There's always a cloudy day somewhere!

“We’ve finally got some free time and you want to help an old lady figure out why her crops are withering?” Corvirus seethed, glaring at Emmerich. “What part of ‘free time’ do you not understand? Are you just so addicted to your ridiculous do gooding that you want to volunteer for more?”

“I want a chance to help people, not governments.” The Chosen Sword Saint Hero replied flippantly. “Everything has been about Destiny and the Grand Quest lately. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

“Ifn ya really don’t want to join us, lad,” Ferric broke in, his voice soothing but his face mischevious, “You could go to the bathhouse. A hot soak is a wondrous activity. A true luxury.”

“I hate you all.” Corvirus replied, throwing his bag at Emmerich. It almost hit Ferric instead, but he’d been expecting that and caught it with a laugh.

“I don’t understand.” Sister Savantha murmured, leaning close to her lover. “They’re all quite clean, Corvirus especially. Why doesn’t he like bathhouses? Is it because they’re public and sometimes loud?”

Elfsdame snorted out a laugh and slung her arm over Savantha’s shoulders. “No, it’s because last time we went to the bathhouse it turned out an evil fire spirit was using it as a front to eat souls. We’d have been fodder ourselves if Corvirus hadn’t made it so clumsy it slipped in a puddle and brained itself on a doorframe. That was the incident where I became able to rank the group by size, not height, and is the reason Emmerich knows I’ve got a birthmark and where.”

“Ah.” Savantha replied, giggling at the imagery. “That explains why everyone is so unconcerned with modesty. I thought it was a monastery thing and I was the one being awkward.”

“No, that’s just us.” Elfsdame admitted with a grin. “Things tend to go sideways when we get involved and social graces are always the first thing to go.”

“You drop social graces the moment you think you can.” Corvirus snipped from ahead of them. Elfsdame noted that him and Emmerich were walking in a very similar configuration, it’s just that while her hold on the mage she loved was clearly a romantic gesture, Emmerich was still at the headlock stage. Corvirus was mostly tolerating it (an occasional vicious elbow, no knife) which was how she knew he was enjoying it too. “You drop manners faster than you drop birds, and that’s saying something!”

The whole group laughed at that, but it was Emmerich who finally commented on it. “That’s really not an insult, Corvi. Not to Elfsdame.”

*

“What do you mean the wheat rust is magical?” The distraught farmer cried, and Corvirus jerked back at both the accusation and the volume.

“He’s right.” Elfsdame replied, finishing her own examination. “This is not natural.”

*

“Why do the villagers never tell us the woods are haunted when they ask for help?” Sister Savantha snarled, calling down holy power and turning the skeletons to dust.

“They think we wouldn’t help if we knew.” Ferric replied, wiping his brow now that the battle was done. “They underestimate our stupidity.”

*

“... This thing is so obviously both evil and magical it would be insulting for us to use magic to check it.” Corvirus said flatly as they stared at what they knew was a temple pretending to be a crypt. “Why do all Servants of the Dark hire the same architect?”

“Evil cannot create, it can only corrupt.” Elfsdame intoned seriously, which was spoiled when she rolled her eyes. “The absolute worst part of the Court being replaced with shape shifters, besides all the death of course, was what it did to the music. And poetry. By the Tree, the crimes they committed against poetry…”

*

“Why does a Lich even want to ruin some farmer’s life?” Corvirus grumbled, tucked safely behind Ferric as their fighter and his enchanted shield ate spell after spell while they distracted the undead forces led by the necromancer who worshipped the Lich. Sister Savantha ignored him, too busy healing Ferric in concert with the combat spells that laced up and down his veins, lightning chased with poison.

“Because they’re bored and wanted ta tempt some adventurers ta fight.” Ferric grunted, annoyed in a way he usually didn’t show. “Ah don’t mind that ya ignore the speeches, lad, but could ya not ask questions while I’m counting? Ah need ta be ready ta charge as soon as Emmerich is in position, and you need ta be ready ta duck.”

*

“This is taking too long!” Elfsdame seethed, firing shot after carefully aimed shot at the Lich from their hiding place. Sister Savantha was taking the lead this fight with a protective shield due to the fact that the Lich could fly, rendering their two main combatants useless.

Corvirus thinned his lips, knowing she was right. One of her arrows did strike, tearing through the undead’s clothing and bouncing around a bit in his ribcage. The flicker he had on him caused most of them to just go right through him.

“There!” He said, noticing something shining under the tear. “That green thing! That’s the phylactery! Can you hit it?”

“Not with the spell.” She admitted, pulling a specially enchanted arrow out of a side pocket in the quiver. She had a limited number because it had taken both mages several days of work to enchant them, and it had exhausted both.

Corvirus nodded. “As soon as I shift the dimensional lock his hordes will reappear. We’ll have maybe a count of three before we’re swarmed.”

“On my mark, then.” She replied, eyes directly on the Lich. “NOW!”

*

“I hope you’re happy.” Corvirus snipped, flipping through the books in the Lich’s inner sanctum.

Emmerich grinned exuberantly. “I am, yeah.” He admitted. “There’s something nice about doing things just because you want to, not because you have to.” The others were all resting, but he had far too much energy to settle himself and was instead keeping watch while Corvirus investigated.

Elfsdame laughed. “At least it wasn’t the sewers again.” She commiserated, and Corvirus curled his lip in distaste.

“At first I thought it was just for the look, but now i’m wondering: Why d’ye wear all black, lad? You’re not the sort ta value the opinion of others enough to dress for them.” Ferric asked out of nowhere. Corvirus, who always needed a moment to process unanticipated questions, just blinked at him.

Emmerich, on the other hand, burst into laughter. “The only person whose opinion on his looks he cares about enough to dress for is his mother.” He insisted. “Missus Gallia is the main reason either of us ever look presentable, honestly.”

“It’s a very nice black.” Elfsdame commented soothingly, noting the small expression shifts that meant Corvirus was about to take the question more harshly than Ferric had intended it. Every now and then they stumbled on a conversational pit trap with their black mage, try as they might to avoid them. “The dye hasn’t faded at all in it! Your robes remain the same shade no matter what they’re doused in. It’s really very impressive!”

Corvirus blinked at her for a moment, trying to parse the hidden question he knew from the tone was in the words. Eventually he just settled on correcting her. “They’ve never been dyed. Not either set.”

“That Damn Bastard, Missus Gallia's favoured throwback of an attack sheep, has black wool.” Emmerich replied, still chuckling. “All of Corvi's clothes were made from either her or her children’s fleeces, because then she assumed Corvi was also her lamb and looked after him as such.”

“Attack sheep?” Sister Savantha asked, startled. “Aren’t sheep docile animals?”

That made both Corvirus and Emmerich laugh again, so hard they couldn’t breathe. Ferric’s eyebrows inched slowly higher as they watched them, and Elfsdame settled in as eagerly as a child who had been promised a story. She loved the tales she was able to coax out of either of them about growing up in a small farming village. It was all wonderfully exotic to her.

“Domestic sheep are often friendly and easily led, yes.” Corvirus began, calming himself and straightening up into what Emmerich recognized as a version of his grandfather’s teaching pose. He launched from there into a little lecture on animal husbandry that covered the types of sheep, what they were bred for, the fact that the area they were from required livestock that was a little more aggressive than the ones closer to large cities, and that the particular sheep in question had traits that led Missus Gallia to assume that a wild ram from the mountain flocks had gotten to her herd at one point. Elfsdame was fascinated and asked a bunch of clarifying questions, but both Ferric and Sister Savantha eventually wandered away when the explanation got too much for them.

Ferric sought Emmerich out then, to pry a proper answer for his original question from someone who knew exactly what he was asking. “So his garments have always been black? Just because of the sheep?”

“They’ve always been undyed.” Emmerich corrected. “Most dyes give him a headache, so he’s always worn clothes of undyed broadcloth. Switching to black was more of a symbolic thing when we were twelve or so. That he would always be surrounded by and protected by a mother’s love. They had a few rough years around then, but Missus Gallia always wanted him to know he was loved and she was on his side. The switch to mage robes from pants, however, was much more recent. They didn’t have enough black sheep for Father to begin a trade in it, but Missus Gallia saved enough spun fleeces to bother stringing the large loom with it eventually, so I strung it up while Father was working on a multicoloured commission. It took a week or so for me to finish the cloth, since I still had lessons and training, but it was worth losing a little sleep for the chance to turn out a bolt of broadcloth large enough for robes. Corvi had wanted for years to be able to dress like his Grandfather did, so Missus Gallia wanted to indulge him.”

Ferric eyed him curiously, obviously weighing something in his words. Emmerich wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but was content to let him search for it. “So you’re saying YOU made his clothes?” The older man finally asked. Emmerich shook his head.

“No, I just did the weaving. Missus Gallia did everything else, but the large looms are very big. She doesn’t have one, and if she just made smaller bolts with more seams they wouldn’t be as comfortable and would likely hang oddly. It wouldn’t have been the perfect gift that way.”

Ferric nodded slowly, still mulling over whatever he was looking for, before clapping Emmerich heartily on the shoulder and laughing. “You’ll figure it out yet, lad, yer clever enough! Soon enough, soon enough… And sooner than that mage, I’ll wager!”

He wouldn’t tell Emmerich what it was he needed to figure out, but the younger man didn’t let it bother him. Ferric wasn’t the sort of person who would hurt any of them, so he was welcome to his secrets.