Alyssa turned to the blue-skinned stranger and stared daggers at him, snapping, "can we trust him?" so low that Morangul was out of earshot by far.
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Alyssa turned to the blue-skinned stranger and stared daggers at him, snapping, "can we trust him?" so low that Morangul was out of earshot by far.
Morangul was caught off guard and was about to cast a counter-spell when he
realized the kind of spell being cast upon him. Soon enough, he saw in his
minds eye that he was standing upon the deck of a ship, next to Alaria in her fairy form,
and in front of a very shocked young woman.
A very holy, very shocked young woman, as Morangul could
easily sense the holy aura the woman emitted. He could only shake his head
at the absurdity of it all; first, a fey with the mind of a child casts an illusion spell most
masters would struggle with, and now he is standing in front of someone who could quite possibly
detect his true nature!
The old lich sighed, made a grand, sweeping bow, and said
"Greetings, I am Morangul, and I'm sure you already know her name," he said,
pointing to the giggling fey.
He sighed again and turned to the still giggling fey.
"Oh, Little Devil, what have you gotten yourself into?"
"Oh, you can ask her yourself. I'm sure she'll want to talk to you before we reach the island", the captain walked towards the door as well, "Now, I'm not sure what the princess wants there, but what are you looking for?"
***
At first the princess was a bit shocked by the appearance of a man out of thin air and, somehow expecting another demon attack, took a step back, backing into the reling again. She quickly realised this was Alaria's doing though, judging by the giggle on the fairy's face and she examined this new 'arrival' more closely, sensing it's dark aura, a presence that made her inner being cringe.
"What are you?", she pondered the name, Morangul, that had now been given to her twice and combined with what she sensed about this character she remembered her teaching and the revelation of who she was talking to hit her like a bolt of lightning. "This is impossible", she whispered, her eyes wide open, as if she was seeing a ghost, "you were slain."
She looked over at Alaria: "You should not have brought him here, for all we know this... this abomination could be behind the evil that has befallen Lassara!"
"Ha! Even I am not stupid enough to unleash Vayne upon this world!
I wanted to conquer Lassara, not bring it crumbling down! And it is not so
easy to slay a lich, as you well know, woman! Even if that Paladin was using
one of the Shard weapons...."
Morangul grimaced, then flashed a big grin at the woman.
"But you already know who I am, pray tell, who are you?"
Alaria listened to the princess and the lich, pondered on their discussion for some time and came up with absolutely nothing in particular.
"What does slay mean?"
"Shut up, little devil."
"Hey!"
"Alaria, he's a..."
"I like Mr. Bones though," Alaria muttered, sensing the princess's thoughts. "He reminds me of my great great great grandfather after he went on a mouth-stitching diet for a year. Lost 500 kgs of weight. He was always so cranky and mean and fat before that. He was mean and cranky and lean after it. Did I tell you about the time when some hunters came to decapitate him?"
Morangul and the cleric (since she certainly didn't look like a Paladin) stared
at the fey, who had the most innocent looking face. After a few awkward moments,
Morangul facepalmed and cackled, a sound that shocked the cleric out of her stupor.
And alerted the rest of the ship to his presence.
A few members of the crew made their way towards the scene, wondering who this man was and why he was upsetting their female passenger so much. Amalia calmly raised her hands to show them the situation was under control and they didn't need to step in. "I am Liana, a cleric from the Order of Dawn", it wasn't a lie, except for the name, "and I have sworn to battle... things like you."
She calmed down a bit though, realising the Lich was not about to unleash a horde of undead creatures onto the ship's deck. "So, why have you returned, if not to bring ruin into our lands once again?"
"Hopefully we will find out when we get there. We have generations of-"
Thomas stopped midsentence as he pulled the door open to the deck and stared in shock. Slowly, he closed the door, turned, and rushed wordlessly past the confused captain to the window. He pushed the windows open wide and, ignoring the questioning of the captain, lowered himself from the captain's cabin window to the guest cabins, leaving Alain in the cabin wondering what the hell was going on and why the Lordling's chest seemed to have a glowing thing on it. Trying to ignore the foaming water beneath him Thomas reached his leg over to the nearest cabin window, which he kicked. After a few kicks the window opened and Gilford leaned out wearing a bed robe, bewilderment on his face.
"What in the hells are you doing?" He asked
"Trying a new diving technique!" Thomas hissed "Shut up and let me in, quick!"
With some cursing and several bruises Thomas lowered himself into Gilford's cabin and rushed to the armour chest at the foot of Gilford's bed.
Gilford looked him over "Do I even want to know?"
"No" Thomas grunted as he pulled a steel breast plate from the chest and laid it out on the bed. "Big skeleton thing on deck."
Gilford groaned. "Well that’s just perfect." He walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled out a padded shirt "How many have we lost this time?"
"None so far"
"Really?"
"Yeah, it's talking to the imp thing and the princess"
Gilford had put on the set of padded wool and held out his arms and slipped on the chain hauberk Thomas had held up for him. "Talk-talk or enchanting-talk?"
"How would I know?" Thomas replied pulling out more armour from the chest and laying it on the bed. "For all I know he could- wait why is that bird in here?"
He was referring to the seagull sitting on the pillow of Gilford's bed; it cawed at him and prodded with its beak at a gauntlet Thomas had placed next to him. If he could tell the difference between birds, Thomas would have sworn it was the same one from earlier.
"I don’t know." Gilford replied his voice muffled by the mail coif he was pulling over his padded hood "'just showed up this morning and has been following me around all day. It hasn't crapped on anything yet so I've been ignoring it."
"Yeah well, It better not start" Thomas said as he held up the breastplate "now hold still"
Morangul stood there pondering.
The woman was a cleric, no doubt, but he
was thinking back to Alaria's ramblings
before he was projected.
"Wait a second! Alaria said your name was Amalia!"
Morangul gave a large frown.
"It's not nice to lie to potential allies, for I to am
looking for a way to defeat Vayne and the demon armies."
The cleric scoffed at his comment; "And why should I believe you, of all people?
Why should I believe that you have not joined them?"
Morangul simply rolled his eyes;
"Put simply, I actually want to enjoy my new-found freedom in an actual world,
not a smoking ruin. Now, I suggest you tell me who you really are."
Alain, after regaining his balance, carefully opened the door as to not alert whatever Thomas had seen to his presence. He gained a look at the skeletal Morangul across from his princess' face and quickly slid out of the door, without making any sound.
Whoever this was, his presence made the hairs on the captain's neck stand up and he wished he had brought his sword from his cabin. Slowly approaching, he heard fragments of the ongoing conversation.
"...Now, I suggest you tell me who you really are."
The captain's eyes widened. Surely she wouldn't...
"I am Amalia Undine, rightful queen of Lassara and I hope you are sincere in your proposals of allying yourself to me, or I will hunt you down with all the might that is at my disposal", the straightened posture, her proudly lifted chin and the spark in the princess' eyes made clear that she was momentarily unaware or intentionally oblivious of the fact that all the power at her disposal might well be limited to who was on this ship. And even that wasn't as clear as the captain had wished.
The reaction of the crew was as it was to be expected. Open mouths and wide eyes, but also some laughter went through the crowd that surrounded Morangul and Amalia and the princess quickly realised that what she had just done might not have been the wisest course of action.
Frijyk took a glance at the old wizard, who looked unusually concentrated while sitting in his meditative position. Usually, his face was more relaxed, and more... well, meditative. He couldn't tell what, but Frijyk guessed Morangul was doing something. Probably magic-related. He turned back to Alyssa, who was glaring at him expectantly.
"I've been traveling with him for a while, and he seems mostly benevolent. I'm not one to believe in trusting anyone besides oneself with his own life... but I at least trust him not to suddenly betray me. He helped when we were fighting one of those demons. He knows some very powerful magic, and has some strange ideas about the subject... but he is teaching me to use it myself. And anyway, he's just an old wizard. If he does try anything, there are three of us, and only one of him. And we have swords."
Frijyk hoped his answer was satisfactory. Both Alyssa and Guantano were giving him something of a strange look.
"What about you two? What do you plan to do if we find these weapons?"
"We'll see about that once we're there. The most important thing right now is to get our hands on something that can actually defeat the demons. As benevolent as he looks, Morangul is not helping us for the blue in our eyes."
The revelation of who he was talking to put Morangul off
guard for a few seconds, but he quickly composed himself.
"Ah, well now...." He started off, "Now I see why you were
hiding yourself. I could imagine what Vayne would do to you if
he captured you."
He chuckled at the red flush that came to
the princesses cheeks. "Oh, but you have a filthy mind, you do!
Here I am talking about torture and a gruesome death, and here
you are thinking about that. Kids these days, so uncouth...."
He ended with a mutter, chuckling inwardly as he watched the
princess fumble for words to refute him, her face redder than ever.
And Alaria didn't help much either, giggling madly and zipping around the princess's head
in her fairy form.
It was at this point that he noticed the man standing behind him with a shocked look on his face,
"Ah! Greetings, I am Morangul, and you are?" The old lich gave yet another sweeping bow.
Before he could even begin to answer, two other men came out of a cabin with a crash,
both fully armed and armored.
"Oh, its becoming a grand party on deck, it seems." Morangul
said dryly. Then he felt a peculiar sensation emanating from one
of the newcomers. In fact, it seemed to be coming off of the finer dressed
one's right hand.
After a few moments, he finally realized what it was, with a strange look coming over his face.
"Nice hand you got there."
"I feel dizzy," Alaria moaned. She stopped spinning around Amalia's head and dropped to the deck like a stone, moaning.
The lich's image flickered once. Then twice. Then stayed exactly where it was as Alaria burst back up. "Mr. Morangul!" she yelled. "You are glad! I've never, ever seen you glad before!"
Alain was about to answer and he took a step, trying to place himself purposefully between the skeletal creature and the princes when he noted the flickering image and the reactions of Alaria.
"Alaria, is he an illusion of yours?"
Alaria looked at Alain as if he was crazy.
"Mr. Bones is sitting far far away in some trees. Why would he be here? That's just him speaking throuh me."
"Speaking through you..." Thomas muttered to himself. "Well that's just what we need. Yet another monster who knows who we are."
Thomas walked over to the fey woman and struck the side of her head with his palm, shocking the girl and breaking her concentration, causing the image of the skeleton to dissapear. "If you ever do this again, I'm throwing you overboard!" said Thomas. He turned to the surprised crew "That goes for the rest of you, we have gods knows how many creatures looking for this ship, all eager to tear us to pieces if given the chance. If I find any of you doing anything to give away our position, so much as a message in a bottle, I'll have you hanged! Dismissed!"
His stomach finally slowly steadying, Guantano turned to look at Frijyk before adding on to Alyssa's reply.
"Well Frijyk, I don't know whether you've been one for the bards," Guantano said with a hint of his telltale humor. "But we, are going to make a saga worth a dozen compositions and countless recitations in inns all over the land." Taking a quick swig of water from his gourd, before burping and raising his hand to wipe his mouth, Guantano then continued in a faux serious voice, "Will you join us on this epic quest Aqua boy?"
".....Aqua Boy?"
Morangul just came out of his trance,
and was still quite disoriented from the abrupt ending
of his conversation with Alaria and Amalia.
Impetuous fool, he thought, thinking of the young upstart with the prosthetic hand, its never a good idea
to break a telepathic connection by force! I hope her fragile mind wasn't damaged even more...
With that, he turned to the events at hand, and called out,
"Actually, I think he is more of a sky blue!" as he shakily got to his feet.
"Might be from the lack of oxygen so high up in the mountains."
"Speaking of hanging people..." Alaria said, slowly raising her head. The tone was of intense annoyance, with none of the characteristics of the confused little girl before.
"You do know that I can pretty much kill everyone in this ship right now if I really want to, right?"
Alaria raised an eyebrow as if amused. "Oh? Surprised that I can even talk this way? Don't worry, I'm fine. I am just...borrowing... some vocabulary from your own brain here. A big roomy place as well, I might add. Mother told me that it was very rude to do so, but you know what? I don't give a damn," Alaria smiled. "It makes me feel...powerful."
"Hey, did you hear an anecdote about a nobleman hanging from the ceiling by his own entrails? Well, you better listen when a Fey tells you a life story because if not, you may just miss the life lesson... hell, you might find yourself becoming a life lesson!"
Thomas froze, this girl seemed to believe what she was saying, and the little fey had some power, the illusion was proof of that. And his own wizard was incapacita-
He was unable to finish his thought as a figure rushed past him with unimaginable speed and a mailed fist came crashing down on the imp girl's temple. Thomas was shocked , and stood mouth agape along with the rest of the crew as Gilford was now standing over the prone girl with glowing green script criss-crossing his armour.
Gilford stooped over and held up the delirious alaria by the wrists with one hand pulled back his other one and gave Alaria a quick punch to the forehead, knocking her out cold. He then carefully laid her out on the deck and pointed his finger at the princess.
"She's your companion, clean her up then go with her to the wizard's quarters." Gilford said. He turned to the stunned audience "As for the rest of you, get back to your stations, show's over."
Alaria growled as she felt a presence behind her and turned invisible, leaving behind an illusionic decoy in her place. The nobleman mentioned a wizard... How troublesome. She placed additional care into the spell as not to be detected by them. After all, it fooled Morangul, at least for a while. At least not until he put in actual effort to locate her specifically.
She watched the drama unfold with mild interest and pulled out her dagger. They'll notice that they had been bewitched in few days or so... Unconscious girl wasn't that hard to maintain a decoy of. Someone could ask why she was unconscious for that long, but who understood how Feys operated anyways? So she had things to do... Favors to repay... Tricks to prepare... She let out a silent giggle as she began to climb up the mast.
Amalia Udine had not protested when ordered to heal the girl, she had taken an oath as a cleric to heal the sick that had overrided any indignation she felt over being ordered around. Alain however had no such oath and had entered into a heated argument with Gilford, which was not helping Amalia's concentration. She knelt over the prone body of the fey girl and raised her hands ahead of her.
"Cure moderate wounds"
Her hands started to glow with a faint blue light and she lowered them towards the fey to administer the magic by touch. She gasped in surprise as her hands went right through the girl.
Thomas had walked over from where he had been standing in shock and was attempting to break up the two solder's argument when he heard her gasp. He looked over to see the Princess' hands seemingly embedded in Alaria's torso.
"I'm guessing that's not normal." Thomas said.
The illusion started to disintergrate where the magic of Amalia's hands touched it and within seconds the girl was gone much to the amazement of all of them.
"Oh gods."
The implications of a psychotic fairy out for blood running around the ship unseen sent Gilford scrambling to the hold stairs, dragging his charge behind him.
"I trust you are well rested, Morangul," Alyssa sneered, "so how about we get moving? You know the way, I believe."
Alain was still arguing with Gilford when he noticed the commotion about Alarias body and heard Thomas' comments. He shook his head, shooting another glance at Gilford but before the captain could make up his mind about what to say, the knight grabbed Thomas and pulled him away.
The princess wasn't quite finished though. Quickly getting up she stormed after Thomas and Gilford, followed by Alain, who was now worried about his charge. Entering the hold, Amalia was already arguing aggressivly: "Sires, I will not accept this kind of behaviour. The choice as to with whom I... negotiate and who travels with me is not yours and the way you handled this situation was more than unhelpful."
She calmed down a bit, her gaze shifting from Thomas to Gilford and back again, before she drew a deep breath and gathered her thoughs.
"Alright, we need to plan now. Whatever we may want to think or feel about the 'monster' that Alaria projected onto your deck knew more than we do and right now we need all the information we can get."
Gilford had bolted the doors to the main deck shut and they were standing in the first deck the staircases. The group found themselves watched by several pairs of curious eyes; Up and down the ship sailors were caught in the middle of setting up hammocks and were staring at the only light source in the room brigter than the odd oil lantern: the green glow of Gilford's armour.
Before he replied Thomas turned to the closest sailor, "You, get Cid, Xandrax, and that neurotic man with the bottles to my quarters, now." the sailor nodded and set off down the ship to the guest quarters.
"Well, princess, right now we have an angry invisible pixie flying around above deck, looking for me shaped things to kill and sooner or later I expect she will decide the easiest way to do so is to set the ship on fire. I really don't have time to give you an update and- Wait I didnt mean-"
At the word 'Fire' a gasp spread through the onlookers and after afew seconds there was a great rush as 50 odd sailors rushed the staircase wielding sticks, buckets of what was presumably water* and whatever seemed to be around they could beat flames out with. Only Gilford's firm grip had kept Thomas from being trampled.
"Uh... oops."
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* Thomas didn't have an opportunity to inspect them. After a poorly timed breath he decided he didn't particually want to.
A scream and a loud murmur.
"What's going on?" one of the sailors said.
"The stairs up the deck," another sailor answered. "It's gone."
"What?"
The sailor burst though the row of other sailors in front. It was true, the stairs leading out the deck was gone, replaced by an imposing wall.
"Some kind of trick," a sailor muttered. "it's probably just invisible. If we search carefully."
"No, no, no," another sailor said. "Look!" Another sailor walked forward to touch the wall on the other side. "There's absolutely nothing here."
"You mean we are trapped? With a crazed Mage killer inside?"
"No, wait!" another sailor said. "We still have a few lad up there... Maybe we could..."
Kh-thuck. A trapdoor suddenly opened over them. Three men dropped through it, covered in slime and seaweed. The trapdoor above then quickly closed and disappeared.
"What happened?"
The slime-covered sailor rose up and grabbed the nearest sailor. "Squirrels!" he said. "Squirrels!!!" he collapsed.
"Fick," said one of the sailors.
"Worst part is that she's an illusionist. She could disguise as one of us."
The sailors all exchanged suspicious looks. Was the man in front of them really the same sailor that they've worked with for years? Didn't Jod said he was grabbing lunch? What was he doing here?
"Anyways, we are trapped here until we find her. That means there's only one thing to do..."
"Kill each other until we find the fae and kill her?"
"What? no, you idiot. We travel in groups. Don't let each other out of your sights! If you are vein bewitched, call somebody! And then we'll do a full body search."
"There is the princess, no?" said Alaria disguised as a sailor.
"What about her?"
"The moment she touched the fairy, the fairy disappeared! Who knows if it isn't just a mind trick? What if the fairy knocked her out and disguised as her? Then we would have an insane psychotic killer of a fairy disguised as the princess!" said Alaria.
"Are you suggesting..." the other sailors said. "That we do a full body search on he princess of the kingdom..."
"Yes."
"Who happens to be a 16 year old girl?"
"Yes?"
"I actually like that idea. It'll ensure that our superiors won't be a psycho fairy."
"Purely for security purposes, of course."
"But wait!" Alaria said. "You can't go in there unarmed. The fairy might have bewitched or tricked the princess's honor guards to serve her instead! You know what she did with the stairs... She mitt make us look like monsters tothe eyes of the honor guard! So we have to knock the honor guard out quickly and silently and then search the princess."
"For purely security reasons."
"Yes," Alaria rolled her eyes. "For purely security reasons."
"Alright man," one of the sailors said. "We got out plan. Quick! We should have some rope inthe hold. You! Grab a few cudgels from the armory!"
"Here, take this!" Alaria said, handing the sailors a pouch of crushed mushrooms.
"What's this?"
"It makes people really dizzy if they breathe it in."
"Thanks! Where did you get it?"
"From the herbalists? Duh?" Alaria said. "Quick! We don't have enough time... Who knows what evil that the fairy could be plotting? We have to go stop her!"
"Right. Man! Follow me! You, give this to the chef! Tell him to make some soups out of it! We'll give it to the princess, err, fairy's honor guard.
Rest of you, to the holds!"
The army of sailors quickly left the scene, leaving Alaria shaking her head.
"That was too easy."
"Yes," said a voice behind Alaria, "your performance wasn't very convincing."
Alaria spun round just as a sickly bald man behind her blew a silvery powder into her face. Before she could even think to avoid it a warm feeling spread through her body causing her muscles to relax and her mind to become heavy. She was paralyzed in an instant, it took all her concentration to keep her illusion from fading when her body crumpled to the floor.
"Heh, now that was too easy." Said the man, "Dont think I dont know what you are, fey," he tapped some sort of monacle that he had straped over his eye and grinned "I've been keeping an eye on you since you came aboard, in case you fell out of favour. It's a pity you havent done anything serious yet, your ingredients would make me alot of money in the guild. Still, never an opportunity wasted. I think the others will notice if I drag you in front of the lord missing a horn or a pint of blood." He pulled out an empty vial and moved it to alaria's mouth "But I doubt they will notice if I took some saliva, now, open wide..."
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