No Storm Lasts Forever, a DND inspired story, by Allan Concillado

Chapter One: Nightstone, Part Three

     Slayer, Phil, Ace, and Midnight wandered into the church. It was vacant and untidy. Chairs were dusty and destroyed, some were flipped over. Bibles littered the floor. The ceiling had fallen down, exposing the giant bell at the top. The altar where the pope speaks was the only thing that was semi-clean and undestroyed.

     "Ugggggggh, why are we even here?" whined Slayer. The dragonborn only just was promoted to the rank of novice fighter and was assigned towards joining the group as his final trial to become a fully fledged fighter, but due to the stigmas assigned towards dragonborns at birth, it is unlikely such an ambitious wish will occur. The dragonborn may lack any form of combative skill and yes, the dragonborn may be a bit of a blubbering idiot, but what he lacks in having any semblance skills he makes up for in fighting walls, wooden ones to be precise, as stone walls are rather tough. Trained at a young age to fight walls, he grew up without a father for a wall killed him before he had a chance to meet him. His mother was also killed by the same wall when he was a young lad of 5, then his dog, then his girlfriend, then his uncle, then his wife of 5 minutes, and his lunch when he was out to eat during the tournament, like the wall just straight up waddled it's rear end towards him, stopped in front of him and smacked it out of his grasp and left, but not before kicking a puppy on its way out.

     "Well suck it up, our job is to find out what happened to this town, and this place may give us some hints," stated Phil. Phil is a great leader. He's led many missions with different parties, but they can never fully give a rogue 100% of their trust.

     Midnight nodded in agreement, as the fox would much rather remain quiet as talking seems pointless. "Who knows, we might find some smoking hot babes hidden somewhere in this very church!" exclaimed Ace. His perverversion quite noticeable within his voice.

     "How ironic would it be if we found a lustful woman in a holy church?" joked Phil. "Okay," he clapped his hands together while exhaling, "let's split up and look around. Me and Ace will search the 'first floor' while Slayer (he jokingly remarked) and Midnight search the what was the 'second floor', got it? Okay, split!"

     Phil and Ace started to turn over all of the rubble looking through everything, for signs of what happened. Phil retraced what he knew.

     A mercenary came up to him and his friends one day with a letter. The content of the letter stated that in a faraway town, its civilians suddenly disappeared and the town was destroyed by an unknown force.

     "So? What do you want us to do about it?" asked Phil after he read the letter out loud. Everyone in his party turned around and faced the mercenary, also questioning him.

     "Your party has a high reputation of completing all of the quest you have been assigned so far, and your tales of your past adventures have finally landed upon ours and the Queen's noses, so we decided to personally pick your party for this operation. You should all feel honored." The mercenary smirked. He had a thick english accent, and his pride and ego seemed to surpass far beyond what he and his company accomplished.

     Phil, being the smart ass of the group, mimicked the mercenary and stated, "Oh yes good sir I am very honored to serve the company that killed all of the hostages that they were assigned to save. Oh yes very honored. Please thank the Queen for hiring us and not you, for I'm sure you and your company would surely screw up like last time." He stroked his invisible mustache, making the effects last longer. Ace snorted, and then stopped himself.

     The mercenary's face was red with anger and he balled his hand into a fist and let it fly into Phil's face. Ledias jumped in front and stopped the blow with her palm. He was shocked at how surprisingly strong this small, 17 year old girl was.