Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [120]
"This body is a bit smaller than Moander was in the Elven Woods," Olive noted.
"You can't be serious!" Breck said.
"I have scried on my people for months as they built this new body, but I had no idea it was so huge" Grypht said. "I never attempted to view it all at once. I never imagined the scale they've built it to." From the hamlike smell the wizard emitted, Alias could tell that Grypht was extremely worried.
"Grypht didn't realize it was so large, either," Alias explained to the adventurers who couldn't understand saurial.
"If Moander's last body was bigger than this one, how did you ever destroy it?"
Breck asked incredulously.
"We burned it… with the help of a red dragon," Akabar said.
Grypht shook his head unhappily. "That must be why the minions have been casting special enchantments on this new body to protect it from fire," he said.
"Grypht says this one's protected from fire," Alias translated. From the surprised look on Akabar's face, she could see the mage hadn't counted on this possibility.
"Well, what are we supposed to do with it, then?" Breck asked. Fear and frustration had begun to creep into his voice.
"Grypht could disintegrate it," Olive suggested.
"Perhaps," the wizard mumbled. "Given a thousand years."
"It's simply too big," Akabar replied. "It would take hundreds of wizards working years and years."
"Then gate it into another dimension," the halfling said.
"It would take the power of a god to create a gate large enough" Akabar said.
"As long as the seed isn't brought to it, the body isn't important. Right?"
Zhara declared. "Without its minions, Moander is helpless. Somehow we must free the saurials from the Darkbringer's possession."
"Is that possible?" Alias asked.
"There are ways to free those who haven't been possessed too long," Grypht replied. "Those who were possessed first, at the same time Kyre was, harbor too many tendrils of possession. Even if we succeeded in destroying all the tendrils in their bodies, so much of their flesh is rotted away that they would die anyway. But those are blessedly few. Most of our people could be saved by a cure disease spell. That will destroy the tendrils that possess them. If we cannot get near them easily, we can cast cold spells on them instead. That will also destroy the tendrils."
After Finder had translated Grypht's words into Realms common, Akabar said, "But cold spells could kill the saurials."
"No," Dragonbait said. "We saurials don't react to cold the same way you humans do." The paladin turned to Alias. "Remember what happened to me last winter in Shadowdale when I was watching you skate on the duck pond?"
"You fell asleep, and we couldn't get you to wake up until we brought you back inside the inn," Alias recalled.
The paladin nodded. "Cold doesn't harm saurials the way it harms you humans-damaging your flesh and hurting your lungs, pulling so much heat from your bodies that you could die. Instead, our scales protect the flesh. We fall into a torpor so we breathe less cold air, and we stop moving, which conserves heat. The larger we are, the less prone we are to the effect, but we can't control it. Even the High One," Dragonbait said, nodding in Grypht's direction,
"would fall into the cold sleep if he stayed outdoors in Shadowdale in winter for more than an hour or so."
Alias translated all this for Akabar.
"Well, maybe we'll get lucky and the vale will have an early frost," Olive said.
Finder shook his head. "Part of the vale's magic keeps it especially warm in the winter," he said.
"There are over a hundred of my people down there," Grypht said. "We will need the help of warriors to capture them without harming them and priests who can cast spells to cure diseases and mages who know magical cold spells."
Alias translated Grypht's words.
"If Finder can teleport me back to Shadowdale," Breck said, "I'll muster a force of fighters and spellcasters."