Trudging through the snow to the fallen warrior, the companions paused over his smoking form.
“He looks a bit familiar,” muttered Tyr.
“The tabard on the horse has got some kind of black horse insignia,” replied Grusalock, even as he calmed the panicking animal with his confident manner.
“He looks a little like General De’Nava,” stated Torrent. “He’s a general in the Ragesian army, and the symbol he and the troops were wearing is that of a Ragesian bounty hunting group.”
Tyr straightened up from the bounty hunter’s belt pouches clutching a neat parchment script, and handed it around.
Kathar Danaver,
We offer you and your men a bounty on behalf of the Ragesian empire – we will pay a bounty of one hundred gold for each living wizard you deliver to us.
The document was finished with the heavy wax seal of the Ragesian Inquisition. The group heaved the bodies into an alleyway, taking care to remove a few of their black armbands ‘just in case’.
.oOo.
Continuing towards the Depository, the five reached one of the more populated parts of the city, where fires spread thickly and screams tore through the snowy air.
Rounding a corner, a man staggered from a burning building, clutching a blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. Tarn muttered and lay one hand over the man’s badly burned hand. There was a brief moment where the screams and the crackle of flames seemed to die away amidst the flapping of invisible wings, and the man seemed to slump as his pain ended.
Unwrapping the bundle revealed a baby, and a young family rushed from the other side of the building screaming and crying for their father. Reunited, the group agreed to carry the three children on their captured horse, and continued on their way.
.oOo.
Passing another burning structure, Grusalock was the first to notice screams from above. Within a few moments, they had swept the heraldic tabard off the horse and Tarn directed a handful of bystanders to hold the corners, allowing the terrified citizens leap down into it.
By the time they arrived at the temple, they were leading a substantial group of people all of whom were looking to them for safety.
.oOo.
After a short rest to speak to the priest and leave the many citizens in the relative safety of the temple, the group headed onwards to the Depository.
Once again the trek was interrupted, this time by tremendous screaming from the north, which seemed to be closing and becoming louder incredibly faster. Glancing up a street, the group could see a lookout on a bridge staring fixedly up and to the north before screaming and diving off the bridge into the crowd below.
The wave of terror washed over the street where the companions stood, as overhead a tremendous red-winged form swooped over the city. Tarn, Torrent and Wingwrath were largely unmoved by the massive dragon, but Grusalock and Tyr fled – returning sheepishly a while later once the tremendous dragon had flown on.
.oOo.
A while later, the group were picking their way through a shortcut, and emerged into the square before the Depository where they were due to meet their contact. The gates to the 80 foot tall tower stood open and were unguarded, reflecting the fires around it, and the breezes from the flames causing the many garish banners around the building to flap and move.
As they strode forwards, an imploring voice cut through the air. “Kiki, please, come out!”
Looking to the right, a richly dressed merchant was on his hands and knees calling into a drainpipe.
Grusalock peered up the pipe and called out for Tyr, who slipped into a crack in the supporting wall. He called out for Grusalock, and there was then a short delay.
“It’s some kind of creature, Grusalock. It’s too scared to come out – I’m gonna need some help”.
It took some time to push Grusalock’s heavy hide armoured form through the gap Tyr had glided through so nimbly, and he then followed Kiki (a gigantic weasel) down a cracked pipe into a sewer drain. At his instruction, the others headed to a collapsed templem where they opened a door into the stinking sewers. There stood Grusalock, drenched in dreadful fluids and clutching a stench-ridden dire weasel, rubbing its stained head against his own.
The owner was pitifully grateful, offering the companions a discount on any silk they might wish to buy…
.oOo.
Finally they had reached the Depository, and trudged through the fountain and statue-lined grounds towards the building. On the door stood three half orcs and a dwarf on guard. He asked for a key which Torrent produced, and he then relaxed and nodded as his comrades opened the door for the group.
.oOo.
Inside, the tower was in the form of a series of large circular stone rooms filled with rows of metal lockers. Stone ramps led up to a second identical floor, but as the companions ranged across the floor to the next ramp a squat horrendous form rounded the side of the lockers towards them.
“I hear war outside,” couched the hideous pug-faced gnome. “I am relieved to be inside. Follow me, Peppin; it’s time to discuss our business.”
‘Peppin?’ mouthed Wingwrath silently to the rest of the group as they followed the scarred and acne-ridden gnome to a locker where he paused.
“Peppin, do you know the password,” he asked craning up to look at the much taller adventurers above him.
Torrent looked confused, and Grusalock was clearly suspicious as he began to swing his staff around towards the gnome.
Rumbled, the gnome turned and dashed for the upwards slope, ducking rapidly aimed blades as he went. The gnome drew a surprisingly long blade and slashed at Tyr, who leapt past him to bar his way up. Instead, the gnome swerved and simply ran straight up the wall, dodging between metal globes in the wall which seemed to distract Grusalock.
Not for long, though. Concentrating, the druid gestured and a slew of vines leapt from his staff to wrench the gnome from the wall. As all the companions surrounded him, they were distracted by a bright light which fluttered down from the level above and began to lance at them with tongues of flame. At the same time, the metal studs in the walls began to his and crackle with lightning, which sheared down across the wall. As Wingwrath cast a spell up at the flying ball of light and flame, the lightning on the walls leapt into life and crackled across the room, arcing across Torrent and Tyr.
Wingwrath and the flying light-thing began a duel of fire and ice magics, whilst the gnome on the floor received blows from all of the other companions. Panicking, he leapt away, receiving strikes from several weapons as he scrambled over one of the lockers.
Tarn gave chase, striking him with the flat of his blade, at which point Grusalock, shifting into the form of a bear, slashed down and tore the gnome to the bone. He convulsed and was still; his form shifting as he died as he transformed into a tall and noble-looking Shahalesti eladrin.
Overhead, Wingwrath continued to blast cold spell after cold spell into the flying form, which was now firing into the group beneath it. One blast of flame dropped Tyr to the ground screaming, but Tarn and Torrent both moved rapidly to heal him with their prayers.
The tiny creature couldn’t last long under the onslaught of fire, cold, thunder and lightning which followed, and as it dropped to the ground, guards finally ran up the stairs from the ground floor. The experienced guardsmen fanned out across the rest of the Depository. On an upper floor they found the comatose form of a gnome, whose ugly face was covered with acne scars and spots.
They were also treated to a view over the burning city, where wyverns still wheeled overhead dropping casks of explosives onto the homes and shops below.
Most of the group was looking at the cityscape, but Grusalock took all of that in with a glance and then spent some time laconically pointing out the windows which had been forced open form the inside, and the slits in a banner caused by two people sliding down it to the ground below. Only his eagle eyes could see the two forms fleeing away.
.oOo.
Once the ugly gnome was awakened, he introduced himself as Rivereye Badgerface, and Torrent confirmed that he was the agent they were there to meet.
Rivereye explained that he had been cursed by the Inquisitors as a safety measure and therefore could not explain his intelligence but that he had captured a series of essential documents which had been with him until he was ambushed by the Shahalesti agents. Feigning unconsciousness, he had learned that they were working with someone named ‘Shialis’, who was based in Gabal’s school of wizardry, and that she was organising a tunnel out of the city and away towards the Shahalesti empire.
And these people had captured his case of documents.