D&DIVE

Towards the outskirts of a clearing within the jungles of Freydal, the sound of hurried footsteps, uttered curses, and slung spells cut through the silence as a ragtag party of six burst through the flora.

“Don’t stop—don’t any of you dare stop running. Or I swear to my patron that when we return to Fahlmar’s Keep, I will personally have my father execute—AHHH!” a high elf beckoned as one of the troll’s clubs flattened the tree right next to her. “Pelemor, what in the realms are you doing!”

Her pseudodragon grumbled and whined as it zipped around the air trying to taunt the chasing trolls to aim for it, narrowly ducking out of the way each time. “I’m trying, mistress! But it’s kind of your friend’s fault for waking them up.”

Faster than the wind, a blur of blue darted past the warlock and her familiar, slicing and hacking through the foliage and underbrush, clearing the way forward. “Hey, that wasn’t my fault! They were already awake by the time I decided to pickpocket them. Would have been a waste not to!”

As she nearly tripped from the shaking earth, a winged gray figure swooped her up, pirouetting in the air to face the chasing trolls. Hand outstretched, she blasted a column of light right into the face of one of them, blinding it, sending it stumbling into its comrade. “Little devil. Couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, huh?”

Beneath them, a large dire wolf tore into the ankles of another troll, ripping flesh and muscle clean off the bone. It chased after the pack of goblins that acted as the trolls’ posse, nicking them up by their necks before slamming them back into the dirt. Howling, it fell behind a few paces to get between the feet of yet another troll, leaping up towards its thighs for the chance to drag it down with its sharpened fangs.

Ahead of the entire party, their fearless leader—the hooded wood elf—blazed a trail through the last bits of jungle with her glaive, decapitating and skewering the remaining relentless goblins that dared to lay a hand on her. “Doesn’t matter who did what—we’re almost there. One final push! We could use a bit more firepower here. Any second now, Eliza.”

Holding onto her flying broomstick for dear life, the blonde Eliza forced her mount to race past their leader, and at the final stroke before they reached the clearing, she cast her hand back and evoked a spell.

“F-F-Fireball!”

“Wait, Eliza—no—!”

BOOM.

Six bodies—singed, battered, and limp—came flying through the air from the aftermath of the fiery explosion of Eliza’s haphazardly cast spell. One by one, they landed onto a mixture of stone tiles and grass while being showered by troll and goblin remains from above. 

This is I.V.E., an up and coming adventuring group from the south side of the Hangrian Peninsula. Don’t ask for the meaning of that acronym—they swear it exists, they just haven’t come up with a formal one yet. While each member has her own idiosyncrasies, they’ve banded together to form their colorful party, each of them filling a vital role during their marvelous misadventures.

One such misadventure is this one.

As the party gathered their bearings once more, Eliza fought the urge to vomit upon seeing the twitching of a severed troll arm, only to have that disgust converted into fear as a glaive punctured it through the wrist.

“Ya, what was that about just now? I thought we said we were going to take this party thing more seriously now that we’re no longer rookies,” their leader raised, hoisting the troll hand up like a trophy with her weapon. “I thought I told everyone to leave the amateur stuff behind. Why didn’t you aim the fireball further back? You know you could have hit us too, right?”

“E-Eugene, I’m sorry … I swear … I didn’t mean to hurt you o-o-or anyone else for that matter,” Eliza apologized, fingers trembling around her broomstick. “I-I just … Everything happened so fast that I-I-I barely had time to think, and—.”

“You can’t keep doing this,” Eugene interjected, staring her dead in the eye, hands still gripping her glaive. “You have to control your powers. Your magic. I don’t want another repeat of the Kreygor incident.”

A lump formed in Eliza’s throat when she recalled said incident. Oh god, all those poor orphans. It still plagued her at night—their screams. “I … Ok … I’ll try …”

“You keep trying, Eliza. You keep saying that. And look where that’s gotten us,” Eugene sighed, gesturing to the rest of their party, who were in different states of dishevelment and disarray. “You’re strong—I know you are. But you need to have more confidence in yourself. Otherwise …”

“Ya, Eugene-unnie?” the blue tiefling called out, waving both hands at their leader. “I’ve scouted the area. Let’s discuss tactical.”

“Coming! Lilianna, go grab Autumn too. I think she’s having too much fun eating all the … remains.” Before jogging of, Eugene gave Eliza a final nod of acknowledgement. “I trust you. You know I do. So don’t betray that trust.”

“I … I’ll do my best.”

The sound of fluttering feathers roused Eliza from her spiraling thoughts. Beside her, a gray figure in twintails landed with a kneel, wings sparkling for a second before dissipating into nothingness once again. “Are you alright? I was worried you might have casted with some wild magic again.”

Eliza pouted and tugged on the aasimar’s chainmail. “Am I really that … unreliable in everyone’s eyes?”

Sensing something was off, her friend scrunched her nose and picked up Eliza’s hand. “What’s wrong? We made it out. Alive. Like always. That’s all that matters.”

“Reina, you … I saw you almost get beaten to a pulp by one of those trolls … If I was any quicker, th-then maybe … maybe you wouldn’t have cut it too close. Maybe … maybe we wouldn’t have been this roughed up.”

“Bah, you worry too much, Eliza,” Reina assuaged, smacking her friend in the butt, fingers digging into her arcane robes. “I can pull my own weight. The others can too. Just do your own thing however you want to. Only you can decide what—.”

Shatter.

“Ya, Rei-unnie! That’s already metagaming!” Leeseo called out, huffing with a cross of her arms. “It’s fine if you want to console your girlfriend in-game, but at least do it in character. In character!”

“Huh? Since when did you care about metagaming? And what’s with that LARP-ing attitude of yours,” Rei clapped back, rubbing her fingers against the back of Liz’s palm, dice still in her other hand. “It’s just a game, aegi. Don’t get too serious about it.”

Leeseo was about to throw a fit when Yujin called them all to attention. “Ok, that’s enough. We all play how we want to. So long as it doesn’t derail things, it should be fine. You two—go back to that scene.”

Rei and Liz nodded in unison before facing each other again, a faint blush scattered across their faces as they resumed the heartfelt conversation.

Shatter.

“—damn it, where was I? Right! In the heat of battle, only you can decide what’s the best thing you can do. After all, you’re our one and only Eliza Benett! The valedictorian of her year at Strixhaven—.”

“Stop …”

“—the youngest wizard to have ever received the Archanomachia’s blessing—.”

“Reina … I—.”

“—and the most talented woman I know,” Reina finished, holding up Eliza’s hand by her lips, kissing her sweating fingers gently. “Ya … When you’re backed into a corner, don’t forget what you’re made of, Eliza. I don’t know what Eugene said to you, but to me? You’re the best among all six of us.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better … aren’t you?” Eliza mewled, shying away deeper into her robes. “Because if you are, it’s … it might be working …”

Chuckling, Reina pulled the whimpering wizard in for a tight embrace. “I’ll always believe in you, jagi. You need to believe in yourself more too. Now, let’s go join the others.”

“Ok …”

When the two rejoin their companions, they were already huddled by a flat-topped rock, where a map of the Freydallian wilds was laid across it.

“Alright, now that we’re all here, Lilianna, if you would?”

The blue tiefling saluted and took center stage by their leader’s side. “Right, right. Ok, get this—based on my sources from the Ultroch underbelly, they have good reason to believe that the artifact we’re looking for is located at this very temple.”

“The Horn of Elysia you mean?” Victoria asked, tossing her hair back as she looped her luscious mane through her golden accoutrements for a fourth time now. “What’s treasure like that doing in the middle of nowhere? Let alone an … eery looking temple.”

“It must have belonged to someone at some point,” Autumn chimed in while she licked the backs of her hands as if she were still in her wolven form. “Although this temple does creep me the hell out. Abandoned?”

“I’m sensing some dark energies from it. I can’t tell what, but … there’s definitely something in there. Something we don’t want to mess with the wrong way,” Reina pointed out, resting her folded arms atop the halfling’s head. “We should probably camp out here before storming it. We’re still a bit banged up from the trolls. Head inside tomorrow?”

Eugene shook her head, tapping a finger on the map. “We don’t have much time. It’s another two and a half days back to the village. If we wait another day, we won’t make it back in time to use the horn on their crops. Meaning they don’t make it to harvest day. Meaning we lose our one way ticket into the Continentarian Alliance.”

“The Alliance …” Eliza repeated under her breath.