SESSION 41
Waterday, 5th of Patchwall
THE WITCHES’ LAMPS
Kizzlorn walked up over the rise. She was dirty and tired. She’d been walking with Nanny every day for hours on end for the last three weeks, and she wanted nothing so much as a hot bath and a hot meal. After that, she could begin to look through her castle. She hadn’t had time before. Now, she would have the run of the castle. She could begin to get to know her parents better.
Spellforge Keep lay before her. A thin line of smoke wisped up from the chimney. She stopped in her tracks and glared.
They teleported back, she thought. She’d walked for three weeks and slept on the ground while they lounged on featherbeds in her castle. The urge to cast a fireball at the Keep quickly passed and she walked on, grumbling to herself. Nanny followed dutifully.
She walked in and found Orthos lounging in a chair, sipping at a mug of hot spiced mead with a book in his hand. He looked up. “Kizz! You’re back! How was the trip?”
Kizzlorn muttered some dark words she didn’t mean and dropped her pack and bedroll to the floor. “Tired. Bath. Then bed. Nanny, stand by the door.”
Nanny moved to the door and took a sentry position. “Stand,” he repeated.
“How’d everything go?” she asked as she walked towards the staircase. She wasn’t really interested in the answer, until she heard it.
“Dartan’s gone.”
She stopped. “What?! How’d he die?”
Orthos replaced his bookmark, set the book down, and said “Er- he didn’t.”
“He’s a traitor,” Vek said as he ascended the stairs from the dungeon. “He attempted to have Jamison assassinated. We cast him out. I very nearly took his life myself.”
Kizzlorn’s tired brain wasn’t processing this right. She raised a hand as if to request a clarification, and realized none of it would register until she’d had some rest. “Wait. Hold that thought,” she said. “Tell me all about it in about twelve hours.” She walked upstairs, found a bath, filled it with hot water, then collapsed into it. She was asleep within seconds.
Earthday, 6th of Patchwall
The flame of Imix’s colossal fiery sword in the dining hall not only heated the castle with steam, but it heated an ingenious water pipe system Kizzlorn’s father had installed over twenty years ago. It kept the water in the brass bathtub perfectly warm and comfortable for the entire time she spent in it, sleeping with her head tilted back on the tub’s edge. Ten hours of the most peaceful sleep she’d ever known. She woke to find she’d paid the price: she was as wrinkled as pruned as a woman four times her age.
She got out of the bath and stretched. She felt so much better. She found one of her mother’s old bathrobes in a closet and threw it around herself. She took something from her belt pouch and stuffed it in the robe’s pocket. She walked downstairs, where she found Vek and Lem having an animated discussion on the natures of right and wrong.
Lem looked up, greeted her, and started to recount for her the story of Dartan’s assassination attempt. Before he could spit out four words she raised a hand to stop him as she crossed the hall. She leaned over and picked up a large bread loaf from a basket near the stove. She cut out the top and hollowed it. She ladled two heaping glops of delicious-smelling beef stew into the bread bowl from the fire, where it simmered in an iron kettle.
She sat at the table with a delighted sigh. “Please, continue.” She began to eat. Lem told her the entire story. The tale of the betrayal was a sad one, and too easily debated as a morality issue, so Kizz didn’t ask questions. She felt sad that Dartan was gone, though. She didn’t truly feel safe with Jamison OR Vek… but Dartan she’d felt would protect her until the last. Nothing to do about it now, she thought, and finished the last of her stew. It had been full of potatoes, just the way she liked it. She turned her mind to new business. “What now?”
Lem shrugged. “We didn’t really find any new leads on this ‘Eye of Heironeous’ matter. I’m beginning to think we’ve gone as far as we can go.”
Kizz removed the rolled-up piece of parchment from her robe pocket and placed it on the table. Vek picked it up and unrolled it. It read:
14th through the 21st of Patchwall
~EVIL~
RETURNS TO HOMMLET!
Come celebrate Fear’s Eve with us
In the historic village of Hommlet.
-Have your fortune told!
-Go on a midnight walk
through the Temple
of Elemental Evil!
-Visit our gift shops!
-Hear storytellers recount
the horrors of the temple!
DANCES, COSTUME CONTESTS,
HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS, AND
MUCH MORE. BRING THE WHOLE
FAMILY… AND REMEMBER…
WEAR A COSTUME!
Hommlet. The town held in the grip of fear by the Temple of Elemental Evil, twice now, in its past. The town freed from madness by the company of Burne and Rufus, and the Knights of the Silver Quill after twelve years later. Vek knew the town. It had never seemed the type of community to capitalize on the horrors they’d suffered. Of course, with time, mortals grew callous and forgetful of their past. Could this grotesque new attraction be some way to deal with the pain of the past, or profit from it? Either way, Vek didn’t like what he read. “It could be a trap,” he said, rolling the paper back up.
“Could be. Could also be the best place to go for new information on the Eye. Chances are that someone there knows something.”
“I agree. Let’s go. I suggest leaving Jamison here… revisiting the Temple might not be good for him.”
Kizz looked confused. “Why not?”
“Because that’s where he went insane and killed two of his partymates,” Vek answered plainly. It was certainly sound reasoning. “We’ll leave him here with Orthos. The two get on well enough anyway. We need to be sure that if Dartan comes calling, Jamison will be well-defended.”
Kizzlorn looked bothered to be hitting the road again so soon, and asked “How far is it to Hommlet?”
Vek seemed to have that familiar smile in his voice when he answered “A good many miles… yet the distance is as nothing when you consider that we can easily teleport the entire group there.”
“Excellent.” Kizz was very happy to hear it. She’d have a full week to explore her castle.
More to come...
, want some coffee?
