The following week, the pair take off on their besoms to fly to another market, a larger-scale fair outside of their lord's domain. They hope to be able to finance the rest of their attempt to retake the toll station by selling hoops, arrowheads, horseshoes and alcohol.
Obviously, with the increase in traffic from and to the fair, more highwaymen, both ground-bound and airborne, attempt to prey on the travelers. One of these bands rides a flying carpet carrying three people dressed and armed like ordinary merchants, alongside a few barrels ostensibly carrying merchandise. That carpet appears to be losing control and even yells for aid, making themselves heard from much further away than normal, while it rains.
"There, a carpet appears to be losing control! We need to stand ready to rescue its occupants and contents!" Seloniel warns Janick, flying close to her.
"Stay on your guard, it might be a trap" Janick continues to fly on an intercept course.
With a puncheon underslung to the besom, Janick is still some distance away, but she isn't flying as fast as Seloniel because of the puncheon dragging her down. The carpet's occupants are panicking as the carpet appears headed to crash into a tree.
And yet, the carpet narrowly misses the tree and, when Seloniel gets within point-blank range of the carpet, the leader of the carpet then yells at her, with Janick behind the carpet:
"Stand and deliver! Your money or your life!" the bandit leader taunts Seloniel.
"Never!" Seloniel yells at them.
We're fighting a wind wizard and two more bandits on the carpet. It goes without saying that we should capture the carpet intact, Janick tries to think of a way to fight the occupants without having to set the carpet on fire. I can't cast an alcohol cloud, the enemy will just clear it with wind. And make the sky more turbulent for us as well...
Meanwhile, an archer on the carpet is clearly aiming at Janick's puncheon, in hopes that the barrel contains explosives or some other substance that could spell trouble. This forces her to fly underneath the carpet, in hopes that she can avoid the archer's shots, at least for the time being.
Seloniel, on the other hand, flies around the carpet in search of the right angle to take out one of the occupants with a well-placed fire bolt without making the carpet catch fire. All the while she needs to dodge whirlpools thrown at her in seemingly random directions. Yet, as she engages in evasive maneuvers all over the place, she feels like it's a better choice to get overhead, into a dark cloud, and then cast a firebolt spell aimed at the wind wizard.
But it's then that the third bandit, who, up to this point, didn't seem to do anything, starts realizing their would-be prey can actually fight. So while the bandit in question takes control of the carpet from the wind mage, he's more aggressive in flying the carpet than the wind wizard was. In a brusque evasive maneuver, he manages to hit Janick in the head with the carpet, who was flying very close to it.
That sends her into a tailspin. from which she struggles to recover, as if her own blood content is building up. But at the same time, it makes the archer narrowly misses Janick because the carpet's unstable flight trajectory messed up his aim.
Here's my chance to use alcohol magic to get them drunk! Janick starts thinking once she is back in full control of her besom, while Seloniel's firebolt narrowly misses both her and the trailing edge of the carpet.
"Alcohol snare!" Janick shouts in the direction of the carpet's passengers, while waving her hand making a gripping gesture.
At this moment, the three occupants of the carpet are caught in green, magically growing vines with teeth sinking alcohol into their bloodstreams. So while the wind wizard keeps trying to repel them with magic, as well as the vines, both the magical vines and their sharply increasing drunkenness restrict the bandits' movements. Which makes the bandit in control of the carpet vomit.
As the bandit in control of the carpet vomits, Seloniel casts another firebolt spell at his wide-open mouth. Which destroys his airways, causes him to asphyxiate, as well as causes internal hemorrhages in the areas of his body hit by the firebolt spell.
By then, the magical vines disintegrate, the other two people on the carpet start trembling, as well as getting blackouts. In so doing, all three bandits start falling off the carpet, which also loses altitude. Starting with the asphyxiating bandit, who falls off first.
While the asphyxiating bandit falls on the ground, some distance away from the main road, and is left for dead, the wind wizard, on the other hand, is too mentally impaired to attempt using magic to soften his fall. And he appears to be falling dangerously close to the main road.
Yet, since people falling from flying carpets aren't a common occurrence, people on the main road curiously watch the whole scene happening, as the drunk wind wizard crashes headfirst on the ground. At least his death is quick, a merchant sighs while the wind wizard's lifeless body lies roadside.
Finally, the bandit archer, falling last from the carpet, crashes into a tree rather than into the ground, on the opposite side of the road.
"Help! Help!" the archer bandit yells from a treetop, having sustained injuries from the fall.
The carpet gets caught into a treetop in the vicinity. A carpet the archer can't fly because he can't use magic. (In fact the two best-known symbols of the magic-using world are brooms and carpets). While Janick attempts to recover the carpet, Seloniel answers the distress of the injured bandit.
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"You have been terrorizing travelers in this region; give me a good reason to spare you!" Seloniel yells at the drunken bandit while her besom is stationary.
"I guess, I might be forced to spend the rest of my life begging..." the bandit answers, his voice still affected by alcohol. "I surrender!" the bandit hiccups later.
Or maybe, if we bring him to our Lord for judging, he might decide to have him fight the electricity-stealing dragon with us, in exchange for a pardon if he survives. Chumzurk sent four criminals to their deaths with him when he fought the dragon, she thinks of what would be done with him once the fair ends. Otherwise, our executioner, the electricity wizard, will just zap him to death. I guess, I can always use magic to make some shackles... Seloniel then uses a pair of old horseshoes to shape shackles to bind the bandit archer: one for the hands and one for the feet.
Meanwhile, Janick wastes no time getting the empty puncheon as well as her besom onto the mostly intact carpet to get it to fly to Seloniel's position.
"I hereby declare your flying carpet seized! And your bow, too!" Janick realizes the bandit archer wields a recurve greatbow that's even longer than she is tall.
The shackled bandit lies flat on the pair's new carpet, and they then continue to fly on it until they make it to the town where the fair is held. Still under the effects of the alcohol magic, he's falling asleep as well as blacking out. However, they both have a feeling that he could survive this ordeal.
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Upon arriving at the town where the fair takes place, some time later, Seloniel feels like she needs to sleep, but at the same time, they feel like time is getting shorter and shorter to fund the entire operation of retaking the toll station.
"We only have maybe three days tops here. Maybe even two. We need to make these two or three days count, and, to me, it means I MUST charge them dead center, as many gallons as I can get!" Janick starts yelling at Seloniel, excited at the prospect of marketing magical wine as a limited edition.
"Do you have any idea of what makes the sale of magical wine at a large fair different from selling the same magical wine at your run-of-the-mill weekly market day?" Seloniel retorts. "For me, this means more competition for arrowheads, horseshoes, hoops and rivets"
I might be wondering if the penchant of the wine-drinking crowd for novelty wines would be in my favor or not in fairs that size. And, of course, I mustn't discount the possibility of other alcohol wizards being present as well, planning on doing the same thing as I do, Janick pauses to think about what awaits her at the fair. What previously made me a smashing success on the market was that magical wine was novel to the clientele. Will I be able to replicate that success? I know that, regardless of outcome, this entire quest of retaking the toll station is going to cost me an arm and a leg.
"No?" Janick starts trembling.
"If I don't know any better, I'd say that it would be the last time you would be able to sell magical wine at Kaeshana ice wine prices for a while" Seloniel warns her.
"Then to make the most out of it, I need to focus only on wine at the fair, one gallon at a time!" Janick keeps yelling.
They proceed to spend the night at a local inn. The pair leaves the prisoner in their room when the time has come for the trading day to open at the fair, securely fastened to the bed.
As per usual, fairs are filled with entertainers of all kinds: minstrels, acrobats, dancers, and the like. And merchants, too, selling items people usually don't get on regular market days at home.
However, this time, Seloniel is some distance away from Janick since this fair has the merchants organized by the merchandise they're selling. This means Janick is surrounded by other alcohol merchants, and likewise Seloniel with other blacksmiths, many of whom are fire wizards like her.
"Fresh, magical wine!" Janick hollers right after having cast the spell to fill the first batch in her puncheon. "Get your fresh, magical wine while supplies last!"
One of the customers starts drinking the wine right in front of her, and even compares her white wine to the latest vintages of wines that customer recently drank after having paid for a half-gallon of it.
"This magical wine is reminiscent of the best in the latest vintage of Kaeshana ice wine! Too good to be true!" a euphoric customer exclaims in front of her, after sampling her magical wine.
Seloniel acted several times as if I was somehow gouging customers with magical wine, and now a customer claims my magical wine is almost identical to the very vintage she kept comparing the prices I charged for it? Janick ruminates while magical wine lovers, and, apparently, people who couldn't get enough Kaeshana ice wine, line up at her stall.
The contents of the puncheon are then sold in a matter of minutes. Which forces her to refill it faster than she estimated going in. Also, her BC goes up after casting the spell that refills her puncheon.
Janick then starts hollering incoherently, as if drunk, about how people who like Kaeshana ice wine would love her magical booze. This causes the customers to laugh and make their wait a little more tolerable. At the same time, other alcohol wizards instead sell ale or mead, but all of these end up getting more drunk with each refill of their own casks.
And yet the spectacle of alcohol wizards getting more drunk with every drop they sell (the ale-selling wizard is noticeably less drunk than the others) makes a jester or two unhappy. One of these jesters throws a bell at Janick, but, numbed by alcohol, or more accurately, the side effects of casting powerful alcohol magic, she doesn't realize something has hit her. She's about to collapse and vomit on the ground when she's casting another spell to refill her puncheon.
Meanwhile, Nyagullah, who, like so many bards, travels across the land to perform in marketplaces, notices something is wrong with Janick. He then looks for Seloniel who, by then, has clearly visible signs of burns on her hands.
"It seems like Janick has collapsed on the ground; I had to warn the customers that once the puncheon is empty, there won't be any more magical wine left!" Nyagullah warns her.
"Janick! Damn her! She cast one alcohol spell too many!" Seloniel starts cursing the alcohol witch's greed, then closes the stall after paying the excise taxes.
All three of them return to the inn, but once Janick is back in her room, they realize the bandit archer urinated and vomited in their absence. Seloniel then casts a vacuum spell to clean up the room, while Nyagullah puts the barrel in place before returning to the fair.
"OK, we leave this town at dawn and return with the bandit to our lord!" Seloniel warns.
She does so realizing that Janick casting alcohol magic over and over made the alcohol witch lose consciousness. She then counts the money earned by each at the fair, and it's clear to them they have enough money to fund the recapture of the toll station. And pay for hired help for a few days if needed.
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Before leaving the inn the next day, Janick awakens and regains consciousness:
"Where... am I?" Janick asks the other two occupants, a little dizzy.
"At the inn" Seloniel starts answering before scolding the alcohol witch over alcohol magic. "Look where your greed and lust for casting alcohol magic led you! You blacked out filling your puncheon with magical wine! And several times over!"
"How much money... did we... make?" a Janick hiccups as she is still hung over.
"Enough to start getting our stone-headed maces and get any additional help we deem necessary!"