A Quest for the Stars

"You think you can run from me?" Asterion ascended slowly on the chains of the anchor. "I am Lord Demetrio's bloodhound! No criminal, rebel, or pirate will make a fool out of him and think they can hide from his wrath!"

"Who's the weirdo?" Cecilia couldn't see due to her piloting the Argo Navis, but she could hear Asterion.

Vanessa winced after sniffing the air. "He smells like poo!"

"Looks like he needs a beatdown!" Temuulen prepared to jump from the railing, but he was pulled away by Caesar.

"Think twice before you engage," Caesar angrily ordered. "We had a scuffle back in the ground, and this is how he left me. He may be all high and mighty about the law, but he's strong!"

"The law?" Charlie asked. "Is he some guard or something?"

"Worse; he technically serves some big bad boogieman who's got the authority of the king on this side of the woods."

"What?!" The pirates were less than pleased.

"Just what happened in that little village?" Temuulen asked.

"Long story; I'll explain after we lose him! Any ideas?"

Cecilia kept her eyes on the skies. "What can we do, Cap? Just wait for him to come onboard?"

"No." Caesar knew he outranked his crew in both authority and fighting ability. As competent as they were, none among them could face Asterion in combat. He himself only survived because the kids took priority for Asterion. Cecilia could probably dazzle him with magic for a short time and maybe Tem was strong enough to wrestle him out of the ship, but either case came with risks, and he wasn't about to endanger his crew.

"Cap?"

"Cecilia, we have no choice but to put the ship on overdrive. How many more spells does it have left?"

"Just one," Cecilia revealed. "Any more than that and we risk sinking it. We kinda used most of its power when we helped that elf girl earlier."

"I'm glad you punks like prattling on so much!" Asterion's hands were now on the railing, to everyone's shock, and he was in the process of raising his leg to climb over it. "Turn this ship around!"

"Damn it..." Still feeling his injuries, Caesar nevertheless issued orders for the crew. "Wulf, patch me up! Cecilia, keep your hands on the wheel, no matter what! Tem, back me up! Charlie and 'Nessa, grab the kids and go below deck!"

"Sure thing, Cap'n!" Charlie searched for the kids, but they were gone. "Uh, Cap'n, where did you leave them?"

"AAAAAAAAHHHH!" The pirates soon spotted the kids running with a bucket in hand as they screamed as loud as they could. The scream, followed by a bucket to the face, startled Asterion enough for him to lose his balance and fall off the ship.

"There they are," Vanessa said listlessly.

"That one's for Eleanor," said a ratfolk girl among the children. She adorably adjusted her glasses and raised her hand victoriously.

Caesar could barely speak through his laughter. "W-well done, kids!"

"Yeah, that's setting a good example. 'Hey, well done, children. You just committed your first murder,'" Cecilia muttered.

"Maintain low altitude, Cecilia," Caesar ordered. "I can still hear him."

Surely enough, Asterion's grunting could be heard not far away. The rest of the crew gazed down the side of the ship and spotted their enemy clinging to the anchor chains once again.

Cecilia steadily kept her hands on the wheel, but she could feel her arms shaking. "That bastard's determined. What do we do?"

"Don't ascend until I tell you to. Stay low and go around the mountain." Caesar knelt to the children's level as they maintained a cautious position. "Things are about to get bad. I appreciate your help, but if you stay out here, you risk getting caught by the bad man."

"Miss Eleanor was always nice to us. We can't let him hurt her friends," the red boy said.

Caesar could sense Asterion getting close to the railing again. "You want to help, and I don't want you getting hurt." He showed them a mischievous smile. "Ever heard of a compromise?"

Meanwhile, hanging on for dear life on the anchor's chains, Asterion continued to climb up. But every time he grabbed on to the chains, the anchor would lower itself, albeit slightly; the hunter believed the chains lowered about a centimeter each time he pulled them downwards in order to climb up.

"These pirates are probably in league with the rebels. Lord Demetrio will promote me for sure once I slaughter them all!" Asterion ducked when a tree branch narrowly missed him. It appeared the pirates' latest attempt to kick him off was to lower the ship enough to let the trees handle their dirty work. The branches that did hit him scratched the skin his armor left exposed, but that was not enough for him to lose his grip or balance. "Did you seriously think that would stop me? Nothing will dissuade me from my duty, not even-!" Asterion's irises shrank after spotting a wooden sign right above the trees.

WARNING! TREETOP SLOTH BEAR HABITAT

LICENSED AIRSHIPS MUST MAINTAIN HIGHER ALTITUDES AT ALL TIMES!

The Argo Navis had descended enough to caress the forest canopy. Asterion hurriedly continued his ascent, but panic had set in, and he pulled the anchor chains hard enough to lower the anchor even more, keeping him in place. He braced himself as his body unwillingly brushed against the leaves and branches of the canopy and, to his dismay but lack of surprise, the claws and teeth of several bears who had been peacefully napping on the treetops and had now been roused from their sleep.

"Ow! Hey! Whoa!" Seconds passed before Asterion climbed above the canopy, his face mauled with deep scratch marks. He felt nibbling on his rear, and did not hesitate to kick the bear that had latched on to him back to the treetops it came from. "You think you're clever? This pain is nothing compared to what I'll do to all of you!"

Speaking of pain...

WARNING! NOW ENTERING POISON IVY TERRITORY

FOR YOUR SAFETY, PLEASE REMAIN ABOVE THE TREES, AND DO NOT TOUCH THE VINES

(Seriously, how dumb do you need to be to stray into obvious danger?)

"Now, wait just a minute!" Asterion's pleas remained unheard when his body collided with the sharp ivy-laden trees right under the canopy. He only made contact for about five seconds at best, but by the time he re-emerged, his face had swollen, and his exposed skin had broken out. "Agh! It's in my bear wounds!"

"He isn't letting up, Cap," an astonished Cecilia pointed out. "There's no stopping him!"

Caesar's frown turned upside down after he looked up for a moment. "Heh. We're not done yet. Cecilia, maintain a lateral position but start ascending!"

"Cap, are you sure? That's-"

"Just do it! I have an idea." Caesar was confident in his plan and maintained his smile in front of the children. "You ready?"

The children nodded, each one holding a bucket. "Ready!"

"Make it easier on yourselves and surrender now!" In spite of the bear wounds, the poison ivy rash, and smelling like poo, Asterion continued his ascent. "Lord Demetrio is expecting results! I'll make his wishes happen or die trying!"

SPLAT

Several oval-shaped objects smashed themselves on Asterion's head and shoulders. He recognized the texture, but the stench was unexpected. "What the? You're throwing rotten potatoes? How desperate are you?!"

"Give it up, psycho!" Caesar tossed an empty bucket aside. "Or you really are going to die trying to capture us!"

"Never!"

The potatoes did little to delay Asterion and he continued moving up. Caesar, for his part, kept calm and simply held out a hand to the side. "Next bucket."

The children had come to an agreement with Caesar; in order to help without getting hurt, they would fetch for anything the ship could spare, fill buckets with it, and hand them over to Caesar.

What followed next was a rain of brittle objects that had an unbearable stench once cracked open, blotching Asterion with a mixture of yellow and transparent slimy fluid. "Eggs?!" What followed after that was a bath of green liquid with meaty chunks pelting the villain's head. "What is this?!"

"My hagfish, crab, and dire boar sausage gumbo!" A distraught Wulf mourned the loss of his dish.

"Quit whining," Cecilia ordered, "I've been telling you for weeks to throw it out!"

"What else have you got up there? You're throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me?" Asterion taunted when no more objects were thrown at him...until moments later when a porcelain sink bonked him in the head. "THAT IS IT!"

"Uh, oh." Caesar motioned for everyone to step back right before Asterion leapt from his current location and landed right on the quarterdeck, just a few feet behind Cecilia. Wasting no time, Asterion punched Cecilia away from the steering wheel, causing the ship to stagger and spin a little. "Cecilia!"

"Take that, you little trollop!" The pirates drew their weapons, but Vanessa and Charlie made sure to place themselves in front of the children. Asterion himself assumed a fighting stance which he freely swayed his left arm to the left and right, mimicking the slithering of a snake. The humiliation from getting slathered with green goo, rotten eggs and potatoes, cow dung, poison ivy, and getting mauled by bears fueled both his rage and determination. "I'm commandeering this vessel in the name of Lord Demetrio. Come at me if you dare, but I must warn you that I've single-handedly slain a dozen rebels! You brigands are nothing but mere insects to me!"

"In...sects, you say?" Cecilia, bleeding from the mouth, stifled her giggling. "That's funny. You're about to be one pretty soon." Holding up her Soulstone, she raised it up, speeding up its ascent. "Now, Cap?"

"Yeah!" Caesar picked up one more bucket and readied to empty the contents on Asterion. Caught off-guard by this and the revelation of Cecilia's Soulstone, Asterion moved solely from instinct and jumped backward and off the ship. "No big deal; I can just climb up again. Much better than getting splashed with whatever he has."

But something had caught him.

Asterion could no longer move his hands and feet as his entire body had caught on to something sticky. From his perspective, the Argo Navis had become transparent, with only white lines outlining the vessel along with its occupants. He froze at the realization of how big the net was...and how green his skin looked.

When he punched Cecilia earlier, the ship spun out of control for a moment and moved laterally. No, it was never out of control; Cecilia made the ship spin so that it would miss the enormous spiderweb he was now trapped on. He could move his head just enough to look back at the fleeing ship, and spotted Caesar holding an empty bucket. What did he try to splash him with, anyway? Surely it must have been something that was worth the jump, otherwise he could have just sidestepped to avoid the bucket's contents. But what if the bucket had nothing, and it was just a bluff to get him to jump?

Yes, that made more sense. The pirates had duped him.

"In...sects, you say? That's funny. You're about to be one pretty soon."

To his dismay, he felt like he wasn't alone anymore. He felt like he was being watched, and rightfully so. Asterion swore he felt vibrations on the web, but he couldn't see anything. "W-wait a minute, let's talk this out!" Frightened, he struggled to break free. But the more he moved, the quicker he felt the vibrations move.

Then they stopped.

"Heh. H-how bad can a spider be?" Asterion grinned, but his uncontrollable shaking betrayed him. "They just bite and poison you. I wish I could meet one that would just deck me, you know?"

A sudden impact to the face made a tooth fly out. Then another, and another after that. And even more after those. Asterion counted them; four giant pale hands punched him, and two pasty feet kicked him. The giant pale blue and white creature before him was about the size of a horse and had four arms and four legs; indeed, the limbs were different enough from each other to tell apart, but aside from them the creature appeared to be no different from a giant spider. Its fangs drooled with venom and drew closer for the killing bite.

"W-wait a second! I'm not a goblin," Asterion screamed despite the green goo from earlier still clinging to him. " I'm not a goblin! I'm not a-!"

SQUELCH

***

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

While they did not wish Asterion's fate on anyone, his screams were music to the pirates' ears. They had finally lost him, allowing them a moment of respite.

"What was that," the red boy asked.

"Nothing you need to worry about," Caesar said. Enough killing was done today, and he was not in the mood to teach the children about the cycle of life and death. "What are your names?"

"I'm Marlon," the red boy introduced himself and pointed at his feline-like companion, "and this is Ray."

"Hello," said the young feline.

"I'm Susie" said the little rat girl.

"And I'm Gortha," the orc girl introduced herself last.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Caesar, and I command this ship." The captain unsheathed his cutlass and raised it up high. "You're safe with us, now."

"Yeah, about that." Cecilia pointed at the crow's nest of the ship. Smoke somehow billowed out of it, and the ship had slowly made its descent into the forest below. "Don't count your mimics before they hatch, Cap."

"Fair point. Cecilia, get ready to make an emergency landing! Everyone, get to your stations!" Caesar nearly darted off when he noticed the kids gawking at him. "Uh..."

"Cool, a real-life pirate!"

"Hehehe..." Caesar bashfully forced a smile. With the enemy gone, he wondered what exactly Lenoria sweetly talked him in to.

***

Not long after their duel with Ser Loin, the girls observed a shooting star dashing across the night sky before vanishing. It left a golden trail behind that gradually faded away.

"Hey, Clara, make a wish!" Lenoria felt Pearl's presence flying alongside her and Chestnut, and Poe settling down on her head as they sped off through the forest road. "What?"

"That's no ordinary shooting star. Whenever a Soulstone wielder dies, the cosmos briefly mourns their passing. And judging by the position of that shooting star, it appears the wielder of the Hounds has met an untimely end."

"The Hounds?" Lenoria felt relief. "Then Caesar must have made it out safe and sound."

Clara then asked a question that had been plaguing her since her departure from Norwich. "Where did Caesar go, anyway? We got separated during that altercation from earlier."

"The plan was to take that woman and the children back to the ship, but..." Lenoria looked down on Lisa. Sensing a sad mood, she quickly changed the trajectory of her conversation. "Looks like he and the kids must have made it out safely if the guy that chased them is dead. He'll meet us back in Goodsprings once the coast is clear."

"That's going to present another problem. Bad guy or not, he was one of the Count's men. That's got to count as some sort of felony..." Clara winced when she felt a frozen hand on her wounds. She may have been away from melee, but she suffered the same wounds Tsukuyomi did due to their bond. "Ow..."

Aquamarine temporarily retracted her icy hand. "Would any of you have felt better if we left them alone? We all knew what would have happened if we ignored everything."

There was no denying the girls did the right thing in the end. More innocents would have died if they ignored the situation and marched to their destination. The alternative would have been a clean slate but a guilty conscience. It didn't sit right for Lenoria and Clara, but it appeared their night of arrival was destined to be bad regardless of what they did.

"Hold still." Aquamarine laid her icy hand on Clara's gore wounds. Taking a moment to gather water, she made some hand motions which summoned a trail of prismatic water that circled around Clara's body. The bruises from the minotaur's fists and the puncture wounds from his horns faded away, though the pain she felt meant they weren't completely gone. "You should feel well enough to help steer Mr. Horsey."

"Thanks, Aquamarine." Feeling much better, Clara straightened her posture and firmly gripped the reins. Free from Demetrio's clutches and the undead far behind them, there was one more issue to address. "We should get our story straight before we reach Goodsprings." The hem of the blue cloak around her person dangled for a moment before she released it from her fingertips. "And ditch these disguises while we're at it."

"Good idea." Lenoria held the reins back, prompting Chestnut to stop running. "Let's take a moment to change, but let's not linger any longer than we need to. It should be easy enough to come up with a story."

The girls discussed what they were going to tell the authorities in Goodsprings should Demetrio's men ever snoop around and ask questions. Ditching their disguises was a start, and since they hid their features well enough, they could avoid detection as long as they kept a low profile. Unfortunately, two problems arose; the first was Lisa. Demetrio and his men knew her face, and if they ever crossed paths again, their plan would fall apart. Aquamarine offered hair dyes from her disguise kit, but that would only be a temporary solution to a much bigger problem.

The second was that, in the end, it didn't matter how effective their plan was; the problem was what Alistair would think of this whole fiasco. He already seemed upset about his predicament, and Lenoria couldn't really tell if his words toward her were part of the act, or a promise that he would punish her for what she had done. Whatever the case was, she was worried he ran into more trouble, and even if he left Norwich, it would take hours for him to cover the distance they just have.

"Please be safe, Al. I'll go back for you once we get settled in Goodsprings."

***

A weary Alistair rested at the base of a tree, his back resting on the mossy bark. Rotten corpses lied sprawled across the road, the eerie light from their eyes absent thanks to Alistair striking down every single one of them.

"I hope she didn't take my words the wrong way..." Applying some healing light to his wounds, Alistair was far from death's door. "The Hammer has not abandoned me. That must mean I've done the right thing. Lord Demetrio may be at the top of the hierarchy, but that doesn't make him exempt from justice." There was just no way he could stay mad at Lenoria. Her heart was in the right place, and he didn't see it until his patron's presence had to point it out to him. "I owe her an apology."

To his dismay, his work was far from done; he spotted Ser Loin running down the road on his return trip to Norwich. Alistair steeled himself and prepared for battle, but quickly realized something was off.

Ser Loin was frightened.

"Ghouls! Ghouls! Get outta my way!"

Ser Loin ran past the boy, completely ignoring him. Alistair then watched the road again and was not happy to see three emaciated figures running closer to him. Their sharp teeth gleamed from the waning moon and their pallid flesh tightly held itself against their thin, starving frames.

"MEAT. MEAT. GIVE US THAT OVERSIZED COW AND WE PROMISE TO MAKE YOUR DEATH QUICK AND PAINFUL."

"Ghouls. Unlike the walking dead, they're intelligent and hunger for human flesh." With a sigh, Alistair hoisted his great hammer. He had to politely remind these strangers why he or anyone else wasn't on the menu tonight...or any other night, for that matter.