Wizard 45

**Chapter 45**

Richard has gone all Dragonrider on us, and is riding Red around the Fish-infested area seen previously. There are too many Fish for Red to fight, so it's up to Richard. Because, even though we've been *explicitly told* that red dragons are powerful users of magic, all Red is good for is fighting. Claws, teeth and fire; that's all she's got. \~/ No evidence of brains. No evidence of magic. She's a brute.

Richard indicates the Shadrin's cave (remember that?) and says that *“One of my friends told me the cave goes all the way through, to where the egg is.”* Which isn't quite true; Kahlan said the cave was *rumored* to go all the way through the mountain, but no one knew for sure. Eh, I'll let it go.

Richard makes a torch out of reeds (you know, the kind of reeds that grow in sulfurous, volcanic areas?), Red threatens to torture him to death before eating him, and Richard goes into the Magic Cave. He walks and walks and walks, and while I grant kudos to Mr Goodkind for not making the cave floor flat and uniform (Richard has to climb up, and down, and squeeze through cracks), I do note that there are *no* branching passageways. This is less a cave than it is an irregularly-shaped tunnel.

Richard reaches the very end, which is extra-small and he can barely fit through it. As he's imitating a sausage, a Something starts poking at his leg. The Something claws his leg as he drags himself free, and proves to be some sort of clawed tentacle. Richard stabs it with his knife, and it retreats, only to come back with a bunch of friends. He hacks off a few with the sword, and the whole monster comes after him. He stabs it in the eye. The end.

We never do get a good idea what it looks like.

Richard, the trained woods guide who is currently attempting to steal an egg guarded by a pack of predators who hunt with symbiotic fly swarms, decides there's nothing he can do about his blood-soaked pants. He doesn't cut off the legs and wear shorts. He doesn't rip up his shirt and tie it around the injuries. He does absolutely nothing to disguise the smell of blood as he sneaks past the *predators* and their *symbiotic **blood flies**.*

\~/\~/

Richard sees the egg. It's too big for him to carry back through the Tunnel-Cave. Then a blood fly bites his leg, proving me right. The flies are attracted to the blood, which means that this was a failure on the part of Richard, the character, as opposed to Terry Goodkind, the author. The problem is, Richard is a *woods guide.* He presumably knows how to survive in the wild. The fact that he does nothing about his blood-soaked pants makes him look like a total incompetent.

Richard cuts up his bloody pants and ties the strips to rocks. Then he blows the Bird Man of Alcatraz's whistle and starts flinging bloody strips of cloth around. This stirs up the blood flies (duh) and thousands of birds descend and start eating the flies.

Thousands? There were thousands of birds in this volcanic, sulfurous region full of vicious flying predators and their symbiotic fly swarms?

How about that. \~/ I guess Richard is just plain lucky that all the birds were of the fly-eating variety. As opposed to, say, birds that eat seeds. Or birds of prey; hawks and eagles and so forth. None of those around.

The Fish start attacking each other in the chaos. Umm...right. Richard, being a hero, starts horrifically maiming Fish and leaving them to die slowly. *“One [Fish] saw him. He ran it through with the sword. The next he only cut off at the knees. It fell to the ground howling. Another came and he took off a wing, and yet another, both arms. He deliberately didn't kill them, but let them flap around on the ground, howling, screaming, to add to the mayhem.”*

**Item One:** Richard, who has been carrying a sword around for maybe a couple of months, and who has spent the last few weeks being brutally tortured, is such a badass swordsman that he *“deliberately [doesn't] kill”* the winged Bigfoots. Despite being outnumbered dozens-to-one, surrounded by swarms of frenzied flies and birds, and running like mad, he has the ability to inflict precise wounds on his opponents. \~/

**Item Two:** Richard is deliberately maiming his foes but leaving them alive, *“howling, screaming.”* He does not kill cleanly; instead, he callously maims his enemies and leaves them to die slowly. \~/\~/

Anyway, Richard dismembers his way to the egg and grabs it, then starts hacking his way clear. Red shows up and starts frying Fish, then grabs Richard and the egg and flies off. She flies for *“hours”* (please note that this is after Richard crawls through the One-Way Caverns for what *“seemed [like] the whole night.”* Red flies them to her Super Seekret Cave which will somehow keep Rahl from finding her egg again. She has more undragonlike chatter as she apologizes to Richard and admits to being embarrassed.

So, having spent the last few weeks being repeatedly tortured, then doing some light horseback riding the previous day, crawling through a cave all night, fighting numerous flying Bigfoots, and then being carried for hours in a flying dragon's claw, Richard is rarin' to go. \~/

Drinks: 20

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