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Posted by on 1997 Jun 10 |

Carrier Pigeon Downed Carrying Sealed Message

(The Crossing, Zoluren: 87 Lirisa 351)

It was a foggy night on the Northeast Green of the Crossing when up in the sky I noticed a pigeon. A moment later, an arrow flew from somewhere and struck the pigeon. It fell to the ground right in front of me, dead.

I was not alone, a young Guild member, Kurokuju had been asking me some questions about life in town while I was acting as a Mentor. As I looked at the pigeon, I noticed the little bird’s message was still with it.

“Someone is going to miss this,” I said. (I know, a bard should be able to come up with something better than the obvious, but it was short notice!) “Do you think we should retrieve the message?”

Several folks there agreed, and as we were talking, the young Kurokuju searched the pigeon and picked up the sealed message. Before I could even warn him that the seal could be trapped, and to beware, he had broken the seal on the message.

Suddenly a White Death Spirit appeared in the air out of the broken seal, and Kurokuju drew one last breath before he was dead. The Death Spirit then seemed to be sizing up whomever was left as it retrieved the message. Then it picked someone else and began advancing on them.

“So much for the theory that it would only attack the one who broke the seal,” I muttered as I frantically started chanting the enchante of war and started putting on my armor and yelled for help.

While the battle was not quick in the fog, it was certainly filled with the dread of knowing we faced a terrorsome creature, and that one mis-step in the bad weather would be our last, too.

The one whom it had advanced on managed to stay out of range several different ways, and then Tazerok was able to use some sort of magic to first put the White Death Spirit down to sleep, and then to kill it.

Several people were there, claiming the note was for them by that time, and Tazerok picked up the note and walked somewhere quieter. I do not know what happened to it, but I heard he had read the message to several folks.

My attention turned to the young Kurokuju, who still lay dead, and I was about to drag him off to safety when two or three Dragon Priest Archers showed up. One of them ran off, or tried to, but heroes of the Crossing were quick to dispatch all of them without any more fatalities.

Still dead on the ground, I pulled Kurokuju to somewhere a bit quieter, and he had his memories protected by two clerics. I do not know if the gods count such things as a quiet death as a good deed, but the young man was certainly a good sport about this unexpected turn of events on him, and not a single word of complaint was heard from him as we gave him instructions about what to do next.

Only time will tell if the contents of the sealed message will come to light, and whether doing so will alert the wrong people, or the right ones.
 

[Ed. Note: The contents of the sealed message did come to light.]