Letter 34: Mission Complete! And a New Mission.

General Summary

Dear mother,
The auction and masquerade over, we spent the night at the Light Keeper’s. The tension from the night’s activities led me to skip dinner altogether. I had nibbled on random foods as they passed on silver trays, and that had been enough to sate my needs. Alyonna seemed…out of sorts. But she ate well. The others were thrilled. I was exhausted.
Alyonna was very interested in the journal I had won, and wanted to see it before we handed it over to Lady Sassafrass. I cared not either way. Reading such things was wasteful. There is much important work to be done, and I’ll not waste my hours reading fiction. So I gave Alyonna the claim ticket. She headed over to Obsidian Holdings with the rest of the team to claim it, while I flew overhead keeping an eye out. I saw several people watching the entrance; I knew they were watching, because every time somebody entered or left the building they looked up and, literally, watched, taking note.
A couple, sitting at a café, sipping mushroom coffee, halted their conversation mid-sentence as the group approached the entrance. Both simply stared, cups half raised to their lips.
A subaerial browsing goods through a shop window saw, in the reflection, our group approaching and immediately turned.
Someone of small stature (a Dwarf? Gnome?) sitting on a bench reading a book just happened to look up just as our group reached the door, and fixated on them, ignoring his book completely.
All simply watched.
None were threats.
But I watched them.
As our group left, the watchers all looked up again. As if cued.
And I watched them.
But none acted, in any way. They simply watched.
We headed back to our apartments so that Alyonna could read the journal before handing it off. It took several hours. Apparently it was quite engaging writing. I was so bored!
A journal by the writer of the escapades of fictional characters.
Ug.
When Alyonna finally finished (with some pressure from the rest of the team to speed things along), we brought the journal to Lady Sassafrass, who was very happy with our performance. We had successfully completed every task set in front of us, regardless of difficulty. We were exemplary!
(She really used that word.)
Our debts to her were cleared!
Vassyr tried to get information about Keesha, but The Lady was not forthcoming, and he gave up. We left empty handed.
At lunch the next day we met with Zinalla. She had gathered a plethora of information about Keesha, which she happily shared, and she had actually formulated a plan. The idea of planning was somewhat novel to us. The overall plan was to completely dismantle Keesha’s entire Unseen operation in the city. From the ground up. This was a grand plan! Alyonna was very interested in confirming that this would include the actual dismantling of Keesha herself.
Zinalla reassured her that that would be the case.
Zinalla rolled out a large map of the city and surrounding lagoon, to include the base that I had scouted (she thanked me again). She’d learned that Keesha never left the base, at least not undisguised. So in order to get to Keesha we would need to assault the base.
In order to prepare for that, our (her) plan was to start at the bottom, eliminating their revenue stream and working our way up, disrupting operations, drawing more troops out of the base, and eliminating what troops we could. We would drain her base of strength, support, resources.
The final assault would start with a “merchant” ship being captured by the Unseen, but that ship would be, of course, crewed by our people. While those people assaulted the base, we would infiltrate, find Keesha, and liquidate.
Our part in the preparation began with convincing some local merchants that their protection racket from the Unseen was no longer valid.
And also…also to get that Glow, the Glow that was won at auction. Zinalla wanted us to acquire and destroy it. She’s working on acquiring the location, and will let us know when she finds it. As she talked about this particular mission Alyonna and Vessyr exchanged furtive glances. I narrowed my gaze at Alyonna.
Subaerials and their substance addictions. I guess it never abates. I will need to keep an eye on them both when we locate the Glow.
While we waited for Zinalla to divine the location of the Glow, we applied some pressure to merchants. This is not necessarily a skill I have.
I decided to visit Preston while we waited.
He was ready with a glass of wine, and thanked me for backing his acquisition of the bottle. He had commissioned a display case for it, and was waiting for its completion before bringing the prestigious wine out. The evening had been wonderful for him, as he'd won two other auctions. He also acquired the flaming sword that I had bid on. That, he planned to hold on to, awaiting the appropriate buyer.
His final acquisition was the ring of protection, which he planned to pass on after a markup in price.
We chatted a bit, I finished the glass, and thanked him for his support and counsel.
Alyonna went to see her contact Luca at the potion shop. I flew above, at a safe distance, but close enough to help if needed. None was.
While we were there Vessyr visited Death Dealer Dan, who made my armor. Who, in fact, made all of our armor. Baermak accompanied him, and they convinced Dan to cease his payments to the Unseen.
When we got back Zinalla informed us that she’d located the Glow. I immediately scouted the building, which was a warehouse in mid-town. There were two entrances on the ground floor, both guarded. I couldn’t see anything else. I loitered above to make sure that the Glow didn’t leave the premises.
The team finally showed up at around 2 AM. I had been flying for hours.
The door on the loading dock bay was open, so Ingoria and I peeked in. Several catwalks crossed above the warehouse. Downstairs we saw so many crates! Crates piled on crates, filling shelves, across the floor, barely leaving pathways between. In the center lay a group of barrels. As we crept inside, Vessyr, Baermak, and Alyonna arrived behind us.
I spied two guards with lanterns downstairs, and to the north a closed office. Through the office window somebody who didn’t look quite like a guard stood at a desk, going over some papers or something.
I kept an eye on him as Ingoria and I slowly approached the office door, which was closed. Ingoria checked the door; it was untrapped and unlocked. I crept up behind her as she opened the door and rushed in.
The man stood in the corner to the east, away from the door to his west. Ingoria stabbed him as I embedded three arrows, thump thump thump. Somehow he remained standing.
And shouted.
I heard the team come alive outside the office. Vessyr and Baermak both cast spells and I could hear the guards scrambling to action downstairs.
Ingoria stabbed our friend again, and I sent two more arrows into his torso. He stumbled a bit as he stepped back from the impacts, drawing his rapier and stepping forward toward Ingoria. He lunged, stabbing her cleanly through her armor and causing her to yelp in pain. She recoiled, spinning around to remove the small sword from her side. He stabbed toward her again, but missed as she ducked and spun some more.
Just as I heard one of the guards scramble up the ladder behind me, he quickly closed and stabbed me in the back with his longsword.
They were fast!
I heard another guard on the ladder. We needed to finish this quickly. I could hear lots of scrambling and stomping and clashing of weapons and casting of spells from downstairs.
Ingoria finished off the guard in front of her, who shouted a command as he died, causing the guard behind me to stab me again. My left knew went weak for a second. Ingoria closed with my assailant and stabbed him as I snuck away, out of range of his sword. Once clear I turned and shot him, landing one in his left shoulder and the other in his arm.
He stepped through the door and stabbed at Ingoria with his longsword. He missed. He swung again, missing again.
Another guard, a Dwarf, stepped in from behind him, dancing around the combatants, closing with me and stabbing me in the side. I had quickly gone from assailant to assailed.
As I tried to block him and back away, Vessyr appeared behind the other guard, outside the doorway. He made some gestures, as if to attack or something, but didn’t actually attack. I’m not sure why. But I needed one of these attackers taken out of the picture.
I carefully disengaged and shot at the guard with the longsword, but I slipped a little on the blood and missed my shot. The second shot did not miss, but he remained standing anyway. He swung his sword at Ingoria, but she is incredibly hard to hit, ducking and dodging. He missed.
The Dwarf looked at me and…grew. He became huge. Absolutely enormous. Still a Dwarf, but now the size of a Giant. And he swung at me. I jumped back and he missed. Twice. With that size comes a certain amount of inertia, so dodging him was almost easy.
Vessyr watched that and cast a spell, freezing the (big) Dwarf in his tracks. Then he froze the longsword guard.
Ingoria carved into the longsword guard, severely wounding him, and then she turned to the huge Dwarf. She ripped into him, mother, like she was threshing wheat. He was held completely still, unable to dodge or deflect in any way. I saw the look in his eyes as he tried to turn to see the attack hitting him from behind, as he could feel everything happening, but he fell before he was able to break free from Vessyr’s spell. Frozen in terror, and then in death.
I put an arrow through the longsword guard’s neck, ending him.
Vessyr ran out of the room, followed by Ingoria. Blood ran down my side as I limped out behind them. Longswords do some damage! Vessyr ran down the ladder and engaged two guards, while Ingoria and I remained upstairs on the catwalk. We both shot at the guards, and all of our arrows landed.
A swirling black cloud surrounded the two guards, and I guessed that it must be one of Alyonna’s spells. She seemed to be concentrating, and it was already there when we arrived. Whatever the cloud was, it did damage, so one guard sprinted away, down to the basement.
The other guard, who Ingoria and I had already shot several times, tried to get out of the swirling cloud as well but fell to the ground instead.
Vessyr chased the escaping guard down and ended him.
I met the team down in the basement. There was another dead guard, likely due to Baermak.
Ingoria and I ran back into the office. She retrieved some keys on a keyring from that first guard in the office. I looked through the desk, but found nothing out of the ordinary. I could hear the rest of the team downstairs rummaging through stuff.
Then I heard the sounds of combat again, but muffled and at a distance, so probably downstairs in the basement. I flew.
Down over the catwalk, to the first floor, then to the stairs, and down to the basement.
Vessyr, Alyonna, Baermak, and Baermak’s mirror image were engaged with a giant metal creature. I immediately shot it. My first arrow smashed a gear in its shoulder, but my second arrow glanced off of its pauldron.
The team lit into it. It was focused on Baermak, which spared me additional wounds, and the two of them faced off, trading blows like boxers in a deadly match; the automaton smashing Baermak with its fists while Baermak snapped his whip into it, denting the metal and chipping small bits off.
I shot it again, bouncing the arrow off its breastplate, but the second arrow stuck, jamming itself into its elbow joint.
We continued to pound on it, over and over and over, until it fell.
We searched the place and found a small secret door, behind which was a safe. The safe was not trapped, but it was locked with a strange musical puzzle lock, which we took turns trying to solve.
We knew the Glow must be inside…but…

Report Date

08 Jun 2024