Saved by the Baron
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 54433
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"Hold it, Boz!"
Boz stopped, the knife just inches from Mistake's throat. The voice - no, it couldn't have been him. He had been taken care of, so nicely, so easily. He wasn't supposed to be here. Not at all. Stacy opened her eyes and saw a man behind her captor waving a large piece of paper with his left hand. He was tall, and well built, and something about the angry scowl on his face made him look handsome. A sword hung in a scabbard on his left side, and he wore what must have been the newest style of body armor. Stacy swore she had seen him before, but like so many other memories, this one seemed to elude her when she needed it most. The angry man continued. "You promised me twenty thousand guilders, Boz. Twenty. Thousand. Well, guess what. I checked my Helvetian bank account. Ten thousand. In case you forgot your arithmetic, that's ten thousand less than you promised. You lying, thieving, cheat, I ought to dash your brains out right here for breach of contract." A smile slowly crept onto Boz's face. "Breach of contract, you say? Why don't you check that piece of paper you're holding in your hand?" Stacy noticed an almost imperceptible wave of his hand. He couldn't cast spells without any incantation, could he? The look on the familiar stranger's face told her that, yes, he could. "You're trying to swindle me, Boz. Play me like those other lords you've conned. You changed this contract after I signed it, I don't know how, but I know I agreed on twenty thousand guilders, to be deposited in my Helvetian bank account, at precisely 5:53 A.M. today. And I know that didn't happen." "So what are you going to do about it? Slay me? With what?" Once again, Stacy noticed the hand wave. "With my trusty - Aagh!" The stranger's hand reached his scabbard, only to draw air. "You mean this?" Boz dropped his knife and picked up the shiny sword at his feet with both hands. The mystery man waved his right hand much more broadly, though just as fast as Bill Boz. The knife that Boz had just dropped appeared in that hand. "You're forgetting, you promised me twenty thousand to set this whole thing up. I go through on my deals. But obviously, some people don't. So," he waved the knife around, not threateningly, but playfully, "I'm going to simply forget I had a deal with you." He thrust the knife into the paper, its sharp edges tearing away at the now-void contract. Stacy finally broke loose of her awestruck wonder and managed to cry out a "Sir, please help!" To her dismay, the man put the knife in the scabbard that was too big to hold it. The knife slipped out of sight, and the man seemed defenseless. "Sorry, the whole damsel-in-distress thing really isn't my type." He turned and started to walk away, seemingly oblivious to having lost his sword. "Give...me...the knife." Boz's expression went from slimy to seething. There was something important about that knife, Stacy figured out, and Bill Boz wasn't going to let anyone else leave with it. The man turned around. "Oh, you want your knife back? I don't see what's so special about it, I mean, after all, you did drop it to pick up my sword. If you wanted to keep it so badly, why'd you let me take it?" The necromancer waved his hand, and he turned calm. Too calm. Calm enough that Stacy knew he was planning something. "You frustrate me, Baron. You leave me no choice but to humbly ask you to exchange weapons with me." "Very well, then. We will exchange weapons the traditional way." The man drew the knife back out of the scabbard with some difficulty. "On the count of three, we will both lay our weapons down. One...Two...Three." A clang of metal, two hands waving, and soon the knife was back in Bill Boz's right hand, and the sword back in the Baron's right. The ever-perceptive Stacy, still trying to adapt to this strange world, noticed that the Baron had stuck his left hand in the scabbard right before the count of three. "And now," the Baron continued, "since I have the clearly superior combat weapon, I would advise you to get out of here while you still have a head on your shoulders." Boz backed away, his face contorted with rage, but he knew he was defeated. It only took three quick steps by the baron to send him running for his life. "Pretty good ploy, wouldn't you say," the mysterious baron said as his sword severed the chains that bound her to the cavern wall. "Act like I don't know what the power behind the knife is, then get him to give up his advantage for it." He caught Stacy as she fell down, the chains no longer keeping her straight six inches off the ground. Stacy managed a backhanded "Thanks for saving me, even though you were probably the one who got me in this mess in the first place." "Oh, come off it, Mistake." There was that name again - Mistake. "I simply gave him all the materials he'd need to capture a commander for his undead army. I never thought he'd pick you." She leaned on his shoulder as her legs finally started to get used to walking again. "I might as well toss this sword in the sewer, seeing as it's enchanted with a tracking spell. Too bad, this blade's served the Allar family for decades." Allar - Baron - yes, it had to be the sometimes famous, sometimes infamous Baron Frederick von Allar. She supposed she was familiar enough with him to call him by his first name. "Frederick?" "Come on, Mistake, you haven't called me that since we were children. Your amnesia attack must have been pretty severe this time." Stacy tried again, finally able to stand on her own two legs for a little bit. "Fred?" He looked at her like she was more sane. "Fred, what was so special about that knife?" The Baron pulled a knife out of the scabbard, with a wry smile on his face. Stacy understood at once that Bill Boz had been tricked with a dummy knife. "See, most weapons of death leave an opening for the soul to escape the body. Sometimes it's through the mouth, sometimes it's through the blood, anyway, the point is that it gets out. But these special enchanted knives, they spear the soul when they kill. The soul can't escape, and like a fish on a hook, it's at the mercy of the necromancer. Handy thing to have, if you ever wanted to go into necromancy." He put the knife back in the scabbard; it seemed to Stacy there was some kind of secret pocket for a second weapon in there. "Anyway, I suppose we should get back to the castle. You usually keep a few sets of clothes there, although I wouldn't mind if you delayed putting them on for a while."
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unknown adventurer
1/8/2006 10:49:44 PM
Extending Enabled
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