Standing up for Zutal was difficult again, although unlike last time where his muscles would spasm and he would feel as though his muscles were made of tissue paper the new problem stemmed from blood loss, which had the side effect of causing dizziness.
With a blurry vision I went to tour our own camp beside the circle of tents left behind by the dead adventuring party, while feeling light headed and wobbling on my feet. Resting on the ground along with everyone else was a sombre feeling, Colbert and Marie doing most of the heavy lifting while Sofia tended to me and Allelu because she herself was not feeling well still. Moving around on my black robe felt really painful, with bruises and cuts flaring up with nothing to stop myself from feeling the hard ground under myself, with me usually sleeping in a bed of leaves as a lizard or on a bed as a human I had never really had to sleep on pure stone.
This robe was worth every gold coin paid for it as I could not imagine sleeping on the ground, might pay Bella a visit to see what other goods she has for sale or buy more robes just in case. With my musings going on about absolutely nothing Marie comes around from the side along with Colbert after stacking the bodies of the fallen and looting whatever valuables could be found within a satchel strung over her right shoulder
Marie: “Nice to see that Zutal and Allelu are now fully awake, good job Sofia.”
To be honest, I have not felt as though I had fallen asleep on only closed my eyes for some rest but considering the blood loss and how tired I was after two days of back to back fighting such a thing was undoubtedly believable.
Marie: “While your awake Zutal can I ask to borrow more of your broken scales?”
Zutal: “Sure, use as many as you can find but please don’t take any hanging off of me, I still need some rest.”
Over time Marie has started replacing Sofias scales on her armour with my own for greater protection, it is a much cheaper alternative to getting metal bracers with leather around it or dragon scale armour. Since both of the alternatives require a lot of work their prices reflect that in both retail value and cost of replacement for damaged areas, when compared to just me and Sofia shedding our scales naturally and having them fall off during battle resulting in free material to repair any damage or create new scale armour.
Marie sits down next to me and starts taking out grey scales from her satchel, arranging them by size, before proceeding to take off her own bracers and beginning her work on the damaged scales. I can only watch as she expertly cuts string connecting the scales to her bracer before using a knife to make holes in the new scales to string and attach to the bracers.
Zutal: “You are quite practiced with cleaning and managing scales for armour.”
Marie: “Well I did live in a forest for most of my life, not a lot of metal to go around so we made armour from animal leathers, bones and scales.”
Marie finishes off replacing the worn down scales, before getting out her bow and beginning to unstring her bow. Quiet was slowly returning back to the camp as everyone had sat down and was watching our campfire, with Marie working on her bow and armour I decided to end the silence by starting up small talk.
Zutal: “Why do you always have to replace your bracer scales so often?”
Marie: “The bow string is usually pulled back until the forearm, sometimes it hits my forearm as the arrow is launched and removes some skin so in order to avoid serious harm from shooting multiple arrows most archers wear bracers…”
As the conversation continues and I listen to technical jargon from Marie it soon gets the attention of the other group members, with everyone contributing about their profession before Colbert takes the front stage with politics and ball room etiquette. Though to no ones surprise he is simply relegated to back ground noise, and instead Marie helps out Sofia in cooking food for the group while me and Allelu stay lying on the ground.
Colbet: “When in a ballroom it is important to ask the lady for her hand before a dance, this is done by bowing at a ten degree angle and offering up your gloved hand, it must be the gloved hand because…”
Zutal: “Sofia, please do not worry about cooking food for me. I want to try the cleric and see if his scholarly body will heal me.”
Sofia: “That sounds stupid, meat is meat and no matter the creature’s traits you can not suddenly gain them. Do you see yourself eating grass?”
Colbert: “The Neutral City used to be a part of the Desert Cohorts but fighting…”
Marie: “Well, true dragons are said to be able to derive power from magical items, and a corpse does fit that category of being magical in nature.”
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Sofia: “You seriously can not be suggesting that Zutal should eat some creepy human flesh?”
Allelu: “Well my brother that creepy humans soul and he is still fine.”
Colbert: “The Claret Confederacy is mainly human based with a few elven cities and dwarf holds…”
Sofia: “He is talking to himself, there was definitely something wrong with the cleric.”
Allelu: “Don’t worry about it, he is simply drunk on the soul energy from the cleric, the more knowledgeable the soul and the stronger its magical power the greater the high the demon would experience from the soul. Speaking of soul energy, he is not going to be eating for at least a week so make that two less portions.”
Sofia: “Well at least you are not siding against my dishes, fine I will cook three portions but I am not sharing if Zutal hates his human food.”
Marie: “Don’t worry, we already know that Zutal has eaten the Artemis tear drop, so a body shouldn’t be all that different.”
I have to admit that Sofia can cook extremely well, with a few herbs and pieces of meat a common soup can be turned into a gourmet meal by her, although the knowledge of herbs most likely comes from the druidic nature she has about different plants and which can and can not be eaten.
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Getting up while everyone is having dinner I head over to the far corner of the massive room, looking around and sniffing the air to make sure the corpses have not attracted any creatures while I was away, although after killing all those spiders their territory might be empty of other monsters for a while. As I round up to the pile I have to move the bloodied mess aside to find the clothed man, eyes rolled back in his head and not a single wrinkle on his face he looks extremely young and yet he has grey hairs on his head.
Most likely magic shenanigans giving the man a youthful face I proceed to take him out of the pile before closing it back up and beginning to feast. I might be big but a full sized human is still a lot of food for a lizard like me, with my instincts telling me to gorge myself on meat like any lizard should when presented with a buffet. With little reason to disagree, since we wont be getting into any fight soon, I proceed to eat the upper half with my favourite bits being the brain and eyes while my least favourite was the kidneys.
Once eaten I feel completely stuffed, eating like a lizard might mean that I wont need any more food for a few days afterward, but now I also have to somehow get back to the camp with a belly that feels like it will burst if I try to stand up. However, to no ones surprise I am capable of making my way back, this is done by me in the conventional way of walking after waiting for a bit to have my stomach compress the food in the stomach before moving.
Although by the time that I return everyone has already gone to sleep, with no one to hold a conversation they must have simply ignored each other and clocked out for the night earlier than usual. With me being relegated as the de-facto night watch for the first shift, ‘Thanks guys.’
My shift begins when I get the hourglass from Allelus backpack, although they were kind enough to leave it on my robe, so all I have to do is spin it over and watch as my night watch timer ticks down.
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With my night watch finishing without any issues, not even a wild beast scent so much as to itch my nose I stand up to the dying embers of the camp fire illuminating my surrounding, chucking a few more bits of wood that we got from the humans camp I move over to Marie, as the leader she must be the one to start the first watch. Even if I started watch first I highly doubt that it would be Sofia after me as under our previous arrangements, so instead I go back to the leader to wake her up, and if it is Sofia turn then I will be told so.
While walking I do notice that the thrumming in my chest has become lighter, while my wounds have also stopped stinging even if moving my shoulders and chest too much would cause discomfort, it is no where near like when I first sat down which was highly uncomfortable.
Moving and waking up Marie turns out to be the right move as she tells me to get on top of my robe and sleep, with Allelu being next after her shift, as per usual then. We would usually split our nights into three shifts, so none of the people would get the same night shift, although with Colberts diminishing servant we were now have to take on shifts every other night rather than when there was eleven people in the group.
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Peaceful dreams was what I had dreamed about, however it would seem that I was simply not destined to get any rest any time soon this week, between hydras, spiders, being possessed by the temple, fighting off adventurers and now this I was beyond unlucky.
I was abruptly woken up to the sounds of screaming and shouting.
Allelu: “Wake up ZUTAL! Zutal! Wake up!”
Looking around I saw Allelu fully armoured, although she does not take her armour off during work hours, she does usually keep the helmet off unless its something important. To call what was happening important would be an understatement.
As I quickly stood up, requiring nothing in order to be battle ready I saw the state of my surroundings. Colbert was shooting out eldritch blasts that lit up the way from the door that we came, with a little bit of light from the dimming camp fire allowing me to see Marie and Sofia shooting into the same hallway. It was nice to know that I woke up at the start of this mess rather than during it.
Zutal: “What’s going on?”
Allelu: “Get ready to be the front line for the group, we have more humans incoming from the tunnel.”
Zutal: “I thought we were the only ones walking the bear tribes territory?”
Colbert: “Yea, well nobody thought the Claret Confederacy adventurers would be stupid enough to trespass in Deep Woods, so I guess there is a first for everything.”
Magic and arrows flew, thorns the size of daggers manifested and were shot into the tunnel based on what could be seen by the light coming from eldritch blast.
Zutal: “What is the battle plan?”
Marie: “We do not know how many of them there are, so the strategy is to get up the temple and hope that its not trapped.”
Zutal: “Why can’t we fight them at the corridors choke point?”
Colbert: “Your stupid or something? We can’t shoot our magic over you or Allelu while in the corridor, while the enemies can most definitely shoot you both over their front lines heads.”
Zutal: “Not my fault all of you are so short.”
Marie: “Now let us get a move on it, preferably before the enemies come up with a way to run out of the hallway.”