What if friend Casmos got the fey wish
“What did you do?!” Casmos yelled out in anger, the broken shaft of her morningstar tight in her grasp. “And dont you dare say it was an accident!”
“I-I can fix it,” Aralaia said as she took a step back. “And it was an accident. I swear! I didnt mean to-”
“Its always an accident with you! That might as well be your name!”
“That’s enough,” Noxle grumbled. “Leave Pretty Pink alone before we make you.”
Casmos let out an annoyed sigh as she felt Noxle’s hand grip her shoulder tightly. She turned to see the glare on his face and Two-Note already pointing their crossbow at her, standard procedure to keep anyone of their crew safe. Even if it was from each other.
The shaft of the morningstar dropped from her hand as she pulled away from Noxle. “She’s always doing this.”
“Her “best” is always causing trouble!” Casmos walked to the door and opened it, pausing in the doorway. “I wish I had never met her.”
The sound of a bell filled the air for a brief moment and she felt the world spin around her. She lost all sense of anything around her as she tried to stumble to a wall to catch her balance. Her hand gripped the doorframe until she felt it slip right through her fingers. She fell forward and tried to catch herself just as the rest of her world seemed to fade away.
Casmos’s head throbbed as she sat up, almost like she had a hangover. Noises were much louder than normal, the light hurt her eyes, and she couldnt help but stagger once she finally got onto her feet. The only thing she could really make out were the sounds of a tavern below the room she stayed in. Not that she remembered getting to a tavern, but it may have been for the best with how angry she’d been at-
She paused for a moment. Who had she been angry at? She could see the face but she couldnt quite place the name. As far as she could tell, it must have been a tiefling she’d crossed once before. A slave trader or something of the like.
Casmos stumbled out of her room in the tavern and made her way downstairs to collect her bearings a bit. Once she was downstairs, she sat down at a table to order food. The tavern itself was lively for being morning, much more lively than she’d expected. Adventurers getting a meal before heading out on their missions, visiting nobles who were trying to keep a low profile, and others that didnt have much of a place to belong.
Her eyes went towards the notice board as an adventurer took the last paper on it. Must have been a desperate request to be left in the tavern, though she paid it no heed as she finally got up to order food. She sat down a few coins on the counter. “Whatever you’ve got for breakfast.”
“Coming up,” the bartender answered as he counted the coins. “What brings you to Neverwinter? Here for the celebrations or for religion?”
“Here to visit a friend,” Casmos said solemnly as she held the ankh around her neck. “And then I’ll be leaving.”
“You should stick around. The temple of Llira’s celebration of joy isnt one you want to miss.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Casmos relaxed a bit once her breakfast was placed down in front of her. Meat, eggs, and a hunk of bread. A hearty breakfast for anyone that considered themselves an adventurer.
“Get back here!” a guard yelled out.
Casmos turned around to watch a tortle, tiefling, and kenku rush through the streets while followed by a few guards. For a moment she had thought about helping them, though it wasnt like the guards to be chasing people who were innocent. And it’d be against her oath to help those that hurt others.
She finished her meal and got up to head to the cemetery. As she stepped out of the tavern, a group of adventurers caught her eye as she watched them look for a fifth for their group. Normally she’d give herself another few weeks before finding another crew after leaving her previous one, though she was going to be short of funds if she kept on her own.
And besides, it couldnt be worse than working with slave traders.
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Casmos hid behind a rock as arrows pelted the ground around her, her hand wrapped around the ankh she wore. It had all started with an innocent mission to take care of some goblins, a simple assignment that should’ve been taken care of quickly. Though Thomas, the party’s rogue, had a different plan. Instead of taking on the goblins one by one, he wanted to use a nearby village as the stage for an ambush to take care of the goblins and a few bandits in the area. And while the goblins were easily led into an ambush, the bandits proved to be difficult.
The bandits not only used the chaos to steal what they could for quick money, but it turned out they had also been working for a few slavers that Casmos had recognized as the crew she’d left. Those that had not been able to be evacuated were now being taken and chained as slaves.
Casmos turned to look at who remained in her party to see them pinned behind a building. The rogue and cleric were dead, and the fighter and barbarian were too badly injured to continue fighting. If things didnt change, her entire party was going to die. She picked herself up, readied her shield and morningstar and rushed out from behind the rock she hid.
Arrows hit her shield as she kept it raised and moved forward, the first bandit she came across she slammed with her morningstar. This had no longer been about protecting others, this had become vengeance. The bandits, the slavers, all of them had to go.
Casmos slammed her morningstar against another bandit, but this time, her weapon wasnt glowing with the divine energy it had before. An arrow passed by her shield and buried itself into her shoulder. She pulled it out and pressed her hand to it to heal herself, only for the wound to stay and the energy that had flown through her seemed to have stopped.
“This is what you had wanted, wasnt it?” a voice asked in her mind. “A life free from Aralaia.”
“What are you talking about?” Casmos grunted under her breath. “Where are you?”
Casmos relaxed her shield as time seemed to stop around her and a fairy stood to her side. Once she was sure that none of the arrows in front of her were going to hit her, she stood up. “I didnt wish for this!”
“Sure you did!” the fairy said with a grin. “‘I wish I had never met you!’ Its been almost a thousand years since I heard a wish that angry! So I gave you what you wanted: a life where you never met Aralaia.”
“This is a nightmare! What makes you think this is what I wanted?!”
The fairy smirked. “But this is *exactly* what you had wanted. You never met Aralaia, which means you never met anyone that could keep you grounded or in check. This is who you are without her.”
“This isnt what I wanted! I was just upset at her!”
“Guess you’ll have to live with it.”
“No you dont!” Casmos tried to grab the fairy, only for her hand to feel an arrow run through it. Time had started again without her noticing. A few more arrows pierced through her and pinned her to the ground.
A slaver walked over to her and grinned. “Well well well, look who’s here? He’ll be glad you’re back.”
Before Casmos could yell, she felt the boot of the slaver slam into her.
