Parallel Hearts

Part I: Chapter 5 - Dark Meetings

Several Hours Later
Terath

Liam and Ogluz exited the system of caverns that night with their pockets heavier with coin and other treasures. Liam held in his inventory a large bag of enchanted alabaster scales and a handful of the Grunslaug's lucky silver scales.

They didn't manage to get its moonstone eyes, but the sightless, wingless dragon would respawn in its lair deep in the caverns once again in seven day's time. For now, Terath was a little safer for the time being and they had achieved their raiding goal.

Liam looked up at the moons in the sky; despite nighttime only lasting a few hours in the game, it was his favorite time to play. Distant galaxies and a phenomenon visually similar to aurora borealis painted a myriad of colors against the deep blue sky, studded with thousands of gleaming stars of all sizes. Fireflies blinked lazily in the darkness around them.

"Well Og," Liam said, and looked around for Oz, "are you ready to investigate the talisman?"

Ogluz was already etching a series of glowing lines on the ground for an etherportal.

"Thought you'd never ask," Ogluz muttered, still perturbed from earlier when Liam forbid him from using flames in the cave out of fear of melting the ice stalactites.

Ogluz breathed flames on the symbol he etched into the ground and the lines ignited and warped up into a shimmering door.

Ogluz blinked out of existence and back into form atop Liam's shoulder.

Liam made a few complex gestures and the door slowly opened to show the same town as before, but this time in the distance.

Together, they walked through the door...

...and appeared on the other side in the outskirts of Drullin.

Although it was nighttime in Drullin, the light of the moons revealed dying grasses along a dusty, uneven dirt road into town. Sticking to the cover of the few remaining trees, he walked slowly toward the town.

They passed a dried up well just outside the town gates, which were now piles of rotting lumber on either side of the road.

"Og?" Liam whispered.
"What?" Og said flatly.
"Does something seem... off to you?"

Ogluz closed his eyes and glowed red like an ember, and then back down into his usual ball of lightly flickering black and silver flames.

"Something off? I would say all things are off here. I don't sense any living, nor do I sense any dead."

Liam paused beneath the last tree-covered area and whispered a few words with another hand gesture.

He could not cast true invisibility, but he could conjure shadows to twist small amounts of light for a period of time. If someone did not expect to see him, then all they would see was a slightly warped version of what was supposed to be there, as though the person were looking through old glass. It worked even better at night.

Ogluz did not require a shadow bend cantrip; he simply chose to whom he would reveal himself and when.

"What about the talisman?" Liam whispered, moving out from behind the last tree.

Ogluz paused for a moment again, and then shook his head, "it's still in that upper left room of the inn over there, and that's all I can sense."

Drullin wasn't much more than a few houses, a smithy, a shop or two, a town hall building, and the inn, all of which were situated around a town square that had seen better days.