"Spiridale, you lazy slug, where the hell are you?" Mandor belted out, but for all his volume, his loud voice was swallowed up by the peaceful forest and ignored by the clear blue sky. The carts and wagons had come to a stop, and people were getting out to stretch their legs, preparing to refill canteens.

"Let me check out that pool, first, sir," Roald said, inclining his head. He was dressed in plate mail, and weapons were strapped virtually everywhere to his body. "Call me over-cautious if you want, but that's how I keep myself and the caravans I protect alive."

Mandor nodded his head brusquely. "Go ahead. That's what I hired you and that other lout for, but he keeps running off. Great dust and damnation! Spiridale!" he screamed again, as Roald unslung his spear and cautiously made his way to the pool. It was some thirty yards off the road, and this chance for water would have been missed had Spiridale, the strange, silent wild elf, not come running in to tell them about it.

Only thing was, he had run right back out again to "scout around." Roald didn't know what to make of it, but was secretly pleased. He was doing his job, and had slightly resented it when Mandor had hired a second guard. Now, of course, Mandor was regretting it, for the elf kept scouting for danger, when Mandor wanted him with the caravan at all times.

Roald wasn't the only one who didn't know what to make of Spiridale. In this land of magic, monsters, fear, and wonder, he still acted unlike any elf Mandor had ever met – or any other warrior, for that matter. There was something unsettling about him, as if he was in another world, or wasn't quite listening to others when they spoke. His bow was actually pinned somehow, in a most ridiculous manner, to his left shoulder, hanging freely, with the string facing behind him. His quiver was large, with a rope coiled inside a bottom compartment which was loosely closed off by leather flaps. This rope was actually tied to one of several metal arrows, separated from his wooden arrows by more compartments in the upper part of his quiver. Mandor hadn't asked what all the fancy rig was for, and Spiridale had offered no information.

Most of all, he was an elf, and by and large, humans like Mandor didn't understand – or trust – the other races.

Even so, Mandor had decided to bring him along because there was an intensity about him. When asked to give a demonstration of his marksmanship with the bow, he had performed splendidly. But what really stunned Mandor – and what he hadn't told anyone else in the caravan yet – was that Spiridale was providing protection for free. He had staunchly refused any payment.

Still – no matter what his abilities, the elf was a burden if he wasn't going to actually do what he said he'd do, and Mandor had neither the time nor the food to spare for this nonsense.

Mandor drew another breath. "Spiridale!" he screamed, veins popping out on his neck.

"I'm right here, sir."

Mandor jerked his head around. He hadn't heard the stocky little elf approach. He stared into the stern, brown eyes, the dirty face below the ragged black hair, and the silly tattered rag tied around his head as a bandanna. His elven features, sleek and beautiful, seemed covered and abandoned somehow. He wore chain mail of a dark shade, with a long sword and a whip to complement his longbow.

"I thought I told you to stay with the families, not go roaming around the trees to play with the frogs!" he said harshly.

"When you hired me, you told me you wanted me to keep these people alive," Spiridale replied evenly. "That's what I'm doing."

"Oh, really?" Mandor leaned forward, hands on his hips, eyebrows disappearing into his thick hair. "I think you're a coward, and that you hide out in the trees to make your escape if anything happens!"

Spiridale looked past him at Roald, poking around the underbrush by the pool of water. "I've already checked around that area," he said. "There's nothing there. There's still not, or I would smell them."

"I didn't see you over there," Mandor snapped.

"You didn't look close enough." Spiridale met his gaze evenly.

"There's something strange here," Roald called, kneeling by the pool. They both turned to face him. "There are animal tracks leading up to this watering hole, but none leading away." He squinted his eyes in the sunlight, waiting for orders.

"Hmp," Spiridale thought. Roald was right, for he'd noticed the same thing, but absently, as he'd been looking for more obvious signs of danger. A second later, his eyes widened in fear and recognition.

"Roald!" he called. "Get away from th- NO!"

It was too late. Roald, looking at Spiridale with surprise and annoyance, had just started to stand up when a tentacle snaked out of the water with lightning speed and whipped around his ankle. Roald shouted once, and he was gone.

Spiridale was running before anyone moved. He scooped up a hefty rock and thrust it before Galen, the group's only priest.

"Make this glow!" Spiridale ordered. The timid man was completely taken aback, but galvanized into action by Spiridale's intensity. No one else was doing anything. He cast a magical spell called Faerie Fire on the rock, giving it a soft radiance, and Spiridale charged through the brush to the pool and hurled the stone down.

Then Mandor understood why Spiridale kept his bow as he did – his left hand only moved two inches before it was in his palm. At the same time, his right hand whipped to his left shoulder, and in one fluid move, unpinned the bow and reached back another inch to pull an arrow out of his quiver. Then Spiridale was probing the depths of the pool with his deadly aim; Mandor could have blinked twice and missed it.

In the darkness of the water, the glow from the stone plummeted and was swallowed up. Bubbles, blood, clothing, and Roald's mangled spear floated to the surface, and all was still.

Spiridale squinted, but in the bright sunshine, he could not see beneath the surface. As he was not a priest, he had no way of knowing he would not have been able to see the rock, anyway, for the glow cast by Faerie Fire was too faint. He fired four quick arrows into the water.

"Get away from there, you fool!" Mandor called out, running forward a few steps. "If you die, too, no one will protect us!"

Spiridale simply nodded, and slowly started to back away, bow at the ready. Mandor thought about telling him that his sword would be better, but kept silent. He had never seen anyone load and fire that fast before, or look as comfortable with a weapon in his hands.

When he was 10 yards from the pool, the water surged and boiled. An instant later an entire mass of about 20 tentacles shot out of the water, coming straight at him, throwing the armor and weapons of Roald ahead of them. Spiridale yelped in surprise, barely ducking his head in time to dodge a metal plate. He fired blind at the writhing sea, and his arm whipped back to his quiver as he went down.

He slammed into the ground and the tentacles yanked him away in the blink of an eye. A split second later he would have been dead, but halfway to the hole a shining arrow shot out of the entanglement on the ground, a rope snaking out behind it. It buried itself into a thick tree, and the tentacles jerked to a stop, their prize holding desperately onto the rope, gritting his teeth in pure agony from the tug-of-war on his body.

It wasn't enough. His grip was sliding, skin coming off his palms. Mandor and the others watched, transfixed, as Spiridale, letting out a ferocious roar, wrapped the rope around his left hand and tore his right hand free. By now he was virtually covered in tentacles.

His right hand wrapped around himself to his other side, fingers clawing beneath. His face, turned up toward the sky, twisted in excruciating, horrible pain as his left hand was slowly pulled free from the grip and a terrific force threatened to pull his arm off. A red haze was beginning to blur his eyes as the tentacles tried to squeeze the life out of him. His drow chain mail had not been built for such punishment – it was just barely keeping him alive.

Just as his fingers were almost gone, his right hand finally latched onto what he was searching for. He pulled his long sword – a Flame Tongue – free from between two tentacles and slashed blindly downward, the sword glittering in the light.

In two hacks, one third of the tentacles was cut away. With a mighty throbbing of water, the remaining tentacles immediately snaked back down inside the pool even faster than they had come out.

Gasping and covered with blood from the creature, Spiridale scrambled away. He came stumbling back to the others to fall into the arms of Galen the priest.

"Oooh," he groaned as Galen laid his hands on him. Silently, painfully, a cracked rib healed. A few seconds later, his shoulder and arm were no longer hurting. Several of the men gathered around him, but most were still looking in awe at the pool of water, now serene and sparkling in the sunshine.

Mandor knelt beside him. "Are you well enough to still fight?" he asked brusquely. Spiridale just glanced at him and nodded quickly, still breathing hard.

Mandor let out a sigh. "Good. You're all we have now. And whether you like it or not, you must stay with the caravan."

"Of course, sir," Spiridale sat up. "I could afford to scout as long as there was another warrior here. It made a good combination. But now I can't."

"Good. Rest for a few minutes. We'll be on our way then."

"No, sir," Spiridale answered, still panting. "I'm not leaving without killing that thing. It's a danger to all living things. It's undead."

Everyone gasped. Mandor's face turned white. "Undead?" he asked quietly. "How do you know that?"

"My sword has special magic against their kind," Spiridale replied, slowly getting to his feet. "I barely had enough strength, and no leverage at all, yet I sliced those things easy. Too easy. It's undead, and I will not leave without destroying it."

If looks could kill, Galen the priest would have had his work cut out for him. As it was, Spiridale met Mandor's cold stare evenly.

"Have you thought about your responsibility to this caravan?" Mandor asked. "I don't want to see my people killed because our guard suddenly turned into a paladin."

Spiridale walked over to his metal arrow embedded in the tree. Mandor followed, still talking.

"Now, I don't care about blue jays and squirrels and boars and deer, or – or – or even other people, for that matter. I care about these people. My people. I can't take care of them. You must."

Spiridale took the rope and tied one end around the tree and the other around himself. He answered harshly, "People are people everywhere, and all their lives are worth the same – too much to ignore. It makes me sick when people like you don't understand that."

"We've got to get these people out of here and on down the road!" Mandor shouted. "If you care so much about lives, you'll do what you can, where you can!"

"I perfectly agree," Spiridale replied. He dropped his bow, drew his sword, and strode purposefully for the pool.

Mandor grabbed his arm and whirled him around. "What if you die?"

"I won't," Spiridale replied. "I can't. Not now. It's not something I can explain, but I know that I am full of life, full of the life this world and my goddess gives. I have a heartbeat, and eyes to see with, and ears to hear with, and hands to do things with. I am full of life, and no evil or undead creature can take it away. Don't ask me how I know, Mandor. I just do."

He stopped to adjust his armor and make sure it was on tightly. "You can't go on, anyway. Not today. I haven't had a chance to mention it, but by scouting ahead, which you hate so much, I discovered a cave where at least four, maybe six trolls live, about three miles on. That's about how far we'd get before we'd have to stop and set up camp. They'd come out at night and take us all. It would be much better just to stay here."

"Why didn't you just go into this cave and take on all these trolls, Spiridale?" Mandor sneered.

"They were gone, and I had to come back and warn you," Spiridale answered. "I'll deal with them tomorrow. Or tonight, if there is time."

"I don't believe you!" Mandor reached his exasperation point. "You really are a piece of work, aren't you? I don't think there's a cave with trolls in it! I think you just now made that up to get your own way!"

Mandor suddenly flinched as Spiridale focused the full intensity of his fury on him. "I am a warrior of Meilikki! I do not lie about such things! Never forget that!"

Spiridale's eyes bore into Mandor's for a full ten seconds, during which Mandor stared back uncertainly. Finally he said, "Sorry," and backed away. "Sorry."

Spiridale turned back around and walked straight for the pool. Hunching his shoulders over and holding the pommel of the sword close to his waist, blade pointing straight outward, he stepped in.

He sank immediately, and was met by a surge of water and tentacles which surrounded him and pulled him down fast. He didn't fight it, but simply pointed the sword straight down.

The creature's own strength killed it. The incredible force with which it pulled Spiridale down drove the sword into its mouth much more powerfully than he could ever have hoped.

Immediately the tentacles surrounding Spiridale thrashed wildly, battering him about harshly. But in that instant, Spiridale realized the creature was horizontal, forming the bottom of the pool itself.

He pulled the sword out and thrust it back in diagonally, angling it upward as he did so. He landed an incredible, solid blow which pierced the mouth wall and drove into undead flesh.

With a horrendous, gurgling scream, the creature grabbed at Spiridale with all of its might and literally threw him upward. Its only thought was to get this warrior who had dared hurt it away from it. But it didn't take into account the sword still deep inside itself.

Spiridale had just grabbed the sword with his other hand to pull it free and deliver another blow when the tentacles surrounded him and pushed upward with the force of a catapult. He had no choice but to go, but he held onto the sword with all of his might. It ripped up through undead flesh along its entire length, once again due to the tremendous power of the creature's own strength.

Spiridale rocketed to the surface so quickly he flew high into the air, stopped only by the rope connecting him to the tree.

He tumbled crazily through the air, the taut rope sweeping him into an arc which thrashed him right through the outstretched branches of another tree before slamming him into the underbrush on the other side.

The men of the caravan, led by Mandor and Galen, ran frantically to his side. Galen propped him up and poured a potion down his throat. "It's the only one I've got," he said when Spiridale coughed. "It will do the most good if you drink it all at once."

Spiridale nodded and drank, then plopped his head back, gasping for air. "I think I did it," he whispered.

"You did," one of the men said.

They all turned to look. Galen helped Spiridale to his feet.

The ends of the tentacles were floating on the surface of the water, like horrible, misshapen lilies on a pond, stretching down into darkness. Blood from the creature's prey now turned the water dark and thick.

"I did it," Spiridale whispered, and smiled and nodded. "I did it."