On some worlds,the religious groups had gone even further, vilifying mind wizardsand even imprisoning them as heretics. The unresolved question waswhether the mind wizards were disappearing by voluntarily goinginto hiding or whether something more sinister was happening.
In SolTheolaur’s case he had voluntarily taken his family into hidingafter being threatened by the Unity of Wisdom for somehow breachingthe Mentarin Treaty.
Now this wasinteresting, as the Mentarin Society was a secretive group of mindwizards that had been around a long time. They were known to beinvolved in magic research funded by the sale of magic items buthad never been implicated in any religious or political intrigues.Had something changed? Had the Mentarin discovered some secretabout the nature of magic that somehow upset the Gods who hadretaliated by having their followers placing a ban on cooperationwith mind wizards in general?
If that werethe case then why was the Unity of Wisdom still trading with theMentarin who were known to be mindwizards. It didn’t makesense.
He returned tothe present situation. He was on Mudrun and his first job was tofind Arch wizard Featherdown but he would have to wait until afterdark as running around in daylight caused problems. Namely everypredator around saw him as a tasty snack. These were just thenormal hazards of being a small cockroach-like insect in a largecreature’s world. He wasn’t worried about being eaten, as he wasmuch too tough to digest. It just attracted unwanted attention whenhe had to blast his way out of something that had eaten him.
Luckily theluggage in which he had hidden had been taken to the local inn.This gave him an opportunity to sample the local food. The warmMudrun climate perfectly suited him so he went for a stroll downthe inside of the walls to the pantry in the inn’s kitchen andsampled several of the foodstuffs, then moved into the bar areaclose to the kegs where he could sup some of the local brew spilton the floor.
‘Very good flavour.’ he thought. ‘Just enough bitters!’ Itdefinitely compared well with some of his favourites on otherworlds.
Eventually itbecame dark and he left a little inebriated to visit the wizard’stower. The problem was of course that Featherdown had surroundedhis tower with an invisible barrier to keep out pests, whichincluded cockroaches. The ward considered him a roach and wouldn’tallow him to enter making him quite annoyed. He couldn’t even getclose enough to find out whether the wizard was home or not.
Being a littleunder the weather his normal excellent guard was down and he didn’tnotice a Newman dressed in black leather armour, as he soundlesslywalked up to the tower. Unfortunately, Chantalot did notice him andhaving a dislike for cockroaches as they were in plague proportionsaround the town decided to squash him. To his complete surpriseHelix didn’t squash but telekinetically picked Chantalot up swirledhim around in the air and threw him into one of the nearby hedges,with the mindspeak message
‘Stop picking on bugs or next time you’ll getworse!’
Feeling alittle more sociable after getting rid of a bit of his frustrationhe decided to go back to the inn and listen in on theconversations. Maybe one of the people there might know where thewizard was. He had learnt by experience never to talk directly toNewmans that weren’t introduced to him as it almost always had badconsequences. Somehow, deep within their psyche was an acutedislike for roaches. They couldn’t help themselves, they had tostamp on him and he reacted defensively by throwing themsomewhere.
Once he had toleave a country in a hurry as he had thrown a crown prince througha two story high window causing the unfortunate fellow to breakseveral bones in his body on landing. That would normally havecaused a war had the ruler known whom to fight. In the end nobodybelieved the prince’s story and he had his allowance cut forwasting too much of it on drink. The irony was that it was Helixthat was drunk at the time, not the prince.
On returning tothe inn, Helix periodically moved between tables sitting upsidedown under them and eavesdropping on the conversations. All of themseemed to be anxious about a confrontation between two druidfactions and other strange phenomena that were happening aroundMudrun. Occasionally he would throw in a few words using mindspeakto one or other of the persons present at the table to liven up theconversation, or for a bit of amusement.
Midway throughthe evening the barkeeper announced that they had someentertainment in the form of Chantalot Rhythmsgrande, a flamboyantbard from off world that was currently the Head of the Town Guard.The bard sang a few ballads from various places and seeing that thecrowd was restless and needed livening up a little told them tocharge their mugs and sing along to the bear song.
This got agreat cheer, as it had been popular over the last few weeks. Toheighten the anticipation in true bard style he then fiddled withthe strings on his lute tuning them one by one and then askingsomeone nearby if each sounded okay. After a few cat calls hesuddenly broke out in a beautiful baritone voice singing each versewith the crowd joining in on the chorus with great gusto.
There once wasNewman that became a bear,
He fightsinjustice, with courage and dare.
chorus.
That’s Aquitainthe Bear,
Aquitain theBear,
You’ll see himhere, you’ll see him there,
That’s Aquitainthe Bear.
verses
Children lovehim cause he’s kind and hairy,
Friends alllove him cause he’s big and scary.
His goldencollar holds gems of power,
That makes hisenemies quake and cower.
Alpha’s thename of his crystal friend,
All evilthey’ll fight and tear and rend.
So if you havea righteous cause,
He’ll help youwith his mighty claws.
If muscle andclaws prove not enough,
He’ll use somecool mind wizard stuff.
He’s a bane ofevil that fights for good,
Just like ahero really should.
They then wenton for another twenty verses and then
