Cut Scene: Back aboard the Zelbinion

Sheena woke up on a bunk.  The door opened and it got really bright.

Thump, thud, thump, thud, thump, thud.  It was Fishguts, the Captain.  Sheena opened her eyes wider.

"There you are, missy, back in the waking world."  He smiled.  "It's good to see your eyes open again."  Fishguts sat on the bunk.  "If you're feeling up for it, Phaeralyn, I mean, the old wizard wants to talk to you."

Sheena caught on to him tripping over the wizard's name.  It was the first time she had heard it.  Maybe some things changed since she had been gone.

She followed Fishguts across the desk to the wizards quarters.  Fishguts knocked and then opened the door, holding it for Sheena.  She stepped in and her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness again.  The old wizard was reading a book with strange symbols in it.  She glanced at it but reading the symbols seemed to make her hurt more.

"There you are, our favored crewman.  Seems you must have found some luck in your travels."

Sheena nodded.  "You had questions for me."

"Yes, well, as the only man of magic aboard, I wanted to talk to you about what happened aboard the Candlekeep ship."  The wizard spoke quickly and impatiently.

Sheena bit at her lip and frowned slightly.  How did he know about the ship?

"Can you tell me what happened?  Anything you can remember may be important." said the old man.

Sheena was racking her brain trying to remember what all had occurred with in the past few days, "Well there was the abandoned ship we found from Candle Keep, I believe. We decided to board it as a means of scavenging supplies and finding some more valuables. Once on board a few of us proceeded down to the lower level. On that floor we found a lot of cannons, all of them had been torn apart it had seemed. Vicaterus..."

She froze was Vicaterus still okay? She was with Druid and the guys they had just met. She thought about the two guys, she nearly laughed at the thought of the Half-elf loot maniac, Felix, was that his name?. He would probably make a decent pirate, if he had some backbone. He seemed to shy away from fights. Probably just wasn't good at it. The other guy, appeared to be an elf. He had tried to save her from the guardians. Mostly a stranger and yet he had tried to save her. She snapped back to the moment at hand.

"Vicaterus saw a sand pile and after much debate tied herself to a mast with some rope and jumped in. At first nothing seemed to happen, until the sand took on a humanoid form. He threatened to drop a torch into the powder keg room, I caught that one, displeased he went below and did it again before I could stop him. There was a giant explosion, how we survived I'm unsure, call it luck, divine intervention, fate, I don't care."

The wizard had grabbed up a piece of parchment and was scratching at it with a pen.  He nodded, letting her know to continue.

"Next thing I know we are sitting on one deck of the ship, somehow we had been warped inside with the sand creature in front of us. Angry with the fact that we were clueless as to the fate of our allies we gave no quarter. Then a group up on a ledge yelled out to us and warned us of the acid that was devouring the boat, they appeared melancholic. They had mentioned something about losing their comrades the same moment we appeared. Anyways we dispatched the sand creature and the half-elf told us the exit was on the other side so we all went over there. His tiger nearly fell into the acid but then this big Worg, fully white with the ability to speak saved it and carried it across."

The wizards scratched some more and nodded again.

"After that we went into the next room, and we walked and got to know each other. Apparently they were on a mission for Elminster, Searching for some Mace of the Morning Lord or something like that. We did a bit of fighting with some ghosts, a mimic, and some cage like things that were guarding an area.  We spent a night's rest in one of the corridors."

"We started moving early the next day.  We didn't get far before I heard some commotion prior and apparently Corrail -- was that his name -- he had let some creatures bite at him but ended up feeding them and then we entered the next room -- some kind of tomb."

"The guardians -- there were two of them -- they swarmed me the moment I entered the room." She winced at the thought of them pounding her again. " I collapsed, as a hope of them not waylaying into me until I became paste on the floor. After I fell, the Elf directed the others to get me out of the way of incoming attacks, he dropped one of them, but then the hands on both of them started moving in unison and there was a flash, then I was in the kitchen of the Celestial Kyte, and now I'm here."

"Did you bring anything back with you?" queried the old wizard again.

She thought for a moment and then unlaced and pulled off a shoe, dumping a bit of sand out on the floor.

The old wizard laughed.  "This sample will work nicely."

He picked up a bit and dropped it into a pestel and ground at it with a mortar, adding a small bit of liquid.  He poured the liquid out over a sheet of paper.

"Nay-lock sneedrum."  The old wizard pulled a wand from his pocket and sent a bolt of electricity into the page.  "Fornaydrod."

A picture formed, like a map.  Words appeared.  Waterdeep.  Neverwinter.  Candlekeep.  Luskan.  A large grey dragon appeared outside of Neverwinter with a spear in its hand.  A red X appeared over the Sword Mountains, very near a blue E and another blue script Sheena didn't recognize.  The icon over Candlekeep appeared as ruins.

The old wizard nodded again.  "You've been a long way."  He paused.  "Maybe we'll go visit your old friends once I'm -- I mean -- we're done in the Cimarines."

Sheena grabbed her elbow and gritted her teeth.  The wasn't the crazy old wizard they picked up at Iceflow anymore.  The was an arrogant, power-hungry wizard, plotting and scheming.  She didn't like it one bit.

Sheena fidgeted with her elbow.

The old wizard looked at her hand at her elbow and at her mouth.  "Just relax.  We're done her."

Sheena stepped toward the door.

The old wizard didn't face to see her as he left her with one last sentence:  "Keep this to yourself.  We don't want to alarm the crew.  We wouldn't want them to get any weird ideas about why you came back and the others didn't."

Sheena caught the implication -- keep quiet or take the blame and the crew would hang her from a mast.

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Thanks to Roger (Sheena's player) for writing most of the dialogue and filling in some character details!