When the fennekian city guardsman walked through a wall into a small room containing only an armored undead more than three times his size wielding a crimson-black battle-axe and backed by a softly-glowing owlen paladin, his first reaction was not what Sean had expected.
Taking the entire room in at a glance, the fennekian showed no signs of alarm whatsoever. He didn’t pull his sheathed dagger, or even acknowledge the geladin as a threat. Instead, he made a series of quick gestures with his left hand and brought the right up to his lips in the universal “shhh” gesture of silence. Then he leaned to the side and, still keeping his eyes on them, placed one of his large, adorably fuzzy ears up against a side of the wall that it didn’t pass through.
Several moments passed, and Sean watched the same series of heartbeats he had associated with the now recognizably lizardkin guards chasing them pass by outside. He could hear the heavy pounding of their greaves as clearly through the wall as if it wasn’t even there– but not one of them stopped.
When the sounds of the guards on the outside had finally faded off into the distance, the sole remaining guard on the inside nodded to himself before finally flicking his eyes up to meet Sean’s burning orbs. The fennekian made more gestures with his left hand, so fast that Sean almost thought he was trying to shake some feeling back into it.
“Woah.” Gel let out a low, impressed whistle inside Sean’s mind, sounding impressed. “I did not see that coming.”
“What? What’s he saying?” Sean asked, as the furry guardsman turned to look towards Saren and made a few more gestures. “Is that sign language or something?”
“More like hand-speak. Paw-talk? That one’s actually a little hard to translate. I’m going to go with hand-speak because you wouldn’t understand the nuance.”
Sean resisted the urge to roll his orbs. “Okay, but if you can understand him then what’s he saying?”
“He’s asking why the Vibrant Virgin– no, wait…” Gel’s response this time had been out loud, presumably for Saren’s benefit as the owlen looked just as confused as Sean felt, and the fennekian repeated one of his earlier gestures. “Ohhh, the Bright Maiden! He wants to know why the Bright Maiden sent those paladins after us, and how we knew where the entrance to this ‘cover cottage’--”
The fennekian shook his head and repeated himself, moving his hand slower this time.
“Ahh– safehouse!” Gel sounded inordinately proud of himself for having figured that one out. His next words were a bit introspective before the slime’s normal exuberance returned. “That does make more sense in context. Anyway, he wants to know how we knew about the hidden entrance.”
Sean had several questions here, first and foremost being what the hell a ‘Bright Maiden’ was. That was obviously some kind of title for the glowing beacon-lady back in the carriage, and the name certainly fit, but beyond that he had no idea what it meant. Saren clearly did however, as the owlen’s heart skipped two full beats when the slime said it. An expression halfway between grief and resolve stretched across Saren’s face, and Sean turned towards him.
“I doubt either of us know the answer to his first question, but it looks like Feathers does.” Sean told his friend through their bond. “How about you ask him?”
As if the owlen’s superior ears could hear their mental communication, or maybe just because he could pick up on the vibe in the room as all eyes turned to him, Saren began to explain.
“The… A Brightmaiden’s purpose is to empower the Light, and all those who would follow it.” Saren’s eyes fell to the floor, as if in recitation of some script he never wanted to read again. “Her sacrificial radiance shall dispel any deception, and her power shall be not of the self– but to treble the power of the worthy. Mundane distractions shall never move her heart again, and with the surface of her soul scoured clean of impurity, her reflection shall be more than mere image can convey.”
“I speak at least nine languages now.” Gel whispered to Sean through their bond. “And I have no idea what he just said.”
“Sounds like he just said she’s some kind of force-multiplier for the Spire.” Sean commented, trying to inspect the owlen’s words for more meaning. “Empower the Light” was probably exactly how it sounded. Her power being “not of the self” clearly indicated some kind of support role, which the whole ‘trebling the power of the worthy’ bit really hammered home. What does “sacrificial radiance” mean, though? Or “mundane distractions”? Why does it sound like he’s reading to us off of some ancient stone tablet?
They all waited for the owlen to continue, but when he didn’t Sean let his battle-axe drop to the floor. It made a harsh, scraping sound against the stone floor and Saren seemed to come out of his reverie.
“Sorry.” The owlen shook himself, fluffing his feathers out as he did and turning to look at the fennekian guard. “Isla did not order the guardsmen to attack. She must have sensed your presence, or more accurately, your disguise. The rest would have been up to whoever was leading the detachment with her.”
The fennekian made a few more gestures, this time asking where the bodies of the slain paladins had gone.
“Might as well be honest about this one.” Sean said, and Gel agreed. Mostly.
“We ate them.” The slime said proudly out loud, before internally adding for Sean’s benefit. “Or at least, we will eat them soon. Which is close enough to the truth to not be a lie, isn’t it?”
There was a pause as the fennekian before them seemed to consider that, and Sean’s hand tightened around the grip of his axe when the guardsman went for his weapon as well. Only when the fennekian drew it from its sheath in a single, fluid motion, he didn’t brandish it at them. He simply raised it up high for their inspection.
“Wait a second, isn’t that the–” Gel started, but Sean interrupted him.
“The dagger we gave those two little fuzzballs back in the caves.” Sean said, finally realizing why this one’s little heart and veins had been so familiar. He might’ve figured it out earlier, but honestly all fennekians did look almost exactly alike. It was like trying to tell one teddy bear from another. They were all so cute, any differences hardly mattered. “How did he know we were here?”
Gel translated both the question and the guard’s identity, and Sean was amused to discover that Saren was actually surprised by the reveal as well. Doesn’t he live here? I get why they all look the same to me, but–
Saren took a half-step forward, bowing his head to one of the two diminutive guardsmen who had fought the Inmortu with them way back out in the sands. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, but Sean felt like it had been. So much has happened since we said goodbye to the little fuzzballs, I didn’t think we would see them again.
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“My apologies for not recognizing you sooner.” Saren said, and it was clear from the owlen’s awkward tone that he didn’t actually know the fennekian’s name. Or maybe fennekians didn’t have names, Sean didn’t know.
“He says his name is Gnar.” Gel translated for them all, as Gnar’s fingers blurred again before the fennekian bowed towards them– towards Sean and Gel, specifically. “And, oh. Aw! Isn’t that nice? He says his people have been looking for a way to repay us ever since he and his brother came back.”
“I still want to eat him.” Gel said privately to Sean. “I can’t put my wobble on why, but I’ve never seen a meal look so adorably delicious in my entire life.”
“Can he make the whole ‘dead paladins in the street’ thing go away for us?” Sean asked, ignoring his friend and only half-joking. Gel translated it anyway, and the geladin didn’t need his friend to interpret the sad head-shake that followed. When Gnar looked thoughtful and raised a finger in question however, his hopes rose.
“He says he can’t stop the rest of the city from coming after us for murdering nearly a dozen guards in broad daylight.”
“Okay, fair. But then–”
“But what he can do.” Gel interrupted with rising excitement. “Is move us anywhere in the city we want, and help us get another disguise prepared if we don’t have one.”
“Well we’ve got the backup disguise part covered, but the whole ‘moving us’ thing is exactly what we need right now.” Sean said, nodding in appreciation at Gnar. “Can he do it without us being seen? How long will it take? Can we leave now?”
The fennekian’s lips twitched into a half-smirk, the first expression Sean had actually seen on Gnar’s face since he had walked in here. Both hands blurred, the left into a bunch of those same strange, rapid gestures while the right– the right hurled the dagger they had given him right past Sean’s skull. It came so close, if the geladin had still had a nose, it would have been shorn clean off.
Saren, who had only been following the parts of the conversation Gel had elected to share with him, gave a squawk of surprise and looked like he was about to attack the fennekian for Gnar’s unprovoked assault before Sean raised a hand to pacify the paladin. As the dagger sank into the wooden wall in the exact same spot it had in their earlier vision, the entire wall began to slowly rotate inward until it was perpendicular to its previous position.
Revealing another room containing only a pair of large dressers, an open chest filled with nondescript clothes of varying sizes, and a staircase leading down with cloth-covered steps.
“The cloth is to keep the boards from creaking.” Gel explained helpfully, before adding with far more eagerness. “Now, left dresser first! They keep a bunch of disguises here and for furballs they have surprisingly good taste. If what I’m thinking of is in there, then I already know what we’re wearing.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
Ten minutes, during which Sean and Gel managed to convince the other two that they needed a few moments alone to ‘assume their disguise’, the group of unlikely allies descended the staircase. Sean had wondered if Saren would comment on their new appearance – he was wearing the face of one of his now-slain former comrades after all – but if the owlen was bothered by it then he didn’t let the expression show on his face.
At the bottom of the staircase was a well-constructed tunnel lined every few paces with brick-laid support columns. To the geladin’s surprise, it was wide enough for each of them to walk without scraping the sides and tall enough for even his large frame to move with relative freedom. There were no lights, but neither he nor the fennekian appeared to need one and the owlen’s hands could glow bright as a torch on command now apparently, so none were needed.
“Did they dig this? Because this tunnel is a lot bigger than I was expecting when I saw stairs.” Sean asked Gel after they had been walking for several minutes. He had dug his fair share of holes growing up, and so knew that displacing this much dirt without construction equipment took serious effort. “And how is this not collapsing someone’s floor? Or the street? We have to have gone under one or both of those by now..”
“These tunnels were built before the houses or the street was.” Gel explained, using the same tone of voice he often did when skimming through memories. “The fennekians moved in after, and they guard the entrances. The city lets them because there’s some sort of agreement there, not really sure on the details. But it keeps the little fuzzballs mostly out of sight, and both sides seem happy with it.”
“They’re happy being ‘out of sight’?” Sean looked at the long-eared Gnar as if trying to square what he was hearing with what he was seeing. “Why?”
Gel indicated Gnar’s ears with a flick of a half-formed slime whip.
“Too noisy.”
“Fair enough.” Sean folded his arms, then dipped an elbow in Saren’s direction. “If we’re going to be walking a while back to the shop, then can you ask Feathers what his deal with the Brightmaiden was?”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t just call her the Brightmaiden, you said he used a name. Does he know her?”
“I’ll find out.” Gel said, translating the question readily. Again, Sean felt the paladin’s heart skip another beat at the topic. After a moment’s glance at their guide, who was no doubt perfectly capable of paying attention even as Gnar led them unerringly past several intersecting tunnels and down another, the owlen spoke up.
“I know her better than most. She was my instructor.”
“Was?” Sean prompted, but Gel was already on it.
“Yes.” Saren nodded. “We were… very close once. She trained me and several others. Among them two of my closest friends. I owe her more than I can repay, and it is my shame to have only realized so recently.”
“Do all Gold Spire instructors glow like that, or is it just her?” Gel asked, mirroring Sean’s own thoughts. “Because if there are a dozen of her wandering around, then this disguise won’t matter when we go back to steal our sword… back.”
“There is only one of her condition on the grounds.” Saren said, without elaborating further.
“Okay, and what else can she do?” Sean had Gel translate for him. “Because if we’re going to help you fight your little paladin civil war, then we need to know who the major players are. Or at least what their abilities are, if you know that.”
“I know precious little about a Brightmaiden’s true capabilities. Their creation is not usually allowed except in times of dire need.” Saren said, somewhat stiffly before reluctantly adding. “I will tell you what I can, however.”
For the next hour, Sean and Gel got a crash course on who’s who within the local Gold Spire regiment from the former paladin. The owlen gladly shared what he knew of their abilities as well, which was a mix of both good and bad news. Good because many within the Spire’s ranks were of lower level. Bad because the Spire’s commander and his inner circle were not.
If those guys end up taking the field, and Saren is right about their strength, then we’re going to be in a world of trouble.
“You sure you still want to help him out?” Sean quipped to his friend when the paladin was done. “We could always just leave and go hunt down that giant turtle.”
“Oh, now you want to hunt it down!” Gel exclaimed in mock exasperation. “Not when it was right in front of us, ripe for the taking!”
“... how are turtles ripe? You know what, never–” Sean’s response died in his non-existent throat as a sound like breaking glass and blaring alarms played out in his mind. The interruption was swiftly followed by a prompt whose background was simply that of Cultivar’s Curiosities… only with chains crossing through the center from the prompt’s borders. As if the whole shop were locked down.
Or I’m locked out. Sean thought, reading the prompt and feeling a burning fury begin to rise within him at every word.
Your lair, Cultivar’s Curiosities, has been invaded and occupied by your enemies! Until the interlopers have been defeated or forced to retreat, your right to rule has been officially challenged.
Note: Due to an unknown ability possessed by those challenging your rule, the normal time to respond to this challenge has been reduced. You now have only until dawn’s first light to remove all interlopers from your territory else your lands shall be forfeit.
“Officially challenged”, huh? Sean thought, having no doubt at all in his mind as to who could be behind this given the extra note on the prompt. His grip tightened hard on his battle-axe while the geladin’s rage slowly blackened like that of the dying night.
We’ll fucking see about that.