[Poor Grallus, the Rogue – 3]

Grabbing the vest he carefully spreads it open across the pile of soft compost. His eyes twinkle as he looks at the numerous rows and columns of tiny glass vials each with their own cork stoppers.

Even though he is in obvious pain, he can’t help but sit in awe curiously touching the vials ever-so-slightly. “There must be 4 or 5 dozen here.” Counting quickly, he realizes that there are 48 places for the vials on each side, for a total of 96 vials! There are about 4 or 5 missing and overall they look to be logically arranged by color. He touches the top of several one-after-one, “yellow, dark purple, pale orange, ooh a dark red, black – that’s weird… There are so many.” Wincing again in sharp pain he looks back to his terribly destroyed leg. The bleeding is continuing and is seemingly getting worse every time he shifts his weight. Going through it in his mind he knows exactly what he has to do looking down at the wooden arrow jutting through his leg.

“I need the same color as before,” he mutters as he scans the rainbow of colors in front of him. “Light red, yeah it was light red.” His stomach clenches as he suddenly realizes there are several different sections with red colored vials. “Oh man… really?” Seeing there is one missing from two different sections of red-ish colored vials he knows he has a fifty-fifty shot. Carefully slipping a light red vial from its tiny restraint he examines it by turning it around in the flickering torchlight. “Come on give me a hint that this isn’t some-sort of deadly fungus poison or acid or something.” Toward the top of the vial he spots a foreign looking letter printed in handwriting. Looking closer it seems oddly familiar. “What does that mean…? Oh wait!” Scrambling with an idea he cautiously digs around in the broken glass finally finding what he was looking for. Holding up both the red-ish colored vial and the newly recovered top of the broken vial it is easy to discern that the symbols are an exact match. “Well that’s a positive sign at least…”

Glancing at his mangled leg with one eye closed, “okay I can do this…” Taking a deep breath, “yeah here goes…” He stares at the leg in dismay with his hands in an anxious ready position. “Yeah okay here goes for real… I’m not gonna yell, I’m not gonna yell…” Taking one last gulping breath he grabs both ends of the arrow, breaks off the arrow head end, “yaack!” and pulls out the other end from the back of his leg, “yoooorch!” and dumps the vials contents both on and in the bloody hole in his leg.

“Okay… I yelled…” he says in self-embarrassment. Flopping back on the pile of soft compost he sits in silence as his leg tingles creating an absolutely insatiable itch he refuses to scratch. Laying back, staring through the open hole of the chasm above, he feels a tear slide down his sweaty face. Wiping it quickly away he sits up. To his repeated amazement but now great relief, his leg is completely healed.

“Sweet,” he says with a broad smile. “Okay, now to get out of here.” Suddenly realizing that most of his pain is now gone, he stands and grabs the vest. Abruptly loud metal ‘clanks’ are heard causing him to jump back with a start. Confused he has no idea what he may have dropped. At his feet, lying crossed in the direct sunlight from above, are two perfectly matched ornate daggers. As he bends closer to see he also quickly realizes they also appear to be glowing. “Whoah…”

“What else do I have? I mean glowing daggers, really? Do I even know how to use those?” Taking a step back from the daggers he sees the small backpack by the cave wall. “Okay now let’s see what’s in that! Some sort of magic dust that makes me turn into a flying monkey probably… I mean, really…” As he steps forward something tickles his nose. “Phhfwwh,” brushing it away from his face.

Grabbing it from under his nose he realizes its some sort of dried orange tulip petal on a string, which also seems oddly enough to lead to his shirt pocket. Pulling on the string he tugs out a small golden placard. Upon further examination it looks to have a single word imprinted in the gold in tiny letters. “Okay…uh… lessee…,” he says squinting to make out the inscription.

“Punkins?”

Instantly without pause a soft ‘poof’ sound is heard. Looking down, standing by his feet in a little cloud of orange smoke, is a small black cat looking directly at him. The inside of his ears, his nose and his eyes are orange. The cat is also wearing a decorative orange bow around his neck giving him a look of distinction. With apprehension in his voice and a little wave he says, “Uuum, hi?” The cat simply looks away and licks his paw, revealing that his paw-pads are also orange.

[835] Words : Spyglass?