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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3517320" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 165THE REWARD“Are you joking?” Dar said.  If his stare had been sharp before, not it looked about ready to cut glass. “That was not in our agreement,” Varo said. “Our agreement is void, by the actions of your companion,” the outsider said, genially.  “Let him decide, his treasure, or his man; I will take either.”“We’re not going to give you one of our people,” Allera said, turning to Dar with an expression that betrayed the smallest hint of doubt.Dar’s jaw tightened.  He pressed the stud on the rod, and the device retracted back into its original form.  He extended it silently toward the outsider. Drakha came forward, the unsteady surface giving him no difficulty.  As it came, its form began to subtly shift.  Its human guise faded, replaced by a hideous visage that resembled nothing more than the face of a huge, bloated toad.  As it took the rod from Dar’s hand, it smiled.  “If I ever see you again, creature, you will not be pleased.”“I look forward to that meeting, human,” the slaad croaked.  It drew the rod close in against its body, and dissolved into gray smoke.  Within a few seconds, it was gone. Kalend sat down on the bone heap, wiping his brow on a cloth.  Varo was already digging through the treasure pile again, but he looked up as Dar came over to him. “What I told that... thing, Varo, it applies to you as well, if you ever summon its like again.”“Very well, Dar.”Dar trudged off, and started digging again through the treasure, a good distance off. They spent the better part of an hour searching through the debris.  They found two more of the eggs, one crushed under the female dragon’s body, but the last fully intact.  Allera did not say anything as Dar smashed it with his magical club.  Varo’s detect magic spell revealed several interesting items, including a magical heavy shield of silvery steel, etched with the symbol of a pair of crossed bolts of jagged lightning, and an arcane scroll in a cracked leather tube.  Among dozens of pieces of cheap and nearly valueless jewelry, they found a silver bracelet set with over a dozen tiny diamonds, and a platinum cup encrusted with rubies.  They also found some mundane gear, likely the former possessions of past victims of the dragons, but none of it was superior to that which they already had.  They also found as much gold and silver as they wanted to carry, so much so that even Dar ended up leaving the majority of it behind.  “We should have brought Shay’s magical sack,” he muttered, as they packed up and prepared to depart. There were two other finds of note, and both came at the very last minute.  Allera found a bright blue diamond wedged into a skull.  She showed the stone to Varo, who nodded; the diamond was almost certainly sufficient for the casting of a raise dead spell.  The last item was found by Varo.  The cleric had been distracted through most of the search, traveling back and forth over the huge nest, as if looking for something.  Finally, he stopped right in front of the fallen dragon, and stared down at it. The dragon looked smaller in death than it had in life.  It was only barely larger than a horse, its body covered in blood and char.  It was already beginning to stink.  Varo knelt in front of it, careful not to impale himself on jagged shards of bone.  The brilliant light that still shone from his mace cast the details of its battered form in stark relief. There... the light reflected on something just visible through a tear of the dragon’s wing.  Varo crept over to it, lifting the dragon’s heavy wing to see what he’d found. It was a dagger, an odd device made of a silvery metal that resembled mithral.  It almost did not look like it had been designed as a weapon, with a wedge-shaped blade and a blocky, unwrapped handle.  A yellow gemstone, a square of topaz, embedded in the hilt gleamed brightly in the light of Varo’s daylight spell. His eyes wide, Varo took the dagger and carefully wrapped it in a torn sack before placing it in his magical haversack. “We can return,” he told the others, who were already growing impatient with the search.  Dar’s pack bulged, and a pair of small sacks likewise full of loot hung from one of the straps. “The same way we came?” Kalend asked. Varo nodded.  “Concentrate on the wind walk; you will feel the power of the spell still potent in  your mind.  Let it transform you back into the misty form, and remain close to me.”The companions did as the cleric bid, and in less than a minute they were speeding back toward the chasm, leaving the broken body of the dragon and the remnants of its hoard behind them as a marker of their passage.</blockquote>

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