Hello, Everyone!
How have you been? Did ya miss my dear Mary? Cause she’s back now – both on this little platform, and the underground campsite she disappeared from a few chapters ago. Last time, she spoke with her Patron, she found out more about him and herself, and was finally sent back with a bag full of tea.
Let’s see whether her absence has been noticed.
The camp was in disarray. People were shouting and searching, some were agruing about what might have happened.
Mary popped up in the middle of all that and everyone freezed.
"Mary! Where were you? What happened? Were you abducted? Are you ok? What happened?"
Bruno tried to examine her for physical harm but she just waved him off, too excited to even be annoyed. She jumped up and down and started gesticulating wildly.
"You won't believe what happened!" she exclaimed. "I was with my Patron! I saw him! He was a monkey at first but I think that was just a joke. We were at his house and the seasons were changing fast, it was winter at the beginning but then it was spring and, and, and… "
Her friends stared at her. Mary saw Paulina start to snigger.
“Noo!” she protested. “It wasn’t a dream! I have proof!” She took out the tea bags from her pocket and waved them around. “He drinks tea, too. He made these for me!”
“You’re supposed to smoke that,” Paulina said.
Mary scoffed at her. Then turned to Aurum.
“I asked about your amulet but Gillean didn’t know anything about it. He said it might be magical, he had an amulet just like it. Well, not just like it, it was bigger and with a different shape....”
She kept on babbling about everything she’d experienced in Gillean’s place, except for the story he told her about her father. She showed them the wand and Paulina, ever the sceptical one, sneered at the sight of it.
“You mean to tell me that you can do magic with this thing?”
“Of course I can!” Mary said, then stopped to think. “I mean, I think I’m supposed to… Why would Gillean give it to me if not to do magic with it?”
“Try it!” Aurum said, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.
“Really?”
“Yes! Try it on someone!”
Mary hesitated. She’d read enough about unatunned magical items to know not to use it on people, so she pointed the wand at the first non-living thing that came into her view--which turned out to be Bruno’s backpack--and waved.
In a puff of smoke the backpack turned bright pink. Bruno gave out a cry of protest.
“No, no, no! Don’t worry, I’m going to fix it!” Mary screamed while Aurum was laughing his ass of.
The next wave of the wand didn’t change the backpack’s pink color but covered it with long thick fur. Bruno started yelling and now more people were laughing. Mary tried out her luck a few more times but each new wand wave made things a bit worse, until she gave up in defeat.
“I’m going to buy you a new backpack, I promise!” she said solemnly.
Bruno murmured and grumbled but eventually everyone calmed down enough to go back to sleep. Mary’s disappearance had taken up less than an hour of the night and they still needed to finish their rest.
Since Mary didn’t need any sleep now, she joined Aurum on his watch. They talked all the way through it and the bard tried to convince her to give her wand another go.
“Make Bruno’s beard pink!” he whispered.
“But I can’t control what the wand does!” Mary protested. “What if I do something horrible to him?”
“Oh, come on! Coward!”
He was puffing his pipe and looked amused.
“What if I try to fix the backpack again?” Mary suggested. “I think I can do it now.”
Aurum pouted but didn’t protest. Mary took out her wand and wished very hard for the backpack to go back to normal.
It did… but it was a quarter of its original size. Aurum smiled widely.
“No, no, no! I can fix it!” Mary said.
And the next spell (“I wish for the backpack to go back to its original size, color, substance, weight and texture!”) worked! Mary sighed in relief.
“Now make the beard pink!” Aurum said.
“Ok, if you want to play a practical joke on Bruno, why don’t YOU do it?” Mary hissed.
“Oh, I will!” he said.
He took out his disguise kit and went to work.
After Aurum went to sleep, Mary didn’t wake anyone else up. They’d taken care and worried about her for so many days, she could at least give them one good night’s rest.
Paulina woke up first. She yawned and stretched and looked around, and when she saw Bruno’s face, she burst into laughter. One by one, the rest of the group rose up and joined her. Bruno was the last out of the loop because nobody wanted to give him a mirror.
Finally, Mary took pity on him and he was able to check out Aurum’s make-up. His whole face was white except for the zig-zagged black patterns around his eyes.
“This might have been your greatest mistake, my friend,” he turned to the bard. “I think I’m going to make you paint me like this for the rest of our lives.”
Aurum grinned.
Hey, people! This is the last part of the ‘crawling through the tunnels’ saga. I hope you didn't mind reading about it. I know it was a lot of talking and little action but I like the character's interactions almost as much as I like the fight scenes.
Next time, a special kind of meta Interlude – where our DM and I answer questions about Gillean, the Archfey’s creation and his relationship with Mary.
This is your last chance to leave a question in the comments if you want us to answer it!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide and the
Glossary for the series. You're welcome!)