Curse of the Shieldfall: That Sinking Feeling By Green
Ari took in the situation with an amused expression on her face. It all seemed so surreal. Less than a week earlier, she was Lady Ariella Taligre Shieldfall, a high noble of New Parsonus, able to have basically anything she wanted just by asking. Since then, she'd gone on a cross-country trip on her favourite horse Roland, found a way into a tower without a door to talk to the wizard who lived inside, and gotten into a life-or-death battle against a vicious, bloodthirsty creature called a lasher with that same wizard helping her out. Now? Here she sat, inside that same tower, in what looked more than anything else like a parlour room, drinking foreign tea with the unusually young, and endearingly eccentric wizard Thaniel, who had insisted on the bitter drink to calm their nerves after the massive adrenaline rush that had been the fight with the lasher (and in his case, the agoraphobia-fuelled mad dash back inside to the safety of his tower). It didn't help that surreal, dreamlike feeling that the wizard, a man who only looked to be in his early or mid-twenties, rather than the ancient, withered form she'd been expecting, was currently arguing with a talking bird, his familiar. "Blast it, Crow, how many times must I tell you that cube sugar just isn't the same as powdered sugar?" said Thaniel, crossly. The bird, always quick with a sarcastic remark or quip due to his barely-hidden resentment at having been given the familiar name "Mister Crow" despite actually being a raven, shook his little head, and though it was hard to tell from across the room, Ari was pretty sure he rolled his eyes, too. "And how many times must I tell you," he sighed, "that powdered sugar comes in a big, heavy bag, and I don't have any hands?" He let out an indignant huff, which intrigued Ari, as he didn't have any lips to purse, and then took off, flapping over to a table across the room and taking careful hold of the grips on the basket that had just materialized. Crow then flew back, carrying the basket and setting it down on the table between Ari and Thaniel, where the would-be adventuress saw that it was filled with a variety of biscuits. "How did he know..." Ari started, curiously. "That the basket would appear? Or that I wanted him to fetch it for me?" filled in Thaniel, a cheeky grin on his lightly-bearded face. "When a wizard agrees to take a familiar, it isn't a mere contract, it creates a magical bond between them, allows the familiar to share in the wizard's power," said the spellcaster, "It's what allows him to talk, for starters, and will let him live much longer than the average raven, as long as I do, even. But to answer your question, the bond also creates a link between the familiar and the wizard's magic; whenever I cast a spell, he knows about it. So when I summon a basket of munchables..." Mister Crow alighted on a perch next to the table and sighed loudly. "You know, speaking of that bond, I'm supposed to be aiding you in preparing complex wizardry, not fetching you cookies like a trained monkey," complained the bird, "If you wanted to impress the girl, there are far easier ways." Thaniel turned dark red, sputtering as he tried to deny the implications of that statement, but the bird just turned to Ari and winked (though it took her a second to recognize the expression, as his eyes were on opposite sides of his head), speaking quietly, as though the wizard couldn't hear him. "Just you wait, girl," he said, "Next thing you know he'll be offering to show you his staff." Now beet red, Thaniel tossed an empty tea cup at the chatty familiar, who cawed in surprised and barely managed to dodge out of the way. "Get out of here, you overgrown featherduster!" said the wizard, though his tone was far more 'embarrassed' than actually 'angry', "We need to talk business and you're just getting in the way!" Shooting Thaniel an exceptionally dirty look, Crow flew out of the room, and his flapping echoed down the central staircase of the peculiar tower that the wizard called his home. Clearing his throat and muttering a single word Ari didn't understand, Thaniel sent a bolt of teal-coloured energy to the shattered remains of the teacup, which promptly reassembled itself seamlessly and returned itself obediently to the table. "You'd be surprised how often that spell comes in handy..." murmured the wizard, shaking his head, "Ah, it's so hard to find good help these days... But I guess you get what you pay for." "I was a gift!" came the indignant response from somewhere above them. "I know!" Thaniel cried, frowning at the ceiling in irritation. "Blast his avian hearing..." Reaching down and grabbing a biscuit, the wizard nibbled on it before settling back in his chair and turning to Ari. "Now then," he said, sounding relieved, "before all that nonsense, I believe we were going to discuss this curse you wanted broken, on your entire family you say?" Ari shifted in her seat and took a deep breath, trying to decide where to begin - when an enormously loud creaking noise reverberated through the tower as the entire structure trembled around them. Thaniel was on his feet before it was over, looking concerned. "Well," he said, "that's usually not a good sound..."
Ari stood up, grabbing the magical spear she'd taken from the family treasury and slinging it onto her back; her first 'adventure' had barely begun, and she was already instinctively keeping her weapon close at hand. "What in the world could make the tower shake like that?" she asked, warily, "This region isn't known for earthquakes." Ari was hardly an expert on the many lands in the Kingdoms of Rilodell, but they were still relatively close to New Parsonus, so she remembered her lessons about the area from her home schooling. Thaniel strode from the room, his face grim; the wizard tended to be a bit ridiculous, and he was clearly more whimsical than she'd known a magic-user could be, but it was oddly comforting to Ari to see that he could focus on what was important and be serious when the situation called for it. She followed him up the stairs as he hurried towards the observatory on the top floor. "I can think of a few things, but this region isn't known for any of them, either," he said, "Which is actually more worrying, come to think of it, I'd rather know that a Jhamese sand-mammoth was using the tower as a scratching post than to not know why my home is making such distressing -" As if summoned by his comments, the tower shook again, more violently this time, and the creaking seemed louder and longer. Ari wasn't sure if there was really such thing as a Jhamese sand-mammoth, but this was clearly not the time to ask, as she fell against the wall of the stairway with a yelp. As the shaking stopped, Thaniel turned around and reached back, helping her back to her feet, now looking downright grim. "Come on, hurry!" he said, "I need to find out what's going on, now!" As they rushed up the final set of stairs, entering the observatory, where all the varied and bizarre instruments on the shelves and tables were now in disarray from the trembling, Thaniel rushed to the center of the room and raised his hands. Instantly, the ceiling of the room reacted, changing from a depiction of the constellations in the sky over New Parsonus to a lifelike image of Thaniel's tower; a glance told them that there wasn't any kind of beast attacking the outside of the building, so a flick of his wrist had the image floating down to focus on the ground beneath the tower. Instantly, a series of graphs and statistics appeared to accent the image, and Thaniel frowned. "Damn! I was afraid of that," he muttered, shaking his head. "Uhhh..." Ari started, but before she could put her problem into words, Mister Crow flapped into the room, settling down on Thaniel's shoulder. "For those present who don't read geomancy," the bird said, "when Master Thaniel summoned the tower to its present location, he did so in a great hurry, because he was panicking, and didn't take the time to make sure the foundation he was setting it on was solid enough." Suddenly, Ari was genuinely afraid for the first time. There was a perfect opportunity in that explanation for Crow to insult Thaniel, make fun of him for his agoraphobia, and he had completely ignored it, hadn't been sarcastic at all. That told her that the bird was too worried to focus on being petty, and that really bothered her. "So if the foundation isn't solid," she said, working it out in her mind, hoping she was wrong, "then..." Thaniel looked over his shoulder at her, his lips tight, brow furrowed. "Then the tower is going to fall over unless I move it right away."
Suddenly feeling woozy, Ari resisted the urge to go sit down in one of the chairs, trying to toughen herself up for what might be a long and dangerous journey ahead - assuming they weren't all crushed to death inside a falling tower before that journey could begin. Crow squawked indignantly, spreading his wings to keep his balance as Thaniel strode over to one of the shelves and took down a large yellow jewel, placing it on a pedestal behind him that hadn't been there when he started walking. Things had a habit of conveniently appearing in this tower, Ari had noticed, but she didn't much care about this one, as she was still pre-occupied with potential doom. As Thaniel placed his hands on either side of the jewel, Crow leaned forward to glare into his eyes, clearly not fond of what was about to happen. "You just used that thing less than an hour ago!" he protested, "It hasn't had time to recharge!" Thaniel frowned and suddenly dipped his shoulder sharply, forcing Crow to take to the air to avoid tumbling unceremoniously to the floor. "Yes, yes, I know, and if I use it again so soon it'll probably burn out for a while, but I'd rather have to wait for the next one than lose my home, my possessions, and maybe even my life waiting for this one!" Thaniel closed his eyes as he gripped the crystal again, and it began to glow from within with the same bright yellow light that he'd used to summon the tower to its current, unsteady location. "Wait!" cried Ari, suddenly thinking of something, "Where are you going to move us to?" Thaniel shook his head, frowning without opening his eyes. "Right now, I'll settle for anywhere but here!" he replied. Settling down on the shelf behind the wizard, the raven glared at the back of his boss' head. "Thaniel, are you sure you can -" he started. "Everyone just shut up!" the spellcaster snapped, "I need to focus on this!" He hunched over, fingers tracing some kind of pattern over the surface of the gem as the glow grew brighter and brighter. Meanwhile, the tower began to rumble again, louder and harder than before, small items shaking themselves off the shelves and tables in the room. Finally, just as Ari wondered if the room was about to heave violently to the side, signalling their impending doom, Thaniel suddenly raised his hands in the air, bringing the glow from the crystal with them, and clapped them together above the pedestal. And then, everything exploded into white.
Ariella cried out, bringing her hands up in front of her face, not that it made much difference; it felt like the light was pouring out of every surface in the room, including her clothes and skin, which was tingling something fierce. Closing her eyes, hands clasped to her face, she stepped back uncertainly, waiting for the sensation to end, and thanking the seven gods when the light, bright even through her eyelids, began to fade. She waited a few seconds after it got dark and then cautiously peeked out. The room looked much the same as it had when she'd stopped, and thankfully it had stopped shaking. Crow had his head tucked under a wing, and Thaniel still stood behind the crystal, hands outstretched above it, like the showy fortune tellers Ari had seen at carnivals. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around, like he was surprised to find that it had worked. Looking down at the gem, he frowned, and Ari realized that the yellow jewel was now jet black. "Double damn. I figured that would happen," Thaniel said, obviously not happy about it, "Now it'll be hours before we can move the tower again. No matter, we'll just stay in here and talk business. But first..." he picked up the crystal and put it back on the shelf behind him. By the time he'd turned around, the pedestal was gone. This time, Ariella had been staring directly at it, and was amused to see that it had simply vanished into thin air without a trace, without a sound, without so much as a little cloud of dust. Then, Thaniel strode past her, scratching his short, well-kept beard, and raised his hands to the ceiling again as he reached the centre of the room. "Let's take a look around," he said, "Find out where exactly we are." A loud sigh came from behind Ari, and she saw that Mister Crow had alighted next to the crystal and was examining it closely. "I've told you before, Thaniel, this is a very sensitive piece of equipment!" he complained, "Couldn't you have jumped somewhere closer?" Pausing in his gesturing, the wizard glanced over his shoulder and stuck out his tongue at the distracted bird. "For all I knew," he said, "the entire area was littered with underground caves and fractures. It was best to get some distance." Glancing over at Ari, he winked. "Besides, where's the fun in that?" The interruption over, he looked back up and wiggled his fingers. "Now let's see, I was aiming for the Sukairian highlands, solid as rock, that range, so..." Thaniel trailed off as the domed ceiling of the tower (which looked quite flat on top from the outside, incidentally) shimmered and faded away, replaced with a view of the area outside of the tower. It was very dark, and they seemed to be surrounded by a blue fog. Ariella knew almost nothing about Sukair except that it was very far away and they were known for their cheese, so she frowned at the sight. "Is it night-time in Sukair?" she asked, "I can't make out anything." The wizard frowned and crossed his arms, and even the raven looked up from poking at the crystal with a talon. "No..." said Thaniel, clearly put off, "actually, it should be early morning, the sun should be bright in the sky... even if it were foggy, it would be much lighter than this. I wonder what -" "Master Thaniel!" interrupted Crow, "There! Look!" he sounded downright horrified, which was a bad sign. Following a pointed wing, Ari caught sight of something moving towards them. A lot of something. Like birds, but moving very strangely. As they came closer, she realized what she was looking at, and gasped out loud. "Seven gods!" she breathed, watching a school of fish swim past the tower, their silvery bodies propelling them around the curve of the building, where they dodged a larger, hungry-looking fish that rose up from below them, and then continued on their way, out of sight. "Th-Thaniel..." murmured Ari, "I don't know a lot about Sukair, but I'm pretty sure they don't have schools of flying fish!" Falling backwards into a suddenly-present chair, the wizard stared up, stunned. "They don't," he said, confirming her fears, his voice flat with shock, "I'm afraid that I seem to have placed the tower on the bottom of Lake Sujan."
There was a moment of profound silence, and then Thaniel leaned forward with a groan, burying his face in his hands. "Of course," he sighed, "I aim for a rocky, mountainous kingdom, and end up sticking us in the middle of the only body of water in the entire region deep enough to completely submerge the tower! Men can't even dive this deep without magical help." In fact, Ariella had heard of a new machine built by the dwarves, a curious suit of armour meant to protect the wearer against the sea, not against an enemy, that would allow someone to dive deep without magic, but this was hardly the time for that discussion. As Thaniel quietly berated himself, Ari took some nervous steps to the edge of the room to try and look down, seeing only rocky soil and some kind of watery plants, which she supposed couldn't be called 'seaweed' in a lake. "S-so, stupid question, but this is still just an illusion, right?" she asked, stepping away from the gloomy deep, "The water can't come in because there's still a wall here, right?" As she finished, Thaniel sat bolt upright in his chair, suddenly alarmed. "Blue's tears! This could get bad..." "What?!" she cried, practically leaping away from the edge as though the water she could see was about to come crashing in on her. Thaniel waved dismissively as he stood and looked down the stairs. "No, no! You're right, this is an illusion, no water can get in up here, I proofed the roof of the tower myself to keep out rain. But..." trailing off as though he'd forgotten her presence, he started down the stairs, and Ari hurried after him. They hadn't gone very far when she realized what had him worried; she could hear water dripping from many, many different places. Turning to face her, he shrugged helplessly. "...The spell requires expensive reagents, and I kind of never sealed off the walls of the tower! The stone is well made and Dwarven-fitted, the seams won't be big, but we've got ourselves something of a pickle."
Ariella fought off the urge to burst into tears and panic - you're a Shieldfall, she reminded herself - and looked down the stairs. "I don't suppose you and Crow can just go around sealing all the leaks?" she asked, looking up at him doubtfully. He shrugged, shaking his head. "We're out of the aforementioned reagents, and there's too much tower to do it the old-fashioned way. But I think we could get out of this okay," he added, climbing back up to the observatory, "The translocation crystal isn't broken, just drained; it'll be recharging itself as we speak, and I think I can come up with a few ways to speed the process along a little bit." Ari looked back behind her, at the staircase and the distant sound of dripping. "But the water... and the pressure!" she said, uncertainly. A table appeared, this time nearer to the doorway, and Crow landed on it as Thaniel hurried to retrieve the blackened gem. The raven scoffed and shook his head. "If the pressure were going to be a problem, lady, we'd have been crushed into dust already. The tower has spells on it to protect it against attacks from creatures, angry mages, that kind of thing," he said, gesturing vaguely with a wing (which Ari silently thought was adorable, though he didn't seem the type to take it as a compliment), "Keeping the pressure out isn't that much different. And the leaks might be all over the place, but the way this tower is built, the water will all flow down into the basement and then start rising, so we've got hours before it becomes a problem up here." As the wizard started getting a few odd-looking apparatuses off the shelf and bringing them over to the table, arranging them around the crystal in some configuration that was far beyond Ari's understanding, something occurred to her. "Hey! Wait a second, you said Roland was in the basement!" she cried, "If all the water flows down there, he'll drown!" She turned to rush back down the tower, not relishing the thought of leading a horse up all those stairs, but Thaniel lifted his head, a distracted look on his face. "Who?" he asked, as though he hadn't asked the same question less than an hour earlier. "My horse!" Ari replied, fuming. "Oh, right," said the wizard, nodding, "Him." Then, as he leaned back down over his devices, Thaniel snapped his fingers, and with a lavender-scented cloud of smoke, a very confused, rather damp-looking Roland appeared in the observatory with them. As a (silently) grateful Ariella moved over to comfort her perturbed steed, Crow sighed loudly. "Oh dear, I do so dislike having animals in the observatory. There'll be such a mess, mark my words." Glancing up from his work, Thaniel smirked, and looked over at Ari. "It's like the irony is completely lost on him," he said, before he frowned and stood up. "Actually, now that I think about it, almost all my stuff is between the basement and here, let me just..." he clapped his hands three times, and smiled, satisfied. Ari looked around, but there was no enormous pile of books and furniture in the room with them. "What..." she started, but Crow interrupted her. "The same spell that he uses to put chairs and tables where he needs them, of course," the bird said, "he just 'disappeared' everything in the tower that isn't part of the stone." Ari shrugged at that, as it made sense, it just seemed a little anti-climactic. "Where does it all go, anyway?" she asked. Without looking up from his work, which at the moment centered on what looked like an ordinary statuette of a dragon, made of deep green jade, Thaniel raised a hand and made a non-magical gesture that was so vague with his distraction that Ariella wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean. "Oh, one of my professors explained it a long time ago," he said, "Something or other about pockets. It's, uh, all very complicated. Crow, bring me the - no, the other one. Yes, perfect..." As Ari watched, the wizard's familiar landed on the table next to him with something resembling a screwdriver clutched in a talon, and began to help as best he could, given that he had to hop on one foot to use the thing properly. Sighing, Ari turned back to her horse. She had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and it seemed unlikely that she'd be of any real help to them. It wasn't like she could protect them against danger while they worked, either, the only threat here was ordinary water, and truth be told, she wasn't much of a spearwoman, as the frantic fight against the lasher had taught her. She shook her head as she remembered the enormous bolt of lightning that had finished the monster off. Thaniel had such incredible power at his disposal, but more often than not, he chose to act in strange and peculiar ways, indulging in eccentricities and (though he tried not to make it obvious) allowing his familiar to disrespect him in order to engage in arguments with him. She suspected that if Thaniel really didn't want Crow to speak to him like that, the bird wouldn't have any choice in the matter. Maybe she could learn from that. If Thaniel could be a powerful wizard and still come across as a relatable goof, maybe she could find a way to feel confident despite her woeful lack of experience. If nothing else, maybe she'd be able to bluff her way out of a bad situation.
While Thaniel and Crow had worked around the crystal, muttering to each other, Ari had continued to pet and groom at Roland's pelt, making him more presentable. As she worked, she pondered her new ally's peculiar nature, and it seemed she was lost in thought for rather a while, as soon she was shaken out of her reverie by the wizard raising his voice again. "Well, that's it," he sighed, "This will speed-up the charging process, so all we can do now is wait for it to finish." Ari turned and walked back over; rather a lot of little trinkets and devices were now arranged around the translocation crystal, some of them glowing, some of them emitting beams of light towards the gem, one off to the side seemed to be steaming like a hot beverage, and then of course, a lot of them appeared to be doing absolutely nothing except sitting there. Glancing up as movement caught her eye, Ari saw that the 'motes', little dots of light which floated here and there around the upper portion of the observatory, forming themselves into the glowing images projected up there when needed, were now all arranged in a large spoked circle, with the crystal directly beneath the centre. She wasn't sure if that had anything to do with the devices the wizard and his familiar had just painstakingly set up, but it sure looked impressive. Wiping off his brow, Thaniel waved idly behind him, and the comfy chairs from the tea room (or whatever it was usually used for) downstairs appeared, arranged just as they had been when they left the room to investigate the rumbling. "Well, Miss Shieldfall," said Thaniel, "it seems we suddenly have a great deal of time on our hands. So, since the alternative is fretting about the floodwater, why don't you have a seat, and we can finally talk about this curse you want me to break?" Nodding, Ari walked over to the other chair, removing her spear and setting it on the floor next to her, frowning as she pondered where to begin. Well, her mother had usually suggested she start at the beginning, so... "My family goes back a very long way," she finally said, "Back to an era before last names became common. I had an ancestor, Ilas, who was a soldier in the army of Thaurr IV, the King of Tebrun. The King's army had just lead an assault against a neighbouring kingdom to try and end a war, but they were unexpectedly flanked by a second force of soldiers, who fought their way to the middle of the Tebrunese forces, putting King Thaurr himself in direct danger. Ilas was just a grunt, one of hundreds of soldiers loyal to the King, but when he saw enemy spearmen charging from behind Thaurr, who was busy dealing with a swordsman directly in front of him, he rushed over and stuck his own shield out to deflect the spear that was about to kill his King - even though it meant another spearman was given an easy shot at Ilas, and he was struck down. The Tebrunese forces were able to rally together and win the battle, but King Thaurr hadn't forgotten the man who'd sacrificed his own life for him despite them never having even exchanged words. He declared him a hero, and posthumously honoured him with the name 'Ilas Shieldfall', which was then applied to his widow and their children, who were brought under the royal family's protection, and became nobles." Ari leaned back, sorting out her thoughts, noting that Thaniel wasn't actually looking at her; the wizard was slouched way down in his seat, elbows resting on the armrests of his exceptionally comfortable-looking chair, his fingers laced together in front of his face, with the thumbs stuck under his chin. Though his eyes were unfocused, he nodded silently as she told the tale, and she got the distinct impression he was visualizing everything she was saying. Her uncle Roderick had done the same thing whenever someone told him a story... she shook off thoughts of her uncle again, though she knew it wouldn't be long before she had to tell Thaniel what had happened to him.
"We've done fairly well for ourselves since then, there's a shipping company with our name on it and we own a lot of the textiles industry in New Parsonus, but..." she cleared her throat before continuing, "The most notable member of the family since Ilas has got to be Alexander Shieldfall III, my great-grandfather, who was, ah, an adventurer of some note." At this, Thaniel started, looking up at her in surprise. "Wait a second," he said, "that's where I've heard that name before! You mean you're related to Xander Shieldfall?! I loved the stories about him when I was just a boy! I still have a shelf full of books about him, they're in one of those pocket things I told you about. Man, that really brings me back, I would ask my parents to read those stories to me every night, I used to dream about being just like Xander, towel cape and toy spear and all. Of course, then it turned out I had a serious knack for magic, so I sort of gave up on the whole 'wandering spearman' idea, but..." As Thaniel looked up for the first time since he'd started down the nostalgic path, he trailed off, noticing the blank looks on the faces of the bird and the descendant of the man he'd just been gushing over. Looking rather like he was considering taking his chances on another floor, Thaniel sat back in his chair, slowly turning beet red. For a few moments, there was a profoundly awkward silence in the room, and even Mister Crow didn't fill it with a snarky comment. Clearing his throat, Thaniel waved to Ari to indicate that she should keep going. "Well, uh, I guess that explains where your family got a magic spear from, his signature weapon and all that," he muttered, "Ah, you should probably keep going..." Ariella was generally embarrassed when people reacted like that to her famous ancestor, who had become rather beloved amongst the people due to the many songs and stories written about his heroic deeds, but seeing a wizard like Thaniel react with boyish glee at the revelation was strangely endearing to her, and she found herself raising a hand to try and hide her smirk. But right at that moment, before she could say another word, there came a loud sound of shattering glass from somewhere beneath them. Everyone present jumped in their seats, and Crow, who'd been preening, squawked in agitation and nearly fell off his perch. "What in the world was that?" asked Ari, who suddenly realized she had her ancestor's spear in her hands. "That's a terribly good question," said Thaniel, frowning, "I put all the dishes into a pocket, what could have - oh dear. Oh dearie me..." He got up and moved over to the stairway, where he glared down the tower and shook his head as Ari followed him. "Crap!" he muttered, in a most un-wizardly fashion. Looking down, Ari shivered, alarmed at the sight of the water rising up the tower; poor Roland would have drowned ages ago. As it was, the horse was already unsettled by the noise of all the rushing water below, stepping back and forth and nickering quietly, earning a glare from Crow. But then Ari realized that wasn't what had displeased Thaniel. More water was positively gushing out of one of the rooms on a level decidedly above the surface of the rising flood, cascading down like an indoor waterfall. It would have been weirdly beautiful if she hadn't been worried about drowning in that water. Thaniel turned around and kicked fruitlessly at the heavy door to the observatory. "Damn! Double damn! I knew I missed one of them!" Turning to him, Ari put a hand on the spellcaster's shoulder, instinctively trying to help. "Thaniel! Calm down!" she said, "What's happening? Why is that room, uh, leaking?" The wizard stiffened for a moment, then sighed, sagging down, shaking his head. "That room has a window in it - I know, I know, it looks like stone all the way up from outside, that's a simple glamour spell, but there are several windows, and that one's just imploded from the pressure of all that lakewater." He sighed, leaning forward, forehead coming to rest on the door with a thump. "Normally I use a spell to reinforce all the windows, make them stand up to - to whatever," he said, forlornly, "but the last time I did it, I was distracted, wasn't sure I got them all, and I didn't want to do it over because doing it twice on the same window would be a waste... now the water's rising so much faster, so I've only gone and killed us all..."
Biting her lip, Ari took her spear and leaned it against the wall for a moment, reasoning that she probably wouldn't have much luck trying to stab the rising water into submission, and used her now free hands to gently, though forcefully turn Thaniel around to face her. Leaning in and looking directly into his eyes, the way uncle Roderick had when she had been too upset to think clearly, she tried to sound confident and authoritative. He'd made it seem so easy... "Thaniel. Focus. Deep breaths," she said, off to a good start, "Blaming yourself right now won't help, and I'd really rather not drown down here where no one will ever find us. You're the wizard here, we need you to save us. Now, uhh..." She looked down for a moment again, taking in the sight of the additional water pouring out of the room. Looking back at Thaniel, she was struck by inspiration. "If we can seal off the room with the broken window, we'll only have the original leaks to worry about. Do you have some kind of spell that will keep the water inside that room?" Thaniel looked at her blankly for a moment, like she was speaking in tongues - actually, she thought to herself, he might still understand her if she was speaking in tongues - and then his face lit up. "Of course!" he cried, happily, "Ari, you're a genius! I thought of this earlier to try and block off all the water, but there's too much of it and too many cracks to stop it for long. But I should be able to keep all that water trapped inside that room, at least until the crystal recharges." "In case either of you were wondering," came the loud voice of Mister Crow from inside the observatory, "It's still black. Do try and save us as much time as you can, would you master?" Ari glanced back inside, wondering exactly how good the bird's hearing was, but then Thaniel stepped past her, back inside, grabbing a small object from a shelf. It looked like - well, it looked like a misshapen lump of gold, but as he raised it and began to chant in some ancient dialect, it began to glow a nice shiny yellow. Thrusting it forward as he leaned over the railing, Thaniel shouted out one last syllable, and a bright beam of golden light shot out from the talisman, streaking towards the leaking room, only to stop and spread out as it reached the entrance as though it had hit an invisible wall. Soon the light had spread out to block the entire entryway, and the water was contained inside, building up within the room. Thaniel sagged, sighing in relief, tucking the shield talisman into a pocket (a literal one, in his robe) before turning back to face her. "Well, we've lost time," he said, "not a lot we can do about that, but that shield's just what we needed to keep from losing more." He held up an arm, gesturing that she should go back into the observatory, and smiled. "Now that things have calmed down a bit, would you like to continue your story?"
Soon, Ari found herself back in her chair, as if nothing had happened, but the sound of the rising water was getting louder, and she found herself growing more uneasy by the minute. Taking a deep breath and trying to focus, she closed her eyes and started. "Right. Xander Shieldfall, wandering hero," she said, "Went around slaying monsters and saving people from villains and foiling evil plans... I don't know why I'm explaining that to you, it sounds like you idolized the man." Thaniel blushed and Crow snickered, but neither said anything, so she continued. "Well, the thing is, he was also known for searching dungeons for treasure, always on the lookout for more magical artifacts in particular. But on one of his later adventures, he came across something... he wasn't expecting, something we've never understood. It was..." Ari bit her lip; as a child she'd been endlessly told of the fundamental importance of keeping this information a secret. But what good was keeping a secret if doing so doomed you and everyone you loved? Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she forced herself to keep talking. "It was some kind of gauntlet, an armoured glove," she said, her voice trembling, "He only found one, I don't know if it was part of a pair. It... it was cursed, but it didn't affect him right away - or rather, it didn't take effect right away." Ari kept her eyes closed, and began to wring her hands together, unpleasant memories rising up, things that had given her nightmares for years. "The - the curse didn't just affect Xander, it affected his entire family," she said, "everyone related to him by blood... then they passed it on to their children, and it shows no signs of stopping three generations later." Ari sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Like most of the things Xander discovered that weren't money or women, it eventually wound up in a museum. Unfortunately, the place was robbed some years later and the gauntlet disappeared. It wasn't until later that we found out about the curse, and by then, we had our hands full just dealing with it..." As she shook her head, sighing, Thaniel cleared his throat. "Ah, if you don't mind my asking, Ariella," he said, delicately, "If you didn't know the gauntlet was cursed until after it had been stolen from the museum... then, well, how do you know it was that gauntlet that was cursed? I don't mean to harp on the point, but your ancestor retrieved rather a lot of artifacts in his time." The would-be adventuress reached down into a pouch hanging from her belt, and retrieved a very old, leather-bound book. "Xander was a smart man, smart enough to know when he wasn't smart enough for something," she said, holding out the book, "Whenever he found something with writing on it, he took a rubbing of the symbols, to have someone read later. He almost never actually did bring them to an expert, mind you, but his journal is full of them." The wizard had gone pale when she said those last words, as he realized he was holding the personal journal of his childhood hero, but he took a deep breath and put on a professional face as he opened it up, turning the pages with reverence. "Yes, before you ask, I'll let you poke through that thing later," she said, having predicted the look of awe on his face, "but the rubbing we found most important is near the end, we put the bookmark there." Sighing disappointedly, Thaniel obediently turned to the page marked by the faded and somewhat frayed red ribbon attached to the book's spine, and then looked down at the charcoal rubbing with interest... for about two seconds, at which point his eyes bugged open wide and he looked up at Ari in shock. "Hermit's cave!" he cried out, a common reference to the Green God of life, who preferred to be left alone, "Ari, do you realize what this is?" "Well, yes," she started, put off by the strength of his reaction, and how quickly he'd come to it. "This script," the wizard interrupted, "they only taught us to read this at the academy so we would be able to recognize stuff to stay far, far away from! Nine hells, Ari, no wonder your family's in so much trouble, this script was invented by a cult who worshipped the Black God!"
The world was watched over by seven gods, who all made their presence known from time to time in varying degrees of directness. But ancient legends said that there were originally nine of them, and that after countless aeons of cooperation in benevolently ruling the world, one of them - the Black God - suddenly rose up against the others, trying to destroy every living thing on their world for reasons long since forgotten, even managing to slay one of his fellow gods (whose identity had been utterly lost to humanity through the passing years) in a surprise attack, before the combined efforts of the remaining seven were enough to seal the Black God in a prison in the darkest pits of the deepest of the nine hells. These events were ancient history, and on the rare occasion that one of the Seven made a personal appearance in the world, it was never to give an interview to historians, so the details were fuzzy. But every once in a while, a group of malcontents and miscreants would pop up, dedicating themselves in secret to worshipping the enchained Black God, in hopes of helping him escape from imprisonment to return to the world and finish what he started so many centuries ago. No one knew whether or not praying to the Black God actually empowered him, but every kingdom in the world had made the practice illegal and punishable by death, just in case it aided the Dark Destroyer in any way, shape, or form. Most of the time, these death cults were bad enough on their own, practicing the foulest forms of magic and kidnapping innocent people to serve as blood sacrifices to their evil god, sometimes going as far as gathering armies and engaging in the kind of total, wanton destruction the Black God was believed to have engaged in during the War of the Gods. There hadn't been an active death cult in the Kingdoms of Rilodell for centuries now, long before even Xander's time, but Thaniel had by no means been exaggerating when he said that their works were to be left alone; evil magic can linger long after the warlock who cast it is dead...
Ari shivered, the kind of feeling her aunt had once described as 'someone walking over your grave'. She'd known her family had had the words translated, and that they'd paid the mage to keep it quiet, but she didn't know why; the idea that the curse which afflicted them was that dark in origin genuinely scared her, more than the curse itself had all these years. Thaniel wiped his glistening forehead with the back of his sleeve, shaking his head. "Let's see what this thing says..." the wizard muttered, squinting slightly, "I'm a bit rusty in this, it's not like I get a lot of opportunities to brush up on my blacktongue, but ah..." his eyes scanned the page for a bit, then he cleared his throat and spoke, more solemnly than Ari had ever heard him. "Darkness shall take hold of those who remove this sacred hand from its resting place, twisting them and their kin into beasts only at home in the dark." The wizard blinked, frowning as though he'd bitten into something sour. "Damn. Heavy stuff..." he murmured, more to himself than to her, "Hmmm... looking at your great-grandfather's notes here on the side, the way he describes the shine of the metal under sunlight, I think your cursed gauntlet might be made of darksteel." The wizard sighed again. "A pity, that, sometimes you can break a curse by just destroying the object that inflicted it in the first place," he said, "but darksteel is notoriously difficult to get rid of. That's kinda why warlocks like to use it to begin with. You need a knowledge of normal magic and alchemy to create it, not to mention a talented blacksmith, and while we could probably destroy it just with the first two, my knowledge of alchemy isn't that great, so..." as Ari watched, Thaniel trailed off, frowning. "Hmmm," he said at last, "why do I have a nagging feeling in the back of my mind?" After another moment of silence, he handed over the journal, not looking directly at Ari. "Perhaps it had something to do with darksteel?" she said, helpfully, "Or blacksmithing, maybe. Or -" "Or alchemy!" he interrupted, his face brightening, "Yes, that's right, I was thinking of my alchemy station, it's built into the wall on the floor beneath this one. I mostly just dabble, but I've had some good ideas, discovered it's much easier to replicate something you've already got than to create something from scratch. Dedicated alchemists spend their lives trying to turn lead into gold, but I've found a way to turn gold into more gold. Much simpler, though the rarer the material, the more ingredients you need to replicate it." After a moment, his face fell, and his eyes widened again. "Seven gods..." Thaniel muttered, "I left those ingredients in the alchemy station!" As he said this, Mister Crow squawked, alarmed, from his perch, where he'd been mercifully silent this whole time. Thaniel slowly stood up, a look of growing horror on his face. "And while something as rare as gold would probably use it all up and make a fragment the size of my fingernail, something as common as, say, water..." Shaking his head slightly, snapping out of his daze, Thaniel bolted for the door, and Ari found herself following him, skidding to a halt and bumping into the (thankfully solid) safety railing just in time to see the water in the floor below them, before there was a bright light from within the room on that floor - and a massive torrent of water blasted out and began to flood the stairs all that much faster.
"Gods above!" the wizard cried, horror etched into his features as the water surged up the stairs towards them. Ari just stood there, terrified, certain she was looking at her own impending doom. She had thought she was about to die one other time in her life, and she had thought to herself, at least I beat the curse. This time, though, there was nothing in her mind except wordless, blind panic, so when Thaniel grabbed her by the upper arm and yanked her back into the observatory, he probably saved her life. As they stepped back into the room, Roland was huffing and shaking his head, scratching at the stone floor beneath him with a hoof, perhaps able to detect the fear in the air, and Crow's beady black eyes kept darting back and forth between the wizard and the crystal on the table before him, as though he could speed up the recharging process by staring it into submission. Ari shook her paralysis off, embarrassed that she'd frozen like that, but more concerned with the very real threat. She lended a shoulder to help Thaniel slam the heavy, reinforced mahogany door shut behind them, and backed off as he pulled a heavy metal beam out of thin air and slid it into place to lock the door. Just as he let go, there came a heavy SLAM, and the door shook slightly as the water reached their last sanctuary. Ari stepped back, alarmed, as small amounts of water began to seep under the door, as if the puddles were a sentient enemy which would burn at her feet or leap up to scar her face. Meanwhile, the already-frightened Roland reared up, neighing in fear; he was hardly a seasoned war horse, and the loud noise of the water hitting the door had him scared half to death. On his way down, his hoof caught a small table and sent the decorative statue of a long-bearded wizard on it tumbling to the floor. No one noticed. "Dammit!" cried Thaniel, "I thought we'd have more time than this! It was never supposed to reach the observatory!" Ari stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, turning him away from the shuddering, creaking door to look at her. "Focus, wizard!" she said, as sternly as she could manage, "Can't you just use that shield thing on this door?" He shrugged, helplessly. "I'm sorry, Ari," he said, "if I knew it was going to get up here I would have just done that instead of sealing off the room downstairs, the talisman can only be used once a day." The heiress groaned and frowned at him, more mad at the idea that they were about to die than at the wizard. "Blasted magic!" she cried, "Don't you have anything that doesn't require recharging?" Rolling his eyes and turning back to the problem at hand, Thaniel sighed. "Yes, but I'm not sure what good changing the colour of the water or summoning chocolate muffins would do!" As he stepped away from the door, Thaniel raised his hands, and a bunch of random pieces of furniture suddenly appeared, jammed in a pile against the door, which was beginning to leak more and more water into the room, despite its strength. "Crow? How's that crystal looking?" he asked, climbing on top of a handy table to avoid the water. "It's beginning to change colours," said the raven, "but we're gonna need a few more minutes before we can move far enough to even get us out of this blasted lake!" Ari stooped low to retrieve her ancestor's spear from the floor, putting it on her back because if nothing else, it felt wrong to let it just randomly wash away when the room was flooded. It felt inevitable. It was almost strange, really, feeling lost and doomed was a familiar sensation to Ariella; she suspected it had been to every Shieldfall since Xander. She almost wanted to just go sit in the corner and wait to die. She'd clearly made some bad choices on this stupid little 'adventure' of hers, whether she'd picked the wrong wizard, or hadn't tried hard enough to convince Thaniel to help her the first time they'd met - she was currently all too aware of the fact that the tower had only been moved to the unstable ground because Thaniel had needed to flee to its safety after helping her fight the lasher in the nearby woods, a task she'd undertaken thinking it would convince Thaniel to aid her - or, nine hells, maybe the entire venture was the wrong idea and she should have just stoically accepted her fate. She couldn't be the first Shieldfall to try and break the curse... she'd heard that drowning was one of the more unpleasant ways to die, but at the moment, it felt like the appropriate reward for this ridiculous endeavour. Standing still, feeling the slowly rising water lapping at her ankles, she just closed her eyes, feeling tears coming on, finally ready to just give up.
And then, she heard the wizard's voice.
"Ari?" he asked. She reluctantly opened her eyes and looked up to see him still sitting on that table, looking somewhat ridiculous, but an odd look on his face didn't seem to fit. "You still need to finish your story," he continued, "You never told me what the curse does." The heiress tilted her head to the side, as confused as if he'd suddenly turned into an Orc, and frowned slightly at him. "What's the blasted point, Thaniel?" she snapped, annoyed that he would press her for such difficult details at a moment like this, "I appreciate your efforts, but look around you! We're all going to be dead very, very soon, so it doesn't matter what the curse does because I'm not going to live long enough for it to affect me, and you're not going to live long enough to even find out how to break it. Nothing matters anymore, wizard. We've lost." She was about to go pout in the opposite end of the room, already preparing a prayer for the Orange Goddess, who was known for amusing herself by tweaking the threads of fate to make curiously unlikely events happen, asking only that the spear eventually find its way back into the hands of the Shieldfall family. But before she could request this divine intervention, a hand made of glowing purple energy firmly gripped her shoulder and pulled her back towards the table. "Hey!" she cried, upset at the wizard's stubbornness. "I wasn't done with you, Ariella Taligre Shieldfall!" Thaniel said, crossing his arms and looking surprisingly annoyed. Ari noted, absently, that that was the first time she'd ever met anyone who was able to remember her full name after only hearing it once. "Dammit, Thaniel, it's impossible to -" she started, before he cut her off, his voice carrying rather a lot of force behind it, so much more than usual, in fact, that she wondered if he was magically enhancing it somehow. "The first rule of magic, the very first thing they teach you," Thaniel said, "whether you're studying at my old academy, that massive collegium in Sandras, or even being homeschooled by a magically-inclined mother, the first and most important ruleof magic is this: Nothing is impossible. There was once a small cabal of mages who accidentally made the sky yellow instead of blue for an entire week by messing up a couple of syllables in a spell. Escaping this little predicament is child's play!" Ari was quite taken aback, she'd never seen this kind of fire in his eyes, this confidence on his face; he was getting damp from the fine spray of water through the bulging door, but the absolute certainty of his words forced her to pay attention and not discard his words as a stubborn refusal to accept his fate. "Now then," the wizard went on, "we are going to get out of this alive, we are going to return to the surface, and then I am going to break that wretched curse on your family, just like I promised! But before I can do that, I need to know everything there is to know about the curse, so don't you go giving up just because things look bad!" Finding herself grinning, Ariella nodded, then, after a moment's thought, stepped up and joined Thaniel on that table, holding the spear across her lap as she sat there next to him. "Alright..." she said, quietly, "and thank you."
Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself for the revelation she now had to make, and looked down at the spear in her hands. "The curse... it doesn't do anything at all to you for most of your life. But ever since Xander, every single blood member of the Shieldfall family has been affected. My mother will be fine, she was born a Hightower, but my father... and my brothers and sister and I... we'll all feel it, someday, unless the spell is broken. We'll all change." She shuddered, and closed her eyes tight, suddenly not wanting Thaniel to see the terror that appeared in her eyes whenever she thought directly about this subject. "The - the inscription you read, it says the curse twists its victims into 'beasts only at home in the dark'... that's p-pretty accurate," she continued, swallowing hard, "When we reach a certain age - the youngest have been thirty, and none of us have ever made it past forty-five - the curse takes hold, and we, we..." beginning to tremble, Ari felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks, quite different from the mists of frigid water spraying towards them from the door. "We transform," she finally said, "we change from human b-beings into revenants." Thaniel's voice came then, quiet and neutral, not wanting to intrude any more than he had to. "When you say 'revenants', you mean..." "Believe me," she moaned, "I mean real, old-fashioned revenants, we didn't pick the word out of the air. They're horrible things, skin as black as pitch, eyes glowing with a yellow light the colour of pus, their entire bodies writhing with shadows, even when they stand in the light... and they're monsters, good, honest men and women who turn into monsters that want nothing except to murder and destroy every living thing they find!" "That description... it's not just what you were told, you've actually seen it happen, haven't you?" The wizard asked. "Yes!" she cried, close to a sob, and she found the words coming fast and painful, unable to stop herself, "My - my uncle Roderick, my father's big brother, he was always there for m-me, even when father had to be out of t-town... I loved him so much, and I - I know he loved me just the same, but a few months ago, I went in to check on him b-because I'd heard something break in his room, and - oh, Blue's tears, Thaniel, he was in the middle of changing, his eyes were already glowing, his t-teeth were twisting in his mouth... but the worst part of it was, wh-when he looked at me, I could see that there was still some of - some of him in there! His mind hadn't fully gone yet! There was enough of him in there to be afraid... and to say one thing, just one word. Run. He begged me to run, he knew soon I - I would just be prey to him, so he t-told me to run. So I did, and I, and I..." She opened her eyes, trying to banish the image from her mind, but all she could see were tears, and overwhelmed by the awful memory, she let the spear drop to the table and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Almost immediately, she felt something she hadn't been expecting; Thaniel leaned over and embraced her in a tight hug, holding her against him without a word. Grateful for the sympathetic contact, she pressed her face into his shoulder and cried, cried for her beloved uncle Roderick who had turned into a creature of the night before her very eyes, cried for the two men he had killed on his way out of the city that night, and cried for the very real terror which had burned within her at all times since then, knowing that Roderick was only a single year older than her own father Silas... and that even then, the same fate awaited her someday.
For a time, though, all that mattered to Ari was her pain, and the warm, unexpectedly strong embrace that helped her through it. When she composed herself, she leaned back, sniffling and wiping at her eyes with the back of an already-somewhat-damp sleeve, like a child, but there was no judgement in the wizard's eyes... only sympathy. Though it was quickly joined by embarrassment when her gaze lingered on his, and he let her go, coughing into a fist and averting his eyes. "Uhhh, maybe we should move away from the door," he said, quietly, pointing a thumb at the spray leaking in, "looks like you're getting pretty soaked." Ari grinned slightly at his transparent attempt to help her save face, but she appreciated it more than words could say. "Y-yes, that seems like a good idea..." she said, before finally looking around, "Red Raver, look at this place!" The water had risen to about waist height, or it would be if there were any humanoids standing in it, and Roland looked absolutely miserable, sloshing around the room in the floodwater, his pelt dripping all over. At this rate, the table would be floating away in minutes, and there would soon be no place left to hide. But Ari found, though she couldn't quite say why, that she now shared the wizard's conviction; they were going to get out of this, one way or another. But before they could move, before they could even say anything, there was a loud cracking sound behind them, and both the wizard and the adventuress looked at the pile of furniture with a fair amount of trepidation. Anticipating what was to come, Ari scooped up the spear and leaped from the table, Thaniel diving off to the other side, while behind them, the door finally gave up the ghost, buckling and tearing away from the strong metal hinges, the iron bar holding for another second or so before the door broke in half and it was no longer solid enough for the bar to make a difference. A torrent of water surged into the room just as a high pitched ping rang out, clear as day above the rushing liquid. "Thaniel!" cried Mister Crow, sounding desperate, "The crystal! It's -" before he could utter another syllable, the table he was on overturned from the force of the onrushing wave, and the movement crystal - now a bright, if dull yellow - was flung into the air, splashing beneath the surface of the roiling water. Eyes bugging out at the sight, the wizard pushed off from the wall, diving headfirst into the pond that was rapidly replacing his observatory, and disappeared. Ari, meanwhile, slung her spear onto her back as best she could, as she needed the use of both arms to keep her head above the water. Roland, meanwhile, was flipping his lid, but there wasn't much she could do to help calm him down, given their situations. Crow circled overhead, no longer able to land, and all Ari could do was try and look through the cold, cold water and try and find Thaniel, but she couldn't see anything with all the movement. She rose higher and higher in the room, and soon the water was crowding the motes towards the ceiling; even the little balls of light seemed agitated, shaking as they moved much faster than usual, zipping back and forth in confusing, dizzying shapes. Roland was kicking at the water hard enough to stay afloat - Ari had been worried about that, as she hadn't had any idea whether or not horses could tread water - but eventually there wouldn't be room for Ari's head, let alone sharing that space with Roland. As the water approached the domed ceiling and the free space lessened more and more - the motes were now crowding around a very upset Crow - Ari found herself wondering how long the wizard could hold his breath. She knew he couldn't hear her, but she was scared for both of them, and couldn't help it. "Thaniel!"
* * *
It was a gorgeous day in Sutari, a mountainous city of the Sukairi, who were generally regarded by lowlanders as a delightful, if somewhat quirky people who really knew their cheese and had a penchant for using the same two letters at the beginning of almost everything they made up a name for, save their children, thankfully. People were out enjoying the day with smiles on their faces, children were playing and laughing, and even the city guardsmen looked a bit more relaxed than usual as they walked along the streets, as if their maces were lighter in the face of such a beautiful sunny day. Near the center of the city was a public park; a nice, lush, green area in these rocky lands was rare enough that the Sutari city planners had gone to great lengths to preserve it. Young couples walked through, holding hands and enjoying each other's company, while children got up to all kinds of games and antics, with their parents watching happily from a distance, ready to step in should things get out of hand. It was shaping up to be a special day all by itself, and then it happened. A building, a tall, narrow tower to be precise, just appeared out of thin air, popping into existence with an intense bright light, sitting on a knoll to the side of the park as if it had always been there. Immediately, children ran back to their parents, and everyone in the area stopped to stare. It was obviously magic, they muttered amongst themselves, but why had water come pouring out of that window about halfway up? It looked broken, but there was no sign of anyone moving around in there, nor of anything else, not that they could see from the ground.
The building stood there for a few minutes, glistening in the sunlight, which again was odd, as buildings made of stone weren't known to do that. Soon enough, a fair number of the guard had arrived, maces gripped firmly in hand, scowls planted just as firmly on face. They cautiously approached the tower, trying to keep the gawkers that had gathered from approaching it. They knew perfectly well that they were ill-suited to trying to counter magic, but this was their city, and they wouldn't let anything get in the way of keeping the peace, no matter how strange it was. Before long, there was a creaking noise coming from the door at the base of the tower, but it didn't move. A pair of guards approached this door, moving calmly and quietly, and one of them reached out to take hold of the ornate handle, glancing at his partner and receiving a nod, the other man tensing his muscles, preparing to leap into action if necessary. Maybe there was nothing behind the door, maybe there was a friendly face, or maybe there was a hideous monster there. They weren't sure what to expect. What they were not expecting, though, is that when the guardsman pulled on the handle, the door would swing open with a great deal of force, and an absolute torrent of water would come blasting out, bowling him over and soaking him from head to toe as it pushed him away from the doorway.
Long after the gasps from the crowd had subsided, long after the drenched guardsman had managed to scramble to his feet, now missing his helmet, water continued to surge from the door of the tower, leading some people to wonder where all the water was coming from; a guard who arrived after the main group mentioned he'd been patrolling the protective walls surrounding the city and had seen a disturbance on Lake Sujan, a great many bubbles pouring up all at once. He suggested that this was some kind of magical trick, and that all of the water from the lake would come pouring out, flooding the city. Eventually though, the flow came to an end, with the city most certainly not endangered, and the last of the water came pouring out - and with it, a girl with a large spear strapped to her back, a very confused-looking horse, and a black bird that flapped around on the damp grass for a bit, squawking unhappily, each of them absolutely soaked. The girl, sprawled face down on the ground, pushed up onto her hands, coughing and sputtering as she did so, but as soon as she was able to draw in a breath, she turned to the door behind her and managed to choke out 'Thaniel?' As if in response, this motley crew was joined by a man wearing bright, colourful robes, dripping wet just as thoroughly as the others, though he walked out the front door standing upright, attempting an air of refined dignity despite the water pouring from his sleeves and the loud squishing of his shoes.
* * *
Ari found, given what she'd just gone through, that she didn't much care about the distant crowd staring and muttering amongst themselves, nor the uneasy-looking armoured men with maces. She was just happy to be alive, and she gratefully accepted Thaniel's hand as he helped her to her feet. She wondered how he was so composed when she could barely stand for the force of her coughing. Getting 'flushed' out of the tower had been a... unique experience. She'd been tossed and thrown this way and that, occasionally bumping against the walls or Roland, but never hitting anything hard enough to actually injure herself. She idly wondered if that was the wizard's doing. When she finally caught her breath, she looked around warily, and turned back to the wizard, who had been speaking with the guards, convincing them that he'd only put the tower there because of an unspecified "emergency", and that he meant their city no harm. "Thaniel... where are we?" she asked, squinting at the distant rooftops sticking above the trees in the park that surrounded them, "Not that I'm not grateful or anything, anywhere would have been an improvement over the bottom of a lake, but I'd just like to know." At the moment, the spellcaster was looking at a small child who had crept closer once the guards dispersed. Most of the crowd had left, still not comfortable around the tower, but this boy, clearly curious, had come in to see who these strange people were. Thaniel grinned at the kid and flicked his right wrist; one of the rings on his hand flashed and a chocolate muffin materialized in his grip, and he offered it to the boy, whose face lit up with a bright smile, taking it with a word of thanks and dashing off to enjoy it. Towers from nowhere were intimidating alright, but how could anyone who creates muffins from thin air be a bad guy?
Chuckling, Thaniel turned back to the novice adventuress. "This is Sutari, one of the larger cities in Sukair," he said, "Nice people. Wonderful cheese." "So is there something here that can help you break the curse?" Ari asked, wringing out her hair. Thaniel shrugged apologetically. "Mmmm, probably not," he said, "the Sukairi aren't real big on magic, prefer to rely on physical strength. I mean to keep my promise, free you and your family from that curse, but after that little misadventure, we're in no condition to get started yet." He let out a deep breath, not quite a sigh, as he looked back up at his home. "The crystal still isn't fully charged," he continued, "it could only manage a short jump, so I put us in the middle of the biggest city on Lake Sujan's shores. We'll need some time to set things right in there, and after all the use it's gotten lately, the crystal will probably take a day, maybe two, to fully recharge again. I figure it's best to put up with curious locals if it means we'll be safer than plonking us out in the highlands." Ari nodded at that, and turned to see to her horse; Roland looked okay, if rather damp and a bit dazed, but it would be best to make sure. While she was rubbing his side and cooing encouragement about how brave he'd been into his ear, a rather upset bird landed on Thaniel's shoulder, hissing under his breath so nobody nearby would notice the talking animal. "Wizard! I've got rather a bone to pick with you," snapped Mister Crow, "Your negligence may be endearing and charming to humans, but it infuriates me, especially when it almost gets me killed! Hells below, you almost killed all of us and destroyed everything in the tower! And they never would have recovered any of your things from pocket universes at the bottom of a lake, let's be clear! Your entire magical career would have been one big waste of time, and all because you didn't take an extra three seconds to be more precise than 'somewhere in Sukair'! If I -" As the raven ranted, Thaniel reached into a pocket without saying a word, and retrieved a small ceramic loop, which he slid over the finger with the muffin ring on it; it fit perfectly over that ring, which glowed a slightly different colour this time, summoning a much lighter-looking muffin into the wizard's hand. Crow stopped talking, his eyes darting back and forth between Thaniel's grin and the muffin. "...Is that a blueberry muffin?" he finally asked. "You'd better believe it," said Thaniel. "You're bribing me with food." "No, I'm offering my oldest companion his favourite food because we just shared a harrowing experience together. If that just so happens to mean he's too busy eating to keep yelling at me, well..." The bird's beady eyes continued to dance between their targets for a few seconds more, and then he sighed. "Fine, but I'm still going to be grumpy with you all day," he said, then abruptly pushed off, snagging the muffin out of Thaniel's hand as he flew away, back up to the tower, entering through the broken window and disappearing.
Ari forced the smile off her face as she returned, having heard the entire exchange, rather enjoying the wizard's muttered 'what else is new?' as he put the ceramic loop away. He glanced up as she approached, and winked. "Takes reagents to recreate actual blueberries, unfortunately," he said to her, quietly, "but when it keeps Crow from flapping his beak? Silence is priceless." She giggled, surprised at her own reaction. Green God, it just felt so good to be alive, to not worry about impending doom, to stand under the bright, warm sun again... Which reminded her, actually. "So, uh, Thaniel..." she started, "don't freak out or anything, but, um... don't you have agoraphobia?" The wizard nodded silently. "This is so, I hate going outside," he said, strangely calm. Thaniel looked over his shoulder, to the doorway; the sound of a million drips rang out from inside the tower, which was waterlogged from top to bottom. Then he looked up, to the shining sun and the clear blue skies, and he put on that lopsided smirk as he regarded his companion. "But today? I think I'll make an exception."
Ariella Shieldfall has successfully managed to convince the wizard Thaniel to take her on as a client and break her curse. But what exactly is the curse? Why would she go to such lengths to get magical assistance for it? And what in the world is that creaking sound?
Curse of the Shieldfall continues, as we get to know our heroine a little better, and see how well Thaniel's cleverness holds up under pressure. Thanks to my good friend RoninDrake for helping with the main concept of this one, as well as to my mother, without whom I might never have written this. n_n
