I do not own Dungeons and Dragons or any of the characters.
Heist
"Oh, yeah," Simon snapped. "Okay Holga! I'll just do it!"
Jasper grunted as the Helmet of Disjunction slammed into his head.
"Sorry," Simon apologized.
"Either it's a miracle and it's raining priceless magical helmets, or something's not going according to plan," Jasper said.
"Simon can't attune to the helmet," Holga explained.
"You humans!" Doric scoffed. "You just can't help but lie!"
"What's the lie?" Jasper sighed, pushing himself up.
"Edgin knew Simon wouldn't be able to attune!" Doric snapped.
"And you didn't?" Jasper asked. "I could tell at a glance. He doesn't have enough confidence. Until he learns to believe in himself, he'll never be able to be a powerful Sorcerer."
"If you knew, too, why didn't you say anything!?" Doric demanded.
"Because I figured we could make due with a Changeling Wild Shape instead of the Helmet of Disjunction," Jasper shrugged.
"The vault where Forge has his treasure is protected by the Arcane Seal of Mordenkainen," Simon said.
"Oh," Jasper said. "Well, that's...Yeah, that makes more sense."
"Look, I didn't lie!" Edgin defended himself. "I really thought Simon could do it! Guys, look. We got a couple of hours until the games begin. this is what we do! We pivot! Instead of dwelling on what went wrong and who lied to whom, let's put our heads together and figure out a plan!"
Doric sighed, shaking her head. "I'm going to figure out my way home. I can't believe I put my faith in any of you. Least of all a couple of Changelings. Lying is all you are."
"Yeah, I'm going, too," Simon agreed. "Sorry about Kira."
"Kira?" Mia asked.
"My daughter," Edgin said. "Forge has her and has convinced her I abandoned her. We're stealing from him so I can get a Tablet of Reawakening to bring her mother back. It's why I was in prison, not that you ever bothered to ask."
"We'll find another way to get her," Holga promised Edgin, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Just not today."
"Why not?" Jasper asked. "If it's for your child, I'm not abandoning you."
"Neither will I," Mia promised.
"It has to be today," Edgin said. "We're not finished until my daughter's safe."
"Aren't you sick of failing!?" Simon snapped.
"No!" Edgin snapped back. "That's the whole point! We must never stop failing, because the minute we do...we've failed!"
"Huh?" Doric asked, confused.
"The only true failure is giving up," Jasper explained. "Everything else is only a setback. But if you give up, that's it. That's all you are. A quitter. A true failure."
"Look, none of us here can say our lives have gone the way we hoped for," Edgin said. "Right? Holga, you left your tribe to be with a man who left you were so upset about...leaving your tribe. And if you quit now, that's in stone. Same for you, Simon. You're a petty thief masquerading as a pettier sorcerer. You gonna go back to your show?"
"It's better than dying!" Simon argued.
"There's worse things than dying," Edgin said. "Doric, you have integrity, and I'm sure the last thing you want to do is tell the Emerald Enclave that you had the chance to save them but you walked away. Jasper, you tried to play the good guy and you got screwed over. You lost your son and you got blamed. This could be your only chance to do something that would make him proud for the first time. Do you really want to throw that away?"
"I already said I was coming with you," Jasper said. "Why you gotta make me feel like shit on top of that?"
"And Mia," Edgin said, ignoring Jasper, but then paused. "I actually don't know you, but I'm sure your life has been bad at some point."
"Not really," Mia shrugged. "I've pretty much always done what I wanted, and then I met Jasper and I've been happy since."
"Oh," Edgin frowned.
"You're quick to call us all failures, but what about you, Ed?" Simon asked.
"Me?" Edgin scoffed. "I'm the champion of failures! I lost everything that ever mattered to me, and it was all my fault!"
Everyone stared at him in confusion.
"You want to know who really killed my wife?" Edgin asked. "I did. I decided we deserved a better life than a Harper's oath would allow us. But I didn't realize that Red Wizards mark their treasure. I led them right to our door. I didn't even have the good luck to be home when they got there. I failed the Harpers, I failed my family, I failed all of you. Which is exactly why I can't quit. So if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go sit on this rock...and make a plan."
Edgin walked over to a large rock, sitting down. Jasper sighed, pulling his weapons back on. As he did, Holga joined Edgin on the rock, followed by Doric. Finally, Simon walked over, saying he'd sit on the rock but there was no more room. Jasper looked toward the water, thinking. They needed to get the gate open, but with that seal, and without a functioning helmet, they couldn't open it. Maybe they could go through the wall, but it wouldn't be even remotely stealthy. Maybe they could do it if he could turn himself into a Purple Worm, but it was beyond his abilities.
"How about this?" Holga suggested. "We use the Hither-Thither staff to get into the vault."
"No, I've explained this," Simon said. "You can't Hither-Thither into a room you can't see."
"I'm not saying that," Holga said. "I say we put the portal on something, then sneak that thing into the vault."
"Mmm," Edgin grimaced. "The only thing going into that vault is treasure."
"I don't suppose we know anywhere that still hasn't brought their treasure?" Jasper asked.
"Wait, yes!" Edgin realized. "Forge said the richest men in Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep are bringing loot to the city. They'll be taking the High Road!"
"Baldur's Gate will take longer to arrive, but Waterdeep will have the lighter security," Jasper said. "We're about the same distance from each."
"So, Waterdeep, then?" Mia asked.
"There'll still be dozens of guards," Doric pointed out.
"Yeah, but they'll be guarding against people taking things out of their wagons, not putting them in!" Edgin pointed out. "Holga, I could kiss you!"
"Try it," Holga challenged flatly.
Edgin's grin vanished for a second before returning. They quickly made a plan, then got moving. The plan was equal parts simple and complicated. They bought a painting for next to nothing, then cut out the canvas, placing one of the Hither-Thither staff's portals on the wood backing of the painting, where the canvas would hide it. Then, Edgin hid with the painting in a pile of leaves in the road for Waterdeep's convoy. When the wagon passed over it, he used tree sap on the frame to stick it to the underside of the convoy. Then, the portal on the painting and a portal on the ground were used to hammer boards off of the underside of the wagon. Doric quickly slipped through the portals, then unstuck the painting, only for the frame to fall. However, she and Simon grabbed hands, Simon catching the edge of the painting after falling halfway through, and Holga caught Simon. Instantly, Jasper transformed into a twenty foot serpent, six inches across, and lunged down through the portal, ending up streaking up into the carriage to a metal pole across the side. He wound around the pole, with one end, his tail wrapping around Holga's leg before his body contracted at the same time as Doric's tail wrapped around the pole, instantly pulling Simon and the painting up just before the painting hit a rock. Once the painting was off of the ground, Doric pulled it up into the carriage. Jasper returned to his favorite form beside her as she set the painting down the other way, allowing Holga to nail the boards back into place. Then, Simon closed the portal the painting was connected to and Doric put the face of the painting back on, using the tree sap to stick it into place before she and Jasper escaped the carriage as flies. They landed with the others and grinned as they returned to normal.
"Nicely done," Jasper said. "That was almost the smoothest infiltration I've ever seen."
"What's the smoothest?" Doric asked.
"Me walking into a city where I'm wanted wearing a different face than they're looking for," Jasper smirked. "Come on."
The others nodded, and they headed down to meet up with Edgin, then from there for Neverwinter. They rented a room at an inn, Jasper having disguised himself as a tall, muscular, blue-haired Moon Elf. They had made it into the room without trouble, and took the tablecloth off of the one, round table in the room, placing the connecting portal on it. Except, when they removed the painting's canvas, all they found was stone.
"Oh no," Edgin breathed.
"What happened?" Doric asked.
"It's facing the floor," Edgin said. "Why would they store it that way?" He tried to pry at the edge of the portal with his knife, trying to flip the portal enough to get his fingers under it, only for it to not go anywhere. "Damnit, why does nothing go our way?"
"Let me try," Doric said, taking the knife. "Maybe I can make a gap."
"Why not just turn into a drill worm?" Jasper asked.
"I can't do a drill worm," Doric said. "I can do a normal worm, though. Just have to make a gap." She paused. "You're a Wild Shape. Can you do a drill worm?"
"No," Jasper frowned. "But she's a stronger Wild Shape than I am."
"Really?" Edgin asked.
Jasper shrugged. "Possibly."
Doric rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I'm going to keep chipping, maybe I can make enough of a gap to get through as a worm."
"Good," Edgin nodded. "That'll be Plan D."
"Isn't it just Plan B?" Holga asked.
"No, Plan B has a stink on it," Edgin dismissed her.
"Then what's Plan C?" Simon asked.
"Plan C is our current plan," Edgin explained. "We're going back to Plan A."
"Why not just call it Plan A?" Mia asked.
"Because Plan A has an even worse stink on it," Edgin explained.
Jasper sighed, shaking his head. "Anyway, what's the main threat here? Forge's security?"
"If only," Edgin sighed. "You've heard the bit of my story about Sofina?"
"Yeah," Jasper nodded.
"She's Forge's top advisor, and she's a very powerful Thayan Red Wizard," Edgin explained.
Jasper groaned.
"Should have brought Xenk after all," Mia sighed. "What's our part?"
"We're going to sneak in our own way," Jasper decided. "We'll meet you all by the vault, if nothing goes wrong."
Edgin nodded, and Jasper shifted forms yet again, becoming a heavyset, brown-haired dwarf with a bushy beard reaching his stomach, a black tunic shirt over a green, short-sleeved shirt, and grey pants with cuffed, black leather boots. Mia nodded to him, and they walked out of the inn together. They made their way through town, changing appearances and outfits three times along the path, using back alleys to do so and Mia finally leaving her real clothes behind in favor of replicating clothes as Jasper always did in order to fit her appearance better. By the time they arrived, they'd ended up as a pair of Neverwinter guards on patrol, making their way back into the castle, not getting so much as a sideways glance as they passed the gate guards, due to the increased security for the games. The trip through the castle, and the attempt to find the vault, however, took longer than they were expecting, but finally they found it. Except, as they were walking in, Holga and Simon were suspended in the air by enormous, black tentacles coming from blood red spell circles on the floor.
"Oh, fuck!" Jasper cursed, just before tentacles burst from the ground below them as well, restraining them both.
Like Holga and Simon, their legs were bound together, their arms bound to their sides, and a tentacle wrapped around their mouths. However, before Jasper could use Wild Shape to escape the tentacles' clutches, something metal was forced around his wrist by the tentacles. He looked down, seeing a gold and silver bracelet, a Magic Suppression Band, and cursed in his head. And then, the band flashed, and in a wave starting at the band, his body began to change. It thinned and paled, the bracelet shrinking with his wrist. His fingers elongated and slimmed down, his clothes sank back into being no more than pale, white-grey skin that bordered on pure white, his eyes enlarged and turned pure, empty white as his skin around them darkened to black, the features of his face shrank until it matched the featureless one from his rapier, and his hair grew long, paling rapidly before ending with a very slight, pale, turquoise tint. The scars from the Pride Sinspawn, on the other hand, stood out on his pale skin only because they were true, pure white. He looked over at Mia, seeing she'd been fitted with a bracelet also, having also adopted her true form, now so thin that she looked nearly androgenous. Due to having been replicating clothes instead of wearing real ones, the bracelets had left both of them naked, at which both Simon and Holga shouted into their tentacle gags in surprise.
"Well, good news," a female voice echoed through the chamber, its tone anything but good. "You won't die. Yet. You're being placed in the games. You'll have the honor of dying for a cause."
Several guards entered, the tentacles releasing them all only after they'd been restrained and had blades to their throats.
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