Day 3 - Finding Yuna
Up at the crack of 10am... Damir was downstairs, I think he'd eaten. The others were nowhere to be seen - I assumed they were shopping (and they dare to say women are bad!) Talk about shop till you drop, these guys are the pits and I'm beginning to think they'll never leave so long as they have money to spend and shiny things to buy - what suckers.
I remembered this morning to look for the sun while still in the clearing around the inn. Definitely not there.... Damir noticed too. This place; the clearing, the Inn and a certain amount of the forest around it were weird; they were some 'other' place not of the normal world. Oh well!
It didn't take us long to find signs of Yuna (or at least we hoped it was her) Off to one side of the path a burned swath ran away into the forest. We followed it. Damir said the burning was new but even as we trod the charred tunnel, new growth was beginning to push up out of the ashy soil. We upped the pace to a jog and began to close on the source of the burning. I was glad I'd worn my travelling gear, I was covered head to foot with soot and ash already. The forest around us was still smouldering in places and we slowed again. I moved cautiously ahead. It was easy to move quietly through what was left of the forest, further up the track I could hear the distinctive 'whump' of bursting fireballs. I crept further. Standing in the middle of the path was Yuna.. I think! It was the right size and shape and was acting insanely so it seemed a fair bet, but black from top to bottom, she was difficult to recognise. She was standing near that cottage I'd seen the other night, except this was NOT where I'd seen it. I signalled Damir to move up but quietly and with caution - who knew what she'd do if she heard us coming. I managed to close without her noticing; she seemed fairly engrossed with flinging fireball after fireball into the forest and I paused to wonder again whether finding her had been such a great idea. Briefly I considered coshing her but reflected that it might seem a trifle hostile if I didn't pull it off (my mother always told me not to bug insane people) I grabbed her by the shoulder. "Don't panic it's just us!" I said. She swung round, arms raised in a spell casting gesture so I tripped her and shoved her face down to the ground. I wasn't fast enough though, as I dropped on her intent on gagging her before she could cast something, she vanished. Shit that pisses me off.
"She's buggered off" I called back to Damir. "I think she went in there."
I gave Damir the abridged version of my little trip a few nights ago - finding the cottage, not seeing any way in etc etc etc. By this staged I must say I'd lost some of my enthusiasm for this venture and was about ready to let Yuna stay in the forest if that was what she wanted - seriously, who needs to travel with an homicidal pyromaniac. Damir felt I may be overstating the problem a bit and insisted in trying to talk her out... Bah! I sat on a charred stump and filed my nails. Eventually out she came, she was clean again (half her luck) and seemed chatty enough with Damir. Next thing I they both vanished. Neurotic as well as psychotic... this just gets better and better. It took a while to get back to the Inn on foot; there were faster methods but I wanted the time in private to think. When I arrived back Damir was downstairs with Hoo Dung and Norton, apparently Rumbles had just headed off to the bath house where they thought Yuna was. I groaned inwardly, I'd been looking forward to a bath but not after Rumbles thank you very much - not unless they drained the bath first! As things turned out that was just what they had to do. The story I heard was that Rumbles had shat in the bath and the whole thing needed emptying and scrubbing out before it was fit for normal people to use. I hoped this was just a story but had a sinking feeling it wasn't. I stayed dirty a while longer and ate dinner instead. Rumbles came back looking no cleaner to my eye but wearing a smug Orcish smile.. I shuddered. We talked over the proffered jobs from Bertrand and in the end - mainly due to a total lack of interest from the others - I chose a task for us.
One of the jobs had been to locate a party of Town Protectors who'd ridden out of Town one day and never returned. They'd probably gotten lost or run away through sheer boredom, or some such. The Town they protected hoped we would be able to find them alive - I reasoned that even if we did; and it was a long shot; we could still kill them, strip their gear, return to the Town with the "Awfully sorry, they were like that when we found them" story, collect our reward and head back to the inn to see if anything more lucrative had come in while we'd been away. Sound reasoning!
Back to The Inn of the Far Shore.
