I wake up, groggy, to a fuzzy world that is completely brown. Once Myrddin moves his head though, everything sharpens into an almost painful colorful detail. The room is a lot messier than it had been. The bowl of stones and dice is upended all over the floor, the flowerpot is broken, and I now occupy the previously neatly made bed. Faladel looks vaguely pissed from his position on a nearby chair, and the DM is sprouting a solid looking lump on his head and a hoof-shaped bruise on his face as he adds a few leaves from a selection on the table to a nasty smelling concoction over the fire.
“Drink this up.” He says briskly, handing me a steaming glass of the lumpy brown stuff. “We have to purge the last of the poisons from your stomach.”
“The what now?!” I exclaim, more than a little startled. Then my memories start returning to me and I think back over the sensations I felt. Dizziness, inability to concentrate or control my body properly, and then passing out. “Actually,” I say, frowning. “Poison makes a lot of sense. But how am I supposed to trust that you haven’t poisoned me with this ‘medicine’ as well?”
“I’ll have you know I’m proficient with a healers’ kit!” The Librarian looks affronted, and is already back to digging around in his piles of leaves on the table. “The mushrooms were just a bad nature roll!”
“Don’t worry.” Faladel says grimly. “I watched him make it. I insisted he only use ingredients I was familiar with, and he rolled pretty high. I think that means we’re good.”
“And although your interference gave me advantage, the limitation of ingredients made it twice as difficult.” The Librarian grumbled at Faladel, and then turning to me continued in an accusatory manner, “Anyway, you gave us all a fright passing out like that! Why did you have to go and roll so low on a saving throw?” I open my mouth to protest, but he waves me off and continues. “Nevermind, you can’t answer that I suppose. We can’t change the rolls of the dice, we can only rollplay their outcomes to the best of our ability. And your friend here did a pretty good job of that.” He shoots a look at Faladel that is half admiration and half– was that fear? I blink, startled. But Faladel is moving closer to me, and doesn’t even notice his expression.
“Are you okay, Briareth?” He asks me worriedly. “You should probably drink it up.” He pushes the mug of hot stinky liquid into my hands. “He says it will rid your stomach of any remaining toxins.”
I glare at the offending brown substance. It looks slimy. I hate drinking slimy things. Looking back up at Faladel, I ask curiously, “What happened while I was out? And,” I add glancing around the room confused, “how did Myrddin manage to sneak out without me noticing?” I consider the possibility of hallucinogens in the mushrooms. “Wait, was he even here in the first place?”
“Of course he was here.” The Librarian says, waving a one hand dismissively at me while the other puts a poultice carefully on the lump on his head. “Faladel Mithrandir certainly doesn’t have fists the shape of hoofprints.”
“Did he cause the goose egg though?” I ask, looking pointedly at the lump.
Faladel coughs slightly, his face a little red. And the Librarian looks at me confusedly. “Did I perhaps misjudge the severity of your injuries? Elves cannot lay eggs, Briareth Herbalar. You know this.”
I’m so embarrassed by how he misunderstood me, I take a gulp of the smelly brown concoction just to hide my face. I immediately put it down and gag. It’s just as disgusting as I suspected it would be.
“He meant the bump.” Faladel corrects the Librarian eventually as I continue contorting my face to more accurately describe my utter disgust at the taste. It’s like mashed worms, raw eggs, and asparagus all mixed together. I hate asparagus. “And yes.” Faladel continues, face still slightly reddened, “I did cause it. I thought he had poisoned you on purpose Briareth. Things got messy for a bit until we sorted out an understanding.” He smiles cheerily at me, “But now he’s willing to take us to the passage to the outside world without further delay to make up for the misunderstanding. Just as soon as you’re well enough to go.”
I gag again. The taste of that nasty concoction still hasn’t left my mouth, and worse yet, it feels like the undead worm paste and the asparagus have teamed up to get their revenge on me for swallowing them. They twist and swirl around in my stomach and I contort my mouth, swallowing down the saliva that keeps trying and failing to wash that miserable taste away. Suddenly my stomach lurches and my eyes widen as I recognize the sensation and the true source behind the saliva.
“Bucket!” I gasp out.
The Librarian, quick as ever to pick up on things, shoves a bucket into my hands and I empty the contents of my stomach into it.
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It isn’t until the next day that I’m feeling well enough and the Librarian has declared that I ‘purged’ enough to travel safely. Faladel is still giving me worried glances as we shoulder our baggage. But the Librarian promises it isn’t a long trip, so I put on my stoic face and prepare to face it.
Although the Librarian is right– it wasn’t a long trip, just most of the morning and afternoon– I still ride mostly slumped over on Myrddin’s neck. I feel almost how people describe being seasick. I’ve never felt the sensation myself, but the rolling, stomach roiling gait has to be somewhat similar right? I’m sure that if I had had anything more substantial than porridge in my stomach, I would have puked all over Myrddin’s lovely mane, and he would have been quite upset with me, and wouldn’t have made the ride half as gentle as it was. And I know he was trying to be gentle, I could tell in the manner that he carefully, ponderously placed his feet. It wasn’t his fault that my stomach took umbrage with being on horseback. It was the fault of the exceedingly unrepentant Librarian who led us and had given me bad mushrooms in the first place.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“You won’t see me eating any of his home cooked meals again.” I mutter to Myrddin, who whinnies back in agreement as the target of our combined malice finally calls out, “We’re here!”
Here is in fact, nowhere. At least, nowhere that looks special or important or a gate to another world. No shimmering magical portal; no mysterious signs pointing to a ripple in the air and spelling out “Adventure This Way” In strange, mystical, and barely comprehensible handwriting; not even a carefully designed pile of stones on the ground in the shape of a giant rune.
Just piles of rubble, a good supply of straggly bushes clinging to life, and a Librarian staring sadly at a hill of rocks.
“You’ll have to leave the horses here. Or you can entrust them to me to take care of, I suppose.” He says despondently, still not looking at any of us. He had ridden with Faladel and Ethiel, but not even the horse’s helpful nudge can cheer him up now.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, begrudgingly, still not quite forgiving him for the concoction he forced upon me. I’ve forgiven him for the mushrooms, but that nasty asparagus tasting brown stuff will take much longer to forget.
“There used to be a tree here. But it’s been so long– I was so lost in my books–” The Librarian’s voice falters, fades, and dies for a second. Eventually he whispers. “Its stump is long gone, even its roots have decayed. I didn’t even notice.” He keeps his face turned away from all of us as his voice strengthens and he says “You will have to dig to find the tunnel. No doubt, it is long since caved in. I will guide you. It is good we have the horses, they will be most useful in moving the stone.”
I look at the hill of rocks he’s staring at. They certainly look collapsed. And if we move too many without creating some sort of support structure, it looks like they would certainly collapse again. “This could take a while.” I say, starting to voice my concerns aloud.
“Perhaps.” The librarian admits ruefully, and then tacks on, “I should have packed us dinner.”
Faladel glances between us, looking slightly confused. “You both do realize magic could make this much easier right? There are spells for this sort of thing.”
“There are?” I turn to stare at him, I knew he knew a lot more magic theory than me, he’s sort of a nerd that way, but to think he would take it as far as researching construction?
“Definitely. Building things normally isn’t the pursuit of scholars and wizards, and hiring a tradesperson can be expensive, so they created spells to help them with such things.” Faladel says, standing straight eyes far away as if he’s reciting from a book. He blinks slightly, coming back to himself. “I’d try to cast one myself but…” He makes a little self deprecating shrug, and I nod in mute understanding. Being a magical dud sucks sometimes. Well, all the times for Faladel, but sometimes it’s just really inconvenient for the rest of us as well. Particularly because I would rather knit hats and booties for all the horses in the stable than study something as boring as how to use construction spells of all things.
“Perhaps you could teach me?” I suggest half-heartedly, already dreading an affirmative.
Faladel shakes his head slowly. “There was some dispute over the ethics of even using such spells on a minor scale due to guild jobs being lost, which is why the book’s author hesitated to provide much detail. I was able to understand the basics after studying them for quite some time, but adapting that to teaching? And, even if I could, you certainly aren’t my ideal student Briareth.” He smiles to soften the blow slightly, but I still clutch at my chest and adopt a wounded melodramatic look. “I was hoping” Faladel continues, a grin at my antics twitching the corner of his mouth as it tries vainly to escape, “one of you might have known how to do it.”
“Roll persuasion.” The Librarian breaks in. Faladel, obediently, retrieves his mahogany-colored dice from his pocket and rolls the twenty-sided one onto a nearby rock. A 17 faces up when it finally skids to a stop, a hair's-breadth from the edge. The Librarian studies us with his gleaming silver eyes. “I don’t know the spells of which you speak, princeling, but I do have a few tricks up my own sleeves that might help.” Reaching into his right hand deep into his particularly voluminous left sleeve, he concentrates, and pulls out a glowing blue semi-translucent hand. Then he does the same on the right, and again on the left, until a grand total of fifteen hands float freely in the air, unattached to any part of him, yet seemingly under his control nonetheless. I gape at one openly, and reach to touch it. It slaps away my curious hands.
“Many hands make light work, isn’t that how the saying goes?” The Librarian asks of no one in particular, paying absolutely no attention to my reddened hand and narrowed eyes as I try to stare down the hand that had slapped me–a difficult task seeing as it doesn’t have any eyes. He just claps his normal hands and says, “Now, time to get to work I believe. If all goes well, we shall have the tunnel cleared up by nightfall.”
And all does go well– mostly well at least. Oh, my hands are very sore by the end of it, and I tore my jerkin on one of the nastier clinging bushes, but once the Librarian stabilizes the rocks by extending the root systems of nearby plants and growing a few new ones in key portions, things go quite swiftly. Faladel tries to ask the Librarian about the spells he used to grow the plants, but he is quite taciturn on the subject, and instead shoes us further down the tiny tunnel we’ve created into the hill of rubble. It’s small enough that I find myself leaning over so far it might just be easier to just walk on my hands and knees. But then I would have even more difficulty turning around to carry the rocks back out the slowly lengthening tunnel. So I just stay in my hunched over position, carting rocks back and forth until finally– something interesting happens.
I go to dig another rock out from the excavation site, but as soon as my fingers touch the stone, my vision turns into a scalding white flash and I’m left blinking– hands outstretched in a small meadow of flowers. A stiff breeze slaps me in the face with cool fresh air; air that smells of water, and salt, and life. I blink, completely disoriented, trying to understand my new surroundings.