"You're at the end of you're rope, I'll wager," grumbled a dwarf brandishing a battleaxe. "Not that it's anything personal, you understand, but I'm afraid your time on this ball of mud is just about done."
The dimly-lit, dirty inn seemed to watch this display in silence, almost as if it weren't commonplace. The party had just entered, and had not received the warmest of welcomes. This is getting pretty bloody repetitive, isn't it? Malark rolled his eyes as Ajantis walked forward, telling the dwarf that he'd have to get through the paladin first. Well, at least AJ walks the walk. Note to self - black and white idealism can serve a purpose.
"C'mon mate," Malark whined, "I haven't done anything worth killing me over."
"You've done nothing to anyone," responded the dwarf, "far as I know. Don't matter one whit to me. A price is a price and a head is a head, and wherever the two meet, there's old Karlat makin' his living. Like I said, it's nothing personal."
"FOR THE GLORY OF HELM!" roared Ajantis, and the fight began. The dwarf's battleaxe clanged off Ajantis shield, as he raised his sword. The two became locked in the duel very quickly, and Imoen and Neera tried to do what they could at a safe distance. Ajantis, however, was no match, and after a couple of nasty blows, Malark realised they were in danger. No healing items left. Shit.
"AJ, fall back!" Malark cried out as he leapt into the fray, belting into Karlat with his flail.
"Ah, fuck it, I'm out!" yelled Karlat, as he began to run.
"Oh no you don't!" Malark began to chase the dwarf, as Imoen kept loosing arrows. After running around the inn and generally terrifying the patrons, eventually, one of Imoen's arrows managed to bring the dwarf to a stop.
"What is this?!" Ajantis exclaimed after picking a note up off the ground. "This is a 'wanted' description of you, Malark. An evil enemy wants you dead, so it seems! Let us carry on with our search and not be discouraged by such developments. We are on the right path, and the enemy will be defeated in the end."
"How much gold are they offering?" asked Neera.
"Don't tell-" Malark tried to stop him.
"Three hundred and fifty gold, and not a coin less," Ajantis answered, a paragon of honesty.
"..her," grumbled Malark. "Guess I'll die with a smile on my face, then." He walked off and ordered a beer from the counter.
"Make that two!" called out Neera as she ran over to the counter. "You never told me people were trying to murder you!"
"Never came up," Malark said as he took a sip and winced. Well, cheapest drink at the cheapest inn in town. What did I expect, honestly? "Besides, weren't you offering mutual protection? I'd say a cranky person with a fair bit of gold is a lot less of a threat than an entire magocracy ruled by a lich. Anyhow, that's beside the point. What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know," grumbled Neera into her mug.
"Fair enough," said Malark as he finished his beer. "I'm going to bard around and annoy some patrons. You do you."
They returned to the Friendly Arm Inn, spider corpse, wine bottle, and boots in tow, and set about seeking out the gnome who asked them to do it. A lot of currency was changed hand, Neera looking on a little in shock, and they went downstairs to discuss their next moves and plans of action.
"To Nashkel next, then?" asked Ajantis. "I believe that was where the bandits were most concentrated."
"Incorrect. Out next move is the cloakwood-" started Malark.
"Cloakwood?" asked the rest of the party in a mix of confusion and horror.
"Yeah, Cloakwood, to get that dwarf his cloak back. And then we need to head to high hedge, to fetch that shortsword from that halfling I tried to drown in the red sheath. Then we need to detour south of beregost and get those boots so I can get my money back…"
"Malark, how many random people did you say yes to doing stuff for?" Imoen asked, very suspiciously.
"A few too many, by the sounds of it. They just started talking and like they were all offering rewards and I like having nice things so I said yes I mean what's the problem?" Malark rambled, hoping his rambling could dig him out of the fact that during his pub crawl he had forgotten to be a cynic.
"I'll make a hero of you yet, Malark!" cried Ajantis, in delight.
"Yeah, but only because it's easy money. Seriously, we have enough money now that even if someone dies bringing them back is going to be easy, and that's not counting the potential money out of all these magic items I can't work out."
"He's a giant pansy and he's just lying so he doesn't look lame," giggled Imoen at Ajantis, having a fair bit of fun at Malark's expense. Malark, to his credit, just sighed and ordered another round, including the water for Ajantis.
They left the next morning for the fishing village north of the Friendly Arm Inn, Malark of the opinion that selling an ankheg shell to the smith in Beregost was probably a good idea. Neera approached him on the way.
"All this travelling, all this adventure...how do you manage it?" she asked. "Until now I was barely able to keep my head above water. Yet here with you, it seems almost… easy!"
"Honestly?" pondered Malark, "I think it just comes down to safety in numbers. I'd be dead were I on my own."
"Wow, really? You seem way more capable than that. Not that I'd know. Travelling companions have been in short supply. My life on the road has been a solitary affair, full of cold nights and colder dreams. It's enough to make a girl want to head back to High Forest."
"Well, that explains the pointy ears."
"I'm a HALF-ELF!"
"I mean, duh. The human-like features and the pink hair-"
"That was a wild surge," pouted Neera.
"Uh-huh. And pray tell, what colour was it before?"
"...lavender," Neera replied sheepishly.
"And the educated have never been right about anything before. So why did you leave? I'm going to guess it was… surgetastic?"
"You really know how to get someone to open up," Neera replied, her voice thick with sarcasm. "Why, yes, let me just share intimate details about my past, ha ha. You put me right at ease."
"...I'm going to take that as a yes?"
"You're the worst. During my magic training a sphere of fire I had summoned got away from me somehow. One moment I was concentrating, the next moment my classmates were rolling on the floor screaming."
"There's no way anyone actu…" Malark paused, remembering to think about his words, something he did far too infrequently. "Alright, I totally see how someone could blame you but I also think no-one should blame you."
"They probably wouldn't have had I taken responsibility or grabbed a bucket of water or did anything other than just run away, terrified of what I'd done."
"Wait, what?" Malark couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. "You didn't do anything? At all?"
"Horrible, I know. Afterward, I ran into the woods and couldn't go back to bear to face the consequences. I snuck back into the village now and then for food, and once to leave a note for my parents, but eventually I had to leave. I took to wandering High Forest, but I kept running into the wrong people and doing the wrong thing. Eventually, Turlang the treant grabbed me and said, 'take a hike.' Well, maybe not in those words exactly."
"Guessing they share your love of rambling stories, then, huh?"
"Hey! I open up to you-"
"Relax," chuckled Malark, "I'm a bard from a library. I don't think you could find an individual who enjoys long, rambling stories nearly as much. Tell me more some time. Seems like an interesting enough tale."
"Huh. I forgot some people are crazier than me. Well, whatever. Let's continue this journey together then, shall we?"
As they arrived at the fishing village, it wasn't long before Malark has stumbled onto a distraught farmer who had lost his son. It took all of three seconds for him to crumble into 'we will do whatever we can,' then charged headlong into an ankheg nest.
"I mean, we're guaranteed to find a shell here, right?" Malark asked, hoping to find some support.
"Were 'a giant pansy' the words you used to describe him last night, miss?" Ajantis asked Imoen.
"I do believe they were," Imoen giggled. "Although I'm not too keen on ankhegs. I don't like bugs, and I sure don't like giant acid spitting bugs, no sir."
"AJ, you nearly promised the farmer our souls and the return of his child," Malark retorted. "It's lucky I cut you off when I did. And given the last ankheg has damn nearly killed me and AJ, can't say I've much love for them either."
"Weren't they such a great field study?" Imoen asked rather cheekily, jabbing Malark in the ribs.
"What can I say?" responded Malark. "I get superpowers for the sake of ruining your day. On the subject of superpowers, both Neera and I have no useful spellpower left and we haven't found the son. You might have to trigger a surge."
So when the next ankheg appeared, she did exactly that. Unfortunately, it didn't put the ankheg to sleep, and just made her legs slower. While Ajantis was able to bound into the fray, Neera had less success.
"EAT FLAMING," she cried out as she waddled toward the ankheg, as threateningly as possible with her quarterstaff held above her head, "-or, uh, possibly frosty- DEATH!"
Malark could barely keep his song up he was laughing so hard. The mood did sober when Ajantis found the body of the farmer's son. While there was a great haul of magic loot, it wasn't something for them to revel in. Malark groaned like a mistreated zombie the second Ajantis said he lacked the strength to carry both the son and the shell of the ankheg, but it was clear the shell was a more minor priority.
After returning the son to his father, and some nudging bellowing from Ajantis, Malark managed to persuade the farmer to take some money given he was losing his land and had lost his only son. They ran very quickly into the nest again to retrieve a shell, and headed back to the Friendly Arm to receive clerical treatment and sell the loot Malark could identify.
Before they even had a chance to rest, Malark had them off on the march again. This time, they were headed to the cloakwood. The tasloi had no chance against Ajantis' melee prowess. After setting camp there, they headed into the temple near Beregost to heal Ajantis.
After some discussion of the party healer and total lack thereof, the head priest mentioned they needed less hobgoblins in the area. This was enough to set Malark off, and he found the hobgoblin band after a little wandering around. After a generic threat for their money or their life, and Malark's typically irreverent response, the leader of the band rallied his battle cry.
"You brave! So brave, we cut your heart out and show you! Chill, attack!" The hobgoblin took a second to look around him. "Chill?"
His entire army were victims of sleep spells from Malark and Neera, and his only other standing bandit was quickly cut down by bolts of magic energy from Neera.
"Ah, fuck-" bemoaned the hobgoblin before Ajantis hacked through him.
The party decided to check off another job or two before heading off, and went to sell the ankheg to the smith. He offered to make them a suit of ankheg plate for four thousand gold, a sum the party could barely front. Telling them it would be done in three days, Ajantis insisted Malark see through helping all the citizens he agreed to help.
"Wait, what citizens?" Malark enquired.
"The halflings you were telling us about in the Friendly Arm. Do you genuinely not remember?"
"Can't it wait, like, three days? I can get so much pampering done in that time," moaned Malark, accepting he was fighting a losing battle, followed it with a sigh. "Looks like I hired a conscience then. One more round, then we go."
"Why do you insist on drinking that… swill before we go out?" Ajantis asked.
"Because, AJ, I'll rationalise myself into doing the selfish thing if I don't," confessed Malark, starting his drink. "Now let's go be friendly neighbourhood adventurers."
A/N: Yeah, I just could barely chuck in any jokes here. Given the title, I think we all knew a fair bit of drama and inner conflict was coming; hopefully this story finishes with a few well finished character arcs. I'm trying to find a balance; but I think part of that balance means some chapters will be up and others will be down. Pacing is proving tough. Anyhow, that ankheg plate is going to be super handy, especially since having two suits means I won't have to spend even more on full plate before Nashkel mines - the reason should reveal itself next time. Hopefully another chapter in the next couple of days, hopefully I don't burn out.