Chapter 20

Sooooo they met Astra. AAAAAAAA. Extremely bad. What's worse is that I think Lenny kind of liked Her? Okay, okay, starting at the beginning.

## Synopsis

After Scourpax spent a half hour or so pissing off the locals and their local dragon gods by lobbing magic at a magical fire (which, who mixes magic like that? Dangerous stuff), we found ourselves on horseback, with one of the locals as our guide and Cesta urging us onward. We came upon a glade in the rocky foothills outside of Melancrot, where a lone bare tree stood surrounded by boulders. As we reached the glade, we detected a group of bandits hiding in the brush, waiting for us to pass. We quickly set up an ambush of our own. The magic users hid out of sight of the bandits, and the shiniest members of the party, myself and Carnelian, posed as stranded travelers.

Little did we know that the ambush we laid to waylay the ambush laid against us would spring a trap of its own. The spellcasters made quick work of the largest goblins, and we were nearly home free when She arrived.

**Astra.** The terrible darkness from which life may not escape. The one I've been running from these long months. The one who tempted me to power, the one who turned my life to loss and my joy to ash.

My bitch ex-girlfriend, destroyer of worlds.

When the latest goblin She was riding walked out from behind a boulder, carrying Her, my heart leapt into my throat. Memories flooded back of long, quiet nights in the woods alone with Her, the screams of villagers growing soft in the firelight against Her sweet promises. I froze, unable to react, terrified of what I might do if I moved a single muscle. She made a bee-line for me, climbing the tree and offering Herself back to me. I reached out--

--and remembered, mere hours before, a conversation with the gnome. We were ahorse, riding towards the city, when suddenly he gained a strange look in his eye. He turned to me, in that way that old men turn to those that they are about to address, and he told me about his time as the King's vizier. He told me about his decision, after the war of the leveled mountains, to give up fighting and become a simple farmer. That he had seen power, grasped its edges and turned his attention around it, and had seen no use for it, and put it aside.

If Scourpax had no use for such power, what purpose could it serve for me, who can reach the top shelf in the village market without using Mage Hand? In that moment his words returned to me. I tore my hand away from Astra's golden hilt and placed it on my axe. I freed the goblin from Her power and cast Her down to the dirt, where She belongs.

Then, the fight started. She was mad at me for abandoning Her. I was mad at Her for seducing me into murdering everyone I've ever loved, and countless others besides. It got ugly. And it would have gotten uglier if She hadn't turned Her attention to Lenny. She started coming on to Lenny, promising her all kinds of power, victories, might, the whole thing. Classic Her. It took three of us to take Astra out of Lenny's hands and throw Her into The Scourpatch. I don't know if I agree with that tactic, but at the very least I don't have to listen to Her obnoxious attempts to get us back together anymore.

Oh, and Castelis was mad because I lied about Astra being his daughter or whatever. Honestly, I was just happy to have a good scapegoat. Anyway, that's never going to come back to bite me.

We finally reached Melancrot, border city of the Dragon Lands and home to the finest bakery in all of creation. Carnelian had some problems with reception after we crossed through the city gate. Like he lost touch with his Patron or something. Whatever, warlocks are weird. Then Helike went on a really bad date, we got into a fight with some wizard hunks, we went dancing til dawn (I think), and Lenny and I drank some horrible, awful, bubbling black something that will haunt my dreams until the end of days.