Wizards and Swords and Adventures Oh My!
Sorkil slouched through the gloom; the only sound that could be heard was the muffled thump of his staff is it repeatedly hit the dusty floor. Either side of him empty and battered crates loomed up like mountains and the air was thick and greasy with a faint taste of tin.
Magic, he could sense it. Quite old magic yes, it could have been from decades ago, but some of it still lingered around and put him on edge, the occasional spark scorched the wooden floor as his staff came into contact with it.
He stopped in front of another identical pile of crates, something had caught his eye. Covered with a layer of dust and mould which almost had a life of its own was a small set-up of objects. There where a few cracked scrying orbs, objects that could record magic, there was a sextant watch and chart, several battered and cracking maps and several books and scrolls.
There was also a considerable amount of dried blood, just visible under it's layer of filth, not to mention a skeleton wearing moth-eaten robes that might once have been red, with a rusty dagger sticking out of its back. He only surveyed it with mild interest; it wasn't exactly an unusual sight.
What was unusual was the fact that the objects where still here. Normally, anything which had a street price of more that one gold piece was salvaged and re-sold several times in a matter of minutes. But these had obviously been here for years.
He carefully walked around the corpse, noting a zamarokian staff clutched in its bony remains of a hand, and picked up a book at random. He opened it halfway through and squinting at the scraggly handwriting, started to read.
Terrig rummaged through the many pockets in the wizard's robes. Wizards where interesting. They normally had lots of fiddly small objects for measuring the length of this and the strength of that and so an, and there was always someone willing to get their hands on such items.
They where also amazingly difficult to catch off guard, they where like cats and seemed to have a sixth sense for would-be thieves.
But wizards didn't creep around on rooftops spying on people he thought as he absentmindedly stashed away some coins he had found in one of the pockets and picked up the binoculars. Wizards separated crowds carrying large ornamental staffs, wearing fancy robes, and rudely expected everyone to show them respect. He examined the binoculars, they where solid, plain and rather heavy leather things with scratched lenses, but they still might fetch a good price.
Having decided that everything worth taking was taken, he nudged the be-robed heap with the toe of his boot and the man rolled down the roof and landed on the street far below with an unpleasant cracking sound that suggested he wouldn't be getting up in a hurry.
There was no point in just leaving him to come and get revenge or anything like that.
(1) And if you got caught trying to mug a wizard, you would end up with no senses, in the way of a well-aimed fireball.
Aris pinched the bridge of her nose. Lira had, with the help of Wilt and, with a little bit of persuasion, Liz, told her their whole story so far, as well as an anecdote of when Syril had single-handedly beaten up five guards.
To Lira, the word 'reality' was simply a bunch of syllables. Sure, she was aware it applied to a large majority of the world, but viewed it as something that was necessary to keep the balance of the 'cosmic forces', if not a bit de-grading. In short, she'd seen the world and come to the conclusion that everything turned out for the worst in the end, so why bother being surprised?
Different worlds, on the other hand, seemed rather interesting. She would have liked to ask Liz about it but she seemed reluctant to talk unless it involved muttering about dreams and reality under her breath.
"So what can we do about it?" Liz said, breaking everyone out of their chain of thoughts. They stared at her.
"So how can I get back? I had a lot of marking to finish as well as a T.V. program on planets I was going to record."
"Well..." Aris began "I don't know if there's really anything we can do at the moment. You could try finding a wizard and asking them, but as they said, the wizard who teleported you here didn't really know what he was doing. My advice is to hang around a bit and see what happens. Something is bound to."
"It might be a good idea to get some sleep first" Lira said over a barely concealed yawn. "Come on, I know a good place." She said, standing up and motioning for the other two to follow her.
"G'night Aris" she said and with that they walked out into the night.
Or early morning, as it was.
Josef held the gleaming sword high above his head, the light reflecting intricate patterns onto the bright metal. The effect was rather spoiled when one of the members of the Society cleared his throat loudly.
"Thank you Josef, but there's not need for the dramatic entrance. We've seen that damn sword before. Too many times before."
Josef lowered the sword and sheathed it, looking embarrassed. "But it's Silverlight! The legendary, hero-wielded demon-slaying sword! It must deserve some respect!"
"No." The man stated, curling another kink into his scraggly goatee "Matthew, please go and put that thing in the cellar."
"Ah come on Dave" Josef said, handing the sword to another man and taking his seat in ring "I thought you where all for that type of thing."
"Only if it's red and black" Dave said defiantly.
"Oh-"
"Will you two shut up and stop bickering!" said one of the members of the group, standing up suddenly and knocking his chair over. "We've got to prepare for that Summoning. Everyone knows what they're supposed to bring, be at the Stone circle south of Varrock at 2 'o' clock this afternoon, lest Zaros smite you."
"Two in the afternoon? Aren't things like this normally done at night?"
"Do you want to have to fiddle around with torches and drippy wax candles in the dark?"(1)
"Ah, no."
"Thought as much, meeting adjourned" Denath said, heading towards the door.
"Boss?
"What?"
What does 'adjourned' mean?"
"Argh!"
(1)The Society prided themselves on being Modern Wizards, and were no longer bound by things such as black chalk, archaic invocations, ceremonial garb, impresively ornate staves or, indeed, drippy candles. They used these items completely out of choice.
The first thing Liz was aware of as she slowly crept back into consciousness was that he head was complaining. Well, complaining is a bit lax a word, a more suitable description is that her head was screeching at the top of its metaphorical lungs.
She groaned and rolled over, burying her face in the coarse woollen pillowcase.
Eh?
Liz sat up and squinted around the small room she was in. The walls at one point in time might have been whitewashed, but they where now grey with the occasional burn marks. What could possibly have been sunlight was creeping in through the holes in the curtains.
Memories of the last few hours of consciousness came creeping back reluctently.
Liz untangled herself from the blankets, noting that she'd slept in her clothes, which where not only ripped and muddy from running through the forest, but crumpled. She wondered how bad her hair looked, but fortunately there was no mirror in the room.
Liz wandered out of the door onto a small, equally grubby landing and walked carefully down the stairs, forcing her tortured brain to concentrate on putting on foot in from of the other.
The large bar was rather crowded and noisy, but she found Lira in the end. She was sitting at a table that had certainly seen better days, eating what shall be called, for the sake of the narrative, a steak. After some determined sawing with the blunt knife, she finally managed to cut a small chunk off, transfer it to her mouth, and started chewing.
"Urgh." Liz said sitting down opposite her "What's with the hangover?"
"You ch'lnged me t' a dr'nking cont'st" Lira replied with her mouth full.
"Who won?"
"Guess."
"Oh. Then what happened?"
Lira chewed for a bit then swallowed. "Well, after you had passed out I challenged everyone else to a drinking contest."
"And?"
"I won of course." She said, sawing at the meat again. "Do you want some steak? It's really… well it's… do you want some?"
Liz eyed the plate suspiciously "Err, no thanks."
Lira shrugged. "Your loss." She replied as Liz pulled up a stool and rested her elbows on the table, head in hands.
"So what are we doing today?" She said eventually.
Lira carefully nudged the rest of her steak to the side, and after downing the rest of her beer replied "Well, I thought we could go and get you a weapon, If you meet a dragon, you don't want to be punching it to death, do you?"
"I don't want to meet a dragon at all, thank you."
"Don't worry, unless we go into the wilderness, or further to the west, you won't be seeing anything more scary that a vampire."
"Oh gods…" Liz muttered, placing her hand over he eyes.
Lira looked up with interest. "Gods? Which ones?"
"Eh?"
"Which gods were you talking about?"
"It's just a figure of speech."
"Yes I know, but which gods were you talking about? Saradomin, Zamarok, Guthix? Zaros? Or one of the southern gods, like Ithclarin or Elendis? Lira questioned, ticking them off on her fingers as you spoke. "The Morytainians have their own Gods as well, but I doubt it's any of them."
"I... I'm not talking about any Gods really, and I've never heard any of those names before. We have…different "Gods" where I come from."
"Really? Wha-"
At that moment Wilt decided to appear, struggling under the weight of a large bag of gold coins.
"The bank attendents seemed strangely scared once I told them who I was getting money out for." He commented
"Yea, I'm a well known customer" Lira said, standing up and taking the bag off of him. "Great, we can go and get some supplies now."
"Good" Wilt said "I'm completely out of air runes, you're lucky I had enough to teleport us earlier."
"Well Audbury's Rune shop is the best place for runes" Lira said, heading for the door "but Liz and I need to go to the marketplace first, and it's probably not a good idea for you to wander around Varrock on your own. So if you come with us first to the market, then after we've gotten what we need we'll head over to the Rune shop. Come on."
The trio stepped out-side into the bright afternoon sun, and after blinking a few times, started down the crowded path towards the roar of the fountains. Or it could have been the roar of the crowds. Yea, probably that. In comparison to the empty stillness that had been there the night before, the square was filled with people in expensive, multi-coloured armour, people wearing not so expensive armour pestering those who had, and hundreds of stalls bearing their interesting and in some cases suspicious wares. Lira gripped Wilt shoulder and pulled him away from a grubby man in bronze armour who attempted to buy his wizard's hat for a potato, and peered through the sea of people until she saw the stall she wanted.
The man running it was carefully running a whetstone along the edge of a bright blue scimitar, and only looked up when the three of them stopped in from of him.
"Hello, and welcome to Yaril's Weapons Stall!!" The man recited, somehow pronouncing the capital letters. "We have a huge assortment of arms ranging from Bronze to Runeite!! And-" He lowered his voice into an exaggerated whisper "we may even have a few more powerful items such as the legendary drago-"
"We just need a rune scimitar, thank you" Lira said impatiently.
"Rightio!!" The man exclaimed, and pulled out a heavy case "Here we have an assortment of daggers, all perfectly balanced with a-"
"Rune. Scimitar." Lira demanded slowly and clearly, while Wilt started to snigger slightly. She picked up the blade the man had recently been sharpening, and gave it a few experimental swings. "How much for this one?" She asked.
"Thirty five thousand gold pieces!!"
"Fifteen thousand."
"Thirty thousand!!"
"Fifteen thousand."
"Twenty five thousand!!"
"Fifteen thousand."
"Twenty thousand!! And that's as low as I'm going!!"
"Fifteen thousand." Lira said patiently.
"Urgh, fine!!" The stallholder exclaimed, and Lira handed over the gold without a word.
She turned to Liz and handed her the weapon, along with the leather scabbard and belt. Liz held the sharp bit of metal gingerly, as though she expected it to attack her.
"You do realise I have absolutely no idea how to use this, don't you?" she said uncomfortably.
"Hold the blunt end, poke with the pointy end!" Lira chuckled "Don't worry, after this I'll teach you how to fight properly. Now let's go and get you some armour."