Later....
Practically all alone at the group's campsite, hidden in the woods, Bristletail barks angrily and screeches in pain as he feels his gnome companion getting clawed at, and then punctured by three arrows in rapid succession. The tiny fox rolls around and whimpers, feeling his master pass out and land achingly on a tree branch a few feet down. Bristletail runs around and makes a vulpine groan as he panics and tries to figure out what's wrong. Elfenhaus, the only other creature at the camp right now, snorts and stamps a hoof, irritated at the manic fox and at being reined to a tree right now himself. Bristletail bolts into the forest all of a sudden, looking for his master.
Fleck lies unconscious somewhere in the woods, invisible on a tree limb. Peregrine the hawk perches on a nearby tree for several minutes, glancing about all over and looking for signs of its lost prey. The familiar's mind rages and fumes at the deception, cowardice, and tricks of humanoids, especially gnomes, in the face of their goblinoid superiors. His master's fury simmered just below the surface, as Aenicius argues with the Kinrisari head overseer of the slave camp. The familiar's frustration is reciprocated through the empathic link, making Aenicius more angry, which consequently made the familiar more angry too through the link....... Aenicius begins beating some hapless gnomes in the slave camp, as Peregrine ruffles his feathers and takes off, seeking something small and furry to mutilate and vent his rage.
For a few moments, the hawk's attention is turned away from the site of its battle against Fleck. A gnome slave is beaten to death in the camp by an angry hobgoblin, but another gnome is narrowly spared out in the woods, as he lies invisibly on a tree branch, a blood-soaked cloak stuck in his wounds being the only thing that keeps the last of his lifeblood from spilling. Grely'k and Felicitas show mercy on this gnome, but the scales of fate needs be balanced, and they somberly note the death of one who paid for this gnome's boldness.
Argus creeps along in the tree branches, hugging them for dear life, as he tries to find signs of where Fleck disappeared to during the escape. The Invisibility spell won't last too much longer, the druid thinks, and neither will Fleck's. He crawls along quietly, trying his best not to make too much noise, as the squirrel he Charmed carefully leads him to where the scent of bloody gnome is coming from. Argus sees the strange hawk flying around in the distance, diving down on some poor forest animal, and he hopes the bird of prey has a worse sense of smell than this squirrel.
He had only seen brief glimpses of the early part of the escape, as he had flown off under Fleck's spells, carrying the sturdy chest within which Valdir's gear was locked. Now that the chest has been set down a goodly distance away, Argus told Valdir, the barely-conscious elf-turned-horsefly, to wait for him because he hadn't seen Fleck catch up or pass them yet, and so Argus flew back towards the camp just before the Fly spell on him wore off.
Now the invisible druid-monk crawls around in the trees, around the area where he found traces of blood on the ground, and some arrows up in the tree canopy. He inches forward on a thick tree branch, and suddenly bumps his noggin into something hard yet fuzzy. The squirrel stops too, and Argus bites back a curse as he rubs his head. What'd I bump into? There's nothing up here.
Then he reaches out to pull himself further along the branch, and feels something bumpy and soft.......a face? He feels around ahead of himself briefly, and sure enough, that seems to be a small, humanoid body lying on the branch in front of him. Bloody Naeronite telling us it wouldn't go smoothly, and never telling us what in the hells would go wrong......
Argus surmises that since the invisible body hasn't stabbed him with a knife yet or something, or even said anything, it's probably an unconscious Fleck and not an enemy lying in wait for the gnome's comrades to return. The druid quietly utters a pair of healing orisons, asking Eraekoth to keep the gnome from bleeding any more, so they can get vengeance for this later. Then Argus begins dragging the unconscious gnome away, making the difficult climb down with a veritable sack of bones that he doesn't want to drop.
He takes a breather once on the ground again, and the squirrel agitatedly chitters at him, as the hawk seems to be returning to its nearby perch. Argus quietly thanks the squirrel and tells it where to hide from the hawk, then he gets up and awkwardly picks up the invisible gnome, making his own invisible way slowly back towards the chest and Valdir the horsefly.
By the time Argus gets over to the chest and his haversack, his own invisibility has worn off and Valdir has reverted to his normal form, Fleck's Polymorph having faded. However, now the elf lies unconscious next to the chest, and Argus sighs in exasperation. Pointy-ear must've been unconscious when Fleck found him. Whatever the gnome did to revive him, it sure didn't last long.
He snorts angrily and tries to figure out what to do. First he makes sure Valdir's stable with his last healing orison of the day, then he opens his haversack and begins trying to stuff unconscious Fleck into the main compartment of the extradimensional storage space. Blasted gnomes aren't small 'nuff. What d' they need with arms anyway? It'd be so much easier to stuff Fleck into my backpack if his damnable shoulders weren't in the way.
After some struggling, he manages to get the gnome into his haversack. Hope he doesn't suffocate in there. The monk then puts on his backpack, slings Valdir's body over one shoulder, and hefts up the chest with Valdir's junk in it. Then he curses profusely in Hibridean about becoming a bloody pack mule, and begins trudging away towards the party's own camp, making a winding way of it to throw off any potential watchers. He constantly has to open up his haversack and pull Fleck partway out of it, to make sure the gnome doesn't suffocate. He doesn't get too far before Drack sees him, coming from the camp himself to see if the rescuers were going to need any combat support during their escape.
Argus curses about the sailor's timing, and puts down the chest, drops Valdir off his shoulder like a sack of beans, and shrugs off his backpack, sighing in relief from the brief chance to rest. Valdir is bloody and bruised, with many barely-treated wounds from piercing weapons, and is scarcely wearing anything more than his underclothes, which are torn and bloody from the arrows, swords, and clubs that have wounded him. Argus opens his backpack and hauls out Fleck. Drack reaches him as the druid is struggling to pull an unconscious and bloody gnome out of his haversack, much to Drack's confusion. The gnome is barely breathing, and Argus has to give a few good whacks to the chest to get Fleck's lungs working properly again, after the many near-suffocating moments stuck inside the extradimensional backpack. Drack is aghast at the druid's treatment of Valdir and Fleck, and checks to make sure they're both still alive after the druid's rough 'rescue', if it could be called that. Drack has no idea what the heck's going on.
