Cait select Send Message

D&D&Tea, day 1, roll 2: 7

Cait sat down in the proffered chair with a heavy thump. “Ow,” she muttered. “You didn’t say anything about there being undead guarding the magic for your scrolls.”

The hood of Rabs’ cloak tipped in a way reminiscent of a secretive wizard hiding an eyeroll. “Why did you think I needed an adventurer?” she asked, and pushed a new scroll and quill across the table to Cait.

The innkeeper came by with a mug of cider, set it down by the wizard’s elbow, and gave Cait a sympathetic look. “Are they all so dangerous?” she asked. “I mean, this is why I have these adventurers pay for the whole week up front, but this seems a little harsh.”

Rabs snorted. “Here,” she said, and held up her cupped hands for the innkeeper’s inspection. “You pick the next one, then.” The innkeeper poked dubiously through something that Cait couldn’t see. “That one?”

“No, no,” said the innkeeper. “How about there?”

“Hmm, the seventh facet,” Rabs said. “Very well!”

Cait blinked as the air thickened around her. Then, with emphatic care, she stood up from the chair and drew her club. This one appeared to be a jungle filled with the heady fragrance of flowers in bloom.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cait_tea/4688402121/in/set-72157624121434691/

“This is lovely,” Cait said, and braced herself.

Nothing attacked.

“Hmm,” Cait said, and stopped to just breathe in the flowers for a few moments. Revitalized, she chose a direction and began picking her way through the tangled vines. A beautiful line of blue flowers ran past her feet like a stream, and she crouched down to admire them. Above her head, jaws snapped shut and something growled angrily.

Cait didn’t shriek this time (any slight squeaking noise was surely your imagination). She whirled around and drove her club hard into the throat of the —

Well. She whirled around and struck, glancing the very tip of her club off of a heavy vine that writhed away. Beside her face, a pugnacious purple-mottled jaw dropped open again to reveal a row of vegetative yet extremely vicious teeth. Cait rolled to the side and struck at the vine again, this time barely bruising the thick greenery. However, it bought her time to reach into her bag, pull out a bag of salt, and dump it into the maw of the cleric-eating plant. With one last writhe, the plant wilted to the ground. Behind it, Cait could see that the stream of blue-flowering plants appeared to be pouring from another cauldron. Eagerly she approached this one and scooped up a mug. Then, remembering the previous tea, she pulled out a different bag and shook a small twist’s worth of sugar into the mug.

Holding it up, she took a deep breath. Yes, the floral richness of the blue flowers was wafting from the steam of the tea as well. A cautious sip broke open a lovely sweetness and Cait smiled, sipping peacefully as the warmth of the tea washed through her. As it cooled, though, the sweetness began to turn cloying. Heaviness dragged at her limbs, and she shook it off and paced, returning to the tea only to find it cooler and sweeter than before.

As she turned again, a sharp scent broke through the air and Cait turned, about to welcome the change when she recognized the blood orange from the earlier tea, a last remnant perhaps of her spell to detect the undead as the carnivorous vine rose up again, swaying before her on its weakened stalk. The jaws seemed to part with foul laughter and then, even as Cait reached for her traveling mug of holy water, it turned and slithered away.

Grimly, Cait lifted her mug of tea and drank the cold liquid down. She pulled the scroll out of her bag and, lifting its quill, bordered it with arrows of urgency and sweetened it only with licks of flame through the middle. Then she stopped, looked down at the bubbling blue flowers, and threw rune-petals of joy and delight out from the middle to meet those ominous borders and give them meaning. With one last smile for the blossoms, she snapped the quill and reformed at the inn.

“That was nice,” she said to Rabs and the innkeeper. “Thank you! But you know, you’re going to have to do something about all of those chairs I keep losing.”