"Damnedest thing happened.. After I picked up the blade it became very heavy. I thought about leaving it, but a voice inside my head told me that if I brought the sword along it would assist in my escape."
Zenythin kept lounging and laughing as he related the events.
"Anyway.. Who am I to argue with a strange voice in my own head. Our kin were dying all around. I was a coward. I ran to the dungeons, crept onto the rowboat in the caverns below the castle. I thought I'd end up in the Eastern sea, stranded, open to attack, but instead..."
He just laughed harder.
"You flew here? I'll swap you the black blade there for your steel. Seems a fair trade, considering. I'd feel a bit safer if I had a sword in my hand that respected me."
He grinned and winked.
"That castle in the distance... Not any I recognize..."
The black blade kept vibrating in Selythin's grip. It was as if the weapon were purring.
Behind the boat, up current and in the distance, the two elves heard someone cry out.
"What!? How? I can't swim! But... Help!"
* * *
"Who's we? Who's yew?" "She's brave!" "A hero! She'll help us!" "This is still scary. What'll we do? Tha queens dead." "Oh no! The hu-mens not so good either.."
The little fae-folk, winged or tree-like, budded and flowered, crowded around Eovin, Jim, and the horses.
Laynard was too far gone and Jim was crying.
Everyone heard another voice.
"No! Pop! Jim! Where are we?" Bo, Laynard's other son, ran into the now crowded glade.
There was another loud thunder clap.
* * *
Alan Oake sloshed through the river that used to be a street and grabbed ahold of the burly bully drowning in the well.
Easy enough, but the rushing water and the guy's size and weight were too much.
Alan was going down too, but right before his head went under the young tailor glanced over and saw good old/young Page. She had some reeds in her hand and was muttering funny words.
Alan and Bradrick, the tailor now remembered the bully's name, went down the well. An invisible force sucked them down...down...down.
Water was all around them, but, miraculously, they could breathe!
The current kept pulling them along. Darkness. Then, after many moments of panic, a light above. The force of the water quickened. They continued along a violent river.
Bradrick the bully blurbled at Alan. "What!? How?" He looked scared. "I can't swim! But... Help!"
The pair could see a boat ahead. A rowboat. It looked like two figures were aboard.
The river seemed to even out and calm down after a series of large rocks before them.
* * *
The crossbow bolt thudded into the wood frame of the window, but not into the snarling beast.
The winged, clawed, chaos thing flew straight at Ralph. It wasn't quite fast enough to reach him.
Ralph, the Dreaming Knight, gripped the glowing sword. A flash of light and suddenly an eerie spirit, glowing the same shade as the blade, leapt from the collapsed old man and into Ralph Crenshaw's chest.
He felt a weird energy fill him, connect with the sword in his hand. He heard a thousand voices inside his head.
He knew every single one. He'd drawn them all. He could match the sound to the face of each. They were heroes. Ralph, perhaps, but in a thousand spectacular forms.
A thousand eternal warriors now lived in him.
(New round. You act, then the chaos beast. You're only 15 feet away and the creature is low enough to strike.)
* * *
(Eovin, Selythin, Josiah Jones, and Alan Oake all LEVEL UP. Ralph will level as soon as the fight is over.)
* * *
)
