A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twenty Second Day of the Fourth Month 293 AC

Being told he'd have to fight a dragon didn't make Bronn sleep too easily that night. Every rustle of the leaves, every lizard's hiss, every heavy step might have well been forewarning some giant teeth-filled head reaching in and eating them all, or else breathing fire into their little wizard's hideout. Luckily a sellsword's life had taught him how to swing a sword just fine even on a couple hours' snatched sleep if he had to, though that still didn't help with staring up at the grey nothingness of the 'ceiling'.

"Boy, you awake?" he whispered to the Essosi demon's get. A talk to pass the time would do him good, keep his mind off monsters in the dark.

"Yeah," came the slightly curious reply. "What do ye need?"

"Couldn't you have made this place nicer, at least given it a proper roof and walls..."

"You must have mistaken me fer someone else, master Bronn," he shot back. "Someone taller, with no horns... ah right, and a woman besides, name of Lya."

"Well, there's so many of her that you could hardly blame a man for begin confused, now can you," the sellsword shot back. The boy had a smart mouth on him, but then Bronn supposed if he had been able to toss balls of fire at twelve he'd have had one too. That and burned down a few towns by accident, probably.

"Funny," he snorted. "Wouldn't say so around them, though. There's at least a pair of the sisters who'd take it really badly if you implied they ain't their own people."

"Say, is there any truth to..."

"No, he ain't sleeping with all of 'em," Maelor interrupted. "Best not be repeating that in the king's hearing either, or he'd take it badly."

"Hardly seems to be worth it to be a king then," the sellsword jested.

"From what I've heard you have the drunken whoremonger of a king across the water to thank for that. Viserys don't want to be anything like that, and a fine thing he doesn't I say." The boy sounded very serious all of a sudden.

"What d'you know about whorehouses?" Bronn winked. "You'll change your tune soon enough, I reckon."

"Not much beyond paying whores to repeat secrets fools share between the sheets. I know plenty about drink, though...." Rather than cheer up as Bronn intended he fell into a morose silence.

"Knew a bad drunk?" the warrior tried. That was usually how it went.

"No. I..." he trailed off. "Why the hells am I talking about this to you?"

"Would you rather talk to his priestliness over there?" A tilt of the head towards the sleeping Essarian sorcerer was hardly needed.

With a snort of reluctant amusement the boy relented. "I had a friend back in Mantarys, used to spend every penny he could beg, borrow, or steal on wine and beer. Said you never know if you'll see the morrow so you might as well enjoy today. One night the two of us went on a second story job and he was a little 'tipsy' he called it, and I took his word for it. I shouldn't have..."

"Got caught?" Bronn hadn't known many sneak thieves up close, but he could not muster up any 'proper fighting man's' disdain over it. Not like you could call the kid a coward. He was out here planning to fight a damn dragon along with the rest of them.

"Nah, he... he slipped and fell. Broke his neck." A long pause then a shake of the head. "They didn't even hear it from inside. I used his share to see to it he got a proper pyre and ash urn."

"There's worse ways to..."

Bronn's attempt at sage advice was abruptly cut off by the grey walls of the hideout rippling with strange colors like a stone thrown into still water.

"Someone's trying to break the spell!" Maelor shouted. "Get up!"

To the sellsword's total lack of surprise the giant eyeball woke up first, looking round and round everywhere, then the snake girl and the priest. They all just barely got spells to fly put on them before the hideout broke apart, leaving them all hovering thirty feet above the surface of clearing...

Heavy nets of woven vines weighed down with stones fell on all of them, pulling down everyone except Bronn. Looking around blearily with only the moonlight to see by he saw that the damn lizard birds had thrown them. Must be some kind of magic to let beasts...

"They're shape-changers!" Xor shouted, the light rays falling from his eyes showing something between a lizard bird and a man standing on the ground waving a staff.

Bronn didn't need to be told twice. Kill the wizard first. Slipping his net with a few well placed strokes from Fleasticker, he dived straight at him while spells rained down around him and some kind of vicious windstorm ripped some of the more distant of the flock to bloody shreds.

That's when it screamed. Loud like thunder, if thunder could hate and hunger, a beast larger by far than any of the rest of the attackers dove out of the cloudy sky and straight at Maelor.


"Watch out!" Bronn called.

The warning only barely came in time to get him to twist out of the way of that spear of a beak, but he could not keep all the way out of the claws. Bursts of golden healing light flashed in the night as the spell battle continued, though the beast looked undaunted by the thought of fighting so many wizards.

The thing was saying something... maybe through all the screams. No one was listening, not the boy who aimed a spear of light into the back of its head, not the priest who turned night to day for one brief moment of dazzling color, definitely not Bronn as he cut down the bloody wizard in the middle of his next spell before twisting about to fight the monster.

It didn't seem to have liked the light in its eyes, but it sure as hell didn't look hurt, more pissed off. When the snake girl called wormy darkness in its path it flew right on through to hit the priest, damn near ripping his arm off.

So Bronn did the only reasonable thing a man could do when seeing his traveling companions, and only way out of this benighted jungle, about to get killed. He flew into the path of the monster and jumped on its back as it flew by, hacking with his sword at its neck all the while. It was like chopping down a fucking tree...

The monster turned its neck around and screamed at him so loudly he could feel the blood gush from his ears, but he just kept on cutting... and cutting, until the monster went dead beneath him.

OOC: The monster was a young Kongamato, a sort of lesser jungle dragon who had gained the allegiance of a tribe of Pterafolk, and their domesticated pteranodons. Since it guessed a group walking around with as much magical stuff as this one might have some way to see through shape-changing, it used only beasts to watch the group, usually with only the occasional intelligent scout darting in to lead them. Also the fight could have seen both Maelor and Malarys die had it not been for luck and Vee's healing.