Hitting the Books
4 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Aurora Moonwhisper, an elven ranger
- Casindra “Casi” Naïlo, a half-elf warlock
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Lekslufer Biswell, a half-elf rogue
- Phelan Bloodwave, a half-elf druid
- Popdaka “Pop” Veinfinder, a dwarven paladin
- Thava Norixius, a dragonborn sorcerer
- Thokk, a half-orc monk
When one spends many years in a library, one becomes attuned to certain sounds and hopes to never hear them again. Among those is the sound of an overburdened bookshelf spilling its contents as it crashes to the floor. It represents the loss of potentially hundreds of hours of painstaking archival work, and could even mean damage to priceless tomes as their fragile spines strike unforgiving stone, cracking bindings and tearing through glue.
Books! I had always cherished and treasured books, though I admit there have been times when my personal collection of such has strained the limits of what my haversack is capable of storing. Thankfully, my parents keep a much-more powerfully enchanted trunk for me where such things go when I can no longer afford the space to carry them with me, but can’t yet bear to part with them, for my mother understands my predicament in such matters all too well, and my father has had to endure this behavior from us both.
“What was that?” I asked, as though I didn’t already know.
“Me!” Lek shouted back.
“Lek? Are you all right?” My inner librarian compelled me in that instant to race back into the small but overflowing library, words of angry admonishment on my lips for what I thought then must have been foolish behavior on Lek’s part: attempting to climb the shelf for some reason unknown to me, as he was surely tall enough to reach any volume on the shelf.
I stepped into the room and sure enough: a bookshelf I had not yet had chance to examine had fallen, and its contents had scattered across the floor beneath it. Casi was rising from her seat in the corner, as even she could not get so absorbed in her reading as to miss such a crash.
“I’m not,” the nobleman called from somewhere beneath the fallen bookcase, then added sarcastically, “thank you for asking!”
I spotted a flicker of movement in the corner near the side of the bookcase. “There’s something in here… the books are moving!”
An extremely undignified whimper escaped my lips then as that very swarm of books attempted to bash me in the face with a book. And, having previously read Treatise on Monsters Known and Unknown, I was not in the slightest bit happy about having that rather ponderous volume hurled at my face by an invisible assailant, and reacted instinctively by hurling a ball of fire back at my attacker.
I regretted it immediately: throwing firebolts in a library? What was I thinking?!
There was a thump from beneath the bookcase, and another fluent string of Elvish curses from the trapped rogue. “Somebody get this thing off me!” Lek yelled in Common.
“Coming!” Devo called, racing into the library, and to his credit, pausing only for a moment as he took in the flaming book swarm and the rest of the chaos that had befallen the small chamber. He ducked past the swarm, grabbed the edge of the bookcase, and grunted as he heaved, but the bookcase barely shifted. “This is some sturdy wood!”
“That’s what I get for putting faith in a tiefling,” Lek groused.
“I’m trying, Lek, don’t worry!” Devo assured him, adjusting his grip on the bookcase and preparing to lift it again.
Casi took that moment to step into place on the other side of the bookcase, and between the two of them, they were able to raise the heavy furniture enough that it no longer had Lek pinned, and they held it there while the nobleman scrambled out from underneath it.
The book swarm, still aflame, made another effort at clobbering me with a tome, though at least that time I couldn’t make out the title of the work. As Lek emerged from beneath the bookcase, I reached into my well of magical energy and wordlessly sang a few notes, plucking at the Weave with their resonance and sending their energy at the battered half-elf in an effort to bolster his fighting spirit.
Casi and Devo dropped the bookcase to the floor with another loud crash once Lek was clear. The rogue didn’t draw any of the fine blades about his person, but instead retreated across the bookcase to the far corner, drawing his bow from his back as he did so. His arrow did knock one of the larger volumes out of the swarm, but I couldn’t help feeling a little outraged that the so-called nobleman had left me to face the swarm alone, and I may not have schooled my expression to conceal my annoyance at his retreat.
Devo’s own crossbow bolt likewise embedded itself through a charred book, but the crackling blue energy beam Casi hurled at the maelstrom failed to connect: the flames had done their job, and the swarm was played out. By the time I drew out my saber and hacked down the last flailing tome with a pained wince for my actions, whatever magic had animated the books into such a malevolent force had finally dissipated.
I consoled myself over the destruction by glancing at the copying desk in the corner as a reminder that it was highly likely none of these were original volumes, but instead copies. I then chided myself once again that this was supposed to be the story of my companions and that I had become too involved in it. I needed to temper my instinct to race to a companion’s aid, no matter how well-intentioned that might be!
Pop burst into the room, his hammer at the ready, but the fight was over save for a few burning embers. I stamped my boots over the remains to ensure nothing else could accidentally catch fire, then asked, “Where’s Thokk?”
Book Review
“I found some really nice chairs!” the cheery half-orc called, his voice muffled only a little by the closed door behind me. Pop opened it, showing that it, too, opened onto the patio glimpsed through the open door at the end of this hallway, and there was Thokk, seated in one of a pair of comfortable-looking cushioned chairs.
“Are you okay?” Devo asked, drawing my attention back into the library.
“It’s nothing, just a scratch!” Lek insisted, backing away with his hands upraised as though to ward off the cleric. “You get away from me!”
There was something in Lek’s behavior toward Devo that deserved unraveling—if it was xenophobia, why did he then accept the half-orc Thokk so freely?—but now was not the time to try to sort it out. “Find any interesting books over there?” I asked lightly.
Devo, however, was not so easily dissuaded. “Do you need healing?” When Lek again made a dismissive noise and pointedly turned his back on him to begin studying the titles on one of the still-standing bookshelves, the tiefling sighed. “Let me know if you need help…”
“I could use help lifting this bookcase out of the way so we can see what books were on it,” I suggested.
Casi had already returned to her reading in the corner, but with the help of Lek, Devo, and Pop, we got the surprisingly-heavy bookcase settled upright again. Pop and I began to search through the books that had fallen on the floor as Lek alternately grumbled about “seeing double” while also fending off any attempts the cleric made at trying to treat him.
It soon became obvious that the shelf had contained mostly folktales, poetry, and works of fiction, so I pushed aside the stacks Pop and I had made, stood, and moved over to another shelf to examine its contents. Pop moved to check out some of the piles in the room like the one the flying book swarm had emerged from, his hammer at the ready in case another stack should suddenly animate and provide him with a target. He apparently didn’t find anything that interested him, though.
“I’m going to go back out and look at that painting again,” Devo declared. “Let me know if you find any books about the Seven Sisters.”
I nodded and moved to another bookcase, discovering that this one seemed to contain biographies arranged in no particular order. Most seemed to be about famous wizards like Khelben, Elminster, Vangerdahast Aieulvana, and even Sammaster, the founder of the Cult of the Dragon, and though I considered plucking that last one off the shelf for a long moment, I decided against it and moved on, continuing to scan the titles.
“Here’s one titled Ranger, Warrior, Musician, Mother: The Versatility of Dove Falconhand,” I reported a moment later.
Devo hadn’t even reached the door yet, apparently, and he raced back over eagerly. “Does it have any illustrations?”
I pulled the blue-bound book off the shelf and handed it over, then went back to checking out the rest of the shelf. There were dynastic histories on the Shoon Imperium of southwestern Faerûn, the Obarskyrs of Cormyr, and the Dragonsbanes of the Bloodstone Lands, with the latter having a piece of paper sticking out of it. A quick glance at that showed it had a hand-written note from Fistandia reflecting on the death of King Murtil Dragonsbane in 1465 DR, and how the usurper who followed him had made Vaasa a far more dangerous place to visit.
“It’s blank.”
Lek snorted. “She was that forgettable of a mother?”
Devo held out the book to show us that the pages were, as he described, completely blank. “It seems… deliberate? Like it was made this way. I’m going to hang onto it.”
Lek took that moment to furtively snatch a book off another shelf, tucking it into his pack.
The tiefling was looking down at the curiously-blank book in his hands, but he likewise noticed Lek’s not-so-subtle procurement. “Lek, what is that? Is that another book to help us figure out the—”
“No!” Lek snapped, his cheeks flushing.
“What is it?”
“A book!”
“W-w-w-well, yeah,” Devo stammered, similarly flustered, “but… but what’s… what’s the book?”
“History.” Having devolved to one-word and monosyllabic responses, it was clear that Lek obviously didn’t want to talk about it.
“Oh, what kind of history? I’m looking for history about tieflings!”
Lek seemed to be grinding his teeth. “Nope.”
Devo, to his eternal credit, shrugged off the half-elf’s attitude in much the same way as he always seemed to do. “Well I think it’s weird that this book is empty, which makes me think it’s a clue. I don’t know what it means, but it seems like it means something. What do you think?”
And just like that, the mercurial rogue was no longer on the defensive. “Why would a book be blank?”
“Because it’s a clue!” Devo declared.
“What’s it called again?”
“Ranger, Warrior, Musician, Mother: The Versatility of Dove Falconhand. It’s basically her ‘how you do it all’ book. Or would be, I guess, if it wasn’t blank.”
Lek frowned. “Are there any other paintings of her?”
I shrugged, pausing for a moment on a book about the Knights of Myth Drannor and wondering if that was Dove Falconhand-adjacent enough to warrant further scrutiny. She and her husband Florin had both been members of that famous adventuring company, after all. “Not that we’ve seen so far.”
Devo made a humming noise of interest. “I’m going to go look at the painting of the Seven Sisters again,” he declared, and left the room with the blank book in-hand. Lek followed him out the door, apparently curious to see what he was up to, and a moment later, I heard them both run down the hall. I distantly heard Devo shout, “Blue!” and I grinned as apparently he was trying that—in Common!—as the password for the portal.
“You’re not a dragonborn!” Lek yelled at him.
“I don’t speak Draconic!” Devo retorted. “Why did we let Thava leave?”
“I don’t know, because she decided to? She’s a strong, independent woman; she can go where she pleases!”
Their voices were drawing nearer as they returned to the library. “But we don’t know Draconic!” Devo complained as they re-entered the room.
Lek waved at the shelves. “Well, why don’t you look for a book on that?”
“Maybe there were other paintings?” Devo asked, apparently rhetorically, as the two left the library again.
I bit my lip, keeping to myself—for the time being, at least!—that I was also fluent in Draconic. Then I spotted something I couldn’t possibly ignore. “Pop? I think I found a book you’ll find very interesting.” Plucking it off the shelf, I held it out for the dwarf’s inspection.
“Heroes of Dale and Hall… the Companions o’ the Hall!” he exclaimed, and snatched the book out of my hand. Before he could seat himself in the floor with the book right there, I cleared my throat.
“It’s been a long day already,” I began. “Maybe we should gather in the entry hall and set camp?”
Casi wasn’t difficult to pry from her chair, but Thokk left his seat only very reluctantly. We found Devo and Lek inspecting the trio of paintings hanging in the study, and they informed us that they’d spoken to the homunculi who’d graciously offered to cook dinner for us.
That offer turned out to be… interesting. The homunculi certainly understood the mechanics of cooking but they apparently lacked tastebuds. Fortunately, the kitchen was well-stocked with salt and other basic seasonings needed to remedy that particular deficiency.
After we ate, Casi and I ventured into the study to look over Fistandia’s journals. I shared with her my fluency in Draconic and offered to help with the burden of translating the wizard’s curious shorthand. As Casi was not actually fluent in the language, she struggled to explain how the cipher worked, but as my mother is a sorceress of not inconsiderable power and scholarship, I was soon able to figure out the methodology. We then selected two journals from the shelves which piqued our interest: one with a spine which seemed more worn than any other, and another which had a bookmark stuck in its pages.
As we laid out our bedrolls in the foyer for what would have been the evening had we been in Waterdeep proper still, our group chatted about our discoveries of the day. Lek finally found some art he did find appealing: one of the paintings in the study had included a depiction of a naiad who was—as nymphs tended to be—rather shapely and completely nude. Pop hadn’t thought there’d be a book in the library that would appeal to him, but he was already at least a quarter of the way through Heroes of Dale and Hall. Undignified though it might be to squat over—and the faerie dragons were certainly going to have a laugh at our expense—the “smelly box of rocks” in the arboretum would be just as suitable for storing and incinerating our waste as it was that of the cats. Thokk was not in the slightest bit dismayed that the “really nice” chairs in the mansion were crafted magically, and in fact he decided to go get his favorite chair from the patio and carry it down the hall to the foyer so he could sleep in it among the rest of us.
So as to not disturb anyone’s rest, I settled at Fistandia’s desk in the study with my scratch journal and long-form journal, and spent far longer than I should have making a record of all that had transpired thusfar, surprised at exactly how much had happened in but a single day.
I really must find a way to record such events contemporaneously!
Comparing Notes
5 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Morning arrived far too early, for I had been up very late. Were I a vain woman, I might have considered using a bit of the various powders and facial creams I keep in my bag for theatrical purposes to reduce the appearance of what were surely rather unsightly shadows beneath my eyes, but thankfully the kitchen of the mansion was stocked with strong tea leaves from Shou Lung, a samovar from Rashemen, and several varieties of thick jam with which to sweeten and fortify it, as was the Rashemar custom as taught to me by my Aunt Kara.
Between the potent tea and the hearty breakfast spread—even the homunculi’s lack of tastebuds had no problem with the glorious feast of tomatoes and potatoes fried in the fat of salty sausages—I was feeling much more myself when the portal opened to admit Thava and the wolf cubs, looking much more rested than they had when they’d departed the previous day. While they joined us for breakfast and everyone else filled in the trio on what they’d missed during their absence, Casi and I quietly swapped notes on what we’d discovered in our respective journals.
The well-worn journal, dated twelve years ago, detailed the preparations and spells for creating new gateways to the mansion and setting their inbound and outbound passwords, though the only password which was noted in the journal was that of the “quick escape” password, aushuka—a Draconic term meaning “retreat” or “fly away”—which can activate any keystone from its non-mansion side and pull in any living bipedal creatures within a short distance of the gateway. This seemingly explained the results of Thokk’s sneeze: it must have been close enough to the word aushuka to have triggered the quick escape, propelling him through the portal with haste.
The spells for creating gateways and setting new passwords seemed beyond our capabilities, but the spell for removing a gateway’s keystone was far simpler. However, it seemed a poor idea to remove a keystone without the means to restore it, and so far there seemed to be no reason to disable access to the mansion. Further, it appeared there were multiple gateways currently connected to the mansion, though there was no list of all their destinations nor did Fistandia seem to have any need to write down their passwords. She mentioned that Freyot was not nearly so good at memorizing these things as she, but he apparently had a clever method for keeping his list of passwords safe that met with her approval.
The other journal we’d selected was notable for its bookmark from a bookseller in Suzail, and was dated from eight years ago. It detailed the completion of the upgrade to the library which allowed the mansion to precisely duplicate any book in exact detail, though it could not copy magical writing. As Casi had speculated, it was similar to the duplication process used by Waterdhavian magistrates to copy legal documents, and indeed Fistandia mentioned such slates as inspiration for her invention. In her case, however, she was interested in complete copies of thousands of pages at a time, rather than single pages with redactions, so hers was both more complex and far simpler. However, she made note that the magic was intrinsic to the mansion itself and thus any copy made in the library could never be removed from the mansion.
We could, however, make a copy of anything we wanted to take with us and leave a copy behind with the mansion, such as Fistandia’s journals: we need only place the book on the shelf below the desktop and speak the command phrase: kavlak vethiturasjir, a Draconic phrase which roughly translates to “make this my book”. Fistandia noted that most books seem to take roughly five minutes to duplicate, but especially long volumes or ones with detailed illustrations could take longer than that.
At one point, whatever discussion Thokk, Lek, and Devo were having led the trio to rise and venture into the study, and from the lascivious expression on Lek’s face, I was fairly certain it had something to do with the painting of the nymph. He placed his arm over the taller half-orc’s shoulder in a comradely gesture, talking in hushed tones that elicited an expression of confusion on Thokk and one of dismay on Devo.
Devo might have been raised in a religious temple, but at least he, unlike Thokk, had been raised by women.
The Next Clue
Moments after they disappeared into the study, the tiefling gave an excited shout. “Hey! It’s another one of the books!” He came racing out of the room, waving a book with a blue leather-bound cover with the Star of Mystra on its cover and on its spine. It was titled In Shadows: The Courage of Qilué Veladorn. Devo nearly threw it at Casi as he raced past us to dart into the exercise room, and then he sprinted out of that room moments later to disappear into the library at the end of the hall.
The rest of us looked at one another in surprise, then at the book. Even Lek and Thokk emerged from the study, confused because they’d thought Devo was right behind them only to find the tiefling suddenly vanished.
“Let’s go find Devo!” Thokk declared.
“Nah, help yourself,” Lek groused, leaning against the wall of the study.
Casi rolled her eyes and motioned for Thokk to follow her to the library.
The rest of us broke camp, then began to follow.
“There’s nothing in there!” came an annoyed shout as we neared the door. I peered in and found Devo staring at the blank pages of a blue-bound book, which I noted a moment later was the book titled after the dark elf Qilué.
“We’re looking to see if there are more of these books,” Casi explained quietly, and I nodded and joined the search. It was sound logic: there were seven daughters of Mystra, and as we had found two books so far, it seemed logical that there were seven books.
“I’m not doing this because of Devo,” Lek said, picking another bookcase and starting his own search.
Devo beamed. “Thanks for joining me!” the tiefling offered cheerfully, as though Lek had declared exactly the opposite.
“I got the only book I want,” Pop huffed, and he went through the other door in the library to the remaining chair on the patio and continued his reading of Heroes of Dale and Hall.
Once they also had been filled in on what to look for, Thava and the wolf cubs likewise joined the hunt, and we soon had searched every shelf and pile in the small but well-stocked library: there were no other blue-bound books with the Star of Mystra on the spine.
Devo put the Qilué book onto the copy desk. “How does this work?”
“Kavlak vethiturasjir!” I called out, but nothing happened.
“What if we, like, spill water on it or something and see if, like, something shows up?” Thokk suggested.
Lek wasn’t the only one surprised at his astute suggestion, just the first one to vocalize it. “Like invisible ink?”
I shrugged. “Worth trying…?”
“Let’s go to the kitchen!” Devo declared, and was already on his way out the door before anyone could begin to suggest an alternative. As his voice faded down the hall, he called out, “And while we’re in the kitchen, I’m going to search it for another blue book!”
I chuckled, enjoying the cleric’s enthusiasm.
Lek had the other book we’d found, though I’m not sure where he’d gotten it and I probably didn’t want to know if he’d stolen it out of Devo’s pack. “I don’t see any impressions as though a quill or other nib had written on the surface,” he noted, tilting the pages at an angle to inspect the grain of the paper.
“Is it still worth it pour water on the pages?” Thokk asked slowly, looking confused.
“Doubtful,” Lek sighed, but he left the library anyway.
The rest of us—save Pop, who was engrossed in his book, and Casi who was back to studying another of Fistandia’s journals—trailed out of the library and down the hall to the kitchen. That small room was far too cramped to hold us all, so only Thokk and Lek ventured in to test their water theory, as Devo continued to search the shelves and the pantry beyond. After arguing over which page to pour water on, they finally settled on the fifth page of the book, and groaned in dismay when apparently nothing happened.
The homunculi watched them with interest, then finally Coriander noted, “Oooh, you’ve found two of those now!”
“How many are there, sweet thing?” Lek asked.
“I don’t know how many there are,” the homunculus admitted, “but you’ll find more!”
Lek leaned closer. “Are they upstairs?”
Cumin nodded. “There are some upstairs, yes! And some downstairs, too!”
Thokk held out the book. “Can you take a look at the pages and see if you see anything?”
The homunculus looked flustered. “There’s not… I don’t think… I can’t read, so I wouldn’t know!”
“Oh. But I mean, like, if there’s like anything that looks like writing to you, because we can’t see anything.”
Coriander flew up higher to take a look. “It looks blank to me!” Cumin nodded in agreement.
Lek then attempted to press the creatures for a count of books on each floor, but the poor constructs didn’t know any more, and the half-elf apologized, again acting far softer toward the tiny creatures than he had toward almost anything else so far.
“To the dining room!” Devo declared, spinning on heel and marching out of the kitchen.
“Where’s he going?” Thokk asked with a giggle.
” I don’t know,” Lek replied with a huff, but the two nevertheless followed the tiefling out of the kitchen and to the next room down the hall. Thava, Aurora, and Phelan followed after, looking equal parts amused and confused.
“Into the radical floral room!” Thokk declared a few minutes later.
Lek sniggered. “Watch out for pixies!”
I winced, wondering if the faerie dragons were going to back to their old tricks again, and then trying to recall if anyone had thought to actually relate the story of the prankish creatures to our newly-returned companions during their wild retelling of the previous day’s events or they’d somehow glossed over that while talking about falling bookcases, flaming book swarms, and really nice chairs. However, it seemed like Caexarith and Virlyaer either weren’t in the arboretum this morning or they were keeping quiet, as nothing happened to anyone who ventured into the garden.
“The patio!” cried Devo, but this time he walked, rather than ran, to the opposite end of the mansion to where Pop was seated. Thokk stopped in the foyer along the way to grab the chair he’d slept in so he could return it to its proper place. Lek decided to stop by the stairs and wait there, and I joined him, figuring that we’d searched each room on this floor already.
I had the nagging sensation we’d missed something, though.
Onward and Upward
Finally, the entire party reconvened in the foyer, including Pop who’d reluctantly put away his book, though Casi was still reading through the journal she carried. Devo led the way upstairs, taking the steps two at a time with his tail swaying in counterbalance. Lek likewise hurried up the stairs, not wanting to be outdone by the shorter tiefling, and soon we were all around the corner landing and up the second half of the tall flight of stairs, which opened out into a cozy sitting room with a pair of plush purple sofas, a large violet rug, two more bookcases overflowing with books, an empty fireplace with a shiny suit of armor next to it, and some kind of strange multi-level platform covered in fur of an unusually vibrant hue. A large window on the opposite wall looked out into the purple nothingness, but aside from that, the room otherwise had a similar feel as the entrance to Freyot’s flat back in Waterdeep.
Devo immediately began to search the nearest bookcase; Thokk, of course, was impressed by the sofas. I ventured over to the table next to the sofa beneath the window, and immediately my eye was drawn to a book with a familiar cover: The Serpent’s Song, it was titled, and it was bound in black and emblazoned with silver scale-like details. Having read only excerpts of this particular tale before and having never had the chance to read it in its entirety, I quickly grabbed the book and tucked it into my pack to examine more closely later.
Lek likewise wandered over to the window, but he was curious about the peculiar platform structure. As he stood there puzzling over its nature, one of the mansion’s resident cats solved the mystery for him: it followed us up the stairs from where it had been eating its breakfast in the kitchen, stretched its paws up onto a rope-wrapped column to sharpen its claws, then jumped into one of the fur-covered boxes to curl up for a nap.
“It’s for the cats!” Lek explained, waving at the strange contraption, then he wandered over to the bookshelf next to me and began inspecting the titles.
The Blade Barrier
Thokk sauntered past the cat… tree? and pushed open the door in the hallway beyond. “Oooh. Shiny!” he exclaimed, and stepped into the room.
The hair rose on the back of my neck. Thokk was very good at finding trouble.
“Oh, that’s cool! That’s a neat little party trick!” he exclaimed happily. Then, a long moment later, “Ooooowwwww! Hey, that hurt!” There was a grunt, then a hollow-sounding thunk as something metal impacted something wooden.
Thava, Phelan, and Aurora were already following after Thokk, and the dragonborn paused in the hall. “Thokk? What’s going on?” The half-orc immediately began to babble, so the sorceress simply cast a barrage of magic missiles into the room, which impacted on something with metallic pinging noises instead of the usual sizzle.
“Is everyone okay?” Devo called, looking up from his investigation of the bookcase, and frowning at the continued babbling from Thokk. Putting aside the book he’d been holding, the cleric followed the others into the hall, then stopped. “Did the door attack you?”
“Nope?” came the strangled response.
Pop heaved a sigh, unslung his hammer, and started toward the the hallway. Rolling my eyes, I also started toward Thokk, curious to see what trouble he’d found this time.
“Stop attacking me!” Thokk whined.
Devo lunged forward with his mace, then muttered as he seemingly missed whatever it was he was attacking. Thava charged forward, then seemed to bounce off of some immovable barrier, shaking her head with disbelief. Pop jumped in with his warhammer raised in a two-handed strike, and there was a mighty clang! as he connected solidly with something, but he also fell back with a curse.
I had finally moved up far enough to see what was happening, just as Aurora leapt out with her sword and a wild cry. Thokk stood in the doorway of a small room, struggling to keep a sword embedded in the face of the not-quite-wood door even as an identical flying sword darted about his head and shoulders, inflicting minor stings and cuts. I was reminded of a much larger, much more deadly version of the stirges we’d battled in the Yawning Portal just two—two!—days previously, but I could tell Thokk was going to be in serious trouble if he didn’t get out of there soon.
Fortunately, Pop’s previous hit must have greatly weakened the metal, for Aurora’s shortsword sheared cleanly through the embedded blade. Unprepared for the sword to no longer be resisting him, Thokk staggered forward, cutting himself on the broken weapon. He recovered quickly enough, dropping the hilt in his hands to make a grab for the other sword buzzing around his head, but it dodged nimbly out of his reach, and Thokk moved deeper into the room.
Phelan rolled into the room and came up with his scimitar in his hands, but his swing went wide of the floating blade. Ignoring the half-elf, the flying sword stabbed in the direction Thokk had gone, and there was a strangled gasp and a heavy thud that had my heart leaping into my throat.
“Thokk!” Devo cried out, and called down holy fire, which the wicked sword easily evaded.
It could not evade Thava’s deadly magic missiles, however, and it clattered to the floor.
The silence which followed lasted an eternity.