Move 453: A Friend Comes BackHook Horror Caverns--Very Early, Day 43 (Marpenoth 26)
As the party began the work of healing and deciding what course of action to follow, a familiar figure entered the cavern. Renn walked cautiously into the light, wary and a little befuddled.
The little gnome shook her head. "It's nice of you to say so, but I've only done one out of a half dozen and now, I'll have to rest for hours before tackling the next patient. At this rate, I take forever." Arachne returned to her current favorite meditating place and closed her eyes
Jana scrambled to her feet at Renn's appearance. She paused for a moment to get her angry face going and stomped over to Renn. "Whatinehells were you thinking, running off like that?" she growled. "Don't be doin' that Daelen shit no more, dammit." She hmphed but her heart wasn't really in it. She continued in a much calmer voice, "If you've got any healin' spells, we got a lot of hurt people. 'Cept Kanon," she added quietly and with a slight wince. "Don't heal him unless he says it's okay. Some weird-ass god thing." she explained. "Uhm, no 'fense."
"Rennirolas!" cried Aloysius as he ran towards the elf. He gave Renn a big hug. "I thought you were . . . .gone. Fore'er, I mean. Do you know what happened to you?"
The exclamation made Arachne open her eyes. "Praise the Pool!" she sighed to herself. "They won't have to wait..." She closed her eyes again.
"Thank the gods!" Echo added her quiet voice to the others. "Are you okay?" She started in his direction, but when Jana and Aloysius went over, she stopped.
Kanon lifted his head up from his prayer and stumbled slightly as he stood up. He looked skeptically at Renn and mumbled, "Welcome back." The priest surveyed all the surrounding adventurers and moved over to Jana slowly, "Let's start with the most wounded and make our way around. Tell me when to stop Jana." With his eyes lowered towards her wounds and his hands Kanon weaved his fingers slowly and whispered over and over again as his hands began to glow, "Light give her strength."
"Thanks," Jana mumbled. She held still while Kanon healed her. After the first spell she said, "You oughta go check on Echo and the others now."
Kanon gave Renn a brief greeting and began praying for Lathander's healing for his wounded comrades. When he finished, he had exhausted his spells, but the group as a whole was much improved in health.
Kanon walked back over to his resting place and settled in. He stretched out and clutched his hand around his holy symbol, "I'm gonna rest here until the decision to leave is decided upon. I'm not feeling very well."
Renn looked somewhat confused as he arrived to find the group once more. He spent a moment gathering his bearings and studying the faces before him.
"I didn't wander off," he said absently in reply as Jana chided him. "I don't really remember much of anything...just a fight, and suddenly everyone was gone and I was alone in the room."
"Well, okay," Jana muttered. "If you didn't wander off, that's different. But don't be doing that shit again, okay?" She patted Renn hesitantly on the arm and went back to sitting against the wall.
"Alone in the room?" Echo queried. "I mean, you don't remember what happened to you? Do you remember talking to Arachne after you disappeared?"
After being healed up a bit, Jana said, "Maybe since that pool seems safe, we can all wash up a bit? Fuzz-face can go first," she said with a humorless smile. "Not that we're gonna untie him or nothin', but if there's anything in there, we'll know it at least."
"There isn't," said Aloysius.
"There wasn't awhile back when you looked," Jana pointed out. "But you said you felt a current, so there could be something there now."
Aloysius nodded. "Indeed, thou art correct," noted the mage. "While, generally speaking, one may invoke in certain circumstances Medver's Presumption of Eternal Statics, requiring affirmative proof of some newly offered element into a system afore presupposing a substantive change in the system, mayhap such a practice is unwise when addressing a dark, cold pool in the Underdark."
His expression was completely serious. "I wonder if any learned treatises have discussed the appropriate scenarios for the abandonment of that principle?" he added rhetorically.
"Do you want me to look again?"
Jana's eyes glazed over during Aloysius' musings. When he asked her if she wanted him to look again, she blinked a few times and said, "Yes, please. I would appreciate it. Or we can drop Fuzzball in and see if anything eats him, either way."
Dalgaer stared at Aloysius in incomprehension.
"I do have some healing power available," Renn continued in response, "and I'll do what I can."
Renn looked to Kanon first since Jana warned had warned him. "May I help ease your wounds?" he asked.
Aloysius was still grinning broadly. "No matter," he said happily, "so long as thou hast returned. Stargazer intends to study the aura on the rock formation. Mayhap it can be of use to us in some way. The sword has been rather forthcoming about its talents. I will honor its request that I not formally analyze it. Suggest would I that Dalgaer become better acquainted with Finslayer. Finslayer seems to have been made especially for gnomes. As soon as someone feels up to attending me whilst I study the rock, I will begin. I'd rather not go alone."
"Do you want a fighter or a spellcaster to go with you?" Echo asked. "That rock makes me nervous."
"Oh, I'm not sure," replied the mage. "I was more concerned about roving denizens than a threat from the rock."
"Probably best you don't go, Echo," Jana chimed in. "Doesn't that rock make you feel all weird? Best to stay away from it. Probably Renn, too."
Azrun shrugged, "I'll go. Nothing else going on here right now." He stood and prepared to leave when the Mage was ready.
Aloysius looked at Arachne. "Are you taking some of us to the surface?"
There was a slight pause before Arachne opened her eyes. She looked up at the lanky wizard and said, "Not right away. I'll need many hours of rest before I can essay that excursion. And even then, I don't know that the rest of the party cares to remain here until the surface group returns. I'm not sure how urgent the need is for more supplies. Saddam doesn't seem to have anything I might use to replace the purse of mine that he incinerated. I wouldn't mind going to replace that. And --" She looked down at the charred mess that used to be her clothes. She sighed and then rewrapped the rags around herself. "I wouldn't mind getting a new dress..."
Dalgaer pulled a pouch from his belt and handed it to Arachne. "Here, I'm barely using it. Not sure if it can replace that which you lost, but it can hold things."
"Oh! Thank you, dear!" Arachne exclaimed. As he was leaning over to hand her the pouch, she seized the opportunity -- and seized Dalgaer as well -- clasping her arms around his neck and leaping up awkwardly from her seated position so that she could kiss him on the mouth instead of his hand. "That's wonderful of you!"
Azrun looked around, "Could we open the little house? I need to get a few things out of there and the others might need some things too. If we're going to take any of the coins here we'll need to put them some where too....although I do believe we're getting close to capacity with it. We can also make up a shopping list if we're planning on sending Arachne and someone top side."
Echo said, "When I made that suggestion, my main point wasn't resupplying. That was sort of a side point. If we don't want to do the other part of it," she glanced pointedly at the tiger man, "we probably have enough supplies to get by, depending on what Kanon lost." She dropped her voice, again trying to keep the tiger man's hearing, "We have to decide what we are doing about him though. We can't keep him, I don't think."
Arachne entirely missed the rhetoricism. "Awareness, by Rufinus the Elder," she said, pulling a cloth-wrapped lump from her rucksack. "Chapter Sixteen is about the talent that a number of creatures and individuals have shown for knowing, without any sensory justification that trouble is approaching." She unwrapped the lump, muttering "Better than the present rag, I guess," to herself. "There's also Between Sea and Sky by Tamannie, which discusses the particulars of living just above the water's surface and depending for your survival upon a place you can seldom see." She got up with the unwrapped cottage and moved some yards out into the middle of the cavern where the roof seemed highest. She put the cottage down on the ground and walked back to her rucksack, leaving the cottage where everyone could see it, though not yet expanded. "On a more theoretical level, of course, there's Raelver's Mutatismundi, subtitled by the author A Swift Kick In Medver's Pants." Arachne quickly stripped off the burnt rag and replaced it with her nightgown (which had been wrapped around the ceramic cottage). The nightgown, while worn and wrinkled, was nonetheless an improvement on the previous garment. "I wouldn't mind a swim in the pool," the little gnome allowed. "I still feel singed."
"I'll have to review those sometime," said Aloysius. "They sound riveting." He moved over next to the pool and began stripping off his clothes.
Echo looked at Jana and commented, "There are times I wish I had learned to care about all those theories. This isn't one of those times," she finished with a
half smile, "but sometimes."Jana laughed silently. It was almost a full minute before she composed herself enough to ask innocently, "Does that mean you won't explain them to me?"
Dalgaer looked in incomprehension from Aloysius to Arachne. His brow furrowed and he said, "You two are far to smart for me, sometimes."
"Smart?" Arachne echoed. She went to him and took his hands in hers. Standing before him in her nightgown, so much smaller than him, she looked more likely to be his daughter than companion. "That's not intelligence so much as it is a dozen years hanging around the professors and sages at Spandeliyon University."
"No sense in drying them again," Aloysius said quietly. Once he was buck naked, he muttered a few words and his body morphed into a long black eel similar to the one (albeit smaller) the group had encountered previously. The eel slid into the pool and disappeared.
Dalgaer shrugged, "Very well. It's talkative enough I suppose."
Dalgaer picked up the blade and drew it from it's scabbard. "Alright, Finslayer. I'll give you chance."
Kanon looked up at the returned elf with drooping eyes and a heavily scarred face. Nearby his armor lay scattered about haphazardly where he'd dropped it. He twitched slightly at the offering of healing and shrugged, "Why not?" He just closed his eyes and lay there hardly moving.
"Thanks," Echo told Kanon. "I feel so much better. Did you lose any equipment in the fireball? Arachne and Azrun lost a lot, but I didn't lose much."
Still clad in her nightgown, Arachne went over to the pool and sat down at the edge to watch and wait (and probably go to sleep again). "He does seem to like that spell," she murmured to no-one in particular. "Perhaps magic is also much less taxing than directly twisting my tissues or maybe he has no particular love for his form as a human..." She sighed and gazed down at the calming black surface.
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