The Goldsmith Shop Affair

Baronet Maurice Kyron, lord of Benry, and his squire Sir Julius had lost track of both their old battle-brother Mikondor, and their less treasured acquaintance Mateo of Martini. Mikondor had proven himself quite unwilling to respond to the magic thought-transfers attempted by their new acquaintance, the Naly, a citizen of the Confederacy who had joined them for reasons undisclosed. Both of the men had last been seen at La Hydre, a fashionable drinking establishment in Courite, and both had last been seen in the company of one Miss Murielle,a ravishing but rather mysterious woman. Murielle herself had not returned to La Hydre after Mikondor's disappearance.

After some discussion with Maurice, held in his chambers, Naly had cast a successful Seeker, he and Maurice picked up Julius, and they then went to the Rue des Orfèvres, where Naly had felt that Mikodor would be present. As it was Sunday's morning, there were few people about.

After asking a servant-girl, and looking around a bit, they noted that one of the houses marked as plague-struck had tightly drawn and fairly new-looking curtains on the second floor, and looking a bit closer, they found that one of the entrance doors had been opened recently. They entered the house, and Julius used his magic coin to provide light. Sneaking up (to the efforts of the other two were soundly ruined by Maurice) to the first floor, Julius, walking point, fell down through the staircase, as some steps turned out to be loose. However, his acrobatic training spared him of any damage.

Once up, the three men found that some rooms were unfurnished, while others were not. One room contained a dais covered in black cloth, and six heavy silver candlesticks, but after some dispute with Maurice, Julius agreed to leave them where they were.

As they were coming down the stairs again, Maurice, who was bringing up the rear, was shoved from behind, and fell into Naly, who in turn fell into Julius, and the three tumbled down the stairs, landing in a heap below it. As they attempted to regain their composure, they became aware of a flying gentleman hovering over the stairs behind them, and a number of robe-clad persons approaching them across the floor of the entrance hall, brandishing clubs. Julius got into a scuffle with the flying gentleman, who seemed not to mind very much neither knife stabs nor groin kicks, merely smiling wickedly and attempting to plunge his longish canines into Julius's throat. This monstrosity was lain low as Julius pulled out an aescwood crossbow bolt and stuck it deep into the being's gut. The club-wielders approached the three, and, not minding whatever injuries they suffered, they quickly knocked out both Julius and Naly.

Just as Maurice is despairing at fighting off three attacks single-handedly, Naly returns to consciousness. Despite his griveous wounds, he begins to chant out a spell, while the robed figures closest to the two Confederationists move in to finish off Maurice. He, however, deftly catches the first blow on the crossguard of his main-gauche, and with a quick slash from his sword-rapier he cuts his assailant's right arm to the bone. The assailant drops his club and stumbles backwards, clutching his arm, trips over the fallen Julius and falls prone. But as Maurice has his attention focused on this deft stroke, the other attacker lands a crushing blow towards his chest, which is only slightly abated by his armouring spell. However, as Maurice stagger from the blow, Naly finishes his spell. A flame jet gushes from his right hand, striking the other attacker full in the chest, turning him into a living, screeching torch, the blazing light from his upper body illuminates the two other robed club-wielders, who are trying to move in from behind without getting to close to the burning figure.

As the flame spread to his entire robe, the burning figure staggers and collapses next to the forwards-crawling Naly, a noxious gust smelling of smoke, charred flesh and something rotten strikes his face. Crawling over the wooden planking towards the next attacker, he is struck over his left shoulder blade by the man's club (6 HT damage). In spite of the agonizing pain, Naly grits his teeth and brings up his flame jet against the attacker's arm. The searing flame immediately envelops the entire lower arm and part of the club, and with a howl the robed man drops the club and leaps backwards. Maurice finishes his wholesome spell, and touching Naly's calf muscle, he lets the healing energy flow into him. One can hear chanting from the man standing at the door next to the staircase.

After taking a quick look around on the floor, Naly lets his flame jet flicker and die. At the same time - gritting his teeth against the pain of chest and leg wounds - Maurice runs forwards to attack the final, unhurt club-wielder, who back-pedals furiously and raises his club to defend himself. Swinging his blade in a wide arc which comes down on the inside of the club which is held in a feeble defence, Maurice's sword slashes into the face of the robed figure with an "chunk" audible above the clamour of the fray. That man takes a last step backwards and collapses. The sole, robed figure still standing manages to smother the fire which has ravaged his right arm.

At this time, a largish sphere of stone hurls forwards from the hand of the man standing in the doorway next to the staircase. It strikes Maurice's left leg with great force, crippling it.

Naly then gets up into a kneeling position and grabs hold of his quarterstaff with his right hand. However, he realizes that it will not be easy to pull it free from underneath the flaming body of the first body struck by his flame jet.

The prone Maurice drops his sword and begins chanting a sunbolt spell. As the Baronet does so, the figure in the doorway runs towards Maurice, his liquid grace reminicent of a feline, the light from Julius's coin is reflected by dark-irised eyes, pearly white (and very sharp) canines, a glinting ruby held in his left hand, and the electrum brocade in his doublet. He seems to be a dignified man in his 40s, aging very well. Unlike his non-descript thugs, he is finely dressed in soft leather boots, black velvet hoses, a more Cargan-style doublet of purple silk with slits showing burgundy fabric underneath, padded to enhance the impression of a muscular torso and brocaded with electrum thread. The man is clean-shaven and his hair is dark with white at the temples - he wears it shoulder-long and combed backwards. His gentlemanly appearance is in sharp contrast with the casual way he pulls back his right foot and delivers a powerful kick to Maurice's face. The blow shatters Maurice's concentration, and his nose. At the same time, Naly chants for a flame-jet while using the staff held in his left hand as an aid in getting up.

Dizzy from his many injuries, Maurice faints. The last thing he sees through blood-fogged eyes is the malicious smile of the sharp-toothed gentleman. The gentleman turns towards Naly,long canines bared in a malicious smile. At this time Naly completes his flame jet evocation, and thrusts a ray of flame towards the man. The man makes an effortless leap in a high arch towards Naly, easily clear of the path of the flame. Without thinking, Naly jerks the jet up towards the incoming assailant and somehow, whether through luck, fate or instinct he manages to strike the man in the middle of the chest, just as he reaches the apex of his leap, more than a man's height above the floor and ready to come down head-first at Naly. The flame tears into the chest of the man, burning a fiery hole wide enough to put one's hand through, and with a choked snarl he plummets to the floor, his aimless body easily sidestepped by Naly as it crashes limply down into the pile at the door.

Naly then turns his attention to the last upright figure in the room, and thrusts the jet of fire towards him. The figure is at this time trying to open one of the doors on the wall opposite the entrance with his left hand, and is struck in the back by the blazing fire, once more putting his robe on fire. He utters a gurled roar of pain and turns around, dodging the Naly's second strike with the flame jet and charging towards him, left hand outstreched, showing stubby, thick fingers terminating in dog-like claws. As the light from Naly's spell falls inside the figures hood, he can see a hairless head with a bestial face. A flat, snout-like nose flanked by dark, sunken eyes, beneath is a wide mouth with long, sharp teeth bared in a grimace of rage and pain. Naly notices vaguely that someone is pushing shut the door through which the sorcerous gentleman entered the room.

Naly feels fatigue burning through his system, black dots are swimming before his eyes. He cannot pull much more power from the aether without disasterous consequences, yet he needs more energy. With an inward groan, he reaches for the fires of his soul and starts feeding the spell off his life-force, a feeling of intense cold spreading through his body as he does so. He focuses his flame jet on the abdomen of his sole remaining enemy, and just as the flaming creature tenses to pounce on Naly, it is overpowered by its many burns and collapses on the floor in another flaming heap. Naly keeps the flame focused on the creature a bit longer, to make sure that it is dead. The door next to the staircase slams shut. Naly's flamejet dies.

The roof is on fire, or at least parts of it, the same goes for the walls, the floor and several people on it. The floor next to the staircase and the entrance door is quickly becoming one big funeral pyre, and Naly staggers moves away from it - to avoid turning into a crispy, crunchy wizard. One of the bestial, robeclad figures is also crawling out from that area. The flames are spreading rapidly, as the house has been dried by a long, hot summer.

Hoping to find an exit, Naly steps towards the door nearest the entrance (D5), only to find his way blocked by the crawling, robe-clad creature, limping on two legs and one hand towards the same door. He strikes the fleeing enemy in the right side of the ribcage, striking him sideways away from the path to the door. The wounded wizard fumbles a bit with the door handle, and then pushes the door open and stumbles through, feeling his injured body ache with each step. A bit belatedly, Naly realizes that the room he is in is only lit by flickering firelight from the doorway, and all he can see is his own shadow, a section of the floor and the edge of a table.

Looking into the darkness, Naly chants the first invocation of light he ever learned. At this time, even these simple syllables seem hard to utter, and he feels an inner ache as he strives to channel mana from the surrounding aether. A small light - no greater than a candle flame - awards his efforts, hovering in the air in front of him, causing his shadow to become more muted.

Naly takes a few deep breaths before going on a search for a door or window. He moves the light along as he walks. As he steps further into the room, his light illuminates a large, sturdy table, much worn and with many scratches and deep gouges. It is covered in dark streaks and splotches. Colour is hard to discern in this light, but the fresher splotches seem to be a dark reddish-brown. The table is so big that it is hard to discern its other edges in this light. He tries to remember how the house looked from the outside, and is pretty certain that the street ought to be on his left, but he cannot see any light from that direction (or from any other)- but then seems to remember that all windows on the ground floor were shuttered and nailed shut. Naly then turns left and walks some distance, and a door set in a sturdy frame comes into his circle of light.

Naly tries to open the door only to find it nailed shut so in a panic he bangs on them a couple of times with his staff to try to bash it open. But this is a sturdy door, and his effort does little except to produce a bit of noise and make his hands hurt. Calming himself with an effort of will, he stops to examine the door a bit more closely, and sees that it has two metal bolts and a a large, wrought-iron lock holding it shut. The hinges are of iron, nailed to the door and frame on the inside.

Hurt and desperate, Naly pulls out the small vial he purchased before leaving his academy. He has no choice but to use his Elixir of Healing. Unstoppering it, he pours the vials contents down his throat and feels the soothing fluid dissipate through his system, dispelling the fiery-frosty ache in his interior and partially healing his shoulder and torso. As the sensation of healing begins to fade, he chants an invocation of fire, creating a wide disk of fire on the door, in doing so he once more draws upon his spirit for energy, and the frostfire is ignited once more in his interior, ending the pleasant feeling from the elixir rather suddenly. The fire burns tall, its tongues are licking the ceiling. His next chant - once more feeding partially on his own life-energy gives him control of the burning area, although he is barely able get the spell right, distracted as he is by both internal pain and split attention. Contracting the fire to a minimal area, and keeping the flames burning low, so that they do not touch the ceiling, he burns around one hinge for some time and then moves the confined fire down along the door to the other hinge, and burns around that as well. The area around the first hinge keeps burning.

After a minute, the created fire fades along with his control of it, but the blackened door keeps burning steadily around the hinges, as the spell has ignited the wood. This light, along with Naly's glowing light-globe and the ever-stronger fireglow from the hallway is making the room brighter, and in addition to the table in the centre, Naly can now make out a fireplace, a couple of stools, benches and shelves along the wall, and some stuff standing on the floor and in the shelves. As he casts a glance towards the doorway to the entrance hall, he realizes that Julius and Maurice are still in the burning room! Making an abortive attempt to slam the door off its hinges with his shoulder, he hears the wood groaning and cracking, but the door stays up. Naly turns away from the door and runs back to the doorway to the hall.

A grisly sight greets him: The room is now fully lit, as the flames have spread over floor, walls and ceiling, catching on debris, clothing, hair, flesh and suchlike. The three bodies piled in front of the entrance door is burning merrily, rivulets of burning, melted fat are spreading over the floor. The door is on fire as well, as is the staircase and the wall next to it, and the ceiling above the entrance. The wall farthest from the entrance is also burning, and there is a path of flame running between them. One of the corpses next to Maurice has been burning for some time now, and the fire is beginning to catch on his robes, which crackle with sparks and give off puffs of multi-coloured smoke. Julius’s prone form is, as of now, untouched by the fire.

Naly moves into the room, shielding his face against the heat radiating from the fire. He kneels and puts his arms under Maurices armpits, folding his over his chest, and thusly pulling him along over the floor and into the other room, leaving a trail of sparks and multi-coloured smoke. By slapping the flames with his glove-covered hands, on Maurices robe, he successfully smothers them. He then returns and pulls Julius out in a similar way. Next, he moves both of the unconscious men over to the entrance door, and resumes his efforts to bash it down with his body. Though he receives a couple of bruises for his efforts, the door continues to creak encouragingly, and eventually the hinges snap loose. At this time, a mighty crash is also heard from the room next door. The door falls a little bit outwards, but not much.

Naly casts a glance towards the other door to see if the flames have spread to this room, fearing that the ceiling in the other room has caved in. So far, there is no fire in this room. Also, the floor seems to be tiled with shale, and unlikely to catch fire.

After that he continues to bash down the door, asuming that the reason he can't get it open is the nails on the outside. He also screams a couple of"help"s out the crack in the door. The door proves pretty resilient, and his right shoulder gets increasingly beaten and bruised. Eventually, the realization dawns on him that while the door has broken free of the hinges on the left side, the iron bolts and lock-bolt are long and solid enough to hold the door securely on the right side, and bending them may take a long time.

Rubbing his shoulder Naly stops to think. Despite this it does not occur to him to attempt to pull the door sideways and backwards. He looks for a window, or any other possible way out. In the light of magic and fire, it becomes apparent that there is indeed a window on each side of the door. These are shuttered and bolted, and there are also vertical iron bars, as thick as a thumb, and spaced three inches apart. No light whatsoever is coming through the shutters.

Naly goes over to a window and feels the iron bars. They have patina of rust, but seem very solid and well fixed. The opening could easily be crawled through it were not for the bars - not even a conscious Julius could crawl through a space three inches wide. He thrust thoughtlessly at the shutters, but accomplish nothing but making a bit of noise. Looking frenetically at his companions, he sees that they each have empty sheaths and scabbards, and Julius has a half-full quiver, but neither seems to be in possession of any weapons at the moment. Naly cannot see the fireplace clearly from where he is standing, but it seems to be very large, perhaps more properly described as a furnace. He notices that the room is gradually being filled with smoke, it is getting harder to breathe and the air is getting hazy.

Naly looks around in the room he is in, looking for an item the proper shape and size to hold between himself and the door. The room is overall larger than the one in which the fight was fought. Apart from the table in the middle of the room, there are several workbenches, with rows of shelves above them. They are bare. On the floor, there are a couple of broken bucket and two three-legged stools. As he peeks through the doorway, Naly sees that parts of the ceiling has fallen in, tearing open some of the rooms on the second floor, and that the vastly enlarged chamber is burning all over. The fire is roaring, and the heat coming through the open doorway is scalding. Moving on, he finds that the wall furthest from the door out is dominated by a huge, furnace-like fireplace, with several smaller ovens built into it, and a large set of bellows. The furnace itself is open, apart from the remains of some sort of metal and stone scaffolding (for a smelting-pot?). Crawling into the furnace itself and looking up, Naly sees in his pale light that the butterfly valve has been ripped out. The opening in the chimney is about 2 feet wide.

Naly looks around the workbenches for any tools (preferably a large sledgehammer). But once again, he finds them empty.

Realising that he is running out of options fast, Naly swings his staff two handed and pounds away at one of the shelves above a bench near the door, first at one end, then the other. Groaning with pain from his arm and shoulder, he beats it loose from its supports, which fortunately turn out to be less sturdy than the shelf itself. The board breaks loose and tumbles down on the bench, it is one of the largest shelves, and is a bit less than an inch thick, five feet long and one foot wide.

Growing increasingly panicked, he soon collapses from smoke inhalation.