Bjorn crumbled to the ground as an extremely heavy force slammed into his side. As he fell, all of his countless hours practicing with Alaric paid off. As he fell his muscle memory kicked in and he twisted in the air automatically and landed on his back in a defensive position with the monster on top of him. The first thing he saw were two massive fangs snapping at his face trying to stab into his body. Thrusting his arm up he was able to get his forearm between the section of its head and its body.
The next thing that he noticed was the eyes. 8 cold black eyes looked down on him as the massive spider tried to plunge its fangs into his body. 6 of the 8 legs raked at Bjorn's body digging its claws along his sides, superficial cuts began to appear on the sides of his body.
Alaric and Tayla sprinted as fast as they could trying to get into a position where they could help. But the alley was long enough and they were just far enough away. Instead, Meira was the first one to come to Bjorn’s aid. As she cast her arc lightning spell. The lightning bolt shot forth from her hand and slammed into the large red spider that was on top of Bjorn. The lightning slammed into the spider charing the blood red carapace that covered the body. The electricity of the lightning bolt traveled through the spider and into Bjorn.
Bjorn's vision went fuzzy and the pain from the cuts on his sides subsided. In the bottom corner of his vision a little round icon appeared. When Bjorn focused on it the icon grew in size.
You are dazed for the next 10 seconds.
Around the outside of the icon was a solid line that started to shrink like a minute hand running around the clock. A small number appeared reading 9 seconds. All Bjorn could do was watch the number start to shrink. At 4 seconds he could feel a faint tugging sensation on his back. The time passed excruciatingly slow, the ten seconds felt like two minutes as the adrenaline running through his body warped his perception of time.
When the timer hit zero it was like the entire world just snapped back into focus. His vision cleared, he could finally see the battlefield again. Tayla and Alaric were both close fighting back the large spider, while Meira had Bjorn by the collar and was pulling him away from the fight.
The spider, now that Bjorn was able to get a good look at it, was large. From the tip of its front legs to the tip of its back legs, it was over 6 feet tall. With a body close to 3 feet long. Its body was the crimson of blood. Now that he was able to see it closer the crimson was the blood from the corpse that it came out of. The limbs that were striking at Alaric and Tayla were white underneath all of the gore. It was hard to tell, but there might also be some black spots.
Name: N/A
Race: Hijacker spider
Age: 4 months
Level: 19
The rare Hijacker spider is a vicious stealth hunter. They like to infiltrate communities of creatures, kill one of their members, and steal their body. These spiders feed on the bones inside of the body. Once the bones have been liquified and then drunk they use their limbs to mimic the movements of the species they have taken over. They then use the meat suit to get near their next prey, using the species' sense of community to get close enough to abandon their meat puppets and attack their next prey.
Bjorn had a brief thought of the annoyance of having to read the entire prompt about the spider. As he had thought, that the prompt in the middle of his vision ballooned in a split second covering his entire vision before fading so his vision was clear. The benefit to that was he gained all of the relevant knowledge in a split second.
“They feed on bones.” Bjorn called out. “I think you will have to use crushing attacks to try to disable it.” As he called out he used his hands to motion to Meira that she could let him go. When she dropped him he continued to speak as he got to his feet.
Alaric’s ax head skidded across the head of the spider. “Easier said than done, I will try.” Alaric called back, his voice sounding strained.
The alleyway was wide enough that both Alaric and Tayla were able to attack the spider from the front simultaneously, the drawback was that it was narrow enough that Bjorn and Meira were effectively useless unless they wanted to try and hit the creature without hitting a friend. Unfortunately, the odds of hitting a friend were quite high.
“Retreat.” Tayla called out. “Try and get it to the street.”
Slowly at first her and Alaric took a step backwards, then another. The spider followed after, it was denied a meal, and then hurt by the lightning, it wasn’t going to let the party go. They made it half way back onto the street, before Alaric created enough space that he was able to make an hasty retreat down the alleyway.
The spider was faster than Alaric though, and as he created the distance the spider took a lunging leap at him. Meira was faster than both, a large foot and a half long shard of ice came hurtling down the corridor and slammed into the spider, narrowly missing Alaric. The ice shard was heavy enough and had enough speed to knock the spider back, but did little damage overall. Seeing his opening Alaric was able to make it out of the alleyways mouth before the spider caught up.
They positioned themselves on either side of the alleyway, Meira and Alaric on one side of the alley, and Tayla and Bjorn on the other side.
The spider came bursting out of the alleyway and immediately lunged at Tayla. Who nimbly dodged out of the spider's path. It landed on the ground in between Tayla and Bjorn. Turning it tried to attack Tayla again.
As it did so a beam of bright light shot forth from Bjorn's hand slamming into its abdomen. As soon as he had created distance he started casting his light bolt spell, finishing the casting as the spider took its lunge at Tayla. The bright light did no perceptible damage.
The spider's speed was considerable, before Tayla could fully recover from the lunging attack the spider had turned around making a second attack at Tayla. Fortunately for her, she was not alone. Alaric placed his body between Tayla and the spider and it slammed into haft of Alaric’s ax. Locking the two into a contest of strength.
Tayla recovered and moved to hit the spider. Seeing the lack of damage Bjorns spell had done, and how little Meira's ice shard spell did, he decided to forgo the light spell again and the bow. Instead he opted to try his cast stone spell, he began casting.
“Get down.” Meira cried as he finished the casting on her arc lightning spell for the second time. Trusting their friend Tayla and Alaric dove to the side to get out of the way, as a beam of electricity shot from her hands slamming into the spider. There was another small Thunder clap as it shot between them breaking the sound barrier.
This time instead of fully immobilizing the spider it only affected the side of the body that was struck. When hit the four legs on that side of its body contracted rolling it onto its side. Soon after a small black stone came hurtling out of the air slamming into the spider's hard carapace. A resounding crack could be heard echoing over the once quiet street.
You have struck, hijacker spider with blunt force damage, dealing extra damage. You have dealt 37 points of blunt force damage.
“Guys it is weak to blunt force attacks. Stop trying to cut at it.” Bjorn called out as he absorbed the knowledge included in his prompt in a split second, once again not having to read what it said. He filed the experience away for later.
Now recovered Alaric stood over the flailing spider. Its uncooperative legs hindering its movement. He looked down on the blood drenched spider with disdain as it tried rather ineffectually to turn towards the dwarf now towering over the spider. Its curled legs being under its body its four remaining legs had pivoted the body so the mouth was facing Alaric.
He raised his large heavy ax over his head and brought the blunt end down on one of the 4 remaining moving legs. There was a loud snap, like the sound of a breaking bone as the leg broke in half. A wicked grin crossed his face as he brought the ax up again and swung down once again, severing one of the spider's legs.
The spider recovered and gained mobility with its previously hindered legs and was no longer at Alaric’s mercy. But with two of its legs severed its mobility was greatly hampered.
Tayla was mostly useless, but she was able to get a few lucky hits in, her daggers cutting into the new stumps or segments of the spider's carapace where it looked weaker. Meira used a combination of her haste spell and her arc lightning when it came off cooldown. And Bjorn kept peppering the spider with his cast stone spell.
The spider would have taken any one of them down one on one. Its thick natural armor and natural weapons would have been more than enough to take any one member down. But with its speed and mobility reduced from the missing limbs, and with the fact that it was 4 on 1 the spider stood little chance. So they slowly picked it apart until its mangled corpse lay in front of them, tucked up next to the building. The blow that finished it off was a strike from Alaric’s ax, slamming into its head splitting it open. A thick gray liquid oozed out of the opening.
“I feel so useless.” Tayla said “The last three fights we have been in I haven't been able to contribute much.”
“It's alright, that fight was mostly Alaric and Bjorn anyways. All I could do to it was stun it or slow it down occasionally. On top of that I'm pretty sure my lightning spell is what made us have to recover Bjorn from under the spider.” Meira said.
Alaric swung his ax trying to dislodge the liquid stuck to his ax head. “We are all suited for different types of combat. I do good versus monsters, because most of my time growing up we were trying to protect myself from them. Meira does well versus monsters and humanoids, but not to the same degree. You excel at fighting humanoids that none of us can match. And finally Bjorn kind of fails at fighting everything.”
“Hey.”
“But his versatility is what keeps him alive, he can go wherever we need him to go so we can keep him alive. All while finding a way to be kind of useful at the same time.”
“You know I am right here? I can hear you mocking me.” Bjorn said in a voice dripping with indignation.
“Unfortunately I am serious.” Alaric said in a somber tone. “Think back to every single fight we have been in since we have traveled together. You have almost always either gotten injured, lost the fight, or ended up with the enemy on top of you. Don't get me wrong, you are getting better, but you still have a long way to go my friend. It isn't mocking when I am speaking the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts.”
Their conversation was cut short by the sound of heavy boots slapping into hard stone at a rapid pace.
“Do we run?” Meira said after a few seconds of the sound wafting towards them.
“No.” Tayla said. “We did nothing wrong, we caught and killed what has been causing the murders. If anything they should thank us, I assume we will be taken in to be questioned though. So we stick around.”
Less than a minute later 10 of the city guards came flooding around a corner and ran straight up to where the 4 were standing, drawing weapons and forming a loose circle around the smaller party. They were all clad in simple chainmail shirts, with a small metal cuirass over it. They all carried halberds, on their hips they had swords, or shorter axs. They also had simple open faced helmets.
One of the guards had a slightly fancier cuirass and his helmet had a little plumage on top of it, he stepped forward breaking the loose circle. “Drop your weapons.”
Looking back and forth to each other, Meira nodded, and everyone dropped the weapons they had visible, having to unsheath a few in Alaric’s case as he dropped multiple knives on top of his ax.
“Slendor, Verrick, gather their weapons.” Two of the guards, one a human, one a dwarf, came forward and started to collect their various weapons, holding them in awkward bundles in front of them. Once the two guards were back behind the formation he once again addressed the group. “We heard loud rumblings coming from this area, explain yourselves.”
Bjorn decided to take the lead, as Alaric’s face started to turn red with anger. “We were on our way back from the public library when we noticed an elf lady standing in the alleyway staring down the corridor, so we investigated. That was when that spider burst forth from her body and attacked us. You heard the tail end of our fight.”
When Bjorn mentioned the spider he pointed it out to the sergeant there was a collective gasp that escaped the guards almost simultaneously. Apparently in their rush they hadn’t noticed the spider's corpse that was up next to a building.
The guard sergeant was apparently not a trusting man. “So you say. Your story sounds not very plausible, who has ever heard of a spider inside of a body. I think we just caught the killers boys.”
Alaric couldn’t hold it back anymore.”Are you retarded? Can’t you see that the spider is covered in blood? It’s a damn sight more than plausible, it is the truth. It’s not our fault that you haven’t the sense that a small child has. Anyone with a shred of intelligence would be able to see that much. If you are having a hard time with problem solving our friend Meira…”
Alaric’s tirade was cut short as two of the city guard piled on to him and started to struggle to get Alaric down. Seeing the guards struggle, two more joined the fray. Between the four of them they were able to get Alaric face first onto the ground and his arms behind his back. One of the guards produced a short coil of rope and quickly tied his hands together behind his back.
“You see men, admission of guilt. If they weren’t guilty they wouldn’t have fought back. Take them with us to the guardhouse. We will throw them in jail until the captain can figure out what he wants to do with them. You and you, collect that spider. And Hallie, go collect that poor woman's body. It would be disrespectful to leave her like that, especially after these villains have mutilated her corpse.”
When Alaric went down Bjorn took a half step forward. Tayla put her hand on Bjorn, and did a small shake of her head. So the other three watched Alaric get detained. Once he was fully detained the guard started to haul Alaric off. The others followed along calmly. They were led through the streets until a large three story building loomed ahead of them.
The contingent went through the front door. Inside was a large foyer with multiple doors leading out of the room. It was packed with guards. They were rather unceremoniously searched, stripped of anything of worth, tied the same way Alaric was and then led through a series of doors which led to a set of spiral stairs going down. The four were led down the stairs by two guards, the stairs traveled down for a good 20 to 30 feet before leveling out. There was a large heavy wooden door with multiple locks on it in the middle of the hallway. There was a guard stationed at the bottom of the stairs, when the saw the group coming he stood from his stool situated to the side of the hall and walked up to the door. Taking out a set of keys he inserted a different key into each lock turning them, when three of the four locks had been unlocked he stored his keys and pulled the door open.
Inside the door was a large dark room with metal cages built into the walls. There were 10 cages in total, with only one occupied. The only light source in the room was the magical lights that were affixed in the hall. The guards took one of the lights, leading the group inside. They ended up locking them into their own cages. Once each of them were in their cages the guards quickly left, leaving them in complete darkness. From where they were locked up they could hear the three locks reengaging.
Soon all the sounds had gone and silence reigned, only then did Bjorn break the silence. Casting his simple light spell he shot it to let it hang above their heads in the center of the room. The light from the sphere was blinding in the pitch black that the room had been.
Tayla drew in a breath to speak. “Real smart move there Tayla.” Alaric snapped before she could speak. “Let’s stay around, we just killed the one responsible for the murders. They will probably reward us. My ass.”
“Stop that Alaric.” Meira snapped. “That is not fair and you know it. She was right, staying around was the smarter move. We were just unlucky enough that the guards who came to us were apparently lacking in their intelligence stat.”
“Still we are in.”
Meira cut him off with a barking tone. “It was a call you agreed with, It made the most sense. You are now being cruel for no reason to Tayla, she doesn’t deserve that. I am sure she is already beating herself up over our current situation.” They all looked over to where Tayla sat with her back to the bars of her cage. Her head drooped and her shoulders slumped in defeat.
Trying to cut off the line of conversation Bjorn spoke up. “Well regardless of who is at fault, we are still in our current situation. What do we do?”
Alaric gave out a small chuckle. “What can we do? We are currently locked inside cages in the basement of the guardhouse. You saw those protections. If we were able to get out of these cages, they had 4 locks on the doors.”
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“They only used three.” Bjorn cut in.
“Ay, they only used three. I think that 4th lock is a decoy lock. Making it so you have to match the right key to the right lock on the right day. I think each key is probably randomized per day. There were 16 keys on that key chain. I also think that the amount of locks needed to open the door is probably randomized as well. All of that is hearsay anyways, as the locks are on the other side of that rather sturdy looking door. We don’t have access to them to break out anyways. On top of that you saw how many guards we were paraded past. There had to be at least 50 of them. So even if we do manage to get out of the cages, and then past the doors. We have to fight past 50 guards before they are able to get reinforcements all without any of our gear.”
Bjorn was quiet for a moment. “Well when you put it that way, yeah it doesn’t seem like we can really do much.”
“I think our best course of action is to go along with whatever happens. I would like to think that eventually this will get to the captain. We will have to put faith in the fact that the captain is probably less of an idiot.” Meira said.
“Fat chance of that. What kind of competent captain of the guard would put that idiot in charge of people’s safety and life.” Alaric said, spitting on the floor as he did so.
One thing that had caught Bjorn’s eye as he was roughly shoved into his cell was that one of the cells was full when they entered. Looking over at it there was an old decrepit human man squatting in one corner of his cage. “Hey, my name is Bjorn. How long have you been in here?”
The old man hadn’t moved at all since they entered the room, instead as they started to talk between themselves he had started mumbling incoherently under his breath. As they talked he had slowly gotten louder. Occasionally they were able to make out a few words. “46. Aloent. Geal. 1. Intruders.” over half of what he had said loud enough for them to hear weren’t in any languages that they knew.
When he was addressed by Bjorn his words became loud enough for them to hear. But every 5th word that he said was in a language they collectively knew. So far he had talked in dwarvish, elvish, common, and orcish. At least those were the ones that they were able to identify.
“Eh, he is cracked in the head. Let’s ignore him.” Alaric said before sitting down in his cell to sulk.
The room fell silent for over an hour. It was hard to keep track of the time passing. If it wasn’t for the clock in the corner of Bjorn’s vision it would have been impossible. It was quiet, still, and once Bjorn let his simple light spell elapse without recasting it the entire room was in complete darkness.
A small quiet voice broke through the silence. “My entire life, I have been on the wrong side of the law. The one time I thought for sure that we would be in the clear this is where we ended up. I am sorry guys, I should have trusted my gut. I knew better, but I still decided to stay. This won’t ever happen again.”
Alaric was the one to speak up first. “Meira was right, I was being rough on you for no reason. It was the smart and right move to make. I am sorry that I lashed out at you like that.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Meira said.
“You know, on Earth there was a saying. ‘Innocent until proven guilty.’ That saying means exactly what it sounds like. I seemed to have forgotten where we were for a moment. Here it seems to be ‘guilty until proven innocent if you can.’ There were alot of problems on earth, but unfortunately the Eld has more, and the problems here are more severe. You have nothing to be sorry about Tayla, we all made a choice. Now we are paying the consequences of that choice, even if it is unjust consequences.”
They all fell silent again. After another span of time Bjorn decided to start training his magic, after all they were locked up in a dungeon. There wasn’t much his magic could do for him. So he started to cast his simple light spell, he waited until the 10 minute duration was about to elapse, and he would cast the spell again. He currently gained mana at a rate of 1.5 mp per 10 minutes. Which was honestly pathetic. But with his mana regeneration and his mana pool he could cast the spell 28 times that way before his mana pool was empty enough to where he couldn’t cast the simple light spell again. Giving them a little over 4 and a half hours of light before Bjorn had to wait for his mp to regenerate enough.
It took almost 19 hours for Bjorn’s mana pool to fully regenerate. As his mana pool started to near the bottom he got a headache, as the mana pool grew nearer the bottom the headache grew worse and worse. Making it harder and harder to concentrate. Figuring it was a good way to train, Bjorn continued to cast the simple light spell every time he could. The headache made it hard enough to concentrate that he actually failed to cast his spell multiple times. Each time he failed he still lost the mana the spell would have normally used on a success.
Still he pushed on, if he was going to keep being a spell caster he would have to learn how to fight through the headache. An entire day passed like that with nothing really happening. Twice during the day the door opened to the jail and food and water was brought in. The first time they came in they brought a bucket for each of the prisoners.
It was early on the next day when something changed, the door swung open and admitted 5 guards. They walked up to each cell and opened up the door. “Come with us.” The one who stayed by the door said. “The captain wants to see you.”
They followed the guards up through the guardhouse and threw a series of doors before they came to stop before a large heavy wooden door. When they knocked on the door a deep voice could be heard through the door. “Come in.”
They swung the door open and led the 4 inside. There was a large desk up against one side of the wall with multiple bookshelves piled high with books and scrolls. Sitting behind the desk was a mountain of a man.
He looked up at the assembled party and frowned. “Gillan, why are they in such a state?” The tone was one of military efficiency, cutting through everything to show his displeasure.
The guard who spoke earlier snapped to attention upon hearing the tone. “Uh, sorry sir, you said you wanted to see these prisoners, so we went and got them before bringing them here.”
The human guard took a deep breath sighing, before using both his hands to rub at his temples. “First of all Corporal Gillan these 4 are not prisoners, nor should they have ever been some. Second of all Corporal Gillan, when I asked you to bring them to me I didn’t mean it had to be immediately. Thirdly Corporal Gillan, I don’t want you to ever bring dirty people before me again.” Each time the captain said corporal Gillan they could see the man visibly shrink.
The dungeon they were kept in was covered in a thick layer of mud and grim, after their extended period down in there the clothes they were wearing were covered in caked dust and grime that would be difficult to remove.
“So Corporal Gillan, I want you to take these people to the bath house down the street, take a few guards to help. I want you to find new clean clothes to give to them. I want you to take those filthy clothes and burn them. And then I want you to bring them back to me. Lastly Corporal Gillan, you shall be assigned to guard duty on the walls for the remainder of this span. You also will be assigned to latrine duty that will be set to start as soon as you finish your first assignment. Are we clear?”
The fully wilted guard snapped back to attention before saluting. “Yes sir!” He said in a powerful voice.
The captain then turned his eyes back to the four filthy people standing before him and his eyes softened. “I am truly sorry for the way you have been treated, you don’t deserve it. You have my promise that you are not in trouble in any way, and we will do whatever we can to reimburse you for the way you have been treated. Dismissed.”
As they turned to leave he said. “Oh, and after the baths return all of their items to them.”
This got another salute from the guards before they led them out of the captain's office. “This way.” Corporal Gillan said and led them down another hallway, they soon came to an obvious stock room. They waited outside as he went inside and retrieved a large sack. They then followed GIllan out of the guard house and then down to the public bathhouse. They were followed by two guards. There were two males, including Gillan, and one female guard. Once inside the public bath house the guards quickly ushered them past the lady behind the counter in the lobby. The two men took Alaric and Bjorn down one hallway and into a changing room, Tayla and Meira followed the other female guard.
Once they stripped down the remaining guy took their clothes and stepped out of the room. Gillan led them through a different door and into a large room with a large pool in the center of the room. Inside there were 3 other naked men in the process of washing themselves.
“Go ahead and take your time, we will be waiting for you in the changing room with your change of clothes. Over there on the wall.” Gillan pointed to the opposite side where there were multiple small outcoves built into the wall. “You will find any type of soap you will need to clean yourself.” He turned to go before thinking better of it. “For what it is worth, I am sorry for how you were treated.” He gave a small bow of his head before he turned and left through the door he came in through.
Alaric let out a low chuckle. “Well that was unexpected, and I can’t say I am not angry at our treatment. But this has been a welcome turn of events. Come on, let's get cleaned up.”
During the bath Bjorn took great care to clean out the small wounds that were mostly healed on his sides by now. Once he was finished he found another outcove that was stocked high with clean white bandages, he quickly wrapped his torso in them, hopefully avoiding any extra disease from the conditions they were just in.
An hour later Bjorn and Alaric made their way back to the waiting lobby wearing their new clothes. The fabric of their new clothes were softer and finer than what they had been wearing before.
Soon the women joined them in the lobby. They made their way back to the guardhouse. This time they were led to a small room set off to the side, inside the middle of the room was a table piled high with all of their various tools, weapons, and items that they were carrying on their person. They quickly got suited back up and rearmed, nothing seemed to be missing. After they were rearmed Gillan led them back to the captain.
This time when they entered the captain had his back to the door as he was looking through one of the shelves. “You may go Gillan.” He ordered without turning around.
Name: Gram Craigshoof
Race: Half minotaur, half centaur
Age: 51
Level: 37
Profession: Warrior
Specialization: of the bull
As a half race, you sometimes get the characteristics from one parent, and sometimes the other.
When Gillan left the room Gram grabbed something off of the bookshelf and turned around taking a seat at his desk. “I once again apologize, I don’t think we have been properly introduced, my name is Gram Craigshoof, and you are?”
“Tayla.”
“Bjorn.”
“Alaric.”
“Meira.” They each said respectively.
“Well met. It has come to my attention that you all fought a spider yesterday, and were able to kill it. Do you mind giving me your side of your story?” Bjorn took a half step forward and retold the event exactly how he remembered it. Only being interrupted by the rest when Bjorn got to the part where he was Dazed.
“Ah, this all makes more sense now. You said it was a hijacker spider. Have you any experience with these creatures before?” When Bjorn shook his head Gram got a confused look on his face. “How do you know that it is called a hijacker spider then?”
Bjorn smiled. “I am sorry Gram but that is a rude question.”
“So it is an ability then. Some sort of identifying ability I am assuming.”
Bjorn’s smile widened and he nodded. “That is correct. I do have one question myself though. So my ability tells me that you are a half minotaur half centaur. How is that possible? And how are you a human?”
Gram gave a small full bodied laugh. “Now that one was a rude question.”
“Tit for tat.” Gram’s smile turned slightly confused. “You ask a rude question, I figured it was only fair for me to ask one as well.”
“That’s fair. Seeing how I have the answer to my question and you still don’t it would be unbecoming to not answer you. Very well, my mother was a centaur, and my dad a minotaur. When they had me I came out as a normal looking human, but it quickly became apparent that I had more minotaur in me than centaur. As I grew rapidly and to proportions not normal to humans. I guess I was lucky in a sense, I got the human half of my mom and the Human half of my dad. My sister was less lucky as she got the more animal half of both.” He stopped speaking and was silent for a bit. Gram shook himself out of whatever track his mind was going down. “But even though she can’t really speak, she does have a great personality. It does make it hard for her to find a date though.”
“Anyways, enough about my history. We do appreciate you taking down this spider. Since you killed the spider we haven’t seen anymore murders. I am inclined to believe that the hijacker spider was the one responsible for killing dozens of people across the city.”
“That's good, I am glad we could be of service.” Meira said.
“Yes, that service is actually what made me want to talk to you. When I heard about the spider I went to investigate personally, of course my sergeant didn’t tell me that he took you into custody, all he told me was that the spider was found and killed. It appeared he was trying to take credit for your work. Rest assured, that man has since taken your place. We locked him up for his crime, actually he was locked in the same cells you were just in.” He paused speaking and sat at his desk, he opened up the parchment that he had in one hand. Picking up a quill he quickly scratched a few lines down.
“Sorry, I had a thought and had to write it down before it left me. Anyways, during my investigation I learned what my former sergeant had done and who was really responsible for the kill. Your rather public fight actually was in your favor, as many of the residents nearby watched your fight. I made a report to the duke about my findings. Which brings us to the crux of me actually finding out your state. The duke asked me to bring you four and the dead spider to the palace.”
He paused waiting for a response, when none were forthcoming, Gram started again. “Of course you don’t have to, you have done a service to us in Blackrock Bay, and we have only repaid you with suffering. I do think that you going to the palace with me will be for your benefit though. If you decide you want to leave that is understandable and you are more than welcome to do so.”
They all looked at eachother, Alaric shrugged. “All right, we will go with you. I am willing to put my trust in you Gram you seem like a decent fellow.”
“That is settled then, we shall leave immediately, follow me.” Gram rerolled up his scroll and threw it into a bag at his hip. As the mountain of a man walked around the desk his size became more apparent. He walked past Bjorn, the tallest in their group, and the man dwarfed Bjorn. Gram had to be at least 8 and a half feet tall. When he was on the other side of the room it wasn’t as prominent as this furniture was built for someone his size. He actually had to duck to get through the door.
As they made their way into the large open room that was the entrance to the guardhouse a small contingent of guards stood there. When their captain walked into the room they snapped to attention. They made their way past the guards, as they moved past them the 6 guards turned and followed them. Just outside the door a small flatbed cart sat with two more guards stationed at the front. The shriveled up spider's corpse sat on top of the cart.
Once Gram made his way past the cart he turned up the street making his way deeper into the city. Right behind Gram was Bjorn and his friends, then the cart, and lastly the 6 guards taking the rear position in their column.
It took a while to make it to the center portion of the city. It was slow going due to the cart being very slow. The road was mostly flat, but the guards pulling the cart had to pull it uphill the entire way. Every ten minutes they had to stop to let the guards change out who was pulling the cart. Each time they did the guards pulling the cart would be breathing really heavily, and covered in sweat.
When they made it to the highest ring of Blackrock Bay they turned down a side street. During their time here they had thoroughly explored the entirety of Blackrock Bay. At least of what they had access to. The upper ring was further split into two additional separate parts, there was the small section that the public could access, and then the place where the palace grounds were built on. To further complicate things, the line cutting Blackrock Bay in half also cut right through the center of the palace.
There was a short wall separating the palace from the rest of the upper level. Apparently they didn't put much effort into protecting the palace from attack, figuring that if the palace was under attack the rest of Blackrock Bay was already screwed. So the ruling family had instead put the effort into protecting the rest of the city.
As they were walking down the streets of the upper level Gram ducked into a smaller side street. Ducking wasn't an exaggeration of explanation, he had to duck to get through the opening. There was a 8 foot tall arch covering the entrance to the street. On the other side it opened up allowing freedom of movement for the whole party again.
Soon they came to a small side gate in the wall to the palace. The main entrance that they had previously explored was grand and intimidating. It had large and fancy scroll work cut into the stone. This one looked more like a large wooden door that would be used to access a wearhouse. It was 9 feet tall and 7 feet wide. There was a single guard standing there on the street side of the door.
When he saw the party coming he called up. “Open the gate, it's Captain Gram.” Following the words there was a heavy thunk from the otherside of the gate and then the doors began to swing inwards. On the other side there were 4 men pulling on chains that had been set into the wood of the gate. Two more guards rushed out of the now open doors to the palace and quickly replaced the two current guards pulling the cart. The current guards looked to be relieved to let their duty go to someone else.
He turned to the bedraggled men who had accompanied them. “You may take a rest at the guardhouse here for a bit before returning to your post in the lower city.” All 8 men stood tall and saluted. He then turned to the party. “Well, I think it is about time for us to meet the duke. If he isn't otherwise engaged.” He turned and walked through the open gate, with the others following. Once everyone was through the gate the 4 men pushed the gate closed again, and then set a large wooden beam in place to lock the gate.
On the other side of the gate was a long covered tunnel leading deeper into the palace. Not 10 feet into the tunnel there was a wooden door set into the wall that the cart pullers turned and headed into.
Gram stopped for a second. “El, could you send someone to let the duke know we are here.” The last man saluted before turning into the room and shouting Gram's order into it. The large man just shook his head and sighed. “I could have done that.” He muttered under his breath just barely loud enough for Bjorn to hear it. “Oh well, come, follow me.”
They followed Gram through a short series of tunnels that eventually ended in a large doorway. He pushed open the door and stood aside. “After you.” He said as the remainder of the column and the cart made their way inside the room. It was a fair sized room, large enough to fit everything and everyone inside with little to no issues.
They only had to wait a few minutes before another door opened and three people entered, the one on the right was an older elf woman, her face showing wrinkles and grey hair. It was odd, she was the first old looking elf in the Eld Bjorn had seen. The one on the left was an abnormally tall gangly looking human. In the center covered in a deep Rich red and blue outfit walked a person who barely made three feet tall.
Name: Duke Dornan
Race: Gnome
Age: 61
Level: 41
Profession: Mage
Specialization: Geomancer
Gnomes are naturally gifted with their hands. They are also normally described as cunning and crafty. They gain 1 point in dexterity, and intelligence per level, they also gain two free points to distribute per level.
As he entered Gram dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Greetings Duke Dornan. This here is Tayla, Bjorn, Meira, and Alaric. They are the one who killed the creature.” The sight was comical, as even in his kneeling position the giant of a man that Gram was, was still taller than Dornan standing at full height. Gram's thigh muscles were almost the same size as Dornan.
“Welcome Gram, and thank you for bringing them and the creature to me.” He turned to the group who hadn't kneeled at the duke's entrance. “It's alright no need to stand on formality, come now Gram stand. Do you mind telling me the story of how the four of you came across this thing while the city had been on lockdown, and a no travel order had been, well ordered?”
The fact that the duke hadn't told Gram to stand and pretend that formalities were irrelevant until the others clearly weren't going to follow wasn't lost on Bjorn. This time instead of Bjorn recounting the story Meira spoke up filling Dornan in. As she spoke the tall gangly human and Dornan both made their way over to the spider's corpse and started to inspect it. Halfway through the story they had to pause for a bit as the prodding of the spider released a rather fowl stench.
When she finished speaking Dornan turned towards Gram. “Have you found out if there are more of them? Or if this creature was responsible for all the killing?”
“I don't know my lord, I am inclined to believe that this spider was the only one responsible. As since Alaric and his companions have killed this one we haven't had any other dead bodies show up.”
As he finished speaking the door burst open and a red-faced man rushed into the room. “My lord, we found another one dead, this time in the upper residential district.”
Dornan turned towards the newcomer, and Gram just threw his head back and let out a little “fuuuu-”
(If you don't care, you may skip to the next part.)
You have advanced your skill level in earth magic. reaching skill level 5. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You are now level 15, you have 12 (base 16) attribute points to distribute.
You have advanced your skill level in light magic. reaching skill level 9. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.