Chapter 156: Jellybean break

Chapter 156: Jellybean break

Petey and Milo sat in the cave next to Smiley, eating jellybeans. Petey checked on Smiley, took his pulse, turned him a bit and got him to swallow a couple of jelly beans and some water. "We need to get him to the Old Healer. Whatever he's suffering from looks close to the same as whatever has happened to Bleusnout."

He sat down next to Milo, and poured out a bag of jellybeans. Milo detected a slight magical glow to them "One of the bushes my clan has is old. Old enough that it might be older than the clan. Like older than cheese kind of old. No one remembers how we got it. Three others are only a couple of decades old and were brought to us by my great uncle. Good job on finding him, by the way. Got rid of some old grudges and relieved some tension in the older folks."

"Anyway, the beans off of the old one gain some nice effects if they ripen long enough." He made a small pile of six red beans, one blue bean, and three yellow beans. He swept the rest back into his bag. "The reds will keep healing you up. The blue prevents infection, and bleeding, and the yellows are for poison. Frankly, you should be worse off. Char would have been using poison."

Milo took the rest, but handed the yellows back. "She did. I'm more resistant to poisons than she thought. It was her claws that tore me up. I underestimated her. And I didn't take into account the cheese. I had no idea that cheese could give that much of a boost, and she had a large supply of it. And when she turned into a fiend? Even sparring with Larry didn't prepare me for that."The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.

Petey smiled at him. "Yeah, but Larry is a sweetheart down deep. He was always a good kid. Charlotte? Sort of the opposite. Spoiled and entitled. Not always, we had some good times together. For a few years it was me, her, and the twins always getting into trouble together. Then our training started up, and the competition to get a Master Ring changed all of us. Char started only caring about char. She wanted that ring badly. Everyone had to be very careful around her. Sparring could turn into a real fight, instantly. And don't get me started on how bad she got if you scored on her playing Surprise. She was so mad at you!

That's the big difference between fighting Larry and fighting char. When you spar, Larry isn't trying to kill you. Keep that in mind the next time you get into a fight. If the other guy is trying to kill you, all the rules get thrown away, except trying to survive."

Milo thought about that, and agreed with Petey. Sometimes it wasn't a game. He had fought tooth and claw against Salasha, he needed to remember that more fights would be like that. "So, what does the Hollow's new Deathmaster think is going on?"

Petey suddenly had a very neutral and stupid look on his face. "Gosh, I don't know. What does the Scout Master think?"

Milo needed to practice that face, Petey did it very well. "I think you spent years making people underestimate you." They both chuckled. Milo looked over at Smiley. "Rifkin is lying about things. His story just doesn’t line up. And if he's lying about some things, he's probably lying about a lot of things. I ask myself why someone would want to hurt Master Bleusnout, and the obvious answer is the person who benefitted the most."

Petey nodded. "Charchar was talking a lot of bullshit, trying to confuse you, but some of what she said sounded true. How 'Rif' wants to change things in the Hollow. I bet that's the argument he used to convince her. I also wonder about that cheese she was eating. Pretty advanced stuff. None of the battle cheese Bleusnout makes could make someone go fiend so quick."

Petey looked over at Smiley. "Another thing to consider is that Smiley was a better Chef's assistant than Rifkin. He did the job, was patient, and had that goofy grin that put people at ease. And he was good with the cheese. I think Rifkin was worried that he'd be assistant chef forever, and Smiley would be the next Master."

The attack on the caravan came in the early hours of the morning. The mostly human raid was well rested and healed up. Six thieves and assassins using stealth and Shadow Walker potions worked their way silently to the start of the ratkin dungeon. Using sign language, they discussed the next move.

"It looks like a circus in there! Pretty festive. And see that herd of draft animals? Those are to pull the wagons"

"Not many guards, but they have decent armor and weapons. Do you think we can thin them down at all?"

"How about we backstab some of the ratkin feeding the animals, then take their clothing. With disguise and the darkness, I bet

we can surprise some guards. Make sure to tuck a piece of rope in the back of your belt for a tail."

"We need a druid down here. Which one can actually move silently?"

"That's Duskarrow. He's working on a combo of archery and druid for the toxins. Sort of a range assassin. Why?"

"The Panic Animal spell. If we get those beasts upset, the guards will focus on them, not us."

Nods all around set the plan in motion. One person went back looking for the Druid, and four others started moving up behind the ratkin who were feeding the lizards and oiling their skins. The last thief told Brannigan the plans, and the raid leader moved the raid up as far as he could.

The players left nothing to chance. Four of them attacked at once against a lone ratkin, then moved to the next. One by one they killed the lizard herders and took their clothing. They moved through the animal herd until they were close to the guards. Duskarrow snuck up to the herd. Lizards were different from cows and horse, but still, this should work fine. The spell went into the animals’ minds and made them think that a predator was attacking. They'd all run from the imaginary beast, causing havoc in the little circus while the rest of the raid moved into the cavern and set up for a charge. As more ratkin came out of the village, they'd hit them with superior firepower and whittle them down.

The spell was cast, the animals looked up in panic and began to move. Brannigan gave the signal for the raid to begin.