Post by Milo Brightmane on Aug 14, 2019 15:17:31 GMT
The door to Ambershield's Boutique burst open revealing a broad-shouldered dwarf, his face as red as his beard. The proprietor of the little glittering shop looked over from showing a nervous human a selection of bejewelled rings in time for the ruddy dwarf to announce "Drow!"
The change from charismatic shopkeeper to battle-ready dwarf occured so quickly a casual onlooker may not have even noticed him reach under the counter and retrieve a large and well polished battleaxe. "Where? Are we under attack? How many?"
The intruding dwarf stomped towards a small but deeply cushioned chair and threw himself onto it. "One." The jeweller, Gety Ambershield, lowered the axe, and raised an eyebrow. "One? You're getting worked up over one drow?" "One is plenty when you're forced to spend the best part of three days in their company," Milo, the other dwarf, said. "Ah," said Gety, replacing the axe on its hooks under the counter. "This is about your trip out west. I think we may have to wrap this up later," he added, turning to the customer. "Can you come back in an hour or so? And we'll find the perfect one for your Iefyr." The human left with a lot more grace than Milo had entered, leaving the two friends alone in the shop, the silence broken only by Milo's ill-tempered huffing. "Come out back," Gety directed, "and you can get it off your chest."
As they walked into a neat sitting room, Milo exclaimed "I don't know what they think they're doing, joining in adventures, pretending to help people as if they were decent folk." Gety waved him to an armchair, but Milo continued to pace across the plain but well-made rug. Gety sighed, and shouted out the door "Farrik! Two teas down here!" A voice muffled by distance returned "Which one?!" The frustrated reply was sent back "Something calming!" Turning again to Milo he cried out "In the name of Marthammor! Will you sit down and tell me what happened in your wanderings, instead of wearing a hole in my carpet?" Milo flopped into the chair finally, and starting tapping his fingers on the arm. Gety sighed. "I've never seen you so worked up. This drow must have really gotten to you." Milo opened his mouth to speak, then grasped at the air as if hoping to pull the right words from it, before managing "It's like everyone's forgotten! The war ended barely ten years ago. That's nothing!" Gety frowned. "The war up in Luruar?" "The Silver Marches, but yes." "The types who head out on these adventures probably don't have the keenest grasp of world history, Milo. And it is history to a lot of them, especially the humans. Ten years is a long time for them, even more so the young ones we get around here."
Milo thumped his fist into the padded arm of the chair. "They should know! Whole towns were destroyed, we lost Sundabar to the orcs because of those inbred cave-crawlers. A hundred thousand and more, battering at the walls of Adbar, while we worked around the clock feeding arrows and javelins and anything we could up to the defenders while we waited for a breach and a swift death." Milo paused, breathing heavily, before continuing. "My brother was in the Iron Guard, up on the walls. We almost lost him." He spread his palms out and pressed them into the fabric, before curling them up again. "And now they're over here too. Swanning about as if the world owes him a favour, looking down his nose at everyone and everything."
Farrik entered the room carefully carrying a tray on which sat three delicate cups of steaming chamomile. He placed the tray on the table before picking up one of the cups, and started to gently blow on the hot water. Looking up into the silence, he saw the two other dwarves staring at him intently. "I'll, um, I'll just, uh," he stammered, sidly his way out of the room and closing the door gently.
Shaking his head, Gety continued. "So? What was the mission, the quest?" "Hmm?" murmered Milo, lost in thought. "Oh, these elves based in the Spine needed help. They had a house in the Plane of Water that they'd taken over from a marid that had been manipulating them. At least that's the short version. Anyway, the few of them in the house that were figuring out how it worked, steering and that, had apparently been turned to fish, and they needed us to figure out what had happened. And all the while this drow was talking down at everyone, making snide comments. There was a half-elf in the party, Traavor, the spider-lover called him a half-breed! As if it means anything to be fully anything, especially fully drow! Ha!" He took a sip from his tea, and seemed to sit back into his chair a little. "And this house was enormous, right? Like it was built for a giant, but a smart giant, because there were books around, enormous, maybe 4 foot tall, and this drow has the gall to say the book is bigger than me. I'm nearly five feet tall! Tch," he tutted loudly, before continuing.
"In the house there was this odd woman, maybe some kind of sea witch, I don't know. Madam Undertow. Said the elves had tried to work a holy statue to give them infinite fish, but they'd rejected her offer to trade for instructions and accidentally turned themselves into fish. So guess who gets offered a trade next." Milo pats himself on the chest with a broad hand. "She wanted the lantern from the head of this big fish, out in a nearby cave. Outside, Gety, in an infinite sea." "Infinite?" said Gety, leaning forward in his seat. "Yep. It was horrible, Gety. Water that just went on and on, until you couldn't see through the depth of it. Like looking down into a deep lake, but you can't just swim up to the surface, the water just keeps going above you, and all around. We had these necklaces that kept us breathing, but every second we were out there I felt like I was about to start drowning." He shook his head. "I hope I never have to go back there.
Anyway, we were in this sort of boat, controlled by magic. The drow got into a tussle with this bird person that was with us, huge horrible looking it was, starting tugging on either end of a fish of all things. And then he had the nerve to call the bird a savage, as if he hadn't just been doing the same thing!" "The lantern, Milo, what happened with the lantern?" "Alright, alright. Well, we found the big fish. Huge. Mouth bigger than the boat, and needle teeth longer than each of us. I'd gone in with, let's say optimistic ideas that we could quickly cut the lantern away and escape, but sadly we had to kill the fish just to survive. The drow was boasting later about how helpful he'd been, as if making the fish glow weirdly was any use. I was far more helpful! I put a shield around this young human, Stedd, he'd have been shark food without that!" "Sharks?" Gety said incredulously. "Why are there sharks now?" "Ah, ahem, where we'd attacked the fish, the blood may have drawn in some sharks. Plus Serpentine was there, and had summoned a demon which then went on a rampage, and we had to take that out too. Some people just shouldn't be trusted with magic. Especially drow!" he shouted suddenly, as he remembered why he was so angry earlier. The tea and the focus on recalling the story had momentarily helped him forget the presence of the dark elf mage, and even remembering then it wasn't with the burning fury with which he'd stormed into the shop.
"So we got the lantern back to the witch or whatever she was, she turns the elves back into elves, etcetera etcetera the end," he ends, anticlimactically. "And?" Gety asked. "Did you get anything for helping? The whole point of going out there, stocking up on resources for your big masterpiece?" "Ah, yes, hold on." Milo rooted through a pouch, before revealing a tiny blue gem, around half the size of his fingernail. "Any idea how much this is worth?" Gety rummaged around in a drawer before returning with a magnifying glass. Holding up the gem to the glass, he examined it closely. "Fairly high quality," he said. "I'd say 150 gold, rough estimate. Not bad. I can even cash it up for you if you'd like. I'd get a good ring out of this." "Thanks but I think I'll hold onto it, unless I specifically need coin. This is going to be an expensive project, I don't want to keep tens of thousands in gold just sitting...
Spine! I should have said the book had more spine than him! Argh, damn it!"
