Roleplay

Sparrow was about to disagree with Oru’s opinion of the caravan when the elf seemed to discover he could breathe again; she watched as he fingers his bandages and noticed that the blood seemed to be old and stale.

What? she thought, frowning slightly. I could have sworn…?

Maybe she’d just thought she’d seen fresh blood. No—no, she’d seen fresh blood, she knew it—he’d left spots of it on the floor, for heaven’s sake. Yes, there was a smudge of it right next to her boot.

She looked up at Oru in surprise, about to speak again and point out what seemed to her a very strange occurrence indeed; but he cut her off again, asking why she was there. At his following rhetoric question she frowned, tilting her head in concern.

What exactly had she gotten herself into? She thought Clover was simply a traveling performer of some sort, a little odd but friendly. When Oru had been raging earlier she assumed Clover had rescued him from some horrible fate and the elf was just bitter because he’d been humiliated. For all she knew he might just be speaking sarcastically, making up that nonsense about ‘some eventual performance plan’.

Or...was he?

“I stopped him, actually,” Sparrow explained, slowly sitting on a nearby crate once she was sure Oru wasn’t going to fall out of the cot. “I was lost, I needed some help to get back to the city.”

Back to the city. Ugh, that tasted unpleasant on her tongue. It was the last thing she wanted to be saying. She’d much prefer to proclaim she was off on some grand adventure, about to come into a large wealth of money--then she could say she was headed ‘back to the city’, going to retrieve her little sister and take her somewhere fantastic, where Lark could sing and dance all she wanted, never having to stop so she could go wait on some noblewoman’s every beck and call.

Reaching absently to make sure her handkerchief was still in place, she studied Oru curiously, asking, “What’s this druid ceremony you mentioned earlier?” As an afterthought, she added, “If you can tell me about it, that is.”

She’d heard it mentioned that different species could be very particular about their customs and rituals, and it was always better to be safe than sorry and remember to be polite when asking.

Sparrow listened in fascination to Oru’s description of wood elf customs. It sounded preposterous to have to do all that just to prove yourself a “proper elf”...but, then again, everything he listed had practical implications.

When he started to list the beasts and monsters roaming the woods, she felt her eyebrows rise in subtle wonder. By the King’s name, how am I not dead? she thought, incredulous that she’d survived a whole two days in these woods without being torn apart by any one of the number of fearsome creatures Oru had listed. She was glad now she and Lark had decided that Sparrow would go on by herself first and return for her little sister later—who knew what might’ve happened to the girl if Sparrow had dragged her out there into those deadly trees? She shuddered at the thought.

Oru rolled over to face her, gesturing as he described gnolls. They sounded almost comical, but that was probably just because Sparrow had never seen an orc in the flesh and had no idea of how truly dangerous they were. The vilest creature she’d ever seen—besides the occasional drunken dwarf, swearing their bearded head off as they stumbled down the street—was a dog Graeyorn had tampered with in his magical experiments. The hound had grown an extra leg from a spot just below its ribs, and begun to lose hair due to disgusting, bile-filled welps and sores. An unneeded surplus of canine teeth had sprouted from the dog’s gums until it couldn’t shut its mouth fully for all the teeth taking up space… Not to mention the hound was gradually growing in size every day it was kept locked up in the cellar to be observed. Thank goodness Graeyorn had finally disposed of it, or else there might have been a giant, grotesque canine beast out in the woods for Oru to fight off as well as any gnolls.

Sparrow was jolted from her reminiscing when the elf suddenly stood, gasping something about the gnolls still being in the forest. With a frown she stood, following him over to the door to peek out the window as well.

“Um—well, I—I can fight a little?” It sounded more like a question than a statement, and Sparrow hurried to add, “That is, I’ve been in a few alley fights, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been up against a gnoll before.”

Lie! her conscience sang. You’ve been in one alley fight, and it wasn’t really an alley fight so much as it was punching a beggar old enough to be your grandfather then running before he could grab your satchel again.

Sparrow pursed her lips determinedly, scanning the forest outside the window as it rolled slowly past. Whatever the case, she knew how to punch well enough, and if she was given something to swing with she could hit hard whatever she was swinging at.

“Are you so sure we’re being followed?” she asked, seriously considering calling for Clover now as she suggesed hopefully, “Maybe the gnolls ate something else when they couldn’t eat you and they’re just sitting back enjoying their supper now?”

She hated to think what might happen if a pack like the creatures Oru described caught up to the caravan. A tribe of gnolls aginst an overly-cheerful tabaxi, a worn-out runaway, an elf that had already been beaten by them once, and a fat little mule hardly seemed a fair fight.

“Clover!” Sparrow gasped in surprise when the tabaxi came into view, battling a canine-like beast. It was strange to see Clover in such a scenario, the complete opposite of how he’d been when she first ran into him. It was at least nice to know he could fight and his skills weren’t limited to that of a simple performer.

Oru stumbled back, asking about something sharp, anything—Sparrow tore her eyes away from the window, now aware of all the shrieks and hollers outside as she looked for any item that might be used as a weapon. Before she could really even begin to look, there was a horrendous splintering of wood, and something like a sharpened branch came bursting through the side of the wagon.

Sparrow gave a sharp intake of breath, jumping out of the way as Clover hissed for help. Her eyes landed on some sort of instrument, a lyre or long-necked harp of some kind; without thinking she grabbed it from where it hung on the wall, turning and swinging the larger end with all her might.

There was another tremendous splintering sound, but this time it was the body of the instrument smashed to bits by the impact of striking the gnoll’s head. With a screech the creature pulled back and Sparrow dropped the useless lyre, apologizing mentally for the destruction. Surely it had played many a fine tune in its day—at least it had met an exciting end.

Something rocked the caravan, sending Sparrow stumbling to the side; catching herself against one of the chests, she pushed herself up and caught sight of another chest, small and filled with a few empty, glass viles and some bags of colored sand.

A bulbous eye appeared in the whole left by the sharpened stake, peering around at the inside of the caravan. Grabbing one of the sand-filled bags Sparrow loosed the string holding the top together and lobbed it at the gnoll’s exposed face. The creature outside shrieked and recoiled as the sand—blue in color—burst across his visage with a nice sparkle. She had no idea what the stuff was, but hopefully it did some damage.

The caravan lurched again and Sparrow launched herself at the hole where the window had been, shouting as she tried to look out, “How many of these things are there?!”

If it was any more than five, from her point of view, they were most certainly doomed.

Another bag of colored dust in one hand and the neck of the demolished instrument clutched like a club in the other, Sparrow did her best to keep fighting back anything that so much as growled in her direction. It was growing evident though that her sleep and food deprivation of the last two days was starting to wear on her; though she kept a bold face, her swings were growing steadily weaker and her aim was becoming less accurate.

An especially rough lurch of the caravan sent her tumbling with a small shout of surprise, and, with a painful thud, she found herself thrown to the floor next to one of the openings in the wagon’s walls. Near immediately a great, meaty paw reached through the hole, swiping down at her face.

“Gah—!” She let out a yelp, trying to duck out of the way, but the gnoll’s fingers caught hold of her handkerchief. With a yank the bandanna had come loose and Sparrow’s white hair fell into her face as she threw the bag of dust at the creature’s face. Reaching for the handkerchief she managed to catch hold of it, pulling it free of the gnoll’s grasp and scrambling away from the hole frantically.

Oru seemed to be losing his grip and she made sure not too get to close for him for fear he might lash out at her mistakenly, so desperate his movements seemed.

The elf’s sudden exclamation pulled her attention from the gnoll she was attempting to fend off, its hairy forearm groping through one of the gaps in the wagon’s walls; twisting around, she could see through the other side of the caravan to the woods outside, where Clover appeared to have been pinned down, beaten roughly against the ground.

She flinched at every strike the tabaxi endured, understanding Oru’s confusion when Clover reached for his lute. Was he going to play some sort of farewell song, a mournful goodbye to the world in his last moments of life? Poetic, but not exactly practical. Sparrow herself would have preferred to die fighting rather than singing.

Whatever doubts she’d had about Clover’s choice of action quickly vanished though, when as he appeared to sing something she couldn’t quite hear, an explosion of light and color momentarily blinded her. She squinted against the sudden brilliance, thinking she must have been mistaken. Because, odd as the idea was, she thought she’d seen the burst of light rise from the tabaxi’s instrument.

As the firework-like display faded, Sparrow opened her eyes again to see only two of the gnolls still seemed in a fighting mood. They ceased rocking the caravan, making a beeline for Clover as the tabaxi tried to scramble up from the ground where he’d previously been pinned.

In a rush of adrenaline and without a proper thinking-through of her actions, Sparrow launched herself at the biggest hole in the caravan’s side, hair falling into her face as she shouted, desperately trying to distract the gnolls and give Clover a few more seconds. “Hey! You big, ugly, disgraceful insults to the face of the earth! Get back over here and fight me like men!”

Sparrow stumbled back as Oru came to the rescue, killing the gnoll with a fury. Thanking him faintly she found it hard not to stare at the horrendous creature as it took its last breath; she couldn't imagine what it had been like for the elf to face a pack of them all on his own.

She looked up as Clover, too, finished off the gnoll he’d been battling. From the glances she’d managed to snag between dodging her opponent's attacks, the tabaxi seemed to have been using his instrument and his voice to cast some sort of magic that slowly weakened the creature until it finally collapsed. Sparrow watched with a sinking feeling in her stomach as the torch the gnoll had been carrying fell from its hand, rolling right up to the caravan—which now had several new windows, to put it politely.

In a few moments, the entire wagon and all its contents were ablaze; Sparrow turned to make sure the mule was alright, but he’d already freed himself from his smoldering ropes.

Unsure what else to do, she turned back to her two companions. They were her companions now, weren’t they? After a fight like that, she felt they were more than just travelers met together by chance.

As Clover sank to his knees, letting out a somewhat manic-sounding laugh, Sparrow moved slowly over, standing nearby and watching the wagon and its contents go up in smoke. All those wonderfully curious things, gone. She felt a twinge of sympathy, hesitating a moment before reaching over to pat the tabaxi’s shoulder kindly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she knew it didn’t do much good. “I really am.”

Withdrawing her hand, she used it to brush back her tousled hair, flinching slightly and realizing her knuckles and palm were scraped up nicely. She wouldn’t be surprised if she had a few splinters as well. But, unless Clover’s music had the magical ability to heal, she supposed she’d just have to deal with the stinging.