I dedicate this chapter to:
Alita (Árama), Wyla (Mashauri),
Alejandro (Bahamut), Mata (Taltos),
Harold (Timmy), Usiel (who sometimes plays Sianodell)
And Gabriel (Our DM-GM).
My party of seven, who spent
All this last campaign trying not
To kill the new guy...
Hello! Happy birthday (actually, birth week) to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday dear Ruby! Happy birthday to me! You may remember that I once said that January the 29th is a very special date...
Yes, because one beautiful January the 29th (I am not going to tell you how many years ago!) this Costa Rican girl you all know as Rubymoon-Faith was born!
Ok... Enough of self-congratulations and let's get to what brought us here today.
First of all, I answer your reviews:
AL: Thanks for your review. I hope you like my story... though the world we created is a little bit different from the D&D world... I'm really trying my best to make it interesting!
Wow! A LV 14 Wilder Elf Druid!... I have never got that far... taking into account that I began to play D&D last year and I have been in three different campaigns (counting this one and a BESM d 20 one)... I think Gea is going to be my character to get a higher level, though must of my party have already got to LV 3 and I am still a LV 2 (buju! uu). Anyway, thanks for your support and for the help you're offering. Maybe someday I will be needing it... or I'll just write to keep in touch (I like to make mail pals).
Mashauri: Wyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Please stop being so modest. We have our good and bad times. We are not always such good players... and sometimes we mess things up... Yes, poor Yaashi. He's our party's little Kenny, but it's fun to see him die. Ah... and hurray for all the cute guys!
Sara Fénix Black Sanders: Hey, girl!Jajajajaja! You are introducing your cute Greg to me little by little... (sorry, I haven't still watched him directly). Anyway, it is not that impossible to understand your review... just a little bit. Yeah, I know this story is growing up faster than the other two, maybe next time we meet I will give you the copy of the document for you to read... And, of course I had to mention the fact that I have a boyfriend! If it wasn't for him, this story would not exist.
Now, I apologize if this chapter is a little bit shorter than the rest, but what I wrote in the few lines up here is real. We spent all this campaign trying not to kill the new guy who entered our campaign and monopolized the whole game, leaving us sitting without anything to do for four boring hours.
Anyway, here is chapter 6. Enjoy it!
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Chapter 6: Surprise Attacks and Exorcisms
My bedside alarm clock rang at 6 o'clock. Vanessa's did as well. Árama had already left the room... It was January the 10th, first day of class.
I got up and started to get everything ready before my first class of that day: Humanities, at 8 o' clock. Fortunately, Vanessa and I were going to be classmates in this subject so I would not have to spend the morning with a lot of strangers.
Before we entered the room, I found Bahamut, who was also waiting for the class to begin. Vanessa entered the room while I talked to Bahamut so, when we entered the auditorium (A/N: At our University, Humanities groups –depending on under which modality you take the course- are usually large groups of about 80 to 90 students so, they need something bigger than a classroom), it was already filled with people so, I could not find Vanessa again.
We took a pair of empty seats almost at the back of the auditorium as the professors entered the room and gave each of us the program of what we would be doing throughout the semester. Unfortunately, our Arcane Arts professor was going to be Professor Drake, who kept looking at me as if he wanted to tear me into pieces with his eyes.
At some point of the teachers' speech about what we were supposed to learn with each one of them, I felt this kind of strange energy running through my body (just like the one I had felt when I was walking by the High-School building when I was looking for the young girl a few days before). At the same time, the four girls that had been sitting behind us screamed and ran away from the class, still screaming.
A few seconds later, I had Professor Drake standing right in front of me.
-I want you to get out of this class! Now!
-What? You cannot do that- I replied. –That is not fair!
-And you dare to get troublesome after what you have done? You knew you were not supposed to do magic in class before you are told to. Didn't you, miss- he asked. –And you also know Necromancy is totally forbidden in this University... Get out.
I turned to Bahamut for a split second. "Come on, Bahamut! Are you not going to say anything? Stand up for me!"
Bahamut tried to defend me, but it was not enough for Professor Drake.
-I am not going anywhere- I said. Every inch of my body was trembling with fury and indignation. –What you are doing is not fair! I did not do that on purpose! I cannot control it!
-Who are you?
-My name is Gea...
-Well, miss- a feminine voice interrupted; it was the Biology professor. –Please just try not to do that again, Ok?
-I will try.
The rest of the class, up to the fifteen-minute break we had in between the five hours the class lasted, was peaceful for me... Except for the fact that Professor Drake kept looking at me, as if he expected me to make any single mistake to take me out of the class for good.
During the break, I went down to the building's cafeteria for a small snack. While I ate, I heard something was going on a few blocks away from where I was. It sounded like gunshots, lots of gunshots and explosions.
I walked out of the cafeteria and followed the shooting sound. In a few seconds I found myself in the middle of a crossfire battle. But I was not the only one there... the young semi-elf and a pair of her classmates were walking around there. According to what she told me, the High-School building had been evacuated and the students had been told to wait in the gardens until the situation was controlled.
As we talked, I saw Professor Drake walking in the middle of the crossfire, stopping the bullets with a fire blast as he walked inside the closest building. I decided to follow him, to see what was going on inside that building and the young girl decided to come with me.
We followed Professor Drake inside the building, but we lost his track once inside it, since we got stuck in the middle of another crossfire... To protect ourselves from the bullets, we entered the closest room, where we met Bahamut, Sianodell and Timmy, who had entered the building a few minutes before we did.
Sianodell was already at the other end of the room, since he had defeated the guy he had been fighting against. Bahamut and Timmy were each still fighting a pair of guys. Another guy lied unconscious at the other end of the room.
I walked straight to where Bahamut and Timmy were, preparing myself to try with the other Necromancy spell that I could maybe control: the Touch of Fatigue (if I concentrate a lot, I can manage two Necromancy spells: Disrupt Undead and Touch of Fatigue)... With one of my hands, I touched the face of one of the men my friends were fighting against and absorbed enough energy to leave him kneeling on the floor.
While that happened, Sianodell hurried back to where we stood and killed the remaining man with his sword.
-Please do not kill me- the man who was still kneeling on the floor pleaded. –I have wife and kids. Please have mercy! Do not kill me!
-Ok- Sianodell said. –We will not kill you if you tell us what is going on here.
-No. I cannot do that- the man insisted.
-Ok. Let's kill him, then.
-No! Ok... I am going to tell you what I know- the man said, as Sianodell and Bahamut drew their swords out. –Everything I know is that there is something going on at the main computer room.
We walked to the main computer room. Bahamut and Sianodell entered first. I think Timmy followed them, because he disappeared from beside us, like he used to do. By the time the young girl and I entered, Sianodell had thrown a table down and a bookshelf had been broken. Four men with guns were preparing to attack and... A woman had a sword aiming at Bahamut's throat as she spoke to him:
-Seems like you are still the same stupid, useless, Bahamut- she said in a kind of angry but sexy voice at the same time. –I was really enjoying that sake bottle that I stole from you...
As she spoke, I heard Sianodell whispering a few incomprehensible words and, when he finished, the woman let Bahamut go, as she took her hands to her stomach, bent over herself and ran away from the room as fast as she could.
When the woman ran away, and we were ready to attack the remaining four men, they threw a pair of smoke bombs and ran away... But they had not left us alone. We heard a small "click" as they ran away. They had left us with a grenade! That meant that the whole building was going to blow up in a few seconds!
-Run!
I had not begun to run when I felt someone lifted me up as we moved forward at an incredible speed. As we came out to the light of the broad morning, I clearly recognized the person who was carrying me: it was Sianodell.
In less than ten seconds the building blew up, but we were all already outside. Well, actually not all of us were already outside... The young girl was still inside the building when it blew up. Anyway, she had managed to survive. She appeared a few minutes after the explosion, heavily wounded and covered by dust...
In one of the University's gardens, a few meters away from where we stood, we saw Professor Drake and the young-looking, tall, bearded man (the one Sianodell told me was the Social Sciences Faculty Dean) trying to fight against a giant robot (A/N: a mecha).
It was a very uneven battle... Neither of the professors could do anything against that robot. Even when Professor Drake gave full power to his scourging rays and the earthcaster did the same with the giant rock peaks that tried to pierce its metallic surface, the robot seemed immune to their magic.
At some point of this uneven battle, the robot attacked, leaving both professors unconscious. At the same time, someone was ejected from the robot's pilot cabin and fell, totally unconscious, over the young semi-elf: He was a young human, maybe her age or a little bit younger.
Sianodell tried to run as fast as he could (A/N: Sianodell's got a special ability called Speed, with which he can run up to a hundred miles per hour) to reach the robot's pilot cabin and turn it off before something else happened, but he did not count on the fact that the robot's force field was still activated and it repelled him. Timmy, on the other hand, had appeared on top of the robot's head, but he fell off it immediately. There was nothing we could do, at least not if the force field was still on.
Suddenly, a magical flame hit the force field and made it flicker, leaving enough time for Sianodell to pass through it... Árama and Taltos had arrived, and Árama's Produce Flame was strong enough to damage the force field a little bit.
Anyway, having Sianodell in the robot's pilot cabin did not help much either (I am really sorry to say this, but we all need computer classes urgently). He asked Taltos for help but, since Taltos did not tell him much of what he had to do, he tried every single button around him (REALLY BAD IDEA).
In a few seconds, the thing got crazy. It took off a few feet from the ground and began to spin around itself, throwing grenades to everything that moved...
Timmy, who had got back on top of the robot, got to disable its legs, but it was not enough. One of the explosions got to hit me, but not very hard. What really worried us was that it was aiming its ion pistol at the young girl...
When the attack was about to reach her, the young human boy who had just fallen on top of her got in the way and received the shot... The ion beam killed him immediately. It was a gruesome scene to watch: he was torn into pieces, his blood covered the semi-elf from head to toes...
As the robot kept spinning around, Timmy kept climbing until he reached the robot's chest. He hit it with his giant club and uncovered the robot's main cables. He hit it once more, cutting most of the cables, but nothing seemed to happen... Suddenly, Sianodell ran out of the robot's pilot cabin and carried me away once more. The robot was about to blow up.
The robot blew up, but this time no one got injured with the explosion. We could all get out on time (Árama and Taltos had helped to carry the professors away).
After the robot was destroyed, we were called to give a whole inform on what had happened. Fortunately, though we had destroyed University's property, we did not have to pay for it. They said that, since we had saved many lives that day, our debt had been cancelled...
The young woman who talked to us also told the young semi-elf not to worry, that Yaashi (a few days later I got to know that she was talking about the human boy who saved her that day) was still alive and that he was going to be Ok... That was something hard to believe! We had seen him die! We saw the young girl covered with his blood! Anyway, that was what she said.
°°° (Second week)
It was a Friday afternoon. I was taking a walk around the campus when I heard someone calling me: it was the young girl. She said she needed my help (actually, the party's help) to fulfill a mission that had been entrusted to her... According to what she said, the people at her High-School had found out about her special ability to exorcise and had sent her to a special mission in an abandoned mansion found in some island close to New Shanghai, China, which was said to be haunted.
I agreed to help her and the rest of the party did, too. So, the next day, we left the University and headed to China...
I do not know quite sure what happened while most of us were looking for someone to rent us a boat to get to the mansion but, when we were back in the city's main streets, there were several men lying on the floor in front of the tavern; Sianodell and Bahamut were standing in front of the tavern's door; Timmy stood on the building's roof... There were like 40 or 50 other men approaching the tavern from the main street! Meanwhile, a young man tried to reason with the man who seemed to be the group's leader... That man had three of his men aiming heavy guns at Timmy.
Finally, things seemed to settle down and the group went away, letting us get where the others stood to ask them what had happened.
-Your friend did something really stupid- said the young man who had been reasoning with the group's leader. –He messed up with a group of Yakuza... If you mess up with one of them, you will have all of them following you, until they get to kill you. Now, thanks to him, I will have to come with you, because I have just made a blood pact with their leader: He will spare all of your lives if I bring him a painting that is located in Shian mansion's living room- he began to walk away, followed by his two companions (a man and a woman), but he turned around once more. –Ah, and next time you come around here, do not bring him. They will kill him if they see him around.
That did not sound very polite. There was something about that guy that I did not like, though I did not say anything... Maybe it was the way in which he said it; so haughty, so "I know it all and you do not so, shut up and let the professionals work". Unbearable... I began to fear it was going to be a loooooong journey.
Anyway, it was around mid-day when we got in the ship and departed with our new companions... According to what our guide and ship captain said, that mansion had been abandoned for many years, and it was always surrounded with the smell of death and destruction... Those who dared to approach it were few.
We disembarked and began to walk toward the mansion... Our guide had been right: there was really a smell of death and destruction around the place. It really gave me the chills to walk around the isolated three-story house's front yard... The grass had already gone yellow and it grew up to our knees; at the right corner of the garden, a single tree grew tall and leafless; but what got our attention was the statue that stood in the middle of the yard: It was an elf... a very elegant-looking elf male, maybe the house's owner, for in a golden plate at the statue's feet we red a birth and death date and a very strange phrase that no one seemed to understand: "When angels cry blood, the insects of the fig bloom".
Before we entered the house, that young man we had met a few minutes before decided to search the garden for black lotus... Five of them he found in the fountain that surrounded the statue. He carefully took them out with his sword and placed them in small bags (one of which he placed inside one of his pants' pockets) and lend a petal to his pair of companions... keeping the rest for himself.
It did not take too much of an effort to open the door, since the house was too old. The first floor was almost empty... except for another statue... It was a female elf with wings... angel wings.
Now, guess who searched the statue to see what was so special about it? (A/N: ain't my fault, he wanted to do everything). He found a small closed compartment within the rock, in which there was some sort of strange thing shaped like an insect but, though he tried to manipulate it with all his strength, nothing seemed to happen.
We decided to leave the statue alone for a while and keep walking up to the second floor... Whatever the phrase in the golden plate meant, it had to do with that statue and it did not sound like anything good.
We took a walk around the second floor. It was very extensive, and room doors surrounded its only corridor, but each and every single one of those rooms was completely empty. The white sheets that were supposed to be covering the furniture were spread throughout the floor, covered with ashes... wood ashes. Everything was all the same until we got to a place where the corridor branched of in two different directions: one of them headed to another room and the other one headed to another staircase.
We decided to enter the room first... Maybe there would not be anything special about it; just the same things that we found in the other rooms. But this time we were mistaken...
It was a large room; it did not have any furniture, just like every other room in the house, but there was something that made it different from the rest: a painting. This painting showed a group of elves (both common and dark elves) dressed as if for a party. But there was something missing... There was an empty square in the middle of the painting, as if someone had cut something out from it... That had to be the painting that man had asked for! But why would he want it?...
Sianodell carefully took the painting off its frame and placed it inside his pack, while the new girl examined what could be seen from the window... She saw a greenhouse and what might have once been a swimming pool at the back garden and some kind of tower that connected the whole house... That was when our group got to split apart: The three new guys, Timmy and the semi-elf went to the back garden to see what they could find there. Sianodell, Bahamut, Taltos, Árama and I stayed inside the house and climbed up to the third floor.
As we walked through the third floor, we saw exactly the same things we had seen in the second floor, until we reached the library... It seemed like the library was the only place in that house that had remained intact. High, full bookshelves covered all the four walls.
Up there, we started to look for a book that could tell us something about the painting. But... where to start in such a huge library?
It was Sianodell who finally found something about the painting. It was some sort of diary what he kept in his hands. There, we found a small copy of the painting, where we could find out what the missing part looked like: it was a young couple. He was a dark elf; she was a common elf. They were tightly embraced and seemed really happy.
Sianodell turned the book and gave it to me, so I could read the names on the page next to the one where the copy of the painting was, to see if maybe I could recognize anyone in it.
I read carefully. There were so many names, but their order did not seem to match with the painting... Bla, bla, bla, bla... Galanodell, bla, bla bla... Litvkah, bla, bla, bla... Kihlstrom... So, my parents had been there. I did not know why, but that was not a comforting thought... It was such a shame that the names did not match the painting! I could have maybe seen my father as he really is, but it was impossible.
According to what we read next, the painting was made during a party... An engagement party for one of the members of the Galanodell family, but something happened and the wedding never took place... That did not give me a good feeling.
As we read, Árama climbed a few stairs and found the entrance to another room. Right behind the door she found a wedding dress, which she packed among her things.
It was beginning to get dark when we began to hear something downstairs... Music. It was a very old elven melody... We followed the sound and found ourselves back in the living room, but there was something different inside it this time.
There were shadows, many shadows dancing around the room. We decided to keep watching, to see what could have happened that night... Nothing seemed to change much until the sun finally set. Suddenly, one shadow stepped in the middle of the room, followed by a few others, which started to attack and murder the other shadows in the room. Only a few shadows seemed not to be attacked... I knew my father had something to do with it!
The others arrived just in the middle of the massacre. Timmy handed me aroll of parchmentwith a spell written on it; they had found it in a secret room under the greenhouse.
Suddenly, one of those shadows began to take shape and popped out from the wall: It was the dark elven guy who had been cut out from the painting. He was only wearing the pair of pants he had been wearing in the picture... he just walked out from the room, not even paying attention to us. Another shadow took shape after he did: It was the young elven girl that appeared in the picture with him. She had just left the wall when she flew up to the roof and went through it.
Soon after this happened, one of our new companions (A/N: Guess who? And please don't ask why) opened a hole in the roof... Bad idea... The same vampire that had once kidnapped Árama appeared from what seemed to be another room upstairs and went down the hole that had just been opened. This vampire took Sianodell's chin, looked deeply into his eyes and went away, taking Árama with him once again.
Great! There was not a way in which things could get worse now, was there?
It turned out that things could get worse because, as soon as the vampire left, Sianodell turned against us and attacked one of our new companions (A/N: Guess who and why?). The young man tried to defend himself using the black lotus he had placed inside his pants' pocket, but he did not have any luck since he did not count on the fact that Sianodell was wearing a force field ring that repelled his attack (same attack that he received, for he had dared to touch the black lotus with his bare hands).
Now we were in trouble. What could we do to get through Sianodell without harming him?
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Author's Note:
Mecha: Giant battle armors, or mechanical exoarmors (like those in Gundam and Evangelion) with humanoid shape, equipped with giant weapons.
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Well, that is all for today... I guess it did not turn out to be a very short chapter after all (taking into account we spent half of the time we actually played doing nothing... or maybe it is because I got excited with the description of the mansion).
Anyway, I hope you liked it. Keep reading if you want to know what actually happened inside the mansion. Chapter 7 will be "In Love and Death". I guess the title says it all... A very ancient love and death story that took place at the Shian mansion. Will Mashauri get to fulfill her mission? (It also contains a small introduction to our Sports Festival).
Well, you know what to do now... REVIEW!
Bye, bye...
Ruby.
P.S: I need your help to decide upon something... My DM-GM said he is going to give me the specialization in the Fire Domain but to get it, I will have to give up one of the Sorcerer/Wizard magical schools, with some restrictions... He said I cannot give up Evocation, Divination and, obviously, Necromancy... Send your answers with your reviews...