(Dovakiin)
People were yelling.
When the blue giant had cast his flame sphere spell, everything within five feet had ignited immediately. Flames were now dancing across the bookshelves. The fibres of the fur carpet were blackening and curling, smoking and throwing up embers. The curtains were collapsing off their poles, letting light spill into the room across the troll pit and the desk, only for it to mix with obscuring, choking smoke.
Hot. Everything was hot. Dovakiin looked over at Lord Vance. This wasn’t good.
For the first time since he’d walked into the room, Jezediah Vance’s composure was broken. Calliban and Alex Hawke were dragging him back from the flames that now engulfed the desk in front of him. A look of terror had overcome his features, and his legs kicked to get him further away from what was in front of him.
Well, serve him right for releasing a troll on us.
Still, Dovakiin had to admit that this wasn’t a good first impression. If he wanted this contract to go ahead – and if he was honest, he had to admit to himself that he did really want that – they needed to stop their employer’s mansion from burning down.
The blue giant Fledinem was just standing there, dumbfounded, as if he hadn’t quite realised what was going on. The rest of the group were in various states of panic, doing their best to stamp out a fire that was already far out of control. Alex Hawke had moved to the door, and had seemed to have the right idea – in the absence of a mage, he was calling to servants to get some water.
Dovakiin cursed their lack of a mage. This was a stupid party composition for adventuring. Why, back in his day…
He shook his head, ending the reminiscence. He started eyeing the door Hawke had opened, as it looked like the best exit for Lord Vance while they established some kind of bucket chain.
But then the air turned to ice.
Dovakiin sensed it rather than saw it coming. There was a sudden breeze that rustled across his scales. The flames started to spit and dim, retreating under the sudden onset of a drop in temperature. Then Alex Hawke was blown off his feet.
“PUT IT OUT!”
Dovakiin leaped back as something shot into the room through the open doorway leading into the corridor. Papers and embers swirled in its passing. It was blacker than the smoke of the fires, a whirling vortex of something cold, something malevolent.
The fires around the room all extinguished.
Fledinem was seized by invisible hands and was slammed up against the wall behind him. He winced as blackened ice began forming on his skin.
“HOW DARE YOU!?” the blackness screamed. Dovakiin realised that this was what had yelled earlier too. It had a feminine voice, but one that was raised to an ear-piercing, skull-splitting volume.
“Clara, no!” Lord Vance yelled. “Let him go!”
The blackness swirled in fury. “HE TRIED TO KILL YOU!”
“No, it was an accident! Put him down!”
For a moment, Dovakiin thought the blackness wouldn’t obey. The wallpaper behind Fledinem was beginning to blacken and crack, curling up under the cold and the decay the thing was radiating. This might be the end of the blue giant. But then the entity dropped him, and as quickly as it had come it went careening out of the room, taking its icy chill with it.
Fledinem crashed to the floor. He sat up, rubbing his hands against his upper arms. Dovakiin thought that he could see icy hand-prints formed around them, as if someone humanoid had clenched them tightly.
For a moment, the room was entirely silent, until Fledinem spoke.
“Ok, so I realise in hindsight that I shouldn’t have started the fire. But what was that?”
***
Dovakiin lay back in his four-poster bed that evening, pondering over the day’s events. The guest room he was in was luscious. There was no denying the wealth behind it.
They’d not all been fired on the spot, and even something had been mentioned about orientation tomorrow. But Lord Vance had not explained what the thing was that had attacked Fledinem.
I don’t like fires, was all the wealthy noble had said, before walking out of the room.
Dovakiin found he couldn’t rest, so got up and walked over to the window. He looked out across the grounds. A thin mist covered them in the darkness, obscuring the carefully maintained hedgerows and flower beds that looked so beautiful during the day time.
The rattle of a horse and cart could be heard in the darkness. A carriage was moving out on the empty road past the manor. It was the only sound that could be heard in the still night air.
Calliban had given them leave to wander around the manor, provided that they didn’t go higher than the first floor, or into the basement. Those, the butler had marked off as private, and part of the family’s quarters. But Dovakiin was not aware that Lord Vance had a family.
There was something hiding in this manor, some force that had reeked of decay. Of undeath.
The horse and cart had turned up the drive, heading towards the manor. The last adventurer Calliban had promised was arriving.
Dovakiin grinned. Things were looking interesting.
He turned towards the door. If there were to be answers found about what was going on in this manor, they would not be found in this room.
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