“Good, you’ve finally arrived.” Garrak said with a grin, looking at the new adventurers that had finally shown up. Now they had everyone; his group known as ‘Greywood’, Silverdawn, famous platinum adventurer ‘Garbiral’ and the black crows. Now the ‘White Snakes’.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything!” The guild leader of the newly arrived group said with a reciprocating grin on his face. “Say, you said there would be another party, aren’t they here yet?” He asked, looking in-between all the people who were there, noticing one of the supposed groups were missing now.
“Yeah, ‘Silver Dawn’, they haven’t shown up yet. Apparently moving through Greenwood so likely got captured by elves or got lost or even chickened out. Whatever the case, more gold for us.” Garrak responded, then turning back to the others.
The lead adventurer, a paladin named ‘Alasarn’, walked away also, joining the others which left the other three members of this ‘White Snake’ party to speak amongst themselves. “So, this is supposed to be the place that High Bishop Iriar said those Inhumanoids would be?” The tank of the group, Oriath, asked while turning to the other two.
“I suppose it is…the council did say that it would be something like this after all.” The male, a mage responded. His entire body hidden under grey and extremely dark blue robes. A mage named ‘Torthor’. “Then again, we were hired to go on this mission in particular so it would make sense if that was the case, Selark gets himself killed and we get personally asked to go to this place? Too convenient to be a coincidence.”
The woman in-between them, remaining quiet for the entire time until now started blinking rapidly. Like someone finally waking up from a deep daydream they had been deeply invested in before quickly looking around with a shocked look on her face.
“Wait? Where am I? What is this?!” She said, panicking before looking down at herself. “Am I?! Oh Gods, what the hell happened to my body?!” She yelled, starting to have some kind of panic attack.
“Oh, come on ‘Cycera’…not this again.” Torthor responded, putting his hand on her face to keep her quiet while adjusting the small circlet on her head. Noone making any attempt to help either of them, like he had already handled the problem before it even began.
After whatever it was he was doing, her breathing slowed, her movements became less erratic and the tense panic that had filled the air quickly calmed down back into the peaceful bliss it once was before. Once she had fully stopped, the mage let go, putting his hands back down while the woman in question looked like she was daydreaming once again.
“So uhmm…what’s the deal with that?” Oriath asked, looking down at Torthor, due to himself being at least 7 feet tall. He was new to this specific group after all, and while trusting that everything was alright, his curiosity prevented him from keeping quiet.
“Apologises, that happens sometimes…” Torthor began, looking over to his teammate. “She’s a…Geminite.” He began; the term was very common. One used for when someone has 2 different identities bound in one soul so deeply both parts make up the one soul. “Cycera is one of these people. Cycera, a powerful battle mage with powerful healing capabilities and then there’s also ‘Carcan’…he’s basically the same but not as loyal to the Theocracy as Cycera.”
“He? What do you mean ‘he’?” Oriath responded, still confused on a different area of that part of the topic.
“Yeah, Carcan is a male…so what the Theocracy did was make that circlet to permanently supress Carcan in particular while giving access to Cycera. The problem is Carcan’s will power is much stronger than Cycera’s, they didn’t know he was a Geminite until he let it slip out at some meeting or whatever, so some mages made a way to basically give us the ‘Cycera’ personality 24/7, physically and mentally speaking.” Torthor responded plainly, showing absolutely no sympathy for either person.
“Bit rough, isn’t it? I mean, its not my place to judge the subject or anything.” Oriath asked, silently asking for Torthor’s opinion without explicitly saying it.
“Maybe, but you know how the Theocracy is, resourceful with whatever they can be resourceful about, that’s just how you have to run a nation free from the creatures of beasts of the demi-humanoids and Inhumanoids.” Torthor responded, giving a response based purely on logic rather than personal emotion or opinion.
The woman in-between them, shook her head suddenly and looked over at them. “Sorry, must have zoned out again. What did I miss?” She asked innocently, likely completely unaware of what had just happened moments ago.
Before either could respond to her question, a voice from a few feet away called out to them. “Hey, you three! Come here!” It was Alasarn, calling them over to begin discussing the plans on what to do next as others who were standing a few feet away also approached.
Finally getting to the group, the way cleared properly and they all saw what had been hidden behind the hill. An enormous castle stood before them, it looked as dark as the night sky and as intimidating as a real dungeon, a building that seemed to have countless different areas, rooms, pathways and more. Yet, for something that seemed too ancient, it also somehow looked so well kept, like it was taken care of, or it was taking care of itself for all this time.
“Alright, so tomorrow we go in, get what we need and get out, alright?” Garrak asked, looking around to them all, a few of which simply nodded at him. “Alright, here’s the plan…”