“What in the Dragon’s name is that?”
“This will help.” Val, who just shook me awake, holds out her flask. I take it and drink deeply; the ale soothes my throat. Returning the flask, I ask again, “What is that?”
I am slumped across an empty barrel that smells like the ale I just drank, but I am looking at my staff. The well-worn ash rod I carried yesterday is reaching for me? with its tentacles? while the crystal at its tip pulses slowly.
Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten those mushrooms.
“The firbolg gave it to you.” Val took a long swig and passed the flask back to me. “After you killed the Beholder.”
The prior day began to return.
Val is a half-elf, and she seems to love ale as much as I do – though I think she loves fighting even more. Her party found me in a ditch outside the Glade two days ago, fed me, and didn’t ask questions other than if I wished to join them.
I didn’t have anything else to do, and Val had ale, so I did.
There are five others in her group: the firbolg, a paladin, a ranger, a water genasi, and some sort of sentient tree that calls itself Travis. They were en route to investigate a nearby, abandoned mine.
“Killed the what?” I took another long drink. The world sparkled around me like sunlight on hoarfrost; the mushroom hallucinations hadn’t entirely faded.
“In the mine?” Val looked at me carefully, and I shook my head. “Long, searching eye stalks, tentacle-monster minions….”
“I thought that was… that wasn’t a dream?”
“I told you not to eat those mushrooms.” Val reached for her flask and put it into her pack. “Probably don’t need more of this now, either.” She looked at me again. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Travis should have left you dead.” She shook her head again. “Come on, it’s time to eat.”
I’m going to need more ale.
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page 223
I’ve spent the past week playing with, and learning about, my new staff. With help from Travis – who, he explains, is Warforged, also possesses arcane knowledge, and in who’s chest pulses a crystal of the same sort that tops my staff – I have discovered that it is called Dagon’s Staff, and that it has magical properties beyond its writhing, grasping tentacles.
And I have also learned to charm, to calm those tentacles, so that they relax into a braided nest or cocoon around the crystal, only coming alert when called upon. I rest easier since this development – in part because I no longer fear it will kill me, and in part because it seems to keep the dreams away.
UNOMAHA D&D 