Hello, Everyone!
Last time in our story, Mary was worried that all their stuff was gone along with the Pocket of Holding on her bag. However, they found a whole other bag containing their stuff, as well as the stuff of someone called Lanurey Trost.
Mary asked Gillean what was going on but he wasn't helpful at all. He even said that he'd never sent any fairies to Mary, contrary to what she'd been seeing in the past.
Morning came and found Mary slouched in her armchair, wand in hand and a deep wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her friends were sleeping, this time fully clothed and prepared for a quick wake-up, but she hadn’t as much as nodded off. She didn’t need to.
Or did she?
Yet again, she remembered Gillean saying that even though her body didn’t have to sleep to recover its strength, she should do so from time to time anyway, to alleviate her anxiety and stress. But how could she do that here, in Ekoba, where danger lurked around every corner?
She woke her friends and they went downstairs, hoping to find the tavern bustling with animated life.
It was dark and grey instead; and awfully, awfully quiet.
“The magic is still gone,” Mary whispered.
“I suggest we clean up the blood and stuff and go out as if nothing happened,” Aurum suggested.
“I'm on it,” Mary said.
“Wai…” Bruno began.
With a few flicks of her wand she made the blood on the floor vanish and the glass of the window mend itself.
“...t!” Bruno finished.
“What?”
“I was going to say that it might look suspicious if we got rid of the evidence. Only guilty people would do that."
“Oh!” Mary covered her face with her hands. "Oh, no! I didn’t mean to! I-I-I… I don’t know how to bring it back!”
“Don’t worry about it, Mary," Aurum said. "I say we sneak out back and go on our way."
“We could have gone out front like civilized people,” Bruno said, “and told the guards what we found.”
“Are you crazy?” Aurum said. “They were going to blame us! We were the only other people in the tavern last night, and we just made things a thousand times more suspicious!”
"Sorry!" Mary squeaked.
“Plus, everybody heard us talking to Rory yesterday,” the bard said.
Mary searched her memory for that conversation and felt all the blood leave her head.
“Oh, my Ioun!” she cried out. “I asked him all those questions! Like, if he’d die if he didn’t eat or if he got moved out from the tavern! That must have sounded so suspicious!”
“I told you those were inappropriate,” Bruno said. “But anyway, it’ll be way more suspicious if they caught us sneaking out the back door!”
Aurum didn’t argue with that. He threw his bag over his shoulder and they made their way towards the front door.
It was locked.
“Ok, that’s not good,” Bruno said.
“Nooo!” Mary whisper-cried. “Why is this happening?! Is this a trap? Are they going to arrest us now?!”
“Shhh, don’t sweat it,” Aurum said and nodded towards the back.
A few minutes later they had already taken their horses and headed out into the streets. Aurum had turned out to be pretty good with Lanurey Trost’s lock-picking tools. If Mary wasn’t so distraught by the whole situation, she’d have certainly questioned him about that. But she didn’t, because she was too busy to try and look casual to the passersby. Her mind flashed towards last night.
“I… I opened the window upstairs,” she whispered as they walked. “What if it triggered some kind of a mechanism and that’s what killed Rory? What if it was my fault?!”
“Mary, calm down!” Bruno said. “It’s not your fault. There were a bunch of open windows in the tavern last evening. People were smoking like chimneys! If it was important to keep the windows closed, someone would have said something!”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. Sorry.“
They saw a few guards walk with purpose in the opposite direction and she could swear she heard the name ‘Rory’ mentioned at least once.
But nobody stopped them, nobody questioned them. Nobody even looked at them funny. The trio managed to walk a long way into the streets and alleyways of the First Wall before they paused to plan their next step.
“We should find some place to leave our horses while we’re going for the bells,” Aurum said.
He was patting Perjurina and Mary noticed a glimmer on his ring finger.
“Why are you wearing that?” she said.
Now, in the light of the coming day, she could see last night’s ring in detail. It was brass, with a rectangular-shaped amethyst engraved into the metal.
“Finders, keepers,” Aurum said, grinning.
“Couldn’t that be dangerous, when you don’t know where it came from? What if it’s cursed?”
He rolled his eyes and handed it to Bruno for Identification.
“It’s not cursed,” the dwarf said after thoroughly examining it. “It’s not even magical. But you shouldn’t be wearing something that appeared on your nightstand right before what happened with Rory.”
Aurum glared at them and slowly put the ring into his pouch.
“So, a place for our horses,” Bruno said. “What about another tavern?”
“Uuuh…”
“A non-magical one?”
“Yeah, ok.”
Oh, we still don't know what's going on. What's that ring got to do with anything? Why didn't anyone know how it appeared?
It's all ao mysterious! :)
And our DM is a genious!
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.