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

Chapter Five: The Party At The Mansion, Part Three

     Everyone sighed once they got back inside. "Wooo, we did it, yay," Phil said sarcastically as he slouched onto a chair. "So Commander Timber, where's our payment?"

     Commander Timber rolled his eyes and walked up to Phil. He gave him one copper coin. "We never specified how much we would give you," he said with a smirk.

     The dwarven emperor went behind Timber and smacked him on the back of his head. "Give all of them 100 gold EACH," be ordered.

     "Heh, yes sir," Timber replied and bowed as he grabbed several large bags from one of his mercenaries and gave them to Phil. He scoffed at him and walked to the back of the crowd.

     The dwarven emperor sighed. "Okay! Let's return to our festive spirits!" he shouted. Everyone cheered and went back to eating and chatting.

     Midnight returned to his little corner with the other wizards. Orinus was trying to stop Cyprus from killing her kidneys with alcohol. The new adventurers were getting food and Commander Timber was hanging out with them, which was suspicious.

     Ledias walked over to Phil. He was drooling while staring at the 1000 gold pieces laying in his lap, which was extremely heavy but he didn't really care; it's 1000 freaking gold, he's rich as hell now.

     Ledias giggled. "You do know that you're gonna split that gold, 100 pieces for all of us, right?"

     "I know, but let me have my fantasy of having 1000 freaking gold pieces in my damn lap for goodness sake," Phil replied as he hugged the bags filled with gold.

     Ledias smiled and sat in the chair next to him. "Okay then. Didn't you spend 500 gold on Cyprus's alcohol?" Ledias asked.

     Phil flinched. "Uhhhhh, only 50 was my gold..." he answered sheepishly.

     "Bad," she said, playfully smacking his head, "don't steal!" She then looked up at the ceiling. "If you had 1000 gold, what would you spend it on?" she asked.

     "A house and a large lot of land," Phil answered instantly. "I want all of us to fit inside that very large house and just chill. We don't have to go adventuring for money anymore, we can just do regular jobs. Of course, it wouldn't be as awesome, but hey, at least we'll be living peaceful lives."

     "That's a nice dream to have," Ledias replied. "To be honest, I thought of the same exact thing. I also want all of us to live on one really big house and live a normal life. I can go back to being a doctor, you a bartender, and Midnight an engineer."

     "I thought that Midnight wanted to be a teacher?" Phil asked.

     "He did, but he was more fond of magic engineering rather than teaching magic or regular engineering," Ledias answered.

     "Ah, that's nice." They sat there in silence for a while, looking at the people dancing and talking and eating and drinking. "This is cool," Phil finally said.

     Ledias nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it is, but don't you think the music is just a tad too loud?" she asked.

     "Yeah, it kind of is," Phil replied. "Now that you mention it, doesn't everything look a little weird?"

     Ledias looked around. Her vision became blurry and everything was looking distorted and bubbly. People one by one fell to the floor, drugged. Even the emperor fell on his knees. "Oh, that's not good," he muttered before face planting into the wooden floor.

     Ledias's hair was sparking like crazy, and then it stopped.

     "Oh man, my stomach," Phil groaned before falling out of his chair onto the floor, spilling the gold coins.