Irolt Takes First Watch Again

“We should have chased him down.”

Dusk was settling in quickly over the town of Irolladice, the deep purple of the sky visible through the poor construction of the roof. It was an ominous color, and dark with no stars to break up the vastness of it all. It was the sort of empty sky that invited contemplation. Irolt found that when going over all his regrets, the recent ones were easier to focus on, and less likely to shatter him.

“We didn’t need to,” Franza said. “What would we have done if we caught him?”

“Restrained him? Questioned him? We could have asked him who he was working for and gotten a list of everyone they ever stole money from? Something!”

They had been over it all already by this point, back when they had first devised their plan to camp out in the nefarious base of operations back behind the church of silence. There was plenty of loot still there. It stood to reason that the owner of the cup and ball game would come to collect it, so long as no one had warned him. With the furry’s escape, their chances of encountering the other criminals were lowered considerably.

At least chasing him would have been doing something.

Their current plans for an ambush felt far too passive for the half-dwarf. He was not good at staying still, even in the best of times.

“It’s going to be okay, Irolt,” said the dog with a yawn. “You’ll see.”

He wasn’t surprised by the dog being tired, but it certainly felt like it had been more than a day since they’d awoken in the shitty cave.

That can’t be right.

So much had happened since then, so much of it already foggy in his mind, not to mention that he had really messed up that sleep schedule with the first nap he’d taken in years.

Since I’m up, I might as well take first watch.

“You guys should get some sleep. I napped earlier, and I can set up a trap by the door, in case they come in.”

“Alright,” said Franza. “Don’t let Belthor take all the gold.”

In the corner they could both hear the clink of the coins that the elf was counting.

Irolt sighed. He should have known immediately when they found a room full of loot that he would have this problem.

A thief and a hedonist.

“You guys know that we can’t keep this stuff, right?” He looked at both of them seriously, and then to the goods. “It’s stolen loot.”

“We can keep some of it,” Franza whined. Belthor nodded emphatically from his corner atop the aforementioned stolen loot.

Some fucking heroes we are.

“We’re returning the money, and that’s final,” he snapped, but he knew already that they wouldn’t be returning all of it. Whenever they had to handle money for the Resistance, Belthor insisted on taking a “finder’s fee.” That percentage was likely going to double, now that he had to share his ill-gained profits with the dog.

Franza pouted while Belthor just shrugged, smiling, and doing little to hide the fact that he was planning not to part with all of the currency.

There will be more here than we’d know how to return in any case. If they don’t take too much, it will just be like payment for all of our troubles.

That hardly seemed like the righteous path, but everyone had to make compromises.

It’s not like we could donate the excess to the church, because they would probably just set up another ring of thieves.

It was hard not to be bitter about his earlier frustration with the church of silence.

“In the meantime, Belthor, it might not hurt to pack up all of this stuff, just in case. I’m going to set up a trap, but if it doesn’t work or we need to evacuate quickly, we don’t want them being able to run off with anything else.”

“You’re the boss,” Belthor said, eagerly beginning to shove the gold into his bag.

“But we’re not keeping it,” Irolt reiterated.

While the two of them filled their bags and pockets, Irolt looked around for any materials he could try to make a trap from, an idea he’d gotten rather attached to because it would keep his hands busy and his allies safe. He didn’t have much with him, so he knew he’d have to get creative, but he liked the challenge.

He noticed as he searched that one of the floorboards was loose. It looked just as suspect as the rest of the building, and Irolt wasted no time in prying it up, and then the board next to it, not able to believe what he was looking at.

Directly underneath them, hidden only by loose slats of wood, was a cavernous hole so vast that neither the church nor the shack should be standing. The ground was hollow to the point of not being there.

It did make for an amazing trap, he had to admit. A little rug being laid over the floorboards did wonders over the preexisting void. What was harder for him to reconcile was the group’s tenuous position of being balanced over the abyss.