Nisha snatched the letter out of Clueless’s hands and started reading it, softly muttering, “What to wear, what to wear… and a date, I’ll need a date for this. And hmm… never been to a real party before, unless you count crashing one with a dozen other folks, and that usually doesn’t end happily for us, even if it’s fun.”
Clueless laughed and snatched for the letter, “Hey, I was reading that!”
The tiefling held it up over her head and tried to keep it out of his hands, failing to realize that a game of keepaway tended to work best if you were taller than the other person. She mock pouted for a few seconds before she felt a poke to her back.
“You know, you’ve got one yourself.” Tristol said as he held out a similar letter addressed to her. “No need to crash the party either.”
She handed back the letter and picked up her own with a grin, “Can I pretend I’m crashing it anyways?”
“You can do whatever the heck you want. That’s what you usually do anyways.” Tristol chuckled.
Toras looked over towards them, “I’d put a qualifier on that though. So long as no people get hurt and there’s no major property damage or public scandal you can do whatever you want. How’s that?”
“Workable.” Nisha said with a wink.
Tristol laughed as she got up, snagged the Factol Karan doll and dashed out the door, saying something about ‘dolling herself up’. He looked over to Toras, “This should be interesting…”
“That it will. I have to wonder who else is showing up, for good or for ill.”
“True, it’s probably going to be a pretty big crowd, lots of important people and all that. Just so long as it’s not like one of the social functions my parents always tried to drag me out to, I won’t mind at all. Anything’s better than sitting in a room with a bunch of social climbing, absurdly arrogant wizards, and having to play along with it.” Tristol’s tail spruced out as he recalled his memories of such things in Halaraa, and his mother’s routine insistence that such were for his betterment.
“No. Here we’re likely to get everyone from Rhys, Estevan, the Titan…” Toras said before Clueless interrupted.
“…the b*tch in a razorvine headdress…” Clueless said with a smirk before he muttered to himself, “I swear I’ll have her shaved one of these days…”
“Ok, so there’s one person who’d fit in back home… hopefully we don’t get seated next to her. Still, it sounds pretty large, and it sounds like it’ll have all types there.” Tristol mused.
“It’s something I’m looking forward to, that’s for certain.” Clueless said with a grin.
Fyrehowl drew her blade and bowed to the githzerai monk who stood opposite her, her sparring partner of late. At first she had felt overwhelmed by the quickness and odd fighting style of the other cipher, and because of that initial surprise, she had felt doubt in her own abilities. However, by the end of their first few sessions, she had discovered a number of things that set her own style of fighting apart from Kel’shra’tar’s. First and foremost, she was probably twice as strong as the spindly monk, maybe even more; she was taller than he was by a good foot and a half; and she had her own claws and fangs, that while not commonly regarded as proper weapons for a trained fighter, she was naturally adept with them as extensions of her own body.
She spent the next evening after their last session alone in a chamber in the gymnasium, adjusting her methods of using her sword, experimenting with incorporating her bite or claws as sudden, unexpected, offhanded attacks. A number of wooden practice dummies quickly showed the signs of the unorthodox methods, and by the end of the evening the lupinal was smiling, though at one point she did have to pause to pick a splinter or two from between her teeth.
It was all going much smoother, as if she could feel what to do rather than sit and ponder on style, tactics, and proper movements. It might have just been the extra practice that led to her feeling more confidant and noting a smoother edge to her reflexes, but at the same time she felt oddly similar to how she had in those few spontaneous, reactive moments when she had bested the fallen lupinal, Tarnsilver, there in Belarian.
“We’ll see how this works…” Fyrehowl said, looking down at the splintered remains of the targets with amusement.
She hadn’t told the other cipher about the changes, half expecting the spontaneity of it all to surprise him and give her the upper hand in their next match, and half expecting him to fully anticipate it and react on instinct much like she was beginning to do. Neither of them were Rhys, but compared to Fyrehowl, the gith had trained for much longer. Still, she was improving rapidly and both of them were pleased with her progress.
Near the end of that next match, Kel’shra’tar hastily moved into a defensive position and parried a sudden low strike from Fyrehowl. Repeatedly during their match the taller and stronger lupinal had forced him back and gone on the offensive far more than in previous bouts. He had managed to fend off most of them, but the blocked impacts were jarring at times when they landed solidly, rather than being deflected off to one side, and by themselves it was taking more than a bit out of him. Still, he adjusted and eventually disarmed her, being as much quicker than her as she was stronger than him, but he noticed the improvement in her style, and more importantly in her reflexes.
He was better than her yes, but her rate of improvement was such, that given time she was going to eventually outstrip him in ability, partially from her own racial traits, and partially because of how rapidly she seemed to be adapting to the philosophy that he himself had been taught by Rhys and her factors, and which he was now teaching to her. He didn’t admit all of it to her immediately, but she seemed to sense it anyways, which was an affirmation of the feeling anyways.
“I have a question to ask you.” She said as she rolled backwards and stood up.
“Ask,” he said, handing her back her sword from where it lay on the ground.
She nodded and spoke as they walked out of the training chamber, “One of my companions, a bladesinger and member of the Indeps, Clueless, I think you’ve met him before. I wanted to bring him along the next time we sparred, hopefully so that he and I might coordinate some of our tactics. Would you mind?”
“Not at all, though I may be hard pressed against the both of you. You have improved, and his style is largely unfamiliar to me. I am at a disadvantage, but the challenge is welcome. Ask him and bring him along. Perhaps tommorow?”
She nodded and sheathed her sword, “That sounds good. Again, thank you. And the compliment is well received. See you then.”
“So why am I here again?” Clueless asked as he stood in the center of the Great Gymnasium, looking at the hundred odd persons milling about the central courtyard.
“Spontaneity! Because I asked you to. Is it that bad of an idea?” The grinning lupinal said to the half-fey.
Clueless shrugged and quirked an eyebrow, “Spontaneity isn’t bad, and it’s something your new group embraces from what I know. But isn’t this whole idea of planning and working on coordination of our fighting styles a bit… well… defeating the whole purpose of being spontaneous?”
“Your not a cipher, hence we need to train. Besides, you don’t just wake up one day and hear the heartbeat of the multiverse and know what to do when you need to do it. That takes practice, even if it slowly replaces the need for you to consciously think before acting.” Fyrehowl said with a soft chuckle as she opened the door to the separate courtyard used for swordplay.
“Besides,” She said, brushing an idle speck of dirt off of her otherwise spotless robes, “This gets you out of the Portal Jammer. You’ve been stuck behind the bar, serving drinks for a solid week now. You need to get out more.”
“And you need to be around more, because I’ve only been tending bar for a shift or two at a time. Besides, I rather enjoy it. I get to chat up the regular customers, get to know their faces, and I have the added bonus of making sure that Nisha doesn’t burn the place down by accident.”
“Burn the place down?”
“She swore she only did that to one place, one time, and it wasn’t entirely her fault. Something about dancing Slaadi and large amounts of alcohol. I just keep reminding myself that we don’t have dancing Slaadi.” Clueless said, his wings flushing with a bit of color at the very idea of dancing Slaadi. “Plus, if you must pry, I’ve found that Factol Montgomery is a rather good conversationalist for an animated doll. She’s cute, and she makes fun of Darkwood. And she’s more than a little hot.”
“Still, you can’t just stay bottled up in the bar if your social life revolves around little animated dolls. Even if some of them are amusing, or objects of your weird fantasies” Fyrehowl said, poking Clueless in the shoulder.
“Hey, I’ve got a girlfriend, and I’ve been spending just a tiny little bit of time with her. Let’s just say that we haven’t been spending our hours together playing Arcadian Bridge. She’s a Sensate, I’m half Sidhe, allow your mind to wander from there.”
Fyrehowl shrugged and very nearly said, ‘Is she actually your girlfriend, or do you two just get together to have fun?’ but, in a very uncipher-like fashion, she paused, hesitated and reconsidered.
“I can only imagine.” She said with a hesitant chuckle, hesitating rather than acting, and as funny as some might find it, they’d need to approach the subject eventually, just not at the present. Fyrehowl pushed the idea out of the forefront of her mind.
“So whom are we supposed to be sparring with today? Rhys’s gofor?” Clueless said as he stretched in the center of a marked practice yard.
Fyrehowl chuckled, “I wouldn’t call him that, but that’s him. Kel. He’s pretty damn fast, even if he’s not exceptionally strong. You’re probably stronger than him, but he’s confidant enough to train against us both.”
Clueless raised an eyebrow as he stripped out of his shirt and tossed it to the side. “Yeah, that probably says something. But I still say that we should try out what we talked about earlier.”
The lupinal paused and hesitated before replying, staring overly long at the bladesinger’s chiseled physique and the elaborate knot work tattoo that covered most of his back except for his wings. Clueless was exceptionally fit, and despite his being neither a lupinal, nor any type of celestial in the first place, Fyrehowl found herself admiring what she saw.
“Fyrehowl? About what we talked about earlier?” Clueless prodded her with the question again.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I was thinking about something.” She said with a slight startle.
Clueless grinned, “Isn’t that what you’re not supposed to be doing? The whole cipher thing and all?”
She poked him in the ribs, “Yeah yeah yeah. Hey, it’s better than lingering on other things. I’m doing my best here to not be utterly depressed.”
He nodded, “Actually yeah, you’re right. You’ve been tossing yourself into this, and its been keeping you occupied. I can’t say that’s bad. Anyways I think our sparring partner is here.”
Council Chairwoman Rhys’s assistant and understudy walked onto the sand of the sparring ring and bowed to both Clueless and Fyrehowl. They exchanged greetings and made small talk for several minutes before they took their positions at opposite ends of the ring. The githzerai held up his hand and the metallic bracers that he had been wearing seemed to flow like liquid, pool in his hand, and form an intricate longsword; karach.
Clueless glanced down at his sword, Razor and whispered to it, “Hey now, don’t get jealous. I promise I won’t leave you here and elope with any other swords. I’m more than happy with you, and I think you know that.”
Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing about Clueless talking to his sword like it was a living thing. “So… like we talked about before?”
Clueless nodded, “That works for me. We’ll see how it works out.”
They walked out of the Great Gymnasium tired but happy, Fyrehowl smiling and flushed, and Clueless stumbling in his walk due the spasms of laughter he was having as they left. His wings were flushed green as he glanced over at the lupinal and began snickering, a tear or two running down his face.
She rolled her eyes and poked him in the ribs, “Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Clueless was still laughing, “Well, that’s rather the point of the group isn’t it? Still…”
“Oh it wasn’t that funny. You’ll make me regret having done that.”
“No, the people who happened to be there at the time who’ll likely tell it to all their friends will. I won’t tell a soul, I swear. I won’t need to.” The bladesinger said, still flushed and laughing.
“Bah. It worked didn’t it? Who cares so long as it did?”
Two hours earlier…
Clueless deflected the gith’s last slash with a backhanded cut of his own sword and then ducked in low, cutting hard and quick and attempting to force the gith to either retreat further or trip. The gith was already stepping to the side however, and his blade was already moving to counter and nullify the tactic. Or at least it would have, had he not suddenly faltered, paused, and been knocked flat to the ground, still staring, not at Clueless, but at Fyrehowl.
The lupinal’s robes were pulled down to her waist, she was bent forwards, and flashing her breasts as the githzerai. It lasted barely a second or two before she covered herself, leapt and pinned the stunned cipher on which the faint trace of a blush was showing under the pale yellow of his cheeks; and Clueless was laughing hysterically.
Several dozen other people in that section of the gymnasium were also staring slack jawed over in their direction, including several ciphers, a bard who had nearly choked on his flute, and one of the hill giants who owned and operated the building. Some distractions affect more than their intended targets, and Fyrehowl’s had done just that.
“I think we just won…” She said with a mixture of embarrassment and satisfaction over towards Clueless as she moved and helped Kel up from the floor.
“…” He said little as he molded the liquid karach of his sword back down into a ring on his dominant hand. He then simply stared over towards the two, and while he said nothing at first, the karach seemed to twitch slightly, almost as if it were laughing for him by proxy in response to his thoughts. A few seconds later he started laughing too.
“I must admit, I wasn’t expecting anything like that.” He said, his cheeks flushed.
“Score one for us then.” Clueless said with a grin.
The githzerai motioned them towards the exit as their session was over, but he lingered just long enough to ask Fyrehowl a question. “Was that planned in advance?”
She shook her head, “No. No, it wasn’t. I needed a distraction and I just did that without thinking, it just felt like it would work and I did it without really considering it.”
Kel smiled and bowed, “Then you’re learning. Very good.”
She smiled back, “Thank you, I’ll see you in a day or two again.”
He bowed once more and she departed, walking out towards the entrance where Clueless seemed on the verge of falling over with laughter. He didn’t seem like he was going to let her hear the end of that little incident.
Back at the Portal Jammer, Skalliska sat at one of the back tables, away from the customers, and poured over a new stack of books fresh from the Great Library. Her reptilian nose twitched in annoyance as, once again, another supposedly comprehensive source of lore relating to her own race left much to be desired.
“F*ck him, and the same to his worshippers.” She muttered harshly in her own native language, referring to the figure pictured on the current page of the tome.
“He’s too damn entrenched, or else I may be looking in the wrong places. One or the other.” Skalliska said in a softer tone as she rubbed a finger along the knobby spine of her familiar. The fire lizard growled softly in support as it nibbled at the end of a bit of meat the kobold had given it to gnaw on as she did her research.
“Son of a…” She cursed again, this time in planar common as she tossed the book off the table in disgust at the content of the chapters relating to religion amongst kobolds. She mentally swore that every damn world that had kobolds, and that was most of them, held Kurtulmak as their patron, himself just an overblown and self-important archfiend.
“Can I help you with something?” She said, trying to regain her composure as she stared at one of the inn’s patrons who had been staring silently at her since she had tossed the book off of her table and tumbling under his.
“Not you…” The bald human said in a surprisingly monotone voice before he went back to sipping at an empty glass.
“Whatever… sorry about the book.” Skalliska replied, but the black clad berk had already turned away to stare off distantly towards the bar. Though not that she could see his eyes, what with them being behind a pair of black metallic goggles.
She shrugged and went back to her reading, leaving the man to stare off into space. Probably a bleaker or a dustie, considering the void that made up his personality, his pale, waxy complexion, and his drab choice of clothing. Still, the bar had seen weirder types…
“Skalliska, what exactly is it that you’re working on? You’ve been at it for a couple days now…” Toras said as he walked over to the table, a curious look on his face. He motioned to the chair across from the kobold.
“Sure, you’ll just need to move the books though… go right ahead.” Skalliska said without looking up. Her familiar puffed a small gout of flames from its nose towards the fighter, acting all the part of a miniature red dragon.
Toras sat down and glanced at the titles of the books that sprawled across the table’s surface. He frowned slightly.
“What?” Skalliska said as she looked up and tilted her hat back to look up at his face.
“I can’t really say I approve really. Kurtulmak isn’t exactly high on my own patron’s list of friendly deities. I can give you some much more pleasant options, so can Florian as well.” Toras said with the tone of a concerned parent who just caught their kid with a hand in the liquor cabinet.
The fire lizard snorted another puff of flame in Toras’s direction. Though it was little more than a matchstick’s worth, it accurately reflected Skalliska’s expression. She groaned and knocked her head against the table with a soft *thunk*.
“What?” Toras said as he reached over to pick up the book and look closer at it. There was a full-page illustration of Kurtulmak, sitting atop the skulls of various humanoids, gnomes primarily. “Nice guy…”
Another snort and a puff of smoke from the familiar as Skalliska glanced up at Toras, her beady eyes peering down the length of her snout unhappily. “Exactly, and that’s my problem.”
“Oh?”
She pointed unhappily at the illustration. “Same thing in that book and most all of these others. Same thing over and over for the past week of reading. Kurtulmak, Kurtulmak, Kurtulmak! I’m sick and tired of Kurtulmak!”
“I take back my previous statements.” Toras said with a wide smile. “Doing some soul searching then I take it? Not happy with your race’s standard options?”
Skalliska leaned back in her chair, propping it against the wall on two legs and putting her feet on top of the tome, and the picture of the ubiquitous evil god of kobolds; she seemed far too comfortable in the position.
“Did I ever tell you about the prime world that I originally came from?” She asked as she picked up her familiar.
“No, not really. I always assumed that you were planar, given your profession and all. Do tell.”
“Not much to tell. Or rather, there’s not much left of the place. There was my own race and the Illithids; both of us controlled about half of the sphere. It ended poorly and the world is more or less dead and spinning in the void now. However before it all fell apart, my people, we had our own gods. An entire pantheon of them, and Kurtulmak wasn’t among their number.” She scowled at the mention of that particular power’s name.
Toras nodded, “And once you got out here, all you could find was him, and almost all of your kind tend to worship, or at least revere and respect him.”
“Pretty much how it’s been. After all that happened recently I started to look around for information on if any of the members of my world’s pantheon survived the destruction of our world and the dispersal of our people. F*cking squidheads scoured the surface of the world clean. Think magical sandstorms of white hot glass, constantly, over the entire surface.”
“Not my idea of a fun time, no.” Toras said as he closed the book. “Any luck so far though?”
Skalliska shook her head, “No. At least not yet anyways. I’ve got time, and if worse comes to worse I can always just go to the astral and see who amongst them isn’t there…”
Toras nodded, “It’s an idea. If I can help you, you know, all you need to do is ask.”
The kobold grinned, “I appreciate it, but for the moment this is something that I’d like to do on my own. Spiritual, personal stuff, I think you’ll understand my need to go this alone for now?”
Toras nodded respectfully, “Yeah, I sure can. Anyways, I have to go out and do some shopping for some new clothes for this party that we’re all invited to. It says come as you are, but considering how much jink that Jeremo is supposed to have, I think I’m going to do my best to look good.”
Skalliska chuckled, “I should too at some point actually.”
“Anyways, anything I can get for you before I leave?”
Skalliska motioned her snout over towards the berk at the other table, “Yeah. Get me a drink and get that berk over there to leave? He’s been there staring at the bar for two hours, and he just starting drinking the lamp oil at the table. I think he’s a bleaker or something.”
“Not a problem, I’ll handle it. But anyways, I’ll see you later. Keep an eye out for Nisha when I leave, make sure she doesn’t get into anything she shouldn’t. She’s like everyone’s mischievous but lovable little sister, but three times more innocently destructive…”
Tristol glanced around the shop, a tiny thing about three blocks in the direction of The Lady’s Ward from the Friendly Fiend. He knew that because he had walked from the Portal Jammer to there along with Florian, dropped the cleric off and then gone about looking for any shops that might commission custom articles of clothing.
After all, if he was going to a party, any sort of party, he wanted to look nice for the occasion. Sure, he wasn’t dressing up to impress anyone really besides himself perhaps, it wasn’t like such functions back home, but this would be the first real official function he had attended since he had come to Sigil. He wanted to look nice, even if it wasn’t for anyone but himself.
Florian wasn’t with him as he stepped into the silversmith’s shop a few blocks from the Great Foundry, the stacks still belching their acrid clouds of soot high into the yellow haze of the Ward’s sky. The cleric had insisted on dropping by the Friendly Fiend, saying something about ‘A’kin is such a sweetheart’, or some such. Tristol shook his head in bewilderment. He was a fiend, regardless of the smile, and though he’d always been pleasant, Tristol honestly wasn’t sure what to make of him. Fyrehowl seemed to feel the same way, Toras thought he was what happened when a fiend went barmy, and Nisha seemed to adore him, at least in as much as the ‘loth put up with her random petty theft.
“Can I help you sir?” The shopkeeper inquired with a pleasant tone. He was a gnome, and former member of the Godsmen, apparent by the golden symbol around his neck.
“Yes actually,” Tristol said. “Earlier today I purchased a new staff down in The Lady’s Ward, and while it’s nice, it’s rather plain. I was wondering if I might be able to commission a decorative headpiece for it.”
“Absolutely, it seems a simple enough prospect. What sort of metal might you have in mind? I’m well enough versed in gold, silver, brass, most any base metal, and one or two exotics, though I tend to need advance notice for any of them.”
Tristol held out the staff, a long, smooth, simple shaft of some dark hardwood, stained almost black. “I was thinking silver. It’ll offset the color of the wood nicely I think.”
The craftsman looked at the wood and nodded, “That seems like a decent prospect. What sort of decoration might you be interested in? Either describe something and I can sketch it out, or if you already have a model for me to work from; I can do either.”
“Actually, I have a model for you that I think will work.” Tristol said with a grin as he reached into his robes, and the extradimensional pocket contained within.
The silversmith chuckled, “I think I can work with that. In fact, if you leave him here for a while I can get started on it now and have it finished by the morning.”
Tristol smiled, “I’ll wait if you don’t mind, he doesn’t like to wander.”
“Clueless? Why are you laughing?” Florian said as he walked over to the bar where the half-fey was trying to pour a drink while giggling.
“Oh… nothing….” He replied, obviously failing any attempts at restraint.
“Come on, spill it.” He insisted. “You’ve got me curious.”
Clueless looked around for Fyrehowl then leaned in closely, “Distraction in the middle of a sparring match, Fyrehowl flashed Rhys’s apprentice. Poor berk was too stunned to react and we had him down almost instantly after that. Trouble is, about half the gymnasium may have seen it too. Maybe just the aftermath, but I’m sure it wasn’t just me and Kel.”
Florian started to laugh, “Honestly?!”
“Honestly. And hells, it worked like a charm. The look on his face was priceless, and so was hers after the fact.” Clueless said, still pouring ale into an already full cup as he laughed.
Florian was laughing just as hard before he leaned over the counter, took Clueless by the shoulders, said, “Oh what the hell.” and kissed him full on the lips.
Clueless pulled back with a stupefied look and put down the bottle on the counter. Earning his namesake, he just stared in bewilderment as Florian laughed again, blushed, smiled and walked up to his room.
“What the hell was that about?” He said a few seconds after the cleric had departed. “Not that I minded. Not that he’s a bad kisser, but still…”
Sitting at a table and watching what had just transpired, Nisha began to giggle and said nothing to alleviate Clueless’s utter bewilderment at the situation. She saw no need to ruin a source of amusement.
“What?” Clueless asked her. “Is there something I’m missing here?”
“No, nothing at all. Really.” Nisha said as she drank deeply from her mug, using it to hide her grin. A little white lie never hurt anyone, especially not when keeping it that way made for amusing times.
*chuckle* If they make this a book there'll be several author credits.
This whole things is an only slightly modified rendition of the Actual campaign we're in. Shemmies writing - but the characters are owned by real players. 