The Heavenly Host

“Which is where I want to be! This place is really wears one out,” Tizzy said. “I’ve been baking all night.” He shook his head. “This place encourages bad habits.” He pulled his pipe from behind him suddenly and lit up.

“So, can you check with Gastropé?” Tom asked. “I assume he’s going to want some time to get somewhere private.”

“Sure, he owes me one. When do you want to do it?” Tizzy asked.

“Well, everyone needs to get up yet, so maybe early afternoon in Astlan?”

Tizzy frowned. “I had planned to be out of it by then; I guess I could nap now, then open the link, you do your hijacking thing and then I continue my siesta.”

“That works.” Tom was a bit surprised that Tizzy did not want to go back to Astlan and torment Gastropé and Jenn.

∼

Finding a private room for lunch in Murgatroy proved extremely vexing. It would have been quite nice to rent out a small back room of a tavern for lunch so that everyone could talk privately. However, that had not proven possible, so they had gathered food and drink at the market and one of the taverns and gone on a picnic. They had debated going into the woods, but Teragdor had suggested heading to a small copse on the plain, out past the wargtown. The forest on the other side of town was too likely to contain hidden listeners.

They were a rather odd lot that certainly would have attracted eavesdroppers: Stevos, herself and her aging grandfather, all of whom were well dressed by local standards, along with a half-orc priest of Tiernon and an ambulatory sword. Interestingly enough, the people of Murgatroy seemed less bothered by a walking, talking sword than those in Freehold. Either that or they were simply used to minding their own business.

Ruiden had insisted on coming along. When they had returned to the hotel and told Ruiden and Danyel that the two of them were going to Murgatroy, Ruiden wanted to know why. Explaining their reasons led the sword to the conclusion that Murgatroy was the last place the demon that had captured Talarius had been; thus, he needed to investigate.

It was, surprisingly, a decent picnic. The weather was nice, they had brought a good-sized blanket to sit on, and Hilda had managed to locate a few bottles of passable wine. The only slightly awkward thing was the way Teragdor kept looking at Beragamos. The awestruck look was amusing at first, but after a while, it started to seem a bit gauche. Although, to be fair to the young lad, he was a lowly itinerant priest stuck in the middle of a place worse than nowhere, and he had probably had to fight his way through incredible amounts of prejudice, as well as actual judgement, to get ordained. Yet, here he was, having lunch with two saints, a sword golem and a legendary figure who actually spoke directly with their god, Tiernon, on a daily basis. Not even the Thaddeus Barolos, the High Pontificate of Tiernon in Astlan, sitting on his holy throne Justicia could make such a claim. It was doubtful the man had even met a saint in the flesh, let alone a Supreme Archon.

Hilda shook her head. When had she become so jaded?

∼

Gastropé pushed the plate towards the center of the table. The local tavern meal had been decent enough by his old standards; unfortunately, he had been completely spoiled on the food on the Nimbus, at the Grove and the alvaren food. He glanced at the candle clock on the left wall of the tavern. He would need to leave soon in order to get to the secure spot he had staked out after Tizzy had contacted him.

The request, while objectively rather odd, was subjectively quite reasonable in the world he currently found himself in. Tom had some people in the Abyss who needed to get back to Astlan and they needed a gateway. Only a few months ago, this would have terrified him on so many levels, but today it seemed like a completely reasonable request.

Gastropé had to chuckle at himself. Ever since the storm lich battle, he had pretended to others on the ship that traveling through the Abyss was old hat for him. Apparently it was, because this just seemed so routine at this point.

“I have to run a small errand,” Gastropé told Jenn.

“What? Where?” Jenn asked, setting her iced tea down.

“Just have a small favor I have to return. I will meet you out at the investigation site by the wargtown.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Jenn asked.

Gastropé forced a smile. “Nah, it’s no big deal, and if we both show up late, people will wonder where we are. You go and let them know I’ll be there in no more than half an hour.”

Jenn shrugged. “Okay. Have fun returning a favor or whatever.” She shook her head, apparently displeased by his rather vague answer. However, he was positive she would not want to know about this.