You know, this is probably one of the longest running story hours with an author that goes on so many extended hiatuses.
I am going to admit, straight out, that I have no idea when I will update again. All I know is that, yes, I do enjoy writing this story hour and will continue to do so as long as I am physically able. How often I implement such updates is debatable. But know that I will strive to do so as often as I can. Be it weekly or... annually.
I hope my loyal readers have not forgotten me.
Enjoy.
Chapter Three, Part Two
The sunrod fell from Abrina's grasp as she clawed at the air, attempting to find purchase where there was none. Her legs crumpled beneath her as she hit the stone ground, jarring pain shooting up her hips. The sunrod glanced off a sharpened stake and clattered to the bottom of the pit a few feet away. Several other stakes, lodged between loose stones in the floor of the pit, were scattered throughout.
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- [*]20-foot fall: 7 damage. 1 spike attacks +3 against AC 15 (flat-footed, no shield): rolls 9, miss. Abrina at 1 hp.
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Regaining her breath, Abrina looked around the bottom of the pit, discovering that she had only barely missed one of the spikes. Grasping one, she lifted herself up and gingerly tested her feet. She had definitely twisted an ankle, and she could already feel several new bruises, but she remained in one piece. Whispering to her patron, she called upon his power to ease her pain.
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- [*]Spontaneously casts cure light wounds in place of magic weapon, rolls 9. Abrina at 8 hp.
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Abrina retrieved the sunrod, raising it above her head, and examined her surroundings. A few items
lay scattered across the pit’s floor, including a
rapier, light crossbow, and six crossbow bolts, all in good repair and assuredly not remnants of the gnome exodus. Ignoring the rapier, she retrieved the crossbow and the bolts. Picking up the last bolt, her hand brushed against what felt like skin. Squinting her eyes and bringing the sunrod to bear, Abrina made out the nearly camouflaged naked body of one of the tall ones hanging impaled upon four of the pit's wooden spikes. Bringing her sleeve to cover her mouth, she stepped back.
How do I get out of here? she wondered, placing a hand against the stone side of the pit. The ledge was far above, and even requesting Ninurta's aid to increase her size would still not give her the reach or the strength to grasp the edge. The wall was coarse and sloped very slightly, and Abrina concluded that finding handholds in the rough stone and climbing the wall might be her only option.
Methodically she removed her chainmail, knowing that its weight would only serve to pull her back into the pit. If she fell again when nearing the top ledge, she may not survive a second fall. Abrina tucked the sunrod into her belt and removed a length of rope from her pack, tying it through a sleeve of her armor, the grip of her shield, the tip of her spear, and fastened the other end around her waist. Its length was longer than the pit was deep, and once she reached the top Abrina could pull her armor up the side.
Abrina maneuvered through the spikes to a corner of the pit. She sought a small handhold and lifted herself up with a grunt, bracing herself against the two walls. She managed to make it nearly half way when her grip slipped and she slid back into the pit, scraping her fingers raw as she dug them into the rock searching for another handhold.
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- [*]Climb check +3 (0 ranks, +3 Str) against DC 15 (DC 20, -5 for climbing corner): rolls 23, progress 5 feet.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 4, 10-foot fall, 4 damage. Abrina at 4 hp.
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In frustration, Abrina pounded the pit wall with a bare palm, but after inhaling deeply, braced herself in the corner and attempted a second time.
And a third time. And a fourth time.
Each time, the handholds slipped from her grasp, dust and bare rock tearing at her fingers. Scraped, sweating, and bleeding, she persevered, and after a blur of several tries, she finally discovered herself nearing the top of the pit.
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- [*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 10, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 11, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 13, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 12, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 7, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 16, progress 5 feet.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 5, 10-foot fall, 3 damage. Abrina at 1 hp.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 5, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 11, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 10, failure.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 16, progress 5 feet.
[*]Climb check +3 against DC 15: rolls 20, progress 5 feet.
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Abrina breathed deeply without looking down to the spike-lined floor of the pit. Falling from this height would definitely put her in more danger than she preferred.
"Dear Ninurta," she prayed, pressing her body close to the stone, "please guide my hand and bless me with the strength to escape this pit." A warmth suffused her palms and with renewed confidence she reached for another handhold.
Her foot slipped, with dust and small stones clattering down the pit face to the floor below. Abrina's heart thudded in her ears as her hands struggled to hold her body against the stone. With her god's help, she somehow managed to lift one arm, and slowly crawled over the lip of the edge.
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- [*]Casts guidance. Climb check +4 (0 ranks, +3 Str, +1 guidance) against DC 15: rolls 15, reaches top.
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Abrina collapsed on her back at the edge of the pit trap, exhausted and worn, staring at the ceiling of the hall. With Ninurta's guidance, she had succeeded.
"Thank you," she whispered under her breath to her god and struggled to lift herself to a sitting position.
Abrina pulled on the rope, lifting her equipment to the ledge, and took a few moments to don her armor. Readied, she stood and weighed her options, staring at the
unremarkable stone wall at the end of the hallway across from the open pit. She pulled out Ghelve's map and stared at it in hopes of finding another path to take that did not require bypassing the trapped gear doors.
Her eyes narrowed as she examined the passageway where she currently found herself. The gear doors were clearly labeled, but the map showed the hall continuing unimpeded into another room, whereas now she saw nothing but an unremarkable stone wall. Perplexed, she approached the wall, carefully inching around the yawning pit, and slowly brought her hand up to the wall. Instead of falling upon cold stone, her hand simply disappeared through it. She gasped, yanked her hand away, and paused to collect herself.
Clever, she thought,
An illusory wall. What's hiding back there? She smiled and closed her eyes, blocking out the disturbing presence of the wall, and stepped through.
Abrina passed through the wall without difficulty, her sunrod revealing two familiar circular doors in the center of the walls on either side of the room.
Carved into the opposite wall was a large map with lines that glowed faintly, showing various interconnected rooms and corridors. The passageways outlined on the wall map were the same as those on her own, revealing no secret passageways that Ghelve had hinted at, nor the methods to bypass whatever traps sealed the gear doors.
With a sigh, Abrina returned to the hallway through the illusionary wall and bypassed the pit trap. Gingerly, she slowly made her way to the opposite end of the hall, aware and ready for any other pits that might appear beneath her. When she reached the section of floor just before the two doors at the end, she inched along the wall to be safe. Coming to the stone wall, she lifted a hand and half-expected it to slip through the surface as she touched it.
Her hand fell upon solid stone.
She traced the outline of the mortared stones with one finger, pleading to Ninurta that there was a secret way. The children were down here in this forgotten enclave, somewhere. She did not want to risk the doors and become a permanent resident here herself. Nor did she want to hazard the crudely made tunnels where skulking creatures lurked. Abrina would, of course, if it came to it, but she prayed that she would not have to.
Her palm rested against one stone, and slowly she felt it give. The stone retreated slightly into the wall with a deep
klunk that reverberated down the hall, and a
four-foot section of stone in the center of the wall began to
pivot on a central vertical axis, revealing a room beyond.
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- [*]Casts guidance. Search check +0 (0 ranks, -1 int, +1 guidance) against DC 20: takes 20 for a total of 20, success.
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Abrina breathed a sigh of relief a moment before the
acrid stench filling the chamber billowed out to fill her nostrils. She coughed and covered her mouth and nose with a sleeve as she peered into the chamber.
One tabletop was cluttered with alchemical apparatus while the other, flipped on its side, had spilled its contents into the middle of the room. Both were
draped in cobwebs, left untouched for decades.
Abrina took a tentative step into the room.
Amid the fragments of shattered glass lay some broken candles, some spent tindtertwigs, various sundry utensils, and a pile of rags. Against the opposite wall stood a cabinet, its doors set with jagged shards of frosted glass, as if
someone had smashed through the glass to reach the contents within. A familiar tunnel bore through the left wall, and
mounted to the ceiling was a web-shrouded wooden fan connected to some gears and a rope belt that crossed the ceiling and disappeared into the far wall.
When Abrina took a second step, the pile of rags stirred, lifting themselves up of their own accord. Slowly, at first, the pile collected itself. Then, suddenly, as Abrina stared, the rags wrenched upward and careened through the air directly toward her, latching onto her wrist. She involuntarily screamed and shook her arm but the rags held fast. Pieces of cloth, whiplike, lashed out at her arms and her face as Abrina stumbled backward pulling at the tight grip of the rags.
Then the sound of grinding stone alerted her that the secret door was beginning to close.
In desperation she yanked one last time at the flailing cloth and managed to throw it to the floor. Abrina turned and dashed through the closing stone door mere moments before it shut tightly, leaving one tattered rag pinned between it and the stone wall. It stretched and snapped, as if still reaching for her, like a flag caught in a serious of strong gusts. Abrina eyed the cloth, her heart still pounding and her nerves still on edge, and grasped it with one hand. Pulling a tindertwig from a pocket, she struck it against the stone and held it to the rag. It tried to wrench itself from her grasp, but Abrina held tight as the cloth caught and soon became consumed in fire. After a few moments, the charred remnants fell slowly to the floor.
When she returned, Abrina resolved to enter the chamber more prepared. Until then, she decided to explore the passages more recently carved out by the creatures that had stolen the children. She turned back down the hall, again avoiding the area near the two gear doors, and retraced her steps back to the room with the gnome masks.
The door remained ajar, just as Abrina had left it. She peered into the dark room and saw it just as it was before: the denizens had not yet discovered the deaths of the creatures. She still had time to find the tall one with the set of keys, and the creature was down one of the tunnels. Abrina stepped into the room and breathed deeply. If none had yet detected her presence, she might have a chance to find the keys unheard and unseen.
Standing before the dark tunnel, Abrina slowly removed her armor, shield, and bow. She lay them carefully against the wall and discarded her spear, as well, considering it too awkward to wield within the confines of the tunnel. She removed the dagger from her belt and grasped it firmly as she ducked her head and entered the tunnel, crawling over the corpse of the tall one she had speared from behind. The tunnel soon split into three passages. She investigated one, to find it opened upward into another room. She turned back, hesitating to leave herself in such a vulnerable position to whatever creature resided above. A second path led straight into a large chamber with
flickering lights and the sound of trickling water. After a moment, she heard no other sounds of the creatures and resolved to explore the chamber later. The third path led to a small room, barely lit, and Abrina peered from her crawlspace.
Dead rats, burnt tindertwigs, and bits of broken stone littered the floor of the room whose only furnishings included a cot against a wall and a wooden chest bearing a dented lantern. The lantern was lit, but barely enough light escaped through its shutters to illuminate the room. Across from the tunnel was a familiar
round door. On the cot was a cloak encasing the form of a sleeping tall one.
Abrina quietly lowered herself to the rubble-strewn floor and slowly approached the creature. As it slept, she removed a length of rope from her pack and placed it on the cot next to the sleeping creature. Abrina took a deep breath and lowered the dagger to the creature's neck, a hairsbreadth away, and clamped her other hand on the creature's mouth.
"Wake up," she hissed as the pale eyes of the creature shot open. "Wake up, you miserable creature, and don't struggle or your life is mine." She pressed the dagger against the rapidly whitening skin so the creature could feel the touch of cold steel. It froze.
Abrina could not be sure if it understood her words, but it understood the sharp metal only a brief struggle away from spilling its blood. She flicked her eyes to the rope at the creature's side.
"Now, take that rope and gag yourself. Tightly."
She saw no recognition in the creature's pale face, so she nodded to the rope a second time. Slowly, it reached a hand over and grabbed the rope. Keeping her hand across its mouth, she motioned for it to place the rope in her hand's place.
Slowly, the creature followed her pantomimed directions, placing the rope into its own mouth and tying it in a knot behind its head. Abrina stepped back, keeping her eyes upon the creature and holding the dagger threateningly. She picked up the remaining rope and bound its hands. Satisfied it was not capable of attacking her or calling for help, she rummaged through its possessions
stowed under the cot, discovering two small stones with jagged carvings, its crossbow with a supply of bolts, and
a silver ring with three keys of different size. She clenched the keys in triumph.
"You won't be kidnapping any more children now, you skulk," she said.
The bound creature could do nothing but stare blankly at her.