Summoning Ocellus

Since they were trying to be found, they went outside brazenly during the daytime. The tribe hadn’t given them crossbows to use or armor to wear, but they had left Ijj and Tixi with the goggles that helped them not be completely blinded by the sun.

“Excuse,” Tixi said in common, after walking up to the market guard and tugging on his cape. “We want adventure.”

The guard looked at her strangely for a bit. “I’m afraid I don’t have any work for adventurers. I’m just guarding the market.”

“We want to be adventurers,” Ocellus explained, her magic-assisted common much more fluent than Tixi’s rusty skills. “Is there somewhere we should go for that? A guild or something?”

The guard laughed. “As if adventurers would stand for being subject to guild law.” He shook his head. “You could try asking around at the Pub, or the Haunted Box. Lots of adventurers hang out there.”

“I know where those are,” Ocellus said. At least, she thought she remembered. The Pub was right next to the market, and to get to the Haunted Box was a quick jaunt past the thingie.

The Pub was, surprisingly, a lot less crowded than Ocellus remembered. There were maybe a dozen people scattered here and there, mostly keeping to themselves, instead of the boisterous crowd that filled the place at night. A few of them looked like they might be adventurers…

“Excuse me, but are you lost?” asked a tiny human barmaid, blocking their way a few steps after they entered the building.

“Is this adventurer place?” Tixi asked.

“It’s a place for everyone who can pay,” the barmaid said, folding one arm to her side and glaring at them. “You don’t look like you can pay.”

“What makes you think that?” Ocellus asked, as if it wasn’t obvious. All three of them were naked, except for the little dragons’ goggles, and only Tixi had a sack with her spellbook in it. “Um… we can work for food? Mostly we just want to talk to people though.”

“Can clean with magic!” Tixi said enthusiastically.

“Uh huh,” the barmaid said. “I’ve seen plenty of wizards clean with magic. It’s why we hired an actual dishwasher.”

“Okay, so we can’t actually pay for food or drinks,” Ocellus said. “Do you mind if we –”

“OUT.” She shouted, stepping towards them aggressively. “Don’t make me get my broom!”

So that was a bust.

In contrast to The Pub, the thingie was much more crowded than it had been at night, when no children were dangling from its impressive arch or racing in circles around the bulbous base.

It also hadn’t had Danielle sitting in its shade, playing her lute and singing for spare change. Tixi recognized her too, and they sat down nearby and waited for her to finish her song.

It took a long time – she seemed to have infinite verses, each one describing another of the main character’s heroic encounters or sexual exploits, depending on how you decided to interpret the metaphors. Ocellus blushed a bit when it got to the story of how the hero had tricked the devious shapeshifter into copying his form, then wrestled it into submission until it cried out in surrender.

Eventually she stopped to take a break, and they approached her.

“Didn’t expect to see you folks out during the day,” she said, taking a long swig from her waterskin. “Or ever, really. I heard the wizard got you.”

“Was exiled from wizard, then exiled from tribe,” Tixi replied. “Want to be adventurer now!”

“I don’t suppose your group is looking for a couple of spellcasters?” Ocellus asked.

“What level?” Danielle asked.

It took a bit of a conversation to figure out what she meant by that – apparently, adventurers were rated from one to twenty depending on how much experience they had and how powerful they were. With their little bit of rogue training, and ability to cast second-rank spells, Tixi and Ijj were likely fifth level; Ocellus didn’t get a level since she was a familiar. A valuable utility familiar with her magical abilities, but not combat-rated.

“My party just hit seventh,” Danielle said. “I could ask if they want to take you on anyway, but you probably wouldn’t get a full share since you’re so far behind. Orrrrr…” she mused. “I could take on Tixi as a cohort. Then I’d be paying you directly, and they wouldn’t get a say.” She turned to Ocellus. “You’d get to come along as her familiar of course.”

“What about Ijj, then?” Ocellus asked.

“Ijj can go home,” Tixi said. “He not exiled.”

“He’s not going to leave you,” Ocellus said.

Tixi snorted. “Then he can hang around camp like camper and not get paid.”

===

“We really need a cleric, not another wizard,” complained the party bookkeeper, a kobold alchemist who made sure everyone knew his real name wasn’t Keeper and that he had nothing to do with Tixi’s tribe other than his master absentmindedly buying his egg from them. He could throw extremely deadly bombs that he whipped up on a moment’s notice, but what Tixi was (slightly) jealous of was that his spellbook was so much easier to read than hers, and could serve the same function with the spell’s characteristics spelled out in plain text instead of shifting mystery runes.

This was mitigated by the fact that he also kept the party’s financial status in a separate notebook, and that notebook had provided thousands of gold which from which Danielle had spent half her share on Ocellus during the resulting shopping trip.

Nothing mitigated Flicker’s open suspicion, but nothing mitigated anything about Flicker. She could hide in plain sight in bright light or shadows, effectively becoming invisible thanks to her elf-made gear, and snipe enemies with her horrible crossbow that was larger than Keeper.

“Why do we need a cleric”? Danielle asked. “We’ve got a paladin, we’ve got my healing spells, even you have *healing bombs*. We’re covered for sustain.”

“Not with your cohort. Adding two more arcane elements unbalances the party dangerously.”

“There’s nothing a cleric could do for us that I can’t,” Danielle said proudly.

“They could cast Gentle Repose so we’d look beautiful on our way to the graveyard of half-casters,” Keeper replied. Then he sighed. “I suppose we’ve made it this far, and our next mission should be a bit of a walk in the woods.”

“Don’t you mean a walk in the park?” Ocellus asked.

“Hardly. The woods are fairly overgrown at this point since no one’s thought to check on the missing village for almost ten months,” said William, their paladin, as he finally arrived at the café they’d agreed to meet back at after shopping. “Keeper, how unbalanced are we if we add an arcane trickster? With a little retraining I think Ijj here could make a good one. As a cohort of course, I’m not expecting another share of the loot.”

Keeper groaned. “Let me check my books.”

===

The pair of ogres sat in the middle of the path, picking their noses, armpits, and toe-jam and eating it. The stench was indescribable. Two humans and a kobold walked slowly towards them, rounding the corner and approaching.

“Hail friends!” William said.

“Who you call friend?” one of the ogres said. “I call you lunch!” The other one uprooted a sapling and threw it at them like a javelin, which the paladin deflected off his shield. Danielle, at his side, started to sing.

It was a slaughter. Tixi, hidden with the other half of the party, tossed a web as the ogres charged, slowing their assault enough for William to switch to his own massive longbow, and they peppered the ogres with ranged attacks. Massive bolts from Flicker’s heavy crossbow rounded out the assault.

“Walk in the park!” Ijj exclaimed. He’d learned a little common in his time with the party.

“Don’t get overconfident,” Flicker hissed at him. “These couldn’t be more than scouts.”

“An ogre tribe could certainly block the road,” William mused, “but there has to be more to it. Word would have gotten out by now.”

“Word of the stench if nothing else,” Danielle said, covering her face and coughing.

“Were they alive before?” Tixi asked. “Some undead are stinky.” She edged around to the bodies, and poked one with a stick, focusing on the eyes and teeth. “No sign of undeath, just stinky ogres.”

There was nothing else to do there, so they made their way deeper into the forest, a bit more on guard. Shortly, they came upon a little cabin in the woods – part of an overgrown farm, with a barn still in good repair.

The stench from the cabin suggested that there were active ogres living there, but if there were they were hiding because there was no sign of movement.

===

“In Shelyn’s name that was the worst,” William said. “Everything about that was the worst.”

“Learned a lot!” Ijj said, having been on trap duty. According to Flicker, every door in the house was trapped. According to Ijj, it was always safe for someone else to try opening the doors he didn’t find traps on. Somehow, William kept believing him, probably because he sensed no lies. Just mistakes. Mistake after mistake, that landed him safe in his full-plater armor on poop-covered spikes, which would have caused some horrible disease most likely if he hadn’t been a paladin and immune to all that nonsense.

The family of extra-stinky ogres ambushed them in the bedroom, where their extremely fat mother was bedridden except for her ability to fly. She kept out of reach of William’s sword, but scorching rays of magic and Flicker’s giant crossbow were a little harder to dodge, and soon enough she teleported away leaving them to finish off the rest of her boys.

They found the baby daughters slaughtered in a closet.

They also found the bones of several rangers from the local chapter (judging by the armor and other non-consumables left behind) in the barn, alongside one survivor who described how they’d been betrayed and giants now occupied their fortress. Which still didn’t explain why Turtleback Ferry was sending no traffic down to the city since the fortress was past the town, built right up against the dam that now threatened to flood the entire region if it was under ogre control since the ogres lived at the top of the long mountainous ridge it was built into.

“Are adventures always like this?” Ocellus asked. “Not the disgusting stinky bits, I mean the way they seem to snowball since I think this means we have to go save the dam also?”

“Pretty much,” Keeper said. “But it usually ends up with us getting extra loot, and we’ve always survived so far.” In a whisper under his breath, he added “Somehow.”