Chapter 2: A quick fight and a girl

General Summary

“Bandits!” Skald said with excitement, “Where?” I rolled my eyes and thought, did you not hear them say ahead?
We continued up the road and saw a bag of potatoes. Al and I know no one just leaves a bag of potatoes sitting on the side of the road on purpose, especially with bandits in the area, of course, this is a trap. We snuck off the road and started sneaking up on whoever must be trying to kill us. Ash and DaVinci snuck up on the other side of the path, but Skald ran straight up to the potatoes, and no one was there.
All that paranoia and no one was there for us to fight. Just as I calmed down, I heard yelling ahead, we headed towards the noise trying to see just what was going on as we ran ahead the trees started to feel twisted and off. As the trees started to thin out we see a clearing with some kind of stone portal on the other side from us, there are five men arguing with a mule standing near them idly eating grass.
This is of course when Skald ran in screaming, “Jalapeño,” with his weapon drawn.
“That idiot is going to get us killed,” Alfred said as he drew out his bow and shot the man who looked to be in charge. I ran forward and threw one of my bombs into the crowd. It went off knocking one over. Ash and DaVinci ran toward the fight.
Just as they got there, the leader hit something and a beam came out of what he was holding, and a portal opened in the arch. I watched as he quickly aged from a man in the prime of his life to a crumbling skeleton in a few seconds.
Ash did something and one of the bandits fell and DaVinci hit the man next to him and it went down. The remaining two men ran in terror. I finished running up and a hand emerged from the open portal and a young girl screamed from the other side. We all ran forward and grabbed her hands and pulled her out. She fell out of the portal and as we helped her balance two dark shapes emerged from the portal.
“Ghosts!” DaVinci yelled. The fight was short, but intense and the ghosts faded away.
“Thank you for saving me, kind people,” the girl said, “I am Eliandra and I want to be an apprentice to the Gray Fox, a member of the fairy court in a forest up North, but while I traveled to go to him, I was pulled into that other realm. You have rescued me, can you escort me to the Red Tower over there?”
I blinked at this mass of information and tried to take it all in. Ash picked up the rod the man dropped and was looking it over.
“Oh, that is the Rod of Memoria,” Eliandra said, “The necromancies tried to use it to make a land of peace between the dead and the living, but it was not a pleasant place to go. I do not recommend going there. But I do want to go to the Red Tower because then I can learn more about magic.”
“Do you know how to work it?” Ash asked as he looked at the rod. “I can see three buttons on it, red, blue, and green.”
“You need to push them in the correct order and it can do all manner of things like open a portal or light up like a torch. I think the torch you had to hit two of the button’s together.”
“Of course, we will help you, fair lady,” Skald said, “I know that knights help damsels in distress, so, of course, I will help you do this. Let us leave this area of devastation.”
“Where were you raised again?” Ash asked.
“I was raised on a farm and my Mom read me stories before bed every night.”
“You actually know who your mother is?”
“You don’t?” Skald said in confusion.
“No, I was raised with my clutch mates and we were all raised together before we were forced to work for the dwarves as slaves.”
“You had a very strange upbringing.”
“Right back at you,” Ash said, as he walked over to the mule and started to lead it down the path. We walked for a while and shortly after dark, we found the nearest town.

Staying in a town with an inn called The Cage

The local watch found us and we are directed to “The Cage,” the finest and only inn in the town. After negotiating two rooms for us, we spent the night. We listened as the locals gossiped. If you are wondering Sicilian is putting trinkets all over the towns to ward off evil and Nizska complains it is a waste of metal and causes rust. Aside from those two scintillating bits of information, it was a fairly boring night. Ash gave a fairly impressive performance on his bone flute, and we got information on where we can trade in what we found from the bandits to get supplies to head to the Red Tower.
“Now we can go to the Red Tower,” Eliandra told us the next morning.
“Not quite yet,” I said, “This sort of expedition needs planning. We need to sell what we found on the bandits so we can get food and other supplies for the trip.
We split up and headed to our various locations. DaVinci worked with Furrier to adapt the armor suits we got off the bandits' bodies, then headed over to the blacksmith to trade supplies. Ash spent the morning studying the wand to figure out how to use it without aging several hundred years in a few seconds. I headed over to the apothecary in the woods to try and gain some herbalism supplies. We worked calmly for the day and at the end she gave me two healing potions.
Skald and Alfred went to the general store and sold the items we don’t need and supplied us for the start of the journey.
After a day of supplying ourselves, we slept at the inn again and headed out to the Red Tower. After hiking for several hours we saw four bug creatures menacing a woman with a couple of older kids and a younger child. As we watch the child goes down and the woman screams in frustration.

Report Date

19 May 2023