Unable to fight away my panic, or put together the complicated plans that would be required for escape I turn to pleading for my life.

I try to get out "Please, stop, I don't want to die." letting the emotion of fear into my face. If I can manage to at least survive I still have the chance of getting to Attis or perhaps he'll find me.

You scream at the firecrafter in front of you, and you see that he flinches and the fire wanes briefly, your fear with it.

You start to notice how familiar the fear is, just like you felt months ago just on a more powerful and less controlled level. You start to remember when, but not before your vision goes black.

---------------------------------------------------

You wake to the cold and wet. Covering every part of your skin, you feel thick, wet, grimy mud. Some of it has dried to your skin, but the majority is still wet. You feel manacles binding your hands behind your back and your legs tied together as well.

You can't see anything but faint glints of light through the small imperfections of the bag covering your head.

I focus to keep myself calm when I come to consciousness. I need a task to keep myself focused, if I have a task I can keep calm in the face of just about anything, and Attis will know I'm missing and something is wrong as early as tonight, and he knows I was looking into Felix.

So my task for now is making sure I don't get hypothermia and while I'm at it practicing my crafting and figure out what is around me.

I'm going to be trying three things.

I want to use firecrafting to keep myself warm against this cold wet mud.
I want to use metalcrafting to see if I can identify any weaknesses in the manacles.
And I want to try watercrafting, using all of this water they so kindly pressed against me in the mud, to first diagnose what injuries I have and then try to heal them.

I'll also be keeping my ears open listening for anything going on around me, and while I'm fairly certain this mud is going to stop my abilities to windcraft, I want to pay attention to if I feel any movement of air.

You don't hear anything around you yet, so you reach out with your crafting to see what you can do.

Your firecrafting is extremely impeded for some reason, and you don't feel any effects from your attempts.

When you test the metal furies of your manacles for weaknesses, you find that the metal isn't special-they're normal and not reinforced. You reach out through them more, and find that there's a small crack, somewhere in the center as time has worn on them.

You reach out to the water to try and assess your own injuries, and for the first time you're met with success. While you're cold and it's dank and dark, you're confident that you commune with the water furies in the mud and that you remain uninjured at the moment.

========================

Metalcrafting: +@1
Watercrafting: 1@3

And the bonds at my feet are rope right? If so I want to reach out with woodcrafting and see if I can find any weakness or see any slack in the knots or a potential way to untie them.

Do I hear anyone around me? Either way, I'm sure either they or Attis will be coming soon, and I may need my energy so I attempt too meditate to conserve and gather energy while waiting, as much as I'd love to practice with watercrafting after finally succeeding I'd rather not sap my strength right now.

You sense with your woodcraft that the bonds at your feet are rope, but don't find any weaknesses before you start hearing footfalls approaching. Then, a door opens and shuts a few moments following.

"Chair," you hear Felix say in Romanic. The sound of wood scraping on stone follows, but Felix's voice doesn't move. He switches out of Romanic and asks, "Mike, are you with us? I would very much appreciate you answer some questions that I have for you."

I take a deep calming breath and respond,
"Felix? Yes, I'm here, a little cold, but I'm here."

"Good, good," Felix says calmly, "Now, I want to tell you now that I am no watercrafter, but we have one coming and we can ask these questions again. I suggest you're honest the first time, with me. So, to begin...what exactly were you doing in my quarters?"

"I was planning to take one of your prototype heatstones to try and figure out more about them. I really want to learn more crafting but people teach it so slowly, and only if you show strength already. I needed a way to get something impressive enough for my exam to actually get into a dedicated class. I really am sorry.

And while saying this I start the process of convincing myself that it's true (and it is to an extent, I plan to use this knowledge for placement purposes). The best way I know how to lie is to convince oneself that it's true and push the other parts of the truth from ones mind.

"I haven't had long to look into you, Mike. If you were a normal student here, I might believe what you had to say, but someone or something pointed you toward us."

Then, you feel someone abruptly grab you by your shoulders and sit you up into a kneeling position. Something pricks your neck, and you feel cool metal resting against your mud-coated flesh. Felix continues coldly, "If you tell me who, you can keep your life."

OOC:
Close call on persuasion.

The roll was 2d10 vs 2d10, your persuasion and his will power (how lying rolls are resolved). You got 16 (2d20=11; +5 for argument) which was a success! However, his success was better with a roll of 2d20=19, which also was a success but a greater one.

I gulp, failing to keep hold of my calm, and break.

"I, I really don't know too much, I was just supposed to look into a list of people and find anything suspicious I could. All I found about you was that you took more lengths than I would have expected to hide your heatstone experiments. I was supposed to retrieve a sample and bring it tonight. Not to press my position though, but if I tell you who sent me, what will you do with me? I'd rather not tell you and then still end up dead."

My rational side fighting down the fear near the end there and saving what it could.

Felix doesn't respond for an agonizing amount of time, until you finally feel the knife removed from your neck. The sack is lifted off of your head as well, dim light filling your vision with the profiles of five men. Two guard the door in front, and stand behind Felix who sits down.

You also feel two men holding your shoulders. One left and one right. It looks like a storage cellar. Hay covers the floor in places, but it's mostly dirt. Stones surround the walls, and there are some crates and barrels grouped on different sides of the room.

Felix smiles. "If you only tell us, we will still kill you; however, if you help us, I think I can find an arrangement where you won't die. At least not by us."

I relax a little, partially by the idea of not dieing and also partially a forced response. I want to start trying to feel where my equipment is located so I have a better idea of where I am.

"I like the idea of me not dieing, but I'd like to hear a little more before I agree to help." forcing a bit of a smile back.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:25, Mon 20 Apr 2015.

You focus a little better, and feel the general pull of your equipment is up and toward your back. You can't feel a magnitude, but that is the direction of the vector the sensation pulls toward.

"Sounds fair. You're going to take a heatstone with you to your meeting tonight. Who are you meeting with?"

"That works for me, will it be one of your heatstones or would you like to me to go and purchase one? And I only know that I'll be meeting with Attis tonight, though I expect more to be there. What time is it though? If I'm not to look suspicious I need to get to my night session with magister Aristus beforehand.

When you mention Attis, the discomfort in the room is palpable. Even Felix balks for a moment before recovering his composure. "Aquitaine is in the game?" He looks to his associates, who look to one another and back at Felix.

He continues, "That changes things significantly, but not for you. It's even more important that you still do just as Attis commanded you to do, and bring him a heatstone tonight; however, magister Aristus will just have to do his formulas without his pupil today. We can't trust you to be out without supervision."

He looks at the four thugs. "Okay, get him cleaned up and ready for tonight, but keep him in here." He stands and brushes his foot in the dirt. "His windcrafting shouldn't be a problem in this room."

As Felix is walking out the door, he turns for a moment, "Where did you and Aquitaine plan to meet?"

"By the well in the courtyard. And where will I get the heatstone? Are you supplying it or should I just go get one?"

I take time to commit the four thugs faces to memory as they get me cleaned up. Do they bring me wash water in this room? Is it always four of them? And does the door out look to have any lock on it? Just trying to keep my options clear.

Felix nods at you and gives you no other answer before he steps out.

Then, one of the thugs brings in a bucket of water and some cloths to wash the mud off of yourself. He slings it at you, and sits in the lone chair between you and the door. One thug steps out, but you don't hear any locking mechanism as he steps past and you briefly see stairs leading up.

Three thugs stay in the room with you and don't offer to help get the mud and muck off. Instead, the two thugs that were flanking you before move away and into your vision to talk by the door in hushed voices while the thug in the chair watches you intently.

I take my time washing off, being careful to get all the mud off, happy to see it gone and eager to be able to have windcrafting, even if weak, back to me again.

Once I've got it all cleaned off I'll probe the air, trying to get currents of air moving and seeing how difficult it is down here. I imagine it's still nearly impossible.

Do I see any weapons on the thugs? and do they all look like students?

Otherwise I'm just passing the time, resting up for tonight after being cleaned off and changed.

The thug sitting in the chair has a metal knife on him, and has it in his hand as he watches you finish getting the mud off.

It's like you can breathe again with your windcrafting, and you feel like you could probably still summon enough wind to knock someone down, but summoning Hermes or flying might be nigh impossible.

The thugs are wearing bland, brown tunics with green ropes around their waists. They look like they're the right age to be academs, but aren't wearing the robes for it.

You try to relax to pass the time until it gets dark, and finally you hear a knock at the door. The thugs inside stand up straight again and watch you with more attention. A few moments later, the fourth thug re-enters the room with Felix by his side. You see Felix wearing flying leathers. He produces a heatstone from a pocket, and hands it to you. It's very warm to the touch and takes a degree of willpower to not flinch at the heat. "Do be careful with it. They can be very unstable."

Then, he turns to head up the stairs, one thug trailing directly behind him. You have one additional thug behind you and two on your flanks. The one behind you prods with the butt of his knife to move forward.

Interesting, Felix can fly, although he's of a blooded house so that's not terribly surprising that firecrafting isn't his only ability. I also make note that these thugs likely have had mild military training or Felix has a harsh hand with discipline, to respond to the knock as they have, but not enough to have stayed vigilant for the duration. Good to know.

In response to Felix's comment on the heatstone I joke "So I guess I shouldn't practice my juggling. Got it."

I follow along up the stairs, making note of where I'm coming from, and eager to be sent on my way to the meeting.

How far do they take me towards the courtyard? They can't bring me the entire distance or it tips their hand to Attis. Once I'm away from them and walking towards the meeting I'll use my firecrafting to try and figure out how long this grenade has before it explodes. I also start getting ready to summon Hermes and have him fly away with it, I don't trust Felix and think I may be intended to be a walking bomb. But I don't want to start any of that until I'm away from them.

He walks you out, and you see a group of robed academs working furiously at different fires in what looks like a kitchen. He walks you through that room, and to another set of stairs that leads up to wooden doors that open out, cellar doors.

It's almost dusk now outside, and you're only a short walk from the courtyard you've planned to meet Attis. As you step out into the open air, Felix grabs your arm roughly. "I've been thinking." He says firmly, and pushes something into your left hand. "Use it on Attis and you're in. I'll teach you everything you want to know about firecrafting, windcrafting, all of it. You're talented and I can tell. You can help us fix this backward empire."

Then, he pushes you forward into the night, and you see a dagger made of bone in your left hand.

I quickly palm the bone dagger up my sleeve. It wouldn't do to be seen walking around with it.  It does make me curious though if Felix is honestly trying to convert me. No time to find that out for now though. The bone dagger obviously is to assassinate metalcrafters, which terrifies me slightly.

I go towards the meeting grounds with both the dagger, hidden away up my sleeve, and the modified heatstone. On the way I'm studying the heatstone using firecrafting. I'm trying to figure out if it's on a countdown to explode and if there are any tethers out wards towards other people, like one towards Felix who can remote detonate it.

I'm also keeping an eye out for Attis and anyone he may be with.

You walk toward the meeting place, and constantly have that spine-tingling feeling that you're being watched closely. Still, you reach out with your firecrafting to investigate the heatstone. The furies inside seem wild and red in your mind, constantly moving within the stone and waiting to spread heat rapidly.

You try to feel for any sort of connection, reaching out to touch any string of furycraft with your own, until suddenly you to find a fine string of it, pulled taut with the fire fury. When your senses come into contact with it, though, the string suddenly snaps and the heatstone grows extremely hot extremely suddenly.

You hear the sound before you see the flash of light from the heatstone and the rush of heat so intense it creates instant burns in seconds. You look down to see your right forearm gone, and your ribcage within clear view. Darkness pushes in on the edges of your vision until you lose consciousness.

OOC:

You don't gain experience in firecrafting here, but the experience can serve as an example for later improvement.

I'll think of the next world sometime tonight and ask Oak to set us up with a new thread. I hope you enjoyed Alera.

I had a great time in Alera and am sad to see that chapter of my story close, but at least I managed to not get Attis killed in the blast and hopefully he can piece together what's going on.

But most importantly I'm having a great time and thank you again for running the game and I look forward to what comes about in the next world.