Midnight Meeting [Rhia]

Rhia hummed to herself, her boots snapping twigs and crushing leaves as she traipsed through underbrush of the lightly forested countryside. Today’s the day! Her first real job as a mage! It seemed easy too. She continued walking as she flipped open a satchel on her belt and pulled out the job flyer, ‘Enter the abandoned mansion -blablabla- collect the artifact known as Horn of…’ definitely can’t pronounce that word - in fact, let’s just skip it. The next page was a strip map showing what roads to walk down, general distances noted on each path ending with a simple drawing of the mansion at the end. Roads are boring though, they are so traveled that they hardly ever let you see the world for what it is. She glanced at the final page, it seemed to be a charcoal sketch of the interior of the house, the author of it left several annotations, but they were illegible in this light. After rolling the three documents back up she slid them back into her satchel.

“That’s the place!” she shouted while pointing, knowing full well this gesture was for nobody. Rhia picked up her pace into a light jog now deftly dodging roots and branches as she went, she quickly scaled the fence and tossed herself off the far side towards the front door. Odd, there are lights on the third floor, I should probably ready something. It occurred to her she hadn’t really paid much attention to which shells she had taken today, she popped the four shells from their loops on her belt. In her hand she now had four brass metal cylinders engraved in silver. In her hand she saw a paralyzer, a continual flame, another paralyzer and an ice bolt… can’t see a good reason to use that last one. She unholstered her Caster, a smooth metal tube with hinged breach on the rear and an angled handle, opened the breach and slid in one of the paralyzers. the breach snapped shut on its own, any faster and it would have caught her finger. The light’s probably just to discourage people from looting the place.

She holstered the now loaded Caster and tested the front door, the knob turned freely but the door didn’t budge, must be stuck from lack of use. “Stupid door!” she shouted right before turning the knob again and slamming her shoulder, full weight behind it, into the door. The door swung open and collided into the wall with a massive crash, the sound echoed through the large foyer and down the halls. Seems it was just stuck, as she thought. Let’s see, the vault is in the basement, and the stairs down are behind the stairs leading up to the second floor balcony… I think. Rhia pulled the charcoal sketch from her satchel and found the stairs down fairly quickly. As she approached the stairs she got a whiff of something rotten, it’s probably nothing, but just in case, she drew her Caster. Rhia entered the stairwell and stopped dead, She wasn’t alone, two silhouettes ahead. Aaw crap…

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All the hair on Rhia’s body stood on end, her skin crawled, the figure below twitched suddenly and before she could raise her caster or say anything she was hit with a wave of nausea.  Her legs went weak, her off hand instinctively shot out to brace herself to the wall, gagging and coughing as she struggled to maintain balance.  I thought the smell was bad before, I think I'm going to be sick…

She clenched her eyes shut, they continued to water, this place must have had a fully stocked larder when it was abandoned, its since gone rancid.  She dry heaved before collecting herself a bit, squinting below she let out a small gasp, it was all she could do to not twist her face into an incredulous stare. Somehow the figures below had multiplied, it had to be the nausea, there’s no way…. Wait, this place is abandoned, with maybe a caretaker checking on it. No monsters, no guards and definitely no multiplying shadows.  That’s a dirty thief! And I’ll bet they’re here to loot the place!

She tried to speak a couple times to the silhouettes below, now convinced it’s either an artifact of her blurred vision or some magic trick of some sort, but every time she tried she’d either dry heave or cough.  The figure below finally spoke, the voice sounded young.  Rhia blinked a couple of times, her eyes were finally adjusting and then they shot wide open, below her was a young woman, still hard to tell how young, but definitely more than a couple years younger than herself, but that wasn’t important right now, a man was creeping up behind her with a stick. She had to act now.

All in one motion, the tall(ish) woman leaned further to the left, twisting her body into a roll through her left arm.  She tumbled backwards, uncurling herself into a crouch, her cape fully billowed from the twirl.  At the end her Caster now pointed to the right past the girl, a sound like wet clothes hitting a rock was heard as a billow of glowing pink flower petals burst from the end of the metal tube, the man’s body loosened up, he dropped the stick as he stared blankly ahead.

“Ow ow ow ow ow!” She dropped the Caster, it had overheated from the shot, burning her hand. The stupid thing tumbled end over end down the stairs having a grand time, it held no regard for decorum… or her feelings. She slumped down sitting on the floor now.

“What do you mean I shouldn’t be here, I’m on an official job to get this fancy horn!  Got my flyer and everything. What are you doing here?” Her face contorted in pain, but she was trying to sound like she hadn’t just hurt herself doing a cool rolling shot… on stairs, what was she thinking?

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Cloak, twirled itself all out of whack; hair, mussed; back, likely bruised; holster, missing Caster but otherwise A O K. Her cloak was great for so many reasons, none of which seemed to want to come to mind at the moment, and if it mattered Rhia didn’t care, it was cool, and functional, and it was now sideways.  She clambered to her feet straightening her clothes and came face to face with what was inarguably… The source of that smell. It’s magic, It must be, It’s gotta be an illusion or some kind, or some kind of summon magic made to look undead, it can’t be real, you can’t bring the dead back!  Definitely can’t do that!  Magic has rules right?  An illusion couldn’t pick up my Caster right?   Is the Caster an illusion now?  Is it?  No no no no, they have to be physically here and this girl must be insane to conjure up stuff like this... Ok ok, I got this, calm down, those things haven’t attacked me, maybe they can’t think for themselves. SO. GROSS. Her face twisted from nauseated, to confused, to panicked, to a bad facsimile of a poker face, and then back to nauseated. Her train of thought was stopped dead when the girl spoke up again.

I kne.. She stopped herself short, not actually intending to say it out loud. I so called it. She’s a thief, here to rob the place and I don’t think I can stop her, definitely over my head here. She shuddered involuntarily as the girl spoke again. I really don’t know enough about how guild jobs work, maybe If I go along with it.

A job… right.  Rhia struggled  to squeak out, not managing to keep full composure.  Being surrounded by a bunch of, quite possibly, real animated skeletons from a variety of sources was not making it any easier.  She made a show of straightening her cloak again and noticed the empty holster on her thigh.  Her hand throbbed, a reminder that she had dropped it.  In all the fuss it slipped her mind.  Her eyes swept the area looking for where the Caster could have gone, they stopped on the bony hands of one of those things.  Ok think, the girl has my Caster, I mean, technically that ‘thing’ has it, but that doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s inert right now, safe, not that I think anyone would want to use it after that amazing display of craftsmanship.  Still, I can’t.  Rhia heard the command and thought the best option here was the same as before she lost the Caster, go along, try to salvage the job, and don’t die. Rhia loosely followed the girl, not taking her eyes off the Caster.  Her focus was shattered as the silence was broken by the girl’s fresh order.

Her cloak billowed out as she raised her arm pointing it straight at the girl, the other on her hip. Her face and voice incredulous as she spoke. “What do you mean me first?!  I’m not even armed! Send one of those…” Rhia’s voice cut off as she remembered where she was. She shivered as her arm dropped to her side, her head turned to look at her Caster and back at the girl.  She continued calmer.  “I’m not doing anything dangerous without my Caster.  That’d be like you going in there blind folded, hands tied behind your back and without these…” Her voice trailed off again still not wanting to acknowledge the existence of undead.  Keeping her focus on the girl, Rhia held her hand out to the skeleton palm up, grasping at the air.

”Please?”

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The slightly tall woman clenched her jaw, trying not to move and keep a stoic expression.  This whole situation was ridiculous, simple D rank job, go into an empty mostly abandoned mansion, go into a trophy room in the basement, and grab the horn of whatever it’s called.  There weren't supposed to be armed guards, or this many rooms, or a strange little girl with an obsession with a death motif.  I didn’t come prepared for this. Rhia’s expression, despite her attempts otherwise and for lack of better words, wandered through that whole line of thought until a cold rod was dumped into her hand.  

Without looking at the thing, she nodded her head in… its? Direction, tossed the Caster a couple inches in the air letting it spin and flip catching it by the hand grip. Her thumb flipped a lever on the side releasing the spring loaded rear breach, catapulting the silver engraved bullet a couple feet into the air.  She quickly turned to her left letting her cloak flow outward obscuring her left hand, she grabbed a nearly identical shell slid it into the breach and stopped her spin, with her left arm raised straight in the air, in time to catch the falling spent shell, at the same moment the breach of her Caster snapped back shut. Her right hand spun the Caster by the trigger guard a couple and slid it into her thigh holster. At the same time sliding the spent shell into an empty belt loop.  She made a mental note, one spent paralyzer, a continual flame, an ice bolt and another paralyzer, yeah.

Thank you, I never leave home without it. Rhia said flatter than she had meant and gave a salute before pushing through the door.  She snapped open her pouch while she walked, pulling out the crude map of the basement she received with the job, she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, no idea which way was which, they must have entered from a different stairwell than the one this map was drawn from.  She decided this didn’t matter and she’d eventually see something that made sense. The heavily carpeted basement, who carpets a basement? Muffled her boots as she turned a few corners.  The hall dead ended into another hall, with a large metal door built in and two guards, she immediately dropped to the floor, everything on her made of leather and fabric, this didn’t make much of a sound.  The guards looked quite oblivious to everything that happened upstairs and neither were looking down at her at the moment.  Should I do this slowly,  and hope the girl does her part, or… never mind the only way to do this is the cool way.

She took off sprinting, unholstering her pistol with her right hand and grabbing a second shell with her left. Please let this one work. She dove, extending her whole body midair, lining up the shot with the guard on the right.  Her left hand bracing her right wrist, spare shell ready Rhia focused on the shell inside and released the stored mana.  Baby blue apple blossoms burst in a cloud from the end of the barrel with a solid -FWIP-.  She didn’t have time to make sure it took effect before tucking her head and arching her back.  Rhia hit the ground activated the breach release ejecting the shell to anyone’s guess where and slid a new shell in locking the breach just in time to stop in a crouching position, she lined up the shot as the second guard too notice and let another shell expel it’s magic; a ball of ice the size of her fist formed traveling at high speed accompanied by a crack of thunder slamming into the guard’s shoulder.  But Rhia didn’t see any of that, the recoil sent her flying a couple feet backwards, landing and skidding across the carpet on her back.

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