“We have a problem.”

I burst through the door to find Kevin helping Topher test the pull on the bow. They seemed to have reconciled.

“There’s a guy downstairs saying we were the ones raising the dead last night.”

Kevin’s face dropped into hardened annoyance as he moved past me. “I’ll see what’s up,” he sighed. Just before leaving the room, he brought a hand to his chest and whispered, “For eyes are deceitful.” As if yanking off a sheet that was over his form, he pulled his hand up, making his features give way to that of a middle-aged, balding human. He turned with a slight air of smugness. “Be back soon.”

Topher’s mouth was agape as he watched him leave. “When did he learn that?”

“Last night,” I said, gathering my gear. “Kevin and I are level three, now. I take it you’re not?”

He blinked at me a couple times. “How did you know you were third level?”

“Well, Kevin figured out how to do Arcane Trickster stuff, and I started accidentally insulting him with Cutting Words. That and we had similar dreams last night.”

“…What dream?” He asked, quietly apprehensive.

I oriented myself with a quick breath and remembered. “Falling onto a wall and having to continue falling on one side or another, each choice a different archetype—“

“Damn it!” He stomped a massive foot into the floor. “I had the same dream - only I couldn’t get my first or second choice. Like I was blocked, or something.”

I stopped preparing for a second to put a hand on his shoulder. “If it helps, I know exactly how you feel. We should get going, though.” I listed my weapons as I gathered them: Longsword, dagger, shortbow, check. Lute, check. Topher had sat himself on the bed and withdrew into his own thoughts. “What’d you end up with?”

“Champion.”

“Hey, that’s not too bad,” I consoled, insistently shoving his pack at him. “Double the critical hits, at the very least. And as a half-orc, your crits are super-good.”

He wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, but with Eldritch Knight or Battle Master I’d at least get more options, you know? Spells or maneuvers. Now my only options are swing or swing.”

“Gear up now, complain later,” I snapped, instantly regretting it. Topher doesn’t usually let things bug him - being dismissive was the same as being hurtful. I sat next to him. “Sorry. Being a Champion might be boring from a tabletop standpoint, but this is as real as it gets - your options are only limited by your imagination,” I reasoned. “You’ve played enough to know that fighters have the greatest turnover of any class - most people who play them can’t figure out how to use them beyond stand-and-deliver combat. You’re not one of those people. If anyone can turn limited options into creative results, it’s you.”

He just stared at the floor, pondering, so I went back to getting my things. After a bit he gave a snort of consideration. “Well, nothing to do about it now.” He started donning his armor.

Two knocks and the door opened. Kevin entered, incognito. “So… yeah, that guy’s basically a character assassin,” he said. “Says he’s an investigator from Colme, but I think he’s trying to get the town riled up to lynch us.”

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Who was this guy? “Anyone up for a quick getaway?” I asked, ready to go. “Someone else can carry Jenn this time. Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s a lot heavier than I was expecting.”

“Sounds good,” said Topher.

Kevin pointed to the window. “Should she be out in this storm?”

Crap. Judging by the beating on the window, it was coming down harder than before. She was in no shape to move about in the rain.

“Should I see if she’s up for it?” asked Kevin.

“Not looking like that,” said Topher.

Damn it. “Kevin, did you get the impression that the guy is known in town? Or is he a stranger?”

“He’s not known - he kept saying crap like how he’s an authority, like he had to convince people. It was working, though.”

Topher had finally started gathering his things. “Seem odd to anyone that as soon as Minerva stopped chasing us, we get this guy?” he asked.

Kevin folded his arms. “Think they’re working together? Like, she knows she can’t get to us without her superiors being upset, so she sent this guy to just take care of us?”

I shook my head. “I doubt she’d do something overtly illegal - if this guy had authority, he’d just arrest us, wouldn’t he? Plus, she knows that we didn’t have time to set up any sort of necromancy on the scale that happened. I don’t think she’d be willing to let the real culprit go just to get us.” My headache was slowly receding, giving me the opportunity to think. “But you’re right, Topher, we just got one bad guy traded for another, and that’s worrying. It’s like the DM was trying to get us to do something, but when we didn’t take the bait, he switched tactics.” I shook my head - I didn’t have time to figure out the big picture. “What does this guy want? Why would he try to frame—“

The words came out of my mouth, and I had to double check how stupid I was being. “Oh, damn it,” I groaned, things falling into place in my mind. “Alright; is it a safe bet that this guy is trying to frame us to cover up his own involvement in the necromancy?”

“Or he was hired to cover up someone else’s,” shrugged Topher.

I nodded, then turned to Kevin. “And you’re pretty sure he’s not from here?”

“I’d call it a safe bet,” he said.

“Good.” I pulled out my lute. My magic limb descended into my soul - it’s shell was colder and murkier than ever. Was it tied to my mood? Whatever; I needed to concentrate. I instinctually grabbed what I needed, but surprised myself as I retrieved it - or rather, them. There were two emotions. I hadn’t realized it until now, but my magic limb did seem a bit, for lack of a better word, stronger. It certainly had gotten enough exercise. One of the emotions was calm, which I recognized instantly. The other… had a shifting center of mass, like part of it would charge from one side to the other. It also felt as though it were forever expanding, though it never outgrew the grip of my magic. I finally identified it.

Courage.

They were separate for only an instant after being dragged through the murk, as if contact with the outside of my soul caused a reaction. They merged. I was only holding one emotion, a seamless combination of Calm and Courage.

Confidence.

I closed my eyes. “Before silence takes lease.” The confidence began stretching and contracting like taffy, elongating until it stretched up to… some part of my brain - not a conscious part, somewhere I wasn’t generally aware of. I felt the smooth wood of the lute in my hands, the taught strings. Strumming a quick melody, the confidence snapped onto my brain, gilding it.

“Enhance Ability?” asked Kevin.

I nodded, which threatened to shake the confidence from my mind and break the spell. It took a marginal amount of concentration to maintain it. “The first thing - the very first thing - we did when we came here was rescue a baby from some people who were abusing this Ware stuff. Eventually we find another place that has evidence of the Ware being abused. That sounds like the beginnings of a questline to me. And right now we have a guy downstairs who at the very least knows someone tied to that fiasco at the crypt last night.”

They started to smirk as they realized what I was getting at. “We’ve been running around without anything real to latch onto - no purpose besides running from Minerva, which in retrospect was probably an attempt to railroad us into meeting people who’d put us on track for a ‘do this or die’ quest. But the DM has finally dropped that plan. He realizes that we’re not going to go along with the law simply because it’s the law. He’s switched tactics. Now we’ve been given something we can do. Something we can follow. Something we can look into on our own terms without being shackled or in debt to forces unknown.

“It’s time to go on the offensive,” I smiled. “It’s time to start the adventure.”