After a few more parting words with Lofaxio in the Grand Library, the party-with-no-name crawled its way through a long, dark tunnel that led them back to the sandy dunes of the Dellish desert. After following the glowing Riddle Worm silk plastered to the tunnel’s ceiling, they emerged into the near blinding sun to a surprise. A contingent of 6 mercenaries, and their kind-of-friend, Zain.
After calming down from what looked an awful lot like a terrible betrayal, the party heard Zain’s story. These mercenaries had picked Zain up after he returned to Daros in search of a valuable orb he had looted, then sold. After getting to know each other over some torture and questioning, the guards really got to like Zain. Turns out Zain’s “women, am i right?” mentality was pervasive in Dellish mercenaries.
The mercenaries had been hired by Bastard Nigel to track down the party, and take them back to Videl to brainstorm who killed King Thad. Rumors of their exploits across the country had reached Bastard Nigel, and he felt their murders and mayhem might fit snugly into the theories he himself had come up with on the assassin.
But, the party, for the time being at least, had little interest in taking a long journey to Videl when they were hot on the trail of unraveling how the Ice Stone might play into all this. In order to continue on to the Necromancer’s Tower at the Clit, they had to give the mercenaries the slip.
Or, charm them into coming along. Ole reliable, that charm of Tenli’s. Whenever a conversation tips against her, she gets’a’casting. And this time, she charmed the pants off these fellas – figuratively – convincing them to come along with them up to the Necromancer’s Tower.
The party journeyed by horseback through the seemingly endless dunes, until they reached The Drink, and began traveling along the river, north to the Clit. Upon making camp, Zain confided that he by no means liked his torturers. The party decided to use their sleeping poison to incapacitate the guards, and then argued over whether or not to kill them. Of course, Orophor was all for it. Beorn thought it might be more humane to raise earth around them, making any pursuit more difficult whenever they did wake up.
After deciding not to torch the guards inside the raised earth, they continued under the light of the moon up the river. As they traveled, they heard a small pathetic whimper. Gugu discovered a little elf child hiding among the driftwood of the river bank.
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The party offered the little boy some food and asked him his story. And a real sobber it was. A witch had put a curse on him and his family. The curse killed everybody but him, so now he wandered Dellin, not welcome anywhere, and hungry and cold and generally miserable. Orophor wanted to kill him. But kinder-minds prevailed, and they just left the kid to starve on the river bank.
After wasting precious time with the cursed child, the party rode like the wind to evade their pursuers, and made it to the Clit, where the great Slick river forked, on one side continuing on down to the Drink, and on the other, forming the great Slit canyon.
As they faced down the difficult task of crossing the gorge, Tenli noticed dust on the horizon, indicating the mercenaries had woken up and caught their trail. They would have to get across fast.
Orophor, not a fan of walking, wanted to figure out horse logistics first. So, the group attempted to put one of their horses in their bag of holding. It was like putting a condom on a horse, but eventually, they got it to fit. To monitor the effects, Orophor stuck his head in the bag, and saw the horse was full blown nuts. Just totally crazy. So that didn’t work.
And neither did Gugu’s attempt to cross the gorge. She shot an arrow tied to a rope across the canyon. It bounced off the rock. She tried again! Arrow split in half. One more time… pinched her thumb in the bowstring. Orophor gave her a pat on the shoulder, took her bow, and nailed it first try. But then Gugu tied a really great knot, an excellent knot, and the party ziplined down the rope across to the other side of the Slit.
All but Gugu and Sven, that is. By the time it was their turn, the mercenaries were seconds away, so Gugu did something heroic. She slung Sven across her back, grabbed the rope, and began her zipline across. As she went, she severed the rope, and swung hard into the face of the canyon, nearly losing her grip. But spies don’t die that easily. She gritted her teeth and climbed the remaining length of the rope up to the other side of the gorge, plopped Sven down, and took a deep breath. They’d made it.
The mercenaries did some fist shaking at them, but it would be some time before they figured out how to get across.
The party-with-no-name then took a look around. It didn’t take long before they felt the prickle of magic on their skin.