the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

"If there is going to be trouble soon I guess I should be practicing, too."

[neverbeatme]

"You might as well even if there isn't. You have the bow, and even though it still works when you don't know how to use it, it works best when you do. You know?"

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. It's a good thing it's a ranged weapon, if I had a sword and shield like you somebody could yank my staff away from its loop on my bag and then where would I be?"

[neverbeatme]

"Falling over, probably."

[deepest_magic]

"Not very effective."

[neverbeatme]

"Definitely not as effective as you could be. I don't think there are many situations that could be improved by you falling over more."

[deepest_magic]

"And probably none of those situations are in combat. Do you suppose we ought to have been more proactive about looking for and capturing the Witch's surviving soldiers?"

[neverbeatme]

"We found the ones we could find with the resources we had. I'd much rather be dealing with them now, with everybody well-fed and happy and all the roads and bridges and wells and my armour and your bow and all the knights who know anything about fighting, than right after we won with pretty much nothing but my sword and an untrained, disorganized quasi-army. However much consolidating they've been able to do since then, I'd be very, very surprised if it was anywhere near as much as we have."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah, that makes sense. But I'm wondering if we're going to be attacked, or if the presents are enough information to let us go looking for and surprise them before they go after us."

[neverbeatme]

"I guess we'll see. And I'll take this as a cue to start organizing the fighting knights into an army."

[deepest_magic]

"And I suppose we can see if any of the winged horses want to be ridden into battle when we have more than usual reason to imagine one might happen."

[neverbeatme]

"That would be helpful. Especially if we can get the dwarves to produce decent armour for them... I'll look into it."

[deepest_magic]

"You look really nice in your armor," blushes Isabella.

[neverbeatme]

"Thank you," says James. "It's nice armour. I'm very fond of it. Is there something you want to talk about, here?"

[deepest_magic]

"Um."

[neverbeatme]

"'No' is an acceptable answer, I'm not trying to put you on the spot or anything."

[deepest_magic]

"Is 'yes but not talking about it works for me too if talking about it would be weird' usable?"

[neverbeatme]

"Yes. Would talking about it be weird? I don't think talking about it would necessarily be weird."

[deepest_magic]

"Well, I wouldn't know, you see."

[neverbeatme]

"Wouldn't you?"

[deepest_magic]

"If it would be weird? No, I don't know."

[neverbeatme]

"Well, based on current estimates of projected weirdness levels, what are we going to do?"

[deepest_magic]

Isabella laughs.

"I think me and my notebook are going to go somewhere and I will get back to you?"

[neverbeatme]

"Sure, sounds good."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella sneaks one more peek at James-in-armor and then scurries away.