Fantasy Cursed Island

[Fangs9090]

Emil groaned as he was moved. "I'd never had these before... But I'll not make that mistake again... One at a time."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Emil,' Jerry shook her head, "You're one of three people I trust not to do something stupid the second I turn around."

 

[Fangs9090]

"Sorry. A moment of weakness on my part, as a fruit bat."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry briefly looked like she would slap him. "Take a deep breath Jerry, bury it with the rest," she muttered to herself. "You get a pass because this is the first time you've done something stupid, and you learned from your mistake without needing your nose to be rubbed in it first."

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil nodded. "I'll be more careful from now on. Once my stomach settles, I'll carry the pot over. There are some other pots that are empty but seem similarly enchanted."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"No, you stay here, we'll come pick you up when we get ready to leave," Jerry shook her head, "But, uh," she pulled out the cards, "Shuffle found these, and you know how she is. Can you separate the two decks? Don't open the cards, but, you can tell the set by the back." At least a few cards were missing from each set. One of them was the case Niudisa had found, and the others were probably in Shuffle's bag.

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil looked at the cards and nodded. "Yes, I can do that." He sat up and got work sorting the cards.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Thank you, I'll have Nyah come by with something for your stomach when I find her," Jerry left to go to the other shack with the goblins, Fia, and Nyah. Nyah was trying to calm Nyah down with an illusion tale like she had with Shuffle adn Fia, and it wasn't really working.

"Hey, Nyah? Emil just got sick all over the place in the big hut, can you go give him something to settle his stomach?", Jerry asked.

 

[Fangs9090]

Fia was definitely distracted though, even if she was the one who should’ve been keeping watch. If Jerry hadn’t started speaking, she wouldn’t have noticed her.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry wasn't even mad at Fia, that one was on Nyah. 'Lyak, how do you open your magic wood barriers?' Jerry demanded of the little one. Lyak looked between Jerry and her raka, who by some miracle had passed out. 'You know the deal.' Lyak grumbled and fished a small stone out of her bandages.

'Raka says I'm not supposed to-'

'Raka can tell you whatever he wants, right now what matters is what I tell you.' Jerry took the stone, "And Fia, I know it's easy to get distracted but either of these two can kill the entire party if we don't keep an eye on them. Jerry turned and left to go back to Shuffle with the rock.

--------
Nyah appeared in smoke next to Emil, producing a clear bottle filled with a clear liquid. When she set it on the table next to him, it fizzed. carbon spring water. "This should help settle your stomach."

 

[Fangs9090]

Fia looked at Jerry and nodded, focusing once again on her task and watching the goblins.

—————

Emil jumped as Nyah showed before looking at the bottle. “Ah, thank you.” He took a short break from card sorting to drink from the bottle.

—————

Shuffle was now sitting on top of Raine’s cage, leaning over the edge to look at Raine and moving her ears about.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Without a distraction, the younger goblin began pacing. Scared little thing was never on this end of a hostage situation before.

----------

"Alright, get off the cage," Jerry approached with the key rock and waved it over the bars, which retreated out of the way as long as the rock was near. "Come on out," Jerry smiled at Raine and pantomimed for Raine to come out, it was safe.

 

[Fangs9090]

Fia once again tried whistling, despite that failing to do anything every time she’d tried it before.

—————

Shuffle hopped down from the cage, sitting a short way behind Jerry and smiling at Raine.

Raine hesitated as the cage was open. She cast a glanced at Shuffle before stepping out. She looked around, taking a moment to really process that she was finally out of that cage, before she smiled and stretched her arms above her head.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Good," Jerry ran the stone over the cage some more to see what that did, and somehow it... shrank? The stone pushed back the wood until it was just a small cube no bigger than the stone. "Oh, I'm keeping that!" She pocketed it and turned to rain, squatting to look Raine over. She pointed to herself, "Jerry, friend.' Still thinking Raine's base language was draconic, she said "friend" in that language.

 

[Fangs9090]

Raine seemed to understand the pointing thing for names, at least. She pointed at Jerry. “Jerry.” She then pointed at herself. “Raine.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry nodded, "Good, she understands that much." She turned to Shuffle, "I'm gonna go back to Asta and see if I can figure out how to talk to Raine, you should go see Emil, you might have some more of the cards, he's sorting them out." She gestured for Raine to follow as she made her way back to the hut with the bean jars.

--------------
"That's the last of it," Adran confirmed once the room was bare. 'I think there's two shacks that haven't been gone through yet," he looked out the window at the shack Raine's cage had occupied, and the remaining shack no one had touched yet.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle nodded and ran off, ignoring the bridges entirely to just swim back to the other hut.

Raine watched her go before looking at Jerry. She glanced around before deciding to follow her.

—————

Niudisa nodded. “Hopefully they’ll have something good, too. I think I see why adventurers do this stuff. It’s very rewarding.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Once back in the hut, Jerry moved a seat for Raine and sat down on the other, giving Asta a scritch. "So, you can't understand me, and I can't understand you." This probably wouldn't be as simple as just bleeding for her, either. Well, she had to start somewhere. A good place to start would be to see what she called stuff, figure out what words she used for things. Jerry pointed to one of the books, as though to ask what it was.

------------------
"You know, apparently Jerry used to make a living doing this with people's houses." Adran shook his head as he walked the bridge to the other shacks. "I wonder what kind of cool stuff she found." There was a splash down below as Beri's polymorph wore off and the expansion pushed hiim off of Joanne's lap into the water. from the yowling and screeching and scratching before Beri could get his claws into wood and haul himself out of water, not only did he not expect that, he probably thought he was about to die when he hit that water. "Gods-dammit, now he's gonna be pissed for the rest of the day."

 

[Fangs9090]

Raine took a seat, looking at the book for a moment before she seemed to understand. She point at the book. “Deku.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry nodded and repeated the process with other items, memorizing the words that came out of Raine's mouth. People liked to joke about Common being three languages stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat, but Raine's speech put that to shame.

-------------------------
"It's just... animals?" Adran prodded the runty saurian cage with his foot to get a response, so he could see it better. "Surgical scars, the hell is this guy doing to his pets?"

 

[Fangs9090]

Raine caught on quick, it seemed, and named items as they were presented to her. She was at least intelligent enough to figure out Jerry wanted to communicate more easily.

—————

Niudisa eyed the blight pup. “I think I saw an organization once that would have a fit if they saw this.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Eventually, Raine and Jerry identified enough terms to have simple, if broken conversation. Yes, no, basic sentence. Context could be inferred from body language and how the word was used. It was nowhere near perfect, but it served enough to communicate basic ideas. 'How you captured?'

-----------------------
"That organization would have all our heads," Adran shook his head, "But this goblin is sick."

 

[Fangs9090]

Raine though about it for a moment before doing her best to explain, using her hands to try and show the words she couldn’t figure out how to communicate. It seemed she had been crawling through a small tunnel to escape some manner of beast when the floor of it collapsed and dropped her into the swamp. She’d barely managed to evade the tarrasques, which she described as demon turtles, only to be captured by the goblin.

—————

“Probably. I haven’t heard much from them lately, not since they got in trouble for trying to insist beast races wear collars ‘for their own safety.’”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry choked back a chuckle at "demon turtles". A more accurate name did not exist, it was just funny to hear it come from someone shorter than Shuffle. 'I capture goblin, demon turtles gone.'

-----------------
"I was thinking of a different organization then," Adran remembered the fiasco NIudisa was referring to, though. "I'd like to see someone try to collar Shuffle." Finding nothing of note, and deciding it probably wasn't a good idea to release ill-adjusted corrupted creatures, in the swamp, Adran turned around to go take a look at the remaining shack.

"Oh," this one seemed to be the other workshop, with an alchemy setup more advanced than Niudisa's, walls lined with shelves of potions and dried plants hanging from the rafters. Upon inspection, the alchemy setup folded too. "Well, we hit the jackpot, didn't we?"

 

[Fangs9090]

Raine gave a nod at that. She’d figured something had happened to him. ‘Who you?’

—————

Niudisa shrugged. “Honestly, if no one explained collars to her, they could probably just put it on her and she wouldn’t pay it any mind.” She fluttered after Adran to the next hut. Her eyes lit up as she saw the alchemy setup. “Oh, hell yes.”