A return home

[Ebiris]

'Once more, she's right there!' Marie protests as Antenora seeks to provoke Sharess.

"Mmm," Alicia only hums thoughtfully. "Really there's no telling how many might have tried it over the eons and been lost to the attempt, we only have the successful ones to look at. Even then... perhaps something did go wrong with Eblis and that's why he immediately fell, whereas Antenora remains much as she was?"

"Personally I think he was just rotten deep down and becoming One forced him to own it instead of repressing," Marie speaks up, ruffling the freshly risen deity's hair. "Antenora's too honest for that."

[Anastasia]

Antenora blushes but smiles at Marie. "Thank you," she says, "It may be true. Della emerged during that. Perhaps a dark side for Eblis appeared and without aid, he was unable to defend against it?"

"I wonder, such as why similar celestials fell," Mystra remarks as Jessica comes over, carrying a large tray of roast meat, while Latha carries a platter of vegetables and finger foods.

"For now though," Sharess purrs, "Lunch and then a cat nap."

[Ebiris]

"Ahh, thank you Jessica," Alicia says, leaning back in her chair and turning around a bit so she can reach over and help herself to the spread.

"Yeah, I'm starving after all that swimming!" Marie disentangles from Antenora to snag something herself.

[Anastasia]

The food's as great as you'd expect. Everyone eats, a pause to simply enjoy the spread Jessica prepared.

As you eat, you hear it and feel it. Amid the sea of prayers and storm of requests? "Saint Alicia," The man's prayer is rough, a voice unknown to you. "I don't know much about this, but I know it hurt my brother and Hand bad. It's bad. I feel it. If you're real, if you listen, can you help?"

Antenora cocks her head to the side, "Beg pardon? I was lost in my own thoughts."

"No one said anything," Jessica says, then smiles, "A sign that I did all of this right!"

[Ebiris]

"You might be hearing prayer, Antenora," Alicia says softly, focusing on her own. She looks at the source of her own latest prayer to see who it is and what sort of state he's in.

[Anastasia]

Mystra looks up from her own meal. "Yes. You will off and on until you reach your full blossoming. That is normal."

You see it in your mind's eye. A big, scarred man wearing torn leather armor and clothes. A broken sword is before him. A sword of green metal - Baatorian Greensteel. Shards of it are missing, chunks of it just not where they're supposed to be.

[Ebiris]

She does a bit of divination and mental probing to get some more context on what happened to him and the sword and who/what Hand is!

[Anastasia]

Hand is a man, greasy haired and strong. He lies a little away, a wound burning with flickers of green fire. You can sense it, a fragment of the blade is within him.

The sword itself is Magalab, a sword of a pain devil serving Hell. It breaks off pieces of itself into those hit, causing them painful wounds that ultimately kill them.

The two plus a third who rather resembles the man praying battle the pain devil. They're badly outmatched but somehow hang in there - until it's only the praying man left, at which point his blade catches a flaw in the blade and cleaves through, taking the devil's head with it.

[Ebiris]

Where is this guy? In a dungeon, a house, a forest...?

[Anastasia]

He lies at the entrance of a crumbling ruin, wounded himself and kneeling besides the blade. Beyond it is open desert, arid and desolate.

[Ebiris]

With Antenora's ascension still fresh, Alicia is inclined to be a bit more direct in how she responds to prayers right now. Still, just having an angel drop in to heal them would probably rankle and beg the question of where said angel was while they were fighting for their lives.

Instead a gust of wind blows in from the desert, blowing in sand to lightly dust the flagstones of the ruin they're in. All except for one particular stone within the man's field of view, which remains entirely clean of any sand, indeed any that was already on it got blown away by the gust.

A little bit of reality altering ensures that there is now a hollow under that stone, containing a preserved healer's kit and three potions of cure moderate wounds. The kit will have everything he needs to try removing the sword fragments from his brother and friend, and the potions are just there as a little extra to show her appreciation for killing a troublesome devil, and to get them back on their feet for anything else in the ruin that might threaten them.

It doesn't matter if he's not very skilled at caring for the wounded, Alicia will help him in spirit so long as he makes the effort.

I'll give him divine insight for +15 on his heal checks assuming he gets that far and tries to fix them up.

[Anastasia]

The man looks up at the wind, grimacing and...

> roll 1d20+4 Perception
<Penuche> Kotono invokes Penuche's magic: < 5 > [d20=1]

He doesn't seem to notice it at all.

[Ebiris]

Alicia sighs audibly.

Back in the desert, the flagstone in question abruptly cracks in two with a loud noise.

[Anastasia]

Mystra reaches out and lays a warm hand on your shoulder. "I understand." she says, a voice of long suffering. "The only thing worse than mortals turning their nose up at aid they ask for is being so unperceptive as to miss an obvious omen."

> roll 1d20+4 Perception he won't manage another 1, right? Right?
<Penuche> Kotono invokes Penuche's magic: < 6 > [d20=2]

The man sees the stone and gasps, hurrying over to it and removing it.

In the meantime Syala just sighs as well. "Sharess, did I ever miss any that badly?"

"Mmm-hmm?" Sharess agrees, "It happens sometimes. Why, one time I spelled a message out in the apples of the tree and you somehow missed it. I think you were daydreaming. It was there for days and you never once looked up at the right angle. Then I moved it and you looked at the other angle instead. Mrr, the problem is that even observant people miss things, and it can drive the times you work in mysterious ways mad."

[Ebiris]

"He got it on the second time at least," Alicia says, still monitoring so she can aid his healing attempts. "If he'd missed that I'd have been tempted to just heal them all directly even though I shouldn't reward obliviousness."