From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: [KQ] Raelf: In the Tunnel of Love
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 92 07:01:49 GMT

The low city was a dusty, drab, nasty place this close to the Shunned
Center.  The gray of dust blended into the bleached gray of old weathered
wood and rough-hewn stone, daubed mud stucco and cobblestones, dead weeds.

The only color was the blue sky, the bright rags on a wandering street
vendor, pushing a cart in an ill-considered shortcut.  That, and the
jewelled glint of a hummingbird as it blurred from place to place.

An observer, if there was one in the daytime, in this dreaded place,
would have seen the bird stopping, hovering in place.  They would have
seen a group of three tiny spheres appear in the air around the bird's
head, spinning, with one finally moving off eastward or southward.
The bird zipped off in that direction.

The observer, were she able to keep up, would have seen that the bird
suddenly dove for a hole in the ground, one of the slotted grates
leading down into the sewers underneath, the slimy, noisome, unhealthy
place where the residents of a slimy, noisome, unhealthy part of town,
dumped the kind of things that were so useless or disgusting that even
they couldn't stand to have them around.

Most certainly not the kind of place where a brightly colored bird,
accustomed to sipping delicate nectar from beautiful flowers, should
be going into.  But there it was, zipping purposefully down the
murky ill-lit corridors towards some unknown destination.

The hum of wings was audible for only a few feet.  There was too
much other noise.  Creaking, groaning noises from the streets, the
sound of heavy-laden carts lumbering over ancient support timbers.
The distant rush of water washing into, and out of, some part of
the sewers where water moved with more regularity.

The muffled growl of the Tunnel Crocodiles.

A closed door.  Behind it, the emaciated body of a human, who seemed
to have died of starvation.  Not what the bird was looking for.  It
moved on, puzzled by the discovery - just around the corner was a way
to the surface, why hadn't the human gone up?

The spheres rotated around the bird's head again, and one, glinting
faintly green, zipped off down the tunnel.  The bird followed, past
a place where something that was certainly not water cascaded down
from a pipe, into a murky pool below.  An eye opened in the pool, a
mucky brown tentacle reached upward, but the consistency was too thin
for it to reach the agile bird, which vanished down a conduit that
used to carry some sort of wires, in a long-vanished past.  

The bird pulled up sharply.  It had come into a huge room.  There was
something strange.  A huge heap of detritus and garbage, but at the same
time, heaps of what had to be actual treasures.  Things of value.
But nobody would be taking them without first getting permission from
the mass of gleaming pale crocodiles sprawling indolently among them.

Their leader - the sphere had led to him.  But this wasn't right.  The
lizard-man prince is huge, overmuscled, green and scaly, like this one.
But he has those tattoos, red and intricate, over his entire body.
He wears clothes, of a sort, and this one was naked.   And this one had
no tattoos, and instead of a trident he carried a black sword whose blade
gave off a nauseating aura.  The bird moved closer.  The scales, all new,
shiny green, except for those on the right hand.  A ring, definitely
wreathed in magic, on that hand.  The bird recognized that ring.

The leader stood, hissing his displeasure.  No speech, just annoyance
at the high-pitched humming from the hovering bird.  The T-crocs that
were closest to him wriggled away in fear, some rolling onto their
backs in abject surrender.  The leader waved the sword, and some form
of primitive reptilian communication took place.  The T-croc just
under the bird made a snapping leap, but the bird was gone, back
down the tunnels.  The crocs gave chase, followed by the hissing,
growling lizard-man.

The bird knew he could not escape by speed.  These tunnels were too
small and narrow.  The escape to the surface was too far, and he
couldn't keep this up, without food.  He landed.  FLICK - a human
stood where the bird had been, clad in a black poncho and pants,
breathing hard.  The three spheres spun around him, two moving off
the way he was going, one hovering indecisively near him.  He drew
a toothpick from his hair, above the left ear.

<<Monkey Trick>> he said, in a language that sounded like lava
flowing into the sea.  The toothpick grew in his hand, becoming a
short staff the size of a longsword.

FLICK.  The human was replaced by a duplicate of the lizard-man
with the sword, but with tattoos, shifting and flickering colors,
red, green, blue, gold.  The short staff began sputtering, arcs
of electricity building around it, vaporizing bits of water and
the occasional bug.

The neo-lizard-man splashed swiftly down the tunnel, looking for
a good defensible position.  The spheres, forgotten, evaporated into
mist behind him, dispersed by the passing mass of a lunging T-croc.

----

"... But the biggest thrill we ever got, was doin' a thing called
the crocodile rock ..."

[ADMIN: 'Raelf the older, joining the Kron Questors for a while.
	Note that Thk Prime is introduced by permission of Mike Rigler.]