<div class="floatright">(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/db/e9/cf/dbe9cf5fe0e93ceb0b2c4707e6679664--character-portraits-character-ideas.jpg)</div><div class="floatleft">(http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.roosterteeth.com/uploads/images/54063e01-6933-4e38-b195-d0fc28595a06/md/2181220-1448930942333-Warrior_Karsten_Face.jpg)</div><div class="floatright">(https://mfiles.alphacoders.com/402/402340.jpg)</div>That had to be, without a fucking doubt, the most disgusting display of excessiveness Sophie had ever witnessed… and probably anyone she knew had witnessed, for that matter. To top it all off, he had made it look so easy it was practically criminal. They had worked so hard, worn themselves flat out and honestly she would probably see rats and eels in her nightmares for years to follow.<br/><br/>It was a combination of shock and nausea mingled with barely contained annoyance that stalled out her brain, leaving her to just stare blankly at the warrior after he had made his request.<br/><br/>“You mean it’s… still alive?” She gasped, utterly repulsed.<br/><br/>By the looks of it, the queen was unconscious and hanging on by a mere sliver of life.<br/><br/>“Okay…” She remarked skeptically, her violet eyes flicking to Les as if she thought this was just as stupid of an idea as she did. By the looks of it, it seemed like it.<br/><br/>Tentatively, she edged over to the pile of gore and filth that was somehow, miraculously still breathing… god, she hoped it was breath and not like, filled to bursting with maggots or some other vile shit.<br/><br/>She kicked it and backed away. Nothing happened and she found herself looking skeptically at her redheaded partner with a lofted eyebrow.<br/><br/>“I’m not so sure about this…”<br/><br/>Sophie’s eyes flicked to Less, who was bent at the waist, her hands on her knees, trying valiantly not to throw up. Her skin was so pale it could’ve been translucent as she surveyed the scene through mussed red tangles of curls. That small shrugging movement, conveying to her partner in crime silently that while she was highly skeptical, it couldn’t hurt to at least poke the beast a bit. They might as well right? What did they have to lose-<br/><br/>A tight cough and gag kept what tiny amount was in Lesniya’s stomach from creeping up.<br/><br/>Gods, but the stench was revolting. How did he just walk around like it was nothing?? Straightening a little, burping slightly and holding her stomach, Les watched Soph edge tentatively forward and kick it before doing much the same as the redhead did moments ago and jump back from the body.<br/><br/>“Do the…” She waved her hand again, making a sprinkling motion, trying to convey what she thought would be appropriate for “bursts of flaming fireworks of death” without using too much of her breath or voice. “….again. Like this.”<br/><br/>Edging closer to Cerias, but trying to make it look like she was just getting a better vantage point, Les reached out her right palm and slowly let the power slip down to her fingers tips. There, it made an ice dagger. Flicking her darkened gaze back up, making sure he was watching and ready with a shield, she poked the dagger into the queen’s ugly hide.<br/><br/>Wondering what the redhead was up to, Cerias merely followed her with a raised eyebrow, casually sidestepping a snarling lunge from the queen of unhappy scents. They should have some mana back so he wasn't all that surprised as her hand started glowing faintly. The dagger had him purse his lips and want to shake his head but at least it was a step up from the wayward fence-posts the girls had used previously.<br/><br/>Thought it had taken a moment for the girls to catch on, they finally did what they could to poke and prod, there was little else Cerias could call the haphazard stabs and kicks they aimed the way of the giant rat sow, at least they didn’t balk from it the way some still wet behind the ears adventurers did when it came to getting close to the more…repulsive opportunities for loot. He’d long ago learned to not be all that squeamish, though he had to admit it had been quite some time since he had run into something quite as stomach-roilingly disgusting as this.<br/><br/>With the enthusiasm the girls threw themselves into wailing on the bloated ball of plague boiled fury, he wondered if they might have some fairly shallowly buried issues to vent with the thing. He could really only applaud their dedication and feel a small shiver crawl down his spine despite his far higher experience of being at the ends of that kind of wrath. But there was also an enticing fire in them that drew his eyes. He couldn’t deny the way their movements had their curves shift and bounce and the lively fire in their eyes were alluring in a way that made his mouth drier.<br/><br/>Luckily the moment ended as, with a final, hateful, screech, the queen of pus and half-melted boils finally succumbed to her wounds with a final lunge his way before sinking down in a bleeding, broken mess, her limbs twitching a few times before finally growing still.<br/>He couldn’t help but let a small smile break through his frown like a stray ray of sunlight a perpetual cloud covered sky at the sight of their faces as the riches of loot became apparent to them. It was a moment of sunshine over a ragged landscape, making the otherwise dull flowers and mountains gleam in its presence.<br/><br/>Letting them go at it, enjoying their simple pleasure of the moment with them as he recalled his own first time hearing that heavenly tingle of coin pour into his purse. It wasn’t a whole lot as he measured things, but for anyone as new as they were, it would seem a small fortune. Or at least perhaps make it worth the pain and odor getting it.<br/><br/>“Finally…” Sophie murmured, flicking bits of dead rat fur from her sword. “I’ll get the tail.”<br/><br/>It took some time for her to slice the giant bald wormlike appendage off of the queen’s rump, the sword was quite dull after all. But after some swearing and complaining it finally broke free with a grizzly popping of bones.<br/><br/>No sooner had tail been parted from rat than the giant creature’s body just simply vanished, leaving the raven headed girl to look around utterly perplexed. There, sitting in the middle of the indention her carcass had made was a small stack of copper coins with a few silvery ones gleaming up at them merrily. That would have been distracting and welcomed enough had it been the only thing they had found, but sitting beside the metal coins were two objects that were very obviously not there before.<br/><br/>The first was a long crooked branch whose bark had long since been worn away. It looked like a hand me down walking stick that a whole generation of grandmothers had passed back and forth. What almost looked like gnarled old bony fingers at one end appeared to be clutching a small cracked crystal that was the ugliest shade of bright orange, gleaming dully in the afternoon light.<br/><br/>Next to it was a bundle of embroidered fabric. It sounds a lot fancier than it really was as the pattern was a repulsive floral print giving the strong impression that someone had skinned a particularly tacky old couch which once belonged in a mental institution for the blind. Several dark splotches stained the aging patched velvet.<br/><br/>The girls exchanged skeptical glances as Sophia squatted down to examine them further. She had no idea where they came from as they didn’t appear to have rat guts or any of the mud staining their surfaces. She prodded the staff with the severed rat tail grasped in her hand. Nothing happened.<br/><br/>Setting the dismembered appendage down beside her, she prodded the bundle of fugly cloth. Again, nothing happened. Where the fuck did these things come from?<br/><br/>Well, the details didn’t seem to matter as the reluctant priest grasped the middle of the staff and pulled. What the…<br/><br/>As if held by some sort of glue or spell or something, the stupid stick wouldn’t budge an inch. The same happened with the cloth. She tried with both hands but nothing shifted.<br/><br/>“Les? What about you?” She asked with a grunt after having tried to deadlift the staff with both hands. The red-haired portion of the pair squatted down right next to her, assuming the same stance and trying the exact same lifting routine.<br/><br/>Nada.<br/><br/>An incredulous look cross Lesniya’s face. “I don’t understand…” She muttered out before kneeling back down next to the staff and fabric, both of which had clearly seen better days. Her hands pushed into the fabric - which had barely any give - and then went back to the staff. “It’s not stuck on anything…” she said, a bit louder. Her fingertips traced over the gnarled head and stuck-on crystal, pressing and prodding before she wrapped both hands around the shaft and stroked down its length. “Is there like a button or something?” She looked up at Soph, her palms gliding over the end of the staff, twisting, then moving back up it in the same round-gripping fashion. She even split her fists, gliding back and forth in separate motions around the would-be weapon, looking for some sort of indent or trigger mechanism to release it from whatever had a hold on it.<br/><br/>He was torn from his ruminations by cursing and grunting and when he looked over to them he could barely hold from barking out a rowdy laugh. But disbelief and enervation won over the brief gleam of mirth and he sighed, smacking his gloved palm against his face and dragging it down, only a second later remembering what else that hand had touched only moments later and his mouth twisted in disgust.<br/><br/>Scraping off the flakes of dirt and mud as well he could leaned down and thumped the closest girl on the head, clearing his throat at the same time.<br/><br/>“What are you girls doing? Yanking on the loot. Don't you girls know how the real world works at all?”<br/><br/>It only took a glance for him to find out that, indeed, they somehow didn’t.<br/><br/>“Come on! This is adventuring 101, first day of ‘kill things steal their stuff’ school!”<br/><br/>Shaking his head enough to make his thick brown hair flow in the air behind him so that the sun picked up and shone in the silver hairs strewn into it he put his hands into his pocket and yanked it out with a frustrated little growl in the back of his throat. Reaching out he grasped the red head’s hand putting two dice in it. Then let her go and did the same with the brunette.<br/><br/>“Dice! You roll for it! Everyone knows you…”<br/><br/>Another sigh and he’d almost managed to bring his exasperations back under control.<br/><br/>“Just…just declare if you want the item or need it and roll ...then, if you roll the highest you can take it. Alright?”<br/><br/>“Huh?” Sophie said, looking down at her palm. None of this shit made any sense.<br/><br/>The girls would find a pair of ten sided dice looked up at the bleakly. They were white and slightly opaque, chipped around the edges and some of the numbers were a little faded. One pair was zero through nine, the other was zero through ninety.<br/><br/>“This seems stupid. I mean aren’t they the same thing? Don’t we<em>both</em>need the staff?”<br/><br/>No sooner had the word “need” come out of her lips than Sophia saw her dice glow blue. They felt warm to the touch.<br/><br/>“W… want?”<br/><br/>She said a little hesitantly and sure enough, the dice changed to a soft green light.<br/><br/>“Fucking weird…”<br/><br/>Clearly they were completely clueless about how the real world worked.<br/><br/>“Well, then I, uh, will roll need on the staff.” The words sounded awkward but there was no mistaking the sound of excitement building in her voice.<br/><br/>“That’s a<em>mage</em>staff. You can’t use it. How do you... “<br/><br/>Cerias sighed, and went to pinch the bridge of his nose only to remember at the last second that his gloves were exceptionally dirty.<br/><br/>“All you have to do is read the tag to figure that out.”<br/><br/>The exasperation in his tone was palpable.<br/><br/>They hadn’t noticed it before but carved into the end of the staff, just above the tip, was a tiny tag, filled with stats:<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Staff of Insignificant Consequence</strong></span></span><br/><strong>Class: Mage<br/>ATK: 2<br/>INT: 4<br/>WSD: 2<br/>Effect: Provides slight damage bonus to fire spells.</strong><br/><br/>Quickly they checked the fabric and found a similar tag, one that was sewn into the lining of the grotesquely patterned cloth.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Cloak of Mediocre Potential</strong></span></span><br/><strong>Class: Caster<br/>ATK: 2<br/>INT: 3<br/>WSD: 4<br/>Effect: Slightly reduces casting time of some spells.</strong><br/><em>Wench wash on gentle. Line dry only.</em><br/><br/>By this time, Lesniya had plumped her round ass down into the oddly clean dirt next to the loot that refused to move. She crossed her legs and held the dice in her outstretched palm. With her other hand, she pointed to her dark-haired companion. “So you should roll for the...cloak. Maybe we can… wash it… And I’ll roll for the staff.”<br/><br/>Glancing back at Cerias, making sure she didn’t hear the frustrating man tell her they were doing something wrong<em>AGAIN</em>, she looked back at the dice and then up to Soph. Shrugging - because at this point, what else did they have to lose - she stretched her dice-holding hand out to the side. Less than an hour ago, she was shooting ice out of her fingertips. Rolling dice for a weapon wasn’t so disbelievable at this point.<br/><br/>“I roll need on the Staff of Insignificant Consequence.” She said out loud. The dice glowed in her palm and with eyes wide open, she tilted her palm, letting them roll out and onto the ground. The dice bounced for what seemed like an eternity before slowing coming to a halt. Pushing up onto all fours so she could stretch forward and see the numbers that appeared on top of the dice, she read out loud. “Eight… and 60.” Tilting her head back up to look at Soph, Lesniya sat back on her heels. “I got 68. Your turn.”<br/><br/>Sophie had watched as Les tossed her dice but no sooner had the six and eight of her friend been rolled than she felt her palm buzzing. The little objects trembled angrily in her palm as if they too wanted a turn but she wasn’t going to even be able to use the staff anyway, she thought as her eyes flashed to the cloak gloomily.<br/><br/>“Uhh, I guess I’ll roll want, then. These seems stupid.”<br/><br/>With a dejected sigh she threw the little dice along the ground. They bounced and danced until landing squarely on double zeroes and a 1.<br/><br/>“Greeeeat.” She sighed, snatching them back up, feeling her enthusiasm deflating by the minute.<br/><br/>Les leaned forward and took the staff into her hands, testing the weight of it and running her thumbs over the age worn wood.<br/><br/>“I guess that leaves me rolling need on the fugly coat thingy.” She conceded feeling the dice shudder in her hand and glow blue again.<br/><br/>“Twenty one, it looks like.” she stated snatching them back up as she looked to the redhead, who shrugged and said. “Can I pass?”<br/><br/>As it would seem, yes, in fact, you could as the cloaks reluctant new owner was able to lift the bundle off the ground and shake it open. It could have been her imagination but Sophia could have sworn there was a cloud of cat hair billowing into the wind. That was, as it turned out, dust. The smell was so much like that of her grandmother's house she almost picked up the fragrance of cooking sherry that the matron usually had on her breath. It had been the only way she could sneak drinking past Soph’s father.<br/><br/>The inside lining was a pale milky blue and much to her delight, found she could turn the cloak inside out and it didn’t look half bad.<br/><br/>“I guess… is that everything?” She asked Cerias as the girls looked up at him curiously and more than a little hopeful. The pairs desire to be finished with the day was all but scribbled across their foreheads.<br/><br/><br/><br/>