Two Weeks and Twiddling Thumbs

Two weeks. It’s been a whole two weeks. I used to gladly and proudly inhabit the streets of Wallsard, but without Hinto every day has been grim. We wake to mornings with chirping and bustling town life, but everything appears in grey ever since. The bottles of ale I had come to habitually share with Magnus have been a welcome time ritual bonding, and the contests between us had been a means to distract us from the sorrow of our missing friend. While we don’t understand his reasons, we know the battle we shared with him when last we saw him had been that would tax any mortal creature of even the most renowned fortitude.
 
Blurry nights and groggy mornings would not suffice for long. We began the day with normal pace, living off the surplus of our recent exploits and the fame of import for being contemporary heroes of recent memory for the town. Something about the day was unique. A breath of fresh air, albeit subtle. New adventurers had come into the tavern, reminding us in a bittersweet way that all good friendships begin with humble beginnings and casual greetings.
 
A spell-studied thin and tall figure of some elven decent, his two compatriots met by the hearth. The ornate book caught mine and Randuras’ eye as we nodded at each other in approval and admiration of its apparent artisan crafting. We ate, we grumbled small jokes at each other, and we enjoyed another rising of the sun as battle-worn allies being grateful for our luck of fate, for it had been kinder to us than others.
 
Jakuul came in the entrance after starting the day, accompanied by a friend of his we had not previously met. He introduced himself as we curiously approached as a group to find them exchanging jokes and smiles, a human embodied as the elements appeared on his visage, but he gave us his name as Coro, a long time acquaintance of Jakuul’s.
 
We learned of his recent discovery that he had found, a mote left behind from a creature he described as the manifestation of the air itself, he had happened upon as he witnessed it expire. He grabbed the mote, and was surprised to find that it allowed him to view an illusion that pierced the perspective of a fortress, which appeared to be underwater. As he navigated the scrying viewport, he claimed it was inhabited by more of these creatures of various elements, being empowered by a race of creatures he claimed to have fishlike features.
 
Randuras recognized these beings as possibly related to if not the direct link to the Sahuagin, which had been known to inhabit the deep western seas of the Cyorion northern hemisphere. They appeared to be arming and weaponizing these elementals, and since we had seen them elsewhere, we assumed they were connected to the ill-intentions of Ikeltek and his other various minions.
 
We came to the conclusion that we had had enough sulking and downtime, and with this being our only solid lead to work with, we must secure passage on a ship to find out more about these beings. Elementals are not known to be aggressive by any means, so they must have been acting against their will to rampage against not only the land, but the inhabitants. The rest of the morning was spent procuring a way to allow my friends to survive the elements, not only of the rough seas, but submerged for potentially hours.
 
I myself would find no trouble doing so, being of my somewhat rocky and torture but albeit amphibious origins. A device, a spell, or a vehicle, anything that would help us travel below would be advantageous. We accompanied Randuras while he browsed the library, and Neoon found some pertinent maps, discovering a location known as the Fangs of Wolfbron, a nearby feature of land that allows those who know of it to navigate through safer waters -- and according to Coro, where he had travelled many times, which may be likely where the Sahuagin resided in secrecy.
 
I myself found interest in the fiction section of the tomes and titles, and under a large unorganized group of pages and bindings, a cover grabbed my attention. It was a book called ‘Escaping the Shadowplane’, a novel and wealth of information that described the adventures of a spell-weary adventurer by the name of Lolan Wode, although the pages had been worn and the name had been inferred, a tear through the middle and sometimes missing pages. Assumptions can be misleading with names, and context can obfuscate myths from historical legend, but this author had claimed to have first-hand exploits as an experienced warlock, and his methods of evading the dark forces that empowered and then strived to enslave them to his will. Warlocks such as myself know better than most may, that the deeds may start as minor tasks, and the powers intoxicating beyond imagination.
 
While certainly potent, and some having immense control of eldritch energy and spellweaving granted to them from planes of existence beyond our comprehension as mortals, the fate of all is typically the same: That beyond a point, the deities that employ any sponsored spell of my kind is met with an insurmountable objective or set of campaigns that betray the true goal of their employer: to claim their soul or see their demise as a scapegoat or disposable pawn in their grander insidious schemes. If I did not soon find a way to subvert my own fate and free myself from my dark masters, this would invariably be my own future as well, whether the source of my success came from fiction or fact I must exhaust all possibilities.
 
The librarian seemed almost entertained, musing sarcastically that a grown adult would take this material seriously. Maybe he assumed I was purchasing it for a nephew or niece, but he practically encouraged me to lose it as the fiction section was paltry at best by design, and apparently he was one of the types to assume imagination in fiction held more value than the research and documents they kept in much better care.
 
I passed the time while I could while Randuras perused his other source of material, and Neoon seemed to meet a strange old man sitting in the corner at one of the desks, and excused herself to follow up on similar leads to help us traverse into the watery deep. The time had gotten to me and I decided to head back to the tavern to find a bite to eat, while trying to convince Randuras to take the book with him to afford him more time, although he was too engrossed in his current paragraph to realize the wisdom of alternatives. I reminded him they had a borrowing system, since it was indeed a library of normal function.
 
The half elf librarian, who had both chastised my choice of reading, and between hushed squabbles between myself and my draconian tinkerer friend, had grown annoyed at my presence by this point. I took the opportunity to ‘hush’ all in attendance as they had done to us, one last act of subtle but polite defiance as I exited the building. As I did so, I noticed a rather discrete but rude gesture from the bookkeeper, and while I recognized it being from my part of the world, enough to realize it to bean impolite one, I smiled and winked at him as a sly final acknowledgement for the favor of his so-called discount on my book and headed back through town.
 
The rest of us met back up together, minus Randuras still researching and whatever shenanigans Magnus and Jakuul were up to meanwhile, and shared our thoughts over a charcuterie from Jorund. Meat, wine, and strategies were exchanged, and while we had not fully assembled with the others, it appeared we would ride northwest along the coast to venture closer to our destination before departing by boat. Neoon had found a way to allow the rest of us to breathe underwater, but breathing alone may not be enough as some of us may need to swing a sword or afford the flapping of their wings. Perhaps a way to displace a small area of water to afford us a way to maneuver, or otherwise move about as we would on land, but only time would tell what the other members may find in addition to chewing on grasses. The others could concur or contribute a new idea when they rejoined, but that seemed to be the most prudent plan of approaching the challenge ahead.
 
When Randuras returned, he told of precious metals in his books during his research that would hopefully aid him in his goals. I was under the previous assumption he was looking for a method to help us travel underwater, but he began to elaborate about his ulterior purposes involving a strange lantern in his possession. He had been sent to this region by the Wyvernfall mining company to procure this lantern from one of the mining operations after one of the supervisors had fallen weak from illness. After exploring the mineshafts, he found his shard embedded, glowing in the side of one of the walls, impacted into one of the veins of coal. I seemed to jog his memory or inspire some sort of context, as when I asked if the shard was the cause of his illness.
 
Whether these metals could be used for a breathing apparatus or other purpose was still up in the air, but the question remained what lay ahead of us and our next challenges. We continued to discuss options until guards came into the tavern and marched up to our group, among others, questioning each table. They seemed particularly interested in a man of frog-like appearance, to which I unwittingly spoke up and said I hadn’t seen him yet today. After a couple of furrowed eyebrows, I quickly turned the conversation about a fake persecution of fish-like people, of which I feigned being insulted. The captain and his men stammered for apologies and shrugged it off as nothing in particular.
 
We took this cue as a good sign to go looking for our friend. Whatever they had been up to, during our only a half day excursions, had gotten them in hot water with the local constabulary. We sent Neoon ahead to investigate, as the guards had mentioned there had been a misunderstanding, not to use their words, involving a punch to the face and a quick chase through the docks. We began to make our way through the streets to find them, and quickly Neoon reappeared to lead us to where she had found them. Through a whirlwind of circumstance and chance, apparently our friends had found themselves in a fighting tournament of pugilistic proportions. A grimey, dank underground bar with a large central ring filled with golden sand, stained with blood and sweat adorned the giant establishment, scattered with tables along the side for audience members.
 
We were still separated from our friends, but after a round or two of musculature and masculinity between strangers, we discovered our frog friend had been pitted against a local well known fighter. Jakuul sprinted forward in an explosion of energy and surprisingly made very short work of his opponent, throwing him to the floor in an unconscious lump. The rest of us continued to drink and cheer, but in the back of mind I couldn’t help but hope they weren’t hopelessly outmatched.
 
Another match began between two brawlers, one hitting the floor in a thud and mist of sand after a whirlwind of punches and grapples. A pure display of brute force in the sands, with somewhat less than honorable combat as the occasional eye-gouge and punch to the soft areas.
 
Magnus emerged to a roar of applause from our table, as Kico had summoned bushes to use as pom-poms. Apparently this was not Magnus’ first fight, and had already begun to earn rapport with the regular and frequent patrons, even in the course of a single day. Had he been fighting all day? He surely had earned the love of the crowd. In an impressive show of force and skill, laid his opponent out in a single blow after a few moments of sizing up his enemy, dodging and blocking to test the waters. His enemy thudded again to quake the earth of the foundation and rattle the ornamented decorations along the walls, as the crowd cheered at his triumph.
 
The next fight Jakuul was again at the ready. Against another crowd favorite, he crouched down to evade her first two volleys of punches, which found no score against his agility, a second follow up he was able to parry and riposte, catching her in the stomach and knocking the wind slightly out of her. He tried to follow up with a spin kick to almost flourish and relish the opportunity, slightly taunting him with a smile and beckoning motion as he landed. Enraged, she rushed him with her full body weight, wrestling him to the floor catching him off guard. Shoving him backward, he was struck with a slow haymaker, knocking him further backward to his knees in a look of surprise. Her bare hand had made contact with his skin, and as known to his friends, this would not bode well for her chances, but we kept watching in suspense as this was certainly not the end of the fight, but certainly closer a match than either round previously.
 
Jakuul swept her legs, catching her ankles as a visible look of shock grew over her face as she fell backwards down to the sand. Scrambling onto her, he began to wail on her with his fists as he leapt to her chest to keep her pinned. A flurry of quick jabs of advantage rained down as she dodged them, with Jakuul striking the sand where her head had been.
 
 
 
Kico’s crafted cheering bushes had now become twigs from being shaken so vigorously, the leaves now littering the floor around our table. The opponent, looking bloodied but not beaten, shook him off and wiped the dribbling blood from her nose, snorted, and rose to her feet. Charing Jakuul, she began to charge him, again tried to grapple him -- but he was able to slip a hand free and strike her temple undefended, stunning and toppling her to the floor, the crowd erupting into thunderous roar. The underdog had defeated the favored champion, and we could not have been prouder of his accomplishments.
 
We thought the night’s excursion was over, but apparently there were many fights in this grueling arena -- Magnus was again up against an even larger opponent. He squared off opposite his foe, and checked him into the wall with a slight grapple, and went slamming into the stone boundary of the pit. Slightly stunning him and being pinned, Magnus began to pummel him with his fists multiple times with jabs, before backing up slightly and leveraging his weight to clothesline him backward, bouncing him into the wall once more. Bloodied smears painted the evidence where he had once stood, as he crumpled to the floor at the feet of Magnus to tally yet another victim of his mighty strength.
 
The rest of us had become slightly rich for the evening, collecting our winnings and drinking our fill, as Jakuul was ready for his next fit in the sands. Again, a flurry of attacks emanated from his torso as fists and arms became a blur of motion that punished the receiving end of his motions. She wouldn’t be the first of the night to mistake his stature as an opportunity to grapple and pin him, and again Jakuul was able to wriggle free with his speed, scrambling her from her knees to reposition and reset their stances. Exchanging attacks, Jakuul knocked her prone briefly as he prepared to strike her with the heel of his foot. Hitting her in the small of her back, he broke bone and shattered her in an audible crushing blow, silencing the crowd in surprise from the lethality. Jakuul quickly rushed to her slumped form, and the attendants of the tavern made haste to cast healing magics to her unconscious body. Coming to in mere seconds, she wryly smiled and congratulated on his precision and devastating hit, being rushed off to a nearby bench to allow her to recover. The crowd erupted in cheering, and the announcer congratulated Jakuul to announce his victory yet again.
 
After the devastation, the announcer took the opportunity to give the fighters a brief moment of recovery, allowing a repose and intermission between the last of the main event fights before moving on. The night was over, and the memories would last forever. While the evening had brought us a brief fortune, the glory would remain for quite a long time for the patrons and citizens who were there to witness it, to spawn myth and legends for generations.