Getting An Earful

Callum shook off the last vestiges of his enraged persona. He was breathing heavily and knelt in a bloodsoaked area with multiple goblin corpses around him.

The rational part of him knew that, as party members, XP was shared equally in a fair manner; he wouldn't have gotten any more XP if the final blow had been his. But, for a brief instance, his other self wanted to attack his own party members.

He always suffered a physical and emotional backlash when his <<Rage>> state ended. However, this time it seemed to be worse than he had experienced before.

Amarok stuck his head under his limp arm and pressed up against him. He enjoyed the companionship while he scoured his thought processes for any vestiges of his enraged state, the thought of lashing out at his allies scared him.

And he didn't know what to make of his thoughts of his parents and their killers while he had been in that state, he had never thought of anything besides what was in front of him. He didn't even know that he was capable of thinking beyond his immediate circumstances.

His confused internal thought process was disturbed when he realized that a large form was standing over him. He looked up to see who it was, his eyes had to travel a long way until they came to rest on the large form of the Bearfolk.

"Lord Callum, it has been an honor to fight by your side. I'm afraid that my time grows short and I will be unable to accompany you any further," she bowed down slightly as she spoke.

Callum was about to thank her when she dematerialized before his eyes. She was there one second before she quickly faded out prior to the arrival of the next second. Callum agreed with the sentiment Amarok sent him through their connection.

"Yeah, buddy, she was a good packmate. But so are you, thanks for coming over and checking on me," he said as he briefly tightened his arm that was around Amarok.

As he stood up, he shook his head at how the unusual was quickly becoming the norm in his new world. It was almost like he was a completely different person and his life as a farmer was just a realistic dream.

He looked around the room and saw that the other members of his party were looting the numerous goblin corpses found throughout the large hall. Weapons were laying everywhere, scorch marks were on various surfaces, and red or green blood was scattered all over the place.

"Oh, gods, Amarok, you're filthy . . . and so am I," he exclaimed as he finally realized exactly how bloody and gory the two of them looked; bits of viscera and lumps of flesh were stuck to them both. He shuddered as he recalled sliding along the bloody floor due to Osmar's wind spell.

He had been a part of several butchering operations back on his family's farm. But, he never expected to be sliding through the aftermath of a bloody battle; he was just glad that he had turned his head to the side and closed his mouth and eyes.

Just then, a hazy memory of biting a goblin's ear off surfaced in his brain and he realized that his mouth had a bad taste in it. Never in his life did he cast <Clean> as fast as he did in that moment.

He vaguely recalled a couple of other times that he bit the goblins, but he was wracking his brain as he tried to recall one very important detail about the goblin ear incident; he felt a wave of nausea roll over him as he sifted through the hazy memories from when he was enraged.

"Oh, gods, did I swallow that goblin ear or did I spit it out?" he questioned as he hurriedly filled his mouth with water; he rinsed and spit with water until his waterskin was empty.

His cantrip had cleaned out his mouth, but he couldn't help it as his mind, all too readily, recalled the vile taste. It could perfectly recall the taste, but he could not remember what happened to the ear; he dearly hoped it wasn't because his mind had suppressed such a horrible memory.

"You look a little green, are you ok, Callum?" Ravi asked as he approached the distracted man.

"I'm good, I definitely didn't eat a . . . I mean, there's no problem," Callum quickly said.

Ravi looked at Callum after his weird response, Callum had clearly been about to say something else. The two stared at each other for several long seconds.

"Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for helping to save my life earlier. Also, I'm calling an end to our run for today, so pick up all of the goblin gear."

The two carried on a short conversation before they separated. The party piled up everything by the door they had entered through; Trash items, the overwhelming majority, were placed in one large messy pile and, off to the side, the others items were carefully laid out.

During the cleanup, Callum continued to use his cantrip to clean both himself and Amarok. The other members of the party briefly touched base with Callum or Amarok to remark on a particular event in the battle or check on their wellbeing.

Eventually, most of the party stood at the foot of the stairs to the throne while Alea carefully inspected the throne itself. They hadn't found any treasure chests when they swept the hall, but Alea had informed the party that the throne had a heavily trapped secret compartment.

She warily circled the throne multiple times and seemed to be carefully considering the throne; the rest of the party silently waited some distance away. She would occasionally step up and fiddle with something before she stepped back.

After several long minutes, she extracted a vial from the chair and an evil laugh escaped her lips.

"Ooh, well this is an interesting poison. I'm going to claim this as part of my share of the loot," she said with a wide smile on her face. No one in the party contested her claim, she served as the party rogue and heavily relied on stealth and poisons for her damage.

She pocketed the vial and focused her attention on one part of the throne. She pulled out some of her lockpicking tools and started to work on opening up the secret compartment. Callum heard a click and a section of the throne slightly slid out.

Alea verified that there were no other traps before waving the party forward as she fully opened up the compartment.

_____

Loot Acquired

Magic Scroll (Uncommon), Mana Dust (5/5), Goblin Ear, Floor Mark, Beast Core (Common) (Durability: 15/100), 1 gold and 8 Silver.

_____

The party excitedly inspected the loot, they were finally starting to get some decent items from the dungeon. Callum had learned quickly that Goblin Dungeons were typically very stingy with higher quality items; they tended to favor quantity over quality when handing out loot.

The scroll was a fairly powerful AOE ice attack spell. Powerful magic scrolls could be hard to come by; a magic user needed to be significantly higher than the spell they were trying to transcribe and they needed to have the right skills; such as Rune Writing or Arcana.

((A/N: AOE is a common gaming acronym for Area of Effect. In this case, an ice based spell would effect an area instead of a single target.))

Dungeons provided the majority of the scrolls higher than (Common) quality. Generally, (Uncommon) scrolls were the equivalent to a lower leveled Advanced Class spell and were always in high demand.

Mana Dust was useful for enchanting various items, creating scrolls, as well as a key ingredient in some potions; the party received enough Mana Dust for five uses. Callum simply glared at the Goblin Ear.

They gathered everything up that they could carry and went back through the door they had entered from. Instead of returning to the passageway like Callum expected, the party found themselves in an antechamber with various tunnels leading away from it.

Ravi saw the confusion on Callum's face, "Now that we all have Floor Marks, we'll come into this room the next time we enter the dungeon. The three tunnels there lead to the different floors, and this tunnel leads back out."

Callum followed Ravi's pointing and realized that the tunnels leading into the dungeon were marked with their respective floor numbers; there was room for many more tunnels. Callum assumed that they would appear when they gained the right Floor Marks.

They exited out into the early afternoon sun, and saw that the area around the entrance was devoid of life. Either the other groups had been able to enter the dungeon behind them, or they had already returned to the castle.

Callum led the party back a different way than they had taken to get to the dungeon. He was able to spy on the area around his caves from some distance away; the snowstorm had covered up the trails and he couldn't even make out the caves themselves.

Building the blocking walls out of snow served to disguise them, at least from a distance. He was happy that no one could tell they were even there or that they'd been occupied, at least without getting much closer.

He wanted to be able to trust his new tenants, but he still wanted something to fall back on if he needed it.