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Howdy, there!! The name's Temonus. I'm a bloodfly-

Hey, hey. Put away those claws. I won't sting. If you'd care to sit down a spell with a weary old insect, I'll tell you a tale of the time I was once quite high-ranking in the bloodfly hierarchy.

What's that? You don't believe me? No one asked you to, stranger. Just sit back, grab something to munch on, and enjoy my tale.

Before I start, you should know a little bit about us. Yes, we suck blood, but it helps balance out the ecosystem. How, you ask? I'm not quite sure. I never was much of a scholar. Anyway, one thing you should know is that we bloodflies weren't always so big and annoying. We also used to be able to fly more than five inches off the ground. In fact, we used to be some of the tiniest bugs out there... but, that all changed with a bizarre spell mishap.

If I recall the story correctly, a clan of bloodflies had moved on to a sandy beach opposite the shore of a human camp in the early days of Aunna, the great blue bubble we lived in. A large colony of meatbugs, for some reason, had taken up residence in some old, moldy wooden huts on the lakeside as well. Their dwellings were extremely overpopulated, and when we began to harvest the old and sick out of the meatbugs' living space, they went up in arms. The meatbugs, being the none-too-bright creatures they are, went into the human camp to try and get them to drive us away.

Like I said; meatbugs aren't the most intelligent things that have been created. But, in a way, their request went through well enough, despite the fact that none of the meatbugs ever came out again. A pasty-faced human magik-wielder came out and fried all but five bloodflies into oblivion.

Ouch.

What happened next is kind of fuzzy in our records. Some say that the mage, furious that he had not killed us all, went into a thrashing fit and dropped a fireball on his feet. Others say that a gust of wind blew the fire he was about to throw back into his face. But, no matter what the story version, the idiot always sets himself on fire and burns to death.

Well then, as if the suicide-by-fireball incident wasn't bizarre enough, a meatbug crawled out of some hole in a rock and started to rummage around in the human's spell pack. The bloodflies, shaken by the firestorm that had slain their kin, were still wise enough to know that the magik-wielder's corpse did not belong there, and flew over to take its blood away. Don't go asking me how, but the meatbug actually read one of the scrolls, and cast it on one of the bloodflies, successfully blowing him up to about twenty times his normal size. The poor guy must have been so bloated he could barely fly.

Anyway, the "giga-fly" genes were dumped into the bloodfly breeding pool, and before you know it, each and every one of us was a titan on wings. We were also creatures of magik, now. I always liked being classified as that. But, as time went by, the magic began to grow unstable, which meant that so did we. And now, thanking you for your patience, I can begin the real story.

*

Back in the old days, bloodflies were living all around the inners of Aunna. I had the good fortune of being a descendent of one of those five bloodflies who were there when the magik-wielder died, and thus I was a honor guard of Tan-Gul the Wise. Tan-Gul (young bloodflies often joked about the name, which sounds like a human word that roughly translates to "messed up") was the last remaining of those same five, and was the spiritual ruler of us all. And that, obviously, means that he was the first one who sensed the decline of the magik that held the bloodflies together. One stormy evening, I received a summons to his lair.

Tan-Gul's home was beyond the reach of normal creatures. Only a select few, such as myself, knew where it was and how to enter. Being creatures of magik ( I love that name!), we had somehow gained the ability to breathe underwater. But since our naturally beating wings kept us above the surface, it is rather tricky to gain access to the deep blue under tides. Tan-Gul's lair was located at the foot of a tall cliff, a bit due east of a swamp in which humans had started to build a large temple into the face of a mountain. So, as you might have already guessed, the only way down to Tan's house was to jump off the cliff above.

After an unpleasant splash landing, I was greeted by the elder himself with a feast of tasty seaweed. Yes, we eat plants. Now stop interrupting me. So, old Tan informed me of the situation about the weakening magik, and cheerfully added that if something wasn't done to replenish it, every bloodfly in all of Aunna would shrivel up and die.

"And what has this got to do with me?" I asked him, though I could have already guessed what the answer was. Sneaky old-timer... if I refused whatever he told me to do, I would be exiled and hunted down.

"You, my friend, are going out to find a scavenger," he said. He was wearing a sly grin that said 'you are going to be asking about this in 5... 4... 3...'

Grins must have some sort of power. I did ask, and was told in response that I was going to find a special scavenger that had been given a list of some sort by Edych, the bloodfly who had taken the brunt of the meatbug's spell. Since he was the biggest of them all, Tan-Gul informed me, he had to take a special mixture to maintain his energy and keep himself from collapsing. He had a pet scavenger, and it carried the list.

Great. Now, I'm being sent on a scavenger hunt. Let's just hope that old Edych liked his recipes short and sweet. While I was leaving, Tan-Gul added in a suspicious tone that I would "know the scavenger when I saw it". Wonderful. It's probably going to be a razor painted in scavenger colors. So, after popping back up to the surface of the water (quite an unpleasant experience, if you ask me), I headed out on my gopher errand and started to ask around the bloodflies in Aunna if they had seen any weird-looking scavengers lately.

I was hanging out with some bloodflies on the river bank near the human "new camp" about a month of unsuccessful traveling later, when I asked them the question in an off-hand way. With the same off-hand tone, they told me that after a guy with a big gemmed sword had cleaned out a cave of black goblins on the opposite bank, a really odd-looking scavenger had taken up residence. Feeling triumphant, I thanked them, gave them a few stalks of dragonroots, and stealthily flew over to the other shore.

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