As the last imp fell from the air, covered in frost from and icy blast from Ellen, it soared to the group of huddled wait staff where they were gathered, flutily banging against the barred kitchen door.
Ellen appeared before the group, teleporting in, and summoned an iridescent yet translucent bubble over them all. The imp crashed into the shield, dying on impact and splattering the top of the spell with blood.
When the shield vanished a moment later, the corpse of the imp fell from the air, the splatter of its blood falling shortly behind it in a bloody rain all over the neatly dressed staff.
Ellen turned to see if they were okay and saw the mess she’d created.
She breathed in through her teeth at the sight, holding in a wince.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “It’s nothing a little clean spell won’ take care of but… if any of that got into your mouth you should probably see a cleric. Immediately.”
The wait staff looked from here and then to the disaster that had once been a ball room, no one speaking a word.
“Do you think I could trouble one of you for a drink?” she asked, receiving blank stares.
Before any of them could answer, Newt came soaring out of the air right for her and completely covered in the gore of his battle. The familiar flew into Ellen, disappearing as it touched her, but leaving behind the blood that had covered him. The remnants of the imp stained her robes with a thick dripping red paste.
“Ahat no! she cursed, looking down at her bloody clothes. “Stupid Newt! I was definitely going to get laid after this!”
“Can’t you just cast clean?” one of the wait staff asked.
“No!” Ellen said, “Demon blood is magically resistant. I just lied so none of you would freak out.”
Ellen stretched out her hand, summoning a nearby wine class to her hand. It transformed into a mug but retained the lipstick stain on the rim but with a wave of her hand it was clean, and she downed the liquid in a single gulp.
The act seemed to dispel the shock and awe in which the wait staff were stuck in, and they all stood straighter, the expressions on their face filled with poorly disguised irritation.
“Wizards,” one muttered under their breath.
***
“You look terrible,” Bill said to Syril as he walked through the front door of the tavern the next morning in the same outfit as the night before.
Bill sat in their usual booth across from Ellen, both awkwardly avoiding looking at each other, Ellen by reading her new spellbook, and Bill by looking at a series of metal squares of different colors.
“Late night,” Syril said.
“Oh, rub it in,” Ellen said sullenly.
“Well, demon blood will ruin anyone’s chanced of a good night,” Syril said.
“There was one noble who was interested, but I think it was because of the blood, and I’m not desperate enough to find out what that is about.”
“Good call,” Syril said, sitting down.
“I can’t believe I couldn’t even get one of the wait staff,” she whined, lower her head into her spellbook on the table.
“That’s because you have no respect for the plight of the working man,” Linar said from the next booth over.
“How long have you been there?” Ellen asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Oh, so you had an early night too?” Ellen said, trying to turn his game around at him.
“Nope,” he said, leaping over the divider between booths. “I got invited downstairs.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Syril asked.
“Of course it’s not,” Linar said. “Get your head out of the gutter. I got to go down to the sex dungeon.”
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“What do you think I meant it was a euphemism for?” Syril asked.
Before Linar could answer, Grom’s heavy footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, followed shortly by a lighter step.
“Oh, you all are her so early!” the nameless waitress said seeing the booth full. “Is Sal still not back yet?”
Sal, the owner of the inn in which Grom and Syril temporarily called home, usually opened the establishment in the morning and closed it at night, but as he hadn’t been around the last few days Bill had let himself in when he arrived for their scheduled debrief.
Grom joined the others at the table while his paramour got to work behind the bar.
“Don’t say a thing,” Grom said, rubbing his head.
“I was just telling everyone—" Linar began, but Bill cut him off.
“About his deviant escapades.”
“Well, yes,” Linar admitted, “But I learned something important. The wait staff I’d seen in the dungeon—the blood dungeon, not the sex one—well actually I saw them in the blood dungeon and the sex dungeon. Anyway, they were covered in bite marks, and at least some of them were from a vampire—or some other creature with teeth like one, but they didn’t strike me as the type.”
“Did you ask about them?” Syril asked.
“Of course not,” Linar said. “Who and what bit them was none of my business.”
“It kind of is,” Syril said. “We are trying to determine if their employer is a vampire stealing people off the street.”
“I’m leaning toward vampire,” Grom said.
“Me too,” Ellen agreed. “But I don’t think he’s been stealing people. If he had, why would he have let the former captives go, let alone employ them? Could they be under some sort of enthrallment?”
Linar’s eyes grew wide at that.
“What?! No…” he said in horror. “Are you saying I slept with someone under the control of another?”
“It’s possible,” Syri said with a shrug.
“That evil bastard! I’ll kill—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Ellen said. “It’s just an idea.”
“Well, it looks like he has three principals,” Grom said.
“So, he’s probably a vampire,” Syril admitted, “But we need to determine if he is responsible for the disappearances.”
“How do we do that?” Bill asked.
“By finding the missing people,” Syril said. “I’ll go around today and talk to the missing families.”
“Do you want help?” Bill asked, when the statement was met with silence.
“I think it would be best if I went alone,” Syril said to the relief of the group.
“So…” Bill asked once the bard had left. “What are you all up to today?”
“I need to go give this ring of mind shielding to those servants and see if it breaks them from their enthrallment,” Linar said, stalking towards the door.
“Let us know how that goes!” Grom called after him.
“I need to go do some research,” Ellen said, patting her book, “And buy some reagents.”
She then disappeared as well, teleporting out of the booth and reappearing somewhere beyond their sight.
“I hate it when she does that,” Grom mumbled, getting a grunt of agreement from Bill.
The two men sat awkwardly across from each other in silence after that. Despite their connection through resurrections, the two had spent very little time together in isolation. This was by design on Grom’s part, as he feared his flimsy cover would fall apart if the warrior continued to pick at it. Though, more and more he was growing confident that the warrior lacked the mental acuity to pierce through the deception. And, with his own powers of mysterious origin growing, the likelihood someone would have reason to see through his facade lessened.
Grom was still harboring a hangover and decided to end the awkward silence himself to head off any questions of theological nature.
“So, uh, what’re you up to today?”
Bill held up the metal squares in front of him.
“I’m picking out the color of enamel I want for the set of full plate armor I’m about to commission,” Bill said.
Grom perked up at that, not having to fake interest any longer.
“You found a smith that can do that here?”
“Yeah, here’s all the colors he offers,” Bill said.
The two quickly fell into a conversation about plate armor and the types they’d prefer. It hadn’t occurred to Grom until that moment that he could now afford a set of the expensive armor, and as soon as it had been pointed out to him, he’d realized how much of a fool he’d been for not seeing it.
Too distracted with all these lies, he thought.
“I’m going to get measured for my armor,” Bill said. “Do you want to come with?”
“Why not,” Grom said, “I haven’t been felt up by a blacksmith since I was a boy.”
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