Damu vs a Yuan-Ti Priestess

The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku assassin, as told by Leo Wayfarer to his Nephew Leto Wayfarer: # 32 (of 33) The killing of the "Dragon-Lady".

 

When Damu told me that his clan had a job for us up north in the pirate city of Bayport I knew we were up for some dirty work. When they gave us a chest of potions up front I knew we were fucked. I was already in deep with the Kenku and there was no refusing their offers at this point. I remember sitting on my porch drinking in my chair on a gray rainy summer day. Dirty poor kids from the neighborhood were chasing some sorry ass mongrel man up the street with sticks when Damu showed up with the potion chest and a bag of diamonds.

"We have to go up to Bayport to kill some gangster called the Dragon-Lady", he said as her tossed the sack of jewels to me.

 

Shit always rolls down hill, and it always had a funny way of rolling down on top of me. Somebody somewhere fucked up and it always was up to him and I to clean it up. Oh well, whoever this "Dragon-Lady" was I'm sure she was a cunt anyway.

 

We caught a ride up to Bayport with a caravan belonging to a semi-shady fat, effeminate Halfling merchant named Kyle Oberton. People around Scardale called him leg-rub Oberton as he liked to pay street urchin boys to rub his inner thigh as he jerked off. Either way it was a quick ride on short notice.

 

After our third day on the road I pulled Damu aside and asked him details on the job.

"This 'Dragon-Lady' isn't a dragon, but no one knows what she is really. Some say she's part dragon, but some are thinking she's part demon. Either way she's got magic, and she lives in a guarded villa. Not only do we have to kill her, we also have to kill anyone who looks like her, and we have to burn the bodies. The rulers of Bayport won't bother us if we are discreet. This is a clean up effort", Damu told me.

 

So like usual we were to sneak into a lethal situation not knowing even half of the whole story, and kill people we never met. This job was my second to last job before retiring from mercenary work. I had kept telling myself for years that after a few more successful missions that I wouldn't blow all the money I made on hookers and taverns, and that I'd retire before my luck ran out. I'd did that shit for 10 years after serving in the Regentum army from when I was 15 until I was mostly 21.

 

..[if !supportEmptyParas]-->At the city gates of Bayport Damu and I quickly split from that fat faggot Halfling. The walls around Bayport are huge, towering solid grey slanted walls that are stained with blood and scarred with wear from repelling marauding hoards over the years. By the gates I saw a skinny bitter old man stabbing a goblin with a spear that was locked inside a gibbet. The sorry little bastard was missing a hand and was all bruised and cut up. Huge half-Ogre guards in flat black spiked armor leaning on massive well-worn swords stood at either sides of the cities gate as a few shabby human solders asked everybody as to what their business in Bayport was. Factories spewed black and yellow smoke in the distance, and the first thing that hit me was the intense, pervasive stench of piss. In Regentum our cities have their ghettos, but Bayport itself is a ghetto.

 

Skinny and tore up opium addicted human whores openly sucked off Orc marauders, while I saw a Gnome playing a out of tune mandolin on the shoulders of a Bugbear who was in a squad of thugs of mixed goblinoid races. Whores of every age and race sold themselves to the killers and thieves they shared their city with. Pirates looked at us two with eager eyes, hoping maybe to capture us and sell us to a ship. Everywhere I saw cripples and lepers begging in the streets and massive throngs of the worst examples of all races crammed in together around tightly packed and haphazardly build shacks made from scraps and tents. Bayport is a grim and vile place.

 

I wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, so we skipped getting a room and headed straight for the villa. The villa itself it turned out to be the size of a small castle and loomed far above everything around it, so we could not get into it from an adjacent rooftop, which is Damu's favorite way to get into a place. The villa was guarded by Hobgoblin and human troops, and some of the Hobgoblins rode on giant malformed boars. Damu snuck around the place and said their was no obvious way in or out of the building besides the front door, or through windows not too far from the roof. I didn't want to wait to be clever and con my way in through the front. I just wanted to be back on my porch drinking.

Damu broke out his set of climbing claws and a chunk of charcoal to blacken our weapons so they wouldn't gleam if we had them drawn. As he quickly, silently, and smoothly climbed up the walls of the villa in a zigzag path between shadows and vines, I downed a bunch of potions that the other Kenku gave us. One potion was for quickness, one for strength, and another to float up to the roof. For once I made it up a building quicker then he did, and the little fucker gave me a dirty look. We got into the building by Damu climbing down another wall, opening a window, and quickly killing a guard with his crossbow. I very carefully floated down into the window as its hard to move quietly in armor.

 

We were standing at the end of a long hallway that that went straight and turned left at the end. We could hear chanting and loud, heavy drumming coming from further with in the building. Damu went up to the turn first, looked for a moment, and then signaled me over. Looking around the corner I could see a bright light coming from the right at the end of another hall, and could clearly hear a loud and powerful female voice chanting,

"Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, Deathless Mother-Father, bornless primordial serpent awaken! Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, upon our hidden obsidian temples awaken! From the blackest pits scribed with blasphemous secrets arise from the bowels of the abyss for you beloved children! Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, Enter this female vessel so she may guide your hand! IA, IA YIG!!"

 

Damu went a head again, paused for a few moments longer then before, then again signaled me over. "Leo outside of that door it there are two curved staircases to either side that go down into a large open chamber. In front of that is a balcony. There is a giant snake with arms playing drums while a naked lady who's a snake from the waist down is doing some ritual", he told me in a very matter of fact voice. It seemed absurd, but I peaked around the corner to see a beautiful, lithe, slender, dark haired woman with a 30ft long snake like lower torso in the throws of some occult ecstasy, while flashes of red light and translucent spectral tendrils crawled sensually about her body.

"Leo you go down and get the drummer, I'll get this Dragon-Lady", he said. Damu then hopped up on to the banister of the balcony then with weapons drawn he did a leaping flip towards this Dragon-Lady, and I charged the drummer.

 

The first thing was her scream. I looked up quickly to see Damu landing, and her clutching her bare chest where he sliced her from her neck, down across her left tit. Enraged the drummer reared up towards a height a few times higher then mine and lunged at me with an incredible speed. Had I not drank those potions I would have been crushed, but I rolled out of the way and leaped on the creatures back. I began ruthlessly hacking away at scales and muscles as hard as armor. It smashed itself against a wall in an effort to knock me free from its back, and in failing to do so knock over a flaming brazier which set a red velvet tapestry with a gold knot work of serpents on it on fire. Pounding my sword away at its neck and back its arms went limp, and at that instant I felt the room grow very cold. I saw Damu dodging blasts of fire and frost, which were shooting out of the hands of the Dragon-Lady.

 

..[if !supportEmptyParas]-->..[endif]--> The drummer snake shot up and towards its Matron. I leapt off the beast at a good 20 ft in the air, and swung at the waste of the Dragon-Lady. Striking true I cleaved her from hip to the other and fell with her to the floor. For a moment our eyes met and she looked very beautiful. I started to feel sorry for her and then realized she was trying to bewitch me. I stood up quickly and shrugged it off. The drummer snake was lying in a poor of its own blood barely alive, and the Dragon-Lady pathetically was crying and crawling to her severed lower half. Damu put his little talon foot on her head and cut it clean off. I walked over to the drummer snake and brought its misery to an end. We took whatever looked valuable from the room, including this gold and ruby encrusted goblet that I still have. We stacked the bodies together as best we could given their lengths, and set them on fire per our instructions from the Kenku. We left the building the way we came and quickly left that disgusting city. We had to bribe a fisherman to sail us down the coast to the city of Nolos. I'm sure the diamonds we gave him where more money they he had ever seen before.

 

I never learned what it was all over and that was one job that I don't want to know the reason behind.

Done