In the Maelstrom

Agamemnon closed his eyes, trying to suppress the feeling of nausea that blinking around in the Maelstrom was causing him.  After a moment he opened his eyes.  There was Mortimer, standing on a hill, leaning on his great scythe for support as he was surrounded by yeth hounds and unicorns.

"Hey!" he called out.  "Don't worry!  I'm here to save you!"

Mortimer turned and watched as Agamemnon powered across the uneven ground towards him.  "I don't need saving," he said in even tones.

"Not you," the priest muttered as he ran breathlessly past him.  "Hey!" he yelled to the unicorns.  "Run!  Before this monster tries to turn you into jerky!"  The unicorns just stared at him mutely.  "I'll try to hold him back!"

"Very funny, elf."

"Go on without me, blessed creatures of light!  I will make this sacrifice, for the forces ... of GOOD!"

The burly orc grabbed his less orcish companion by the arm, cutting short his theatrics, and dragged him towards the ruins of a guard tower, nodding an awkward apology to the unicorns as they left.

~~~~~

Agamemnon gave up on the fire they had built in the base of the abandoned guard tower in which they were taking shelter for what passed for the night around here.  The fire was periodically putting out waves of heat, no heat or actually making the room colder.  Cooking was impossible, though since Agamemnon only had trail rations with him it didn't really matter.

Mortimer was sitting on a fallen chunk of masonry unnecessarily sharpening his scythe with a smooth rock that Agamemnon was sure hadn't existed until Mortimer had willed it into being.

For all its chaos and instability the Malestrom - or at least this small patch of it - was incredibly boring.  Everything was the same mass of dark, turbulent purple cloud with no visible horizon, no stars, no sun or moon, no differentiation between sky and ground, and no variation in any direction.  Even the tumbledown cityscape on whose outskirts they found themselves was composed of a stone which, when cracked, was the same purple-black mass of confused nothing inside.

The priest looked out through a gap in the wall that was either intentionally or unintentionally a window.  The yeth hounds were violent, wanting to fight, but they didn't really seem to care who they fought, they weren't organised and they didn't have a plan so the marginally more orderly unicorns were having no real trouble keeping them at bay.  Every so often the fight would move out of hearing and Agamemnon would think they had gone, only for sounds of battle to start up again on the opposite side of the tower a half hour later.

"I'm bored too," Mortimer said suddenly, fed up with Agamemnon's pacing.  "I'm going to go and fight some dogs.  Do you want to come?"

Agamemnon shook his head.  "Thank you for your kind offer, but no.  I need to spend some time in contemplation and rest if we want to teleport out of here in the morning."  He settled back down by the wall, pulling out a history book to read, this one about the great dragon slayers of the ages.  "You have fun though.  Make sure you don't wander far."

"Yes mum," Mortimer grumbled before striding out the door.

"You don't want to get lost and end up stuck here, do you?" he called out the door after his departing comrade.

"Don't care," the orc called back over his shoulder as he vanished into the indistinct mist.

"Fine," said Agamemnon, settling in as comfortably as he could.  "Good.  Now hopefully I can get some peace and quiet, free from disturbances."

It was at this point that a yeth hound leaped out of the shadows and bit his face.

~~~~~

Agamemnon leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.  "I am exhausted."

At least thirty dogs lay dead outside the tower, with several more littering the area inside.  Mortimer was already picking up the corpses and tossing them out the windows, his scythe held firmly in one hand.

"You are not much of a combatant."

"Hey now Mr Criticism!  I can take care of myself!"

Mortimer just looked at him.

"Well ... I can heal myself, after I'm bitten on the face by a yeth hound.  That is a useful skill to have"

Mortimer continued looking at him.

"You're not much of a diplomat, if we're being frank in our personal assessments of each other, but you don't hear me faulting you for that.  I may not be quite up to your level just yet, but fighting has never really been my focus."

Mortimer made a noise that might have been a laugh.  "You are not much of an orc."

"I'll take that as a compliment, shall I?"

The orc slapped Agamemnon on the shoulder, nearly knocking the already-winded cleric over.  "Thank you for coming here to get me.  Sleep.  I will guard the door."

Agamemnon was too tired to come up with a witty response so he lay down next to a pile of rubble that hadn't been there fifteen minutes ago and went to sleep.

~~~~~

"Look, I can only apologise."

"It's fine."

"I'm not used to blinking around like this."

"I know.  It's fine."

"With a bit of practice my accuracy should improve.  It's just that coming out of a dimension as confusing as the Maelstrom I -"

Mortimer held up a hand to silence Agamemnon, stepped out of the latrine, scraped what he could off his shoes and made his way to Castle Calaelan.

"Thank you for choosing Aggy Air!  We hope to enjoy your custom again!" Agamemnon called after him once he felt the orc was a safe distance away.

Mortimer didn't even turn around, he just made an obscene gesture over his shoulder and kept walking.