Pogug continues his song, breaking the boundaries of what could be considered music through his screams.
You hear Pogug's muffled screams continue. Everyone but Nathaniel is easily able to locate the source, which begins to recede into the distance.
The chameleon's jaw bites down again.
As the screams start to retreat, Erin seizes the chance to take a swing at the invisible creature, aiming her blow by the sound of Pogug's voice. Then she swings Chi around and charges after the lizard, intent on bringing it down.
Erin strikes the chameleon's flesh (thereby showing Nathaniel where it is, so he can now attack with the normal miss chance).
Finding the source of the chameleon by Erin's strike bringing forth a shower of blood, Nathaniel had another dagger in his hand and launching toward the fleeing reptile, moving closer as he did so to close the range.
Nathaniel's knife flies straight and true, right through the spot where he was certain Erin made contact with the beast, but it continues to fly past the spot and clatters to the ground beyond.
Now that he has the location of the chameleon, Semsephiel decides that after this long chase what he really wants to do is cut the lizard in half. He positions himself where he can get an AoO if it tries to run away.
Semsephiel's flying blade slices through the air, appearing to open a bleeding gash in the very fabric of reality. The silhouette of the chameleon appears before you, the colors within it seeming to melt and shift sickeningly, falling out of sync with the chameleon's movements as it staggers and falls to the ground with a thud that kicks up a cloud of dust from among the cobblestones. This is followed by an eerie silence as the melange of colors, still recognizable as those present in its surroundings, twist and deform, looking more like a grotesque impressionist painting of the creature's surroundings than the perfect mimicry that previously made the creature so difficult to locate.
It takes a moment before you realize that Pogug's screaming has also gone silent.
Ashak runs up to the corpse and tries to get the mouth open.
Semsephiel, making use of his enhanced size and multiple arms, tries to lever the creatures mouth open.
Nathaniel ran forward to the fallen chameleon and stands ready to assist Ashak and Semsephiel. If the two of them can't manage to dig Pogug out of the lizard's mouth, Nate will slice the creature's belly open in an attempt to remove their goblin companion, hopefully not stabillating him in the process.
Semsephiel hefts the chameleon's skull. It's jaw flops open, and Pogug's limp body rolls out onto the ground, landing face-down, covered in mucus and still wrapped in the creature's elongated tongue. Lines of tooth marks crisscross his bulbous head.
After rolling Pogug over onto his back Ashak puts two fingers to the goblins neck to check for a pulse.
Ashak feels around for a pulse, but is unable to find any sign that the goblin's little heart is still beating.
"I'm no cleric but the little guy isn't looking good."
Semsephiel suddenly realizes that he has no idea how to tell if a mortal creature is alive or dead. They have hearts, right? And if they're alive, the heart beats, if they aren't, it stops beating. Seems simple. But how are you supposed to know if the heart is beating without cutting them open?
"I'm afraid I'm out of my depth. I normally take a more proactive approach to keeping people alive." Semsephiel tears Pogug's clothing into strips and begins wrapping it around his lacerations. "But as long as we keep enough blood inside him, he'll pull through, right? That's how mortals work?"
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Erin jumps down from her mount and kneels over Pogug, releasing the catch on her other sheath as she does so. "Mortals are sloppy and fragile, so we come prepared." As she speaks, her right hand closes around a stick of wood last seen in the first arena, when she and her familiar were lying bloody on the ground. She presses the wand to Pogug's lacerated skull and closes her eyes in concentration, muttering the proper command word.
The wand appears to have no effect. You all wait in suspense. You might be holding your breath, or perhaps you look away, convinced that it is too late and the goblin is dead. Fully half a minute later, you are startled when Pogug's eyes shoot open. For a moment, he doesn't know what is going on, and resumes his screaming before he realizes that he is free of the chameleon's mouth.
About this time, Evalee returns, leading a handful of city guards. They all ready their weapons when they hear the goblin's scream.
Pogug stops his scream as he slowly notices his friends around him. He looks over himself, still feeling the sting of his wounds. Let's see... Pogug was swallowed, then bit. Then Pogug can't remember. But now Pogug not swallowed. The goblin concentrates, his eyes furiously closed as he thinks. "Aha!" Pogug shouts, an inspiration striking his mind.
"Pogug has defeated creature from within his own mouth. Pogug's cries must have hurt lizard's ears, killing it." The goblin smiles smugly from his rationalization, unaware of the approaching guards.
Sure that Pogug has perished Ashak stands to his feet and looks off into the distance. His blank expression breaks into a grin as the little goblin comes to and immediately aserts himself as the hero. Ashak extends a hand to help Pogug to his feet. "Your shouting played a key role. Lets have the others explain it to the guards though. We may have to fudge the details or they would be too frightened of you."
Semsephiel sees the guards coming and folds his extra arms beneath his coat. When Evalee sees that the battle has ended, she dismisses enlarge person.
"Is everyone alright?" she asks. "I got the guards, but you guys all went chasing after the chameleon . . . we weren't sure where you went."
Nathaniel couldn't help but laugh as Pogug was finally revived and boasted of his slaying of the chameleon, clapping the goblin on the shoulder. "Just so, Pogug. Excellent work!" The young man gently guided the goblin over to Ashak, nodding to the hobgoblin before turning towards the tardy guards.
Nathaniel grinned at Evalee, tossing his dagger into the air before whipping his hand out and sheathing it in one smooth motion. The young man looked a little unfocused for a moment, wondering why exactly he had just done that, then remembered the lovely summoner still standing there. Showing off, right. Anyway, he regarded the guards with a friendly smile. "That big lizard there tore out of a crate and made off with our friend. Could have caused a lot more damage if we hadn't brought it down!"
When Pogug opens his eyes, Erin lets out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding. Looking around only to spot the approaching guards, the halfling hurriedly stows her wand and sling. "Yeah," she nods to Evalee, "it tried to make a meal out of Pogug here, but we're all more or less intact." With that, she takes a few small steps over to Chi and gives him a pat, causing him to conspicuously shrink to a more reasonable squirrelish size.
I used to fly. It's a little thing. One little thing to pick out, out of all the things a low level eidolon cannot do. I used to fly. Under his coat, Semsephiel flexes the disturbingly long fifth digits on his second set of arms. If I could fly, I could have caught the chameleon sooner. I wouldn't have been scrambling behind the dancer and the acrobat. I would have fallen out of the sky like the wrath of a god, and ground the monster's lifeless body into the dirt.
The onetime Godscourge looks around at the carnival performers, notes their excitement, their relief, the euphoria of triumph. It all seems rather pointless to him.
The goblin will live slightly longer. Hooray. They won't all feel guilty until they stop feeling guilty later. Hooray. But the years will drag on regardless, one after another after another, and centuries from now I will still be standing here, watching over some other summoner, but they will all be dead.
"That chase . . . took a bit out of me. I still need to catch my breath." The devil slumps against a wall, seeming to collapse in on himself. "I'll be with you in a moment."
"Alright! Feel better soon," Evalee chirps.
"Alright! Feel better soon," Evalee manages with a rictus grin plastered across her face. She isn't quite sure why she's smiling. Right. Everyone's relieved and happy and hyper competent warriors with hammers and knives and more knives who used to fight in gladiator pits or take over planets when they had a moment of free time though she really doesn't like to think about that and she doesn't think it's irrational because it isn't like what happened in the past effects what's going on now sometimes at least. The point is, before the third person narration of her internal monologue got sidetracked, that everyone's in a good mood because they're desensitized to violence because their friend is alright and it's great that he's alright but she's just thinking about the sailor who was just eaten just broken she watched it happen it could have just as easily been her it's frightening and life is so fragile you forget sometimes that you're never more than one falling box away from death and she's walked along these same docks with her nose in a book. And she can't help but think that maybe if she'd been paying better attention maybe no one had to get hurt at all. No one's trying to hold her accountable but really if you can't hold yourself accountable you're missing the entire point of accountability. But of course she can't be watching every pulley on every boat at every time, but that's not really an excuse because she wasn't keeping an eye on any of them.
There's no reason to be a wet blanket, though, and everyone else seems to be in a good mood, so she just keeps smiling and is happy that Pogug is ok.
"Hm. I wonder . . . " Evalee trails off.
"Nope, pretty sure the chameleon is dead," announces Evalee with a certainty born of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
"Should we, uh, I don't think there's anything we can do to help, down at the docks. Should we pick up the Doc's items?"
Pogug goes ahead and kicks the chameleon's corpse for good measure. "Pogug would be happy to get substances. Oh, but first a little bit of Pogug power."
The goblin whistles a little tune, healing his wounds.
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Nathaniel shook his head at Evalee's suggestion of perhaps helping at the docks. In his mind, the group had done quite enough in running down the rampant, murderous chameleon. "Let's just go get Doc's stuff and get back. I don't want to know what might be in the other crates."
The young man spent a good deal of time retrieving his tossed daggers, but otherwise was ready to go to their next stop. Sweat beaded on his brow at the sudden burst of effort, but everyone (the poor sailor excluded, of course) had made it through, so Nathaniel was in more or less a good mood.
You decide to continue along the city's second tier for a while, until you reach one of the gondola stations where goods are lifted from the docks to this level. While they charge by weight for lifting goods and people to higher levels, rides down are free, and actively solicited for, since those riding down act as counterweights for the goods and passengers that need to be transported up.
Walking again along the docks, before long you find yourselves in the seafood district. I say find yourselves, because unlike yesterday, you don't smell it from a mile away. To be sure, as you pass by a crate of freshly-caught fish being unloaded, you notice an unmistakable fishy odor, but the smell no longer pervades the entire district.
The other strange thing you notice is that a pointed, indigo-colored tower that you are certain wasn't there yesterday can be seen standing twenty feet above the tops of the other buildings. As you get closer, you realize that the conical structure is exactly where the Artificery was just one day earlier. It is painted with man-sized five-pointed stars and a crescent moon, and as you watch, they seem to drift across its surface.
Moving closer to investigate, you see a sign above the door that says in huge block print with curled serifs, " To the side of the door stands a wooden cutout of a young-faced man, smiling and waving in a conical hat and long, flowing robe that match the strange building's paint job.
Ashak does a double take between the tower and his companions. "Huh? Well thats perfectly normal right? Nothing odd going on here."
As they approached the strange tower that was a very recent addition to the city, Nathaniel looked at it dubiously. He smirked at Ashak's comment, shaking his head. "Nothing with wizards is perfectly normal. Let's get this dread business over with so we can finalize our plans for this evening."
The young man craned his neck to look up at the towering spire, then shook his head again. The world might be a better place if all the wizards would just go jump in a lake. Still, there was nothing for it but to just charge ahead. Unless anyone decided to offer caution, the knife-thrower continued forward to enter Basil Arcto's new digs.
"Oh. That's . . . strange."
There's a pause while Evalee tries to digest what her eyes are showing her.
"Huh."
With a sudden renewed enthusiasm, "That's awesome! I wonder where the artificiery went though. We should ask where it went. Arcane bazaar!! Is it really a bazaar I wonder or are they just calling it a bazaar because bazaar sounds cooler then whatever it is? And is it legal to park your bazaar right there on a lot someone else presumably owns? Aren't their zoning regulations? Anyways, we need to check this out but Sephy's going to insist on going first incase it's cursed and it withers his insides."
The old devil frowns. "Or we could just leave." He heaves a heavy sigh and passes Whitecloak, walking at a brisk clip. "If I don't die, I'll send for you," he informs the party. "If I do die, run."
And he opens the door to the arcane bazaar.
As Semsephiel approaches the open double door, the flat, wooden man to the side suddenly begins to shift, the painted image on its surface becoming a moving picture, and the hard wood bending like soft flesh. Luckily, this happens before it is within the demon's reach, or he would likely snap it in half before hearing what it has to say. Welcome to Basil Arcto's Arcane Bazaar! Come on in! The figure waves, then sweeps its hand to the side indicating the way through the door, invitingly. Then it returns to its previous pose and freezes, again becoming inanimate.
Erin stops short at the sight of the bizarre bazaar, turning her head slowly from side to side as though certain she's missed something. She remains speechless through Evalee's remarks, stepping up between Nathaniel and Semsephiel as they approach the door and inspecting the animated cutout with a puzzled frown.
"So what do you think?" she murmurs to the others in a low but conversational voice. "Major remodeling? Alternate reality? Elaborate scheme to cheat us out of our dickerberry extract?"
"Pogug thinks he eats too many berries. Bad berries."
Pogug looks at the wooden man suspiciously, expecting it to become alive again, before making his way into the store.
Semsephiel pokes the wood-again figure to ascertain it's animation status, before preceding Pogug inside.
Nathaniel stopped suddenly as the wooden cutout decided to talk at them, more than happy to let Semsephiel lead the way inside. And prudent advice, as well. If the devil-blooded was destroyed, Nathaniel was not about to risk his life over some alchemist's leaves and extracts. The young man listened to Evalee's excitable banter with patience, her being easy on the eye making it a bit easier to do.
When Erin came to stand next to him and offered her theories, Nathaniel just shook his head. "Wizards and their sorcery. But if I had to pick one, I would say option 3." The juggler nodded in sympathy and understanding to Pogug, clapping him companionably on the shoulder as he waited for the devil to enter and see what might be in store for the group.
Though the outside of the structure is shaped like a cone, the interior is a cube, the corners of which couldn't possibly fit inside. In its center, a cylindrical counter that appears to be made of seamless black glass encircles a man that looks exactly like the sometimes, animated cutout outside, except for the fact that he is fully 3-dimensional and made of flesh instead of wood. He smiles excitedly as you enter. Customers! Come in, come in! Welcome! I'm Basil Arcto! What can I do for you today? Have you come for the grand opening sale?
Semsephiel takes an easy look around the room, and steps up to the counter. It appears this place is larger on the inside than the outside, some manner of extra-planar space. "I was actually looking for the Artificiery, a purveyor of magical items. It appears the store is no longer here, do you know where I might find it or when it might return?"
Semsephiel tries to sound calm, bored even, but has a readied action to interrupt any spellcasting with a claw attack (dealing nonlethal damage). A little paranoia never hurt anyone. Well, it never hurt Semsephiel. It's hurt loads of people who aren't Semsephiel but got a little too close to him.
You've come to the right place, my friend, but I'm afraid the Artificery is no more. I bought them out this morning, lock, stock and barrels. Paid them a tidy sum that I suspect they've used to buy their own private island by now. Is there anything I can help you with?
Ashak rubs the back of his head with a half-grimace-smile. "This day keeps getting more and more interesting. We had ordered some goods to be picked up today, said order wouldn't happen to have passed to you would it?"
Yes, that should be here somewhere... Basil looks around in the space between you and him for a moment, as if looking for a fly to swat. Then his hand shoots out, snatching a slip of paper out of thin air. He holds up the paper and reads, Distillate of Arjoraam, Dickerberry extract, Powdered Sunstone, and Activated Gavarium? He looks back to you. Is that it?
Erin perks up. "Yes! Did you find the sunstone? We heard there was some trouble with that."
Semsephiel went to collect the others after being inside the shop didn't whither his innards.
Evalee looks around the inside of the shop excitedly. "So we're in some kind of extradimensional space?" she says aloud to see if her guess is right. "What would happen if someone poked a hole in one of the walls? Would we all be vacuumed into the astral plane? Is it safe to be in here?"
"And you mentioned an opening sale? Do you carry anything in my price range, which is to say, do you accept dirt or only gold pieces?"
Basil chuckles at Evalee's question about extradimensional space. It is something like that. You needn't worry about the walls, damaging them would require far stronger magic than you can conjure.
When Evalee asks about the sale, his face brightens. Yes, the sale! I have a selection of single-use wands, for half price! Perfect for those needing the right spell on a budget! He sweeps his hand across the glass and turns clear, revealing racks full of wands below. The name of a spell floats above each in translucent letters.
Now, about those sunstones... He turns around and again looks at the air, then he pulls out a drawer from thin air and reaches in. He pulls out a rough, volcanic-looking stone. Powdered, was it? He retrieves a mortar a pestle from below the counter and drops in the stone. He works the pestle only a few times, then lets go of it. The pestle continues to work the stone on its own. He lifts a transparent box and places it on the counter, then slides the mortar into it. As this happens, the pestle's motion becomes a blur, as if time moves faster inside the box.
As the magical tools do their work, Basil turns back to you. Motioning to the wands, he asks, Anything of interest?