Igostrom Enters

Igostrom was new to Waterdeep. So far, it was a quiet sort of day – the sort of day where an innocent little halfling lady who needed to be helped across the street told him all about her wonderful cat, Fluffers. In retrospect, though, perhaps Igostrom should have expected that Waterdeep would be a bit of an odd place. After all, the guards had let him through the gates without any fuss.

Perhaps not.

Either way, any illusions he may have had that this would be a quiet, peaceful sort of city were abruptly shattered.

A loud scream burst from a nearby inn.

Moments later, a large, heavily built man FLEW backwards from the inn’s door. His stocky muscular body was literally lifted an inch or two off the ground, as if whoever had thrown him had generated so much force that gravity had decided to take a few minutes off. His hands, heavily gloved, were on fire.

Most of Waterdeep was used to such things; there was a quick halt in the traffic, and then most of the nearby civilians crossed to the opposite side of the road, and left the dwarf alone.

He skidded to a stop in the center of the road, brought his flaming hands up, and roared a challenge. He wasn’t large relative to Igostrom, naturally, but for something like a human he was enormous – easily 6’5”, with muscles that seemed to have muscles of their own. His skin was a dark slate gray, and now that he was still, what might have seemed like red hair and a red beard were revealed to be flames.

The door to the inn slammed open, and the one had had challenged strode out.

She was… well… small. Kara Bellringer gripped her glaive in both hands, and glared down the humanoid in the street, steadily approaching. She wore a black shirt; one sleeve was singed away to nothing, and the shoulder beneath was revealed to be marked with three slashes, looking like scarring from a bear’s paw. She looked well less than half the man’s weight, and he had easily a foot and half of height on her.

None the less, the centaur, if he watched closely, would see the firey humanoid check slightly at the sight of her approaching, undaunted.

The humanoid roared and flung a fireball at Kara.

Kara didn’t even flinch; the fire slammed into her chest and splashed into nothing, leaving behind a burnt hole in her shirt. She didn’t check her stride at all, and when she reached the man she slammed into him with both hands. Incredibly – given the size difference – he stumbled backwards.

Both hands lit up with flame again, and the man roared again; words were lost in the sound, and he threw his head back, an enormous sphere of flame starting to appear around him. This looked like a problem; the flames were large enough to threaten not only the small human in front of him, but even other passer-byers. Even for Waterdeep, this was perhaps a bit much; mothers stood protectively in front of their children, someone was shouting for the guards, and someone else seemed to be trying - and failing - to summon what looked like a water spell.

Welcome to Waterdeep.

“Princess, we have to get you out of here!”

“I won’t leave them, Archmagus! You can’t make me! I will stand and fight! If I die, I die!”

“I’m sorry, Princess. I can’t allow it.”

“You can’t allow it? You can’t stop-“

And then, darkness.

Ainsley awoke to the scent of burning, and she sat bolt upright in her bed. Her heart hammered so loud in her chest that she couldn’t even hear anything else. There was no time for that. She expected to hear the flap of great and terrible wings at any moment.

Reacting purely on instinct, the dwarf rolled from her bed, and snatched up her war pick and shield. The weight of the weapon was a comfort in her hand, and the shield made what followed next much easier to bear.

She knew it had been too good to be true. They said that dragons couldn’t get into Waterdeep… but they said that Gladstone Keep was impregnable as well. None of that had mattered when the dragon had come.

But she’d be damned if she was going to die helpless in her bed like some snivelling coward.

SMASH

The window of the inn from which the brawl had begun suddenly exploded outwards, and a flash of bright white and gold came streaking down from above. The shield – a heavy steel construction plated with the golden symbol of the Gladstone family; a series of three bricks laid atop one another - had proven more than capable of sheltering Ainsley from the shattered glass which now scattered across the street like a thousand tiny knives.

She landed, barefoot, in the middle of the maelstrom of broken glass she had created, with a heavy thump. She was wearing nothing but her nightclothes; which in traditional Dwarvish fashion consisted of a padded gambeson under a thin nightie. In Ainsley’s case, the nightie was a fetching number in stark white with thick, blocky gold rune work around the hem.

With her hair streaming wild behind her, she looked less like a Princess, more like a deranged miner’s wife come seeking vengeance. Only the gold decorating her face hinted at anything more to her, and on its own, that was… not a particularly convincing set of credentials.

She took in the scene in an instant, her gaze sweeping across the centaur, the berserk woman, and the flaming man.

No dragons, then.

Her teeth bared, and she rose to her full – if rather, unimpressive – height, and crashed the butt of her war pick into her shield, sending a ringing THRUM echoing up the street.

“What.” She demanded, “In the name of Moradin and his seven beardiest Angels do you THINK you are doing here?!”

She took a step forwards, and immediately regretted it, but she gritted her teeth through the pain and, with just raw indignation burning in her eyes, continued to berate the pair of embattled warriors.

“Some of us are TRYING to SLEEP. There are children here! Control. Yourselves.”

Yes. Good job, Ainsley. That’d, definitely, de-escalate the situation. Definitely.

Damnit. Now her foot was bleeding. This was a terrible idea. If only she had some way of … moving around, which wasn’t predicated on her needing to walk along the ground. Ow. Ow ow ow.

A lot of things happened.

Kara was blocking the entrance back into the inn with her body, keeping herself and her glaive firmly between the fire-covered man and the door. A centaur was yelling at her and the man both. A window smashed open behind her, and a woman that the owner of the inn had told her was a “dwarven bigwig” leapt out, shouting at them to keep it down, people were sleeping.

Kara didn’t pay attention to any of it.

Kara kept her glaive raised, every ounce of her attention focused on the man before her. He snarled at the centaur, the brunt of the big spell he’d been summoning bested by the shield, and turned back to Kara. He hurled another fireball at her. Kara shifted, moving slightly; it would have hit her regardless, but she moved to keep even the slightest bit of the flame from splashing on any onlookers, taking the blow squarely on her chest. It shredded the last of her shirt, revealing a well-muscled and now slightly red upper body.

Kara held her ground; he charged, hands flaming, reaching for her as if to grab hold of her and burn her into nothing.

Kara brought the heavy butt of the glaive across and up, and long before his hands were in range for her, the weapon slammed hard into his stomach, his own momentum ramming him into the solid wood. The blade was pointing past her, carefully kept away from any onlookers.

The man groaned - the fire around his hands vanished – and he dropped to his knees, retching what looked like foamy beer onto the ground.

Kara brought her glaive back, still holding ready. “Go,” she said, quiet and serious, her attention still entirely on him. “Now.”

The man groaned again, looking up at her – then at the dwarven woman with the shield, and the enormous centaur. He stumbled up and ran, leaving behind a few sooty streaks and a puddle of watery vomit.

The centaur carried the woman inside, and Kara leaned on her staff, still standing at the entrance to the inn.

The innkeeper, inside, was staring wide-eyed with horror at the door, his face pale. He gasped aloud at the sight of the dwarven woman being carried in by the centaur. "Mistress Ainsley," he began, "you're hurt! A thousand - a thousand apologies, I - we - we are terribly sorry."

Kara came back in a moment later, the color of her upper body already fading back to tan; the burns she'd sustained didn't seem to be very serious.

"Kara," the innkeeper hissed, coming over to her. "I thought I told you - " he glanced over at the dwarven woman, then at her.

Kara blinked at him, not understanding.

Ainsley was surprised when the centaur rushed over, and insisted on picking her up. “Wait.” She said, still not convinced that this was over. The bouncer she vaguely knew; had seen around, at least. Was that really what this was all about? Some hothead getting thrown out of the inn?

Apparently so. When another fireball was thrown, she raised her weapon, and prepared to charge. Regardless of the circumstances of the fight, there could be no justification for hurling deadly flame at people in the middle of the street. This was a point which she felt would be best made with the end of a traditional dwarven war pick. Nothing said ‘reconsider your life choices’ like a couple of inches of curved steel embedded in your cranium.

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. Ainsley whistled when Kara’s polearm slammed itself home into the man’s gut, and he went down like a bag of rocks, hitting the ground hard. Now that the initial moment of terror had passed, she let herself be picked up and taken inside – not, normally, something she’d be comfortable with, but with all the broken glass around and she without her boots, it would have been churlish to protest too much.

Her cheeks darkened at the innkeeper’s dismay, and she looked appropriately sheepish as she sat on the bar with the enormously tall Centaur tending to her self-inflicted wounds.

“I told you, please, just call me Ainsley.” She said to the innkeeper, with a faint tone of resignation which indicated this was far from the first time she’d made that request of the man. She set her shield down, and laid the war pick atop it, pinching the bridge of her nose.

She’d overreacted, like an idiot. Jumped into a situation without knowing the first thing about what was going on, because she was frightened. Khyros was an impossible distance away, and there was no chance that he even had the first idea where she was. She had to stop with this. She was only going to get herself into more trouble if she kept this up.

“I’m sorry.” She continued, “I broke your window. I’ll pay for it, of course. I’ll go to the market and find some people to come and fix the damage as soon as I’m dressed.”

She couldn’t believe she’d gone parading around only in a gambeson and nightdress. Her father would be mortified.

“That’s my name, by the way.” She continued, to Igostrom. “Ainsley. Thank you for helping me…?”

An unspoken question hanging in the air; she didn’t want to presume that the centaur was just a common centaur. She had no idea how centaurs differentiated their nobility, but she was very aware that most nobles leant far harder on their titles than she did. She was faintly embarrassed when she’d pulled out the rune, but she’d needed it; her father’s line of credit was the only thing keeping her afloat right now.

“And, you are very impressive with that glaive, Kara, do you think-“

Whatever she was going to ask, she was cut off when she spied, lurking at the door, a tiny … rabbit? Only, not so tiny as a bunny usually was, and standing upright, peering in like the ghost at the feast.

“- am I actually awake?”

The innkeeper spun back to Ainsley, leaving Kara alone now that it seemed like she wasn’t at fault. “No, La - ah - Ainsley, please, don’t worry about such a thing. We’ll get someone to come and repair the window immediately. Would you like to move to another room, one less - er - drafty? It would be our pleasure.”

Kara looked at Ainsley as she spoke. Whatever the question was didn’t finish, which Kara considered to more then release her from any obligations to reply.

Kara also followed Ainsley’s glance to the rabbit in the door. She scowled at the centaur when he called the rabbit a ‘that,’ and was still scowling when he spoke to her. The scowl didn’t quite fade when he thanked her, but she replied with a faint nod of acknowledgement.

Kara glanced at her glaive, then decided it was best to keep it in hand. Just in case. Her skin was fading back to an even tan. There was a burn starting to blister, slightly, on the shoulder with the scars, and another just below her breast band, which preserved some modesty despite the shredded shirt. Kara stepped to the edge of the bar, and recovered a folded tunic, managing to pull it on without letting go of her glaive; it was black, with gold trim and a little lace, very minimal, along the sleeves. Honestly it looked more like a shirt, but it hung to tunic length on her.

Kara turned her attention back to the doorway. Had she seen the rabbit-like creature on the street? Kara wasn’t sure; she had needed all of her focus for the battles. The centaur had. Why was she in a bar? Kara’s immediate conclusion was that she might be hurt. Her fur didn’t seem singed, but perhaps she had cut herself on the glass or taken some other blow.

Kara stepped closer to the door, and knelt to critically appraise the rabbit creature, studying her intently. “Are you hurt?” She asked, checking for bloody or burnt fur. It never occurred to Kara that she might not be able to speak; most of those in Waterdeep could.

Ainsley’s brow furrowed as the innkeeper refused her money. She shook her head a little, “No, look, I did something stupid.” She said, “It is only right that I fix it. Leave it to me. I insist. It is really the least that I can do.”

The innkeeper’s insistence that she ought to just let him take care of it – as though it were somehow his problem that she’d overreacted – only compounded her embarrassment at the initial error. It was almost as bad as Igostrom’s lecture about the injury that she’d caused herself. Still. On that front, at least, she was pretty confident she knew better.

She patted Igostrom on the shoulder as she turned her attention back to him. “Honestly, thank you for your assistance, it really is appreciated. But don’t worry so much.” She said, “It’s just a little broken glass. Kara over there got hit with a fireball, at least twice that I saw, and…”

And now she was being offered medical attention by the bunny.

Okay.

“… anyway.” She continued, without missing a beat, “I need to go and get some clothes on. I’m not going to sit around all day in my sleepwear, and I have work to do. I’m tougher than I look, I promise.”

Not that she looked particularly waifish. Whilst she wasn’t anywhere near as tall and broad as the centaur, she was still a dwarf; stocky, sturdy, and built of sterner stuff than most other species. It’d take a lot more than a few cuts to slow her down.

Leaving her shield and weapon on the bar, she hopped back onto her feet without any respect at all for the advice she’d been given to take it easy. Broken glass was broken glass, she’d suffered far worse injuries – though rarely in such a boneheaded way.

She certainly wasn’t going to accept any assistance in getting herself upstairs or getting herself dressed – she was quite enjoying the far more self-sufficient lifestyle she enjoyed here in Waterdeep. Nevertheless, there was a bit of tenderness in her gait as she climbed up the stairs and headed back to her room. She’d feel a lot better when she got her metal-soled boots and some proper chainmail on. Really, it was little wonder she was feeling out of sorts; she wasn’t at all dressed for company.

And there was such a lot of interesting company around. Whilst she didn’t want to sit there gawping at Honeybun like some kind of country bumpkin, she was determined that she’d get into something acceptable and back down the stairs before she lost track of the rabbit completely. She didn’t know what the bunny’s story was, but she was certain it was going to be one worth listening to.

“Okay, yeah.”

Honey drew back, and nodded. Then she seemed to wield the instrument as a weapon, and, mumbling to herself, she gently placed it down on Kara’s shoulder. She’d watched godly spellcasters do it with their symbols, she’d never cast the spell on anyone but herself, though. She didn’t see why it should work any differently... and it didn’t. She watched a slight glow light up from underneath the shirt, and she felt the vibrations of her mumbles affect the weave. Yes. That did work.

She took her dulcimer back, and traced her fingers in the grooves. The dark wood was still bright enough not to be lost in her black fur, although her long fur did obscure it a little as she held it to herself.

“I’m Honeybun Sundrop. You seem, like, cool, or whatever.” The rabbit shrugged. “What’s your weapon called? I’ve never seen that kind before.”

Honeybun really hadn’t. She knew about swords, and she’d fired a few crossbows in practice. She eventually decided to stick with something a little easier for her tastes, that was light and not so terribly, terribly long. She’d left it in her room, if she really needed to defend herself, she had her ways.

Her ear twitched twice, and she stretched up as high as she could go. The other injured person was gone. Whatever.