Unfortunately for all parties involved, I am not the only character in this story. While I was busy bamboozling the abbeybeasts, my hordebeasts were left to their own devices (which is never a good thing) and one of my slaves was feeling particularly bold.
Disibod eagerly woke up Rye to wash the horde's laundry. It was around midnight and the rest of the encampment was asleep. Tonight, they would escape… but not just yet. He had been planning and working for this for weeks. Hours of sleepless nights slowly working the locks on the shackles to almost to the point where they would unlock. On top of that, he worked on making his weasel overlord complacent. He had pushed the times that they did laundry earlier and earlier until they were consistently doing it at midnight. He then convinced the weasel that the water in a stream a little ways away from camp was cleaner than the water in the stream right on the edge of camp. That was a bit harder, but he had managed to do it. He had been carefully tracking the phases of the moon to make sure that when they did escape, it was not too dark that he could not see or that it was not too bright that he would be spotted by the watch beasts at the edges of the camp.
The weasel had a tendency, because it was so early, to bring a snack along with. He would not eat it right away, but about fifteen minutes into washing clothes. Disibod had been taught how to forage for food before his ship set sail. The Abbot thought it would be a good idea, since he did not know if there were any towns where they were going. Disibod never knew that he would actually need to know the difference between various types of mushrooms. He had found a particular kind out in the woods while searching for sticks that was known to be used as a sleep aid… or a poison depending on the dosage. Disibod bribed one of the cook slaves to bake the mushroom into the weasel's snack for this night. The cook thought Disibod was trying to please the weasel, as the mushrooms tend to mimic a rather delicious kind of edible ones, and possibly become a slave driver himself. The missionary ended up offering a week's worth of his own rations just to keep the cook from squealing on him and to prove that he would never betray the rest…. In that manner, at least. Without his rations, he had to forage more and fast, which drained him of energy. He had to remind himself that it was all for Rye. For if Rye were not here, Disibod would have foolishly died in despair months ago.
"Is he awake yet?" the weasel grumbled. "Yes, Sir." The dormouse replied. The trio walked out of the camp, with a dim lantern to their usual washing spot. Disibod patiently waited for the candle to die out. He had purposefully placed an almost dead candle in the lantern so his eyes could adjust to the night. The weasel just thought he was being frugal. After twenty minutes had passed, Disi became a bit concerned: the weasel had not touched his snack. To not make it seem suspicious by asking why the weasel why he was not eating, he started a very quiet, but still audible to the weasel, conversation with Rye about all of the delicious foods that he used to eat as a noble and as a monk. That did the trick better than he expected. The weasel started eating in less than five minutes of the conversation. The candle was already out, and the quiet conversing of the two slaves lulled the weasel to sleep. Disibod waited a minute and then jabbed the weasel quite hard with a stick. He was out cold.
The missionary then began his real work. He pulled out a few handmade tools and unlocked all of the shackles with ease. He then took his knife off of the belt of the weasel and put it in its proper place: Disi's belt. He then took off his scapular and told Rye to get on his back. Rye did, but a little too slow for Disibod's liking, his nerves were bad, and his adrenaline was rising. He wrapped the scapular around his shoulders and Rye, making a back sling for the little mouse. He fastened it together with a circular brooch (courtesy of the weasel). He also took off his sandals and put them on his belt.
He Whispered to Rye "Alright, we are going to leave, but you need to be as quite as the night itself, you got it?" A small, shaky thumbs up came into his peripheral vision. Without further hesitation, Disibod shot up a tree and started leaping through branches. He thought he heard shouting behind him (he did, but it was not because of his absence. A night guard had tripped and smashed his face into a shield that someone left outside), which caused him to dart faster than he already was through the trees. About an hour passed when he thought he heard a voice on the ground below him. Against his better judgment, he stopped and looked down. What he saw shocked him so much that he thought he was hallucinating. He cleaned his ears and rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was seeing correctly. Down below the tree, slightly in front of the branch he was on, was a monk. A mouse monk, to be exact. The next thing the monk did caught the dormouse off guard: he called Disi by name.
"Disibod," the mouse and waved to catch his fading attention "follow me; my abbey is not far from here!"
- (switching to Rye's perspective now) Rye had been taking a nap as Disibod was jumping through the trees. He was dreaming of cinnamon rolls when he was roughly shoved awake. Rye almost screamed, Not the bad weasel! but then, he smelled Disi's bread smell, and he quickly calmed down. Rye gazed around, but he could see very little. Disi was looking at something. He peeked over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. Nothing was there. Are we going to stop? Rest on cold ground, away from smelly weasels and dirty clothes? He tugged on Disibod's habit sleeve. "Disi, are we going to bed?" Disibod without turning his head, replied "No, not yet, this kind monk is going to lead us to his monestary." he said, motioning towards ground. Rye was very confused, there was no beast there. Did the dormouse finally crack? His mother had told him not to trust strangers, maybe this was why: they go insane and feed weasels sleepy mushrooms.
- (Back to Disibod's perspective) The dormouse was relieved to see another monastic, even if he was from a different order than his own. He could tell, from the shade of grey the habit was in the moonlight that it was definitely not black like his own. He must have been silent for a while because the monk called out to him again. "Disibod, please come." The dormouse was tired enough not to register that a complete stranger knew his name. "Lead the way." Disi replied. Without another word, the monk shot off into the woods. Disibod followed behind, but no matter how hard he ran, the mouse always had a large lead on him. How could a creature run that fast? He was racing through the branches at a speed that even Disi himself did not know he was capable of. That mouse didn't even stumble. He was so quiet too, as he ran. Was he following a forest nymph pretending to be a monk? Disibod shook his head, such creatures don't exist. They ran for what felt like only a few minutes but was actually a half an hour (Disi calculated by the new position of the stars).
- A wall emerged and Disibod almost fell out of the tree he was in. The monk motioned for him to come out of the tree. He was standing by a smaller side entrance door. How on earth was the monk not out of breath? Whatever exercise routine the monk did, Disibod wanted to start ASAP. The dormous's gaze shifted to a large tree, one with a branch extending over the wall. He was tired and did not want to climb down. Disi motioned to the monk that he was going to get into the abbey using the large tree. The mouse shook his head and, from his facial expressions and body language, seemed to be saying 'you better not'. Disibod was quite surprised on how expressive the monk was, even at night. He signaled back to the monk that he could handle it. Without looking back, Disibod jumped onto the trunk of the large, old tree and scurried up to the branch. He then leisurely crawled across it. He had almost reached the wall when he heard a cracking noise. Disibod jumped just as the branch detached itself from the trunk of the tree. He put a little too much power into his kick and almost slid of the battlements. He definitely would have if the monk did not catch him (with one arm; Disibod was jealous). The monk pulled him onto the battlements and scolded him. Disibod was not looking in the monk's direction the whole time, his gaze was fixed at the ground below the wall. The dormouse stood "Thank you very much. I definitely won't be doing that again, Brother …..?" Disibod looked around him, the monk was nowhere to be seen. He thought that the monk had already made his way down to the yard below.
- Disibod made his way down to the yard, trudging as he went. He felt bad for Rye, the poor thing was probably frightened into silence. He saw a bat flying around. He thought it was strange that there was only one… The dormouse decided to find the abbot of this Abbey. It would be rude of him just to invite himself into the dorms (even though he really wanted to). He didn't even know if the monk that helped him had permission to be running around a forest in the middle of the night. Disibod explored the main buildings until he found what was certain to be the abbot's quarters.
Without courtesy for the sleeping, Disibod knocked on the door very loudly. He heard some grumbling from inside of the room. "Just a minute, don't knock so loudly." The voice said from within. After a few more moments of silence, the door opened. "What is it?" an old vole said as he emerged from the darkness of the room.
The vole looked Disibod up and down "Who in the world are you?" The vole rubbed his eyes when he saw a little field mouse head pop over the darkly robed dormouse's shoulder. "I am very sorry to disturb you. Are you the abbot? I was wondering if me and my little friend here" Disibod motioned to Rye "could lodge here for the night." "I am the Abbot of this establishment. Who are you and how did you get in here?" The vole said. "My name is Brother Disibod. I am from the monastery on…." "So you're a monk?" the vole interrupted "Hmm, interesting. Is your monastery far from here?" "…. Yes." "Good, now how did you get in?" "A brother from here led me…" The Abbot interrupted Disi again "A brother, hmmmm. What is his name and why did he dump you in front of my door instead of taking you to the dormitory?" "He didn't tell me his name." "He didn't tell you. Hmph, sneaky thing thinks he can get away from me. What did he look like?" "Well… He was definitely younger, but not too young; strong build… I really didn't notice too much else, Abbot. It is dark outside and…" Disibod nearly fell over, his sweet running high was over and adrenaline rush gone.
"Heavens, child! Get to bed." exclaimed the Abbot "We can talk more in the morning after breakfast." "Thank you very much, Abbot." Disibod said. The Abbot then shut his door and went back to bed. Disibod stumbled to the dorms and found a room (?) with unoccupied beds. He put Rye in one and sat down on the other. He was going to pull all of the splinters out of his feet, but he was so tired that he just laid down and fell asleep.
Footnote: Probably a rough chapter reading-wise, but I didn't want to edit the RP-Post too much. A lot of this story will be rough like this but I think that's fine. I'm mooooostly still posting this because of nostalgia for Simpler Times and because I don't have any other chapters for other fics ready for sharing. Hope you enjoyed, I know I was a big fan of GoatPOOP's writing, so I will hear no criticisms.