The smell of burnt flesh still lingered two hundred feet in the air, and I watched in horror as the untethered barbarian launched herself over the ledge of our airship. Much taller than myself, and normally as slender as any full-blooded elf or human woman, the half-elf had only moments earlier been imbued with Ruby’s last Scroll of Enlarge Person, and her enormous form hurtled toward the undead dragon below us, greatsword still firmly in hand.
From when Skyler jumped to the moment of impact, only seconds had passed, but I didn’t realize how long I had previously been holding my breath until it exploded from my chest as I watched her land squarely upon the creature’s rotting shoulders. It didn’t take long for her to gain her bearings as the dragon began to list under the additional weight, and she quickly hefted the sword above her head.
With a blood-curdling bellow, she swung the blade with her exquisite strength, completely shearing off the dragon’s left wing like a hot knife through winter-lard.
The beast roared in anger as it spiraled out of control, and a rider shimmered into view, just behind Skyler, but short of divine intervention, neither rider nor barbarian could do anything about their imminent collision with the hard-packed desert sands below.
“Grimey,” Ruby whispered inside my head using one of her cantrips, “what’s happening?”
“Skyler just...she just..." I struggled to answer her, even though answering didn't require actual speech. “I think Skyler just died to save us.” Though I was abled to spit the words out, the lump in my throat endured no matter how hard I tried to swallow it.
I could hear Ruby’s big feet pounding up the stairs from below deck, the only safe place on the ship for a Sorceress, vulnerable and drained of all spells but Invisibility from rescuing a tiny, bomb-throwing goblin with an attitude, among other things, from The City of Shade only an hour ago.
Her silky robes materialized first, but the rest of the husky half-orc quickly shimmered into view as she crested the top of the stairs and rushed to look over the edge, her light skin flushing a deeper forest-green. She was still wearing her harness, and the slack tether coiled neatly around her feet. The sorceress wasn't very strong, physically, but it was within the mental arena she shined.
The woman was meticulous enough for all of us. Just ask Hemi, the most recent victim of her sneak cleanings as the spell-caster leapt from the shadows, the cantrip of Prestidigitation already half-way out of her mouth. The poor boy lost out on all the grime and stink a teenage halfing desperately clings to as that magic scrubber dug the dirt from every nook and crevice. The poor kid nearly sparkled.
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The trembling Halfling to her right gripped the railing with white knuckles. Despite his size, the kid was useful. He had a knack with picking locks, disappearing into thin air, and putting arrows in targets, but his uncanny skills weren’t enough to convince our beloved yet impulsive fighter to hold back any longer, and the smile she flashed as she ran across the deck was the same grin that stretched from ear to ear when lesser fighters worried each other over facing the eternal sleep.
But I never thought it would go down like this, riding so closely upon the tail of what should’ve been a celebration of achieving the impossible. Of entering and escaping a city that doesn’t exist and doing so with every soul still intact within their living bodies.
“Ruby?” his voice was a harsh shout the furious winds tried to steal, “Mara? Can we save her? What do we do, just tell me what to do!”
I had never seen the boy yell like that, and I locked eyes with Ruby, but we didn’t need her cantrip to convey to each other that Hemi wasn’t looking for an answer, and before any tears could leak from his sorrowful eyes, he pressed his face into the skirts of Ruby’s robes with a single sob as an audible boom echoed up from the ground below. The rumbling tremors radiated outward from the impact, clouds of dust billowing up into the dusky sky, and Captain Krek swung The Wanderer in a wide arc, momentarily blocking the scene from view.
Ruby bent down to console the boy, gently patting his head in one of the rare moments the halfling’s face wasn’t buried within the shadows of his hood, and Krek soon appeared, calling to the doubled over half-orc even though she hadn’t said a word.
“Aye, Ruby. Yeh don’t have to ask me twice,” he yelled and went back to the wheel, shouting orders at his crew. The two usually communicated with a set of Pearls of Whispering, two plump and shiny deep-ocean pearls each wore like an earring, capable of transmitting their words over an astounding range.
As the ship began its descent, Captain Krek’s voice rumbled with its melodious burr, deep as a canyon. “The Wanderer never leaves a lad or a lass behind.”
The airship's crew chanted their approval until the pounding in my head was too much to take, and I went below deck to await our arrival at the grisly scene upon my cozy little cot. As I sat there, I realized more than one coicidence had led us to this very moment, and to better understand how this fact only became obvious at this very moment, let me bring you back to when the Red Wizards sent a letter to hundreds of cities across the Forgotten Realms, addressed to only the bravest and most capable alive.