The Affairs of Wizards

Varroth's House, Heldorn, Cormar, late night 15th July 1083

Percinious looked around him. Heavy doors stood opposite the stairs; clearly the main doors to the street. Massively built of strong wood, they boasted locks, bars and chains far in excess of what would normally be required; probably as a boast of security to prospective customers. To his left was a large, imposing door, and to his left a rather smaller door, leading into the north and south wings respectively. The hall was dotted with glass display cabinets, from which precious metals winked dully. Some silver, occasional jewels, but almost entirely gold. Nutbolter's hopes rose; maybe this would be quite easy, then?

A few minutes wandering from case to case dispelled that hope. The Chalice of Ryien was not in any of them. For a moment, he lingered, his thieves' instincts twitching at him at the sight of all that gold, but then he moved on.

The larger door to the north turned out not to be locked, and gave into a rather sumptuous room, part office and part shop. A heavy desk stood at one end, and a large round table dominated the centre. More display cases lined the walls. This was obviously where Varroth dealt with his patrons. Once again, none of the cases contained the Chalice, and it began to dawn on Nutbolter that no respectable businessman was going to have anything as redolent of black magic as the Chalice anywhere visible.

Crossing the hall again, he addressed the smaller door, finding that this one was locked. No problem! He'd come prepared, after all. Opening a small velvet pouch, he slipped out a slender lockpick, slid it into the lock, twisted smartly, and gazed in disbelief as the tool snapped off flush leaving him with a useless handle.

Muttering darkly, he unpacked another tool and tried to clear the lock for another try, but the first lockpick remained jammed tight, and he had to give up altogether.

Perhaps upstairs...

Meanwhile, outside, Mehmet moved quietly across the grubby court formed by the confluence of alleys to stand against the building opposite, giving him a better view of the window Percinious had gone in by. He wondered what was taking his comrade so long; after all, he was a trained and guilded thief. Maybe he would need to be in a better position to help... He scaled the building and lurked in the shadow of a chimney-stack, bow at the ready.

Percinious reached the top of the stairs, and worked his way along the doors. He identified what were plainly bedrooms, and left those alone. At the north end, he found a store-room, crammed with crates and piled clutter, heavy with dust. At the other was something he'd never seen before - an inside bathroom! A cludgie inside a house, and a large tub for bathing in. Whatever next? Some people were strange.

He sighed. Bedrooms it was then. Leaving the one from which the snoring emanated until last, he cautiously opened the northern one. It held a bed, chest, table, wardrobe and so on, all shrouded in dust sheets and clearly unused. Damn! He resigned himself to tackling the goldsmith himself in the last bedroom.

As he returned to the corridor, though, it occurred to him that the rooms he'd seen at the north end did not account for the shape of the building. He went back, and carefully searched the walls abutting the missing area. Inside the store-room, he found a hidden sliding panel.

Inside, by the light of a small oil lamp taken from the empty bedroom, he discovered a secret room. It was a revalation. He'd half-expected a sorcerer's workroom - but this exceeded his wildest imaginings.

Bookcases lined both walls, crammed with arcane-looking tomes, titled in the Khylar language. There wasn't a pentagram on the floor; there were four. A low table at the north end held a wide variety of assorted objects, almost certainly enchanted.

At the far western end was a ledge protruding from the wall. A black velvet cloth covered it, and resting on that cloth was a tall golden vessel - easily recognizable from the book as the Chalice of Ryien. Percinious returned briefly to the empty bedroom, and secured a pillowcase for use as a sack.

He trod carefully across the room, silent and alert, until he reached the table, whence he swept all the articles into the sack for future analysis. He added a carefully picked selection of the books. Then he approached the Chalice itself. All his instincts were screaming caution at him, and his hand hesitated as he reached out to touch the golden vessel. A moment later, he changed his mind, gripped the edges of the velvet cloth, and scooped it into his sack without touching the metal.

Turning, he set off towards the door... and stepped into one of the pentagrams.

He knew instantly what he'd done, even before looking down. A shock of magical energy thrilled through his foot and up his leg, and the pentagram came alive with light. Throwing stealth to the winds, he ran across the room to the door; as he took the first step, strings of light stretched from the pentagram to his boot, like sticky mud, and there was perceptible resistance until his first stride was taken.

Ducking back out and into the store-room, he placed the lamp on a crate as he passed and headed swiftly down the corridor towards the window he'd entered through. As he turned the corner, though, he realized with a shock that there was someone standing between him and the exit.

Someone or something. The light was poor, even for his Khylar eyes, and behind the figure, yet he could see it had short wings mounted on its' back. It began to move, stepping forwards towards him with slow, creaky steps. He ducked back around the corner, and retraced his steps to the lamp, returning to find the ... whatever it was ... half-way from the window to the junction. Drawing back his arm, he flung the lamp at it, striking it squarely on the chest.

The clay vessel shattered, and the oil it contained spread out across the figure, blazing brightly. In the light shed, Percinious got his first good look at the thing. It seemed to be made of stone, which made his fire-based attack a bit pointless. It strode towards him with ominous slowness, trailing flames. He backed a step as it approached, casting the Bladesharp as he drew Hadraes. As he passed the intersection, a glance to his left revealed another one approaching from the southern corridor.

With a crash that made him jump violently, four arrows smashed through the window behind the first monster, showering it and Percinious in fragments of glass, and struck it from behind. Mehmet had sighted the burning silhouette and loosed a Multimissile at it. Most simply glanced off again, knocking off small chips, but one sheared through its' left arm, and the arm dropped off between the wrist and elbow. It didn't seem unduly troubled by this maiming. Nutbolter gulped, and cast Parry. A moment later, another arrow crunched through the monster's chest, emerging at the front, and it crumbled forwards in a scatter of blazing rubble.

Not waiting a moment, Percinious grabbed his sack back up and sprang through the flames, pushed the window open, and swung himself out and onto the building's outer face. Swift, practiced moves took him down the wall to the ground, and he moved off along the building, hugging the wall.

Looking back at the window, Mehmet saw another figure approach the aperture. This one moved like a human, and was moving its' arms in the unmistakable manner of a spellcaster; although the length of time taken already indicated magic of an order of magnitude higher than that the half-Khyle was used to. He decided to waste no half-measures on this one, and worked a Firearrow on the missile he launched at it. The blazing bolt hurtled across the gap between the buildings, striking truly, but it struck a nebulous something surrounding the sorcerer and glanced away.

Completing his spell, Varroth cast it - not, surprisingly, at the now-worried archer - but at the ground in the midst of the court. A black bolt shot down and splattered across the cobbles like tar, and Varroth looked up into Mehmet's eyes and grinned nastily. An instant later, one of the best-aimed shots the archer had ever unleashed struck the sorcerer squarely in the right shoulder. For a microsecond, Mehmet could see a shattering of some invisible shield as the arrow smashed through it, and then it was gone and the goldsmith was staggering backwards clutching his ruined shoulder. Deprived of the protection of his magical shielding, his clothes suddenly succumbed to the flames he was standing in, and caught fire. Mehmet's final arrow took him in the other arm, and then he was gone from sight into the now burning building.

Looking back down at the courtyard, Mehmet noticed that the black splatter seemed to have sunk somewhat; where it before looked like a thick coat of tar over the cobbles, now it looked as if it were a pattern painted on them. Neighbors were gathering, drawn by the fire to fight it or watch it, depending on how close they lived, and Percinious lost himself in the crowd, escaping onto the main street and heading for home.

As Mehmet watched, shadows gathered on the edges of the light thrown by the burgeoning fire. Swirling and thickening, they formed gradually into six shapes, translucent at first but hardening into real material forms; metre-high, coal-black, humanoid forms. Three pushed through the crowd, un-noticed among the hordes of city brats who'd gathered to watch the blaze; three walked to the base of the building Mehmet was atop and began to climb.

That was enough for the archer. Slinging his bow, he scaled the rest of the way to the peak of his roof, and started down the other side. Just a bit too quickly; his feet skidded, and he found himself sliding faster and faster down the slick slates. He grabbed deseperately at the gutter as it rushed by, but missed, and hurtled out over the street beyond, to land with a crash on the hard cobblestones.

For a moment he thought he'd broken his leg; it certainly hurt badly enough. But with effort he stood up, and discovered he could walk... sort of. Staggering slightly, he limped off up the street, losing himself in the alleys and making his way home.

Once there, the pair examined their loot. First of all, they had the Chalice, of course. Percinious' book described it as possessed of the power of transmuting fluids into 'various forms'. Looking at it they could see that each of its' eight faces had a matrix enchanted into it... so presumably there were eight things it could transmute to.

Looking at the other items from the workroom, some were listed in the book and some were not...

Nutbolter's newly-improved Heal spell made short work of Mehmet's injury, and the pair fell to worrying about the strange shadow homunculi the sorcerer's spell had created. Mehmet in particular didn't feel safe indoors. So the pair took their loot and other belongings, and all the lamps and candles they had, and went to spend the rest of the night in a public park on the edge of the Noble quarter.

Their only visitors during the night were a group of very drunken well-born youths heading home; so drunk, in fact, that they didn't even notice the pair of half-Khyle camped out in a circle of candles.

And then it was morning.

Rurik Bloodwind's house, Heldorn, Cormar, 16th July 1083

The next morning, stiff and damp, they reported with their comrades to Rurik's house, where their leader made a stirring speech about driving the Marmarkans back into the sea. Perhaps to their surprise, even the cynical half-Khyle found themselves affected by it, and as they marched out of Heldorn later that day they felt they were to fight in a just cause.