24 Hivvem 4385: It's Never the Stuff You Plan On

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Hey I'm alive to write this! So you know it didn't go tooooo badly.

Stealing the bush went EXACTLY the way we planned actually. Which NEVER happens.

Getting the Bush: According to Plan

The weather had turned nasty: dark, cold, windy and drizzling. This was unpleasant but probably good for us overall, because it made visibility even worse. Mirhandrax and Outcast distracted the village guards by doing a deliberately bad job of sneaking into the village from the rimwards side. They were scaling towards that one gilded thunglaze dollhouse. The idea was to make the locals think they were going to steal it. As soon as a lookout spotted them, all of the lookouts rushed over there with weapons in hand, shouting and waking the village. Summer Sun and I were hanging back, waiting: once the alarm went up, Summer Sun swooped in close to the babyberry bush enclosure. I popped into the enclosure, the bush popped onto his back, and then I popped back out, all in less time than it took you to read this sentence. I accidentally knocked the bush off Summer Sun's back when I reappeared, but he caught it in his mid-talons and flew us back out before anyone even noticed us. So that part went great!

As we swooped out, Summer Sun gave a loud screech to signal Outcast and Mirhandrax that we had what we came for and they could retreat now.
The Distraction: Kind of According to Plan

One of the thunglaze had gotten them partially tangled up in a network of vines and they were trading blows with a half-dozen furomi. When they heard the screech, they used the bound Change Places spells I'd given them to teleport out of the vines and started Flying Like a Bird into the wind and rain to escape.

A thunglaze must have given some of the furomi their own version of Fly Like a Bird because they started flying after Outcast and Mirhandrax. But another of the little guys yelled, "Don't let them draw you away from the village! It could be a trap!" and the furomi drew back. One furomi screamed after Mirhandrax and Outcast, "Go on, run, you gods-cursed cowards!"

Mirhandrax spun about in the air, his great axe raised. He charged at the furomi, roaring "What was did you say?" as he swung. The furomi threw up his meng sword in an attempt to block. Mirhandrax shifted his aim lower and chopped through the nonprime's leg.

"Help?" the furomi whimpered. His fellows swarmed in around our Gormorror, hacking and tearing at him. A thunglaze healed the furomi's stump so it stopped bleeding.

Outcast swooped back and with a stroke of his sword swept the thunglaze healer clear off the fungal shelf. The thunglaze yelped and started to cast Fly Like a Bird on himself, but continued to fall as it waited for the spell to take effect. "Mirhandrax, time to go."

Mirhandrax ignored a stab from a furomi that would have killed me to concentrate on his current target, who lay propped one one arm and desperately raising his sword to block. Mirhandrax brought down the axe down hard enough to drive past the blocking sword and slice open the furomi's leather cuirass. Blood welled from the long gash in the nonprime's chest. "No one calls a Gormorror a coward!"

A different furomi clanged his sword off of Mirhandrax's shinguard. Another one stabbed him in the arm. Mirhandrax continued to ignore them, raising his great axe again.

The focus of his attention squeaked. "I didn't mean you! I meant, uh, him!" He motioned vaguely in Outcast's direction. "You're very brave oh gods please don't kill me I don't want to die."

"You dare call my friend a coward?" Mirhandrax shouted.

"He can call me whatever he likes." Outcast fended off a strike from one of the furomi that was probably hoping Outcast was less impervious to pain than Mirhandrax. Some of the furomi villagers who'd been asleep at the start of the ambush were emerging from their homes, armed with clubs and hatchets. "Let's GO, Mirhandrax." The thunglaze healer was flying back up to the ledge now. Vines from another spell formed around Mirhandrax's legs.

Mirhandrax paused. "Well. All right, then." Bleeding alarmingly, Mirhandrax used another bound teleport to escape the vines. As he and Outcast retreated to the rendezvous point to meet with Summer Sun and me, Mirhandrax asked Outcast, "You're really going to let him call you a coward?"

"I have been called much worse things," Outcast said, flying as fast as the spell would allow away from the hostile nonprimes.

This derailed the Gormorror. "... what could be worse than being called a coward?"

Outcast sighed. "Let's just stick with the plan, shall we?" Since they weren't being pursued he wiped his blade and sheathed it so he could bundle up more warmly in his cloak.

Mirhandrax shook his head. "Nothing against the rest of you prime races, but I'll never understand non-Gormorror."

We all met up back at the cleft where Summer Sun and I had collected some dirt to put in canvas that we wrapped around the babyberry bush's roots. Outcast explained their side of events while Mirhandrax bled and shivered involuntarily from the cold and blood loss as we tried to patch him up. Outcast did a little basic healing on him, but he's no healer so it didn't help a whole lot. We figured the best thing we could do was get him back to Vheshrame and real healers as quickly as possible, so we wrapped a blanket around him in addition to his cloak and then all of us flew off.

Maybe We Should Have Planned for the Trip Back Some

About two-thirds of an hour later we were attacked by a swarm of airsharks, probably attracted by the blood-scent from Mirhandrax. Like airsharks usually do, the swarm focused on trying to kill the most badly wounded among us. Normally having all the enemies trying to kill Mirhandrax works out pretty well because he's the toughest one of us and it meant that Outcast and Summer Sun could concentrate on offense and I could cast spells uninterrupted.

In this case, however, it did not work out so well because Mirhandrax was already in such bad shape that they were able to bite off one of his arms and kill him.

Mirhandrax's bound Heal the Awful Wound brought him back to life and then his bound Temporary Health healed him completely (well except for the severed arm which was still severed). He roared and started whacking apart airsharks with his one-handed axe (because he couldn't wield his great axe with one arm) while airsharks attempted to kill him a second time. Summer Sun retrieved Mirhandrax's arm from the airshark that bit it off after Outcast killed it and then I managed to spont Fresh Meat to keep it from decaying in the hopes that we could get it re-attached by a healer in Vheshrame. The airsharks did not quite manage to kill Mirhandrax a second time before we took them all down.

But this was still very bad because Temporary Health is like you've probably guessed from the name only temporary and since he was mostly-dead again after its healing, that meant he was going to die again when it wore off. And Temporary Health only works once a day.

The rest of us were not in the best shape either; Summer Sun's black-and-flame featherstyling pattern was spattered with blood and his left flank was torn open and he was missing a bunch of feathers from his left wing. The babyberry bush was a little worse for wear but the airsharks hadn't been trying to destroy it so it was more-or-less intact. We hovered in the shelter of a scrubby Verticals tree while I bandaged Summer Sun as best I could. "I think I've seen enough adventuring," Summer Sun said. "I'm ready to be back at a nice safe nest."

"Yeah I'm kind of remembering why I retired," I said to him.

"How long is that Temporary Health going to last?" Outcast asked Mirhandrax.

"It'll start wearing off in three and two-thirds hours," the Gormorror answered.

"It's going to take us another five or six hours to get to Vheshrame at the rate you two fly." Summer Sun flapped his wings nervously. I wondered if he was thinking about how much better time he could make if he abandoned us and flew back on his own. And really hoping he wouldn't, because he's good at navigating at night in the rain while flying and the rest of us would have trouble telling up from down at this point.

Outcast shook his head. "No help for it. Let's move." As we flew, Outcast said, "When the Temporary Health wears off, the wounds are going to come back in bits; unless we're unlucky, a little damage every few minutes. Delight and I both know Remedy for Corpador." Remedy for Corpador is a very simple healing spell that only works right after a wound is taken, and only on wounds inflicted by Corpador, and it doesn't heal very much unless you're a good healer. But at least it's true healing that can be used more than once per day, and it works on all wounds returning from a temporary healing spell wearing off. "If we both cast Remedy as soon as a wound returns, we can probably keep up with the returning damage. How much cley do you have left, Delight?"

"Six." I said.

"And I've got eight. That's ... probably enough to last until dawn." Cley refreshes for everyone at dawn.

"I'll be fine," Mirhandrax insisted.

"Shut up. We need you to not be stupid and stoic about this, Mirhandrax. When the wounds come back, tell us. You know how short the window of opportunity is on Remedy."

Mirhandrax started to say something about being a big strong Gormorror warrior and unconcerned about a little returning damage. Outcast turned in the air, looking ready to hit him. "I want your word on this, Mirhandrax. Promise that as long as you're physically able to, you'll tell us when you feel the spell wearing off." Mirhandrax started to protest again. "Your word, or so help me I'm going to ask Summer Sun to fly Delight and me back and leave your giant corpse here right now, because that's all you'll be in four hours. A giant corpse that we can not carry."

Mirhandrax scowled. "You have my word."

"Thank you."

So in three and two-thirds hours, Mirhandrax grunted out, "Wound back." We were all flying tired at this point because even with a nap it'd been a really long day and the cold wet dark made it feel like we'd been going forever without getting anywhere. Still Outcast and I had been waiting nervously for this moment for like an hour. We were flying slower now, because both of us were keeping in contact with Mirhandrax so we'd be sure not to be too far away to cast the spell when we needed to. We each got a Remedy into him. For another hour this continued, every handful of minutes. We were mostly keeping up with the returning damage.

Then we got unlucky. Mirhandrax passed out from a returning wound and started to fall from the sky. Outcast, Summer Sun and I all grabbed him as us Orren cast Remedy. Mirhandrax's second bound Heal the Awful Wound revived him a moment later and he re-cast Fly Like a Bird. Shaken but intact, we flew on for a few minutes, until the next returning wound knocked Mirhandrax out again. Our Remedies failed to revive him and while we all three grabbed him again, we were not strong enough to fly with him. I reached for my own Heal the Awful Wound to revive him with it, but Outcast stopped me. "Wait."

"Why we have to get him conscious he can't fly like this?"

"He'll just pass out again with the next wound returning. We don't have enough bound spells to keep doing that to him; we need to preserve them in case he dies. Let's get him over to the Verticals and set him down." We managed to half-glide, half-fall with him over to a cleft in the Verticals and set him down.

Outcast and I panted, staring at the Gormorror's body as he breathed in shallow, uneven gasps, blood bubbling out of his nose and oozing from the stump of his arm. Summer Sun hung back, scanning the skies and the Verticals nervously. A wound reappeared on Mirhandrax's neck; reflexively, we healed him. "Right. New plan," Outcast said. "Summer Sun goes back to Vheshrame and brings a healer to us."

"How?" Summer Sun asked. "They won't let me in the city."

"... right. Take Delight with you."

"And then you and Mirhandrax can both get eaten by the next monster to attack?" Summer Sun looked skeptical.

"No no no no." I felt for the cord of the Little Bird of Many Wings talisman around Mirhandrax's neck and pulled it off, while Outcast and Summer Sun looked on, perplexed. I used it to cast Fly Like a Bird on Mirhandrax again. His body rose from the cleft. "Fly Like a Bird is controlled by the caster not the subject," I said. "We can still fly him back."

Outcast blinked at me a few times. "I'm an idiot. Of course. Thank you, Delight."

I gave him a tired smile. "You're welcome. Let's go home."

As dawn finally came and refreshed our cley, the rain stopped and the sky cleared. We did meet one more group of nonprimes before we got back to the city but that was a handful of ulgrane from Summer Sun's nest. Yay! They flew escort with us the last several miles to the city. I told Summer Sun I'd bring Trust or another healer out to treat him as soon as we got help for Mirhandrax and then we primes swooped through the city gates under Fly Like a Bird power. Because as long as we have the talisman anyway it does beat walking.

We left Mirhandrax and his severed arm at the Healer's Guild with a swarm of healers and assistants attending him. I manged to convince Trust to come out and see to Summer Sun, and he put Healing Sleep spells on all of us.

Then I went home and collapsed for the rest of the day.

I am totally retiring from adventuring again now.