With the help of the witch casting a couple of direction finding spells and the thief climbing a couple of trees we finally reached the base of the tower after walking for several hours. That it had taken us several hours to walk about a mile wasn’t a promising start to our project. It meant that when we found the door open at the bottom of the tower I wasn’t reassured. Actually I think I would have liked it better if it had taken us a few more hours to break it. As it was this seemed too much like a trap. The others seemed to feel the same because we were all looking around suspiciously as we entered the darkened room at the base of the tower.
“Third floor right?” asked the witch, already heading for the badly lit star case. There wasn’t a single candle or torch in the whole room that I could see so all we had to see by was the light that came in from a few windows. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be after dark, my fighting abilities go down greatly when I can’t see.
The second floor was just as empty as the last one had been, and just as quiet. I was starting to feel spooky. A powerful wizard should be living here and you couldn’t tell me a powerful wizard wouldn’t stop us from stealing from him. At any second I expected stones from the walls to throw themselves at us or something of that sort. It didn’t happen, we made it to the staircase that went up to the third floor without incident. I think we all almost tiptoed up to the third floor and still there was nothing there.
“How am I supposed to steal nothing?” demanded the thief, it was just as she said that that a sound came from the stairs above us and a decrepit old man descended the stairs.
“Who’re you,” the man demanded, his voice cracking with age.
“You Doyle?” I asked, I was terrified but the other two were counting on me so I had to show a good face.
“That’s right, but I don’t know you kids.” It had been a long time I had been called a kid, I was at least thirty and the witch had to be about forty. The only one who could be called a kid realistically out of the group was the thief.
“We’re here to steal whatever’s on this floor so you hand it over and you don’t get hurt,” I ordered, drawing my sword. Usually I wouldn’t bully an old man but from all of the stories this guy wasn’t any old man so I didn’t feel bad.
“I don’t have nothing, not anywhere, ‘cept upstairs where I sleep. There I got a bed is all,” the old man said cackling. “You kids more adventurers after m’ treasure?”
“That’s right, so where is it?” asked the witch who was finally gathering up his courage.
“Don’t have it. Used to show it off lots,” the old man was still cackling at us. “It was magic, magic went away so did the treasure.”
“What magic went away?” I asked.
“Mine o’course, ‘m an old man now, don’t got magic anymore.”
“What about the maze wood?” asked the thief.
“Nothin’ to talk about, it’s all that’s left. You kids‘re on a fool’s errand, nothin’ here.” We searched the whole tower but came away with nothing. The great Doyle was nothing but an old man whose only belonging was a mattress on the floor. He laughed at us the whole time we were searching. Of course then we had to talk to the boss.
“Ya got nothing?” she demanded as we all stood in front of her.
“The wizard was too strong, he fought us off,” I told her, we had agreed on the lie before hand. It wouldn’t do us any good if it was found out when had done battle against a defenseless old man, and he deserved his continued reputation too, it was all he had left.
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