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Iaus Innskeep sat down heavily on the mushroom speckled log fallen beside the path. He paid no attention to the shower of rotted bark this caused nor to the fleeing harvest-spiders. He also paid no attention to the three people gathered around him.
Father Westpike was the first to speak. “Is that…is there a dagger… ah… stuck in his back?”
Rowena wiped blood from her face and grimaced at the burn. “At least I was only clawed on the back. Soren, you don’t have a shadow of the dagger you stabbed your evil animated shadow monster with still in your chest, do you?”
The Ranger glanced down at himself, even though he knew the wound over his heart was clear. “No,” he said slowly, “but my dagger has a—special property which may make it difficult to duplicate”.
“Yes, yes”, the older Cleric said. “That is right. Soren, you know magic weapons, weapons of darkness. Take a look and tell us what you think. I can cast a Bless on it if it is seen to be radiating evil.”
Soren looked at Father Westpike for a long moment, but then settled himself on the log behind Iaus.
“‘You’ll be fine’ my arse”, Iaus growled at him. “Next time I look at you it’s gonna be through my crossbow sights. Don’t touch it!”
Soren took his hand back and just looked. The dagger appeared to be shadow-black bone, though the size and shape was similar to the one Iaus had used to attack his own shadow monster. It had the same curved hilt and, where the blade was not sunk completely into the warm grey flesh, it was similarly serrated. But there were differences--the serrations on the black dagger were sharp but ragged, and not the clean, pure lines he knew well of bone carved deep with steel. This looked unsettlingly like the blade’s edges had been less sculpted and more, well, gnawed.
Rowena held the lantern closer and tried not to look like she was feeling a bit guilty about encouraging Iaus to just stab his damn shadow already. She didn’t tell him to hit it that hard! And when did he listen to anyone anyway? She fingered her harp absently with the hand not otherwise occupied and tried to remember the tune she had played during the last rest, the one that Iaus had said was not ‘too terrible’. She could play it again. “Is it bad?”
Soren switched his attention from the dagger itself to where it was imbedded in the Tiefling’s back. The wound wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either, if he was being absolutely honest. It was a bit too low for aesthetic perfection, and hitting that close to the spinal cord was just asking for your prey to be paralyzed before you wanted them to be. And really—
“No, Soren” he cut himself off. “Not like that.”
“Ahem, what I meant to say is the wound is very nice”, he reassured Iaus and Rowena both. “It didn’t catch the bone and the bleeding is as slow as you could want”.
It looked like he had taken a bit too long with the reassurance—Rowena was now repeating ‘No, No, No’ in the background, and Iaus’s sleek muscles tensed around the blade and he started to stand up.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Soren wrapped his arm around Iaus’s waist and held him gently in place, tracing a soothing circle over his uninjured side.
The Tiefling sighed and curled forward over the arm around him. “Only when I’m laughing.”
“Yeah, okay” Rowena broke in. “No one is gonna be laughing. Cuz, get over here and bless this thing so we can get it out”.
Father Westpike held up the golden sun symbol of his faith and began his prayer.
“Like calls to like—twinned Shadow born of fear
Cold silence then and now combined to blight
Darkness falls not on those who’s wrong it is—
Shadows are cast by those who hold the light
Lord of Light, drive out the shadow of evil!”
Divine light gathered around the cleric and where the sunlight fell on the twisted dagger, it hissed and bubbled and dissolved in a spray of bone and crimson-black blood. Iaus slumped further as the wound began to bleed freely and Soren pressed a cloth over it, applying even pressure with hand and arm.
“I’ve had worse”, Iaus mumbled.
Rowena looked around, tired and hurting herself, noting their wounds and the dead bodies surrounding them. “Let’s just move over here a ways and have a short rest. I can play a little song and we’ll all feel better. Then we can deal with this.”
The team rested mostly in silence (though Iaus tapped his foot twice to the soothing music--it wasn’t too terrible this time), tending their bodies and minds torn by the surrounding nightmares and preparing themselves for the nightmares still to come. For the short rest was only an illusion of well-being, and all too soon it would be time to continue on down the path again to seek the missing children in the Domain of the Nameless God.