I'm still alive

Yes, folks, it is I, the Limpet.

Well, it's been an eventful few days. I expect you're wondering what I've been up to and where I am now, or at least have nothing much else going on. Well! Don't be lulled into a false sense of security! My adventures are probably enough to cause permanent hair loss to the unwary at the very least! Oh well, enough with the introduction, I'll now transport you back to the beginning of my daring mission, operation Get Back Into Zarfang. Yes, OK, I didn't really call it that.

The moon was rising like a big, round, shiny white thing over the town square when I met with Maevrin. I noticed immediately that she'd cunningly converted her (alleged) adventurer's costume into a surprisingly effective camouflage job by painting the non stained bits brown. I had also made a nod to concealment by tying a few random bits of bracken to myself at strategic points. I was wearing my ebon black robes of supreme power again, which were the only clothes I'd managed to salvage from Zarfang by virtue of the fact I was wearing them when I got kicked out. Maybe the camouflage effect would work better when we'd got out of town, because people had been giving me some funny looks on the way over.

"Hello there, Maevrin. Ready for the secret mission?"

"Yeah. Are you ready to go?"

"Not quite. I've got a gnome coming with me. Hold on, here he comes now!"

A small, pointy-hatted figure was making its jaunty way across the square. Then, a enormous, shambling figure loomed into view behind it. My heart sank.

"I thought you said this was a secret mission?" said Maevrin with a vague, half-hearted sort of sarcasm that spoke of her already getting used to this sort of thing happening. Nigel's grinning features came into view, framed by the unappetising bulk of Gorgrod the troll. Why does everything have to work out like this? I bet you're getting sick of it, so just think how I feel.

"What the hell are you doing?" I hissed at Nigel, as soon as he was close enough, "This isn't even funny! How the hell are we going to sneak around with that great lump stomping about? You can hear his bloody stomach rumbling over the other side of town! No offence, of course, Gorgrod," I added hastily, though the troll didn't appear offended. In fact, he looked even more vacant than usual, and I suspected Nigel had fished him out of the pub on the way over here. Oh, god.

"Well," smirked Nigel, "You said I could have anything spare from your old house, right? You didn't say I had to carry it myself, did you? 'Sides, Gorgrod's pretty stealthy when he wants to be, right?"

Gorgrod leered at me.

"Yeah, I'm dead stealthy, me."

I sighed.

"Alright, then. OK, fine," I said, waving my hands about, exasperated. "See if I care. It's not as if the whole 'living' thing is all it's cracked up to be."

"HELLO EVERYONE! WE'RE GOING ON A MISSION!" I bellowed across the square, "IF YOU SEE ANY MELTY PUDDLES ETCHED INTO THE LANSDCAPE, THAT'S US! STICK A FEW TOMBSTONES ON THERE, WE'D BE MUCH OBLIDGED!"

An old cleaning lady, complete with mop gave me a dirty look as she hurried by on her way home. I sighed.

"Have you finished?" said Nigel. "You know your problem, mate, you're too up tight. You got to chill out a bit." he waved his hands about vaguely and bent his knees slightly, presumably to indicate geezerdom. "You got to chill, you know, like me. Yeah. Don't worry about nothing, I've got a plan, OK? A plan, bit of an old Gnome trick."

"Oh, really. What would that be?"

"My Uncle Trevor mixes up this stuff, secret recipe with eleven herbs and spices. Rub it over yourself, and you becomes slightly invisible."

"Slightly invisible?" I said, feeling another one of my spasms coming on. A witty comeback would probably have been called for at that point, but unfortunately my brain had already entered the death spiral of doom, and one was not forthcoming.

"Yeah, when we get close, we'll just stick a bit of this on ourselves, then we'll be sorted. So just chill, OK, and lead on."

There didn't seem to be anything else for it. And thus, our intrepid band set out, our destination: adventure!

***

The journey to Zarfang isn't an amazingly scenic one on a nice sunny day, so you can imagine that it wasn't exactly pleasant on a dark, albeit moonlit night. We tried our best to get across the edge of the Swamp of Unending Festerment without sinking in. The moonlight glinted off the Swamp of Unending Festerment Gift Shop, closed of course, more's the pity. Honestly, the stuff you can get in that place...

The Shadowed Forest of Eternal Night posed something more of a challenge, looming like a great wave of inky black against the starry sky, but after a bit of straining and grimacing, I managed to get a bit of light to shine from the end of my finger once again, much to everyone's surprise. I would have waggled my eyebrows in an "I bet you thought I wasn't a real wizard" kind of way, if I hadn't been worried the the legendary BLACK MANGLER BEAST might actually turn out to be real, and attracted to shiny things unexpectedly floating about in the pitch black forest. After what seemed like an eternity watching the shadows slide in disturbing shapes across the murky outlines of the tree trunks, we came out into the familiar sight of the good old blasted/howling wastes. Yes, thinking back, during that happy time before I'd been obliged to hang around with the current bunch of weirdos, the geography of this place had made welcome layers of defences around my splendid isolation. I suppose it might be acting as a bit of an annoying barrier now, but it still felt like coming home.

The moonlight shone starkly across the craggy boulders and crumbling cliffs, throwing them into sharp relief as we clambered our way gingerly towards our objective. I couldn't help feeling that the bright light of the moon was making us horribly visible against the pale rock, and it didn't help that Gorgrod's great hobnail boots were scattering lumps of it noisily about the landscape. As you're probably well aware, they call it the howling waste due to the awful howling winds that are so common here, but on this occasion, the weather was perfectly still, which only served to make me more and more uneasy. We passed by Mrs Fengleworth's cottage - a light was on faintly in the window, so I knew she must have been in there, and alright. I fought back a momentary pang of guilt that I hadn't come over and visited her since I moved away, then carried on our steady progress.

My nerves were not helped when we suddenly encountered a great, black rend in the landscape, a jagged, twisted trench that we had to clamber into to cross - it could only have been made by Eldrigar's magic. The rock at the bottom had been melted smooth and shiny, like volcanic glass, and the edges of the trench were scattered with broken shards of stone where the ground had exploded outwards. Not for the first time, I thought of turning back. Even Nigel's seemingly inexhaustible supply of optimism seemed to be running low, even though he didn't really know anything about what was going on. After a few more minutes, we had reached the foot of the shallow hill that overlooked my ex home. There was a bitter, burnt smell in the air, and I could make out the hint of a dark, shapeless mist that seemed to be rising slowly behind the hill. The reason for that became apparent as we came over the crest of the rise.

There was Zarfang, its familiar shape clear in the moonlight, completely unchanged from when I'd last seen it. But it now stood amidst the most incredible devastation imaginable. The ground around it had been torn, ripped, pounded and wrenched into a great, swirling sea of contorted stone. The tower stood in the middle of it all, as if in the eye of a silent hurricane, mist still rising all about it.

It was moments like that that can really put you off just about everything. What a scene! I half expected to see Frodo and Sam wandering by. To make matters even worse, Eldrigar's tower was clearly visible in the background, but its apex now appeared to pulse and crackle with unspeakable amounts of occult power, sending out sparks and arcs of energy and filling the air with a disturbing low-pitched humming sound.

It seemed about time to rally my troops, seeing as they were staring aghast at the view in front of them, just like I'd been doing. I motioned them back behind a handy rock, and prepared to address them.

"Bloody hell!" said Nigel, before I could think of what to say "What's going on down there! Was it like that when you left it?"

"No, of course it wasn't!" I replied irritably, "I'd hardly have lived there in the middle of that, would I?"

"Alright, alright! Calm down! Anyway, I'm not going down there, not for any money!"

"Oh come on," I said, trying to convince myself as much as him, "That terrain should help us sneak over there unseen, I only want to have a quick look and see if I can get it. I've still got the key to that place in my pocket - I had it when I left. And what happened to that invisibility stuff you were talking about before?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, "Yeah, I suppose we can try it out."

He began rummaging in a leather bag he had with him, and passed us each a small bottle containing a thick, brown liquid.

"Here you go. You just rub a little bit of this on you, and you become slightly invisible."

"Hey," I said, "Nigel, it wasn't the uncle with the upside-down eyebrows that gave you this, was it?"

Nigel shook his head.

"Nah, nah, mate, that's a whole other uncle."

I rubbed a bit of the stuff on the front of my robe. Nothing appeared to be happening, and the others looked just as viable as ever. I took an experimental sniff at the bottle.

"Err, Nigel, are you sure this isn't just some kind of barbecue sauce?"

Nigel took a look at the bottle.

"Nah, guaranteed magic potion this, just happens to look like barbecue sauce. It's the secret herbs and spices what makes you invisible. Plus, it's not as if we're going to look invisible to each other, now is it?"

"Well, if you're sure. If you ask me it just looks like were all messy eaters."

I realised Maevrin had been silent through all this.

"Maevrin, what do you think about all this? I take it you're still coming with us, right?"

Maevrin looked doubtful.

"I suppose so," she said, "I just think, the first thing we should do when we get back is tell the authorities about this Eldrigar. It's not like he's done anything illegal blowing up stuff in the middle of nowhere, but you can tell just by looking at what he's done over there that he's not normal."

"Yeah, I suppose your right," I said, "To tell you the truth, I found something in a book the other day along those lines, I'll tell you about it later."

I looked at her suspiciously, trying to figure out what she was thinking behind those spectacles of hers.

"You know, you don't have to come if you don't want to - you can tell yourself it's probably going to be dangerous."

Maevrin looked down at her feet.

"Well, you know, something to do, isn't it...."

"Well, I'm very grateful. Still, don't feel you have to come just because you feel sorry for me loosing my house," I grinned, "I'm a past master of feeling sorry for myself, so that job's already taken."

I didn't get to find out what Maevrin would have replied to this idiotic line, as Gorgrod jumped in front of me, shouting "YARGH! I'M INVISIBLE" and the next minute was spent frantically shutting him up and looking around wildly to see if anyone had heard his voice. Luckily, the coast appeared to be clear, so I decided it was time we made our attempted entry of Zarfang. I realised, gratifyingly, that the others were looking at me like some kind of leader - presumably my earlier display of magical prowess had impressed them a bit. See, I told you I could command minions. I knew I'd come through in the end....

We slunk as carefully as we could over the hill, then began to clamber awkwardly over the broken land. The stone was still hot to the touch and smoking in places, and had a odd, unnatural touch to it, as if something fundamental in its structure had been disturbed. Yes, I did know what we were doing was insane, but I had become fed up with shuffling around in Tumberwell being bored. Who knew what was going on in Eldrigar's mind, or what he expected me to do, if anything? All I knew was I wanted my stuff back.

At last, with many a worried look in the direction of Eldrigar's tower, as well as many a scraped knee, we arrived at the front door of my beloved home.

All appeared to be quiet. I couldn't believe we'd managed to get this far. It was truly remarkable - the tower was completely untouched, not even scorched, nothing. The damage appeared to end in a precise ring around the building about ten centimetres away from its foot, even some old papers I'd left beside the door were still there, right where I'd left them. Oh dear, strange things were definitely afoot, but how was I supposed to know what? I stepped gingerly towards the door, stretching my hand out to the invisible protective line. As my hand crossed it, nothing happened. Eldrigar's tower made an unnerving rumbling sound behind me as I slipped the key in the door, while the others watched eagerly.

The door opened normally, just as it had hundreds of times. We entered. Everything was dark, and when I tried the light switch, it didn't work. Quickly, despite the dark, I pushed my way back through the others, shut the door behind us and locked it again.

"Don't worry," I said, "I'll make a bit of light so we can see what we're doing."

You know, isn't it really annoying how fiddly things always go wrong right when you specifically say you're about to do them? Try as I might, I couldn't make the light appear. There was an impatient shuffling kind of sound.

"Well, sorry, OK, it didn't work this time. Let's just try to find our way about as best as we can."

My eyes were getting used to the darkness, and I could just about make out where I was going as I advanced up the hallway. The place seemed bizarre in the darkness, larger somehow, familiar yet abnormal. As I crept past the foot of the stairs, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Something moved at the top of the stairs, a small, squat figure scuttled away rapidly just when I looked up at it. Could it possibly be...

"Grott?" I called, "Is that you?"

"Did you see something up there?", whispered Maevrin.

"Yeah, if my eyes didn't play tricks on me, I think that was Grott. We should go up and look for him. I wonder why he didn't come and meet us?"

"Look," whispered Nigel, "I don't know who this Grott is, but I'm after as much stuff as I can carry and a quick run home, so whatever we do, let's get it over with."

"OK, OK," I whispered tersely, "We can start upstairs. I want my potion kit and spell books most of all, anyway. Come on."

We climbed carefully up the long, spiral staircase, eventually reaching the landing adjoining my room. Everything was still and silent. I slid the door open and went in, the others following behind me.

No sooner had we entered, when the lights came on, blindingly bright after our long time in the darkness. When my eyes had stopped smarting, who should I see standing before us, but Grott himself! Despite his lamentably disloyal behaviour before, I was delighted to see him again. He was standing in the corner of the room, with a curiously piercing expression on his face. Just as I was about to speak, something happened that caught me totally by surprise.

"Well well," said Grott in a thin, slightly squeaky but brisk voice, "I've been expecting you."


***

Well, I'll let you know what happened next when I've got a chance to write it. Oh yes, and thank you Chootoobacca, whoever you are. Toodle pip for now!