NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sialia" data-source="post: 804154" data-attributes="member: 1025">Dylrath and TeliazThis storyhour written Nov 2001, (while the Defenders were in Eversink) regarding Dylrath's first private meeting with Teliaz. In which we see how Dylrath got himself in to this mess in the first place by allowing his tongue to be a lot more clever than he is.The Professor of Thaumaturgic Divination was droning into the fifteenth section of the outline he had chalked on the board at the beginning of class, with no apparent end in sight.Slouched in his chair, Dylrath idly wondered what it would feel like to slide a short sword into the man's guts and up through his chest.Dylrath blinked.  A moment ago he had been idly wondering whether there would be crab cakes or herring for lunch. Something . . . he turned to look out the window.Teliaz. Oh crap. Teliaz was standing there looking in, looking into the classroom and directly at him. Torazite, ptah, Dylrath thought.  I hate that about them.Ordinarily, Dylrath knew when anyone was looking at him. Ordinarily, Dylrath knew exactly who was watching him all the time. He'd spent a wish on that gift.But Torazite assassins had god-granted obscurity to scrying, which worked even on Dylrath's talent. Who knew how long the living son of Toraz, God of Murder, had been standing out there in the courtyard, staring at him? Dylrath felt kind of ill at the thought. He raised his hand."Professor? May I be excused? I feel kind of ill. Like I'm about to be really unwell."The professor barely flickered an eyebrow in Dylrath's direction. Young master Birdhouse's tardiness and absences were legendary around the school. As were his excuses. The professor did not have time to have his lecture usurped by another example. "Excused. Exam in two days, clear?""Yessir. Very clear, sir." Dylrath said, thinking it was the only concise thing the professor had said all morning. Also, that he was actually hoping he'd get a chance to show up for that exam, ready or not.Dylrath left the classroom wondering where he would go. He had been hunted by Torazite assassins before and had only survived because the Defenders of Daybreak had been willing to walk into a deathtrap to haul his butt out of a cage full of brown mold. Getting to his Room seemed the most sensible idea, but also a predictable one, and there were yards of corridor to pass, and a courtyard to cross. He had also traveled with Teliaz before, on the way to Tovag Barugu, when there was little choice about the matter. He couldn't say he knew Teliaz well, but the pimply-faced godling, who oozed poison from his pores, had been an unpleasant companion, and one the whole party had wholeheartedly approved of shoving through a portal into the middle of a desert full of thri-kreen and abandoning at the first opportunity.Dylrath didn't expect the reunion to be a particularly joyous one.He wondered why he had left the relative sanctuary of the classroom, and then decided that a room full of fourth form divination students and an elderly professor would be more liability than protection. Dylrath was considerably older and tougher than most of his classmates, and he liked most of them. If I'm going to have to deal with Teliaz, he thought, I've got to do it as far away from people I like as possible. He wondered just how long it would take Teliaz just hanging around the courtyard to make the students mob the professor and cantrip him to death. Teliaz had that effect on people.He swallowed, and made his way cautiously to the end of the corridor. He stood in front of the door, thinking. Teliaz saw me in the room. Teliaz knows I have to walk through this door to get outside. He'll be ready if I go through it.  I won't survive going through it.And then he heard Teliaz’s oily voice through the door. "Master Birdhouse?  A moment of your time."It was sort of a request, as if a request were being made by somebody who was in the habit of making demands and giving orders, not making requests. There was definitely something odd about the intonation. It didn’t sound like a threat, for one thing.Dylrath thought, as rapidly as possible. I've got to get to the Defenders. I definitely don't want to go this alone. But the door to the room that held his scrying mirror was in his closet, across the courtyard and up two flights of stairs. I can't get there. "Teliaz, old pal. I'd love to hear all about it, but I'm, uh, concerned about just walking out to meet you, imagine that. Um. Whatdya say you give me a moment or two to, uh, prepare some defenses, as a gesture of good faith?""Whatever."</blockquote>

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