RP (non-canon): D&D Mission 1: Getting "Acquainted"

Aurelus stood up, growling at the pain he felt along his torso due to falling on his stitched wound, looking at Sorri with a glare. "YE NEARLY SCARED ME TA DEATH, YE LIL COWERD! What good'll've come from gettin me wound open again, ey!?" The fighter stepped forward to look at the pearl more closely.

"Ain't 'ere nothin ta value, Denkou. This 'ere thin' ain' worth much, even if I hadn' hit it. 'Sides, it's prob'ly cursed!"

Aurelus lifted his right foot up and then stomped down hard on the pearl, hoping to shatter it.

Sorri held her breath as the iron ball flew toward the pearl, then visibly relaxed when the impact drew no reaction from the item. That relaxation didn't last very long, though. She flinched at Aurelus' shouting but didn't stand down.

"That would be the LEAST of your worries!" she shouted back, furious, but somehow lacking the danger behind it that the fighter could drum up. "Do you want to know what happened while you were out cold from what that happened to you? Everyone else gave that...that...THING their own hits and know what that got them?! Same as YOU! I spent ALL NIGHT making sure you people didn't DIE in your SLEEP!" She forced herself to stop shouting, her teeth clinching as she closed her eyes with arms held stiff at her sides, trying to calm herself. After a couple seconds she turned and went back to her backpack and started digging through it without another word, taking stuff out and then putting it back in, looking for something but apparently done talking with him. Finally she found her book and, without looking back at anyone, asked:

"If the object has no power, then the disease gone? Everyone's better now?"

Aurelus kicking the pearl only resulted in the pearl rolling away from his foot as Aurelus toppled backwards and landed flat on his back. The pearl remain unharmed several feet away.

Talarin shook his head as they started arguing about the now normal pearl. He gave the room one last look around as he gathered up his things and looked at the others. He started towards the entrance where they had entered the night before.

"GAH!" Slip! Fall!

"ARGGHH!!! GODS DAMN THE BLASTED THING!" Brisk movements like falling were definitely not something very pleasant to Aurelus. He looked at the pearl with such hatred, that it took him a second to register that the quarterling was shouting. He blinked her direction, ignoring the pain of his wounds for now.

"...I didn' know..." He heard the question, then looked back at the pearl. "...I reckon i's no' workin anymore. Thing migh' still be hard ta shatter, but i' don't seem ta be glowin' any longer. I just don't feel it's a good idea ta jus' leave it here where the wizerds could come back and cast th' same damn spell again on i', seein' as it is still in one piece.

If we could shatter i', maybe they wouldn' be able ta do i' even if they wanted to!" Aurelus stood up slowly, grunting and holding the places where his wounds had been made. "...we should at leas' get rid of i'... 'haps we could throw i' ou' th' window! Or hide it under th' floorboard! I don' think we should take it with us, mind ye... i's a bad omen ta bring alon' somethin that was cursed once 'pon a time."

The fighter then turned to look at Sorri, and smiled. He took a couple of semi-limped steps over to her, and put his right hand on her shoulder, then crouched down to see her face to face. "Thanks, aye? We couldn've made i' withou' ye. Yer th' real hero here." He extracted his right hand from her shoulder and put it on his chest, bowed his head to her. "I owe ye me life. My sword's eternally grateful."

...

Aurelus stood up briskly. "IF I COULD FIND TH' DAMNED THING!" He looked around like mad.

Denkou frowned guiltily. "I'm, ah... not sure where it is, actually. I needed a projectile to throw and it was there, so I used your sword, but... Well, it happens that the damn jewel hits even if you're not holding the weapon, so I was out after the sword hit." She looked around quickly. "I wasn't conscious long enough to notice where it went."

As Denkou looked around she noticed the sword in a corner, where it had probably bounced after hitting the pearl. No marks were left from the pearl's counter attack.

Aurelus followed Denkou's gaze and saw the sword at the far corner of the room. "Ah, there it is! An', Denk, dontcha ever go throwin' me sword around, aye? I'm quite fond of it."

The man walked over to it... or half-limped over to it and picked it up, then flicked it, and finally sheathed it into it's scabbard. As he walked back to the rest of the group.

"Well, we're done 'ere. Just have ta do somethin' 'bout the cursed thing." He looked at the pearl as he mentioned it and bent over to pick it up. When he straightened up, he was looking at the window.

He launched the pearl out the tower's window and then dusted his hands off as if cleaning them from it's corruption. "There. All set 'n done! Now les get th' hell outta here! It'll be noon by the time we reach Caloma and I've got a lion's hunger in me stomach!

Good work guys... Ye get 'ter pat yerselves'n the back an' hope ta Pelor we get some kind o' reward fer this, eh!?" He chuckled as he walked past the few that were still in the tower and followed after Talarin down the stairs.

It was finally over.

They were free once more.

The half-breed mender merely glared at Aurelus as he apologized, but seemed to relax before being surprised when he thanked and pledged his life to her. She didn't say anything in return, instead looking down at her book as he left to deal with his sword.

Then Aurelus chucked the pearl out a window.

Sorri stared at him. "You're just going to leave it for them to find again? What if someone else finds it?" What was with this group? It was all action with them, barely any thought. "Tossing it out the window's not breaking it or hiding it," muttered Sorri before taking a deep breath to calm herself. Deciding to go search for it when they got out of this deathtrap of a building, she first wanted to get her studying in. "I'll meet you back at the town," she said, looking at Denkou and Ghira since Aurelus and Talarin had already headed out.

Talarin stood on the balcony, looking dashing as he stared off into the horizon. He glanced over to see Aurelus walking out behind him. "You know that this isn't entirely over right?" he said solemnly as the large fighter walked closer to him. "The two wizards are still out there somewhere and possibly more. This seems more like a small part of a larger plan. And we just happened to throw a kink into this part of the plan." he turned to face Aurelus. "We should probably come back after we heal up. Search the place for any more clues and turn them over to the authorties. Maybe we can stop this from happening anywhere else."

Ghira finally stood up, having finished preparing his spells for the day. Storing his book in his traveling bag, he looked up to face the others.

"Now then, returning to town sounds like a fine idea." He began, addressing those who were left to listen, "I suppose it wouldn't hurt if I checked the place for magics, hm? After all, it is likely that any magical traps can be detected now. And quite frankly, I don't want to climb down the wall again if I can avoid it."

A moment of chanting later and the magical pulse of energy was released, expanding as far as it could throughout the dilapidated home.

As Ghira's pulse raced through the mansion, he found no signs of any magicians or magical items within the building. The only returns he got where on Talarin and Sorri.

Sorri settled into a corner of the room and, after trying to read for a while, gave up and closed her eyes to pray. She had been in stressful spots before, but last night had been the grandparent of them all. Had she ever even seen a zombie before? Heard of them, certainly, but--

She stopped. Her thoughts were getting away again. Clinching her eyes shut for a moment, she opened them again before very deliberately turning to a particular chapter and reading it to herself, taking her time to avoid wandering again. Every once in a while, though, she glanced up to check what the others were doing.

Aurelus looked at Sorri and shrugged. "Good luck findin' it. The thing's pretty small..."

Then he began walking towards the stairs, one hand on his wound, and the other on the hilt of his sheathed sword. Once down in the second floor, he proceeded to leave the room and out into the balcony, where the morning sun shone just over the horizon. Talarin was there, looking out into the distance.

As Talarin proceeded to bring him back to reality, Aurelus just turned him down. "Aye, aye... I know, but fer now, we get ta go back ta town 'n get some rest n some well-deserved grub! We'll come back after we're damn well ready an' rested, if at all!"

Aurelus walked past Talarin and down the flight of stairs leading to the 'first floor's' balcony.

"And after we have a damned horse, aye!? Walkin back ta Caloma's gonna be torture on these tired legs'a mine!"

After a while, there was another bellow from the ex-soldier. "OY, TALARIN! TELL THOSE FOOLS TA GET TH' HELL DOWN HERE! I WANT TA BE AT CALOMA BEFORE NOON!"

Talarin grinned as he heard the gruff and tough soldier already to march back to town on a hurt leg. He glanced at the tired crew, and back down to Aurelus. "I'll see if they're up to it. Not everyone is tough like you and me." Talarin gave a little chuckle that was loud enough for Aurelus to hear. Talarin then turned and stuck his head into the chamber. "So do you think that you all will be ready for the march back into town by noon?" he asked everyone loud enough to be heard by all in the chamber.

Denkou looked back from the door into the rest of the house. "Errr... I was going to check the rest of the place, see if we missed anything with our entrance."

"Heh. Sounds like a pile of fun to me. But are you sure that you are up to it?" he asked slightly concerned for her.

Ghira, slightly disappointed, headed down the stairs and to the balcony, where he waited patiently for the others. He would be of no use in leaving the place in an easy way, it seemed.

Denkou shrugged. "I can probably do well enough, and that's why we have a healer, right?"

This isn't working.

Sorri sighed, closed her book, and packed up. She was unprepared, but she wasn't going to get anything done properly like this. I hope we don't meet anything on the way back.

"Not really," she told Denkou. "I only have enough for one or two more emergency fixes. Everything is a mess from last night, and it will take about an hour to straighten up and prepare more for the day. Until then, if anyone takes another injury, they will need to heal the slow way until I can do what I need to. But," she added, nodding toward the doorway where Aurelus' calls were sifting in, "You all wish to leave? Let's leave." Without another word, the mender left the chamber, the stairs, the atrium-like room, the upper balcony, and stopped near the rope to the ground, waiting for everyone to go so she could retrieve the rope when they finished.