Mayor Bill sat at his desk,
nervously wringing his hands, while throwing yet another letter asking when the
haunted house problem will be solved into the trash. Suddenly, the door was
ripped from its hinges and thrown against the floor, splintering into several
pieces. Standing where the door used to be was an unkempt goblin covered in
wolf hide. He had a metal hand with spikes on the knuckles. As Bill was about
to ask who the heck this goblin was, a strange, robed raven-person wielding a
staff materialized out of thin air in front of him. The goblin was followed
into room by an armored knight and a humanoid creature made of wood, stone, and
metal. Then a female cat-person gracefully leaped through the window, followed
by a loud thud as an armored minotaur tried to jump through the window, banged
its horns on the top of the window frame, and fell in a heap outside. After a
few seconds, the minotaur got up and clumsily climbed through the window,
destroying a large portion of the frame in the process.
“We’re here about the haunted house,”
the knight stated. He proceeded to pull out a notice that was torn from the
adventurer’s guild board and thrust it toward the mayor.
“Wha- . . . You . . . Ca- . . . You
can’t just break in here like that! What the heck?” stammered the mayor,
swiping the paper from the knight’s hand.
“Yes, we can. Now, about that quest
. . .” the knight said impatiently.
“No. That’s not how this works.
This is my office!” the mayor shouted, his face turning red. He tried to
throw the notice at the knight’s face. It instead wafted onto the desk, tipping
over an inkwell. The mayor glared at the spreading puddle.
“Just give us the quest!” the
goblin shouted angrily and slammed his enchanted mace onto the desk, snapping
it in half.
The mayor gulped and jerked back in
his chair. “O- . . . OK . . . I’m paying a reward of six thousand gold to any
adventuring party who is able to end the threat of the haunted house that’s
been plaguing our town.”
“Good. We’ll go do that,” assured
the knight, striding out of the room. As the rest of his band followed him, no
one noticed the cat-person swipe an inch-tall, jade figurine of a dog from atop
the remains of the mayor’s desk . . . or the ink spreading across the floor
toward the mayor’s toppled candle.
As the adventurers were nearing the
outskirts of town and could see the haunted mansion looming in front of them,
Cloud, the cat-person began sniffing the air curiously. “Does anyone else smell
smoke?” The group looked around for the source of the smell. The goblin, Hamawk,
spotted a column of smoke rising from the town square. He turned to the
raven-person with a raised eyebrow and asked, “Boomer, is this your handiwork?”
“You knoweth not how wrong you are,
you naïve fopdoodle, for your reasoning loops in circles like my juggling
balls.” Like all other raven-folk, Boomer is only capable of verbally
communicating through the mimicry of sounds and phrases he’s heard before (in
this case, from an obnoxious, drunken jester hurling insults in a tavern, just
before being hit over the head with a bottle).
“I . . . stand corrected,” replied
Hamawk, a bemused look on his face.
“It was a fair question. You do have
a tendency to destroy things,” observed Rusty, the mechanical warrior.
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you!”
grumbled Hamawk, pointing at his metal hand, which replaced the one Rusty
relieved him of when they were on opposite sides of a recent goblin-gnome land
war.
“All’s fair in love and war.”
quoted Boomer. Hamawk sneered and quickened his pace toward the mansion.
“We’re here!” shouted Sir Kevin,
the knight, over the petty bickering as he rolled his eyes.
In front of them stood a modest, dilapidated, two-story mansion, which looked like it had not been inhabited in many years, but for the candles that were lit inside. “Let’s kill some ghosts!” shouted Sir Kevin, flinging open the door and boldly stepping inside.” As the last of the adventurers entered the structure, the door slammed shut behind them and a crack of thunder rang out as rain began pelting the windows, despite the fact that it had been a sunny day only moments before.
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