Legend of the Crystals

Olivia lifted the cloth that covered the window to her very run-down house, crammed between the others. Her furniture included a bedroll in the corner, a table with a few scavenged chairs in the middle. The entire house was able to fit 6 people, in a sardine fashion.

It wasn't long until the others showed up through the muddy walkways that counted as roads. The farmer's son, Mikel, had clandestinely gathered who he could. But it wasn't much. Olivia let the cloth fall and opened the door, her eyes searching for those who shouldn't be privy to a private conversation. But she eventually gestured them in. The Slums of Dorter was a terrible place to be at night, outside.

Having seated herself, Olivia busies her hands with sharpening the prongs of her lucern hammer with a whetstone, "This all you brought?" Mikel nods. He was a young man with a farmer's tan with a simple white shirt and green breeches. Besides him was an older man in a rag-tag merchant's outfit and leather armor. His name was Maximilian and he had a gold tooth that he licked often. The third person was a young acolyte with long hair, but didn't wear the white and red robes of a priestess, and instead wore the borrowed clothes of her sailor brother. Her name was Alex.

There might have been more that held the secret meeting in mind, but they were running late due to unforeseen circumstances. Dorter was a large city with the budding ideal of becoming free from royal rule; many different things could happen.

Olivia cleared her throat and told the others, "Shut up and pay attention. I'd tell you to sit down, but there's not enough room." The others grew quiet and Olivia pulled a makeshift, rolled up map from underneath her bed blanket. Rolling it onto the small table with the sides drooping, she pointed to one of the roads that ran through Dorter along the western side, "Here. Before they reach the plains. It's as far away as we're going to get from the city limits and those blasted knights. With a lucky wind of black magic, we'll get to the shipment before we have to burn the thing down."

The others weren't so enthused about the idea of torching the caravan, as burnt loot was worth much less than not burnt loot. They each needed money for different reasons. Olivia wrapped up the meeting with, "Be there or be dead. For well known reasons, none of us can survive for very long if word got out of our misdeeds. And I don't mind getting my hands dirty..." She eyed the others and they looked away from her fiery gaze.

It was some time later when they laid out their ambush along the road. Each one nervously waited until nightfall, sharing a last meal together. Just in case.

Leading the Caravan toward The Merchant City of Dorter, Ventis Wolftiya kept reminding himself that he was doing the right thing. The Caravan was owned by a old couple who were Merchants that had hired him to defend them and their inventory. The old Hume insistently kept telling him stories about his exciting life, how he remembered once seeing a Viera when he was a child. Ventis did find the man’s talk interesting but he wanted to keep focused on the road ahead, listening for any danger approaching, Ventis walked with his Holy Lance ready for any bandits or monsters they might encounter. Most of the time bandits were worse to deal with than monsters.

[A holy lance! My, if anyone thought bandits were bad, they have seen very little. This will prove to be a very interesting development. We will give Ventis a 14 on his Perception, for being on the look-out.]

As the caravan neared the city and neared the edge of plains before, there was a large tree blocking the road. The old caravan driver squinted his eyes and leaned over the seat, "What's diss? Tree fell down. There! Boy, move it so we can move." He rubbed his lips about, hacking up some spit to send over the side. The two yellow chocobos tied to the wagon cleaned at their wings in the meantime. The shadows of the later hours fell upon the white lion insignia on the side of the wagon.

When and if Ventis moved to the downed tree, two figures sprout out from the woods in the corner of his eye. One obviously stumbled over the other, who was in a bit of a hurry to get to the back of the wagon. Somewhere, someone swore and snapped their finger. The next moment, another figure pops up from the downed tree with Ventis half-way between her and the back of the caravan. Alex held up her borrowed crossbow, "This, this is a stick-up! Don't move, or I'll shoot!"

There was some low-toned magical chanting of a dark language in the woods, the two male figures reaching the back of the caravan. The lass in front of Ventis was dressed in male's clothing and her voice betrayed her inexperience on this sort of activity.

Alex wasn't completely certain she would hit the poor fellow, but he didn't do anything! What luck. The two men busied themselves with grabbing things from the wagon's back and the old man made a very displeased face, "What's all this! You city folk are all trouble-makers! Ya hear?! Trouble-makers!"

Things seemed to be going smoothly, so Olivia kept to her cover of trees and bushes, holding her spell for the time being. Alex swallowed and kept her crossbow up. The men behind the wagon were stuffing a leather sack full of whatever the wagon was carrying, the young farmer lad complaining to his partner in crime, "I thought you were lighter on your feet than that! Your lucky I'm a kind soul; otherwise I'd a left you on the dirt." Maximillian sneered and shoved weapons into the sack, "Shut it and keep your hand movin'."

“Ack!!” What all that the old man could manage to scream before cowering with his wife in the caravan. Bandits had suddenly converged on them, Ventis was surprised he hadn’t heard them coming, perhaps he had been listening to intently to the old man’s tales.

“Stop right there, do not place a hand upon anything!” Ventis spoke commandingly and pointed this Holy Lance at the bandits, keeping calm and collected. He noticed that their leader seemed to be a woman wearing a chest plate with some sort of winged insignia upon it. He wondered why a woman wearing such armor would be committing such petty thievery.

Despite the command, one of the men among the bandits began shoving weapons into a burlap sack. Ventis gave the man an icy cold stare of annoyance and swiftly rotated his Holy Lance inches from the man’s face. “Put everything back, NOW.” His voice did not waver from it’s deep commanding tone.

The bandits in waiting weren't moving around enough to be heard, as they had planned this ambush in advance. The light from the caravan only illuminated the area around it, leaving Olivia in the dark. Her outline could be seen, but Ventis's human eyesight wasn't that great at night to pick out details. As Ventis moved away from the side of the caravan, Alex lifted her crossbow and squinted her eyes, "Hey! Where are you going?" Leveling it, she fired as the warrior ignored her prior warning.

After the bolt whizzed by Ventis's head, the lass bandit near the roadblock swore and started to reload her weapon. Releasing her held spell, Olivia uttered the last few words and a giant eye with two enormous wings and two tiny legs appeared under the light of the caravan's side. It flapped a bit, then shook as a blast of energy zapped Ventis in the back.

Max and the farmer lad eyed Ventis's spear tip, both holding their hands up. Max shook his head quickly, "Look lad, it ain't us you want. It's them!"

The flying monster left a scorch mark in Ventis's armor. It smoldered in the night and the electricity dispersed after it hit. If Ventis wished to attack this flying pest, he would have to move to do so.

Ventis ignored the man’s exclamation about the monster that suddenly appeared and said in the same calm, deep voice, “You know that you’re doing wrong, the monster is mindless… I will deal with you first.” Using the skill to Ignore Elevation, Ventis propelled himself on top of the Caravan and slashed his Holy Lance toward where the voice had come from. If he couldn’t see the bandits, he could definitely hear them.

Standing on top of the Caravan he stabbed up at the flying beast quickly and pulled back the Lance, twirling it around the parameter of the Caravan. He was clearly outnumbered here, but he wouldn’t allow the old merchant couple’s livelihood to be stolen from them.

Maximilian watched the dragoon hop onto the wagon, taking a step back and dropping the sack of weapons and holding up his hands just before the spearhead pierced his leather armor and his gut. Stumbling back, "Oh crap..." He could have walked this off, returned home to his wife and kids, and turned a new leaf to swear off banditing for good...but a light appeared above his prone form. It grew to such an intensity of brilliant white and blue hues and shot down into the bandit.

A moment later of brief screaming "Noooooo!", Maximilian's body explodes from the magical force. Bits of blood and body matter splatter the back of the wagon, the farmer lad, and a bit on the dragoon's boots. Once the dragoon hopped off the wagon, the beast that zapped him vanished. The magic that sustained it had left and tingled the air around the dragoon, but otherwise did very little.

Alex, the bandit near the downed trees in front of the wagon, had just finished reloading her crossbow, her eyes wide in the brief light, "Oh Saint Ajora.." Shakily, she lit the crossbow tip and fired it at the wagon's cover. A fire was starting.

At the same time, however, the farmer lad was wiping blood out of his sight. He was pretty shaken up at his partners' death and grabbed for the bag of weapons and started to run.

Olivia, her magic unable to put the fear into this strange wagon guard, turned tail into the woods. She hated to lose, but she had to cut her losses. It wasn't risking herself over, not with power like that. Now all that was left was to return to town and scrape up another crew.