Move 325: Dead Lizards
Tunnels--Later, Day 31 (Marpenoth 16)The Aloysiuses and Echo took up watching posts, while Jana got up and repositioned herself back into her protective position. Renn picked himself up after catching his breath and armed himself with his mace.
Blacky and Olaf attacked the lizard on the floor with axe and sword, although both seemed to momentarily have trouble getting through the thing's leathery skin. Azrun choose his shot carefully, but he missed the lizard with the arrow he fired. The lizard tried to chomp Olaf again, but this time, it failed to get hold at all.
Renn then joined the melee, making Azrun's arrow shots even more difficult. Blacky cut into the reptile's large flank, causing it to spurt blood all over Blacky and the tunnel floor. A crushing blow to the rib cage from Renn's mace finished the thing off before it could do anything else.
Olaf smiled as he cleaned his sword, "Well, now we know what it was, and it's no longer behind us."
Azrun looked to the party, "Is everyone ok? Blacky, Renn, Olaf, Jana? Sorry for dropping that first one on you." He looked back toward the small cavern the critters had come from," Arachne, can you tell if anything is in there?"
“I'm fine," Jana mumbled in reply to Azrun. She furrowed her brow at Aloysius and Echo and turned to face the direction they were looking. "See anything?" she whispered. She glanced back at the lizard. "Uhm, think we ought to, uhm, looking inside them like we did the other one?"
Azrun nodded, "Perhaps, we should check their nest area first before opening them up. We're are we going to set up camp. If we plan to stay close to hear we might want to wait until we're leaving the area before opening it up. We don't want to lure anything else here."
"No," the gnome's voice said. The voice and her pool of light seemed to be at the entrance of the side tunnel the lizards had come from. "That is, I'm not hearing any sounds from the tunnel, nor seeing or smelling anything notable. "I suppose giant lizards might have gizzards like chickens," she went on thoughtfully. "It might be worthwhile to open up these lizards and find out what they've been eating. We _might_ find something useful, but we can be certain that we'll make a mess doing it." Her voice sighed. "The grell dissection was really disgusting..."
"Mayhap, if these creatures were known to any intelligent life forms nearby, this place would serve as an adequate campsite," suggested Aloysius. "It may be that this tunnel is avoided by anything nearby for fear of encountering these lizards. But perhaps not. Camping close to this place may serve just as well as camping on this very spot."
He smiled as he looked around at the others. "The last pair of battles have gone very well," he said. "Perhaps we are finally . . .umm . . .what is the expression? 'On the same page'?"
"As for dissecting the lizards, we may learn something of what lives nearby from the contents of their stomachs. If their nest is nearby, I see no reason not to take a cursory look at it afore heading off."
"That was gross," Echo agreed. She looked at the lizards thoughtfully. "Do they have pineal glands?" she asked Arachne. "If we're going to cut them up anyway, it'd be nice to get something useful out of the mess."
"I don't see anything down the tunnel," Echo replied.
"Why don't we check out that side passage and set up camp there if nothing seems out of the ordinary." Blacky suggested Renn slid his mace back into the loop on his belt and nodded his agreement as he took a few deep breaths. He walked to where his longsword and bow lay on the ground and stooped to pick them up. "Thank you, everyone" he said with a grin as he straightened. "I'm certainly glad I didn't end this journey in the belly of that lizard," Renn chuckled.
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