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Lucy and Maxwell: Spellsword for Hire Chapter two.
Prologue
Chapter One
The entrance to the sewers wasn't far away at all, just as Pat said. A couple blocks down the road from where you left with Pat is a small building that allows access to the sewers below the city. All you had to do was open the hatchway and lower the rope ladder and viola, you are now standing in the sewers along with your new kobold buddy.
Looking around, you can see you're in a dimly lit cavern, not the sewers proper yet. Either that, or the sewers here aren't as extravagant and filled with pipes as the ones you imagine are common to the elves and grander human cities. The walls are dirt and stone and you're fairly certain they formed this way naturally for the most part
On the wall beside you is a goblin lantern, the sole source of illumination for the room. It's attached to a hook and easily removable. Closer inspection tells you it was almost certainly made by humans.
Before you is a (presumably) human-made chasm with smooth sides. You can't see all the way down, but you can hear water rushing through it, theoretically it's where the sewer waters run. The water sounds as though it's moving towards your left.
On either side of the chasm is the remains of a metal bridge, removed by unknown means. You can see a path through the far wall, but it's currently unreachable unless you can find a way to cross the chasm.
The chasm continues through the walls to both your left and right, with just enough space for you to walk along side them. Presumably they go quite aways.
Finishing your initial look around the room, you consider your next move.
Chapter One
The entrance to the sewers wasn't far away at all, just as Pat said. A couple blocks down the road from where you left with Pat is a small building that allows access to the sewers below the city. All you had to do was open the hatchway and lower the rope ladder and viola, you are now standing in the sewers along with your new kobold buddy.
Looking around, you can see you're in a dimly lit cavern, not the sewers proper yet. Either that, or the sewers here aren't as extravagant and filled with pipes as the ones you imagine are common to the elves and grander human cities. The walls are dirt and stone and you're fairly certain they formed this way naturally for the most part
On the wall beside you is a goblin lantern, the sole source of illumination for the room. It's attached to a hook and easily removable. Closer inspection tells you it was almost certainly made by humans.
Before you is a (presumably) human-made chasm with smooth sides. You can't see all the way down, but you can hear water rushing through it, theoretically it's where the sewer waters run. The water sounds as though it's moving towards your left.
On either side of the chasm is the remains of a metal bridge, removed by unknown means. You can see a path through the far wall, but it's currently unreachable unless you can find a way to cross the chasm.
The chasm continues through the walls to both your left and right, with just enough space for you to walk along side them. Presumably they go quite aways.
Finishing your initial look around the room, you consider your next move.
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What, again? What could possibly have happened in the last 30 minutes that would have caused you to forget your capabilities? Again?
Well, no matter. As you previously reminded yourself, you're attuned to water, and your abilities reflect that. You can conjure small quantities of water and ice, though conjured matter doesn't last long and will vanish in time. You can also manipulate already existing water and ice, imbue your weapon with water or ice, and lower the temperature of things. Lucy's pretty much the exact same, but with fire. Well, she doesn't decrease temperatures, she increases them, but other than that, no noticeable differences.
As for other magical like capabilities, you can detect black magic, and transform into Lucy in about 90 minutes or so. You've also got most of your mana. You figure if you had to put a number on it you've got about 267/269ths of your mana. Then again, you're probably just making numbers up again. Incidentally, when either you or Lucy transforms into the other one, the relevant goblin completely replenishes their mana, so that's notable if that situation would come up.
While you're at it, you may as well mentally list off your other assets at the moment. You've still got your goblin armour and your human dirk, obviously. Your carpenter's pouch has a rope, a toolbox containing a pipe wrench and a hammer, Lucy's mask, a small jar of Drake's Touch, a peace of paper with a bad drawing of a wagon wheel or something and a warning not to go to the center of the wheel, and a sack of 28 silver masks.
As for allies, you've got a lantern named after yourself, a kobold cleric not named after yourself, and a dwarf named after her race.
Oh, and about three and a half hours before midnight. Can't forget that time limit. That means that if you transform into Lucy, she won't be able to transform back into you before the deadline.
>If we can't touch the ground, how about going in through the water? Maxwell's affinity is Water, after all, and Dwarf here just told us all this water is running directly toward their base of operations. Ask Dwarf what the chasm situation is at their base, how far is the drop until you hit the surface of the water, how long can we hold our breath (either naturally or via magic), if the chasm is very deep how much mana would we expend creating either a geyser or an ice staircase to get up, and how silently could we manage it?
You're pretty sure some of those questions you know the answer to yourself. Not to mention, Dwarf probably doesn't know the answer. Like how long you can hold your breath. You could ask, but you doubt she'd answer correctly.
Still, going through the water is certainly an interesting idea. Probably a smelly idea, but whatever, everything smells down here a little. You've not really noticed it until now, but then goblins don't really care about smells as much as other races do.
You may as well answer the questions you can answer yourself first. Regarding holding your breath, you can probably hold your breath for a solid three minutes. Maybe a bit longer if you have to. And assuming the ground down here is level, it's just over ten meters to the surface of the water, which you learned when you lowered Maxwell to check out that cave. You could probably climb down with the rope if you needed to.
As for how much mana you'd need to get back up? That's trickier. Maybe about half if you're lucky, more if you're not? It's hard to estimate when you're not actually there. Luckily magic is by and large a silent art, so it won't alert anyone by sound. Sight's a different matter entirely, of course.
You have no idea what the chasm situation is like, though, so that seems like a question you can safely ask her without sounding completely stupid. She'll probably assume you are anyway, but at least you won't sound it.
"So if I can't touch the ground, clearly I should head into the base by water, shouldn't I?" you muse out loud, letting Dwarf in on your deductions. She gives no reaction. "So I'm thinking I swan dive into the water running through the chasm down there, swim like a fish as close to the base as I can, and them climb like a monkey back up top using magic. Well, a magical monkey."
"You're an idiot." Guess Dwarf isn't fond of magical monkeys. Either that, or she desperately needs to increase her vocabulary.
"Thing is, I'd like to conserve as much mana as I can, for obvious reasons. Can't spend all of it imitating a monkey, of course. So is there anything you can tell me about the chasm near your base? How far to the water it is from the top and all that?"
"It's all the same height." Guess she can still give useful information. "But if you're fool enough to actually travel through the water, you should know it opens up to a large whirlpool in the center of the place."
Well that's probably relevant information. You make sure to do your absolute best not to forget whatever it was she just told you.
"Any more questions before you drown yourself?" Looks like Dwarf is about ready to end this conversation.
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(Anonymous) 2014-06-01 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-06-02 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)It's probably also a good idea to wait at least 90 minutes before we head into battle--and let's face it Maxwell is not going to be able to avoid one--because that mid-battle MP restore would probably come in handy, not to mention the effect of using nothing but Water magic for the first half then switching to Fire for the second would have on the dwarves.
While we're at it, we should ask our Kobold buddy here how useful he'd be in a fight, 'cuz it's looking like that's the way this is headed.
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(Anonymous) 2014-06-02 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)Also, she somehow thinks we're an idiot, which is just crazy. Since she's so bad at judging intelligence, let's make her think we're exactly the worst kind of idiot, one who has no intention of backing out of this, and is going to fail in such a way that she's blatantly involved.
Start planning out loud, and include a hypothetical conversation where we get captured, and concoct some brilliant excuse for why their sentry needs us to take the girl out of her cage for a little while. Then, if she doesn't want it to be absolutely certain that she gets found out, she'll have to help us as much as she can. Or try to kill us, I guess, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
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(Anonymous) 2014-06-02 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)-P