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Just a regular working stiff named Joe
Some days a guy’s lucky. Other days he’s good. Every now and then a guy gets to be both lucky and good for all of about 5 or 6 minutes. Most days though, a guy just gets dumped on. Now there ain’t much that’s easier than stepping through an artfully crafted doorway of pure shadow when said doorway opens right in front of you and is even so damn well made that the shadowy bad guys can’t pass through it. But here? Here we got the stumbling blind guy. Here we got the dame what keeps bouncing her head off the floor. Here we got the big guy what should be leading this outfit but who’s been content to follow the blind guy. Breech the bad guy’s tower without a plan. Fight the bad guy’s minions with no magic weapons except for the dagger the guy what ain’t equipped for fighting carries. Get trapped upstairs where the loot is kept and find some desperate way to get outta there. And damn it all if it don’t just about work......
Just about. You’d think this bunch could at least make it through the doorway. But then again a little good sense seems like it’s too much to ask. And who gets stuck doing all the work? The guy what’s collapsed here on what passes for ground in the Shadowlands. Of course, being collapsed has it’s advantages when you’re too tired to duck out of the way of a body that’s been thrown through the opening. Gotta be the kid. But you’d think he’d have enough sense to put the damn sword away when he can’t see to do anything with it anyhow – well nothing except almost cut the head off an exhausted guy whose trying to stand up. “Put the damn pig-sticker away, kid, that’s me you just about chopped up there.”
At least the kid’s blindness prevents him from seeing the graceless way he had to regain his feet. So tired. But they can’t rest here, not if that ham-fisted presence disrupts this plane again. As for the others – they’ve fallen. And he’s not in any condition to even think about helping them out. And the kid? He’d likely just get himself, or worse the two of them, killed if rushed back in there. Besides, it’s best not to think about how nasty someone’s gotta be if he breach the prismatic wall and can lay out the big guy that quickly. With a thought he seals up the breech he had made. He’s unsteady. He needs to rest. But he’s gotta finish this out. No sense wasting all that hard work by falling here. Looks like it’s him and the kid. ~ But I’ll be damned if I’ll babysit him like the big guy did.
“Get yourself together,” he says calmly and places a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “And listen up. We made it out OK. The other two didn’t and there’s no going back in after them. You gotta step up now. You’re the one that knows this IronWorks place.....” ~ This’d be so much easier if I just left and went on my own way. ~ He sighs. So tired. Too tired for all this. But all that artistry won’t be any good if just quits now. And such artistry – it damn near killed him pulling all that together – be shame, no, a crime, to waste it. He sighs again. “Let’s get moving. We don’t have much time.”
The kid knows IronWorks. But the kid’s blind. Nothing to do but pick a direction that looks promising and hope the kid’ll be some help when they get out......
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