When the door opens - Storytime Part 3

*click*

Falken smiled, the door opened, and a massive wooden log shaped as a battering ram swung down straight into Falken’chest.

The kid flew back and hit the wall with a loud crack and hit the floor with a sickening thud. He felt his ribs shifting in places they shouldn’t, his lungs heaving and hurting with every single breath. The all too familiar taste of copper started sliding through his teeth after a painful cough showed him his own blood, now spattered on the floor.

Falken tried to get up, but the pain was too much. Lying face down in a pool of his own blood was not new to him. The streets of Waterdeep were ruthless and unforgiving if you didn’t know how to take care of yourself. Thugs, guards, people bigger and stronger than you in general, always found a way to remind you of your place. More often than not, your place was between the sole of their boot and the ground. He had learned to avoid these situations, to sneak away from people bigger than him, usually taking something of theirs with him as well.

This time he had messed up. He ran through all the reasons why the trap, the annoyingly simple trap, had sprung; however, as much as he thought about it, he couldn’t change the fact the trap had sprung, and now he was losing blood, fast.

His arms and legs were responding but the pain in his chest was too much to get up and move, so he started crawling towards the corridor’s wall, scraping across the stone floor. With some effort he sat upright against the wall and looked left and right, trying to weigh his options. His friends were still waiting for him downstairs, he could try and crawl his way down the stairs, it was just 4 stories down until he reached the Rookery. He wasn’t sure he would not kill himself going down those stairs, but it was the best chance at he had.

That’s when he heard footsteps.

For a second he thought there was only one set of footsteps, then he heard two, three, a whole group of people were getting up from their barracks and clattering around, probably alerted by the loud sound of the battering ram that had hit him. The trap was probably rigged to sound off some sort of alarm in a separate room in the tower as well.

Falken closed his eyes and held in a painful groan. That was it… the trap was made to seem simple so whoever looked at it would think it was easy enough to disarm, when in fact the trap was a more complex mechanism, made to disable whoever was picking the lock and to alert any nearby guards. Now he could barely move, was bleeding internally and externally, and would be a very easy mark to track down.

“If I wasn’t sturdy enough I could be a very nice wall decoration by now”

Falken closed his eyes, let out a small painful chuckle, coughed up some more blood and tilted his head back against the wall. He clutched one of the daggers he was using to pick the lock, held it against his chest and gritted his teeth. If this was it… he might as well go down fighting.

The footsteps got closer, Falken tightened his grip on the dagger and his breathing got faster. His eyesight was failing him now, he felt dizzy, and his eyes were getting foggy, everything looked white and just as suddenly as the battering ram hit him, he felt himself slip away into a cold sleep.

The fog surrounded Falken’s body and obscured the whole corridor, as Lauren entered and almost tripped over the boy’s body. She had heard the boy’s grunts as she was going up the stairs, but she also caught the sound of footsteps coming from above. Thinking fast she concentrated on the air’s moisture and added some of her own body’s water to it, creating a thick cold fog in the corridor where she presumed Falken would be. If the guards would come in she would at least have a few extra seconds to try and help the kid before they were spotted.

She had to fight her urge to audibly gasp when she finally saw Falken bloodied on the floor. She checked for a pulse and placed her cheek next to his mouth to see if he was breathing. After a second that seemed like an eternity she could feel the warm wisp of his breath on her face. Choking back her tears she placed her hand on his chest and spoke to the water spirits in the fog, and within herself to channel enough energy to bring the boy back from the brink of death. His bones started to realign themselves and the internal wounds slowly began to close. The loud footsteps startled her for a moment and broke her concentration. They were heavy, unusually thick and loud.

The Goliath stood behind her squinting through the fog

“Lauren? Is Damian with you?”

The Feathergale Spire - Stories from the campfire part 2

As they left Summit Hall on that morning Falken kept checking that every single one of his possessions was where it was supposed to be. Last time they had spent a night among unknown armed forces they ended up flying (or falling) down a deep canyon full of rocks.

“Hey kid, did you lose something?”

Falken turned to Damian and gave him a playful smile.

“No, but I believe you did.”

He showed Damian him one of his own daggers. It was actually the one the Sorcerer kept hidden most of the time. Damian gave a snort and a laugh while giving the boy an approving look.

“Well look at that. Last time someone took this dagger away from me, the one who did it had to sleep with me the night before and get me drunk as well… good job kid, keep those eyes sharp.”

Falken smiled and tossed the dagger over to Damian. He remembered that night well. He had lowered his guard just as much as the tiefling had… and would come to regret it as much as every one of them.

~ *** ~

The Feathergale Spire was a white tower that went up for what it seemed to be miles and miles up into the sky, as if signifying the desire of the cultists that inhabited it to reach the heavens and attain some sort of enlightenment from a higher power.

To Damian it was just very pretentious architecture.

The last time they had been here they came asking for information on the missing Mirabar caravan, and shared their stories with the cultists. They took them in, shared bread and salt with them, invited them to partake in a glorious Manticore hunt where they fought alongside them and brought down two of the beasts, and then they continued to celebrate their deeds for the rest of that night.

Then on the morning of the next day, they woke up, their hands tied, taken hostage by the very people they feasted with, and in Damian’s case, shared a bed with, the night before. Thulls, the captain of the “Sky Knights” as these cultists called themselves, informed them that they would be offered as a tribute to the Spirit of air. Helmdorn challenged Thulls to a sword fight to the death in exchange for their freedom and their equipment. Thulls simply laughed, and then had his henchmen throw them off the top of the Spire.

To Helmdorn they were pretentious pricks with no honor whatsoever.

A group of friendly Aaracockras had picked them up as they fell, bringing them to a safe place. That was when they realized their friend Draupnir had injured his neck when they caught him mid-air, and was now in a catatonic state. After much deliberation, the group of adventurers had to take the decision to… end his life themselves, and give him a proper burial instead of leaving him out there for the wild beasts to take him.

Shieldbuster now saw them as the ones who forced him to kill his friend. Pretentious murdering pricks who would taste death at the end of his blade.

A few nights later they had come back to the spire under the cover of night to recover their equipment and exact vengeance on these fools, or at least make sure they rued the day their paths crossed. As of now they had managed to climb up to the level where the cultists kept their flying mounts’ roost. The air cultists had a great deal of Flying creatures which they had domesticated in order to serve them as mounts, most of them being griffons, large magical  beasts with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion, and giant  vultures way larger than those you would encounter out in the wild. They managed to get in and have Lauren befriend one of the giant vultures with her druidic arts. The easy part was over. From now on, stealth was going to be absolutely necessary. So Falken was sent ahead to scout the floor where the cultists’ armory was located. Lauren, Shieldbuster, Helmdorn and Damian stayed behind.

As time passed, the minutes turned into hours, and Falken was still out there.

“That’s it, we need to go help him! –Lauren said- What if he got captured?”

“Hush!! Lower you voice, I’m trying to think of something here…”

“Well Damian you can think all you want… I’m going after him”

The druid got up, left the Vulture’s roost and went down the stairs to go after the kid. Lauren had taken a liking to this kid, and had become very protective of him ever since they started to travel together, and she was not going to let him die at the hands of some pretentious murdering fools who thought they could command the forces of nature by killing innocents and offering them to some spirit in the sky, or some such nonsense. Nature was all about balance, and this construction... this temple was just another slight against nature that put everything out of balance. She would not stand for it... her very skin crawled every time she saw depictions of the sacrificial rituals on the halls of the Spire, and she shuddered as she thought about what they would do to the boy once... or if they found him.

“Those two are going to be the death of us…Shieldbuster, I’m going up to see what I can find, you stay here with Helmdorn and work on an escape plan”

Helmdorn and Shieldbuster looked back at Damian with a pair of puzzled looks and said exactly what they were thinking at the same time.

“Escape Plan?”

They were pretty high up and the chances of navigating through the spire were minimal, so coming up with an escape plan in these conditions was a daunting task to say the least.

“Look, just try to find out a way to get us out of here ok? I need to go down there and make sure they don’t wake the guards”

And with that, Damian left. Hoping that this visit to the Feathergale Spire would end up significantly less disastrous than their last.

On a floor right below the vulture’s roost, Falken had managed to slip past a couple of sleepy guards and into a room that seemed to be the cultist’s armory. Several suits of armor hung on some wooden busts, and an array of martial and simple weapons had been collected into a couple of barrels to the left and right of the room. If his eyes did not deceive him, and they usually didn’t, their equipment should be stashed away from the cultist’s regular equipment… now there was only one thing keeping him from his goal.

A simple lock, with a simple trap.

Back in Waterdeep he used to pick locks like this at least once a week. He wasn’t trespassing, he just removed obstacles from his way in order to survive. Survival usually meant “appropriating” food that he could not afford for himself. Merchants never really appreciated the way he spirited away their goods so the locks on their warehouses got more and more complex. Other street kids that did not have his skills were a lot less fortunate than him, so he always tried to help them out whenever he could, but if he needed it more than someone else, then it was his for the taking. The kid was talented like few, had a keen eye for detail, nimble hands and was quick on his feet. However, picking a lock without sounding off the alarm, moving in, taking the goods, then exiting and leaving the door with no trace of having picked the lock… THAT, was something you learned.

And His teacher taught him well

This one was a simple one though, a simple lock with a simple trap that would activate through a spring mechanism built into the lock. If you did not have they key and tried to open the lock, the trap would trigger and bad things would happen. This, of course, meant nothing for someone with Falken’s skills. He just needed to put in the pin and hook from his tool kit and twist a bit until the lock opened, all while keeping the spring mechanism from going off.

That is, if he HAD his tool kit with him. Right now his tool kit was somewhere behind this very door, and he was using two daggers to open the lock. A simple lock. With a simple trap.

*click*

A daughter's duty - Story time

Toku Akiko was born in the fall of the third year after the Naishou dispute that left the Monkey clan and the Crane clan as rulers of the province. Her birth, just like her older sister’s was met with joyous celebration as is customary of the Monkey clan. Toku Uryo, Naishou’s daimyo and Fuzake Nabiki, the spiritual leader of the region had traveled along with their most trusted Samurai and family members to the nearest temple of Toku, the fortune of Virtue and founder of their clan. She was presented to their ancestor in a great celebration so as to show Toku that their clan was still growing strong.

From a very young age it was very apparent that if Sumiko took after her mother, Akiko was every bit her father’s daughter. Always running around the house, always causing trouble. She would constantly ask her father to teach her how to wield a sword, to which Uryo would only laugh at first. Though he eventually gave in and let her practice with the same wooden swords that he once used to spar with her uncle Gorobei. She was a very beautiful girl with long black hair (which was usually full of twigs and mud) a skin that resembled more that of her father, slightly darker than her mother’s, and two big grey eyes that were always full of joy, wonder, and most of all… mischief.

As time passed and the relations with the crane began to deteriorate, Uryo decided that it was time to have his family make some connections outside of Naishou. During the Naishou tournament Uryo had competed against Isawa Daisuke of the Phoenix clan, and though he lost the duel, he earned his respect. As Akiko reached the age a child would normally be sent to attend a school within her own clan, he used his friendship with Daisuke, his own political contacts and Gorobei’s influence in the Imperial court to have Akiko sent to the Phoenix lands to study in the Shiba Bushi school.

The day before she left, Uryo took her into the inner garden of Toshi no Naishou and sat with her in the small gazebo in the center of the garden. He mentioned what little he knew about the Phoenix lands, about the Isawa Mori, the forest that was veiled in mistery and legend, the Phoenix Mountains known for the many temples housed within. He told her about Kyuden Isawa the Palace of the Phoenix clan, and Shiro Shiba, the castle where she would be spending most of her time. Uryo went through the different ceremonies she would have to go through once she reached phoenix lands. Akiko did not understand half of them, and the other half sounded just plain stupid, but she would obey.

After a good hour of going through all of these things Uryo fell silent. He had never been good at keeping up the face of a Samurai, which is probably why he kept her uncle Gorobei close at all times when they needed to handle political matters. His eyes, usually very calm and happy, were now very sad and his face looked tired, and burdened.

“Akiko, my dear child, I want you to be strong… the coming years will be hard, I won’t lie to you… everything will seem to be working against you on every turn… you will be singled out as an outcast and be constantly reminded of your name and family. But I want you to remember these words and keep them close to you… “

Courtesy, Courage

Honor, compassion

Sincerity, and Duty.

Be Courteous to everyone, no matter who it is. Be courageous… Our clan was founded by a farmer who took up a sword and fought not because he wanted glory, but because it was the right thing to do. Honor is part of our lives and as such you must always be mindful of your actions, since you represent not only you, or your family, but our whole clan. Be compassionate… Samurai are of higher stature than the Bonge, but this only means that you are charged with protecting them, so care for them, and keep them from harm. Be sincere, both in how you speak and how you act, for this shall reflect on your honor. Keep your Duty in mind. Our clan is small, but strong, and we uphold the values of justice and peace in Rokugan. Our duty is to keep the legacy of Toku alive through our deeds”

Her father spoke with a passion she had never witnessed before, yet when he came to the end of it, when he talked about Duty, tears started running down his eyes. His face was shaking and his hands were grasping the cloth of the kimono around his knees.

Akiko was wide-eyed and gasping for a moment. She then quickly looked at the ground for a moment as if to give her father a moment to regain his composure. A long silence was broken by a skittering monkey on one of the garden trees. Akiko then spoke, her eyes still looking at the ground…

“Father?”

A longer silence followed, giving Akiko a very uneasy feeling.

“Dad?”

Before she could look up again, Uryo’s arms were already around her as her father’s embrace took her in.

“You are strong… you mother and I are very proud of you. The challenges that lie ahead are difficult, but you will prevail… such is the way of the monkey”

She did not know that at the time, but this was but the first step in an elaborate plan by her family to close ties with one of Rokugan’s most powerful families. Her parents had spent a sizeable amount of resources and political favors to have her become betrothed to a member of the Isawa family, and to have her enlisted in the Shiba Bushi school.

Akiko said goodbye to her parents the day after that, receiving a parting gift from each of them. Her mother gave her an Obi with embroidered cherries, which she would use with her dress kimono, and her father gave her a small white handkerchief that had a scent very much like the flowers that grew around the gardens. It had been a gift from an old friend to her father in his traveling swordsman days. He also gave her a straw hat, way too big for her at her current size. When she asked what it meant, Uryo simply said 

"That hat belonged to Doji Hakusho, one of the most skilled Iaijutsu masters I have ever had the Honor of meeting. Our relations with the Crane are very delicate at the moment, and I need you to remember that your father once had a friend amongst the Crane"

She hated the idea of leaving her home. She hated the idea of leaving her parents, her friends, her older sister and her little brother Yoshiro. But she also understood that from now on everything she did would be in representation of the monkey clan… nay… of the Uryo Family. She was to become a Samurai like her father and mother before her. She would overcome whatever task they set before her and fulfill her duty.