For Whom the Bell Tolls (1/2)

Belltollia is a northern land. It has long stretches of pine forests, hard winters, nonexistant autumns, all-too-quick springs, and short, muggy summers with overlarge mosquitoes and swarms of overlarge mosquitoes gorging on whatever's unlucky enough to be around.. Farming is hard here, but enough varieties of berries find the soil hospitable that the people of the land never lack for wine or honey. And beasts of all sorts find their way down from the mountains when weather gets too harsh, so hunting and meat are a staple of even the poorest Belltollian's diet.

Most of the trade and settlements in Belltollia were around the Mortelpoisson river, known for its dangerous and profitable salmon runs. Dangerous because the quantum salmon of the western hills had this knack of ignoring water friction once they got going, and could get up to speeds that usually ended poorly for whatever or whoever they ran into along the way, and profitable because they were delicious. (If safely harvested, which usually involved a good amount of stealth, a harpoon or bow, and a certain disregard for one's life and limb.)

And on the southernmost bend of the Mortelpoisson river, lay Belltollia's biggest, busiest, (and only,) city. It was called Leville, a place of narrow streets, quaint shops, much-cared-for gardens, and generally small buildings.

As with any city, though, there were exceptions to the architectural trends.

The two that stood out the most loomed over the skyline of the self-named Villeins. One, to the east, was the crumbling ruin of the Cathedral of Nurph, dedicated to the local saint known as the No-Ear Dame.

The second building was the enormous stone jail that occupied its own island in the river west of the city. It had been built on the ruins of an infamous tavern, the Bad Still, and the name had stuck. Once used to hold political prisoners back in the bad old days when the country had been occupied by the church alliance, it was now used mainly as a military garrison. The soldiers there trained hard and provided a modicum of security for the town, when they weren't out gambling, drinking, brawling, and otherwise causing security problems for the town. It had been a while since the army had seen any town problems that weren't related to bored soldiers, but that was okay. The nearest “enemies” of Belltollia were quite a long way off and mostly didn't care about near-endless miles of sparse forests and ruins full of monsters and worse.

At least, they thoughtthe nearest enemies of Belltollia were distant.

The truth of the matter was that an airship full of trouble was hidden just a few miles out of town. And while the people on board weren't precisely enemies of the state at the moment, they were of the opinion that particular status was fluid, and had a high chance of changing before the end of the day.

And all things considered, while the local garrison would have been really interested in the fact that enemies (or at least antagonists) were closer than they thought, they would have also been rather alarmed to know that the early evening mist that was rising up from the river this muggy late-summer night wasn't entirely innocent. In fact, they would have been downright disturbed to know that it was the result of an old and powerful shaman who'd dumped quite a lot of sanity into repeated uses of the 'Call Winds' skill.

Normally she used it for sharp bursts, to ground fliers, knock people over, or liven up boring parties. But in this case, she had put her knowledge of nature and its processes to work, and manipulated both cold air and warm to slowly encourage a nice, thick pea-souper that enveloped the town from the west to the east, making a stable band of the stuff all along the river... and thoroughly covering the two looming structures that were the cathedral and the jail.

“That's done it,” Anne said, peering between the trees with her spyglass. “Between this an' the night, we'll be ready to move in an hour. Assumin' yer modifications work...”

“They will,” Threadbare said.

Airships, for the most part, were noisy. Therefore, they'd needed a way to keep the Cotton Tale quiet, at least for the first part of things.

The solution had come with a combination of Threadbare's Enchanting skill, and Kayin's Assassin tricks. Her Silent Killer skill muted her, and allowed here to better sneak up on targets. Threadbare had taken the essence of that, put it into a collection of spare sheets from the airship's linen closets, and wrapped them around the engines.

They were torn on what to call the enchanted items. Celia favored 'mufflers,' but Threadbare thought that didn't quite fit. They'd agreed to put off any final decisions on the name until later.

“Mist be good enough?” Zuula asked, from her position on top of the Muscle Wizaard's head.

“Aye,” said Stormanorm. “Now that the sun's about down, there's little risk it'll burn away.”

“Good” Zuula said, hopping down and holding out her cloth hand to Threadbare. “De crown, if you please. Gon' get a little rest before de big show happen.”

Threadbare passed it over without hesitation, and looked to the secondary team. Cagna and the Muscle Wizaard were divvying up potions, checking their gear, and talking quietly over near the bow of the ship. Renny, Kayin, and Glub were playing cards.

“Are you ready?” he asked them.

“Oh. Oh!” Kayin said, tossing down her cards. “Yeah. I was losing anyway.”

“That's what you get for trying to beat a Bard. They have all the luck,” Cagna told her.

“Hey man, that's only my secondary job,” Glub said, carefully picking up the cards and putting them back in his pack.

“We're ready,” Cagna said, patting her bandolier of potions. “Right Bastien?”

“Hm? Ooooooh yeaaaaah. I was born ready!”

“No, seriously.”

“Oh. Right. Nah, I'm good. Most of my buffs don't last long, so I don't have much to manage.”

With that he pulled on a long fur coat that the pirates had dug out of storage for him. It wasn't quite a holocaust cloak, but it was big enough to cover most of his muscled mass. Glub and Kayin and Renny nodded to each other, then scampered into Bastien and Cagna's cloaks.

And without another word, the dog woman and the Wrestler clambered down the rope ladders to the forest floor, and headed off to the northeast.

Perhaps half an hour later, Celia cocked her head to the side, then waved a hand at Anne. “They're in position. No problems to report.”

The act of splitting up to handle multiple objectives had necessitated two parties. Much as it pained him, Threadbare couldn't be in Celia's. He had to manage Anne.

Although, looking at her stats on the party status screen, he wasn't sure if it wasn't the other way around.

Anne Bunny

Beastkin (Rabbit) 38 HP 1352

Assassin 18 SAN 312

Bandit 25 STA 1007

Elementalist (Water) 14 MOX 501

Mercenary 25 FOR 804

Pirate 44

Still, as intimidating as she was, she wasn't unstoppable. Her close-call in the hive had proven that.

Threadbare hoped she'd be a valuable member of the team, and was fully preparing to deal with her in case she decided to be a valuable member of another team. Pirates did that sometimes, he had learned.

The next part would be harder. And if it failed, then the Bad Still team would have a lot more work ahead of them very quickly.

So just to be sure, Threadbare sent one last Decree.

“Simple Decree. Be well. Are there any changes to the Oracle's vision?”

Not a minute later he got his reply.

GARON HAS ISSUED A NEW DECREE!

Relax. Your target remains the cathedral. The way will be shown there.

If he'd had proper lungs, Threadbare would have let out a breath in relief. As it was, he contented himself to nodding, hopped up on the railing of the airship, and stared ahead, into the mist. It certainly did look thick enough, so he thought their odds at staying concealed were pretty good. But at the end of the day they were trying to sneak through a town full of people with very large, very sensitive ears.

Not a few seconds after that, he heard a clicking and a clacking, and turned to find Harey hopping up and jogging along the railing to join him.

“Do you think we should get a sock for your pegleg?” Threadbare asked. “It's a little loud for this next part.”

“Bah. I ain't tryin' to sneak,” Harey said, plopping her rump down on the railing, and sitting next to him. “Been killin' bilge rats for levels. Don't suppose ye could spare a mend or two?”

Threadbare nodded, and muttered the words, watching cracks in her porcelain skin disappear like they'd never been.

“Me thanks,” she stared into the mist with her single glass eye. “I'll have to be getting' that from you lot before we part ways. A montage, mayhaps.”

“That would be best,” Threadbare said. “It's rather hard to unlock the Animator job without a lot of magical research or practice with puppetry. Or both.” In the back of his mind, he felt a little relief at her words. If she was making plans for later, it probably meant she wasn't planning betrayal now.

But then, she wasn't the one he had to worry about.

And as the sun finally winked out on the horizon, Anne gave a single nod.

“That'll do. Stormanorm! Fire up them engines.”

This was the moment of truth...