Hello, Everyone!
Last time our heroes had just found out that there were giant pinkish worms sticking out over the city which were eating people and making everyone forget about their existence. Even thinking about these creatures made them have a terrible headache but Mary and her friends persisted.
They found an abandoned house near one of the worms and, surrounded by the magic of Mary's Orange tree, were able to hurt and even kill one of the worms. Then, for the first time since they'd entered Ekoba, they were able to get a good night's rest.
Тhe hole the worm had gone in gaped like an open wound on the street. It had been magically hidden along with its inhabitant but was open now. Mary and her friends saw it well among the branches of the orange tree, but they weren’t in a hurry to go down there.
“We could do some research first,” Mary said. “If there are sewers under the city and we find a map of those, we won’t be going in blind. Plus, honestly, I could use the rest.”
Under the protection of her orange tree, Mary felt safe for the first time in almost a week. Safe enough to allow herself to fall asleep.
“What if the worm comes back?” Bruno said.
“We’ll be ok in the tree’s crown.”
Her friends didn’t object and they spent the night in the room lined with leaves and orange blossoms and fruit. Mary slept deeply and carelessly, and right when the sun was going to rise in the sky and the magic of the tree would dispell, she felt a tingle on her neck and woke up automatically.
In the window, beyond the shrinking foliage, a pale pinkish column of flesh rose.
The worm had come back.
“All right, so they grow back,” Aurum said. “That’s pretty annoying.”
“Yeah, that means either that they are many more than we saw yesterday,” Bruno said, “or that they regenerate from a joint body.”
They were having breakfast in Trim’s Inn. Ekoba’s opressing nature was back--and so was the headache--but after the night spent under the orange tree, they all felt much better.
“With the use of Saraneth, the tree and Bruno’s Silence spell we’d be able to fell a maximum of two or three worms a day,” Mary murmured, taking notes in her journal. “I don’t think that’ll be enough.”
She poked at the omelette in front of her and groaned.
“What exactly was the deal you two made with Granny Gretel? About whoever it was inside the inner wall?”
“What?” Bruno said. “Why?”
“Because there are worms there, too. And if we don’t get rid of them as well, they’ll keep growing back. And people here are still going to forget.”
“Well,” Aurum said. “Granny asked for us to help her grandchild become a Captain of the guard by tarnishing the good reputation of his competitor. I think that’s pretty easy to do.”
“But,” Bruno said, “there’s a whole other question about the morality of what she asked.”
Aurum rolled his eyes and continued as if the dwarf hadn’t said anything. “We can slip in some lewd drawings from his ‘lady-friends’ and make everyone believe he’s been sleeping around.”
“How do you know that’s not a good thing here?” Mary said. “We don’t know people’s disposition in Ekoba, especially those thug-looking guards. They might like such rumours.”
She thought it silly that the bard, who’d always brag about his bedroom conquests, thought it would certainly be a bad thing for other people.
“Anyway,” she said out loud. “What if we went to this Johanes person and asked him for help? NOT necessarily for a passage to the inner city,” she insisted when she saw Bruno take a breath to interrupt her, “ but just for a help here, behind the First wall. I mean, these worms are influencing everyone here, it we showed them to him, he might want to assist us without the whole deal with Granny.”
Bruno and Aurum weren’t quite convinced and so Mary left them to think about it, while she tried asking Trim about any library or archives in Ekoba. She wanted to check everything she could about the sewers and any strange creatures that might live there.
Trim had a disappointing answer. The Archives, he said, would only be available for an outsider with the express permit from the President, or the Service for Stability and Security. And as for the library – yes, there was one in Ekoba, but it hardly contained anything. The governing forces here didn’t seem too eager to promote knowledge.
“The sewers are a murky place,” Trim said. “They started building them all the way back when the old King was alive, and they made them part by part. First under the palace, then through the Inner city, then parts here and there between the walls… Nobody quite knows how they work, and for the past several years the rumour is that the maintenance people are always understaffed.”
Yeah, Mary thought. I’m ready to bet that they regularly send people in the tunnels but then forget about them.
There was no map of the sewers. No clear path to go forth. When she came back to her friends, they reluctantly agreed to go look for Johanes. They finished their breakfast and headed out.
The moment they went out the door of the inn and took a few steps in the cold Ekoba morning, Mary’s heart went straight to her throat and she felt like it was going to fly out. She staggered and felt the blood pound in her ears.
“There’s…” she began.
But right then, Aurum gasped and his eyes widened. His white shirt stretched over his chest, as if pressed by an invisible force, and blood started pouring down from the place of impact. He screamed in pain and got hoisted up in the sky.
Oh, no! Pood Aurum! The creature seems to have been waiting for him!
Oh, no, no, no! Let's hope it doesn't pull him in its hole to eat him or something!
Let's see what happens in our next episode!
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.