Hello, Everyone!
Having a fun summer? Mine is kinda boring at this point since all the kids I’m teaching have a summer holiday and I don’t have anything to do. Hope I’ll get the inspiration to draw more original art for the upcoming chapters of Mary's story. In this one we have a reappearing character and so we have reappearing art :) Hope you still enjoy it!
Anyway. Last time, Mary and her friends exited the tunnels unde Belfast and found that the dwarfs were about to give up the Artefact to the rock giant Agrax. They couldn’t do anything but hide until the handover was done and then, Aurum said he wanted to try and spy on the enemy’s next steps.
After Agrax and the dark elves had cleared the vault, the dwarves started moving around, congratulating each other and talking with relief.
In the midst of all this, Aurum was still sitting on the ground, concentrating on his Clairvoyance spell. His humming got lost in the dwarves' murmur but he didn't stop.
Mary used that time to fold her familiars. They were a good and well-tested way of getting information, although every time she did it, she felt more and more afraid that this time they’d get noticed and destroyed before they had the chance to reveal something helpful.
When they were ready, she sent Peter into the tunnel after Agrax and the dark elves, and gave Atti to Roko. He'd said he wanted to help, too. He was going to dig his mini-tunnel parallel to the one the drow were walking on, and follow them in that way.
The gnome took the owl, grinned and sank into the wall. And when both him and the paper spider were gone, the rest could only wait. Mary closed her eyes to be able to use her familiars’ senses.
Peter was crawling across the ceiling of the tunnel. He was really small and not very quick but Agrax was obviously not in a hurry. The dark elves surrounding him were now more than three dozen. It seemed like even more of them had joined in after they’d left the vault.
We would be dead if we'd tried to fight them, Mary thought again and cold sweat covered her forehead.
“I can see them,” Aurum said, his eyes white with his magic. “They’re coming! They’re... oh," his voice went from excited to disappointed in the span of two seconds. "They're passing around me!"
He sighed and exited his Clairvoyance. Seems like he didn’t project his consciousness far enough.
"Well, that was pointless!” he said with a shrug.
Mary used the moment to check up on Atti.
Roko was following the elves from his little personal tunnel and peaking from small cracks whenever he could. Through her owl's eyes Mary saw glimpses of the green light from the Artefact in Agrax’ hand.
Not long after, the stone giant stopped. His voice rumbled like rocks falling down a slope.
“I’ll stop here,” he said. “You keep going.”
The dark elves obeyed and soon they disappeared from sight. Peter was hanging on a spider thread from the ceiling and saw what happened next, just as Roko did from his tunnel.
Agrax made a step towards an alcove in the tunnel. Then another. They weren’t calm or decisive steps, it looked almost like he was resisting something.
A human-sized figure, dressed in a long dark cloak, came out of the shadows. They reached their hand and spoke.
"Give me the crystal, Agrax."
The rock giant started moving his hand forward but stopped, trembling. It looked like he was fighting back some kind of control.
The man raised his other hand. It was thinner and all dried up and it was holding a strange item. It looked like a small cencer hanging on four long chains. He opened the lid of the contraption and suddenly Agrax fell apart. The stones and crystals forming his body tumbled on the ground and green mist swirled in the air where he once stood. The mist floated towards the cloaked figure and got syphoned into their device. The lid shut.
The figure stepped forward and took the Artefact from the floor, then they looked around and sneaked into the alcove.
Mary made Peter follow them quickly. She didn't want to miss anything that happened. The figure took out a piece of chalk from their robe and started drawing a teleportation circle on the floor.
“Paper!” Mary urged, still looking through Peter’s eyes. “Give me paper and a pencil! Quickly!”
She felt her journal in her hands, touched the page’s ends to define the writing space she had at her disposal, and started getting the numbers down. It wasn’t her first time writing without being able to see the page. She’d done plenty of that when inspiration struck her in the dead of the night and there was no light around to shine on her brilliant story ideas.
She marked down all the symbols she could see through the spider’s eyes. Then witnessed the mysterious figure say a few words, step into the circle and vanish. After the spell was done, the chalk drawing disappeared, too.
Behind Peter, a small hole opened in the corridor’s wall and Roko came out, eyes wide in shock. He looked around, picked up all the small crystals from Agrax’ body and went back into his tunnel.
Mary exited her familiar’s senses. What the heck had she just witnessed?
What, indeed? One mystery closed, another opened. I hope it’s just as interesting for y’all as it was for us playing the game!
Hope to see you in the next chapter where we have some family affairs and Mary tries out a new thing.
Until then,
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide and the Glossary for the series. You're welcome!)