Rengoku [Closed]

[Scoria]

"The broken clock is wounded.
Again and again, despair's maze is crossed!"

Scoria groaned as he blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the poor lighting conditions of his surroundings. His coal orbs drifted left to right, but there wasn't any clear source of light in the area. Where was the flower brat... Thinking carefully and focusing, it came to his attention that the flower girl was not only nowhere to be seen, she wasn't summoned at all anymore. That was strange. He remembered 'talking' to some of the Landers about retrieving an object for them. It wasn't as though he was particularly interested in helping out, but a few unfortunate rumors had spread among a few of the Landers and his Allure skill somehow seemed to smooth over any of his attempts to get them to leave him alone. Woops. At any rate, he and the brat who thought everyone was a turtle had set out and the next thing he knew, he was here. Time to get...

He couldn't get up. Biting down the urge to scream bloody murder, Scoria closed his eyes instead and focused on figuring out just what had happened. The obvious conclusion was that he had been assaulted, but not to the point where he was murdered. That seemed a little counter-productive if you were going to assault someone, but there was a clear intent behind this. What exactly it was was yet to be determined. He didn't unsummon Alraune intentionally, however, and he knew that if she wanted to, she could stay summoned while he was asleep. Provided that he had the mana to support her endeavor, she could hang out for quite a while. Not too long if she got into fights, but her simply existing out of combat was not so strenuous on his reserves. A brief check of his mana reserves indicated that they weren't full, but they certainly weren't empty either. Which meant she had been gone so long after he had run out of mp that his reserves had recovered or that she had been unsummoned, forcibly. Scoria's eyebrows furrowed at the thought, though the grim expression on his face had remained static since he woke up. Trapped in the darkness, it seemed like a mystery was unfolding.

[368]

[Scoria]

So the forest sprite had gone and vanished on him. Honestly, he wanted to summon her back, but it seemed like there were more problems than his familiar leaving him behind. To be specific, when he said he couldn't get up, it wasn't because his legs had given up on him. His legs were still there and he could certainly feel them, but his legs were forcibly folded underneath themselves, putting him into a position similar to the seiza. Unlike the punishment endured by students across a certain distant country, however, Scoria realized that he didn't have the option to rebel and shift his legs. Someone had gone so far as to tie his ankles together, making it hard for him to move his legs apart and regain any footing. Taking a deep breath to focus on his situation, Scoria carefully focused on what little he could feel in the darkness, trying to figure out just how he had been tied up. Rope against his ankles would have been one thing, but he couldn't move his knees apart either, and judging by the way something was digging into his thighs, they had gone and tied his legs together so they couldn't move apart either. Lovely.

As if that wasn't bad enough, his hands were tied up behind his back. He felt like a hostage. At least they hadn't gone so far as to gag him or something stupid like that. Still, someone knew what they were doing with these knots as Scoria couldn't immediately break free. He wasn't sure if it was because he was in a body that wasn't exactly his or because he hadn't had to break out of bindings in quite a while, but he couldn't seem to escape so easily. He could have gotten the forest sprite to free him, but he couldn't move his hands to open up the skill list for the action. Clearly the preset action to summon the familiar wasn't going to work either, so he was stuck dealing with this. Attempting to flex his fingers and move them about so as to at least attempt to open the menu, Scoria was greeted by the realization that someone had not only bound his hands together, but had wrapped rope or tape of some kind around his fingers. So he couldn't do many of the basic UI tasks. Okay. So that idea was gone. With a sigh, Scoria leaned to the side, expecting a wall of some sort to lean against. What he got was thin air, causing his disturbed center of gravity and inability to correct it sending him crashing down, face first onto the cold floor. With hair splayed out across the floor and acting as the slightest barrier between him and the ground, Scoria stared into the darkness and let out a huff. Wait, 'hair splayed out'...?

The next question Scoria had to ask was why whoever tied him up decided to put a wig on him.

[499]

[Scoria]

Being forced to wear a wig aside, Scoria didn't seem to have much option except to wait around until someone showed up. As things were right now, he couldn't move his legs or his hands, couldn't call for help, and had no idea where he was. For the time being, the only thing to do was sit patiently and wait. Maybe attempt to get himself upright again so he didn't have to be reminded that his hair was suddenly as long as Ange's. Annoying. With a few 'hup!' and 'urgh' sounds echoing from his mouth, he managed to drag himself backwards with small hops. Using the power of his face and his headbutting strength, Scoria slowly dragged himself up with his face until he was once more upright, opting to lean on the wall of the room. He couldn't call it a cave or a basement or anything except a room because as far as he knew, the ground was cold, everything was just a little dirty, and it was just the tiniest bit damp. From what he knew thus far, he imagined he was outside somewhere. Somewhere. Letting out a tiny sigh and leaning back up against the wall, Scoria got comfortable and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

...uh. It wasn't like Scoria was particularly impatient. Certainly, many people thought of him as being hot-tempered and mean, shameless, and perhaps even downright monstrous, but that didn't mean Scoria didn't know how to wait. And he had waited this long already. He was certain that at least 3 hours had passed since he had woken up and at least an hour or two had passed since he had been tied up, he imagined, so was no one going to show up at all? Now that he was thinking about it, maybe that was the point? It was possible he had misunderstood about being a hostage. It wasn't like anyone would pay a ransom for him and he wasn't being leveraged for anything, which is what the point of hostages was for. So in the absence of all of that, was he a prisoner instead? Not killed because... being killed would return him to the cathedral. And from there, he could figure out who had put him in this situation. Apparently his reputation among the Landers was enough that they knew not to take chances with the menace, but equally so that at least one of them felt like they had to do something. Adventurers, he was realizing, didn't have the need to eat. Certainly, not eating anything would result in debuffs of a sort, but not death. And he could sleep in this rotten cage, so there wasn't that issue either. In other words, he was trapped. Unable to summon his familiar, uncertain of a chance of being contacted or talked to, shoved down somewhere where he might not ever see anyone again. This was quite the risk that was being taken. Whichever Lander or Adventurer managed to plot this far and hold a grudge against him to this point sure had guts.

[513]

[Scoria]

Scoria's hands clawed against his bindings, teeth grinding as best as they could inside this cave. Screw this. Screw all of this. The player wasn't good with time, but at least two days had passed at this point. He was hungry. He wasn't just hungry, he was starving, and every time he went to sleep, he had to drag himself back up by headbutting the wall. Blood dripped down his forehead and the scars healed slowly, status debuffs littering themselves on top of his body like weights. This was horrible. It was horrible, but if he was to speak honestly, this wasn't anything compared to what he had gone through before. Once you tasted dirt, once someone slammed your head into the wall, there was no forgetting it. Scoria's eyes glowed in the darkness as he let out a muffled cry of exasperation. It seemed that two days was his limit. No one had shown their faces. No one had said anything. No one had done anything. Didn't Ange wonder where he was off to, or did she just assume he had gone and left them behind?

Enough. Enough enough enough. He didn't know what to do. He wasn't being taken hostage. He had just been thrown down into the bottom of a well, stripped of his means of getting out. His body fidgeted, his arms shifting and legs straining against the ropes that bound him in place. Honestly, who tied someone up like this? After two days, Scoria had gotten a real sense of how he had been hogtied and the quality of the bonds themselves. That was to say, it was clearly someone who knew what they were doing. If the druid hadn't been trapped in the bottom of who knew where, he'd have glared and mentally judged the individual who did this to him as a total perv. They had his arms strapped behind his back, his legs bound to each other, and some sort of blindfold across his eyes. That wasn't all, though, it seemed like they thought special insurance would be needed, so they threw him into women's clothing, to the point where they even threw a wig on top of his head. Cute. Really, really cute. Good work. The nature of the room he seemed to be in meant he couldn't even tell, had he not spent the last two days trying to be patient and wait. There was no light, and the air was incredibly stale, but at the same time somehow fresh. In the way that someone trapped at the bottom of a well felt, Scoria very much understood. This was somewhere he wouldn't die in, but he couldn't escape. Not easily. Not yet.

He'd fix that soon. He had been fine waiting for someone to get worried or impatient, maybe check on him, and he could gather information from there. Certainly, that had been his plan, but... No one showed up. Not after three hours. Not after two days. At this point, it was more or less fair to assume a few things. The first, that no one was going to come and check up on him. The natural result of that was there wasn't any way to get new information about the situation he was trapped in. To put it simply, because no new developments would occur, what he had gathered thus far was all he had. The second reasonable assumption was that no one was searching for him, no one could find him, and no one would save him.

Well, he knew that from the start anyway. Getting along with people, trusting people, being an 'ally of justice' had never suited him anyway. Even taking up board with Ange was taking a toll on him, the bitter, angry, and unreasonable feeling of betrayal rising up without provocation and without explanation. He was angry at that family, angry that they didn't seem to care. And that was lethal. He had never needed anyone's help thus far, he'd be damned if he needed someone's help for some other new reason. Because it was him, because he was that kind of person, he'd manage it. Even if this setup made sure he couldn't bite his own tongue, that he couldn't even take a single step, only wobble around fruitlessly, he'd crawl straight up out of this hole in the ground and wreak havoc on the assholes that did this to him. He'd find them and wring them dry, one by one. No matter who it was. Even if it was Caer. Even if it was Ange. Everyone would face judgment. 'I'm a superhero', huh? That song held a special meaning now.

[779]

[Scoria]

The only thing that had kept him working this far was the fire burning in his eyes. His eyes blazed every time he woke up, wobbling against the walls and floor, moving about with his face to the ground as he tried to feel out what the area was like. Every day, he kept this up, slowly sliding across the ground as he tried to figure out just what the features of the room were. For the most part, it was a smoothed off wall, a smoothed off floor, and there wasn't a single sharp thing or a pointy area anywhere. What did they think he was going to do? Pull a Rika and smash his head against a knife until he bled out and died? Was this Higurashi? Well, considering his apparent reputation, that was a reasonable conclusion. If you were insane. No matter how careful they were, however, Scoria eventually found what he was looking for. After two days of crawling around in the dirt, after four days of being locked up in this cage, he found an unchecked area. A single area with a bump no higher than a small blade of grass, rising up out of the ground. He came across it with his face, of course, and although he was drooling everywhere like a drugged up kidnapee (was that even a word), his eyes burned even brighter. Just what he needed.

He hadn't been awake when tied up, or he would have been able to get out of the bonds much easier. That was a simple thing to do, really, as long as you flexed your muscles and put your hands parallel to the ground. In fact, by being cooperative when someone tried to tie you up, it was easier to escape. It was a little counter intuitive, but a single step into that world meant you needed to do some things backwards. Either way, Scoria rolled over until his hands were against the bump in the ground. It wasn't easy to move, seeing as his legs were pulled into each other at the knees, so he couldn't actually move them at all, and all of his movement had to come from wobbling and shifting with his torso. The player placed his hands at the protrusion from the ground and shifted back and forth, ignoring the pain of his fingers and the blood flow that was cut off. Honestly, he had been in here for what seemed like a week now, did he really care about blood flow? He had so many debuffs stacked on top of him at this point that even making it out alive was going to be difficult. It wasn't nice, it wasn't beautiful, it wasn't even reasonable, but revenge was what was keeping him going at this point. It was revenge and revenge alone that had Scoria essentially attempt to hump the ground repeatedly. When he got tired, he shifted his legs back and forth and his hands around. Certainly, the knots weren't going to come loose so easily, not after an hour or even two, but how about twenty-four? How about seventy-two? Scoria's eyes burned and only when he could no longer keep his actions up did he fall asleep once more, waking up again soon after to repeat the process.

[552]

[Scoria]

Seven days. It took him seven full days of running his body against the ground, squirming, slamming his head against the wall. Seven full days of being trapped in this unbelievable cage was starting to do things to him. Sometimes, he'd slam his head against the wall intentionally, blinding himself with temporary pain in return for some modicum of what could be considered clarity. Whatever clarity meant to a 'monster amongst the masses', anyway. The darkness never really left him, even when he slept, even when he woke up, it was day after day in the darkness. He simply couldn't tell what was what anymore, driven by just that desire to get revenge. It wasn't a desire to get out or a desire to be free of the chilling quiet, it was a desire to have his revenge. A desire to force someone to get their comeuppance. Who the hell did those Landers think they were, anyway? Scoria couldn't even snarl, but he continued to wriggle against the bonds until finally, he heard the sound he had been waiting for. That one sound he had worked the last five days to hear.

Snap.

Out came a finger. From there, sliding the rest out was a piece of cake. Cut the rope and the rest goes out like nothing. In a few minutes, his fingers were completely free. The mobility offered him by control over his fingers, even if his wrists were still tied together, was a welcome freedom. Scoria continued his actions now, emboldened and empowered by his current success. His eyes glowed with renewed fire, his actions fervent and almost desperate. Almost. As if someone like him would be desperate, though. His actions continued and, in just under an hour, his hands were free. Completely and totally free. Reaching up to his head, hands wobbling, he ripped the blindfold off and threw it to the ground. It wasn't easy, unfortunately, as his hands barely did what they told him to. The effects of not eating or drinking anything for so long, huh? Scoria's wobbling claws ripped the gag off next, tossing it aside with the blindfold. He had gotten used to the darkness at this point and hadn't even opened his eyes after the third day, realizing it was pointless and it was better to focus on his other senses. Now that he had his sight back, opening his eyes made him feel like he might be blinded if he did. He wasn't. It was still darkness. Endless, unrelenting darkness that covered the entire area. He'd have gotten up to investigate, had his legs not still been tied up. Yeah, whoever did this really was a perv. Scoria was going to stab this asshole in the face, definitely. With his fingers in working order, he came to the realization that something was up across his legs. Some sort of fabric. Even in the darkness, Scoria was squinting to try and figure it out, but he had other concerns at the moment. He knew he didn't have a knife or anything like that in his inventory, only paper and the like, so the Scribe didn't bother. He just tugged and pulled and adjusted his movements until he found the knots that kept it all together, slowly unwrapping and completely removing the ropes around his legs. Finally. Finally.

Stumbling up to his legs and grabbing the wall for support, the Druid took a few steps into the darkness. A deep breath filled his lungs, relishing in the freedom of no longer being tied up, before he let loose a howl. The wolf was free.

[603]

[Scoria]

Ah. That was refreshing. Not just being able to move around, but being able to let loose his voice. Even in the city or at home, letting loose a howl like that was a sure way to get noticed and reprimanded. Often, it was more trouble than it was worth. In fact, that was pretty much all the time, but now that he was inside this cave, letting out a voice like that was a welcome freedom. Even if his voice cracked and wobbled as he let it go, Scoria felt somehow reinvigorated. Which was great and all, but the only thing that had changed was that he could now move around. He was still inside a dark cave with no light source, if it was even a cave at all. His steps were slow at first, much like someone learning to walk again after being in an accident. That was just how it was. So he took one hand to the wall, letting his hands slide across it, now that he was up to his full height. Maybe he'd notice something new. Maybe. The druid moved slowly, hand rising up so as to try and investigate things he hadn't already rubbed his face against.

Ugh. Just remembering that pissed him off. As if to give him a bit more clarity and strength, Scoria let the wall have it, slamming his fist into the solid stone. It stung, certainly, but it kept him awake and kept him going. Though the chances of someone showing up were entirely unlikely, there wasn't a chance in hell he was falling asleep now if he could help it. The player moved around more, hands against the wall, searching and waiting. For an hour, he tested the surfaces, let his hands run across the ground, reached for the ceiling he couldn't quite touch, and finally sighed. Nothing new at all. He was free, but he wasn't free at all. Maybe he could summon Alraune now. Maybe. He sat himself back down and opened his interface slowly, realizing he couldn't even read a damn thing in this darkness. The interface didn't automatically illuminate anything, so it wasn't like he could use it as a light source. Still, he knew the basic procedure for summoning his familiar, so he followed it anyway. A careful focus and an extended hand as he muttered under his breath for his familiar to come to him. Alraune... didn't show up. No one showed up. All he got was a 'buu-buu~' sound, the kind of "you can't do that" noise that people got when they tried to use spells on cooldown... or they didn't have enough mana for.

That was ridiculous though, he had been mana-free for the entire week. How could he not have enough mana to summon that kid. Ugh. Glaring into the darkness, Scoria picked himself back up and raised his hand to the sky once more, seeing if he could reach anything. Anything at all. Gathering his strength, the player jumped upwards as high as he could. In his weak state, he couldn't really jump that high at all, but he managed to touch it. The top of something. Some sort of wooden... door? ...They really did push him down a well, didn't they? This wasn't some cave. It was a hole in the ground, smoothed out by erosion and covered up on the top. Well, he knew where he was now. He just had to somehow muster enough strength to open a trap door from the bottom, climb out, and seek revenge. This was going to be lovely.

[601]

[Scoria]

To say that Scoria was annoyed was an understatement. He had finally gone ahead and figured out just what his situation was, but that wasn't nearly enough. It just wasn't enough to be able to get out of here. He couldn't summon Alraune, he couldn't muster enough strength to reach the top of this hole in the ground, and he couldn't see a darn thing. This sucked. This seriously sucked. Sighing, Scoria took a small rest, realizing he had been actively working on escaping since he had woken up. He wasn't about to fall asleep, seeing as he had reason to be worried about being tied up again, but he did need a rest. His legs ached with pain and his hands were scratched up and red from clawing at his bonds and the area round him for so long. Just an hour would do. Resting his head against the smooth wall and finally being able to properly stretch his legs out as he leaned back, Scoria let out another tired sigh. This was more than he had bargained for, and in this world where nobody knew him, the police wasn't going to come find him either. His toes spun lazy circles as he waited, breathing softly and slowly in an attempt to get his blood moving and his energy back. He hadn't eaten in days, of course, but he had been sleeping and he had been relatively careful not to exhaust himself. It was unlikely, but it was possible they set his location up in a field of angry monsters or some equivalent bullshit. He wasn't going to be having any of that.

The player rose about an hour later, thinking back to when he had thumped against the top of the 'well'. It wasn't very deep, all things considered, maybe three meters maximum. He was two meters tall to begin with and his reach added at least an extra half meter on top of that, which left him at a bit of an advantage. With strength returned to his legs, Scoria leapt upwards, opting to punch the top of the well rather than grab for anything. He knew there wouldn't be anything to grab, so the first thing to do was to move the trap door enough to see where he'd need to grab. If it opened via hinges or it was just a covering was vital to what he was going to do next. It was, as it turned out, a wooden covering much like you might have found over manholes into sewer systems. The covering itself wobbled and moved out of the way, letting a faint amount of light stream into the well. It really was worn completely smooth and...

Oh jeesus neeping christ. Scoria hadn't realized, but the 'dirt' that he had taken the walls to be weren't dirt at all. They were dirt covered, certainly, but the walls were actually a light purple crystal not unlike quartz. A see-through crystal. What did Scoria see on the other side? Corpses, of course. neepING. CORPSES. The skeletons were lying there, encased in the quartz or flopping around on the other side of somewhere, reflections and refractions causing the skeletons to mirror across more than just one surface. Now that light was in the well, it had just gotten twenty times creepier. Scoria's eyes burned with newfound strength as he quite literally noped the neep out, latching onto the edge of the well with one last strong jump and rolling over the side, flumping onto the ground. Taking a quick moment to check for enemy mobs or other individuals, Scoria felt a vague relief when no one seemed to be around. A short moment for him to relax. Replacing the cover on the well in short order, checked out the area. It turned out the well was positioned in the back of a rather deep cave, and a quick glance outside revealed the cave was positioned almost underground, like a den, in the middle of shrubs and forestry. Finding this place was no easy task, for sure.

[680]

[Scoria]

Well, now that he was finally (finally!) out of that damn well, Scoria had some things to do. Certainly, he had been driven by rage and revenge thus far (and it'd be a lie to say he wasn't still plotting revenge), but he wasn't the type to angrily rush into a situation. Most of the time. At any rate, the reasonable thing to do at this point was take stock of what he had. Now that he was finally above ground and had some light to go off of, it was time to investigate his interface. At the very least, figure out why he couldn't summon Alraune. He opened his interface carefully and navigated straight to the inventory pane, trying to figure out what he had to work with.

Nothing. He had nothing. Theeeeeeeeese moooooootherfuuuuuuc-

Whatever. They had cleared out his inventory, fine. Whatever. He didn't have any of his equipment, from his starter armor to his grimoires. He had absolutely nothing except whatever clothes he was equipped with. Fine. Whatever. WHATEVER. Vanity Clothing wasn't going to do him much good, he realized, but it was better than walking around 'nekkid', as the youngings seemed to say. He navigated to his character display interface next, trying to figure out just what his stats and status was. What he saw was not good. Not good at all. His stats were all red and had abysmally low values (which explained the wobbling and the difficulty jumping, he supposed), but the thing that worried him most was that his health and his mana were absurdly diminished. He checked the status notifications and blinked. It seemed like 'food' and 'water' buffs were combined into one, at least.

3+ Days Without Food and Water:
-Diminished stats
-Lowered mana regeneration
7+ Days Without Food and Water:
-Stats lower to 10% of their original values, including health and mana
-Mana does not regenerate
-Health does not regenerate
-Mana cannot go above half its maximum value
-Cannot cast magic spells
-Cannot use magic weapons (magitech, grimoires, and so on)
-Cannot change equipment
-Cannot use 'Call of Home'
- Get wrecked, sucker.

Uuuuh. Okay. Sure. Fine. That was PRETTY RIDICULOUS, but he'd accept it. Ugh. He couldn't even change his equipment? Since he didn't have any equipment to begin with, even if he found something usable, he wasn't allowed to equip it? As far as he was concerned, these debuffs were over the top in a really ridiculous way. Scoria let out a massive sigh and glanced out at the outside world. Well, if he wasn't able to switch equipment and he couldn't use any spells, the only thing to do was to carefully and slowly make his way back to town. Stepping out through the brush and glancing around, Scoria felt his body suddenly get tugged backwards as he fell to the ground. That hurt, but what had pulled his... glancing backwards, Scoria glared at his hair. The waist-length locks had gotten caught in some bushes, and he had felt the tug in his head, forcing him backwards. It had gotten to the point where he didn't even realize he was wearing a wig at this point, he just accepted that long hair was there as he slowly untangled his hair. It only occurred to him after he had completely untangled his hair that he could just remove the wig. Right until he tried to pull the wig off and realized that it was, 1. glued to his head (...really now) and, 2. It was considered equipment and removing it would be 'unequipping', so the debuff wouldn't let him. Great. Excellent. Scoria didn't even bother glancing at anything else, what he needed to do right now was figure out exactly where in the Greatwood he was and what the nearest source of freshwater was. Scoria let out a sigh and carefully wobbled out of the cave, deciding to leave it behind for good. Never again.

[657]

[Scoria]

Quite a bit of time had passed now. How much time. How much... Scoria scowled and muttered under his breath as his hands came up and balled into fists. Too much time had passed. The clearing around him had two important characteristics. One, it was remote. No one was here at all, he was certain. He had walked around the area for quite some time and no one so much as stepped foot in the area. Two, it was a clear and open space in the forest where he could not be snuck up on. Just as straightforward a reason, he didn't want someone getting the wrong idea and showing up to gank him. Equivalently, he didn't want any creatures to decide that he looked like a good snack. Call of Home did have a cast time, after all. Scoria's fists clenched once or twice before he began his routine. It had been a while. It had almost been too long since he had last practiced.

Too long. Scoria's left fist slipped out from its position in a quick jab as his feet took up that familiar rhythm. His eyes flared quietly as the man threw another punch out, unsatisfied with the result. This wasn't any good. Back to the basics, was it? Scoria's legs slipped into a different stance, shifting from boxing into a mix of karate and taekwondo, legs bent slightly as his hands found their home at his belt. A basic front-facing stance was all he could muster at the moment, but if he was starting from the beginning, he needed to really start from something like this. It burned in him to have to relive these stances, to have to practice something he had become decent at, but that was what he was doing now. Aim for the center of mass, aim for the chest area. Scoria relaxed into the embedded motion, his hand coming up from his belt as the other retracted, as if guided by a pulley. Onward, onward, right until the end, and then twist. His hand snapped into position, rotating until it solidly collided with empty air. The snap of his entire body into the motion wasn't quite there yet, he could tell, but it was familiar. He had to take it slow at first, slowly and then into a stronger, faster, quicker assault.

Again came his fist, a repeated motion as his hands switched positions. Straight into the center of mass, straight into that individual who simultaneously appeared to be there and was not. Straight into the phantom that seemed to taunt and harass the volcanic druid. With a name like his, everything was a reference to fire, ash, and smoldering destruction. So was his name, so was his IGN, so too should his personality be. Leave nothing behind in the destruction that he wrought. Scoria's fists shot back and forth in a repeated motion, his eyes carefully checking his stance in each go. No, this wasn't actually any good at all. If he was going to do this, then he needed someone on the outside. His stance loosened as he slid his hand across empty space, calling upon the nature that he resided in. Summon the familiar, summon the forest sprite, and there she was. "Want to learn to fight?" The resounding cheer was all he really needed to know. Excellent.

[561]