Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 218
A Toe in the Water. Also the Earth, Air and Fire.
The Company casts shrink item and gentle repose on Srapa’s body, folds it up, and stows it in a pack for later questioning. Getting back to the Eye of the Storm is a simple logistical matter, mostly of wind walks and teleports. Before the day is out they are emerging into the netted enclosure around the Way in/out of the Demon Slices.
“Hello! We’re back!” calls Grey Wolf.
“Not demons!” adds Ernie.
Back at the Inn, Horny is the first to greet them. “You get him?” he asks.
Dranko pulls out the sapphire and holds it up to the light.
“What’s that?” asks the minotaur.
“That’s Flicker. He’s trapped inside this gem.”
“Oh, well, yeah, I’m glad you got him back, but what I really meant was, did you get the bastard who kidnapped him?”
“Yeah,” says Morningstar. Kibi pulls out the body of Srapa, folded up in its cloth-like state.
“That’s just a piece of cloth painted like a lizard,” says Horny, scratching his head. “It’s neat, but I meant the actual guy who kidnapped your friend.”
Slightly affronted, Kibi dismisses the shrink item spell, and there’s the shrunken body of Srapa lying on the table.
“That’s disgusting!” exclaims Horny.
“Well, you didn’t believe me,” complains Kibi.
“So that cloth thing was the body!”
“Still is,” points out Grey Wolf.
“Magic is wonderful and glorious thing,” says Dranko. “Can we get on with it? Who around here has a hammer and an anvil?”
* *
The Company adjourns to a smithy in a distant wing of the Inn. With permission from the blacksmith there, Ernie borrows tongs while Dranko lays down a blanket around the anvil to catch any salvageable shards. Then Dranko fishes out the sapphire and lays it on the anvil. As Ernie holds it steady with the tongs, Dranko hefts a hammer.
“What are you doing?” asks the Smith. “That’s a big gem. Why you breakin’ it?”
“It’s magic,” says Dranko. “Our friend’s trapped inside it.”
Not for much longer! Dranko smashes the gem with the hammer, basically pulverizing it into powder. There’s a puff of blue smoke, and then there’s Flicker, lying face up, arched uncomfortably over the anvil. Dranko impishly raises the hammer again as if to strike another blow, while Ernie grabs Flicker’s nose with the tongs.
Nasally, Flicker shouts in alarm. “Dranko! Don’t hit me! Ernie! What’s going on? Let go with those tongs! Ow! Ow!”
“Have you learned your lesson about taking gems from random strangers?” says Ernie, his voice a shrill reprimand.
Flicker blinks confusedly. “She just wanted to know how much it was worth.”
Ernie pauses for a moment and lets go with the tongs. “You did know you were trapped inside the gem, right?”
“I kinda guessed,” says Flicker. “Everything was all blue.”
Drank clears his throat. “Flicker? I’m not going to yell at you for taking a gem from a stranger. And I’m not going to yell at you for making us chase lizard boy across the demon slices to get you back, or involving us in a horrible fight in mid-air in the middle of a snowstorm. I’ll just say this: the gem I had to break to get you out was worth fifteen thousand gold pieces.
Flicker blinks again. “Lizard boy?”
Then: “You couldn’t get me out with breaking it?”
“That’s how it works,” says Grey Wolf.
“I considered selling you, then stealing you back later and freeing you then,” admits Dranko.
“Good thinking,” agrees Flicker. “You should have done that! Why didn’t you?”
“You know, the others would have had a bunch of stupid moral objections…”
“Well,” says Flicker, “You would have had to tell…”
Ernie grabs Flicker’s nose with the tongs again. “Flicker, you ungrateful little…”
“Ow! Let go! That hurts!”
“I don’t know,” says Ernie. “I’m starting to like this. You are quite possibly the most muddle-headed Halfling I ever knew!”
Flicker grows angry himself, and grabs the tongs away. “Why are you all getting on my case? If someone you didn’t know walked up to you, showed you a wound, said ‘I’m really hurt,’ and asked you for healing, wouldn’t you do it?”
Ernie is taken aback. “Well, yeah, I suppose I…”
“Or would you ask a lot of questions first and get all paranoid? No, you’d heal them!” Flicker’s face is bright red. ”And it wasn’t the lizard guy! It was some woman. A human woman.”
“It was Srapa,” says Dranko. “He disguised himself to trick you.”
“Well, still…” says Flicker, hands on his hips. “She…he… just came up to me and said, hey, I hear you know a lot about gems. I said, yeah, I’m pretty good, and she said, well, I found this one, and if you appraise it for me, I’ll give you a cut when I sell it. Why would I not have? I took the gem from her, and the next thing I knew, everything was all blue.”
“All right, all right, I guess you’re right,” says Ernie with a sigh. “I was just worried about you.”
Morningstar steps forward and puts a hand on Flicker’s shoulder. “Ok. I admit that in this particular instance, what you did wasn’t…well, anyway, the next time you go out training, I want to put you in a telepathic bond. You don’t have to talk to me. You can pretend I’m not there. But that way if people walk up to you and offer things, we’ll at least know who you were talking to, and where you were last.”
“Don’t think I’m not grateful to you for chasing Srapa through the Demon Slices,” says Flicker. “What happened to him, anyway?”
“He’s dead,” says Dranko. “Nothing more to worry about. We don’t know that he was evil, but we know he felt it was okay to kidnap you, and he wouldn’t give you back unless we followed him all the way to the Lord of the Roses. I’m glad you’re back, Flicker. We missed you.”
“Gosh. Thanks.”
No one says anything for a minute. Then Flicker says, “You know, it was pretty cool in there.”
“Did you see Dranko’s nose right up close, really really big?” asks Ernie.
“Thankfully, no.”
“What did it taste like?” asks Dranko.
“I don’t know. I didn’t lick it. If you want to find out, get Aravis to magic you into a gem. That is, if you don’t mind us cracking open another 15,000 G.P sapphire to get you out.”
* *
Flicker’s kidnapping has only strengthened the Company’s desire to go into Chaos, rather than pay a visit to this Lord of the Roses character. (Only Flicker and Dranko now have misgivings, thinking that wherever Srapa came from, maybe valuable sapphires grow like cabbages.). But before they go, they spend an afternoon identifying the magical loot taken from Srapa’s body.
Kibi comes away with a staff of abjuration, an amulet of proof vs. scrying and detection, and a scroll with some arcane spells. Dranko takes a gold ring that makes the wearer and everything on him immune to the detect magic spell. Grey Wolf upgrades to a headband of intellect +4, giving his old +2 version to Morningstar. One Certain Step takes boots of levitation. (Ernie: “I’m not wearing them. I can’t dance! >>bonus points if you recall the reference) And Aravis gets a pair of higher-powered scrolls with true seeing, prismatic spray, protection from spells, and mind blank.
There are also some spellbooks (which the wizards mostly don’t fight over) and a handful of unfamiliar coins. And, of course, a hugely valuable sapphire. Flicker spends plenty of time examining it, and is pretty sure his estimate of 15,000 G.P is accurate. That leads to a quick review of all the party treasure, at the end of which Kibi whistles.
“Wow… so that sapphire is the single most valuable piece of non-magical treasure we have.”
“That’s right,” says Dranko.
“I’ll carry it,” says Flicker.
Everyone looks at him skeptically, and Dranko puts out his hand.
“Why not?” complains Flicker.
“You had one, and you squandered it,” says Dranko, smirking.
“I didn’t squander it!” Flicker protests. “In fact, if it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t even have the one we have. It’s true! Think about it! I mean, if the lizard guy hadn’t kidnapped me… thanks to me, we have 15,000 G.P gem!” Flicker drops it into a pouch, and ten seconds later Dranko has picked his pocket.
Morningstar calls the two rogues over to her, and gives them both refuge tokens she’s crafted during training.
“To use one of these, break it while saying the password: ‘don’t lick it.’ That will cause me to teleport to wherever you are, as long as we’re on the same plane. It’s basically ”summon Morningstar”.
“Cool!” exclaims Flicker. “Can we try it out?”
“You can only use it once, so no. And it cost me 1500 G.P to make.”
“That’s only 10% of the cost of the sapphire Dranko just stole from me,” points out Flicker.
“And don’t lose it,” continues Morningstar. “If someone else finds it and identifies it, they could summon me.”
* *
The next morning Morningstar casts speak with dead on Srapa’s corpse, but the spell fails. There’s much debate afterward on whether or not they should carry the lizard-man’s body around for another week in order to try again. Most are in favor, though the thought makes Ernie and Step uncomfortable. Snokas snorts, “I feel bad about the body, but not that bad. The guy kidnapped Flicker!”
“We can just bless the body before we pack it away again,” Flicker adds, supporting the idea. “Heck, we could get a box, bless that, and keep the body folded up inside. Then we wouldn't feel as guilty.”
“You’re attempting to finesse,” accuses Step.
“If we’re carrying around unburied bodies, we should feel guilty about it!” cries Ernie. But the corpse-carrying advocates win the day; Kibi casts shrink item again, folds up the body, and stows it.
With nothing left to do, the Company bids a fond farewell to the Eye of the Storm and their hosts before marching out to their chosen Way. The Way itself is not heavily guarded, since no one has come out of it for years. There’s a gnome in charge of the defense today, with about a dozen others lounging around.
“You leavin’?” asks the gnome. “Through here? You know where it goes, right? Straight into Chaos.”
“Yeah, we know,” says Dranko.
“It’s not like the Demon Slices,” says the gnome. “No mild buffer Slices. You’re just dumped right in.”
Kibi takes out the Stabilizer and examines it, then reads the note that came with it. There are no instructions. After a bit more debate the Company ties a rope around Kibi’s waist. The plan is for him to go in alone and try to stabilize the Chaos, just to see if it works. They’ll pull him out again after thirty seconds no matter what, in case something goes horribly awry. Kibi gets a battery of buffing spells and puts on his helm of water breathing.
“And watch out for Slubs,” warns Morningstar.
“Slaad. It’s Slaad,” corrects Aravis.
“Whatever,” says Morningstar. “Big frog guys.”
“Here I go!” says Kibi. “Got my Stabilizer. My safety rope. My helmet. My familiar. All set.”
“If you don’t survive this…” Dranko starts, but Kibi has jumped through,
There’s the familiar black void, pulling him through to the next Slice. Seconds later he is ejected…
It’s wet! Kibi finds himself completely immersed, with nothing solid beneath his feet, but able to breath because of his helmet. It’s generally dark, though he can make out some details with his darkvision, and there are flashes of reddish light off to one side, illuminating the water in bursts. Some strange-looking fish swim near his feet. A large boulder rolls slowly through the water some fifteen feet away, trailing air bubbles as it tumbles.
Kibi notices that while he feels no gravity, he’s getting pulled slowly along by a current. A few seconds later he stops, as his friends notice the rope paying out and grab it to stop whatever’s pulling him. He looks around one more time, grasps the stabilizer and concentrates, trying to make himself an enclosed room. The water agitates and swiftly transmutes to a cube of air around him, while a stone slab forms beneath his feet. He continues to float, hovering above his new floor, until he imagines gravity. He drops. He tries to imagine walls, and though he only gets about four feet high all around, it feels like a moderate success. He’s stabilized the elements out to about fifteen feet, creating a pocket of air that ends in a wall of water still sliding past. That tells him his fixed region of Chaos is just that – fixed in space, while the rest of Chaos surges around him. Somewhere (presumably) beyond the water, a fireball streaks past, lightning up the liquid with an orange glow.
His time is almost up. The Way in, also fixed in the Chaos, is up near the top of his airy sanctuary. He changes his gravity so that he falls upward toward it, popping out at a jaunty angle and falling onto the ground. The rest of the party stares at his dripping body.
“Well, that was interesting,” he says.
…to be continued…
