After moving to my bed, I slept with no more strange dreams. In fact, it was surprisingly good sleep, despite everything I had on my mind. I even slept in a bit later than I had intended and awoke feeling great. I went to the window and looked out. The snow had stopped, but there was a good layer of powder on the ground.
In fact, it was high enough that Burin had managed to build a snowman as big as him. Nearby, Gregor was training. No surprise there.
I used the replicator to heat up some water and made some tea. Sure, the device couldn’t make food or water by converting other materials, but it could process them into other forms. Basic cooking was one of the more useful functions.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. It can make one beverage from scratch: Hot Earl Grey tea. Not good tea, mind you, but close enough to recognize. Daddy had spent weeks on that function alone. Not sure why. Something about Star Trek, I think.
I sipped my tea – cream and sugared, of course – and returned to the window. While I had been away, Gregor had destroyed Burin’s snowman, and now the dwarf was hurling head-sized snowballs at the fighter, who was kicking them out of the air. He looked like he was laughing, so I don’t think they were fighting for real.
I got dressed and headed downstairs. Giovanni had ordered breakfast prepared. I had a stack of pancakes with lingonberry syrup – why waste it? – and some salty ham. Gregor and Burin were eating the same, but also had some sausage and beans. Terry was eating chocolate cake. I have no idea where she got chocolate cake, but she had some, as well as a big steaming mug of black coffee.
While we were eating, Ionnia Teppen, the head of the village council, stopped by. “Pardon me for intruding, but we were hoping that the Voidstrife cartel could assist us,” she said to Giovanni.
“Listening to needs and providing solutions is part of our mission statement,” he responded. Mission statement? Daddy really shouldn’t be porting so much corporate culture from Earth to Golarion.
“Early this morning, a man was found collapsed on the outskirts of the village. He’s not one of ours. We think he’s one of the mercenaries who came through here weeks ago along with Lady Argentea.”
“We’re happy to offer our healing services,” Giovanni said.
“Argus has already tended to him,” she said. That poor man. Though I guess at least the leeches would be happy. “But he’s asking for assistance. He says that the Lady has been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?!” I said involuntarily. “Did he say anything else?”
She shook her head. “No. He’s awake, if you’d like to talk to him.” Burin and I headed right over, with Terry following us, despite apparent reluctance. It was just two doors down, since the village wasn’t very large.
We found the mercenary, who we were told was named Yuln Oerstag, lying in a bed, obvious signs of frostbite on many of his extremities. His breathing was labored. I pulled out my healing wand and gently tapped him with it. After a few moments his breathing eased a bit, but it did little for his frostbite.
He told us that the Lady’s procession had been attacked by a group of bandits, which had initially been no trouble. It was only when the winter-touched fey appeared that suddenly they found themselves outmatched.
He told us that the Lady had been dragged off, but was still alive when he was forced to flee. He cursed himself for his running away. I tried to assure him that he had made the right choice, but he shook his head. “My ancestors will look down upon me for fleeing. I will spend my entire life making up for my cowardice.”
“We’ll save her,” Burin assured the man. “Just tell us where to look.”
The mercenary gave us directions, then Terry asked him if he knew of any weaknesses in the fey. I guess that’s one way to do it. I was just going to try looking it up on the Adventurer Wiki. “Cold iron is the bane of all fey. And if you have it, use fire. The beasts fear the flame.”
Well, duh. ‘Winter-touched’ kinda gave the fire thing away. But fire I could do.
We told the mercenary to rest, then returned to our breakfast. Yeah, I knew it was urgent, but I needed time to convince Gregor to go with us. So I did my best to play up what a great challenge fey would be. How they had downed a mercenary company.
Terry responded by telling him she knew where a dragon was that they could fight. That hurt. I thought she was planning to come help, but instead she was not only leaving, but planning to try to take another member of the party with her! And he was looking convinced!
I may have overreacted a little.
“You know what?” I said, standing and punching the table. “Fine. Whatever. You go find your dragon. You need bigger challenges to get stronger or whatever. So be it. But what you’re missing is that real strength comes from standing up and protecting those who need you! So enjoy your fight with a giant talking lizard!
Meanwhile, I’m not going to stand around while those bandits do god knows what to that poor woman. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t my problem.
“And you!” I shouted at Terry. “So concerned with your own issues. I know you want to avenge your family. I heard you talking to Burin. But this woman out there, while there’s little chance she’s someone’s mother since it sounds like she was meeting her betrothed, she’s certainly someone’s daughter! Can you imagine if something horrible had happened to you? If it had been you who had been kidnapped?
“I’d bet if that were the situation, your parents would have desperately wished that someone, anyone, would step in and save you! But fine. Go off and do your own thing. Abandon someone who needs your help! I no longer find myself caring what you do!” I spun and faced Burin. “And you!”
“Yes?” he asked.
I took a breath. “You I have no issue with. I’m going to go save this woman, and I could use your help.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” I said. I strode over to the door. “As for the other two, do whatever the hell you want,” I said coldly over my shoulder, only turning my head slightly so my voice would carry just enough to be heard. Then I slammed the door behind me.
I knew immediately that I had probably gone too far, but I was too angry to care. I gathered my things and headed outside, to find Burin and Gregor waiting. Terry was sitting on the patio, showing no sign that she was going to come along.
“I guess this is goodbye,” I said. “Talk to Giovanni. He might know of people you can travel with on whatever road you decide to take.”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said.
“I’ll be sure to come find you in Oppara, little girl!” Burin called back to her as we were leaving. Once he turned his back, I could see her cringe from fifty yards away.
We managed to find the site of the attack relatively quickly. It was not a pretty sight. First of all, someone had been frozen solid, looking like a statue aside from the thicker sheathe of ice around is lower parts. He was missing an arm, which I think might have been removed after he was frozen, since it too was encased in a mass of ice.
There were also two carriages. One was little more than a pile of debris, but the second looked intact, though the horses that had pulled each were little more than masses of frozen meat at this point. Someone had jammed a spear through the handle of the intact carriage, as if trying to lock something inside.
“Hello!” Burin called out to the carriage. “Is someone in there?” We heard shuffling within. “We’re gonna open the door. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out!”
I took up position just behind the horse, keeping a good firing line in case it was a trap. Burin pulled out the spear and Gregor pulled the door open. Which turned out to be a mistake. There were zombies in there. They had been the guards of the caravan, if their clothing was any indication.
Burin stabbed one with the spear and Gregor added a punch to its face. I didn’t have a good line to try lighting them on fire. Also, there might be survivors – unlikely – or maybe some clue to what had happened – a bit more likely – within the carriage, so I didn’t want to risk it. Instead, I launched a small bolt of lightning over Burin’s shoulder.
I was a little too close, I think, because the dwarf’s hair started standing on end. But at least I hadn’t hit him. Then Terry appeared out of nowhere, roughly five feet in the air, right between me and Burin. She landed face first on the frozen horse’s ass.
She looked around, saw the threat, and immediately drew her gun from the case that had fallen next to her. She then took a shot between Burin’s legs, hitting a zombie in the face. That was two down, then we heard another break through the carriage wall. Gregor ran around the side and beat down the zombie that was working its way around to us.
The fight over, Burin beamed at Terry. “Little girl! You’re back!”
She hopped to her feet and pointed her gun right at my face. “You have one chance to tell me what you’ve done to me, witch!”
Wait. Me?! “I didn’t…”
“Don’t lie to me!” she screeched.
Burin grabbed at her gun, but missed. “She didn’t do anything! She was just shooting lightning at the zombies!”
“LIGHTNING?! IS THAT WHY MY HAIR WAS STANDING UP?!”
Gregor walked over. “I am not thinking she is your enemy. She is looking just as confused as you, yes?”
“TELL ME WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” She was literally shaking with rage.
“But I haven’t…”
Sudden Burin grew larger. He snatched the gun from her hand. “Put that down, ya wee brat,” he said, his voice deep and booming. “That ain’t yer enemy.”
Gun no longer pointed at me, I took a deep breath and took in the scene. If looks could kill, Terry’s look would have exploded Burin into a million pieces. This wasn’t going to work. Something was going on, and we had to figure it out before we continued on. But we couldn’t do anything so long as we were at each other’s throats.
I held out my hand. “Burin, may I please have that?” He nodded and I took the gun from him. I returned it to Terry. “We aren’t going to get anywhere if we can’t calm down and trust each other, just a little, at least. So let’s figure this out.”
To my relief, she didn’t immediately point the gun at me. Which was good, because I was on a hair trigger ready to light her on fire if I had to. I didn’t want to, but I would. “Okay,” she said. “It’s possible you had nothing to do with this. Everything’s been strange ever since I saw those two gods fighting after running from that dragon.”
A chill went down my spine. “Two gods fighting? A dragon? Where was this?”
“I don’t remember. I was just passing through when I saw the reward poster for killing a monster. You’ll have to ask Burin.”
I looked at the dwarf. “It was a cave, near Sandpoint,” he said. “I thought the dragon had killed me.”
“I thought you were dead too,” Terry admitted.
Sandpoint?! “Was there some kind of mention of black fangs?”
“That was on the poster,” Terry said, her eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Daddy made me promise that if I was ever in Sandpoint and heard about a monster with black fangs attacking livestock, I was to leave town immediately. I’ve never seen him so deadly serious.” Well, not until I got that message about the invasion.
“Why?” Terry asked again, this time sounding less angry.
“There’s something about that village. He told me that because of the actions of some adventurers maybe thirty or forty years ago, there’s some kind of reoccurring time loop. Possibly because they managed to start a fight between Desna and Lamashtu in the middle of the village, destroying it. The dragon whose arrival set events in motion reappears and adventurers are found to face him. They go off, then after the fight, something happens and everyone in Sandpoint completely forgets those adventurers even existed.”
“What, really?”
I nodded. “My father’s been studying it for almost twenty years.” I pulled out my phone and opened the Ranger database loaded within. “See? These are pictures of the adventurer group from the first loop recorded after his drones were put in place.”
Terry’s eyes grew wide. “I know that dwarf!”
Burin, who had since returned to normal size, took a look. “Well, that’s Mister Cragsplinter! And I bet that’s Mister Aizen and Mister Heimish. He didn’t mention a girl, though.”
Terry snorted. “He probably forgot about her.” She sounded amused and bitter at the same time.
I took a look further. “The log says that their names were Cragsplinter, Heimish, Aizen and Cara,” I confirmed.
“How many of these groups were there?” Terry asked me.
“It says that over a half dozen have been recorded, but there might have been more.”
“And we’re the first ones to make it out?”
“The first that we know about, yes.”
“So what does that mean?”
“I wish I knew. If I had to guess, I’d think maybe you two might be stuck together, though I didn’t study temporal mechanics or anything. Uncle Chadwick might know, or at least will have idea on who to talk to. I’ll call him next time we’re somewhere safe enough to boot up Cortana. I promise you, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
She sighed and took a swig from the flask Gregor offered her. “Alright, fine. Let’s go save this woman.”
Half an hour down the road, we came across a chest half buried in the snow. Burin walked over to it, managed to hit a tripwire and set off one of those swinging log traps you see in movies. “Oof!” he grunted as he went flying. I went over and tapped him with the healing wand and helped him to his feet.
He walked back over, more carefully this time, and opened the chest. “Empty,” Gregor observed, looking over his shoulder. “Is chest perhaps valuable?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t look like it. But maybe it has a false bottom?” I had a secret ‘safe’ in my room that looked like a stick of deodorant. No comment on what’s in there. The false bottom I put into my dresser holds a couple bottles of wine I snuck from the cellar, though.
“Yank it out and we can check?” Terry suggested.
The chest had no false bottom. It WAS the false bottom. In the snow beneath the chest, we found a stockpile of gear that had been stolen from the fallen mercenaries. It was a major haul. Nothing fancy, but moderately valuable.
Continuing on, we found ourselves in a clearing with a mound of snow in the center. With his magic boots, Burin led the way. And once more, he found himself in danger as a serpentine creature, a tatzlwyrm. My parents had encountered one once, early in their adventure. It had tried to drag Lenn, the party’s massive warrior, into a tree.
This one tried to drag Burin beneath the snow. ‘Tried’ being the operative word. Exploding into action, we killed it in less than ten seconds. Terry skinned it, telling me she was going to have Cortana turn it into a nice set of gloves. The girl looked like she was getting cold, even with her jacket and the Wise King’s fur pulled around her.
We continued into the woods. I was working on spell forms in my head when I was snapped back to reality by a cry of “Crows!” I looked over at Burin and saw him pointing up. In the branches of the trees were a number of tiny fetishes made from the corpses of crows.
Gregor walked over to Burin and looked up. “Crows,” he agreed.
Then I got hit in the shoulder with a tiny arrow. “What the hell?!” I said, scanning the trees. I spotted the source, a laughing pixie sitting on a branch and holding a tiny bow. I was annoyed. “BURN!” I yelled, running beneath the fairy and unleashing a gout of flame.
I heard the sound of a gunshot and other sounds of scuffling, then the tiny fairy fled, along with several others. I pulled the arrow from my shoulder and hit myself with my wand, then mended the damage to my jacket.
I turned to the others just in time to watch Gregor retrieving his hat. Had he thrown it? Aww, that was probably pretty neat and I’d missed it. I turned to ask Terry about it, but her state was enough to make me forget. She was starting to shiver.
So we found a cave to rest. Gregor heated the chamber with the magical bead he was carrying and I booted up Cortana while we ate. After we were done, I called up Uncle Chadwick.
“At least it’s not the middle of the night,” he observed. “Have you begun your trip?”
“Not yet,” I said. “A local noblewoman got kidnapped and we’re hunting down the bandits so we can rescue her. But that’s not why I called. Do you have Daddy’s notes on the Sandpoint anomaly?”
“Yes, why?” He sounded intrigued.
“I’ve located survivors of the latest incident!” I said with a grin.
“Really?! That’s never happened before.”
I nodded. “Two of them. Are there any notes about what might happen to survivors?”
“Let me ask Johnny.” Johnny 5 was the AI that daddy had made for him. He spoke with Johnny for a moment and returned his focus to me. “There were some theories. Physicists from some place called Cambridge suggested that anyone who made it out might find themselves at least partially unstuck in time, or even might find themselves tethered together via something called ‘temporal resonance’.”
“Tethered?” That sounded promising.
“They’ll be unable to go more than a few miles from the other members,” he replied. “It sounds like they’ll teleport together if that happens. Kyle’s notes suggest that there’ll be a rather large static electricity discharge if that happens.”
“That would cause hair to stand up, right?”
“Yes, I believe so.” HA! Eat that, you crazy, gun wielding child!
“Is there a way to break the bond?” Terry asked over my shoulder.
“Short of deific intervention? I can think of two known spells that would almost certainly do the job. One’s only available to extremely powerful clerics and is basically deific intervention in spell form. The other is a wizard spell.”
“Can you cast it?” I asked.
“No. Your father could do it,” he replied. “Of course, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to reach him for maybe half a year.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. I didn’t want to think about that.
“And you can’t cast it?” Terry asked me.
I shook my head. “Not a chance. Uncle Chadwick’s far more powerful than me. Unless I can find a quest like the one my parents went on, it’s unlikely.”
She gave me a look. “How would that help you?”
“The constant danger forced her father to grow as a wizard,” Uncle Chadwick said. “He left here about as strong as she is now. Along the way, he got caught up in trying to stop the return of an ancient and powerful wizard. A couple months later, he was more powerful than me, by leaps and bounds. It’s a dangerous shortcut, but I can’t argue with the results.” He paused. “Your aunt is calling me. You should bring your new friends when you come. I can’t cast the spell, but we might find someone who can. And, of course, we could always try to capture a genie and get a wish out of one of them.”
“Thanks, Uncle Chadwick.”
“Any time.”
We sat in silence for a minute or so. “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I’m trying to find a major adventure so I can get stronger. I love magic and want to get better at it.”
“I see,” she said.
I pulled a bottle of wine – extremely expensive wine – from my bag. “Want some?” I asked the girl.
“Sure.” We sat in silence and sipped the wine for a bit, then I went to bed, neither of us having said a further word.
The next morning, we pressed onward, Terry admiring her new gloves. Cortana does great work. Eventually, we came upon a set of tracks in the snow. There were two sets, some older than the others. We considered them for a while, and decided that maybe the bandits had gone back for that stash in the snow, so now was a great time to move on their hideout while they were away.
Following the older tracks, we came to a frozen river. On the close bank was a snowman holding a sign that read, “Intruders, turn back!” Burin regarded it for a moment, then began walking backwards toward it.
I stifled a giggle and considered an idea. Recalling the antics of the previous morning, I turned to the warrior. “Hey, Gregor! Training!” I said cheerfully, pointing at the snowman.
He regarded me, then turned to someone who wasn’t there, “I know, right?” He sighed and walked over to the snowman, reaching it about the same time Burin did. So they were both there when the snowman exploded in a burst of thunder.
Ice elementals burst from the river, laughing. “Hey, are you the ones who put up the sign?” Burin asked, sounding strange as he talked with his ears ringing. “We did what you said and turned our backs! Now what?”
The elementals laughed uproariously and charged. They tried to drag Burin and Gregor onto the thin ice. And in so doing, they clustered together, becoming a perfect target.
Dammit, how does that stupid poem go? Something about fire and ice. Anyway, they died in a burst of flame. Because you never bring an ice elemental to a fire wizard fight.
“Hey, there’s a moose coming!” Terry called out.
We turned to see a massive bull moose coming our way. “Hello,” the moose said in a strange Canadian-like accent. The fact that it was talking didn’t seem all that important in light of the weird accent. “Please don’t shoot me.”
Burin and the moose began having a surreal conversation. Bored, I began speaking my cantrip to detect magic. There was certainly some coming from the moose. In fact, as I channeled, it narrowed in until I could tell it wasn’t coming from the moose itself, but from on the moose’s back.
Then I took another tiny arrow to the shoulder – the other shoulder this time. Brutal cold flashed through my body. Even I felt it, it was so bad. The fighting was pretty brutal, but also comical.
Burin’s axe shrunk in his hands. I tried to make a dirty joke about how cold out it was, but my teeth were chattering too much. Instead, I focused my will and managed to cast a spell. A tiny fairy – an atomie this time – stabbed me with its tiny rapier. So I lit it on fire.
Once the moose was down, Gregor tossed his hat into a tree and Terry was firing at another tree, so I suspected that the enemies who had shot arrows at us were up there, even if I couldn’t see them. I could hear them, though, as they shouted at one another in a language I didn’t recognize.
“Yeah, well, I can yell in a language you don’t know too!” I hollered in Mandarin.
“They’re gone,” Terry said.
I pulled out two more arrows and healed myself, then attended to the others’ wounds. While doing so, I watched as Burin was shaking his axe, trying to get it to grow again. I tried to muffle a laugh, but it came out as a snort instead.
After harvesting some moose meat and packing it for later processing, we tackled the problem of the river. Some applications of alchemical ice hardened a pathway across, and we made it safely, aside from one slip that wounded my pride a bit.
We continued down a snow covered trail until we came to the world’s most inept ambush. The bandits were talking much louder than they should have been. Even I heard them, and I was busy considering practical applications of the fourth theorem of magecraft. Or remembering the moonlight reflecting on that tavern wench’s backside as that bard railed her up against the table in that one inn’s kitchen. I’d snuck down for a snack and instead got a glorious feast for the eyes. Too bad he was a halfling. The short ones don’t really do it for me.
Anyway, Burin called out to them. I was starting to understand why Daddy’s teeth clenched any time he talked about trying to be sneaky with Lenn around. “Are you the Taldor folks?” We were in Taldor. Of course they were the Taldor folks. Everyone here but us and the occasional Qadiran was ‘Taldor folks’.
“Um, yes! We’re the Taldor folks. Just lay down your weapons and we can talk about Taldor things,” one of the bandits called back.
Gregor looked at me. I just shrugged. “No, I think we’ll keep our weapons,” Burin called back. “Now get up and come out into the open where we can chat.”
They sprung up. Why did they spring up? That was stupid. Especially when Terry was getting annoyed. She shot one right in the gut. “YOU SHOT ME!” he said.
“Apparently not well enough,” Terry responded, just barely loud enough for me to hear. She reloaded and fired again and battle was joined.
And then it got sillier. A pair of bandits came running down the road, shouting, “The boss says they’re coming! Get in position! OH SHIT!” This last being shouted as Terry took aim.
She shot him right in the crotch.
They tried to run, but we brought them down with some ranged attacks. I even managed to get two runners at once with a single casting of force missiles. We then gathered them up and I tied them up with some ionic tape. A quick zap and the tape bonded on a molecular level. They weren’t going anywhere.
Terry told me to heal the one she’d shot in the groin, who we’d bound up separately. I did so, stopping the bleeding. He woke up, looking shocked. Then I noticed what Terry was holding and promptly took on the same look.
She was holding the man’s severed penis. Also a lit torch. She held up the torch, held up the severed appendage, and threatened to make the two one if he didn’t tell us what we wanted to know. It was much like a squirrel trying to intimidate a bull. Only the bull was tied up and the squirrel was holding the bull’s dick.
That metaphor went somewhere weird. Look, all I’m saying is that it didn’t work. So Burin came in and tried to be reasonable. A sort of ‘bad cop/good cop’ thing. That didn’t work either. The bandit just stared blankly at him.
“Let me try,” I said. Maybe we could use our connections to influence them. “Look, friend. You have a good thing going with your deal with the Voidstrife Cartel. There’s no reason to jeopardize it. Just help us return the woman and I promise that things will work out best for everyone.” He gave me a strange look, the one shared by the others. Which was when I realized that I had just said that entire thing in Japanese.
Terry was getting tired of this farce. She walked over to the pile of other bandits. “Tell us what we want to know or I will light your friends on fire!” she shrieked. At least, I think that’s what she said. She slurred her words in her fit of pique. The bandit just stared, terrified. “I’LL DO IT!”
Killing the bandits was fine, but I wasn’t okay with just lighting them on fire. Well, not while they were tied up. We were the informal branch of the law, not torturers. But how could I talk Terry out of it? Then it hit.
“Wait! Did you loot them first?”
She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Oh, right. Let’s do that.” She tossed the torch aside.
Gregor indicated the contents of her other hand. “Why are you still holding this thing? You do not know where it has been!”
She looked at the severed penis. “Oops. I forgot I still had that.” She tossed it at the now blubbering man – it struck him in the face with a wet thud – and got to work looting while Gregor kept lecturing her about how you shouldn’t just pick up things like that. I think she was ignoring him.
Burin cut the man loose. “As soon as we’re gone, help your friends and get out of here.”
“Your deal with the Voidstrife Cartel is done,” I said. “Leave the area. If your people are seen around here again, you’ll be decided to be more of a hassle than you’re worth and the adventurer’s guild will get a new quest. Understand?” He nodded. “Good man. And, uh, good luck with that,” I said, indicating the severed penis by my foot.
We headed in the direction the additional bandits had come from. Not too far away, we found what looked like an old lodge. It was in decent shape. Whoever had built it had known their job. But it did look like someone hadn’t been taking proper care of the place for a while.
Burin tried to suggest that we find the front door and announce ourselves, in case the owners weren’t the bandits. I was tempted to look in the adventurer wiki to see if there was an article on the likelihood of that, but just shook my head. “Of course the bandits are going to be here. And if not, I’ll pay for damages.”
We climbed over some railings onto the back patio and went in through the door. Inside, we found a table set with several steaming bowls of stew. Not seeing anyone nearby, Terry picked up one of the bowls and began eating.
We heard sounds from a nearby room. “Come on out,” Burin called towards the door.
“Not gonna happen,” a woman’s voice called back.
“Come on, let’s sit at the table and talk. I’m tired of fighting. We hurt a lot of people today.”
“I shot a guy’s dick off!” Terry said gleefully, her mouth still full of stew. I was starting to suspect that the girl might be a sociopath.
There was no response from the other room. Burin shook his head. “Okay, stay in there if you want.” He then wandered off upstairs.
Terry and Gregor made no move to follow, so I went after him. I got there just in time to hear Burin call down, “Hey guys, we’ve got some skeletons up here!”
The skeletons attacked him, and I did what I could to help. I managed to draw one of the skeletons off of the dwarf long enough for Gregor and Terry to arrive. I had to squeeze in a corner to let Gregor get to the skeleton, which he took down quickly.
I heard chanting in the room, a voice I didn’t recognize. Gregor took out his foe and rushed into the room. Terry went in after him, then I followed.
Burin was down. I arrived just in time to watch Terry throw her bowl of soup at a figure in the doorway of a closet. With the dwarf down, we found ourselves in a desperate fight. I rushed to his side, taking a hit from negative energy as I moved through the room. I brought down the remaining skeleton with a gout of flame and stabilized Burin while Terry and Gregor fought the foe in the closet.
My allies cried out in pain, but the wall of the closet protected me from whatever it was that the enemy had done – the same negative energy that had hit me earlier? In the end, we pulled out the win, but it was close. Everyone was feeling the pain of the fight. But we had the wand and we’d be okay.
On the man’s corpse, we found a holy symbol of Norgorber, god of thievery and assassination. Not surprising, considering we were dealing with bandits. We’d feed the holy symbol to the box. Molecular deconstruction cleanses all.
It was the second time we’d had a rough fight with a cleric. We had to find a way to deal with them without getting the crap kicked out of us. I was thinking “more fire” would do the job.
Downstairs, we located a trap door hidden under a rug. We headed down into the cellar, where we found Lady Argentea. She had been battered, but she was alive. She tried to get away from us, pressing herself into a corner.
We managed to calm her down – Terry gave her a jewelry box she had found at the site of the attack(!) – and I healed her wounds. She then told us about the attack. Based on her description, it sounded like the leader of the fey was an ice mephit. She also told us that she’d overheard the name of the leader of the enemy, which was Teb Knotten.
That’s a really weird name for a mephit.
We decided to rest in the lodge for the night, then head back in the morning. No sense in subjecting our noble ward to the rigors of travel, especially knowing that there were more enemies about.
Safer to remain somewhere moderately defensible, since we weren’t sure we could make it back to that cave before nightfall.
That would give us time to finish going through the house and give me some time to look through the spell book we’d found on the dead cleric, which I assumed he’d stolen.
I just hoped the place didn’t have bedbugs.
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