Journeyman
First Post
The Rest Becomes Unrest/ The Night Ends
Several tables nearest Da’Shen’s explosive entrance to the Rest emptied quickly of their patrons. Startled, not quite sure what to make of the obvious outlander lying at their feet, these former revelers stood back with mute shock apparent on their faces. Shouts toward the back of the common room began to summon Kirian Starshine as Tobin quickly began pushing his way through the standing crowd. The stable hand calmly reassured each individual he passed. Randall, watching from behind, could not help but wonder at the sixteen year old’s ability to still the apprehensive soul.
Kelsa quickly put down her tray of empty mugs on the table closest to her. The patrons there did not seem to mind at all as she then promptly left and headed toward the back of the inn. Rushing up the guest stairs to the second level, she hurried to the end of the corridor while informing startled and half-asleep patrons that all was well. There, at the end of the hallway, she rapped politely on Kirian’s office.
“Yes.” Kirian’s voice calmly carried from inside.
“There has been a disturbance downstairs Kirian. A…foreign looking individual has fallen just inside the front door.” Kelsa tried to keep worry from her voice.
She was tall for her age. Nineteen years old and nearing six feet in height. She had a figure that Randall, her friend, continued to say was an hourglass with a few extra minutes tacked on. She tried to keep her hands at her sides, but they disobeyed and played with her waist length brown hair. She sucked on her lower lip as she waited.
“I’ll be down promptly. This has come at an inopportune moment. I am afraid I cannot stop this experiment. Please, Kelsa, inform Tobin. Do and speak as I taught you the other night.” Kirian’s voice sounded monotone.
Kelsa wasted little time and promptly ran down the hall. There at the end a concerned Randall waited. He looked rather dashing in his well pressed, expensive merchant garb. If it was not for his high-handed attitude, and the fun of toying with his better senses, Kelsa thought Randall might be a catch.
“What did he say?” Randall asked as he put a hand out toward Kelsa’s shoulder stopping her advance. She let him.
“He said I should tell Tobin he will be down shortly. I-I really should get down there, Randall.”
“I don’t want this to interrupt our plans to talk. Are you still interested?”
“Randall. Randall, there is commotion down there. We’ll be lucky not to lose half the paying customers. How can you think like this right now?”
“Kelsa, Kirian was going to loose them when the rains stopped anyway. Besides, I made a deal with him to get you off shift early tonight. I have something,” and his stark blue eyes glinted with intensity, “very important to talk about.”
Perhaps I pushed this little game too far. Kelsa thought.
“Perhaps later, Randall. We’ll see.” With that, she edged around the fledgling merchant and trotted downstairs smiling over her shoulder.
************************************************************************
Brishen quickly knelt with Robb by the stricken form of the göshman as rain blew in the door behind them. The gypsy’s clothes, once bright and garish, were now covered with sweat, mud, rainwater, and the lesser rudiments of time spent too long in harsh conditions. His blond hair was a mess, and worse yet he knew it. An audience, however, was an audience, and his ability to swing the various locals in this particular inn before him was paramount. He could plainly see some of their faces registering more shock at the second outsider to dash through the door. Some he knew from the mob that nearly lynched him two months back.
“Don’t worry! I think he has merely been knocked dead for a second time! I, Brishen,” Then followed the natural bow, “shall be more than able to fix his prone self.”
“You’re that horse thief!” A random cry called from deeper in the room.
“He’s helped me nonetheless this night!” Robb cried. “Let him do his work, and he’ll be no harm to any of you. Eredricht let him out tonight, he did.” His voice came out unusually strong.
Brishen in the meantime leaned down and again let the passionate song in his voice heal the prone desert man. This time around Da’Shen did not re-awaken despite the lump on his head smoothing out. By this moment, Tobin had arrived on scene and began to ask, gently of course, that the patrons back up and clear some space. Rain continued to blow in from the forgotten front door.
“Really, people, must we all let more of that damnable weather in?” Randall called as he finished walking down the stairs after Kelsa. After which he took a seat, recently abandoned, and placed his feet upon the table.
Tobin looked at the unconscious man on the ground and could instantly sense the wrongness about his body. Placing a hand gently on his chest, the young man suddenly felt the war fighting its way towards termination within the göshman’s upper body. The comatose form tried to repel the, sickness, within. Yet the illness continued to spread.
“This man is diseased. I cannot do anything for him, nor could master Kirian if he wanted too.” Tobin looked at Robb dead in the eyes. “Someone must go through the storm and fetch Roderick, and quick like!”
The nearest townsmen suddenly became pallid taking several steps backward. “T-t-there’s been talk of a disease passing through these parts! Ill have nothing of this. Better the storm than what’s killed my kin!”
Suddenly, before Kelsa could get to Tobin in time to warn of the possibility of its occurrence, the crowd in the inn began to panic. Panic soon began a mad rush for the nearest exits, and anything, everything, in the mob’s collective way was forgotten.
Tobin acted without thought pulling the wounded wanderer from out of the doorway in the nick of time. Tens of feet stampeded through the portal mere seconds later. Pushing and shoving, the crowd fled out the front, the stable door where horses were quickly mounted, and through the kitchen.
Randall’s chair upended, sending him careening roughly to the ground with a grunt. Realizing the mob was not about to see him there on the straw covered floor, he just about managed to maneuver himself under one of the larger tables without too much bruising. Wiping blood away from his injured lip, kicked by a damned peasant, he waited for things to calm down.
And at the bar counter, forgotten yet watchful all this time, Cade Blackbarrel dived across the slab just as the greater mass of humans pressed up cracking some stools under their weight. As mugs and broken bottles of wine came crashing down about him, Cade quickly balled himself up and prayed to Nefrotis for luck.
************************************************************************
Tessa stared, mutely sipping on her fourth ale, as tens of patrons fled through the kitchen. Pots, pans, and food flew everywhere as startled cooks and busybodies attempted to keep the fires and more dangerous areas of the kitchen safe. A random townsman, Giliam West she thought, kicked her table knocking ale from her hands and onto the floor. Whether it was the alcohol or her natural tendency to flare at sometimes trivial occurrences, Tessa found herself unable to control her Tiefling nature.
“Watch where you’re going, Giliam!” Tessa growled helping the man to his feet. The room suddenly began to smell of light brimstone. She knew her hands must be very warm to the touch as she fought to keep her bandana in place hiding the small horny stubs beneath it.
“Y-you’re sick too!” Giliam turned and fled, pulling his hand from her warm grasp. He soon escaped with the last of the crazed, fearful patrons.
Tessa blew at a piece of hair lodged in her vision. Turning sharply on the heel of a boot she promptly walked into the common room to see what the matter was, and perhaps find another drink. Instead she found an empty room, save for the small group placing a heavy looking individual on a large table in the center of the chamber. He looked tired and drawn, clothed in heavy, wet robes. Ignored she simply began to search the back of the bar. There she found a halfling, in a fetal position, cringing with open fear.
Tobin, Brishen, and Kelsa groaned together placing the göshman on a sanded table while Robb began to open Da’Shen’s robes revealing chain mail beneath. A cruel looking scimitar was sheathed to a rope belt surrounded by several pouches of herbs. Chest heaving dramatically, beads of sweat soon became apparent on his forehead. Brishen thought he could detect the smell of sandalwood about him while he dried hands made wet from Da’Shen’s clothing. Searching his memory of non-descript facts, the bard thought that placed the wanderer from the southlands of Gösh. Randall walked over slowly favoring his left leg.
“My how the townsfolk mirror the frightful cows they so care for.” He chuckled at his poor taste.
The group was in the process of a collective rebuttal when they turned toward the front door. Yet another individual walked in from the storm outside. Dressed in a long cloak of deep grays, Trevor of Iricsus made a formidable sight despite his seventeen years of age. He wore light chain made obvious from beneath the wet, plastered sleeves of his outer garment. Holy symbol lightly swinging on his chest, he made his way toward the group all the while thumbing the pommel of a mace belted at his hip. Rivulets of rain ran down his face, but he seemed completely unaware of their presence.
“As I came closer to this business,” he smiled slightly, “I could not help but see lord Iricsus show it would be my fate to be useful. Much more so than the simple task which I was slated for.” His voice became reverent, quiet. “It would seem that fate was not incorrect.”
Robb smiled.
“Hello Trevor. It’s a good thing you showed. We were about to go and fetch Roderick. This stranger has taken ill.”
Trevor moved closer tracing the holy word of Iricsus in silent response, and placing a hand beneath Da’Shen’s mail. “He is indeed ill, master Torchlighter. Yet, methinks it is not with the strange malady threatening the environs. I think,” and he stared intently at the göshman’s face while placing an ear to his chest, “it is a simple, yet far prolonged, case of chest blight.”
“Are people belonging to your cult so serious like, or do you lose the grace of your age while worshiping intangible destiny?” Brishen stated. He disliked people who spoke above their years.
Trevor ignored the gypsy entirely.
“If it is this man’s fate to be healed then may the lord guide my flesh in the healing of his.” Whispered Trevor as he laid his palms upon Da’Shen’s heaving chest. A soft green light flowed and pulsed from his palms beginning to slowly form an aura surrounding the sickened göshman.
Da’Shen arched his back in obvious pain. Beads of water, yellow and viscous, began to pull free of his torso and coalesce into a watery sphere a foot above him. Growing in size as more of the repulsive fluid pulled from of his pores, the globule began to take on a reddish hue as blood flowed from his eyes, ears, and mouth. A scream, muted by the water flowing through his mouth erupted from Da’Shen’s lips. Brishen moved back in slight horror. Half a halfling’s head rose above the horizon of the bar counter wide eyed. A drunk and feminine hand quickly ascended behind it then rapidly pushed it down.
“Be gone foul taint!” Trevor cried gesturing his arms in an arc toward the open front door. The sphere of bodily ruin flew out the portal exploding on the muck of the street beyond. Da’Shen whimpered slightly, a sound certainly not fitting with his features, and slowly sunk into a somewhat restful looking sleep. Trevor slumped back into a chair.
“I was to give this to Kirian.” He turned to Kelsa and pressed an envelope into her hand. “Please deliver this. I must seek rest, and am too weary.”
“We have plenty of room now that much of the crowd is gone, Trevor.” Tobin stated slightly awed. “Follow me and you can sleep the night upstairs.”
************************************************************************
Tobin showed Trevor to his room on the third floor, and then promptly led a contrite and inebriated Tessa to her normal attic bunk to sleep off her despair. In the common room below, Randall sulked watching Kelsa just finish cleaning up the common room. Torchlight from the kitchen guttered out signifying the staff’s final retreat to sleep. Robb had since removed himself from the inn to battle, once more, the waning storm’s winds lighting what street lights he could. Cade watched quietly, a muted spark in his eyes, as the elven innkeeper finally walked into the room.
Kirian Starshine looked positively tired. He almond shaped eyes possessed a sunken look about them bringing out their hazel color in an all together different light. The nobae's clothes were dampened from his constant comings and goings between the Rest and her stables. His boots held a slight ring of mud around the bottom of each sole, and stray wisps of straw clung to the hems of ever present robes hanging from their elven frame. These folds swirled about Kirian as he quickly knelt by Da’Shen’s still unconscious form.
“Whereabouts did this individual come into town?” He asked solemnly.
Tobin answered now returning from upstairs himself, “By the northern road to Kalimshire. Robb found him just inside Havenview by the Locksmith’s.”
Brishen spoke up from a shadow shrouded table in the corner of the room, “I was helping the Torchlighter carry him here and he tripped.”
Kirian spun his gaze on the gypsy. “He tripped? Tell me gypsy. How does a carried man trip?”
“Well, he made us let him go, and he became too stubborn to hold himself vertical. I am thinking the chest pains caught him off guard.” Brishen looked contrite.
Kirian only frowned. Looking around the room at the teens surrounding him he slowly shook his head.
“All of you should get rest. Randall and Cade shall share room 12, Tobin. Kelsa, you’re off. Go get rest, girl. Gypsy, help me get this apparent göshman to a resting place near my quarters, and you can share his room for this night.” Kirian seemed to suddenly notice the Tuathinkin for whom he was. “Why are you free? Or shall I assume Eredricht let you out?”
“Why is everybody asking me this question? Ask that harsh knight you call ‘in charge’.” Brishen grunted as he lifted half Da’Shen’s weight on his left shoulder. “And my name is being called Brishen.”
“Brishen, you will of course be under close watch. Speaking of which, mind the flight of steps!” Kirian hissed upon reaching the stairs and nearly taking a spill.
The two, exhausted, finally got Da’Shen out of his armor and robes, and into a soft bed. As Brishen casually fell onto his own shared bunk in the room, Kirian began to fold and place the göshman’s articles on the floor at the foot of his resting place. That was when he sensed it, buried deep in the robes as it was, and cautiously pulling it free, placed the rune in his own pockets.
“Fare night to you both.” Kirian then closed and locked the door behind him. So the göshman had been at the sight of Ike’s death. Interesting. Kirian shrugged the thought off, for it would be a matter resolved when the desert man woke from his slumber. Kirian needed his own relaxation, and soon slept himself.
That night, as all slept within the Haven’s Rest, the storm outside blew itself out. Fires caused by lightning strikes were slowly extinguished by Eredricht and fatigued volunteers. Other townsfolk bailed water from flooded homes and fell into exhausted slumbers. Elsewhere, a hedge mage’s body was slowly dragged off a country road and made into a nighttime delight for wolves.
The plotting of too many bent on chaos began in earnest. Some well laid plans were coming into their first fruits, and nothing, or so it would seem, was there to stop them.
Several tables nearest Da’Shen’s explosive entrance to the Rest emptied quickly of their patrons. Startled, not quite sure what to make of the obvious outlander lying at their feet, these former revelers stood back with mute shock apparent on their faces. Shouts toward the back of the common room began to summon Kirian Starshine as Tobin quickly began pushing his way through the standing crowd. The stable hand calmly reassured each individual he passed. Randall, watching from behind, could not help but wonder at the sixteen year old’s ability to still the apprehensive soul.
Kelsa quickly put down her tray of empty mugs on the table closest to her. The patrons there did not seem to mind at all as she then promptly left and headed toward the back of the inn. Rushing up the guest stairs to the second level, she hurried to the end of the corridor while informing startled and half-asleep patrons that all was well. There, at the end of the hallway, she rapped politely on Kirian’s office.
“Yes.” Kirian’s voice calmly carried from inside.
“There has been a disturbance downstairs Kirian. A…foreign looking individual has fallen just inside the front door.” Kelsa tried to keep worry from her voice.
She was tall for her age. Nineteen years old and nearing six feet in height. She had a figure that Randall, her friend, continued to say was an hourglass with a few extra minutes tacked on. She tried to keep her hands at her sides, but they disobeyed and played with her waist length brown hair. She sucked on her lower lip as she waited.
“I’ll be down promptly. This has come at an inopportune moment. I am afraid I cannot stop this experiment. Please, Kelsa, inform Tobin. Do and speak as I taught you the other night.” Kirian’s voice sounded monotone.
Kelsa wasted little time and promptly ran down the hall. There at the end a concerned Randall waited. He looked rather dashing in his well pressed, expensive merchant garb. If it was not for his high-handed attitude, and the fun of toying with his better senses, Kelsa thought Randall might be a catch.
“What did he say?” Randall asked as he put a hand out toward Kelsa’s shoulder stopping her advance. She let him.
“He said I should tell Tobin he will be down shortly. I-I really should get down there, Randall.”
“I don’t want this to interrupt our plans to talk. Are you still interested?”
“Randall. Randall, there is commotion down there. We’ll be lucky not to lose half the paying customers. How can you think like this right now?”
“Kelsa, Kirian was going to loose them when the rains stopped anyway. Besides, I made a deal with him to get you off shift early tonight. I have something,” and his stark blue eyes glinted with intensity, “very important to talk about.”
Perhaps I pushed this little game too far. Kelsa thought.
“Perhaps later, Randall. We’ll see.” With that, she edged around the fledgling merchant and trotted downstairs smiling over her shoulder.
************************************************************************
Brishen quickly knelt with Robb by the stricken form of the göshman as rain blew in the door behind them. The gypsy’s clothes, once bright and garish, were now covered with sweat, mud, rainwater, and the lesser rudiments of time spent too long in harsh conditions. His blond hair was a mess, and worse yet he knew it. An audience, however, was an audience, and his ability to swing the various locals in this particular inn before him was paramount. He could plainly see some of their faces registering more shock at the second outsider to dash through the door. Some he knew from the mob that nearly lynched him two months back.
“Don’t worry! I think he has merely been knocked dead for a second time! I, Brishen,” Then followed the natural bow, “shall be more than able to fix his prone self.”
“You’re that horse thief!” A random cry called from deeper in the room.
“He’s helped me nonetheless this night!” Robb cried. “Let him do his work, and he’ll be no harm to any of you. Eredricht let him out tonight, he did.” His voice came out unusually strong.
Brishen in the meantime leaned down and again let the passionate song in his voice heal the prone desert man. This time around Da’Shen did not re-awaken despite the lump on his head smoothing out. By this moment, Tobin had arrived on scene and began to ask, gently of course, that the patrons back up and clear some space. Rain continued to blow in from the forgotten front door.
“Really, people, must we all let more of that damnable weather in?” Randall called as he finished walking down the stairs after Kelsa. After which he took a seat, recently abandoned, and placed his feet upon the table.
Tobin looked at the unconscious man on the ground and could instantly sense the wrongness about his body. Placing a hand gently on his chest, the young man suddenly felt the war fighting its way towards termination within the göshman’s upper body. The comatose form tried to repel the, sickness, within. Yet the illness continued to spread.
“This man is diseased. I cannot do anything for him, nor could master Kirian if he wanted too.” Tobin looked at Robb dead in the eyes. “Someone must go through the storm and fetch Roderick, and quick like!”
The nearest townsmen suddenly became pallid taking several steps backward. “T-t-there’s been talk of a disease passing through these parts! Ill have nothing of this. Better the storm than what’s killed my kin!”
Suddenly, before Kelsa could get to Tobin in time to warn of the possibility of its occurrence, the crowd in the inn began to panic. Panic soon began a mad rush for the nearest exits, and anything, everything, in the mob’s collective way was forgotten.
Tobin acted without thought pulling the wounded wanderer from out of the doorway in the nick of time. Tens of feet stampeded through the portal mere seconds later. Pushing and shoving, the crowd fled out the front, the stable door where horses were quickly mounted, and through the kitchen.
Randall’s chair upended, sending him careening roughly to the ground with a grunt. Realizing the mob was not about to see him there on the straw covered floor, he just about managed to maneuver himself under one of the larger tables without too much bruising. Wiping blood away from his injured lip, kicked by a damned peasant, he waited for things to calm down.
And at the bar counter, forgotten yet watchful all this time, Cade Blackbarrel dived across the slab just as the greater mass of humans pressed up cracking some stools under their weight. As mugs and broken bottles of wine came crashing down about him, Cade quickly balled himself up and prayed to Nefrotis for luck.
************************************************************************
Tessa stared, mutely sipping on her fourth ale, as tens of patrons fled through the kitchen. Pots, pans, and food flew everywhere as startled cooks and busybodies attempted to keep the fires and more dangerous areas of the kitchen safe. A random townsman, Giliam West she thought, kicked her table knocking ale from her hands and onto the floor. Whether it was the alcohol or her natural tendency to flare at sometimes trivial occurrences, Tessa found herself unable to control her Tiefling nature.
“Watch where you’re going, Giliam!” Tessa growled helping the man to his feet. The room suddenly began to smell of light brimstone. She knew her hands must be very warm to the touch as she fought to keep her bandana in place hiding the small horny stubs beneath it.
“Y-you’re sick too!” Giliam turned and fled, pulling his hand from her warm grasp. He soon escaped with the last of the crazed, fearful patrons.
Tessa blew at a piece of hair lodged in her vision. Turning sharply on the heel of a boot she promptly walked into the common room to see what the matter was, and perhaps find another drink. Instead she found an empty room, save for the small group placing a heavy looking individual on a large table in the center of the chamber. He looked tired and drawn, clothed in heavy, wet robes. Ignored she simply began to search the back of the bar. There she found a halfling, in a fetal position, cringing with open fear.
Tobin, Brishen, and Kelsa groaned together placing the göshman on a sanded table while Robb began to open Da’Shen’s robes revealing chain mail beneath. A cruel looking scimitar was sheathed to a rope belt surrounded by several pouches of herbs. Chest heaving dramatically, beads of sweat soon became apparent on his forehead. Brishen thought he could detect the smell of sandalwood about him while he dried hands made wet from Da’Shen’s clothing. Searching his memory of non-descript facts, the bard thought that placed the wanderer from the southlands of Gösh. Randall walked over slowly favoring his left leg.
“My how the townsfolk mirror the frightful cows they so care for.” He chuckled at his poor taste.
The group was in the process of a collective rebuttal when they turned toward the front door. Yet another individual walked in from the storm outside. Dressed in a long cloak of deep grays, Trevor of Iricsus made a formidable sight despite his seventeen years of age. He wore light chain made obvious from beneath the wet, plastered sleeves of his outer garment. Holy symbol lightly swinging on his chest, he made his way toward the group all the while thumbing the pommel of a mace belted at his hip. Rivulets of rain ran down his face, but he seemed completely unaware of their presence.
“As I came closer to this business,” he smiled slightly, “I could not help but see lord Iricsus show it would be my fate to be useful. Much more so than the simple task which I was slated for.” His voice became reverent, quiet. “It would seem that fate was not incorrect.”
Robb smiled.
“Hello Trevor. It’s a good thing you showed. We were about to go and fetch Roderick. This stranger has taken ill.”
Trevor moved closer tracing the holy word of Iricsus in silent response, and placing a hand beneath Da’Shen’s mail. “He is indeed ill, master Torchlighter. Yet, methinks it is not with the strange malady threatening the environs. I think,” and he stared intently at the göshman’s face while placing an ear to his chest, “it is a simple, yet far prolonged, case of chest blight.”
“Are people belonging to your cult so serious like, or do you lose the grace of your age while worshiping intangible destiny?” Brishen stated. He disliked people who spoke above their years.
Trevor ignored the gypsy entirely.
“If it is this man’s fate to be healed then may the lord guide my flesh in the healing of his.” Whispered Trevor as he laid his palms upon Da’Shen’s heaving chest. A soft green light flowed and pulsed from his palms beginning to slowly form an aura surrounding the sickened göshman.
Da’Shen arched his back in obvious pain. Beads of water, yellow and viscous, began to pull free of his torso and coalesce into a watery sphere a foot above him. Growing in size as more of the repulsive fluid pulled from of his pores, the globule began to take on a reddish hue as blood flowed from his eyes, ears, and mouth. A scream, muted by the water flowing through his mouth erupted from Da’Shen’s lips. Brishen moved back in slight horror. Half a halfling’s head rose above the horizon of the bar counter wide eyed. A drunk and feminine hand quickly ascended behind it then rapidly pushed it down.
“Be gone foul taint!” Trevor cried gesturing his arms in an arc toward the open front door. The sphere of bodily ruin flew out the portal exploding on the muck of the street beyond. Da’Shen whimpered slightly, a sound certainly not fitting with his features, and slowly sunk into a somewhat restful looking sleep. Trevor slumped back into a chair.
“I was to give this to Kirian.” He turned to Kelsa and pressed an envelope into her hand. “Please deliver this. I must seek rest, and am too weary.”
“We have plenty of room now that much of the crowd is gone, Trevor.” Tobin stated slightly awed. “Follow me and you can sleep the night upstairs.”
************************************************************************
Tobin showed Trevor to his room on the third floor, and then promptly led a contrite and inebriated Tessa to her normal attic bunk to sleep off her despair. In the common room below, Randall sulked watching Kelsa just finish cleaning up the common room. Torchlight from the kitchen guttered out signifying the staff’s final retreat to sleep. Robb had since removed himself from the inn to battle, once more, the waning storm’s winds lighting what street lights he could. Cade watched quietly, a muted spark in his eyes, as the elven innkeeper finally walked into the room.
Kirian Starshine looked positively tired. He almond shaped eyes possessed a sunken look about them bringing out their hazel color in an all together different light. The nobae's clothes were dampened from his constant comings and goings between the Rest and her stables. His boots held a slight ring of mud around the bottom of each sole, and stray wisps of straw clung to the hems of ever present robes hanging from their elven frame. These folds swirled about Kirian as he quickly knelt by Da’Shen’s still unconscious form.
“Whereabouts did this individual come into town?” He asked solemnly.
Tobin answered now returning from upstairs himself, “By the northern road to Kalimshire. Robb found him just inside Havenview by the Locksmith’s.”
Brishen spoke up from a shadow shrouded table in the corner of the room, “I was helping the Torchlighter carry him here and he tripped.”
Kirian spun his gaze on the gypsy. “He tripped? Tell me gypsy. How does a carried man trip?”
“Well, he made us let him go, and he became too stubborn to hold himself vertical. I am thinking the chest pains caught him off guard.” Brishen looked contrite.
Kirian only frowned. Looking around the room at the teens surrounding him he slowly shook his head.
“All of you should get rest. Randall and Cade shall share room 12, Tobin. Kelsa, you’re off. Go get rest, girl. Gypsy, help me get this apparent göshman to a resting place near my quarters, and you can share his room for this night.” Kirian seemed to suddenly notice the Tuathinkin for whom he was. “Why are you free? Or shall I assume Eredricht let you out?”
“Why is everybody asking me this question? Ask that harsh knight you call ‘in charge’.” Brishen grunted as he lifted half Da’Shen’s weight on his left shoulder. “And my name is being called Brishen.”
“Brishen, you will of course be under close watch. Speaking of which, mind the flight of steps!” Kirian hissed upon reaching the stairs and nearly taking a spill.
The two, exhausted, finally got Da’Shen out of his armor and robes, and into a soft bed. As Brishen casually fell onto his own shared bunk in the room, Kirian began to fold and place the göshman’s articles on the floor at the foot of his resting place. That was when he sensed it, buried deep in the robes as it was, and cautiously pulling it free, placed the rune in his own pockets.
“Fare night to you both.” Kirian then closed and locked the door behind him. So the göshman had been at the sight of Ike’s death. Interesting. Kirian shrugged the thought off, for it would be a matter resolved when the desert man woke from his slumber. Kirian needed his own relaxation, and soon slept himself.
That night, as all slept within the Haven’s Rest, the storm outside blew itself out. Fires caused by lightning strikes were slowly extinguished by Eredricht and fatigued volunteers. Other townsfolk bailed water from flooded homes and fell into exhausted slumbers. Elsewhere, a hedge mage’s body was slowly dragged off a country road and made into a nighttime delight for wolves.
The plotting of too many bent on chaos began in earnest. Some well laid plans were coming into their first fruits, and nothing, or so it would seem, was there to stop them.