There was a very noisy silence surrounding Flip’s tower as he returned. There was nothing making noise, at least, not the usual things. Flip suspected Dovhran immediately. There were very few other people to suspect. Who else would bother him after all the destruction and demon nonsense?
“What do you want?”
“How did you see me?” Dovhran stepped out from behind a distant tree that stood next to the tower. He had been fully obscured.
“I ask the question to the universe every time I return, you happened to be here today.”
“No really, how did you know I was here? My stealth may save your life some day.”
“It was quiet and my paranoia told me you would be here after the mayor forced me to help you.” Both answers were technically true, though he had stopped asking the question out loud several years ago.
“Okay. You don’t have to actually tell me. Anyway… I take it Auburten talked you into taking my job offer?”
“He leveraged my family’s debt, so yes.” Flip approached the door to the tower in an attempt to cut the conversation short, but Dovhran approached as well. He seemed intent to let himself inside. “I’m not letting you in.”
“Don’t you want to know more about the job?”
“Do you want to tell me how you found out about my family’s debt?”
“I walked around town, saw the burnt waste just outside the area, asked around, checked public records at the town hall. Wasn’t hard.” Dovhran shrugged.
There was a pause where both men stared at each other, Dovhran expecting to be let into the tower while Flip waited or the changeling to leave.
“No. I don’t want to hear more about your job. If we’re traveling to the pale wastes we’ll have a few days on the road to discuss things.”
“Yes, but arrangement for travel…”
“Good evening.” Flip shut the door to his tower, mere inches from the nose of the ambitious mercenary and let out a sigh. “Travel arrangements. Feh.”
Over the course of several hours, Flip spent time wandering about his tower. Every so often, the wizard would comply with the impulse to pack various items into satchels and heft them into his portable hatch. These bouts of productivity were interspersed with extreme lackadaisical loafing, almost depressions. Being forced to comply with an individual you do not exactly trust is not the most comforting situation. That is not to say that Flip did not feel a certain amount of excitement, as travel beyond the roads of Builend and Westcross was totally uncharted territory to him… and the thought of being more of a free man than he had ever thought he would be was a comfort as well.
As Flip contemplated what it would be like to pursue his own arcane interests and wrote amongst his notebooks and spellbooks he fell asleep. It was some of the best sleep he had felt in years. And when he woke, unaware of exactly how long he slept, there were words burned into his mind; words that seemed to be from a dream he couldn’t quite remember. If he had not fallen asleep at a desk with paper and ink in front of him he may have forgotten them.
Slumber sweetly little one, I know and
hand to thee thy simple small clarity.
Parity be between us and thy band—
grand designs may now bring prosperity.
Similarly, we speak in subtle song
long tongued and with the most utterly,
subtly, protracted will to belong...
Long have our two twin souls been undying—
Crying out to be known beyond the throng.
Strong are we in sleep and in defying,
denying all that we have neatly planned.
The words seemed alien. Flip couldn’t deny the poetry of them, but the form did not reflect any form of poem he had ever written or studied. It wasn’t particularly refined either, but it was clearly a poetic form and there seemed to be some clearer message behind it, but without context Flip could not adequately ascribe any of the words real meaning. He felt, deep in his gut, that perhaps if he could remember any of the dream he had experienced that it could grant some sense to the poem. But as he sat and thought and ran through his mind all that he remembered from sleeping, no memory of a dream came to him.
Flip’s introspection was cut short by a rapping at his tower door. He arose with only a mildly off-put sigh and answered the caller, fully expecting the person that stood there to meet him.
“I’m not here to bother you again, Faengil, only to relay a message. Priestess Devo requests your presence at the hearth temple.” Dovhran spoke as though directly relaying a message.
“You’re being nicer to me today.” Flip was uncomfortable by the relaxed and sincere presentation of the mercenary.
“Today is a day with good news. And tomorrow, hopefully, we will be leaving to accomplish our goal.”
“We can leave tomorrow. I assume that means Cheska has completed her project?”
“You should see it, Faengil, it’s beautiful.”
Flip merely nodded and grabbed his hat from the iron spike by the front door where he let it hang. The mercenary gestured for Flip to lead the way and followed when no further conversation was given.
The walk through town was awkward. Families were still in the process of breaking down burnt and broken structures, moving in and out of tents and lean-to structures to retrieve building materials and water. Some had already started to rebuild. The guard were notably absent from within the town, as many of them had fallen to the demon and the remainder had taken up a tighter perimeter around the town. A town in distress was easy pickings for criminals. Not that criminals were common in that corner of the world, but no one wanted to admit that they thought another demon attack was likely to come again.
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In the road where the demon had fallen, there now stood barrels of sanctified water and a pile of buckets. Several small fellfire outbreaks had started up after the initial extinguishing and forger Morgan had forgone a great deal of sleep to make sure the town was well prepared if it happened again. And across the road at the temple, there were frequent comers and goers. The hearth’s chimney was putting out enough smoke that one might think the town were still on fire, the doors were stopped open, and the heat o the fire and the smell of a meal ready to eat could be detected from the road.
“She’s probably still around back. She was doing some polishing when I left to get you.”
Flip followed Dovhran’s nod to the side of the temple and walked around the various busy individuals moving around the temple grounds. The wizard could hear the squeaking of a polishing wheel and the clunking of the pedal driving it before he saw Cheska at the forge. Or rather, saw her sitting with her back to the forge as she peddled away at her whetstone, which had been modified to polishing brush. It seemed as though she had actually modified the forge space quite a deal since she had brought them both back to tell them what her plan for the demon’s core was. A new smaller anvil had been placed by the forge, new crucibles were sitting on the ground by the mouth of the forge, casting trays and a sack of sand were leaning up against the back wall as well. To top off the renovations, a new awning had been built up over the forge area, providing shelter from rain and heavy winds.
“I’m just putting a bit of polish on it, but you should see what it’s become!” Cheska shouted across the temple yard and over the noise of the polishing wheel.
The half-orc pulled a shining object away from the brush before using her free a hand to slow the wheel enough to prevent it from falling over without her foot to keep it steady. Flip approached cautiously, but with the curiosity of a cat in a new space. It was essentially a new space after all the updates that had been made.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before, it was like having Haemer’s hands around mine the whole time. This must be what a dwarf feels like when they follow their intuition.” Cheska held out her work for the wizard and mercenary to see.
It was a wide bracelet, almost like the cuff of a golden sleeve, enough to cover at least a third of a grown man’s forearm. The metalwork that had been receiving the polish was of a white tinted gold; Flip recalled Joanna showing him how gold could be strengthened by mixing the molten metal with specific amounts of silver and copper when he was a child and how the mixture would give a strange light sheen to the metal. The metal was bisected along the bottom and fitted with a clasp so it could hinge around the arm. But the beauty of the piece was the crystalline structure that had spread out and gripped the metal in an oddly natural looking way, almost like an flattened octopus. The crystal limbs that had jutted out like the petals of a lotus flower before had been completely altered without breaking it.
“When I exposed the core to powerful flame, it bent into this shape. It was as though it had been set in this shape before and it returned when prompted by the forge. And it required very little work to fit to the bracelet itself, it feels as though the materials have merged completely where they touch. The core no longer requires a talisman to keep it inert either. But the best part. “Cheska grinned widely now as she clamped the bracelet over her own wrist. “Is that I can do this.”
Cheska turned abruptly and thrust her arm elbow deep into the coals of the forge. Dovhran leapt forward and let out the beginnings of a shriek as he watched in horror, though he calmed down quickly as he noted the lack of pain present in Cheska’s expression and the more intrigued than terrified expression on Flip’s face.
“No arcane work was required, it seems the bracelet in enchanted by it’s nature to resist flame.” Cheska withdrew her arm from the forge and dusted the soot from her skin. “Better yet, it protects its wearer completely.”
“And fellfire?” Flip asked cautiously. He was aware that his question would imply that the priestess had intentionally experimented with the infernal flames that would have been far beyond her ability to control.
“There was a small outbreak earlier today by the stream on the edge of town… and I did some experimentation.” Cheska rolled back her other sleeve to reveal a rather alarming blister. “My skin wilted like it had begun to decay at a rapid rate rather than burn up like I’d stuck my arm into flame. So I suppose it protects from flame, but not the fell energies that corrupt the fire. If you gave this to a fellblood, I wager they would become quite a demon killing machine… supposing they had protection from the rest of the weapons in the demons hellish arsenal.”
“Your craftsmanship is impeccable, priestess Devo.” Dovhran smiled. There was a strange greed in his eyes as he watched the bracelet intently on her wrist. “I imagine it will serve you well as you work your forge.”
Cheska paused at the implication before letting out a burst of deep bellied laughter.
“Haeth, no!” Cheska managed to stop laughing long enough to respond to the prompt properly. “No. Such an item is far too lavish for my station. Far to lavish for my faith as a whole, in fact. Even in Haemer commanded that it be kept in the church by some champion, you would be hard pressed to find a priest or priestess of the hearth that would don something so garish. And thank the hearth mother, for she does not demand it be kept here.”
“I suppose Dovhran will be looking to buy it, then?” Flip eyed the changeling mercenary carefully. He wasn’t entirely sure he had been reading the greed in his eyes properly, but there was no denial from the changeling upon hearing the question.
“I would be willing to pay handsomely for it.” Dovhran nodded eagerly, already reaching for an unseen coin purse beneath his cloak. “I will not deny you the value of your craftsmanship, it is indeed a divine work.”
“No.” Cheska had stopped laughing rather suddenly, and her flat rejection seemed to startle the changeling all over again. “It is not to be sold either. We do not sell our work like members of a guild or artisan workshop. We may trade forge work for provisions and materials, but our fine crafts are reserved as boons to be bestowed.”
“I will not deny you if you wish to give it freely…” There was a hint of desperation in Dovhran’s tone now. “Surely you don’t intend to lock it away in some pantry cabinet to bestow upon some wandering hero or royal?”
“Not quite.” Cheska unclasped the bracelet and held it out to Flip. “Faengil. While I huddled my congregation in the temple, while the forger prayed frantically to save his chapel, when the guard scattered, and while this knife thrower sat drunk in my cellar… you walked out into the shadow of the Obscure and it cast hell and flame across our town. Whether you did it out of desperation, suicidally, or out of a longing to sate a grudge, no one can deny that we would all be dead if not for you. And while the town may hold you responsible in some twisted way for the demon in the first place, I can think of no one more appropriate for the task of watching out this small sanctified piece of disaster.”
“Well, if that isn’t the most overblown speech…”
“Shut up, lightweight.” Cheska cut Dovhran off before he could complain about her decision and thrust the bracelet into Flip’s hands.
“I don’t think I can…”
“You can shut up too, other lightweight. And if you object again I’ll have someone pin you down while solder it shut around your arm. You’re not in debt anymore, you are allowed to have nice things.” Cheska took Flip by the hands and closed them around the bracelet. “It is named the bracelet of departure, because it allows you to leave hell unscathed. Take it and leave this personal hell of yours.”
Flip nodded, a hint of resentment on his face from being forced into something else he had no say in. But there was no way around Cheska when she decided on something like that. That was the way she had been since she was young.
“If you insist that I take it, I will do so. But I won’t like it.” Flip mumbled as he clasped the bracelet onto his forearm.
“Good. That means I chose the right person.”