Warwic

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Her eyes widened at the dwarf's reaction to Shawdup's comment. The slobbery, well-chewed chunk of meat slapped against his ear, ricocheting into Shurka's tunic.

While the dwarf rolled onto the floor, laughing to bust a gut, Shurka howled and quickly thrust a hand down her top to retrieve the gooey morsel. A look of disgust crossed her face as she stuck out her tongue and tossed the dwarfmade pellet onto a nearby table.

 

Haveing found nothing interesting in the library or the rest of the school other than a few locks to pick. Kael wondered back into town. He found himself back in the tavern and standing in the midst of an uproar as the orcs and dwarf were fueding again. "I can see why my kin have isolated themselves from you lot" He muttered as he walked past the trio to an empty table.

 

Warwic swung a crossed leg impatiently as she sat in her favorite chair, trying to wait while her collegue arranged herself. Breg Targ continually fluffed her braided, greying beard over her aging, dwarven paunch. After a good ten minutes, Warwic grasped the arms of her chair and threw herself to her feet. "The school is crumbling, Breg," she stated sadly. "The latest batch of students are mostly milling about and doing nothing. Only the two half-orcs have even bothered to find their teachers."

Breg abruptly quit playing with her hair, squinting at the half elven lady. Her voice grumbled like rocks in a barrel as she barked, "Aye half orcs. Did ye know one of them is a bloody bard? A half orc *bard*! A half *orc* bard! A half-"

"Would you shush about the orcs!" Warwic yelped, her voice piercing the air. "We all know how you feel about the -" she bent her fingers in the air "'mingling of the classes', but these are new times and children don't follow the dictates of their parents any more."

"It's more than a 'mingling of the classes'," Breg retorted and mimicked the mage's elegant motions with her stubby hands. "Back in The Day, humans and half elves did what they liked and dwarves were the fighters and healers, the elves were the magic-users and the halflings were too busy snitching belt pouches and eating *my* berry pie to bother doing much else!"

Warwic rolled her eyes as the dwarf ranted about the good ol' days. For herself, the days of her childhood were anything but good. Her father had been a tyrant over the magical tomes and scrolls, selfishly doling tidbits to his only offspring when it suited *him*. She blindly reached into her silvery tresses and touched the thick knot of scarring above her left ear with trembling fingertips. A memento of her eagerness meeting her father's wrath.

A bang of fist against wood shook her from her reverie. She whipped around, her ears tuning Breg back in. "By the Luckmaiden's sword, Warwic! Were ye even listening to me, lass?" Breg narrowed her stony gaze.

"I'm closing the school, Breg." She held up a hand to stall an arguments. "Let me get this out before you start, all right? The students already present will be the last. Only a few of my messages actually found to whom they were sent. And for your information, Shawdup was Greggor's idea, not mine. The drunken sot used his bardic magic against me."

Stroking her beard thoughtfully, Breg nodded and whispered under her breath, "Aye and the lush is still among the living for that slight."

Warwic lifted an eyebrow at her friend, then brushed aside her long hair and gestured to her dainty ear. "Elfish hearing, you stone banger. Never you mind about Greggor. He's my concern and not yours."

"Seeing how your concern still has the man deep in drink, a poke from me won't hurt matters." Rubbing her thickly calloused hands together, a grin of glee creased her beard. "Now, what the school needs is a bit of a dwarven intervention. You stay here in your tower and muddle over your precocious magics." She stood and patted Warwic on the forearm as she passed. "Leave the training to me, lass. I worked too hard to get this crotchety without knowing a thing or two about whipping greenbacks into shape." Breg sauntered out of the room, ideas already shaping in her dense cranium.

When the last echoing tromp of bootheels faded, the half elf slowly smiled and decided it was time to meet her students. She pulled on her favored mage robe, the bright gold and indigo fading to mustard and lilac. Tilting her head, she mentally saught her blackbird familiar and her smile curled upwards at the corners when she discovered the featherhead nestling on the roof of Greggor's favorite haunt. It was snug amongst the shadows of the tavern and through it's eyes, Warwic could see Dala, the dwarven healer, Shurka, the barbarian, Kael, the thief, and Shawdup, the bard.

It would be easier to walk to the tavern. Making a showy display would be a wasteful use of her talents. There might be a time later in the day when this spell would be of more use. "That's what scrolls are for, Father," she said in a quavering tone to his ghost and removed a rolled parchment from her trusty robe. Unfurling the scroll like a royal proclaimation, the wizardess chanted the words written. The incantation glowed fiercely as the spell cast itself and she vanished.

Reappearing seated on the bartop, Warwic crossed her legs at the knees and folded her slender fingers over the topmost joint. Smiling brightly, she greeted each of the four with a nod and introduced herself. "Hello, I am Warwic and I welcome you all to my-will someone wake up Dala, please?"

 

Shawdup rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing correctly. It wasn't so late in the night, and he hadn't been drinking enough to make him see what he though he saw. But no, there was a lady sitting on the bar, where only some empty mugs had been a moment before, some twinkling sparkly things still floating around her.

Dala? That must be the dwarf. Shawdup headed over to her with a mug of beer to throw in her face, but then for some reason he bent down and gently shook the dwarf on the shoulder, saying, "Dala, I think you'd better get up. I'm sorry about eating your kinfolk years ago. After thinking about it, I think that maybe that was what made you mad at me."

The dwarf muttered something, but did seem to be waking up. Shawdup went back over to Shurka, who was looking at the lady too. What would happen now?

 

"Bragh, I be getting up when I feels like it, headmaster..." Dala took a groggy swing in the direction of the voice, her eyes still closed. Her hand connected with her stool, which promptly tipped over on her, waking her up a bit more. "Oomph. Ach, now where in blazes am I?"

Dala scowled at the lady sitting on the bar, slowly emerging from her spirits-induced fog. "Yer the one who brought us here, aye? I have to admit yer not what I be expecting. The one I saw in me vision was *ahem* a bit shorter."

 

Warwic nodded at Dala's words, saying, "Oh, you probably saw Breg, my dwarfish friend. She's fond of throwing her kinfolk into my plans." Catching the eyes of all present, she launched into the prepared speech she memorized for every class.

"You all are wondering, of course, why you're here at this little village in the middle of the arse end of nowhere. I run a school of sorts, with my former adventuring party, and we invite promising students to our settlement. I started this way of training in part because I, myself, had a difficult time learning my trade in a conventional manner.

"I was so full of myself when I joined my first adventuring party. I was pompous, arrogant and callous toward the other party members." She shook her head as a rueful look crossed her face. "Ask any of the teachers, they'll give you an earful. So certain I knew everything about magic because of who I was...ugh. It pains me to recall those early days. Needless to say, it was a run-in with an ogre that changed my attitude.

The wizardess grew wistfully reminiscent while she told her tale. "I began to prepare my spells for the day when Korden-" she noticed the jawdrop of Shurka "-yes, Korden the fighting instructor, he asked me to memorize a spell or two to disable a large group of foes. We were on the boarders of a gnollish fortification, by the by, and Korden did not want to be surrounded. I looked down my nose at him, insisting that such a spell was unnecessary since I would flee at the first sign of danger to myself. This statement went over the group like a lead weight. Little did I realize I had signed my own death with those words.

"An hour into the morning, we stumbled upon a hungry ogre. If I had cooperated with the others instead of being such a b*tch, things would have gone better. Maybe not better, but with fewer deaths. I armored myself with a spell and started to flee, only to find I was held back by Greggor, our bard. We exchanged words which I don't recall. I shoved him away from me so I could continue my escape and accidentally tossed him right into the waiting arms of that ogre. The ogre flung Greggor out of the way; its curiousity about the flavor of a skinny mage making it ignore everyone else. The last I remember is crunching bone before it all went black.

"I awoke on a pallet with Greggor and Breg hovering over me. I asked what had happened and Breg, bless her directness, informed me that the ogre had killed me days ago. At the shock I know showed on my face, she mentioned how they would have taken me to a temple sooner except that Greggor insisted on waiting for his banjole to be made first instead getting me ressurrected during the three day period.

"The heart of the matter is: you need to learn to work with or, at the very least, tolerate your fellow party members. You never know when a dwarf will heal you, an elf will watch your back or a half orc will take the blow meant for you." Warwic pointedly looked at the four young people as she talked. "Because of how I acted, the good heartedness of my fellow adventurers got tossed my the wayside while they argued over whether I was worth raising from the dead."

She hopped off the bar and slapped her hands together in a dustying off motion. "I hope I haven't been too boring and long winded. The enterance to the dungeon is in this tavern's cellar. Easy to find. Can't miss it."

 

"Good, let's go!" Shawdup said. "Uh, Miss Warwic, do you think it would be okay if I borrowed one of the long spears from the fighting school? I liked how that worked when Lavertym trained me with it."

 

"What will be in the dungeon Miss Warwic?" Kael asked timidly. Still unused to social situations and in awe from the sights and story the young Kagonesti elf was feeling a little nervous.

 

Fienna hurried back to the Inn her new friend happily flying back and forward, up and dow the street. She'd spent far too much time in the market searching originally for a padded jacket for her friend to sit on, and then just wasting time some would say but it had been necessary.

She'd settled on a nice leather jerkin that had padded shoulders so that her friend could sit comfortably on it without digging into her. Then they'd gone into the countryside and gotten used to one another and as they hunted together Fienna relaised her eyesight had changed it was sharper and there was a depth that she hadn't expected. When she concentrated and relaxed she realised that she could see through her friends eyes, which could be useful. And then Fienna realised that at least one day had passed there was a feeling of some urgency within her to return to the Inn; she was late, somehow she knew it, she was late.

Fienna burst through the door of the Inn and started babbling almost immediately "I'm sorry I'm late, I am late aren't I ? But I had to find a jacket ... "

And then with A "Kai-ia" a hawk flew into the Inn and settled on Fienna's left shoulder and glared at everyone within the Inn, subconsciously Fienna stroked the bird and calmed its agitated state. A look of calm acceptance and determination changed the demeanour of the girl as she stood up straighter and calmly asked

"So, what did I miss ?"

 

"Welcome, Fienna. I see you found what you were looking for," she said, gesturing to the bird perched on the young mage's shoulder. "I am Warwic, sister mage and founder of this school. The others were about to gather anything needed such as weapons or potions or scrolls and finally test their mettle in my dungeon.

"As for what the dungeon holds, there is nothing down there that you cannot defeat through cooperation. I will say that there are a few traps laying about, so scout carefully. If you like, I can use some magery to bring what you need here. Just gather together and talk out what you feel you need. Fienna, would you be a dear and write the list down for me?" Warwic motioned to a sturdy round table in the center of the tavern, where ink, parchment and several quills stood prominent.

Shurka was in awe of Mistress Warwic. She grew shied away from the others in silence and scooted over to the table to take a seat.

 

Fienna sat down at the desk picked up a quill checked the nib dipped it into ink and looking up said:

"Shawdup is it, I think I heard you say that you wanted a Long Spear, yes ? if the rest of you could let me know what else is needed one by one I think would be best."

As she spoke she started writing in a very neat and precise hand,

Potions of Healing, Potion Bag, Long Spear

 

"Uh, yeah, a long spear," Shawdup replied. "And I guess I'll need a sack, or a pack or something, with rope, and, what did mom call it? Oh yeah, a thieves kit. She taught me how to use hers, but I didn't make it out of the cave with much more than my hide and the lute."

 

"Bah, I've everything I need right here." Dala's smirk turned into a frown as she added, "Unless ye'd be wanting to spot me a helm 'n' shield..."

 

Fienna diligently wrote the items down on the list adding a few more herself as she thought of them:

Packs, rope, thieves kit. helm, shield, torches, flint and steel, tinderbox

 

"Hides from da animals," Shurka grumbled. "Like dat leather armor I guess." Her brow crinkled deeply.

 

Hearing the others making their lists for their delve, Rafael began to wonder why he had been sitting here doing nothing for so long...

"Do you guys mind if I come along?" he rasped. "I have everything we need, and if so, where are we going?"

 

Shawdup smacked himself in the forehead. "Now I understand how those adventurerers always knew how to beat us! They went to a school! But Miss Warwic, may I ask, why you want to teach us this stuff? If my father found a better way to raid caravans, or smoke halflings out of their holes, he wouldn't tell the other orc tribes about it, and certainly not the stinking goblins. What do you get out of this?"

 

The question made her pause, but she answered anyway. "I suppose a flippant reply of 'not seeing you die' would be too much, but it's true. Because someone took the time to ressurrect me when I died, I decided to pass on what I know about keeping other, young adventurers off that temple altar."

The halfelf shook her head and, briefly, the image of a dark-skinned, white-eyed face overlayed her own. "If that list is finished, I'll get you want you need and you can hurry down into the dungeon."

 

"Here you are Mistress Warwic" Fienna replied handing a couple of sheets to the halfelf. She picked up her staff and laid it over the bar "Keep this til I return please, I think my sword and wits will be more use for now"

 

"At last, time for questing," thought Kulgothrax, as he rose from his chair. He looked around the room, searching for an entrance into the cellar.