Conclave...Part 3

The journey from the Faire to the Professor’s home was done in multiple stages, but it took place so quickly, it was almost a blur.

First, we landed at the stone circle outside of the community home near Chicago. I was barely standing at that point, finding it hard to maintain my own balance. I was still leaning on Ravyn, who was grunting under the combined strain of supporting my weight and managing the complexc task of making sure we arrived safely.

“Hey, I have rather fond memories of this place.”

“Keep it up, buster, and you’ll be crawling your way home!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We hurriedly stumbled into the house, gathered up the duffle bag full of cash, and made our way to the basement without much notice. We stepped into a dark room, where we hoped that my own powers over the Shadow were put to the test.

Luckily, Drake hadn’t been able to drain those abilities from me completely before Herlinda had stopped him, so I was able to muster enough strength to take us to the place where I had hidden the cannisters and then take us to Jim’s place before collapsing.

I regained cosnciousness to find the Frau tut-tutting over me as she was pulling the broken pieces of Drake’s blade from my gut, all the while listening to Ravyn’s tale of the events at the Faire.

Jim, Cerrydwen, and Herne were all there listening in as well, all of them were also watching Frau’s less than delicate surgery on my gut with keen interest.

When she noticed that I had come around again, Frau chuckled and added a little humor to the event, “Ah yes, it looks like our patient has rejoined us in the Land of the Living. You let me know if any of this hurts now, OK?”

“Very funny, Frau. How bad is the damage?”

“Oh, he cut into you pretty deep there, Rusty, but I really have no idea how much of this stuff in here is essential to your functioning. You are, however, the first patient I’ve worked on who didn’t need any anesthetic.”

Jim’s face hovered into view, looking more than a little green. His nose was also scrunched up. “Rusty, do you really think it was a good idea to go confront Drake without letting us know what was going on? You have other responsibilities now, you can’t just go galivanting off without a plan.”

“Hey, I had a plan...it just didn’t work as well I thought it would. Besides, I asked Ravyn to go along!”

Ravyn’s smoke smudged face quickly poked into my view. She was wagging her finger in that way of hers. “It was all your idea, bub. I went along to save your bacon, as usual. Don’t even try to say that I sanctioned this adventure of yours!”

To be continued...