"Cure Light Wounds" and similar spells are all considered to be of the school of necromancy (although they can only be cast by clerics, not wizard necromancers). This is because Necromancy deals with the boundary between life and death. I like this convention, and I feel that it explains why Xzar would offer healing points as opposed to any other type of small gift. And so this inspires me to make him skilled in alchemy...
Fast Friends
"So, I see we've randomly adopted Mister Raccoon?" Imoen half-asked with a glance back to where the animal was following them. He wasn't a small raccoon but he did have this big adorable thieving face on him, so she was pretty sure she liked him already.
"Probably," Aegis agreed, tossing yet another nut behind them as they walked. "He heard of a job opening for a cat, and while his resume didn't impress me much at first glance, I decided to let him stay on as an intern."
Imoen planted her hands on her hips and gave Aegis a shuttered-eyed grin. "I see."
"Also, this is settling my nerves," Aegis admitted. Animals were sort of her 'thing.'
But—just then—a high, feminine scream pierced the air, sounding horrified and in grave distress. Both Aegis and Imoen nearly jumped out of their skins and then shared a look of surprise. Was someone in danger? They bolted off the side of the road without a word shared between them, heading towards the sound. Another scream reached their ears, but this one was quickly followed by a hoarse, sharp roar.
"Whoa!" Imoen pulled her bow off her shoulder and grabbed for an arrow. "What was that?" she called to her sister in alarm. This was going to be worse than Gibberings, she knew it!
"Sounds like a bear," Aegis surprised her. "Stay behind me!"
Imoen was about to ask for a rundown on why Aegis knew what bears sounded like (and how she knew it wasn't a hydra or gorgon or dragon or dracolich or any other manner of horrible monster) but then they suddenly reached a little glade and crashed out into it unceremoniously. About twenty paces ahead of them, some shaggy, black beast had climbed several branches up into a large oak tree... and no sooner had they caught sight of it than the creature's stout head swiveled towards them.
Oh, yup. That was a bear alright.
A squeal emanated from further up the oak tree, to where a quick glance told Imoen that someone was probably up there, higher in the branches, hiding from this animal. A quick glance back down at the bear indicated that the animal wanted to eat her now, and planned on making short work of it. It had nearly rolled out of the tree, hit the ground at a run, and barreled towards the two of them without ever breaking it's stride.
On all fours it wasn't particularly large... If it had stood up on its hind legs, it would only have been as tall as Imoen. Right? But, uh, the way Aegis shoved Imoen backwards suggested it was still something to be feared, and Imoen wasn't about to doubt her sister twice on this whole 'bear' matter.
"Back up, back up, back up!" the larger girl hissed at her urgently.
Imoen obeyed, nocked her arrow, drew, aimed, and loosed! And hit! The arrow buried three or so inches into it's skin about the neck... But the bear merely roared, and seemed to become much angrier, and all at once Imoen was getting horrible flashbacks to The Worst Hunting Trip Ever. "Ae, it didn't-!"
"Back up!" Aegis spat, interposing herself before the oncoming animal. She met its tackle with her axe in hand but, as anyone with hunting experience coulda attested, hatchets didn't make for great weapons against animals. The bear had curved talons and meaty paws half the size of a person's head, and with a big swat it shoved Aegis' axe out of the way. Another swat sent chain links to popping! It bit for her face, and only then did Aegis seem to regain her balance and gather some renewed mastery of her own strength, because she grabbed the bear's shoulders and scruff and shoved it backwards a foot or so!
"What can I do!?" Imoen needed to know.
The bear lunged at her again but Aegis rolled to the side of it, somehow getting around those clobbering claws and those big biting teeth! The bear rounded on her on all fours again, all cumbersome-looking but secretly-fast. It clawed at her thighs and she swiped warningly at its face. It reared up on its hind legs, and while it did so Aegis struck it hard in the shoulder. THUPHK! The rounded hatchet blade buried itself several inches into the animal's meaty hide...
...But in turn the bear nearly knocked her head off: One poorly aimed smack of it's thick paw left the world had dark and spinning, filled with stars and a surprising amount of red.
Aegis could feel a jolt in her knees, and that was how she'd realized she had lost her balance and fallen to the ground. She felt like she was dreaming for one moment, but then every instinct in her body screamed to lift her hands up. She did so, and caught gigantic, snapping jaws upon the handle of her hatchet. Long claws curled into her armor, tearing it, ripping skin. The pain got a howl from her and brought her back to wakefulness: Bear. Bear!
Aegis kicked and shimmied and flailed, trying to get out from under it. Claws were tearing chunks of her chainmail free. Another second of this and she'd be dead!
Not on Imoen's watch! Four small balls of light appeared like shrieking arrows, and all of them smacked into the bear's head and burned pits into it's flesh. The bear gave a magnificent roar and swiveled about to look at Imoen. "Ae! Get up!" Imoen was holding that wand she'd stolen, that wand of magic missiles, and the little thing had just proven a formidable weapon; but when the bear turned to her, Imoen thought it only looked angrier than ever before! Oghma help me! It rolled off of Aegis with all the ease of a falling rock, and it lumbered straight for her!
Dazed and injured, but apparently highly irate, Aegis rolled after the departing bear. She flailed out with her axe and sank it's head deep into the animal's right back leg. The attack tripped the bear, which sprawled onto it's face with a bellow. Imoen sent another burst of magic missiles at it with her stolen wand. "Aegis, get up!"
And Aegis finally did, thank the gods! She staggered up, wiping blood from her face (and into her hair). The bear whirled back towards her and made to stand, only to fall back to it's forelegs. It roared at Aegis. So Aegis roared at it, which probably made sense—if only to Aegis. Imoen looked between the two of them hesitantly.
For a moment, bear and Aegis hunkered there, glowered at one another. Then a raccoon darted up beside her with its fur all standing on its end, and began to growl menacingly at the (much larger than it) bear. Apparently this voucher in Aegis' favor was too much; either that, or the raccoon simply spoke a similar language and had made a convincing argument. The bear backed up a wary step. It grumbled and chuffed and shifted about it's heavy bulk. Then it turned around and, apparently thinking them far too much trouble for its evening, it lumbered off at quite a rapid pace.
The clearing was quiet for a long moment after its departure, as Aegis and Imoen (and the raccoon) all stared to make sure it was really gone. Then Aegis groaned in relief and let her shoulders sag. She eased gingerly out of her defensive stance as if doing so pained her, and peered downward at the shredded chain weave of her armor. Below the metal, her leather had been torn to ribbons and blood oozed quietly from a few deep scratches. Her hair was in quite the state of disarray- filled with sticks, leaves, dirt and blood. She looked up as Imoen approached her, and held up her hands to forestall any hugging.
"Ow," Aegis told her, and Imoen sputtered a laugh. A few thick cuts on the edge of her face were bleeding openly. If the bear had hit her head square on with an open palm, it would have outright killed her. As it was, she'd merely been backhanded. The whole event had taken only a few minutes of their time, but she now looked hurt, stiff, exhausted, and felt very much like... well, like she'd been mauled by a bear.
Imoen snickered, and when Aegis squinted at her she waved her hands and then (smartly) pocketed that wand of hers before she could accidentally set it off on some unintended target. "Oh Ae! Here, sit down! Sit down, I'll-I'll bandage you up, that's what I'll do!" And with that decision made, she slung off her pack and began digging in it for fresh linens.
"I'm... I've..." Aegis stammered inarticulately. "Holy Oghma's giant ass, that was lucky."
"You're telling me!" Imoen cried with a waggle of her arms. "When it knocked you over I thought it had bitten your head off! Hold still!" She stood up and started pressing the linen into Aegis's cheek.
"Augh! Watch it! That hurts!"
"I said hold still, I'll never get it bandaged if you jump around like you've ants in your pants!"
"I'm not jumping anywhere, you're shoving your fingers into my jaw muscles- Ow!"
"Stop talking, dummy head!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Augh. Why the hells did we do that? That was a bear."
"We were trying to rescue that screaming lady! Oh yeah, that's right." Imoen turned back towards the tree, but there was no sign of the person she'd previously presumed was in it's branches. Were they still up there? She didn't hear anything. Hmm. "Well that's ungrateful, it looks like she done ran away..."
"I am offended! But could I perhaps interest you in a healing potion?" a masculine tenor sprang up from behind them.
Both women yelped and spun around; and Aegis jumped back to her feet.
The speaker was a tall but very slender man in green robes. His hair was chin length and graham colored, and tossed about in a very messy manner, such as if he had just rolled out of bed. His eyes were a pale, lime green, and he sported dark black facial tattoos reminiscent of harlequin makeup—tattoos which made him quite unnerving to behold. His lips were painted black in a permanent smile that extended across his cheeks and nearly up to his ears; triangles like claws stretched down from beneath his eyes, sharply contrasting their color; and his brows were surmounted by a whimsical line of black dots.
Imoen recoiled an inch. Aegis straightened and raised an incredulous brow, as if he had puzzled her more than alarmed.
He smiled at the both of them in a manner that was at once charming, innocent, and—owed to the tattoos—sorta repulsive. But in his hands he proffered forth that aforementioned healing potion, which was actually a rather good icebreaker; Aegis was covered in quite a bit of her own blood at the moment, and Imoen (truthfully) wasn't very good with bandages.
Aegis stepped forward, and lightly waved her shorter sister behind her. "Who are you?" she asked of this very strange man.
"Why, my name is Xzar!" he gushed fabulously with a lift of one shoulder and a flick of a hand. "I'm just a poor unfortunate traveller, who seems to have lost his ken of the road! That's true, isn't it? Yes it is. Is that all? No! I'm forgetting something: This is my aggravating traveling companion, Montaron!"
An annoyed growl drew their attention to the side, where a very irate and shady-looking halfling was perched not so very far away. He had coal-black hair and venomous eyes, and he was lithe enough that only the black tufts of hair upon his naked feet sufficed to distinguish him from a gnome or other smallfolk race. He held his shortsword drawn from its sheathe and, if Xzar hadn't been the one to point him out, Imoen would have said he'd almost looked like he'd been flanking them... but, to be fair, a bear was in the area and Aegis was still holding a bloody axe aloft. Couldn't fault him for being careful.
"Ahem. We are trying to get to the village of Nashkel, just outside of Amn," Xzar reclaimed their attention, and his words sounded so completely rehearsed that Imoen (personally) went way past disbelieving him and somehow resurfaced back on the 'totally believing him' side of things again. "Nashkel is a mining town, and we are on on a mission to investigate the iron crisis in the region! We were hoping you might be heading in the same direction? Perhaps we could help each other out. I happen to be a wizard, and my associate is skilled with blades." He again deliberately avoided use of the use of the word 'friend', apparently to avoid confusion. "And you look like quite the splendid meat-shield, if you don't mind me saying so!"
Imoen and Aegis shared a look, trying to determine whether what they ought to be afraid or simply bemused. There was something hair-prickingy and creepy about this harlequin man, but if he'd wished them harm it would have been easy to have ambushed them while they'd been distracted and injured.
"Well?" he asked, as their silence appeared to agitate him. "Not that I don't mind standing around smelling the flowers and stems and chlorophyll and humus and other odorous nature-scents, but-!" Aegis stepped forward and moved quietly into his personal space, and the wizard's eyes flew open wide as he registered just how much light her silhouette could blot out in close quarters. Imoen hid a grin with her hand. Xzar was tall, yes, but Aegis was a few inches taller still, and she had at least double his pounds. 'Slight' or 'girlish,' were things Aegis had never been.
"Thank you," the bloodied young woman told him after a long pause. She reached out a hand to take the healing potion. Xzar looked quickly from her face to the potion, recalled that he was offering it to her, and all but dropped it into her hands. Then he snatched his limbs back to himself and inspected the fingers as if expecting to find bite markes int hem.
Aegis had no guarantee the vials weren't poisoned or doped, but there was blood running down her face, and Imoen had skipped out every first-aid class every offered by the Candlekeep surgeons. So Aegis uncorked the vial and downed it in one motion. The taste was bitter, like old kelp and spoiled parsley, but instantly her aches and pains were fading away.
"Oh," she sighed happily. Green eyes flit to her. "Thank you."
"Um, Mister Xzar, if you don't mind me asking," Imoen piped up, "Where exactly did you... come... from?"
Xzar blinked rapidly, dropped his hands, and then beamed and gestured to the wild world about them. "Well, I've traveled many places but most recently I-"
"She means the bear, ye damned fool wizard!" the halfling snarled from their other side. "Ye don't just start talking to a person in the middle of the forest without explanation o whence ye came ta be there!"
The wizard scowled. "Oh look who thinks he's so clever! Was I talking to you or to the Garishly-Colored-And-Sickeningly-Spritely-One, hmm? Now, where was I. Yes, we were accosted by that terrible animal; but then you and your extremely large friend showed up and chased it off. We'd climbed up the tree, but much to my chagrin it had started to follow... I didn't know bears could climb, did you, Monty?"
"I only told ye ten... damn... times... If ye'd just cast a spell on the thing, it'a been dead already."
Comprehension flashed over both women's faces: Xzar was talking to them because they'd inadvertently rescued him. "Wait," Imoen interjected, "who screamed?" She turned to Montaron because he seemed best-equipped to give level answers. "We thought it was a woman?"
Montaron leaned moodily against the tree, and pointed to the wizard the wizard with the tip of his sword. "Guess," he dared.
Xzar's voice distorted into something high-pitched, shrill, and slightly feminine. "It was so dirty!" he wailed. "So very, very, very dirty! With GNASHING, pointy, dirty teeth!"
Imoen made a sympathetic 'o' shape with her mouth. Aegis looked to be growing steadily more impressed with the breadth and scope of the wizard's wild gesticulations, and had leaned back and crossed her arms to better appreciate them.
"It probably had flees and worms and parasites and—that would have been very interesting to study, postmortem, by the way—but-!" Aegis's raccoon trotted up beside her and peered suspiciously over at the wizard. Xzar jumped slightly upon noticing it, and then dramatically shrunk back and clutched his arms to himself as if fearful it might touch him. He gurgled a pinched: "Animal...!"
Aegis looked between the raccoon and the madman. "This is my new cat," she introduced them casually.
"That is no cat," the wizard spat in angry whisper, his wide eyes locked upon the furry interloper. The raccoon growled at him, apparently just as disappointed with its findings. Xzar did not let it have the last word: "Hiss!"
"Well, No," Aegis admitted, but then picked up the raccoon with a fond grin and scratched his thick ruff. "But I like him anyway." She shifted his weight up onto her shoulder that he might perch there. Then she looked Xzar and Montaron to encompass both of them as she dusted off her hands. "We can't go to Nashkel just now because we're headed to the Friendly Arm..."
"Well that's that, then," Montaron growled, standing up and approaching the wizard, clearly ready to leave.
Xzar blinked rapidly, swallowed, composed himself, glanced to Montaron, and then frowned thoughtfully up at Aegis. "Well... Um. Is there nothing we can do to change your mind?" he asked, brows coming together uncertainly.
"I'm afraid we're meeting with some friends."
"Oh. Heading, um, up to Baldur's Gate, then?" he asked quietly and in a very small voice. "Or through to Waterdeep or perhaps Neverwinter?"
"Just the inn, for now." The Aegis looked to Imoen, who gave her sister a big, over-the-top shrug with both arms held in front of her to make sure Aegis knew the call was her own; Imoen had no idea what was best. "...But... if you've lost the road," Aegis hazarded and turned back towards the two men, "you might as well re-provision at the Friendly Arm before heading south. And we're not entirely sure where our friends plan to head. If they're headed the same way as you, maybe we can travel together a ways?"
Xzar's face lit up. Montaron paused and didn't budge for a moment, as if processing whether he'd heard them correctly. Then he eyed both of them, quietly. Almost judgmentally, as if legitimately questioning their sanity.
"Alright then!" the wizard cooed excitedly. "I like inn food, don't you Monty? Ooh, it'll be nice to have such kind and generous friends! But of course I expect to be paid in pigeon brains-!"
Montaron swore. "Wait just a moment ye damned wizard. Ye don't go where I don't go, and I haven't said anything about agreeing to none of this."
Xzar's expression turned from elated to violent and he whirled on the halfling. "But look they just took my potion!" he squealed in a grating tone. "I think that deserves some aid in kind, don't you? Why not take them up on the offer, hmm?"
Imoen leaned near Aegis. "We saved him from a bear already, right?" Aegis hrmed an agreement.
Xzar looked back to them in alarm. "Ah, that is, I wouldn't hold such a thing against you, but your conscience would know otherwise!" And then suddenly the next thing he said wasn't loud or excitable at all, but rather small and cutesy. "After all, what's a poor duo like us to do, alone out in the woods with dirty, dirty bears running around? You wouldn't just leave us here..." And then his voice dropped into a low gush and he grinned like a devil as he drawled out a: "Woooulldd youuu...?"
Montaron lifted a hand to pinch at the bridge of his own nose, and seemed to seriously contemplate stabbing the wizard.
Aegis and Imoen stared at Xzar, the latter with her head cocked to the side, the former with a brow raised, for Xzar was unabashedly the most peculiar person they had ever met.
"I think he's nuts," Imoen decided, and Xzar puffed himself up indignantly just like he'd expected such an accusation.
"I think I like him," Aegis agreed, and Xzar deflated and looked like he hadn't expected that at all. Montaron jerked his head up and stared at her in a mix of what looked to be bafflement and irritation. "What?" She walked past the two of them and smirked at the very confused-looking wizard. "The road's this way, gentlemen."
"It's totally not!" Imoen piped up, surprised. "It's- wait... um... Was that tree here before?"
Aegis shook her head in amusement, wiped her axe casually off on her trouser leg, and belted it as she sauntered clear out of the glade. "I think I'm going to call you 'Urso,'" she could be heard to tell her raccoon as she went. "How do you like that? It's in honor of your first battle."
Xzar stared dumbly after her for a moment before lifting a hand to point in her direction and looking superciliously at Montaron and Imoen and chastising them snobbishly: "We should listen to her; she talks to animals."
...
Yarg! Review!