Story HourPost your ongoing tales from your campaigns, and read those from others for inspiration. Lots of other RPG boards post "Story Hours", but this is where it started!
Excellent! Once again you bring combat and tactics to vivid life, I'm really enjoying seeing our diminuitive heroes wreak havoc!
As usual you deliver a spectacular story LB, thanks.
Thanks for the kudos, guys! I appreciate the comments.
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Chapter 42
Even Carzen, who knew next to nothing about engineering or stonework, could tell when the construction changed. It started subtlely, the raw passageway of the Labyrinth giving way to more precise angles of floor, wall, and ceiling, the rough and often uneven floor replaced by tiles worn smooth by the passage of many feet. It felt old, ancient even, and there was something else, a vaguely uneasy presence that sent cold chills traveling up the fighter’s spine. It felt like there was something watching, waiting, something not quite there, hiding in the shadows out in the corner of his eye, but not there when he turned his head suddenly to seek it.
Carzen shook off a shudder. Damned if he wouldn’t be happy to get the hell out this gods-forsaken place.
He looked ahead, at Vhael, who was walking alongside their guide, Terrlen. Or whatever monster lay concealed beneath the nervous outer shell of the man. Carzen had decided to leave him to the dragonborn. This whole crazy expedition belonged to the dragonborn, to him and his wizard, and now the warlock, all of them equally insane.
He’d made one more attempt to talk to the warlord, before they set out again from the sheltered niche where they’d taken a few precious hours of rest. In hindsight, he wasn’t sure what answers he’d been trying to get. Vhael certainly hadn’t been very friendly.
“Why are we doing this?” he’d asked. “We killed the slavers.”
For a few seconds, he’d thought that the dragonborn was just going to ignore him. It wouldn’t be the first time. But after letting out a deep, rumbling breath, Vhael had responded. “Our mission included freeing the hostages.”
There’s been a warning in his tone, but Carzen had felt something driving him to continue. “You know, my father doesn’t give two about a few halflings. He won’t care whether you bring them back or not.”
Vhael had pierced him with a cold stare. “I am not your father.”
And that was it, when it came down to it. Now, as they approached this Demon Well or Well of Fiends or whatever it was called, Carzen wondered for the hundredth time why he was still here. He glanced back at Gez, who at least had the grace to look terrified as he brought up the rear of their little column. Carzen tried to offer a reassuring smile, but it came out more as a grimace.
He turned back as the corridor opened onto a larger space ahead. As Vhael’s broad shoulders moved out of his way he saw that it was a chamber of considerable size, its far wall barely visible in the light of their lamps. Several pillars supported the ceiling, and there were two corridors that appeared to be exits, one to the left and the other a dark shadow on the opposite wall.
The feeling he’d sensed earlier in the corridor was stronger here, and he felt the skin on his arms start to crawl, almost as if there were tiny spiders crawling up and down the limbs under his armor and clothing. Vhael turned and glanced back at him, and Carzen thought he saw it in the dragonborn’s eyes, a realization that there was something wrong with this place.
“I take it we’re here,” Vhael said, turning back toward the guide.
Terrlen Darkseeker nodded, his head bobbing up and down on his spindly neck.
“Then I thank you for your aid.” He drew out a small drawstring bag from his pouch, and offered it to the guide, who just looked down at it, a confused look on his face. “What?” he finally said.
“The second half of our agreed payment. We will have no further need of your services.”
“But… getting back…”
“We will manage. My companion here has been taking detailed notes of our progress.” He indicated Gral with a nod; the dwarf said nothing, but his gaze did not shift from Terrlen. Surina had shifted to take up a position behind the guide, Carzen noticed.
Terrlen still hadn’t made a move toward the bag in Vhael’s outstretched hand. “You want me to return… to the Hall… alone?”
“This place is dangerous,” Vhael said. “I can feel it. I will not take a civilian into such a situation; the risk is too great.”
For a moment the pair faced each other, and it was Terrlen who looked away first. He took the bag of coins, tucking it into the open front of his tunic.
“Do you smell that?” Gez asked, hovering in the shelter of the passage mouth.
The others turned to him, but before any of them could comment, a noise interrupted them, a faint rumbling that seemed to issue from the floor beneath their feet.
“What the…” Carzen began, but Vhael cut him off. “Quiet!” the dragonborn commanded, drawing out his big sword, turning toward the center of the room.
Once again it was Gez who noticed the danger first, but his warning came too late for them to react. “Look! There!” he shouted, pointing to the floor between two of the pillars to their left.
Carzen felt a sinking sensation in his gut as he saw the slight bulge in the floor tiles, a ridge that was coming toward them like a rippling wave through a pond. He felt as though time had slowed to a crawl as he reached for the hilt of his sword. Vhael was shouting something, but the words were unintelligible. Gral and Surina were coming forward, and Carzen thought he could see the tiny puffs of dust that arose under their heels with each step they took. His sweaty fingers closed around the hilt of his sword, and as he started to draw the blade from its scabbard, everything suddenly burst into rapid action around him.
The floor burst in several places, the tiles parting as several long, fat tentacles erupted from beneath them, directly in front of Vhael and the others. Any doubts about its intentions were dispelled as two of the tentacles lashed out and seized Vhael’s legs, holding the dragonborn fast and then dragging him toward the dark opening in the floor where even more tentacles were starting to emerge.
Mara leaned back against the wall, overcome by exhaustion. She was too tired to sleep, even if it had been safe to drift off, which it most definitely was not. Lifting her head took an effort, but she forced herself to do it, to look at the huddled group of halflings who sat together in a quiet knot across from her. They had come a lot further than she had, she reminded herself, had been prisoners for much longer.
The two human miners lay on the floor a short distance apart from the halflings. They’d collapsed into sleep almost instantly on their stopping. Even in the weak light from their single lamp—they were rationing their oil—she could see the dark bruises that covered the face of Harek, the dirty bandages that covered Calder’s feet.
She rubbed her wrists, where the marks from her shackles were still visible. It would be a while before they healed. Longer still before the other marks of her captivity faded. If they lived long enough for that to happen.
A faint noise startled her, and she reached for the spear that was never far from her side. She’d risen to a crouch before she recognized the source of the sound.
“I’m sorry to startle you,” Jaron said, materializing out of the darkness like a wraith. She still hadn’t gotten used to how the halflings could see in the dark now. But it was damned useful trait to have in this place, she had to admit. The black goggles, which glistened in the weak light from the lamp, gave him an odd, alien look, like he was some sort of half-man, half-insect creature doomed to wander these deep halls for eternity.
She shook her head to try to clear it as she gestured him closer. Her mind was wandering down some weird pathways of late.
“Are they still following?”
Jaron shot a brief glance at the halflings from his village that Mara didn’t miss. He nodded. “Beetle’s attempt to draw them off down one of the side passages didn’t work, at least not for long. I didn’t get a close look, but there’s definitely more of them, including a wizard that I think I saw back at the Horned Hold.”
“Sounds like you stirred up quite the hornet’s nest there,” Mara replied.
“Yeah, they’re more persistent that I thought they’d be.”
“I imagine their reputation depends on not letting slaves escape. Especially since they lied to the dragonborn about having us as prisoners. If we make it back to the Hall, that deception could make trouble for them.”
“That’s a big ‘if’ right now,” Jaron said, his voice heavy, though he made an effort to keep his despair from showing on his face.
After fleeing the battle at the intersection, they’d made their way quickly back away from the surviving duergar, looking for another route back to the Hall. The goblin Gru had disappeared, leaving them without a guide. Mara had a general idea of the layout of the Labyrinth, at least the main passages, but she hadn’t been in this part of the complex before. Jaron certainly wasn’t comfortable in leading them into some of the tight, narrow side passages they passed, especially given Gru’s warnings from before about leaving the main tunnels. But they had been moving farther away from the Hall with each step.
A few hours back, they’d passed the fork that led back to the Horned Hold. There was no question about that decision, but shortly thereafter they’d come across another split, with one fork bearing off to the left. As far as Jaron had been able to judge, that choice led more toward the direction of the Seven-Pillared Hall, so they’d headed that way.
They hadn’t gone far before the tunnel started to descend, gently at first, the slope barely noticeable. Jaron had been worried, but they’d pressed on, only to come to a sharper fall, with the corridor starting to bend back upon itself, forming switchbacks that grew ever steeper. That had been alarming enough for Jaron to suggest retreat, but that had been when Beetle had suddenly appeared to report that dark dwarves were following them.
Leaving no choice but to go forward.
“Get everyone together,” Mara said. “We’re moving out.”
Vhael fought against the tentacles that were lashed around his legs, but it was all he could do to keep his footing as the still-unidentified monstrosity under the floor tugged him inexorably closer toward the gaping hole it had opened. He tried to bring his sword into play, but couldn’t get enough leverage for a strong swing, and the big blade only bounced harmlessly over the rubbery hide of one of the tentacles.
The dragonborn’s companions came to his aid. Surina tried to blast one of the tentacles with a stream of fiery eldritch energy, but her bolt went wide, missing its target entirely and almost striking Gez back in the entry before it sizzled against the chamber wall. The warlock hissed and began circling around to get a better shot, flames erupting around her hands as she summoned her magic for another attack.
Gral’s intervention was more direct; the dwarf simply stepped forward, avoiding a lashing tendril that nearly clipped his head, and thrust his staff into the dark opening where the tentacles had emerged. His thunderwave shook the floor, and the tentacles shuddered wildly as the wizard’s spell impacted their owner below. The two holding Vhael loosened enough for the dragonborn to pull free, leaving ugly black burns where they had coiled around his limbs.
Carzen, finally recovering from his own surprise, drew his sword free and started forward to help. He didn’t notice Terrlen edging back along the wall toward the exit, or the dark shadow that shifted above the guide, a sinuous form that crept forward through a crevice in the ceiling overhead. But he did notice a flicker of movement as a second shadow approached in the shadow of the pillars to the right. The light from Gez’s lamp was partially obstructed by the chaotic melee taking place a few paces away, but as the thing leapt out from behind the nearest pillar, he caught a good look at it.
“Incoming monster!” he yelled in warning to the others, rushing forward to intercept it before it could leap upon Surina from behind.
He didn’t make it in time.
Carzen recognized the charging creature as a ghoul, the stink of it filling his nostrils as he drew closer. Surina, hearing his shout, starting to turn, but the ghoul was fast, damned fast, and it sprang at her like a cat, seizing her with its claws. A streaking globe of flame shot wildly from her hands, hitting the ceiling near one of the pillars, erupting in a wash of light and heat that quickly died. The warlock tried to shake the ghoul off, but the cloying effects of its touch were clearly affecting her, and it only dug deeper, trying to work close enough in to deliver a bite.
Carzen laid into the ghoul with a roar, delivering a powerful blow from his sword that bit deeply even into the unnatural hide of the undead monstrosity. The sheer force of it knocked it free from the warlock, but before either she or the fighter could respond it sprang back up and came at Carzen, claws extended toward his face. Carzen barely got his shield up in time to block, but even so it drove him back a step, the ghoul’s claws scraping loudly on the metal.
White flashes of cold energy flared near the other embattled combatants as Gral and Vhael continued fighting off the tentacle-monster under the floor. The creature had not given up after Gral’s initial attack, the tentacles surging up again to seize both foes. The wizard was caught around the waist, the tentacle tightening around him like an iron shackle. But Vhael was ready this time, and he intercepted a tentacle with a powerful stroke of his sword, severing it near the base. Unfortunately for him, the attack did little to dissuade the creature, and two more tentacles lashed him, one of which caught him around the ankle and almost pulled him off his feet.
Gez had spent the first few seconds of the battle huddled in the entry passageway, fighting a surge of terror that threatened to undo him. Carzen’s loud cry snapped him out of it, and he put down his lamp and drew out an arrow, fitting it to the fraying string of his bow with fingers that shook more than a little. He stepped forward and started to take aim, looking for a shot that wouldn’t risk his allies, when a strangled noise to his right drew his attention around.
He turned to see Terrlen being strangled by a creature with an impossibly long arm that stretched all the way from its perch in a crack in the ceiling to where the guide huddled against the wall, struggling furiously as he tried in vain to break free.
Gez aimed and fired almost by instinct. The arrow shot into the crevice above and stabbed into the monster’s leg. The thing looked down at him, fixing him with a cold stare that radiated pure malevolence, and it let out a sinister hiss.
Gez’s horror was redoubled as he heard an answering hiss behind him.
The soldier threw himself down, a desperate cry drawn unwilling from his lips as something hard clasped onto his shoulders from behind and above. For a moment the probing touch brushed his neck, but before it could lock shut he pulled free. Splayed out on the floor, overcome with the thoughts of whatever the hell it was coming for him, the soldier tried to crawl away, knowing that he would never escape, that the improbable streak of luck that had somehow let him survive thus far had finally come to an end.
Even in the desperation of their fight against the tentacle-monster, Vhael monitored what was going on around him with the experienced senses of a veteran of hundreds of fights. While he didn’t see Terrlen being strangled behind him, or hear the guide’s raspy cries over the noise of battle, he did see Carzen and Surina engage the ghoul, and spotted the attack on Gez that knocked him down and sent him fleeing down the passage. He’d never seen a choker, but recognized from written accounts the small but wiry creature that crawled out of a crack in the ceiling and crept after the soldier, clinging to the ceiling like a spider.
Vhael chopped at the tentacle holding Gral, damaging it enough to release its grip upon the wizard. “Gral, there!” he shouted, indicating with a snap of his head the danger.
The dwarf didn’t hesitate, lifting his staff and unleashing a powerful blast of frost that streaked across the room and solidly impacted the choker. The chill strike scored a direct hit, and the choker fell from its perch, landing in a tangled heap on the floor at the mouth of the passage.
But the wizard paid for his intervention, as a tentacle erupted from the ground under him, knocking him roughly back, twining around his legs and slamming his head onto the floor tiles hard enough to send sparks shooting through his vision.
“Damn beastie!” he cursed, fighting to stay conscious as the tentacle crushed his legs together like a vise. His staff had fallen away, and his magic flitted at the edges of his perceptions, out of reach of his battered mind.
Carzen continued to give ground before the furious assault of the ghoul. Its claws had torn runnels in the front of his shield and and ripped several scales off the front of his armored torso, but as of yet he had not been hurt. That nearly changed as the creature seized his shield and pulled it aside, sweeping at his face with his other claw. Carzen was ready for the attack, though, and snapped his sword up, slicing off three of the ghoul’s fingers. The creature let out a hideous sound, and Carzen thought that he was seriously screwed.
Then flames exploded around the ghoul’s back, for a moment framing the creature in a halo of bright red fire. The monster’s angry shriek became something darker, agonized, and it turned toward the source of its suffering.
That left Carzen with the perfect opening to strike the ghoul’s head from its shoulders.
Surina had already gone to the help of Gral and Vhael, who were being pounded on hard by the tentacle monster. Carzen looked around for Gez, but saw no sign of the soldier. He did see a small creepy-looking thing that darted away toward a nearby pillar, and as he turned around to look behind him, he saw something that truly unnerved him.
The tentacle monster had unleashed a considerable amount of damage upon the companions, but it in turn was taking a lot of punishment itself. Several tentacles lay severed or broken upon the shattered tiles, and while others had emerged from the ground to replace them, the weren’t striking with the same intensity that had characterized the creature’s initial attacks. One turned and lashed out at Surina as the warlock approached, but she transformed it into a blackened husk with a point-blank eldritch blast. The one holding Gral had started to drag him toward the hole where presumably the creature waited below, but Vhael intercepted it, severing the tentacle with a single chop of his greatsword. The dragonborn helped the battered wizard to his feet, waiting for another attack, but it appeared that the tentacle-monster had had enough. The last few tentacles slid back into the hole in the floor, which sagged slightly and then settled.
“Gez!” Vhael shouted. Glancing over at Carzen, the dragonborn followed the fighter’s gaze all the way back behind him. Gral and Surina, perhaps sensing something, did the same.
What they saw was Terrlen Darkseeker, now transformed into the furry, muscled form of a humanoid wolf, tearing apart the choker that had grabbed him. The werewolf, sensing their gazes, looked up from his kill, and roared a challenge through bloody jaws.
At that moment, a small horde of gnolls and hyenas burst into the room through the two passages on the far side of the chamber.
Carzen stood in a defensive stance, his shield up, as he looked back and forth between the two threats.
Vhael hadn’t looked away from the werewolf, although he had to have heard the gnolls come in; their hyenas had started a raucous barking as soon as they’d spotted the intruders. The dragonborn’s eyes were fixed on the creature that had been Terrlen Darkseeker, and he was talking to it, something about how they were not his enemy. To Carzen, it didn’t look like the thing was buying it; it growled as it slowly rose, letting the savaged and bloody carcass of the choker fall at its feet.
He glanced back at the gnolls. They had brought lights with them, a pair of heavy lanterns that blanketed the room in warm light. He counted them almost reflexively, a pair of spearmen, an archer, and four hyenas in the left group, three more archers and another four hyenas to the right. Even as his brain calculated the odds he was stepping slowly backwards, toward the exit. He started to turn back toward Vhael, expecting the order to fall back.
One of the gnolls barked an order, and all sorts of unpleasant things happened at once.
Fire exploded around the gnolls even as the hyenas sprang forward, with those odd clipped barks that sounded almost like laughter. Surina’s avernian eruption singed several of the gnolls, and one of the archers fell back screaming, trying to put out the flames that flared up one arm. The other archers fired their bows, the shafts lancing through the ranks of the intruders. Carzen raised his shield by instinct, and heard a loud impact that sent a shudder up his arm.
A cloud of roiling frost exploded in the ranks of the charging hyenas, swallowing half of them. It also served to obstruct the aim of the enemy archers—a bit late, Carzen thought—but he could see that it wasn’t big enough to stop them; they’d just move around it and come at them from the flanks.
As if to confirm that thought, another arrow shot out from the edge of the cloud, no doubt fired in the same instant that the dwarf had unleashed his spell. With that same preternatural awareness that sometimes fell upon him in the midst of battle, he saw the shaft fly by Vhael’s head, so close that he swore he saw a single droplet of blood flick away from the dragonborn’s scaled hide. The arrow kept going, and it slammed squarely into the center of the werewolf’s chest.
Carzen had kept on retreating, but he hesitated in the shadow of the entry. Gral and Surina had remained near Vhael, and they had moved to protect him as the charging hyenas drew closer. One of them split off for the group and came rushing toward Carzen. The fighter lifted his sword to strike.
But before the hyena could reach him, something lashed around his neck from behind like an iron band, and he suddenly found himself gasping for air, unable to move.
Carzen would have cursed if he’d been able to manage the breath for it, but whatever was holding him had a grip like that of a giant. He remembered the thing that had scuttled away, and tried to break free, but it had him fast; he couldn’t escape.
He got his shield up just in time as the hyena slammed into him. He’d hoped its impact would have jarred him free of the chokehold around his neck, but if anything the grip seemed to grow tighter. Bright lights began to flash in front of his eyes.
Surina and Gral held their ground as the hyenas rushed toward them, although they both lacked the armor protection that shielded the others from harm. Surina’s lips twisted into an almost eager grin, her eyes flashing as her magic coursed through her. But before she could attack, she was suddenly thrust roughly aside by Vhael.
She growled something harsh in Draconic, but the reason for the warlord’s odd move became clear an instant later, as the werewolf shot through the space Surina had occupied, its bloody claws slavering as it yanked the arrow out of its chest and tossed it aside. It met a hyena in mid-leap and bore it to the ground, its jaws crushing its neck, ripping out huge chunks of flesh from the hapless creature as it jerked its head up and let out a violent roar.
The gnolls had spread out around Gral’s freezing cloud, just as Carzen had predicted. The huntsmen lifted their bows to fire, most of them targeting the werewolf, while the two spearmen rushed forward to melee. Gral targeted them with a pair of icy rays, blasting them with magical cold that temporarily delayed them as their muscles stiffened in response. Vhael stepped in front of the dwarf and intercepted a charging hyena, delivering a powerful two-handed chop with his sword that opened a bloody gash in the creature’s shoulder. The hyena yelped and snapped at him, while another leapt for the warlord’s legs, landing a bite that tore though his leggings but failed to do more than scratch the dragonborn’s durable hide.
Most of the hyenas fell upon the werewolf, coming at it from all sides, trying to tear it apart. But the werewolf fought like a thing possessed, tearing one hyena from him and hurling it aside, slashing a second across the face with its claws. A hyena sank its teeth into the werewolf’s leg, locking its jaws, but the thing that had been Terrlen merely reached down and seized the hyena’s head, snarling as it pulled, and pulled, and then tore the hyena’s jaws fully open with a sick snapping noise. The creature fell to the ground, making a keening noise that sounded like death as its broken jaw flapped loosely under its head.
The ferocity of its counterattack had driven the hyenas back for a moment, but before they could regroup, a pair of arrows sank into the werewolf’s back. The creature spun and snarled, springing out of the circle of attackers, and landing in a full charge that took it right into the midst of the gnoll archers.
Carzen’s vision was starting to constrict into a narrow tunnel that was continuing to shrink. The hyena kept snapping at him, but thus far it hadn’t managed to get a solid bite through the armor protecting his legs and torso. For a moment, it was so ridiculous that he might have laughed, had he been able to breathe. To come all this way, to die thus…
He never saw the dark form that emerged from the passage behind him, but he felt the sudden impact as Gezzelhaupt sliced his shortsword across the extended arm of the choker, just above where it had latched onto Carzen’s neck. Air, a blessed flood of it, filled his lungs as the strangling grip went slack. The choker, seriously hurt, retreated, trailing its crippled arm after it as it slowly fumbled its way back to the crevice in the ceiling from whence it had emerged. Neither Gez nor Carzen were in any position to stop it, as they had more pressing concerns on their mind by then.
The battle had not paused while Carzen had fought for his life on its periphery, and now combatants were starting to fall. One of the gnoll archers was down, blood oozing from a dozen deep gashes in his flanks, but the werewolf was starting to look like a pincushion, with the other huntsmen firing arrows point-blank into its body. The magical curse that had transformed Terrlen had given him an unnatural boost to his vitality, but it was obvious that even he could not absorb this level of punishment. The werewolf turned and lunged at the nearest archer, but its attack was slow and ineffective, and the gnoll easily evaded it.
Vhael, Surina, and Gral had their hands full with the surviving hyenas, which had been reinforced by the two gnoll marauders, which had finally shaken off the linger effects of the dwarf wizard’s icy rays. Gral hit them with a thunderwave as they approached, but he was hit by an arrow, and forced to withdraw behind his companions. The marauders moved to flank Surina, who met them with a spray of fiery rays that failed to stop their advance. Vhael tried to come to her aid, but a particularly persistent hyena seized his ankle, nearly managing to knock him over.
Thus far the companions had managed to hold their own, especially with the werewolf throwing the gnoll forces into disarray, but the defenders of the Well of Demons had not yet been fully mustered. With a clank of metal and a whiff of brimstone, another trio of figures emerged from one of the passages on the far side of the room. The leader was clad in the familiar trappings of a gnoll demonic scourge, his armor grimly decorated with slashses of red. Another huntsman followed behind him, an arrow fitted to his bow.
But more disturbing by far was the last newcomer, a hulking ape-like monstrosity that came in the wake of the scourge, overshadowing the gnoll with its sheer bulk and ferocity. One glance was enough to reveal that this was no otherworldly foe; the companions didn’t need a second look to recognize it, as they’d already tangled with this type of foe.
The two gnolls, accompanied by the barlgura demon, charged forward to tip the scales back against the surface-worlders that had dared to intrude upon the Well of Demons.
CRAP! heh, how many times have I thought that? DOZENS... and posted it probably another dozen...
You have the title "Cliffhanger King" well in hand, and well earned!
I do have to comment: Two Arcanists!? And they seem to be holding their own =-)
Did I just speak too soon? LOL
Truly enjoying your story sir, thanks for taking the time to share it with us!
Vhael saved them from chaos through a sheer effort of will.
“Form the line!” the dragonborn roared, pulling Surina back from the closing jaws of the trap before the gnolls could flank her. Gral followed in his wake, the dwarf knowing the warlord’s maneuver almost by instinct, the wizard anchoring one flank under the protective arc of the dragonborn’s huge sword.
Somehow Carzen found himself obeying as well, the drills of the training field coming back to him after years of neglect, and he shifted into the spot opposite Vhael at the front of what was becoming a defensive wedge. Gez took the far flank opposite Gral, the soldier protected by Carzen on one side and by the chamber wall on the other. Their position was not perfect, and a foe could still flank them by circling around the perimeter of the room, but it was a decent position, one formed just in time as the gnolls descended upon them.
They were greeted by a gout of fire as Vhael opened his jaws wide and unleashed a blast of flame that swept across the front of the enemy ranks. A hyena, already blinded in one eye by a stroke from Vhael’s blade, fell to the ground, its bloody face charred black. The two marauders fell back, wary, but their retreat was only for a few steps, and they reformed their own line as the scourge fell in between them, the fearsome gnoll roaring a defiant curse at them as he lifted his heavy flail.
“Katek char narshak! Vhael shouted in return, his cry echoing through the chamber as powerfully as the gnoll’s had. Carzen did not understand the language of either shout, but something in the dragonborn’s voice stirred him, and he found himself baring his teeth as he lifted his sword in a ready stance. When the gnoll spearman came at him the spear seemed almost like it was stuck in the air, and he easily came in under the thrust, driving six inches of his sword through the gnoll’s armor into his rangy flesh. The gnoll drew back, and only his training kept Carzen from charging forward to finish him. Instead he dropped back into position, protecting Vhael’s flank.
The scourge laid into the warlord with a powerful overhead swing that should have crushed the dragonborn’s skull like an overripe melon. But Vhael ducked under the stroke, escaping with only a glancing hit that scraped a bloody gash along the side of his neck. For just a moment the dragonborn faltered, and the scourge lunged again, hoping to finish his foe. But Vhael only shifted his stance and brought up his sword like the head of a pike. Now it was the scourge that had to dodge, and he had to abort his attack, nursing a cut of his own just over one beady eye.
For a second the two faced off against each other, terrible opponents who each now had a better measure of the other.
Gral held the warlord’s flank, a hastily-summoned shield keeping the other spearman’s initial thrusts at bay. He cursed as his ray of frost narrowly missed the enemy, the white streak shooting harmlessly out across the chamber before frosting the surface of one of the pillars. “Where’s that bloody demon?” he yelled, as the gnoll probed warily at the magical barrier protecting him.
The barlgura had started to follow the scourge toward the battle raging across the room, but its attention had been distracted by a flurry of motion to its left. The fiend turned to see the werewolf lifting one of the huntmasters off its feet, the gnoll squealing as it fought to tear free. Terrlen snarled and hurled the gnoll into the small, open pit that gaped in the floor between the two passages. The hapless huntmaster crashed into the lip of the pit and scrabbled to hold on, but gravity finally did its work, and the archer plummeted out of view with a scream that abruptly cut off. The werewolf looked a mess, blood running down its body and matting its fur from the half dozen or so arrows embedded in its body. But it seemed to get a second wind as it caught sight of the demon, and it issued a roar of challenge that the barlgura was quick to answer.
The two combatants met in a blur of claws and teeth. Droplets of blood flew out of the chaotic tumble, splattering in a wide radius upon the floor. Terrlen fought with an insane ferocity, but the demon was fresh and unwounded, and that advantage proved insurmountable despite the long gashes that the werewolf tore across the fiend’s furry hide with his claws. For one instant it looked as though Terrlen might have a chance, as he leapt upon the demon’s back, jaws seeking purchase on its fat neck, but the barlgura seized him with one muscled arm, pulling him forward over the demon’s head and slamming him hard into the ground. The werewolf tried to pull free, but his movements were growing weaker, and the demon repeatedly lifted him and slammed him down against the floor, once, twice, until a final impact, accompanied by a sick cracking noise, ended his struggles for good.
The demon stepped forward over the carcass of its defeated foe, and answered Gral’s question with a furious roar that promised the same treatment for the rest of the adventurers.
A quiet calm he had never felt before had come over him somehow, even in the midst of the noisy, confusing melee. His sword felt like a wooden switch in his hand, flashing and arcing in a blur even before he could form the conscious thought to move it.
His enemies could not touch him.
The gnoll spearman, already wounded twice by his blade, came in at him again, driving the spear straight toward the center of the fighter’s torso. Carzen stepped to the side, and as the bright steel head flashed past him he drove his sword down into the gnoll’s unprotected left arm, crunching through flesh and bone and muscle. Blood spurted from the wound as the gnoll staggered back, his arm dangling by a few bits of skin and tendon. Carzen lifted his bloody blade to finish it, but the gnoll was clearly done, and he let him expire as he looked around for another enemy.
To his immediate left, Gez was furiously trying to keep a hyena at bay with his shortsword. The creature was seriously wounded, blood matting its hide from dozens of cuts and scratches, but its injuries only seemed to fuel its fury as it kept surging at Gez, trying to lock its jaws on a leg or arm.
For Carzen, it was the easiest thing in the world to reach out and slide a foot of steel into the hyena’s side, the slender sword slipping between two ribs deep into its body. The hyena let out a strangled yelp and flopped over, its left leg kicking spasmatically.
“Thanks, lieutenant,” Gez said, but Carzen was already turning around to help Vhael.
The gnoll scourge and dragonborn warlord had been exchanging powerful blows in a violent contest that looked like it would only end when one combatant was left broken on the floor. Vhael was obviously battered, his head, neck, and shoulders bruised and cut where the scourge’s flail had laid into him. A big dent in the side of his helmet showed where one particularly potent blow had landed, but somehow the dragonborn fought on, even as trickles of dark blood ran down his chest and arms.
The scourge was making little effort to evade Vhael’s counters, simply taking the hits as he kept delivering those deadly swings of his flail. His own armor was creased and bloody where the greatsword had connected, and one ear hung down from a long flap of flesh, the vicious wound oozing blood in bright red spurts.
The warlord fought alone for the moment; as he turned Carzen saw that Gral was grappling with the other gnoll marauder, flashes of white frost erupting between them as the dwarf tried to keep the gnoll’s snapping jaws from engulfing his face. Surina was still on her feet, but had sagged against the chamber wall, a pair of arrows jutting from her chest not far from her neck. She was trying to rally, but a strained mewling hissed from her as her blood continued to drain from the nasty wounds.
On the other hand, Carzen was invincible.
He actually laughed as he lunged forward and came in toward the scourge’s flank. The hulking gnoll sensed him coming and spun to meet him, the flail sweeping around toward the fighter’s head. He ducked under the wild swipe, and came up swinging, delivering a stinging impact that crumpled one of the metal plates protecting the gnoll’s hip.
“Bet that hurt, eh!” he yelled, as he finished his move, forcing the gnoll to choose between turning his back either on him or on Vhael. An easy choice as far as Carzen was concerned; Vhael now looked like he could barely lift that big sword of his. He lifted his shield, waiting for the inevitable attack.
But the scourge only stared darkly at him. As Carzen frowned, the gnoll’s lips twisted into a grim smile.
Realization cut through his fleeting euphoria, and he turned just in time to see the demon’s leap. He brought his sword up, knowing it was too late even before the monstrous barlgura slammed into him, driving him to the ground with hundreds of pounds of snarling, tearing fiend on top of him.
Carzen felt a fiery pain explode through his side as something jabbed hard into his body. Whatever it was didn’t penetrate his armor, but it felt as though he’d been kicked by a draft horse.
But he had bigger problems right at that moment. The demon on top of him, for one. It was flailing about wildly, and all Carzen could see, hear, and smell was the foulness of the thing looming over him. Something—a claw, an elbow, he wasn’t sure—bounced off the front of his helmet and bashed the back of his head off the floor hard enough for stars to explode across his vision even with his helmet protecting him. Had he not been wearing it, his brains would even now be splattered across the floor.
He tried to shift, move, do anything, but his arms were pinned against his body by the weight of the demon. The arm holding his shield was bent back at an uncomfortable angle, but he almost didn’t feel it against the more immediate pains that racked his body. He couldn’t breathe; it felt like a mountain had settled upon him. Everything started to grow vague, even the pain fading into a gray haze.
Awareness returned with a jarring suddenness. The first thing he felt was a relief as the weight atop him vanished, and a breath as sweet as the purest mountain air flooded into his lungs. That was followed by a return of all the pain he’d left behind a moment ago, and he groaned.
Belatedly he realized that the demon was gone, and he blinked, trying to recover his senses enough to learn what was going on.
It was Gez, looking down at him. The soldier was saying something, but Carzen’s addled mind wasn’t quite ready to assign meaning to the noises just yet. He blinked, and reflexively accepted the hand extended toward him. Actually getting up proved more difficult, but by the time he gained his feet, Gez all but propping him up, he could at least make sense of what he was seeing.
They’d won the battle. At least, that was his guess. Gral was tending to Surina, applying bandages to the arrow wounds in her chest, but it was a close call to guess which of them looked more seriously injured. Both of them would have had to give the prize to Vhael, who was checking the bodies of the fallen gnolls around them. The dragonborn’s body was covered in blood, mostly his own by the number of gashes that marked his scaly hide. Carzen had no idea what kept the dragonborn going; he’d met men, tough men, who would have been lying mewling upon the floor with even half so many cuts.
He looked down at the body of the demon at his feet. He wondered what had killed it; dozens of long scratches covered its body, no doubt inflicted by the Terrlen-werewolf, but none of the wounds appeared mortal. Grasping onto Gez to steady himself, he leaned over and pushed the demon over with a kick of his boot.
There it was, jutting from the demon’s body. The hilt of his sword, the blade buried almost to the quillons, covered in ugly black ichor that had spilled from the wound. Carzen remembered the impact in his side, rubbing absently at the soreness where the hilt of his own weapon must have jabbed into him when the demon landed atop him.
“That was some thrust,” Gez said. The soldier was the only one of them who didn’t appear to be hurt, although he favored his left side a bit as he came up beside Carzen to look down at the demon. “When that thing jumped on you, sir, I thought you were done for.”
Carzen looked around the room, taking in the scene of carnage. There were bodies all over, mostly here where they’d made their stand, but also on the far side of the room, near the passages. His eyes lingered on one body, and he started over there, despite the fact that he could barely stand, let alone walk.
“Sir?” Gez asked, starting after him, but hesitating as Carzen lifted a hand to forestall him.
Vhael looked up as Carzen limped past, but the dragonborn said nothing, and Carzen’s gaze did not shift from his goal. He swayed a little on his feet as he stood over the broken body of the man—now again just that—that had brought them here. In death, Terrlen looked at ease, his features placid despite the arrows that jutted from him, despite the gouges where the demon’s claws had torn big hunks of flesh from his body.
In some strange way, Carzen thought that Terrlen might have been the lucky one.
A subtle awareness stole upon him, and he turned to see Vhael standing there. One of the dragonborn’s eyes had swollen up until it was doubtful that he could see out of it, but the other regarded Carzen coldly.
“Well now, what now, general?”
Carzen knew what the other would say, but he still needed to hear it. “We go on. We’ll find a secure place to rest, recover our strength, and then go on.”
“None of this matters,” Carzen said quietly. “None of this can matter, not this much. No one will care what we do here, not my father, not the great lord of Fallcrest, not anyone. Even if we find those halflings, even if by some miracle we find them alive, no bards will sing the songs of our ‘great deeds’ here in this accursed place.”
Vhael shifted slightly, and for a moment Carzen thought he was going to topple over. But Vhael only leaned in, and spoke quiet words meant for Carzen’s ears alone.
“It matters to us,” the dragonborn said.
He turned and walked back toward the others. Surina was on her feet again, although she rested a clawed hand on Gral’s shoulder in a way that was obviously more for support than for camaraderie. Gez had taken up a gnoll’s cloak and was using it to try to extract Carzen’s sword from the body of the fallen demon.
“Get your things together,” Vhael said. “We’re moving out.”
Vhael shifted slightly, and for a moment Carzen thought he was going to topple over. But Vhael only leaned in, and spoke quiet words meant for Carzen’s ears alone.
Yeah, I didn't have a firm idea on where I was going to take Vhael when I started, but I'm finding it interesting to flesh out some of the concepts that Wizards included in the description of the dragonborn in the 4e Player's Handbook. In some ways they seem to represent a continuation of the ideals of the 1e paladin in terms of their code of honor.
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Chapter 51
Mara could barely think about anything, except for the monumental effort involved in continuing to put one foot ahead of the other. Her side itched under the crude bandage where the troglodyte spear had grazed her. She wanted to douse her head into the waters of the lake again, but knew that if she stopped, she might not be able to get back onto her feet again.
They were fleeing along the shores of a vast underground lake, its edge rippling up against the lip of the narrow shore they’d been following for the last hour. The surface of the lake extended out for what might have been a hundred paces or a hundred miles away from them, a cistern that could have supplied the needs of a city like Fallcrest for years, if not centuries.
Only sheer will was keeping her going, and the other former slaves were even worse off. They’d eaten the last of the provisions carried by Jaron and Beetle at their last break, the meager rations doing little to salve the gnawing hunger they all felt. At least they had no shortage of water, Mara thought grimly, as she glanced back out over the lake.
She didn’t want to think about what would happen when they ran out of lamp oil.
Fear drove them, and there was no shortage of that, either. They hadn’t seen the lights of the duergar party pursuing them, but Jaron had reported earlier that the slavers had followed them down toward the lake, and Mara suspected that they would not give up easily. The lakeshore bent and twisted a convoluted path around the edge of the vast cavern, meaning that their enemies could be a mile behind them, or just a few hundred paces.
The duergar were like a whip lashing them forward, but their brief clash with a pair of troglodyte warriors shortly after they’d arrived at the lake had reminded them that more dangers lurked in these unexplored depths. The troglodytes, seeing that they were heavily outnumbered, had withdrawn after a brief exchange of missile fire, but things could have easily gone the other way had the ugly reptilian creatures pressed the issue. Mara had been the only one hit, grazed by a javelin as she’d rushed forward with her spear, and only luck had kept the wound from being far more serious.
Mara became dimly aware of a faint noise up ahead that tickled at her memory. She couldn’t quite identify it, and didn’t realize she had stopped until Jaron came up to stand next to her.
“Waterfall,” he said. “Probably an underground stream from above that opens onto the lake. I’ll go check it out, if you want to wait here.”
If you need to rest, he didn’t say, but Mara could see the sympathy in his eyes. The ranger and his cousin probably walked three steps for each one that the freed captives took, the pair scouting ahead and behind them, alert for new dangers that might threaten the small column. Jaron in particular seemed particularly determined, the more so after he talked to each of his kinsmen, learning about what had happened to them, and to the absent cleric of Avendra. Mara could see his feelings for her in the way his jaw tightened when he spoke her name. She remembered when they had come for her, back at the Hold, and felt a cold chill on behalf of her friend.
“We’ll go together,” Mara said. “Better that we not get separated, now.”
Jaron nodded. Mara turned as Beetle came trotting up. For some reason, the halfling was soaked through; had he been swimming? “Trouble?” she asked the halfling.
“No luck,” Beetle said. “Fishes too fast, canna catch. You got more bread, Jayse?” he asked, eyeing Jaron’s pack for the tenth time since their last brief rest.
Mara sighed, but Jaron stepped between them and took his cousin’s arm gently. “Did you see the dwarves?” he asked.
“No dwarfs,” the halfling said. “But flickers, back along lake. Come this way.”
“How far?” Mara asked. “How long until they reach us?” They couldn’t see them from here, but if they were closing the distance, their own lights might soon give them away.
The other members of their company had gathered around, hoping for good news but expecting the opposite from their faces. They’d armed themselves as best they could, with broken-off stalagmites to serve as crude clubs, or with smooth rocks collected along the lakeshore. Some of the halflings had fashioned simple slings from straps and bits of leather provided by Jaron, and two carried knives loaned by Beetle, who seemed to have an endless supply secreted about his person. But they looked like what they were, a haggard band of refugees on the brink of collapse.
“How long, Beetle?” Jaron repeated, his own face grim. Looking down into his quiver, Mara saw the ends of only a half-dozen shafts.
Beetle frowned, and counted out something on his fingers. “Maybe half hour,” he finally said.
A grim tension surged through the group; one of the miners cursed, and several of the halflings looked ready to burst into tears. It was more responsibility than Mara wanted, but her uncle had taught her that things rarely turned out the way that you wanted, and that you had to face the reality rather than the hoped-for alternative.
“Come on,” Mara said, hefting her spear in what she hoped was a confident gesture.
The sounds of the waterfall grew louder as they continued, until they came around another bend in the cavern and saw it in a deep niche ahead, a torrent of water plummeting down some thirty feet from a gap in the cliffs above. The light of the lamp fashioned sparkles out of the droplets that fell away from the dark cascade, a brief glance of beauty in this otherwise dark place. The water fell into a pool that gathered slightly above them, overflowing into a channel that descended a short slope into the lake. They’d have to wade across there, but the little stream was only a few paces across, and didn’t look too deep.
Mara sniffed, and frowned. “This place stinks of trogs.” She scanned the area, but didn’t see anything. “Let’s go,” Mara said, starting forward. “Harek, Calder, help the halflings…”
She didn’t get a chance to finish, as Jaron cut her off, shouting a warning. Mara turned to see a troglodyte step out of a niche in the cliffs not ten feet away, where he’d blended so well with the surrounding stone that her gaze had initially passed right over him. The trog held a big stone club, which it lifted above its head as it charged.
Jaron had an arrow fitted to his bow in an instant, but before he could aid Mara, cries from the other halflings drew his attention back toward the lake, where more troglodytes were rising from the shallow waters of the lake, nearly a dozen of them, surging forward in a wave toward the terrified fugitives.
Looking at the wave of troglodytes rising out of lake ahead, Jaron felt a cold surge of panic kindle in his gut. But as he glanced back at the terrified halflings from his village, he knew that he could not flee, could not leave these simple folk of the vale to be chased down and taken by the vile creatures of the depths.
He heard a noise and realized that it was himself, yelling as he drew an arrow, sighted, and fired. The shot sank into the first troglodyte, all but vanishing into the slick gray hide of its torso. For a moment Jaron thought he might have even missed, as the monster kept coming, lifting its stone club above its head as it drew closer. But even as Jaron drew another arrow, the troglodyte abruptly ran out of energy, collapsing in a limp heap upon the damp ground.
But more were coming, spreading out to flank him, with still more moving to bypass him entirely to get to the others behind. Jaron hesitated with his bow half-drawn, unsure of which group to target.
Beetle came to his aid, leaping in with a bright yell, stabbing one of the trogs in the side with one of his daggers. The creature turned toward him, but apparently the halfling had hit something vulnerable, for it faltered like the first, blood spraying out of its mouth as the puncture in its lung worked its grim course. But even as it fell, three more came charging at Beetle, who was forced a wild, dancing course back along the shore, barely dodging the powerful swings of their clubs.
Harek lifted his own crude club to face the first of the trogs that got past Jaron. But before either he or his foe could strike, a troglodyte still standing up to his knees in the lake hurled a javelin that sank with a meaty thunk into the miner’s body. Clutching the haft of the spear protruding from his chest, Harek groaned and fell to his knees, suffering only for a moment before the charging troglodyte crushed his skull with a single powerful swipe of his club.
Calder was already running, retreating back along the lakeshore the way they had come. Some of the halflings had likewise started to fall back, but two of the troglodytes had moved around to intercept them, herding them back toward the cliff face near the waterfall.
Mara brought up her spear as the troglodyte mauler lunged at her. The orc spear caught the creature in the side, its own momentum driving the head into its body. The trog snarled in pain, but before Mara could thrust the weapon deeper, it smashed its club down into the shaft, snapping it in two. Now armed only with a three-foot length of wood, Mara tried to use it like a bo, cracking the trog across the face. But the mauler shrugged off the blow as if it was nothing. It brought its club around in a powerful swing that Mara could not fully avoid. The heavy club caught her raised forearm before following through to glance off her head. The blow knocked her sprawling. Dazed, she was brought back to awareness by a lance of pure white agony as she fell onto her injured arm. She looked up to see the troglodyte looming over her, its club raised to deliver what could only be a killing blow.
Mara tried to react, dodge, do anything, but it was as if her muscles had been disconnected from her brain; all she could do was rock slightly, even that motion sending a sick surge of nausea through her body.
Something whistled over her head, and a small arrow sprouted in the troglodyte’s gut. The missile—obviously from Jaron’s bow—had hit something painful, for the troglodyte jolted, a hiss of mingled pain and anger coming from its jaws. It hesitated, only for a second or two, before fixing its attention on Mara again.
But that brief pause had given Mara the precious time she needed for the urgent signals from her brain to reach her body. As the club came down she rolled backward, out of its path. The stone club hit the ground hard enough to knock shards free that Mara could feel stabbing into her back. She kept rolling until a cold jolt hit her; she’d fallen into the stream.
Looking up, she could see that the troglodyte was following her.
Jaron paid a high price for his aid to Mara. Three trogs had surrounded him, and were pounding at him with their stone clubs. They were slower than he was, and his small size made him hard to hit, but they also weren’t exhausted, hungry, and sore from an untreated gash from an orc spear. All of those factors conspired against Jaron as he fell back, squeezing through the narrow opening left in the circle of enemies. For all his speed he took two glancing hits, the latter of which nearly tore his right arm from its shoulder socket. One more of those… he thought grimly, not finishing the thought as the trogs rushed after him.
Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anywhere for him to go, as the cliff wall loomed up ahead of him.
The four troglodytes that had gotten past Jaron and Beetle came toward the halflings from Fairhollow, expecting easy prey. Indeed, the halflings looked like what they were, terrified farmers and craftsmen, pale and malnourished, weakened from an arduous trek and nearing the breaking point. They too had nearly panicked and broken as Calder had, but Jaron’s example had given them enough steel, combined with the inherent fortitude of their race, to stand their ground. The slings that Jaron had crafted for them whistled, and those without hurled smooth stones that struck with deadly accuracy. The troglodytes had hides thicker than boiled leather, and were hardened by the harsh realities of their underground home, but they found themselves giving way before that barrage. One fell, and then another, dazed by sling bullets that had cracked into their heads. A third dropped its club as a stone snapped into its fingers, and it hesitated to recover the weapon with its other hand. The last one rushed forward, hoping to sweep the halflings aside with a single strong swipe of its club, but a stone slammed into its kneecap, crippling it. Swinging in vain at its tormentors, who fell back to form a wide circle around it, the trog was barraged with stones from all directions. One cracked it behind the slit of its ear, and it fell forward. Stunned but still struggling, it never saw the halfling that came up hefting a rock twice the size of his head, which made a solid thunk as it smashed into the troglodyte’s skull.
Mara was nearly swept away by the rushing water of the stream, but she was somehow able to drag herself up to the other side. Something flashed past her, a missile of some sort, but she couldn’t spare her attention from the troglodyte mauler, which reached the far bank and hesitated just a moment before following her in. The arrow in its gut was slowing it down, Mara saw, but she knew better than to underestimate its strength.
The stream was barely two paces across, and it barely came up to the trog’s knees, but as the current caught it the creature shifted a bit, adjusting to keep its balance. That was the moment that Mara had been waiting for. She darted forward. The mauler sensed her coming and lifted its club, but Mara met it before it could strike, seizing its arms with her hands, struggling now both against the stream pulling at her feet and the muscles of the troglodyte. The trog was stronger and seemed to realize this immediately, and it tore one arm free to grab hold of the woman and thrust her away.
Mara immediately released her hold and grabbed onto the clawed hand holding her, wrapping both of her hands around its wrists. She used its momentum and her own weight to pull it off balance. Both of them fell, the trog falling forward with a splash in the stream, Mara landing on her hip at its edge. She grimaced as the impact sent a fresh knife of pain through her already battered body, but forced herself to ignore it as she pushed herself up to see what had happened.
The stream had done its work; the troglodyte was still struggling, but it was now fifteen feet away, still sliding down the smooth course of the stream toward the spot where it dumped into the lake. She knew that she hadn’t hurt it, not really, but hopefully the other wounds it had taken would give it pause.
She looked over to see what had happened with her charges, expecting a grim and bloody scene. She found it, but it wasn’t quite what she had expected.
Dead and dying troglodytes were scattered about, but other than the impaled corpse of Harek, none of the bodies seemed to belong to those on her side. Two trogs had chased Jaron, backing him up against the cavern wall, but before Mara could intervene the reptilian warriors came under a barrage of stones, hurled by the slings of the halfling villagers. The trogs raised their arms to protect their heads, but one took a glancing shot across the brow that Mara could hear cracking bone even ten feet away. The other one staggered through the storm of rocks only to take an arrow through the throat from Jaron’s bow. It crumpled, even as the second absorbed several more hits and fell to its knees, then onto its face.
Mara glanced left, looking for the troglodyte spear-thrower and the wounded mauler, but anything beyond the shore of the lake was lost in shadow, and she couldn’t make out either foe. She kept low, wary of what had happened to Harek, and called out to Jaron as the last troglodyte that had been left standing on the shore toppled over.
“I don’t see them,” Jaron said in response to her, his magical goggles giving him far superior vision in the near-darkness. “I think they’ve retreated, for now.”
Mara agreed with the halfling’s unspoken addition, But they may be back, with friends. “We’ve got to get out of here while we can.”
Jaron was checking the halfling villagers, who still looked tired and scared, but had been bolstered by their successful stand against the troglodytes. “Beetle?” he asked, looking up as his cousin appeared from back along the lakeshore path, where three trogs had chased him. The halfling had a growing bruise along the left side of his face, but he was whistling as he cleaned blood off his knife. At Jaron’s question, the halfling rogue gave a thumbs-up.
“Any sign of Calder?” Jaron asked. Beetle shook his head.
“We can’t go back for him,” Mara said. “There’s a good chance that the slavers heard the sounds of this battle. We’ve got to get out of here, now.”
She helped the halflings make their way across the stream, and then led the small column of survivors along the lakeshore path, resuming their desperate flight toward escape.
This was nothing new, in this place. Carzen remembered stinking of it, his clothes covered in the foulness of the demon’s vile fluids. He’d had to toss all of it, his cloak, tunic, leggings, and even after he’d scraped his armor clean and put on his last set of clean clothes, he’d still reeked of it. That hadn’t been enough to keep him from collapsing into a deep, dreamless sleep the moment that his watch had been finished, but it had been the first thing to fill his nostrils when Gral had finally shaken him awake.
They’d fortified in a small room used by the gnolls as a barracks, not far from the entry chamber. The place had been adjacent to a room that had been used by the gnolls as a kennel for their hyenas, and it offered a stink to rival the reek of battle’s aftermath. It held only four crude, filthy cots, so rank that even the exhausted adventurers preferred to spread their blankets out on the floor to sleeping there. More importantly, however, the room had been equipped with a pair of thick iron-banded doors that they could rig with a bar from within. There had been no further parties of gnolls to disturb their rest. That wasn’t to say that they had slumbered peacefully; there had been noises, faint sounds that filtered even through the heavy doors. During his watch, Carzen thought he heard an odd, haunting wail that sent chills down his spine during his watch, and one time he thought he saw a pale, ghostly form out of the corner of his vision. When he turned his head toward it, however, it was gone.
Even with those uneasy encounters, once his watch was over he had slept soundly and dreamlessly.
He had no idea how long they had rested. Once they had slept and eaten, with Gral treating their diverse injuries with needle, thread, and fresh linen bandages, they had set out again into the complex. A quick search of the surrounding chambers had turned up more abandoned quarters, and a large room dominated by the largest boar that Carzen had ever seen. The boar had snorted and stomped angrily at their arrival, but it had been chained to the floor, so Vhael had decided to leave it be for now. Carzen had thought it might have been put to better use over a crackling fire, but he didn’t challenge the warlord’s decision. Getting out of this place as quickly as possible had developed a strong appeal in the fighter’s mind.
So now they were leaving the gnoll quarters behind, and moving deeper into the complex. And were greeted by the stink of blood.
They saw the source of the odor as soon as they entered the hall. It formed a trail upon the floor, glistening wetly in the light of their lamps. It emerged from under a set of double doors to their left, and wound away down the length of the hall to their right. Gral knelt beside the crimson course to examine it more closely.
“Fresh?” Vhael asked.
“I would say no, except that its still wet,” Gral reported. “Most unusual.”
A sudden chill filled the room, and Carzen felt a cold shudder pass down his spine.
“Hissa! Surina exclaimed, a bright orb of flame appearing in her hand as she swiveled toward the far end of the hall. Carzen turned and saw three figures rising up out of the stream of blood. They were insubstantial, the outlines of the hall behind them just visible through their ghostly forms. The three ghosts hovered just above the floor, the lower parts of their bodies fading into nothingness.
“Hold your attacks,” Vhael said, watching the trio as they drifted closer. “Surina,” he repeated, and the warlock finally released her power, the room darkening again as the bright glow of her flames faded.
The three were a diverse lot, and there were hints at what had killed them visible on the outlines of their bodies. The one on the left was a bearded human clad in a chainmail hauberk that covered most of his body, at least down to his waist, where it was ripped in a neat line all the way across his torso. As he drew closer Carzen could see that the tear went through the ghost’s body as well, the lower half trailing just a bit behind the upper. He wore an icon on a chain upon his chest, but Carzen couldn’t quite make out the design stamped onto the disk.
The second ghost was clad head to toe in heavy plate armor, including a full helm with a closed visor. This one wore the familiar symbol of the sun god, Pelor, etched in bold relief upon his breastplate. As the ghost shifted, however, Carzen could see that his helm had been staved in from one side, a blow that must have been almost instantly lethal.
The last ghost was an elven woman, her lean body draped in green robes. She carried a staff raised in one hand, as if in salute. One side of her face was marked terribly, the flesh eaten away enough in several places to show the bone beneath. She regarded them with cold eyes.
Vhael stepped forward to confront the three ghosts, and Carzen was all too happy to let him be their representative in this instance. Beside him, Gez was shivering. The ghost of the elven woman drifted forward to meet the warlord, flanked by the two fallen warriors.
The dragonborn opened his mouth to speak, but the woman interrupted him, her voice clear but hollow, as if it came from a deep hole in the ground.
“Why do you intrude upon this place?”
“We seek no conflict with you, spirits,” Vhael said. “We come to recover prisoners held by the evil masters of this place.”
“What you have found,” the ghostly woman droned, “Is only your deaths.” Power seemed to gather around her as she spoke, and she raised her staff high, as if she were a magistrate pronouncing judgement.
It will take about a month and a half to get through the posts I have left. As I noted earlier, I don't plan (at the moment) on continuing with 4e in my writing. Nothing against the system specifically, but the adventure path mods just aren't sucking me in the way that The Shackled City or Rappan Athuk did. I've already begun the next project I'll post here, and will probably put up a teaser before this one wraps up. I'm trying something different for the next story; for one thing, there are actual players this time around.
* * * * *
Chapter 55
Carzen reached for his sword at the ghost’s prouncement, although he wasn’t sure how you could fight foes that you could see through. Surina and Gez likewise tensed, although Vhael, as far as Carzen could see standing behind him, did not so much as flinch a muscle. Gral stood silently at the warlord’s side, but Carzen thought he could see a pale white glow around the tip of the dwarf’s staff, magic held ready in case the ghost tried to make good on its threat.
“Are you the guardians of this place, then?” the dragonborn finally said, as the echo of the ghost elf’s words faded. “I would not have expected to see followers of Kord and Pelor protecting a place such as this.
“We died here,” the ghost with the dented skull said, his tone mournful. “And like as not you will as well,” the bearded ghost added, the lower part of his body shifting slightly away as he moved, slowly sliding forward to catch up to the rest of him. Carzen felt his gut clench at the sight of it, at all of them.
“We were among the best,” the elf woman’s ghost said. “If we could not overcome the defenses protecting the secrets of the Well, it is doubtful that you will fare better.”
“We have no interest in secrets. We are here for the prisoners, nothing more.”
“A doubtful tale,” the elf woman said. “We know the wonders that this place holds. You have the stink of treasure-seekers about you.”
Surina started forward, her eyes flashing angrily, but Vhael again intercepted her with a raised hand, this time a bit more forcefully than before. “You may not have known my kind in life, spirit, but you must know that to the dragonborn, our word is a bond of honor, one that we do not casually sunder. We do not take well to being marked liar. But if it reassures you, I swear upon the sacred name of Bahamut that what I speak is true. We care not for what secrets are hidden here; we are here for our people, and for them alone.”
“You speak of the platinum dragon, but you do not wear his sigil,” the ghost with the caved-in helmet said.
“The gods know what lies in the hearts of men,” Vhael responded simply. “Icons are for other men to see, not for their eyes.”
“You claim ignorance, then, of the fantastic treasures stored within the inner vaults of this place?” the elf woman asked, her words as cutting as any knife despite their disembodied tone.
“If we are to be judged by you, I would know with whom I speak,” Vhael said. He stated his name, and the names of his companions, eschewing titles or ranks. The ghosts seemed uninterested, their pale expressions remaining unchanged during the recitation, but when he was finished, the bearded ghost spoke.
“I was Valdrag, called ‘the Brute’ by some. I feared no man, and found none such who could best me in a test of strength.”
“Apparently something did,” Carzen said, noting the gap in the ghost’s torso. He hadn’t spoken in more than a whisper, but apparently the ghosts had excellent hearing, for Valdrag roared, “I died in glorious battle against a thing out of nightmares, boy! We shall see how you fare, indeed we shall!”
Carzen, subdued, did not respond.
“I was Sir Terris, knight of Pelor,” the second ghost said. “Pleasant words are easy to speak, dragonborn, and even easier to hear, but they often belie what lies within the heart.”
“And I was Mendara,” the elven ghost said. “Tell us more of these ‘prisoners’ you claim to seek. This place is far from any traveled path… why would they be brought here?”
“For that, you should have to ask the gnolls we slew to get here,” Vhael said, refusing to be baited. “If they are here, we shall find them, and bring them back to their homes. This I have sworn, and this I shall do.”
“Bravely spoken indeed,” Terris said. But Mendara appeared to remain doubtful.
“’If’ they are here? So you do not know they are even in this place, then? Your story grows more improbable by the moment, dragon-kin.”
“And whether it be prisoners or magic you seek, you will never find them,” Valdreg said. “Even if you defeat the tests created by the original masters of his place, the Guardian that wards the inner sanctum will tear you to pieces.” He shifted again, the two halves of his ghostly body putting truth to his words.
Gral touched Vhael lightly on the arm. The two exchanged a long look that contained meaning, in the way that long companions could speak without using words. Vhael turned back to the ghosts. “I would know why you are seeking to provoke us. If you are not set to guard this place, what concern is it of yours why we are here?”
Mendara’s angry look was obvious even on her ghostly face, but Terris came forward to hover beside her. “This place is known as the Proving Grounds. It was created by followers of the minotaur god Baphomet, as a trial for those who would seek entry to the inner sanctum. Those original creators have long since left, and the place has new masters. Those you seek would be in the sanctum, if the gnoll lord has them.”
“Then that is where we must go,” Vhael said.
“You will be tested,” Terris said. “Four items are needed to complete the ritual that opens the way to the sanctum. The same ritual also releases the Guardian that protects this place.”
“Aye, and you’ll find this Guardian to be no simple foe,” Valdrag said.
Mendara turned her head, so that the companions could better see the burns that had eaten away half of her face. “If you are smart, you will flee now, and avoid our fate.”
“That’s a big ‘if’, in our case,” Carzen muttered under his breath.
“Our way is forward,” Vhael said.
“If you could share your knowledge of these trials, and this Guardian, perhaps we might be better equipped to face them,” Gral said. “We are not without resources.” He held up his staff, and the pale glow of frost brightened down its length.
The three ghosts regarded them, silently. Their eyes passed over each of the companions in turn; when they came to Carzen, he felt the weight of judgment in those stares.
Finally, the ghosts returned their attention to Vhael. “We will tell you what we can,” Terris said.
Congrats on finishing the story, it's been fun so far, and I've enjoyed getting a peek at 4e. As usual your characters are great and the action scenes are wonderfully detailed.
I was fairly sure they were in for some negative levels against those ghosts!
Looking forward to the 3.x group action, as always thank you for taking the time to share your talent with us!
He’d hated it since their first arrival in the entry chamber, even before the ambush by the tentacle thing and the choker-monsters, but since then his hatred had taken on a fierce passion, nuanced with gradations of disgust and terror that together formed a ugly pit that lodged in his gut. He felt like he would never lose the stench of blood that seemed etched into his nostrils, and he knew that he would never forget the blood-filled room they’d just left. There were not enough years in a life to allow such a memory to fade.
They were resting in one of the smaller anterooms off the main hall, the looping complex that circled around the black pit in the center that had sent a deeper chill through Carzen when they had looked upon it. The young fighter felt as though every muscle in his body had been pulled and twisted until he felt every single one as a little sliver of pain that merged into a seamless whole. He had an itch on the back of his neck, but the simple action of moving to address it seemed utterly beyond him. He knew that Vhael would order them back into action in a few minutes, and also knew that somehow, his battered body would obey.
He glanced over at the dragonborn, and realized that while he was tired and worn, the general had to be… Carzen shook his head. There were no words to describe the warlord. He was still crazy, as far as Carzen was concerned—more so, after what he’d just witnessed—but he was starting to understand why men of all races had followed him. Still followed him, he mused, thinking of Gral, and Surina, and Gez.
And Carzen Zelos.
He couldn’t fault the dragonborn’s leadership against the first few few tests. Getting the book had been trivially easy; it had been lying out in the open, as the spirits had said, in a small anteroom off the corridor of blood. The blood trail had started there, in front of the altar, a grim pool too big to have come from one, or two, or even a dozen men. It had given Carzen the shudders, but that hadn’t stopped them from seizing the book and going on their way.
The first real test had started off easily enough. They had opened the doors to the chamber to see a vast hall, bending to their left, supported by tall pillars that were decorated by floor-to-ceiling mirrors bounded in brass. Carzen remembered the sensation that he’d felt when he’d looked at that first mirror. It had felt as though his soul was being torn from his body. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t scream, although he had felt like it, felt as though the mirror was trying to swallow him whole.
He still couldn’t quite remember just what he’d seen in that mirror. Gral had grabbed him, roughly, turning him so that the mirror fell out of his vision. “Don’t look at the mirrors, any of you,” the dwarf had commanded. “There’s fell magic here.”
Carzen could have told him that, but he obeyed, all of them did. Vhael had led them around the perimeter of the room, close to the wall, their eyes fixed upon the stone so intently that they could see the grain in the rock. Carzen had felt the skin between his shoulder blades crawling, but the mirrors apparently lacked the power to harm them if they did not look at them. That hadn’t fully erased his uneasiness, though.
They followed the wall around the bend in the room to the left, all the way to a black curtain that blocked part of the chamber off from the rest. But it hung free, unanchored on the sides, so they had pushed through.
With their eyes averted as they had been, the skeletons had caught them by surprise. Carzen remembered a flashing pain in his side as something jabbed through his armor. He had looked up—thankfully, there had been no more mirrors beyond the curtain—to find himself facing a monstrous skeleton, its bones covered in nasty-looking spurs and edges. He’d gotten his shield up in time to deflect a spray of those shards; apparently the gods-forsaken thing had possessed the power to shoot out bits of itself at intruders.
The things—Gral had called them boneshard skeletons—had been fearsome and tough, but they had been two to the party’s five, and they’d defeated them at the cost of some painful but ultimately minor wounds. They’d claimed the artifact that the things had been guarding, a minotaur mask carved out of black wood, and retraced their steps.
After that trial, Carzen hadn’t known what to expect next. But the blood room had been worse, that much was certain.
The second challenge had been in a chamber still larger than the first. The double doors had opened onto a stone platform, but most of the rest of the room’s floor had been covered in a sea of what had looked and smelled like fresh blood. Carzen had almost gotten sick at the sheer stink of it, and only the iron control of the dragonborn had given him the example needed to overcome the wave of nausea. Gez hadn’t been quite so durable, but none of them had chastened him when he staggered back over to the group, pale.
Rising up out of the blood pool had been a pair of massive stone statues, depicting minotaurs armed with long spiked chains. The room had been divided down its center by a stone platform maybe fifteen feet across, rising maybe four feet above the level of the blood. They could just make out two more small platforms on the far side of the room, upon which small objects that Carzen hadn’t been able to quite make out had rested. No doubt they were what they had come here to claim.
All in all, Carzen had been ready to leave at once, ghosts and trials and captive prisoners be damned. But Vhael had only hesitated briefly, taking in the whole environment before issuing orders.
“Destroy those statues,” he had said first.
Carzen hadn’t understood the logic of that at first, but they’d complied, blasting the nearer statue first with magic and arrows. Carzen and Vhael had armed themselves with gnoll longbows, and the steel-tipped arrows had dislodged big hunks of stone with each solid impact. But it had been Gral and Surina who had done most of the damage, the dwarf’s icy blasts and the warlock’s fire combining to weaken the stone, creating a tracery of fine cracks that slowly spread across the statue’s body. The arm holding the chain fell free, splashing noisily before vanishing into the pool of blood.
Carzen had been about to ask what they were trying to accomplish, when the statue suddenly came alive, issuing a terrible roar before crumbling into fragments.
“Oh,” he had said.
The second statue lasted longer, the distance putting it out of the range of the casters’ magic, but the gnolls had left them plenty of arrows, and they had done the job. That had left the pool of blood, an obstacle that Carzen was not eager to test. Probing indicated that the blood was nearly six feet deep.
Vhael had consulted briefly with Gral, and together they came up with an answer. It took some time to shuffle back to the gnoll chambers, and longer to bring up the two tables in the barracks there, but they formed an effective bridge first to the base of the ruined statue, then from there to the platform in the middle of the room. The tables were relatively flimsy and unstable as bridges, but they held up, at least long enough for them all to make it over to the statue platform, crossing one at a time.
Vhael had just stepped out onto the second table, the wood creaking alarmingly under his weight, when the demons attacked.
The thing sprang up out of the blood, a fearsome red thing that was all muscles and claws. Without warning it seized the edge of the table, tipping it. Vhael shifted his balance quickly and for a moment Carzen had thought that he would keep his perch, but then the table had broken down the middle, dropping the dragonborn into the blood. The demon surged forward, and was on him almost before Vhael could do anything more than lift his head above the roiling surface of the pool.
Arrows and spells had blasted the fiend, but with the blood protecting most of its body, the attacks had had little effect upon it. Carzen had thought that Vhael was a goner, especially when the demon had started tearing at his face with its claws, but then the dragonborn had seized his tormenter, lifting it up out of the blood. Carzen had quickly realized what he was doing; even as the demon continued to ravage him the companions now had a clear shot at the thing, and they made their attacks count. Within ten seconds the demon had been reduced to a wreckage, and Vhael had tossed it aside, to vanish in a flash under the blood.
But that hadn’t been the end of it. Even as they slew the demon, two more of them had risen out of the blood on the far side of the room, leaving dripping trails behind them as they pulled themselves up onto the platform in the center. The smart thing to do, as far as Carzen was concerned, would have been for Vhael to fall back under the cover of their fire to the platform, where Surina was waiting to pull him up. With them under the blood, the demons were invincible, but better that than to confront them in their element, he had thought.
He hadn’t been quite fully surprised when Vhael had attacked.
The demons had leapt forward into the blood, shrugging off the companions’ fire, even the arrow that Carzen had sank deep into the shoulder of one of them. It was clear that Vhael wouldn’t escape the blood before they reached him, but even as they tore into him, coming at him from both sides, he kept pushing forward, his bloody body slowly emerging from the blood as he reached the steps leading up to the platform. The demons followed, tearing at him, trying to drag him back, but even as they had gashed his clothes, scored his armor, and sliced his flesh, he hadn’t given so much as an inch of ground. He didn’t draw his sword until he was fully clear of the blood, and by then, the demons, for all their fury, were showing the effects of the constant fire from the dragonborn’s companions. Vhael’s sword had decapitated one, even as Gez sank an arrow into the throat of the second, sending it into a wild spasm of flailing limbs. Those struggles had ended quickly, with another quick thrust of the dragonborn’s great blade.
With the statues gone and the guardians defeated, it had become just a matter of time and effort to recover the prize. The first table had been shifted to replace the broken second, and all of them reached the central platform safely. Vhael had looked almost like a demon himself, covered in blood. The far platforms were too far distant for them to use the table as a bridge, but Surina’s magic overcame this final obstacle. She possessed the ability to teleport herself short distances, a power she used to reach the platforms, after leaping to close the distance. It took some time, as she had to refocus her will after each jump, but no more demons had emerged from the blood, and in less than an hour they were back where they had started, carrying two pieces of a large dagger, the third of the four items they needed to reach their goal.
“Come on, soldier,” a voice said. Carzen started—his mind had started to drift off in the midst of his reminiscing—and he looked up to see Vhael standing over him. The others were already up and ready. The dragonborn had cleaned himself as best he could, but streaks of red were still visible in the cracks and crevices of his armor. Crude bandages from Gral’s seemingly never-ending kit covered the new gouges on his face and neck, but otherwise he looked as determined as ever.
Vhael extended a hand, and after a moment Carzen took it. His legs still felt a bit unsteady, but he wasn’t going to let the dragonborn, who’d suffered far worse, get the better of him.
“One left,” he said, leading them once more through the complex to the doors. Their route took them again through the hall that formed a long rectangle around the central chamber where the black pit with its Guardian waited for them. The floor and walls of the hall were marked with black streaks and deep gouges in the stone. Carzen had remarked on these before, but none of them had any idea of what might have caused the damage. One thing that Carzen was sure of, it wouldn’t be a good thing.
But they made their way through the scarred hall without incident, and down the long passage that led to the doors that warded the final trial. Like the others, these doors were unmarked slabs of stone so dark that they were almost black. The doors were balanced on recessed hinges, but it still took Carzen and Vhael working together to force them open enough for the others to squeeze through.
Carzen had been expecting another grand hall, so the chamber beyond the door caught him by surprise, even though it had to be almost thirty feet across. The room was dominated by two tall pillars, the nearer barely ten feet beyond the threshold of the entrance. Carzen stared at the pillar in horror; it was carved to depict a mass of writhing, tormented forms, hairless humanoids twisting in a chaotic disorder of torsos and limbs.
“That is… foul,” Carzen muttered under his breath, releasing the door and stepping forward to give the others space to follow.
Despite all that he had seen in this cursed place, he almost jumped out of his skin when the pillar came alive. The graven figures started moving, the arms twisting and reaching, the faces contorting in expressions of agony.
“Back! Back!” Carzen shouted, all but falling over his own legs as he retreated. The others moved back from the doorway, but not quickly enough, as several of the animated mouths upon the pillar opened wide, and unleashed a gout of hissing, stinging green droplets upon Carzen and Vhael.
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