Chapter 12: A bargain with a demon

General Summary

As we rested in the library I had some time to search around and I found a rather old book called "Herbs of the Wild" in the library. I sat over by the robot and started studying the book.
"Mary," Ash called out bringing a book over, "I found this book on the Afts of the Bronze, but it won't open." I shrugged and watched as he tried all manner of ways to open, first singing to the book, then talking to it, as he did he wandered and tripped near a fire. The warmth of the fire opened the book, so he sat down to study it.
Hemlock found the Grimoire of Thanakane as written by his loving wife, but it too was locked. DaVinci looked for books on leadership, and eventually found an old dwarvish book and started studying it.

The giant automaton finished its countdown, and we gathered as close to it as we could, and we went to a different time.

Construction

As we looked around, the library was under construction.
"I think we're back in time," Ash said.
"The Creature came back with more," I heard in elvish. I turned towards the voice and saw a group of elves walking towards us. "It shreds the bounds of time." They tensed up like they were about to attack as they walked towards us.
"Wait! Wait! Wait!" we all shouted, our voices jumbled together, "Don't attack, we're just trying to get back to our own time and stop this nonsense."
"You are trying to stop the shredding of time?" They slowed down and relaxed slightly.
"Yes!" DaVinci said, "There's a snarl in time and we're trying to fix it."
The robot started to count down again.
"Here," and the elf closest shoved something into Ash's hands. He struggled to hold it and his book, "This will help with the automatons."
"Stop the time snarl before it is all lost!" They yelled as the giant automaton pulled us away. "The books will return in a week's time, study them well!"
We slid back into the present with clockwork soldiers surrounding us.

Clockwork soldiers hit hard

The clockwork ran in and with a whir of gears, I was hit four times and went down. I woke up to a giant bear standing next to me, and threw a ray of frost into the nearest clockwork. It froze up briefly before hitting us again. I went unconscious again.
As I lay unconscious DaVinci fought with a gnome spellcaster who hurled magic at him, as Hemlock fought with the clockwork soldiers as a giant bear. Between them the smaller clockwork men dashed in picking up books to take them over to the copy robots.
Whatever DaVinci did to the gnome, it disappeared, and he ran to me bandaging me so I didn't bleed out. 
Hemlock stared at the door nearby, noticing the strange glow around it, but being a bear could not say anything.
The gnome reappeared and yelled at the robots that had frozen in confusion to get back into the fight. Ash hit the robot nearest him and it went down.
Oh, and at some point while I was taking a dirt nap, Ash grew bigger. Much bigger.
DaVinci pulled out a healing potion, poured it down my throat, then protected me from the newest robot as I threw a bomb towards the robots and the gnome. The gnome gnashed his teeth and threw lightning at us, hitting several of us and I went down again.
Sigh, this is going to be a long fight of me hearing about it after the fact.
Ash noticed the sparkling barrier and threw a javelin towards the field. It turned to dust as it crossed the barrier. DaVinci turned and shot his bow, and his arrow too disintegrated.
Hemlock switched back into his elven form and a vine sprung from his hand pulling the gnome towards him, but the gnome twisted and pulled away.
The nome responded by hitting Hemlock with fire and running.
Ash gave me our final healing potion. I stood up, and tried to throw a spell at the gnome, but it missed as I was still rather wobbly. The gnome snarled and threw a set of magic missiles as Hemlock as Ash hit the robot on him with his new halberd.
DaVinci ran around the room and climbed over the giant hole in the floor, approaching the gnome from the other side. I threw a spell at the gnome and he winced as the spell hit him, and activated a stored spell.  Four more of him sprung into the room, and he threw a spell at DaVinci, causing him to go down.
The fight went back and forth as we wore the gnome down as he used up his spells, but he also wore us down, wearing down what few spells we had, until the gnome disappeared again.  DaVinci ran after him, and caught a bare glimpse of the gnome to see him reappear in another room.
We ran after him as he ran into the room with the demon, and yelled, "As per our bargain, I release you." Ash hit the final robot, and we all ran towards the gnome.
The demon stepped out of the circle and said, "According to the bargain while I live, you live and I will fulfill my bargain. You will all die."
"Kill them!" screeched the gnome looking desperately around for anywhere to escape from.
The demon stepped out and impaled DaVinci on his claws.
The fight continued. I threw a holy bomb on the demon, silently asking DaVinci to forgive me, but I knew this would hurt the creature more than DaVinci.
"Demon!" DaVinci said, "I would make a bargain with you."
The demon withdrew a clawed hand from his side, "I am in the middle of another bargain. Perhaps if things go well for you, we could create another bargain after this."
"Kill the gnome!" DaVinci screamed in pain as the demon slashed his body again. "Then we can sort out this demon."
We all focused every bit of damage we could muster on the gnome. We hit it with bombs, claws, and halberd. Finally, the gnome went down.
"Demon," DaVinci said, "Now you will treat with me."
"Very well," he said dropping DaVinci to the ground, "What do you wish?"
"I wish for all of us to survive today"
"What a truly boring wish, why should I grant this bargain? I'm sure I could take your souls right now," he said.
"Would you survive the attempt?" DaVinci said.
The demon looked slowly around him, "It may be difficult, but you do not look imposing right now." He sneered at us. "Rather the opposite." He studied his claws as they shrunk down. "You will bring me three souls," he looked at each of us, making sure to catch our eyes, "Each."
"No stipulations on whose souls we bring," DaVinci stated.
"Agreed. You will collect them within a month's time, and you must be the ones to deliver the killing blow," he said.
"How are we to collect these souls?" Ash asked.
"I will fix you so you are able to collect them," he stared us each down, "Do we have an agreement?"
We all mumbled an agreement, I don't know how the others felt, but I hated what I had been forced into, as if I was sullied somehow.

Back to the library

Well the den next to the library. It had  a door we could lock, and so we took all of the gnome's items from his body, and barricaded ourselves in there for a day so we could rest and heal.
We went through his items and found a dagger which DaVinci passed over to me. A ring that someone took, and a stick pin, which we could not figure out what it did.
We all spent the rest of the day studying our books, after I'd read the book I realized there was a way I could modify my healing bombs to be so much more effective. I heard Ash mumbling to himself about breathing fire. DaVinci kept mumbling about leadership and maneuvers. Hemlock after studying his book for the longest time figure out how to open it and learned about the travels of the wizard, gaining a bit of of wizardly knowledge.

Report Date

31 Aug 2023