Hello, Everyone!
Last time, (some of) our heroes were just about to get a good night's sleep, when they heard a clatter and some screams from the first floor of the tavern they were in.
Mary, Aurum and Bruno clambered down the stairs and founf out that the owner of the inn, Rory, had disappeared, along with all the magic that had been present there earlier in the evening. There was blood on the windowsill, the window was broken... something had happened, but nobody knew what.
When they came back to their room, however, a worse surprise waited for them there. The Pocket of Holding, which Mary had received as a present from her Patron Gillean, had disappeared.
Mary screamed and rushed towards her bag. She opened it, searched through it, turned it upside down. The Pocket of Holding was really gone. Only a small piece of black thread--the same that it had been sewed in with--was lying on the floor.
She sat by the bed in shock, her eyes staring at the opposite wall.
“Mary?” Bruno said. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s gone,” she whispered. “The Pocket of Holding is gone.”
“What? How? Where?” Her friends gathered around her. “Did somebody steal it while we were downstairs?”
“Write to Gillean,” Bruno suggested. “Ask him if he knows something!”
Mary was on the verge of tears.
“I… I can’t!” she said. “My Book was in the Pocket.”
All of their possessions had been in the Pocket, too. Their spare clothes, their rations, their bedrolls and adventuring gear… Everything.
She’d lost her Book! How could she have been so careless?!
“What’s that?” Aurum said.
He crouched under one of the beds and took out a bag. It wasn’t one of theirs but was definitely magical – the same type of magic as the Pocket of Holding.
“Bruno!” Mary said. “Put on an armored glove and dig in!”
“Way ahead of you,” the dwarf said, already half way into fastening his armored plate.
“I said a glove, not the whole thing!”
“We can’t be too careful! What if something nasty comes out of there?”
That was a fair point. They helped him and then held their breath when he reached into the bag.
He started taking things out.
Bundles of clothes. Aurum’s, Mary’s and Bruno’s; and then… somebody else’s. Mary’s Book of Shadows (“My Precious!” she exclaimed and squeezed it in her arms). Her alchemy set, then another one which wasn’t hers. Their supplies and adventuring gear. Somebody else’s armour and two daggers. A small box full of jewelery-making supplies. A set of lock-picking tools…
One by one, they found all of their own things. The rest of the stuff now scattered on the floor suggested that the person the bag had originally belonged to was a woman, taller than Mary but with approximately the same build. She’d come from--or at least had bought her clothes in--Myth Adofhaer, and was probably skilled with her hands. There was a long box, not dissimilar to the one Mary held their map in. It contained a document written in Elvish.
“I can read this,” Mary said.
She opened her Book and found the page she’d inscribed the Comprehend Languages spell. It was going to take her some time to cast it but she hoped it was going to be worth it.
”It’s a Departure Permit,” she said when the elven script finally blurred in front of her eyes and turned into common writing, “for somebody named Lanurey Trost. It’s allowing her to leave the premisses of Myth Adofhaer and is signed by the Council’s Chairman and the three Elders. Huh!” She stared at the paper and frowned. “It was issued two days before we left there.”
“Then she followed us here?” Aurum said.
It wasn’t impossible. Mary thought of all the stops they’d made along the way. ‘Papa’s Orphanage’, the two days they’d spent in Pamagos… They hadn’t really been in a hurry.
“What if,” Aurum continued, “they sent her to spy on us, then somebody took her out and left her bag as proof?”
“But who would do that?!” Mary asked.
She was getting really frustrated now. She didn’t like not knowing things. And ever since Myth Adofhaer, there were so many things she didn’t understand.
“Could be your fairy,” Aurum said. “Or the phantom I saw.”
“Fairy?” Bruno said. “Phantom?!”
They filled him in.
“Why don’t you ask Gillean?” he suggested. “If it’s a fairy, it might be his doing.”
“Because he would be cryptic and won’t give us anything useful to work with,” Mary scoffed.
He always did that. He was never helpful when they needed definite answers. It was as if he didn’t even want to help them.
“Ask him just in case, all right?”
Mary frowned and grumbled but, nevertheless, opened her book to the last page.
There was a pause, longer than usual. Mary wondered if he was tired of her always coming to him with questions, or angry because she’d lost his Book.
Mary sighed. There he was again, pretending he didn’t follow their every step.
in the last half an hour?"
and then suddenly you clambered down the stairs
as if something bad had happened."
Something had happened! But there was no use asking him about that. If he hadn't seen anything where they were, he would certainly not have seen the crime downstairs.
Mary wrote instead. "Did you send it?
What was she trying to show me?"
Oh, he was pretending he didn't send a fairy-spy on top of the crystal ball surveillance, eh? Mary felt indignation rise in her chest.
Mary glared at the page of her Book of Shadows, trying to comprehend what she'd just read.
"Mary?" Bruno said, touching her shoulder. "What's wrong?"
She flapped the book towards him, too annoyed to say anything.
"It's blank," he said.
Right. The ink had faded out completely by that point. She explained what Gillean had told her. She looked at the window which had obviously not been occupied by one of Gillean’s fairies.
Mary felt like the ground was disappearing from underneath her feet.
You sent a fairy to sew it on my bag
after our fight with Kloth!"
Not since your first mission."
Mary snapped her Book shut. She didn’t want to talk to Gillean anymore. He’d written something more underneath that last sentence but she didn’t bother to read it. She was so angry!
How could Gillean have let some other Fey mess with her and her friends? And how… how could she have been so gulliblle? She got a convenient magical present and accepted it without a second thought?
What a fool!
Oh, no! We've been living in a lie! What's going on?! What's that Bag of Holding doing there? And who is Lanurey Trost?
I hope we'll find out soon! See you next time!
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossary and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: These are my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum and Bruno) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.