19 Kythorn 1479

Oh my head. Honestly even after a day's travel it still hurts. That clear whatever-it-was the orcs had - I think someone said it was made from corn? - has a kick like a mule - but not until morning. It's worse than Lannen's shit - what IS it about clear-colored spirits? Make a note - if it looks like water, but smells like alcohol - RUN.

Max, the wretch, apparently doesn't drink and spent the morning being all cheerful and perky and generally cruel. Good instincts, I just wish I was too sick to fully appreciate it. Of course, oddest thing happened to him - a little bit creepy - as we were breaking camp, this old orc showed up - long greying hair, wild-eyed prophet-y look... He told Max to take care of the queen and the gold will be easy. Max asked which queen and how and since the old man had no invisible dog, he told Max to ask the invisible monkey. He did say that you can't put the cart before the horse, but you can put it before the bird. We'll have to wait and see what that's gonna turn out to mean. I wonder how many times this fellow's gonna show - and how many different faces he's gonna wear.

We left with the orcs warning about the "evil elves" ringing in our ears - savages, they said, backstab you if they get the chance, yadda yadda - all the usual things to say about the other guy. Hard to tell what to believe of it - I mean, they ARE elves, after all. Not exactly the fiercest race ever, right?

Wrong. In this world, they do fierce and savage pretty damn well. Nice little ambush that I'm ashamed to admit caught me totally flat-footed. They went straight for the orcs - ooh, big surprise - and Aprilane - apparently with that "how dare someone non-elvish pretend to be good with a bow" crap. First with some trained birds, then the archers popped up on the hill - very nice set-up. I TRIED to talk things down, I mean, if I can convince a couple hundred orcs not to kill ME, I should be able to kill half a dozen elves not to kill the rest of us, right? Wrong again. They did pause a bit, but then decided I was a traitor and the carnage continued as planned. Unfortunately for them, the tall grass that had covered them well enough crouched was well high enough to cover a gnome simply striding forward and they never saw Gnf until his spells hit them. Mind you, that meant they could see ME and as a traitor I was a prime target. Bad, very bad. Fortunately, human blood is good for just that extra bit of toughness - well, compared to elves anyway and he fell down and I didn't. I remember now why I stay out of fights where they can reach me. But Max covers ground like nothing I've seen and once the hawks left off on Aprilane, she could just start tagging them. A few of 'em ran, but we captured a few. Lyra decided to retrain one of the birds - best of luck to her, but I doubt it'll work. We stripped the prisoners down to loincloths, took their weapons and the bone charms that marked their kills and I leaned in and told them their kills belonged to US now and they owed us life debt. I made a big impression, no doubt, and they rabitted right off. I'm not sure I'm ok with being...scary. Aprilane picked up the leader's bow and has been all but drooling over it ever since. It IS a very nice bow, I grant, but she's worse than Allyson with a new sword.

We continued trudging down along the road and suddenly noticed that the animals and everything had gone really quiet. That's always bad news. Ahead in the road we saw what looked like a heat shimmer - but it wasn't really that hot and heat shimmers don't move towards you. Lurtma had mentioned that their legends about the twin worlds did mention folks just popping back, so we advanced cautiously, hoping this was our ticket back home. Lyra did say that the spirits said this was a transition zone, so that seemed promising... as we got closer we could hear a crackling sound, sorta like when you've rubbed the wool blankets together too much bringing 'em in off the line and then they give that ZING. We could start to make out shapes in the shimmer - sorta purply swirlies and what looked like...well, like canned storms? Once we got closer enough I could see they were chaos shards. Wow, who'dve thought I'd ever see one? Or several? Or fight several? They're nasty, blow up when you kill 'em too. Makes it important to stay at range. Good thing Allyson's sergeant convinced her to learn to use a crossbow. Since they were out of range of my spells, Aprilane lent me her old bow - still chortling over her new one, the more so after she saw how powerful it is. Anyway, we downed 'em, no one hurt, all good. AND Gnf and I picked up a bunch of residuum where they'd fallen. He uses it alot and I can always stand to have a bit more - if I need to speed up more than 8 folks, I guess.

We look to arrive at Silverymoon tomorrow. Frodi is going to get up a group to go after the Queen. It's definitely personal with him now - if it wasn't before. He and Gnf set up a way for him to contact us if he needs.

Odd, when we set up watches for tonight, Allyson let me and Aprilane stand watch without supervision. She's been awfully trusting and it's starting to really worry me. Still, Aprilane's a pretty girl under the dirt and a little flirting never hurt anyone.