[Realms #409a] In the Tower
Morier stood there for a moment with Stoneblade gripped tightly in his hands, surrounded by the smell of ozone and wisps of ephemeral smoke.
"WELL STRUCK!" the greatsword bellowed enthusiastically but the eldritch warrior ignored the weapon and turned instead toward the clanking sound that heralded Karak's late arrival. He grinned mischievously at the dwarf, and widened his eyes in mock surprise.
"Ahh, there you are," he said. "Stop for a pint along the way?" Karak narrowed his eyes at the elf and harrumphed before stalking over to examine the giant's corpse.
"No worries, Karak," Morier finished. "We've got it all under control."
"Well, lads and lassies, there is your answer," the dwarf growled with an angry chop of his hand. "No need to learn fightin' from me. All you ya need is an elf an' an electric sword." Then he bent his full attention to the giant's corpse, muttering under his breath all the while in a voice too low for anyone to hear, "Blasted... faerie combat tactics. Lucky the giant did nae have a real giant head. It must have been near blind to not take them all out."
Awkwardly, Ayremac removed his helmet, carefully trying to avoid any further damage to himself from the bent armor. His head sang out with fresh pain as he did so and his vision swam momentarily. Blinking he studied the helmet critically.
"Not sure if I will be able to fix that..." he announced, turning the helmet in his hands, before shaking his head. Nearby Karak looked up from his examination.
"I'll break out me tools when we set camp," he told Ayremac. "It's not so far gone tha' a dwarf can nae fix it!" The holy warrior nodded his thanks and tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet.
"Karak, I know how you feel about healing during combat, but maybe you could spare a bit now that it's over? Just to clear the ache in my head?" Ayremac asked. His Sacred Healing was still active, but it was a slow process and the insistent pain in his skull wasn't going anywhere in the meantime.
"You take a shot to the 'ead, lad?" the dwarf asked, despite the obvious fact that Ayremac's helmet was mangled beyond the point of usefullness. He clattered to the holy warrior's side and looked appraisingly at his lacerated scalp. Blood was matted in Ayremac's platinum hair and flowed around his ear and down beneath his armor's gorget.
"Your 'friend' did this?" Shamalin asked as she peered over Karak's shoulder. "Maybe you need fewer friends." Ayremac glanced up at her, abashed.
"I hate charm magic," he told her. "It's such an awful feeling to watch a friend, imagined or no, get torn to pieces by your other friends."
"You were a might friendly to that giant there," Karak snorted. "I guess it be a good tactic though, it seemed to disarm him." Nearby, Huzair slapped his bald head and rolled his eyes at Karak's comment.
"You see there, Huzair?" Morier needled. "Magic is great and all, don't get me wrong, but sometimes there's nothing like good old blade-on-flesh action to drop a big ugly bastard like this one."
"You are welcome" Huzair said with his usual confidence and Ayremac laughed mirthlessly.
"Blade-on-flesh action with a summoning of lightning," he told the albino. "Let's not discount magic too much." Morier did not reply, but instead shouldered Stoneblade and turned to look up at the tower.
"Like that, my little sunflower?" Huzair asked Anania. "First ever time I used fireball and it was glorious!" The elf nodded.
"Most impressive," she said and bent to check the ground for tracks.
"Magnificent shooting, by the way," he said with a smirk. "You are as deadly with that bow as you are beautiful." She looked up at that and smiled back at him.
"Thank you, Huzair," she said and then got to her feet. "There's the odd human-sized track here and there, but it's mostly just the one giant, I think. Still, I should scout the area hereabouts to be certain." She fitted an arrow in her bow and trotted off into the trees, disappearing like a shadow.
"Good idea," he called after her. "Let us make sure that there are no other big baddies hiding here. I will turn invisible and search inside."
"Hold up, Huzair," Ixin cautioned. "Let's set up camp here, now, and search very cautiously in the morning."
"No. Search first," Huzair said in a patronizing tone of voice one might use to explain high elvish geometry to an orc. "Let us not give the chance for anything hiding in the tower to get the jump on us, sweatheart."
"It's like a knife in my gut to say it, but Huzair's right," Morier admitted distastefully. "For all me know the tower's full of demons."
"It seems to me this be a guard tower for the bridge," Karak said as he headed back over to the ediface, leaving Ayremac in Shamalin's expert hands. "Hmm... I wonder why only this side be guarded. The stonework looks normal."
"If the tower's full of demons, as Morier fears, do we really want to stir them up now when our resources are depleted?" Ixin pressed. "Shamalin and Huzair have both used several of their spells. I've used my dragonfire for the day and I seem to recall that there are limits to how often Morier can use that lightning sword trick."
"I think your argument's pointless anyhow, Ixin," Morier told her, cocking a thumb toward the spot where Huzair had been standing. "Genius over there's taken the choice out of your hands."
There wasn't much to see inside the tower. All of the interior floors had collapsed, leaving it little more than an empty cylinder. Most of the rubble had been removed, however, to make room for a large, noisome sleeping pallet. An enormous wooden beam lay at an angle on the floor, and Huzair thought at first that it served the giant as a sort of low bench. Then he saw the bell and string and the large notches cut into the beam's length and he made some quick conclusions.
"The beam acts as a barricade for the trapdoor in the floor," he explained to the others, pointing out the corner of the hatch that extended beyond the massive timber. There was a hole drilled into the trapdoor and a bit of twine ran up from it to a bell hung on the wall. "This rope acts as a sort of doorbell, alerting the giant that he needs to move the beam and open the door."
"But open the door for who," Shamalin asked. "Or what?"
"Humans," Anania announced from the opening in the tower wall. "There are numerous human-sized tracks moving along the road southeast. Far too many for an isolated area like this."
"And I think it's pretty clear what sort of humans we're talking about here," Ayremac said grimly. He called on his god-given ability to create a globe of Daylight and pointed to the wall beside the bell. His golden radiance revealed that someone had drawn there in charcoal the rat-and-snake symbol of Ayphx.
