Chapter Thirteen: Live And In Concert

“Zombies.” Betsie pronounced the sentence with finality. “Skeletons, werewolves, ghosts. Headless vampires.”

“Headless vampire? How’s he going to eat?” Zuglah had been trying to lead the conversation back around to the Pank, but he kept getting drawn in.

“They’re not coming to eat, Zuglah. Just kill.” That made sense. It was an apocalypse after all.

He had eaten at least five or six plates of food. He didn’t even order them, they just kept bringing more. He didn’t mind. Betsie ate a big bowl of leaves and veggies, explaining that she had given up meat recently. Plus they really didn’t have the kind of meat she liked anyway, which was field mice and voles and such. “Garden snakes, owls. A nice fat squirrel,” he agreed. He had lived rough for a couple of years, before he met the Swamp Hag.

Supper had come and gone, and they still sat here drinking wine and talking about the Five Apocalypses. The entire school had come through and seen the young Troll in the bloodstained, torn robes stuffing his face with the Driole matron from the third floor. He would go introduce himself to his new bunkmates in due time, but for now he figured let them gossip. He was enjoying the conversation, even if the relevant parts had been very few.

“I had no idea there’d been five,” he said. “I only knew about the Pank.” And Hews of course, but he wasn’t trying to bring that up.

“You would, of course. Being with Caldwell.” She was noticeably drunk now, and Zuglah realized that he needed to help her to her room.

“Yes,” he said. “Jackla.” He had no idea who she was, but if he could use it for a little fishing…

“Exactly.” She put her head down on the table. Zuglah sprang up. It was definitely time to go. “Leave it to The Viz to marry the scariest woman in all the Planes. He needs someone fuzzy to keep him warm at night.” That was new. Who the heck was The Viz?

As soon as they got back to the floor, a Halfling and a Tauren came over to relieve him of the drunken matron, fussing over her and hissing at him. The hobbit was useless for supporting the Driole, but she made up for it with her excellent hissing.

The common area had a bunch of Elves in it.

There were eight of them in total, six men and two women. They were all wizards. He found that out when he wandered over to introduce himself. “You look a sight,” remarked Stuglas Stagrather, the group’s wanna-be leader. He smelled like a High Elf, and he had silver hair that fell straight down. The girl he was sharing a couch with was also a High Elf, if the cold, ethereal cast of her scent was any indication. Her hair was a deep copper red, but swept back at the temples and held in place by a diadem. She introduced herself as Chayah Runsfaster, and she was one of the two highest wizards at the school.

“Have you been crawling? Where was it? I’m shaba seyzal, and I’ve only ever run Spellman’s Caverns. My father is paying to have me power leveled. It’s so tedious and humiliating. If I have to kill one more Kobold, I’ll quit Wizardry and take up gardening. It looks like you had fun, though. Stuglas, move over.”

She spoke nonstop. Stuglas looked around in annoyance, then stood up. He strode over to the tall, broad-shouldered Wood Elf sitting directly across from Chayah, and motioned him out of his seat. The man sighed, but eventually moved chairs, although he made a great show out of taking his time.

Zuglah sat down on the couch. “It was very small. Like a three room dungeon. Called The Stanish Crypt.”

She gushed, “Amazing. You have to take me, like right away. I don’t care if I don’t get any exp. I just want to kill something fair and square for once.”

Zuglah shrugged. “I’m not sure if I can take you there or not. I don’t think so. You see, when I went in I guess I triggered an Instance.”

“WHAT??”

Chayah shouted so loud that Zuglah bounded to his feet, ready to blink in any direction. He slowly sat back down, feeling foolish.

“Oh my word. We have to go back. You have to finish that instance. What if there’s more?”

Stolen story; please report.

“There definitely is. Right before I fought Lord Stanish-”

“You what??” Zuglah jumped again. One of the other Elves, the other girl, had pulled her chair up closer. In fact, they all had.

Calming himself a little, he continued, “Right before he and I fought, he told me where to find something called a gronnibox I think? I need to retrieve something there to defeat a creature called The Tar Witch, and free the Stanish Family from a curse.”

“So what happened? When you fought Stanish?” It was one of the men this time, the Wood Elf, he thought.

“Should I just start at the beginning?” He wasn’t sure, but that seemed the best way, since they were just going to keep diverting him with questions otherwise.

“For pity sake, yes.” Stuglas said. He appeared as caught up as the rest. It seemed to Zuglah like these Elves were starved for some real challenges.

He told them the story, starting from the moment that he walked in. How his teacher had told him that he was in an Instance. He told them all about Ulbarth, and how he had somehow gotten his wagon deep inside a dungeon. Then he told them about the fight with the Spectres, and how he had gotten so bloody by exchanging blows with one.

“I guess I just got excited,” he laughed. “It was my first time in a fight, and my first time doing anything as a wizard. I could have used spells, but I dunno, I just wanted to use my quarterstaff.”

“You really used your claws on a Spectre? Like, a real Spectre? Big floaty guy, goat skull for a head? Sometimes a raven?”

“They didn’t seem to do much. His sure did though, right through my Mage Armor. And my face.” He laughed, but nobody else did. They were looking at his robes.

After that he told them about the three Shadow Knights, as Caldwell had called them, and about trying to sneak up on them. He confessed that Redda Mo had pretty much saved his life.

“Who’s Redda Mo?” Stuglas asked.

“Hang on,” Chayah said to him, then turned to Zuglah. “You wouldn’t have died though, right? I mean, why wouldn’t your teacher step in at that point?”

Zuglah shrugged. “We had The Lady with us, so it was fine. You know, Lady? Live, Damn You!”

Chayah was horrified. “That doesn’t make it okay. I mean, you were seriously eoan sazal? How is that even possible? I don’t think I could take three tier four shadow knights now! And your teacher was just going to let them kill you? That’s horrible.”

“No, he was just going to let it end however it was meant to. If he hadn’t, I never would have won that fight. Even though I guess technically Redda Mo won it.”

At this point, there really was no avoiding it. He took the rolled up Bag of Holding out of his potions bag and unrolled it. He untied the silver chord, opened the bag, and hauled out Redda Mo. There were a lot of appreciative murmurs, and then Stuglas started talking very quickly in High Elf. At least, Zuglah assumed it was quickly, but maybe for them he was slow. Redda Mo replied at around the same speed, so it all sounded like speed-gibberish.

The Wood Elf, whose name was Denton Fask, laughed and said, “I like your runestick. He’s funny. He said you’re crazy.”

Zuglah couldn’t blame him. It only happened yesterday, but he felt like it was surreal, now. When he resumed the story, Redda Mo embellished shamelessly with details that only served to make him seem more heroic. He started to feel self conscious. “Not only was he a gyiol sazal Shadow Knight, he had a witch buffing him. I don’t think they were ready for an attack like that though.” Redda Mo laughed.

He thought that when he finished telling the story they would lose interest in him. But they had questions. How much loot was there? Why wasn’t he at least tier three or four by now? Who was the witch? Stuglas wanted to know how he could believe someone that he just met, trust that he had an expensive Live potion on him and was willing to use it on a complete stranger?

“We weren’t strangers. We’d been making potions together for days. We even bought some phoenix teeth and some God’s Tears in Bakerton.” Stuglas looked at him blankly, so he pulled a vial of Lady out of his bag without looking. “For Lady?”

Stuglas snorted. “You made that? It’s probably not even real.” Zuglah calmly set it down on the floor in front of himself, so that anyone who wanted to could Identify it. Chayah gasped and snatched it up from the ground.

“You made this? That’s incredible. You have more, right? Will you sell me this one? I’ll give you five platinum for it right now.” All of the Elves started clamoring. Not one of them was willing to outbid Chayah exactly, but they did all let it be known that they would pay even more than the outrageous sum of five plats… for the second vial on offer. Elves, it seemed, set a great store by hierarchy.

He gently plucked the potion from her fingers. She frowned delicately, but did not protest. “If you are ever in need of a potion, you’ll have it. Any of you.” He stood. He hadn’t meant to stay with these Elves quite so long. He was starting to get tired, and he still hadn’t even met his bunkmates. He retrieved Redda Mo from the lap of the other girl wizard, thanked everybody, and left.

“Zuglah Glun.” Just as he reached the barracks door, Chayah caught up to him. “I don’t know where you came from, but I’m glad you’re here. Can we have lunch together tomorrow?” He was startled by the question.

“Uh, maybe? Tomorrow is my first day so I don’t know what’s in store for me. It was nice meeting you.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he was already slipping inside.

His new bunkmates were waiting for him. All of them.