Post by Jaezred Vandree on Jun 10, 2024 13:28:21 GMT
The task: find and subdue the Somethings.
The task force: Celia, a demure half-elf diviner; Ulrich, a goblin witch always dressed in all black; and Pixis, an undead little girl. (They are always fighting.)
The leader of the task force: Lord Jaezred Vandree, Queen Nicnevin’s loyal warlock — gentleman spy, veteran adventurer, and maestro home cook.
Within the Giant Snail Hotel, the task force is gathered in a luxury suite that Jaezred has converted into his office for the past year. They sit down in plush chairs around a low table with tea and scones, facing a corkboard.
The corkboard has a map of the Dawnlands and a map of the Witching Court pinned next to each other in the centre; surrounding the maps are 5 torn scraps of parchment, a single word written on each.
Lonely.
Vast.
Lurking.
Eldritch.
Hungry.
Lord Jaezred is standing in front of the board, a spool of red string in hand. “Alright, team, let’s summarise everything we know. Ulrich, grab a pen and paper, you’re in charge of writing notes. Pixis, leave Ulrich alone.”
Pixis lets a small, disappointed wail from behind Ulrich where she was sneaking up, preparing to sink her fangs into his neck. She plops down on the seat next to Ulrich, who gives her a death stare, heaves out an overexaggerated sigh, and grabs some napkins to scrawl on. From across the table, Celia scowls and forces a notepad in front of him.
Jaezred pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right. Why don’t we start with…”
SOMETHING VAST
“Well,” Celia begins. “We know Something Vast was in Reka’s lake recently, but she wasn’t able to stop it escaping. We know it has two powerful Avatars now who are coordinating with each other — they were lovers prior to becoming Avatars… From what I can tell, it’s still in the Court somewhere, but we haven’t been able to pin it down.”
“Indeed,” Jaezred says as he sticks a pin in the giant mermaid lake within the Witching Woods and ties a red string to it, connecting it to the scrap of paper that says Vast. “Morren and Mac — sailors who suddenly developed a fear of open water after encountering the Something. And do we know what having two Avatars means yet?”
“Well… Yes and no… It doesn’t really seem straight forward,” Celia answers sheepishly.
“More is worse, is what I gathered,” Pixis says. “But some seem to be collecting them like decorative fans and it doesn’t seem too much of a big deal. Vast seems to pick specific Avatars that help it focus better, though, so more than one is worse for the Vast than in other cases… Hey! You’re supposed to be writing!”
She throws a balled-up napkin at Ulrich, who sighs again and starts lazily writing the words “more is bad” on the notepad.
“Pretty much, yes. From what Reka said, Vast was not able to create its growing body until it had two Avatars,” Celia says, whilst urgently signalling for Ulrich to jot down notes. “Until then, it remained hidden in her lake, like it was waiting.”
“Its body — I read reports that it was a sphere of water with tendrils?” Jaezred asks.
“To begin with, but Reka seems to think it was trying to take the shape of something else before it bolted.”
“Hmm.” Jaezred turns back to the corkboard and strokes his chin. “The Vast was also harassing Reka in her lake the first time we were made aware of its presence. I think there’s a good chance it’ll try something again with her. And in terms of fighting it, I suppose beating it back with physical force has been effective so far?”
“So far yes, but…while I’ve been trying to find them, I get the impression some of them might be changing. It might not be so simple this time… But I’m still trying!”
“Oh, of course they’re evolving. Because things only ever get worse for us.” He sighs wearily. “Well, do keep at it, Miss Celia. Let’s move on to…”
SOMETHING ELDRITCH
“Now, from what I understand, Something Eldritch has two specialties: it can bend magic spells to its will — such as reversing the effects of a spell — and it can make the religiously-inclined doubt the divine and lose faith in their gods. As such, it has been targeting clergy members in Daring Heights.” Jaezred taps on a dot labelled Daring Heights on the map of the Dawnlands, then drags his finger towards the Sea of Swords. “It was last seen jumping into the sea a few miles east of Port Ffirst, after traumatising a party boat full of Darite clerics.”
“That’s…frightening, if it can make the devout lose faith…” Celia responds. “I’ve heard a few things, but I confess I’ve been focusing on the Vast and the Lonely more than the others.”
“Yes, the good news is that Eldritch’s Avatar is dead. Some old woman named Cassandra; she was backed into a corner by adventurers and consequently sacrificed herself to the Eldritch. Although, I suspect that was what enabled it to fully manifest.”
“Sooo… They didn’t actually solve anything, then,” Pixis chimes in with a very matter-of-fact tone. “Is the Queen sure we should be using these people again?”
Celia buries her face in her hands as Ulrich lets out a cackle. “You can be the one to question Queen Nicnevin on her decisions, just don’t expect to make it back.”
“Ulrich, focus,” Jaezred says, pointing a stern finger at the notepad. “Nevertheless, it was good to have confirmation that Avatars are still mortal and fallible to a hell of a beating.”
SOMETHING LONELY
“Um, the Lonely is still missing as well. No one has seen anything of it since Miss Brightpass was rescued. I know that’s not much to go on, sorry,” Celia says. She leans over to Ulrich to peek at his notes and then kicks him under the table.
“Yes, the Lonely, the first of the Somethings to go loose… It was last encountered in Dr. Killian’s basement in the Mountain Palace.” Jaezred stabs a pin into the great mountain in the centre of the Witching Court map. “Do you think it might still be there?”
The three look up in unison with a palpable dread at the prospect of being sent to see Killian.
Pixis starts, “Not likely.”
Ulrich adds, “Why would it?”
Celia finishes, “…Well…”
This time, it’s Ulrich who kicks Celia under the table.
“OW! Well, it might be—”
There is a loud thump as Pixis’s head meets the table.
“—Killian no longer has Eric staying with him. He might be feeling lonely?” Celia sounds like she is trying to convince herself of this line of thought.
From under the tangled mass of Pixis’s ginger hair comes a muffled moan. “It’s like she wants us to suffer.”
A shit-eating grin slowly spreads across Jaezred’s face, revelling in the schadenfreude. “Well then, it sounds to me that at least one of you is due for a visit to the good doctor.”
Ulrich and Pixis both stare angrily at Celia until she relents. “Fine! I guess I’ll go…”
“We salute you for your service, Miss Celia. I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice on dealing with Killian, but as for Something Lonely — should you ever find yourself in its domain of endless hallways of nothingness, try to stick with your companions. The more the merrier.”
Celia looks at the other two expectantly and is met with silence and a lack of eye contact.
SOMETHING LURKING
“Over in Port Ffirst, we have got Something Lurking,” Jaezred continues. “This is a rather tricky one. We’ve reason to believe that it’s been adopted by sewer druids who seek the destruction of civilisation.”
Pixis is the only one to respond. “Eww. Why the sewers?”
Jaezred gestures down at the exquisite, finely tailored clothes he is wearing. “Do I look like I’ve got any idea, Pixis? Anyway, the Lurking has the ability to make people not notice it. Those who’ve tried looking at it said that it physically hurts them to. However, we do know that it takes the form of thorny black vines, and we also know that it recoils when a torch is shone onto it.”
Ulrich looks up from his doodle of Pixis being stepped on by Nicnevin. “Black vines? I don’t suppose there’s any chance they could be harvested?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because your job is to seal the Somethings away, not ‘harvest’ them. The Queen is displeased enough as it is.”
The goblin considers it for a moment. “Ugh, fine…”
Jaezred shakes his head disapprovingly. “Where was I? Oh yes. We know the druids are planning something with the Lurking and the big tree in the Port Ffirst Marketplace. Any ideas on what it could be?”
He gets three blank looks in return. Feeling bad, Celia tries to fill the space. “Uh… Well, is there some significance to the tree? A tree in a central location like that could hold a lot of power in the Feywild, but in the Material Plane, I’d have thought it was just a tree?”
“To a druid, a tree is never just a tree. But I suppose none of us here have any insight into that. So let’s carry on…”
SOMETHING HUNGRY
“Last but certainly not least, Something Hungry. It’s, er…” Jaezred rubs the back of his neck. “There’s no other way to put it. It’s eating the city of Kundar.”
Celia and Ulrich both have looks of confusion on their faces, a stark contrast to the excitement on Pixis’s. “OH, THAT IS AWESOME! Does it have teeth or is it just sucking people up off the street? Does it eat the buildings too? Is it gruesome? Tell me it’s gruesome…”
“All of it. People, animals, buildings — everything is at risk of getting chewed up by a giant toothed maw in the ground.”
The undead girl squeals delightedly.
Celia hushes her. “Pixis! People are dying!”
“I know! It sounds terrible,” she says while grinning with a child-like innocence, which is only emphasised by her appearance.
Ulrich starts adding teeth around the doodle of Pixis. “So, if it’s hungry, have they tried feeding it?”
“PLEASE TELL ME THEY TRIED FEEDING IT!” Pixis cries out, her voice echoing throughout the floor of the hotel.
“Enough! You need to take this seriously!” Jaezred snaps. “The death toll could reach exponential levels and we’d be to blame.”
“Yes, Pixis, please stop…um, let’s start with shouting, I guess,” Celia says, knowing it is a futile request, looking to Ulrich for support.
“Yes, there are guests here, you know!”
“Oh, bore off! This is way more interesting than those stuffy bods upstairs. It’s eating the city!”
Celia, ignoring this, turns back to Jaezred at the corkboard. “If it’s hungry, then based on the other Somethings, surely they should be starving it, right? How do you stop something like that from eating?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a note of defeat in his voice. “Up until a couple days ago, the Hungry was bound and kept in check by Matthias Prideborn, the Kundarian merchant. You might recognise the name — he is an enemy to the Dawnlands. The Hungry was bound to both Kundar and a factory in the Abyss; Prideborn fed it people and jewellery and, in exchange, the Hungry sped up the factory’s work processes, creating for him a host of armoured demons that it spat out one-by-one up into Kundar.”
Celia goes pale. “So they did… What happened a couple days ago?”
“Some adventurers went to Kundar and undid the binding spell. Now it is free to eat and grow as much as it wants. The only good thing to come out of that was Urdox, the Hungry’s Avatar and Prideborn’s follower, getting killed. And I suppose they also prevented a second Avatar being created in Rae.”
As he speaks, Jaezred walks over to a globe cart sitting off to the side of the room, which he opens to reveal bottles of liquor and crystal glasses inside. “I’ll be honest,” he mutters as he pours amber-coloured whisky into a glass. “This is a dire situation and I’ve got no idea how to solve it.”
Pixis, Ulrich, and Celia sit there staring at their boss expectantly. Breaking the silence, Ulrich asks, “So… What are you going to do?”
Jaezred takes a sip of the drink, savouring the pleasant burn in his throat, before replying, “We are going to arm the adventurers with information — circulate everything we know about the Somethings in the Dawnlands and pray some of these idiots put it to good use. On that note, why don’t you show me what you’ve been writing?”
He steps in front of Ulrich and glances at his notepad:
There is also a doodle of Nicnevin stomping on Pixis whilst she screams as teeth are rising up from below to eat her. To one side, Ulrich is depicted sipping a drink on a comfortable chair. There are a few squiggly black lines with little thorns on them and a couple of stylised snails spotted around.
Jaezred crumples the paper up into a ball and chucks it right in Ulrich’s face. Fortunately, Celia has been keeping her own notes, inscribed in a neat handwriting and far more comprehensive. (Pixis did not even attempt to write anything down.)
“Well done once again, Miss Celia, on being the only useful member of this task force. I’ll be sending your notes to the Daring Council. Now—” The drow spymaster looks at each of the three in turn, the expression on his face turning serious. “How goes the preparation for the re-binding ritual?”
Flicking the ball of paper off the table, Ulrich answers first. “Everyone is up in arms about it. They keep double- and triple-checking in case things go wrong and they upset the Queen. But it’s Xantha’s head that will roll if it goes wrong, seeing as she messed it up to begin with.”
Celia interjects, “Well now, she didn’t mess it up—”
“She didn’t see it was going wrong to fix it, then,” Ulrich counters. “Either way, she’ll be the one facing Nicnevin’s fury.”
“Ooh, I hope she peels her skin off.”
Celia and Ulrich both look at Pixis’s sudden outburst again with disdain.
“Anyway, it’s going well and they are nearly ready to start. Celia has been asked to support Reka’s team, while Pixis will be chasing down a lesser avatar of Something Violent in the wild areas of the Feywild, and I’ve been told to look around for Something Greedy, but they are both considered minor threats for now.”
“Good, good. I don’t think I need to tell you that failure is not an option.” Jaezred takes a bigger gulp of whisky from his glass. This whole business with the Somethings has lasted a year now and he is eager for it to be over. “Look, if we succeed, I’ll make ice cream and waffles for you all.”
Ulrich grimaces. “You really think you can pay us off wi—”
“ICE CREAM AND WAFFLES!”
“Ooh, I’d quite like the berry medley you made us before, if we can make requests?”
“I’M GONNA POISON ULRICH’S!”
“I can’t wait for Lillian to return, I bet she’d love the berry one too!”
“AND THEN I’M GONNA EAT SO MUCH I’M GONNA BE SICK!”
Ulrich sighs, defeated. “Can I just have vanilla, please?”
Jaezred doesn’t resist the smile growing on his face. “Of course.”
Co-written with Anthony
The task force: Celia, a demure half-elf diviner; Ulrich, a goblin witch always dressed in all black; and Pixis, an undead little girl. (They are always fighting.)
The leader of the task force: Lord Jaezred Vandree, Queen Nicnevin’s loyal warlock — gentleman spy, veteran adventurer, and maestro home cook.
Within the Giant Snail Hotel, the task force is gathered in a luxury suite that Jaezred has converted into his office for the past year. They sit down in plush chairs around a low table with tea and scones, facing a corkboard.
The corkboard has a map of the Dawnlands and a map of the Witching Court pinned next to each other in the centre; surrounding the maps are 5 torn scraps of parchment, a single word written on each.
Lonely.
Vast.
Lurking.
Eldritch.
Hungry.
Lord Jaezred is standing in front of the board, a spool of red string in hand. “Alright, team, let’s summarise everything we know. Ulrich, grab a pen and paper, you’re in charge of writing notes. Pixis, leave Ulrich alone.”
Pixis lets a small, disappointed wail from behind Ulrich where she was sneaking up, preparing to sink her fangs into his neck. She plops down on the seat next to Ulrich, who gives her a death stare, heaves out an overexaggerated sigh, and grabs some napkins to scrawl on. From across the table, Celia scowls and forces a notepad in front of him.
Jaezred pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right. Why don’t we start with…”
SOMETHING VAST
“Well,” Celia begins. “We know Something Vast was in Reka’s lake recently, but she wasn’t able to stop it escaping. We know it has two powerful Avatars now who are coordinating with each other — they were lovers prior to becoming Avatars… From what I can tell, it’s still in the Court somewhere, but we haven’t been able to pin it down.”
“Indeed,” Jaezred says as he sticks a pin in the giant mermaid lake within the Witching Woods and ties a red string to it, connecting it to the scrap of paper that says Vast. “Morren and Mac — sailors who suddenly developed a fear of open water after encountering the Something. And do we know what having two Avatars means yet?”
“Well… Yes and no… It doesn’t really seem straight forward,” Celia answers sheepishly.
“More is worse, is what I gathered,” Pixis says. “But some seem to be collecting them like decorative fans and it doesn’t seem too much of a big deal. Vast seems to pick specific Avatars that help it focus better, though, so more than one is worse for the Vast than in other cases… Hey! You’re supposed to be writing!”
She throws a balled-up napkin at Ulrich, who sighs again and starts lazily writing the words “more is bad” on the notepad.
“Pretty much, yes. From what Reka said, Vast was not able to create its growing body until it had two Avatars,” Celia says, whilst urgently signalling for Ulrich to jot down notes. “Until then, it remained hidden in her lake, like it was waiting.”
“Its body — I read reports that it was a sphere of water with tendrils?” Jaezred asks.
“To begin with, but Reka seems to think it was trying to take the shape of something else before it bolted.”
“Hmm.” Jaezred turns back to the corkboard and strokes his chin. “The Vast was also harassing Reka in her lake the first time we were made aware of its presence. I think there’s a good chance it’ll try something again with her. And in terms of fighting it, I suppose beating it back with physical force has been effective so far?”
“So far yes, but…while I’ve been trying to find them, I get the impression some of them might be changing. It might not be so simple this time… But I’m still trying!”
“Oh, of course they’re evolving. Because things only ever get worse for us.” He sighs wearily. “Well, do keep at it, Miss Celia. Let’s move on to…”
SOMETHING ELDRITCH
“Now, from what I understand, Something Eldritch has two specialties: it can bend magic spells to its will — such as reversing the effects of a spell — and it can make the religiously-inclined doubt the divine and lose faith in their gods. As such, it has been targeting clergy members in Daring Heights.” Jaezred taps on a dot labelled Daring Heights on the map of the Dawnlands, then drags his finger towards the Sea of Swords. “It was last seen jumping into the sea a few miles east of Port Ffirst, after traumatising a party boat full of Darite clerics.”
“That’s…frightening, if it can make the devout lose faith…” Celia responds. “I’ve heard a few things, but I confess I’ve been focusing on the Vast and the Lonely more than the others.”
“Yes, the good news is that Eldritch’s Avatar is dead. Some old woman named Cassandra; she was backed into a corner by adventurers and consequently sacrificed herself to the Eldritch. Although, I suspect that was what enabled it to fully manifest.”
“Sooo… They didn’t actually solve anything, then,” Pixis chimes in with a very matter-of-fact tone. “Is the Queen sure we should be using these people again?”
Celia buries her face in her hands as Ulrich lets out a cackle. “You can be the one to question Queen Nicnevin on her decisions, just don’t expect to make it back.”
“Ulrich, focus,” Jaezred says, pointing a stern finger at the notepad. “Nevertheless, it was good to have confirmation that Avatars are still mortal and fallible to a hell of a beating.”
SOMETHING LONELY
“Um, the Lonely is still missing as well. No one has seen anything of it since Miss Brightpass was rescued. I know that’s not much to go on, sorry,” Celia says. She leans over to Ulrich to peek at his notes and then kicks him under the table.
“Yes, the Lonely, the first of the Somethings to go loose… It was last encountered in Dr. Killian’s basement in the Mountain Palace.” Jaezred stabs a pin into the great mountain in the centre of the Witching Court map. “Do you think it might still be there?”
The three look up in unison with a palpable dread at the prospect of being sent to see Killian.
Pixis starts, “Not likely.”
Ulrich adds, “Why would it?”
Celia finishes, “…Well…”
This time, it’s Ulrich who kicks Celia under the table.
“OW! Well, it might be—”
There is a loud thump as Pixis’s head meets the table.
“—Killian no longer has Eric staying with him. He might be feeling lonely?” Celia sounds like she is trying to convince herself of this line of thought.
From under the tangled mass of Pixis’s ginger hair comes a muffled moan. “It’s like she wants us to suffer.”
A shit-eating grin slowly spreads across Jaezred’s face, revelling in the schadenfreude. “Well then, it sounds to me that at least one of you is due for a visit to the good doctor.”
Ulrich and Pixis both stare angrily at Celia until she relents. “Fine! I guess I’ll go…”
“We salute you for your service, Miss Celia. I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice on dealing with Killian, but as for Something Lonely — should you ever find yourself in its domain of endless hallways of nothingness, try to stick with your companions. The more the merrier.”
Celia looks at the other two expectantly and is met with silence and a lack of eye contact.
SOMETHING LURKING
“Over in Port Ffirst, we have got Something Lurking,” Jaezred continues. “This is a rather tricky one. We’ve reason to believe that it’s been adopted by sewer druids who seek the destruction of civilisation.”
Pixis is the only one to respond. “Eww. Why the sewers?”
Jaezred gestures down at the exquisite, finely tailored clothes he is wearing. “Do I look like I’ve got any idea, Pixis? Anyway, the Lurking has the ability to make people not notice it. Those who’ve tried looking at it said that it physically hurts them to. However, we do know that it takes the form of thorny black vines, and we also know that it recoils when a torch is shone onto it.”
Ulrich looks up from his doodle of Pixis being stepped on by Nicnevin. “Black vines? I don’t suppose there’s any chance they could be harvested?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because your job is to seal the Somethings away, not ‘harvest’ them. The Queen is displeased enough as it is.”
The goblin considers it for a moment. “Ugh, fine…”
Jaezred shakes his head disapprovingly. “Where was I? Oh yes. We know the druids are planning something with the Lurking and the big tree in the Port Ffirst Marketplace. Any ideas on what it could be?”
He gets three blank looks in return. Feeling bad, Celia tries to fill the space. “Uh… Well, is there some significance to the tree? A tree in a central location like that could hold a lot of power in the Feywild, but in the Material Plane, I’d have thought it was just a tree?”
“To a druid, a tree is never just a tree. But I suppose none of us here have any insight into that. So let’s carry on…”
SOMETHING HUNGRY
“Last but certainly not least, Something Hungry. It’s, er…” Jaezred rubs the back of his neck. “There’s no other way to put it. It’s eating the city of Kundar.”
Celia and Ulrich both have looks of confusion on their faces, a stark contrast to the excitement on Pixis’s. “OH, THAT IS AWESOME! Does it have teeth or is it just sucking people up off the street? Does it eat the buildings too? Is it gruesome? Tell me it’s gruesome…”
“All of it. People, animals, buildings — everything is at risk of getting chewed up by a giant toothed maw in the ground.”
The undead girl squeals delightedly.
Celia hushes her. “Pixis! People are dying!”
“I know! It sounds terrible,” she says while grinning with a child-like innocence, which is only emphasised by her appearance.
Ulrich starts adding teeth around the doodle of Pixis. “So, if it’s hungry, have they tried feeding it?”
“PLEASE TELL ME THEY TRIED FEEDING IT!” Pixis cries out, her voice echoing throughout the floor of the hotel.
“Enough! You need to take this seriously!” Jaezred snaps. “The death toll could reach exponential levels and we’d be to blame.”
“Yes, Pixis, please stop…um, let’s start with shouting, I guess,” Celia says, knowing it is a futile request, looking to Ulrich for support.
“Yes, there are guests here, you know!”
“Oh, bore off! This is way more interesting than those stuffy bods upstairs. It’s eating the city!”
Celia, ignoring this, turns back to Jaezred at the corkboard. “If it’s hungry, then based on the other Somethings, surely they should be starving it, right? How do you stop something like that from eating?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a note of defeat in his voice. “Up until a couple days ago, the Hungry was bound and kept in check by Matthias Prideborn, the Kundarian merchant. You might recognise the name — he is an enemy to the Dawnlands. The Hungry was bound to both Kundar and a factory in the Abyss; Prideborn fed it people and jewellery and, in exchange, the Hungry sped up the factory’s work processes, creating for him a host of armoured demons that it spat out one-by-one up into Kundar.”
Celia goes pale. “So they did… What happened a couple days ago?”
“Some adventurers went to Kundar and undid the binding spell. Now it is free to eat and grow as much as it wants. The only good thing to come out of that was Urdox, the Hungry’s Avatar and Prideborn’s follower, getting killed. And I suppose they also prevented a second Avatar being created in Rae.”
As he speaks, Jaezred walks over to a globe cart sitting off to the side of the room, which he opens to reveal bottles of liquor and crystal glasses inside. “I’ll be honest,” he mutters as he pours amber-coloured whisky into a glass. “This is a dire situation and I’ve got no idea how to solve it.”
Pixis, Ulrich, and Celia sit there staring at their boss expectantly. Breaking the silence, Ulrich asks, “So… What are you going to do?”
Jaezred takes a sip of the drink, savouring the pleasant burn in his throat, before replying, “We are going to arm the adventurers with information — circulate everything we know about the Somethings in the Dawnlands and pray some of these idiots put it to good use. On that note, why don’t you show me what you’ve been writing?”
He steps in front of Ulrich and glances at his notepad:
Avatars: more is bad
Some are more bad than others.
Vast, may or may not be a sphere
Eldritch bad. Clerics are wimps.
Lonely is lonely
Reminder - send Mavis to watch Celia talk to Killian
Some are more bad than others.
Vast, may or may not be a sphere
Eldritch bad. Clerics are wimps.
Lonely is lonely
Reminder - send Mavis to watch Celia talk to Killian
There is also a doodle of Nicnevin stomping on Pixis whilst she screams as teeth are rising up from below to eat her. To one side, Ulrich is depicted sipping a drink on a comfortable chair. There are a few squiggly black lines with little thorns on them and a couple of stylised snails spotted around.
Jaezred crumples the paper up into a ball and chucks it right in Ulrich’s face. Fortunately, Celia has been keeping her own notes, inscribed in a neat handwriting and far more comprehensive. (Pixis did not even attempt to write anything down.)
“Well done once again, Miss Celia, on being the only useful member of this task force. I’ll be sending your notes to the Daring Council. Now—” The drow spymaster looks at each of the three in turn, the expression on his face turning serious. “How goes the preparation for the re-binding ritual?”
Flicking the ball of paper off the table, Ulrich answers first. “Everyone is up in arms about it. They keep double- and triple-checking in case things go wrong and they upset the Queen. But it’s Xantha’s head that will roll if it goes wrong, seeing as she messed it up to begin with.”
Celia interjects, “Well now, she didn’t mess it up—”
“She didn’t see it was going wrong to fix it, then,” Ulrich counters. “Either way, she’ll be the one facing Nicnevin’s fury.”
“Ooh, I hope she peels her skin off.”
Celia and Ulrich both look at Pixis’s sudden outburst again with disdain.
“Anyway, it’s going well and they are nearly ready to start. Celia has been asked to support Reka’s team, while Pixis will be chasing down a lesser avatar of Something Violent in the wild areas of the Feywild, and I’ve been told to look around for Something Greedy, but they are both considered minor threats for now.”
“Good, good. I don’t think I need to tell you that failure is not an option.” Jaezred takes a bigger gulp of whisky from his glass. This whole business with the Somethings has lasted a year now and he is eager for it to be over. “Look, if we succeed, I’ll make ice cream and waffles for you all.”
Ulrich grimaces. “You really think you can pay us off wi—”
“ICE CREAM AND WAFFLES!”
“Ooh, I’d quite like the berry medley you made us before, if we can make requests?”
“I’M GONNA POISON ULRICH’S!”
“I can’t wait for Lillian to return, I bet she’d love the berry one too!”
“AND THEN I’M GONNA EAT SO MUCH I’M GONNA BE SICK!”
Ulrich sighs, defeated. “Can I just have vanilla, please?”
Jaezred doesn’t resist the smile growing on his face. “Of course.”
— 🕷️💀🐌🔮 —
Co-written with Anthony