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Dear Mom - Mishap Adventures of a Mommy's Elf
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<blockquote data-quote="Lwaxy" data-source="post: 5833155" data-attributes="member: 53286"><p>Uthas chuckled as he helped the dwarf out of the pit trap. "I thought with your stone sense or whatever it is called you'd see it!"</p><p></p><p>The dwarf dusted himself off and looked towards the end of the short corridor they were standing in. "Traps ain't nothing to do with it." He pointed forward. But that the supposed dead end is none, I can see from here." </p><p></p><p>"Alright, then." The captain of the guard walked towards the badly concealed hidden door, which was basically some dirt behind stones trying to look like a solid wall. "Care to break it down for us, hero?"</p><p></p><p>"I thought you'd never ask," Uthas grinned and started running. He bumped full speed into the wall, sending dust and stones everywhere. The others coughed, but he had had the sense to hild his breath. </p><p></p><p>The small chamber behind the wall was occupied. There was a fire in the middle, with smoke going through a hole in the ceiling. Some bedrolls and equipment was arranged around the fire, and a young man jumped up from a chest in a corner at the noise of the crumbling wall. </p><p></p><p>The half-orc and the half-gnome stared at each other. "Gunge?" Uthas asked. "Uthas?" the other wondered. </p><p></p><p>"You two know each other?" The guards, who had their swords drawn, lowered their weapons. </p><p></p><p>"Yeah, met this guy and his friends in a tavern a few days back. They're retrievers," Uthas explained, trying to hide the fact that they were also thieves. Retrievers, he had been told, were a well known phenomena in Freeport and the surrounding lands. Forgot something at a place you were not supposed to be in, needed a ring back you've given to the wrong woman at the wrong time, or anything else like that and you hired retrievers. They were operating in a grey area, but weren't seen quite as thieves, more as a way to stop scandals before they happened. </p><p></p><p>"What are you doing here?" Gunge asked. "No more snake men and weird temples, I hope."</p><p></p><p>"Wormwraith," the guard captain said with a grave face. </p><p></p><p>Gunge visibly paled. "You mean, the necromancer allowing us to camp down here is a wormwraith?" </p><p></p><p>"Necromancer?" Uthas asked, totally confused. </p><p></p><p>The dwarf and the captain looked at each other. They seemed to get it. "Wormwraiths," the dwarf whispered to Uthas," kill people and then live in their skins, so to say. The one we were following must have had a skin to live in." </p><p></p><p>"You may be correct," the guard captain said to Gunge. "We were following it in here after we found a murdered citizen."</p><p></p><p>"Worm.. wormwraith," Gunge whispered and grew paler yet. Then he fell over with a thud. </p><p></p><p>It was followed by an even louder thud as Uthas could not stomach the description of the wormwraith's detailed methods either. The dwarf chuckled. "Hero of Freeport, alright." </p><p></p><p></p><p>Nev went to check out the doors leading from the antechamber of the complex they had accidentally found. "Choose another path," a voice suddenly boomed. "This way leads only to death." He got the same response from both doors though. "So, what now?" he asked, leaving the decisions up to the prince as always when he was out of ideas. </p><p></p><p>"It's just some cheap magic," Orthas decided. "Just to deter fools from going on. This is just like in the stories of our childhood. We found a magic place, let's explore."</p><p></p><p>"Are you quite sure about that?" Nev asked. He was tense but also at the ready. The idea of a "real adventure" like in the stories thrilled him. The whole thing with the snake people and Drac had been intense and exciting, too, but a real dungeon type place was something else entirely. Riddles and traps, which you'd both be able to beat with a bit of thinking and maybe a treasure at the end. All different from fighting evil cultists </p><p></p><p>"Seriously, what could happen? We're both mages with high credentials. Our power reservoir has gone up quite a bit lately, and we learned a lot new spells. We're ready for this."</p><p></p><p>"So, which way?" Nev looked from one door to the other. </p><p></p><p>"Let's go straight first," Orlath decided, a bright, boyish grin on his face. "Treasure, he we come." </p><p></p><p>The door opened without problems, much to their surprise. It did not even squeak. They found themselves in a corridor leading a few meters straight to an intersection. "Oooh, more choices," Orlath laughed. "We'll figure you all out, though."</p><p></p><p>"Didn't anyone tell you talking to dungeons is the first sign of madness?" Nev laughed. "Less of a dungeon, well build as this is, more of an aaargh..."</p><p></p><p>Having gone sightly ahead of the prince, Nev triggered the pit trap and the intersection and found himself an elf's length in the ground. "Oh bah, I need to watch it, I guess," he admitted, not having been hurt by the short fall. </p><p></p><p>Orlath chuckled. Let me help you out of th..." He didn't get to finish. The trap closed again, covering up his friend. "Nev!" he protested. Looking around for something to spring the trap again to let Nev out, he could see nothing that would have helped. </p><p></p><p>Nev's voice came from behind him, slightly irritated. "I've just been teleported back to the entrance. It is not dangerous, just annoying." </p><p></p><p>"Bah." The prince was checking the walls and floor for a way to disable the pit, but he didn't have much success. "Maybe we should go through the other door?"</p><p></p><p>Not too much later, they had triggered the same kind ot trap at an intersection behind the other door, once again it had been Nev falling in. Just this time, he got out quickly enough. "How do we get past this thing?"</p><p></p><p>"What about, triggering it and then jumping out of it into the passage we want to take?" offered Orlath. </p><p></p><p>"Sounds good to me. Here or the other corridor?" </p><p></p><p>"Well, we are here already, so..." Orlath tried to peek around the corner to their left but could not make anything out as the area of the trap was too big. The other passage straight ahead had a door made of what looked to be thin wood. It would be difficult to climb out there. "Around the corner, I guess."</p><p></p><p>Their plan to jump in and out of the trap worked well enough, although Orlath almost fell back in and had to be caught by his friend. They faced another short corridor opening up into a circular room. Then the door seemed to close, then to reopen. Then to close again. The two of them stared until it finally dawned on Nev. "The room is rotating all the time! What a waste of energy." </p><p></p><p>"Maybe it only rotates once someone has come in here," Orlath guessed. "Anyway, there are two doors only visible for a moment. We can't get through."</p><p></p><p>Nev squinted. "There is a lever in the middle of the room, maybe that's for turning it off." </p><p></p><p>"So we'd have to jump only once but I have no intention to be squashed." </p><p></p><p>"Ah but if it isn't too stuck..." Nev concentrated and made an upward motion with his right hand while snapping his left finger and mumbled a single syllable when he saw the lever next. With a screeching noise, the lever flipped over, and the room's rotation started to slow down. "What are we wizard for?" the elf grinned. </p><p></p><p>"Well done," Orlath grinned back. "Let's move on." </p><p></p><p>They could just pass the otherwise unremarkable room now. The corridor behind it went slightly to the right and ended in another, smaller antechamber. There was only one door from here. This one had a real handle instead of just having to be pushed. Orlath tried it but it didn't move. Nev grinned and pushed the handle upward instead of down. "Old trick, we used it to keep the dogs out of the labs," he explained. </p><p></p><p>They entered an irregularly shaped room with two alcoves, in the north and south walls. The eastern part of the room narrowed in two steps. It looked a bit like an unfinished cathedral to them. There seemed to be no other door. Suspended from an iron chain in the middle of the room was a small sphere made of red crystal. Beneath it was a 3 legged round table carved with coin sized circles at the end of spokes, much like a wheel, all forming a larger circle. Stacked in the center of it were some coins. </p><p></p><p>"Ohh this must be a riddle. I love those." With a wide smile, Orlath went to the table to count the coins. There were 11 gold coins, numbered from 1 – 11. As he was barely done counting, a voice boomed again. "10 and 8 and 8 and 10. Arrange them all or face death again."</p><p></p><p>Nev stared in confusion. Numbers were not exactly his strong part. Orlath only chuckled and started putting coins into the carved slots. "Easy peasy. My teacher has done such stuff with me since I was small." Once he had put them all so that the sums of each line totaled 18, the sphere above him suddenly shattered into a lot of sharp shards. A key made of a red sort of metal dropped onto the table. "Huh, I wonder where we'll need that one. I like this place." With a grin, he took the coins as souvenirs. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Uthas, on the other hand, did not like the place he found himself in when he came to again. Through dazed eyes, he started up at a giant armored man with a sword, an axe, a hammer and a bow in 4 muscular arms. He blinked and the picture focused. It was a glowing blue statue of the Warrior God. And from what he could see he was lying at an intersection of 4 corridors. He must have been carried to here, but why escaped him. After a careful check to see if everything that was part of him was still in place, he got up and looked around again. To the left was where they must have come from, the dust and dirt on the floor clearly had a trail from him having been dragged along. Right ahead, behind the statue, he could see a larger room at the end of a corridor with a coffin in the middle. For some reason, his mind screamed 'vampire.' To his right, the corridor ended at a wall. Remembering his former experience with dead ends, he suspected there might be a secret door as well. Behind him was a slightly open wooden door through which the sounds of fighting could be heard. A nasty smell also drifted up from there. </p><p></p><p>From the shouts and commands, it sounded like the two guard had whatever they were fighting well under control, so Uthas decided not to mess with the situation. Instead, he went for the supposed secret door. Flip had told him you could know if there was a door, or rather not much wall, when you knocked at it. When there was a hollow sound, it most likely meant something was behind it. </p><p></p><p>Forcefully, the half-orc knocked against the wall. Pieces of dust fell to the ground, and the sound was definitely hollow. Satisfied with himself, Uthas walked a few steps back to gain enough speed and went tun run the wall down again. </p><p></p><p>It certainly worked. Once more, he stood in a cloud of dust and had rubble pile up at his floor. Through the dust, he could hear munching sounds that suddenly stopped. He felt stared at. When the dust settled, he faced 4 large ghouls staring at him, the remains of smelly bodies dug up from one crypt of the other still in their disgusting clawed hands. </p><p></p><p>In the Realms, ghouls had their own society and were considered intelligent undead. Some even joined adventuring parties, as weird as that seemed to most people. They were also known to aid the military in bad times. Uthas had no idea how it was in Freeport, but those 4 didn't look friendly at all. Still a bit shaky from having fainted before and with a hurting shoulder from running down walls, Uthas said the only thing that came to mind. "Parley?"</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>After quite some searching, Nev accidentally found the secret door leading out to the left of the riddle room when he, frustrated, leaned against the wall and triggered a pressure plate. The door slid open, and the elf tumbled down a slightly inclined corridor which seemed to end after a few meters. But before he came to a rest at the wall, he was lifted up and vanished from Orthas' view. "Aaaaah... ouch," he yelled a moment later. </p><p></p><p>Without thinking, Orthas followed his friend. As he tried to peer up the shaft Nev had vanished in, he suddenly felt upside down, and the tug of gravity pulled him after the other wannabe dungeoneer. He landed soft on top of Nev. "Ouch," complained Nev again. </p><p></p><p>Orthas reoriented himself and grinned widely. "Hey, a reverse gravity spell!" </p><p></p><p>"You don't say," grumbled Nev as he sorted himself out. There would be a nice bump on his head the next day, he guessed, and he hurt here and there from where Orlath had landed on him. </p><p></p><p>Orlath already rushed through the door they were now facing, remembering to turn sideways so he would not drop to the floor in the normal gravity room. As all the others, it opened easily enough. As he turned to Nev, he saw a glimpse of his friend before he vanished back down the shaft which seemed to now have normal gravity again. "Aaaah ouch," Nev shouted once more.</p><p></p><p>Bewildered, Orthas looked out of the room to the now again down. "What happened?"</p><p></p><p>"Guess opening the door up there dispelled the gravity reverse. Do you happen to have a rope?" Nev looked disheveled and was limping as he got up. </p><p></p><p>"I guess so... let me check." Orthas went to check his not very full backpack. Indeed, after a moment, he found the rope coiled up at the bottom of the pack. As he was just about to announce his success, his friend came sailing from what was down a second ago to the new down in the once more reversed gravity. Orthas was barely able to move his head back into the room before Nev hit once more. This time, the wizard just groaned in pain. </p><p></p><p>"Are you alright?" Orthas asked the dumbest question coming to mind. </p><p></p><p>"Does it look like it?" As quick as he could, Nev pulled himself inside the room, where the once more normal gravity dropped him half a meter again. "I feel terrible." </p><p></p><p>"Look, another riddle!" Orthas exclaimed. On the wall opposite the door were the outlines of 5 rows of 5 boxes each. In each was a letter. As Orlath and the limping Nev came closer, another voice boomed. "Speak the hidden sentence or against doom there is no defence."</p><p></p><p>"Ugh, they aren't going to win even the local poetry contest with that one," Nev moaned. "That's about as bad as aunt Len's verses."</p><p></p><p>Orthas stared at the letters, trying to make sense of it. But try as he might, he was at a loss. His frown deepened after a while, as he had the feeling to be on a timer. </p><p></p><p>"You found the hidden sentence?" Nev asked, slightly impatient. The way he felt, he would rather they would be done with it or at least be able to heal him up. </p><p></p><p>To their both surprise, at the sound of Nev's voice, the square swung open to expose a key made of a yellow metal. Orlath groaned. "'You found the hidden sentence' was the hidden sentence?" He checked the square again and slapped his forehead. </p><p></p><p>Nev took the key and could not help but laugh, despite the pain getting worse. "Whoever made this has a weird sense of humor." </p><p></p><p>Orthas sighed and turned back to the door. "We need to get up.. down... whatever, there again," he realized. "How badly are you hurt, really?"</p><p></p><p>"It hurts when I laugh, might've broken a rib or two. My legs hurt, my head got bumped and I was kicked in the gut when you landed on me." </p><p></p><p>"Sorry about that." Orlath went out of the room and stared up to where down really was. "We have no way of fixing a rope there, and even if, someone would have to get there first." </p><p></p><p>"Indeed." Nev followed, rotating himself with more difficulty than his friend. "Maybe a spell..." Without thinking, Nev closed the door behind him. Suddenly they felt themselves falling down again. </p><p></p><p>This time Orlath was almost knocked out when Nev landed on him with yet another cry of pain. Orlath bit back his own shout. "We better get out of here quick before we go... well, there again."</p><p></p><p>Nev could not agree more. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Uthas made good speed as he rushed to where the sounds of fighting had intensified. It was only a short distance, good thing, as he was not good to run for long distances. The ghouls were right behind him. Not impressed by his attempt to negotiate, the undead had decided fresh meat was better than corpses. The half-orc had not been to worried until his hand had gone to where his axe usually was. There had been nothing. His hope was that, whatever the others were fighting, they would have room for a few more opponents. And maybe know where his weapon was. </p><p></p><p>The room he banged into was full of rubbish, including spoiled food, and bloated bodies. The dwarf and the captain were fighting the largest carrion crawler Uthas had ever seen, standing with their backs to the door. The dwarf turned for a moment, and his eyes went wide when he saw the half-orc rush in, followed by the undead. Uthas had a moment of clear mind and banged the door shut so the ghouls would need a while to break through. "Dude!" he yelled at the dwarf. "Have you seen my axe?"</p><p></p><p>"Statue!" the dwarf yelled back. "Took yours gave me this spear instead." He was swinging, as Uthas could not see, not only a hammer but also a large spear which was glowing in a faint blue light. The hammer seemed to do little damage to the crawler, but the spear had made a few wounds here and there. The captain's sword kept bouncing back from the crawler's natural armor as well. </p><p></p><p>"The statue?" Uthas had heard of Warrior God statues doing weapon exchanges before but he had never seen it happen. "Give me the spear, then, you wield it like a child would." Before the dwarf could respond, Uthas seized the spear from his hands. </p><p></p><p> While the ghouls were banging at the door and would soon be through, the 3 of them made little to no progress with the crawler. "Where to those other doors out here go through?" Uthas yelled. </p><p></p><p>"No idea," the captain yelled back. </p><p></p><p>"We should make a run for it and let the crawler say hello to the ghouls," Uthas suggested. </p><p></p><p>"Great idea," the dwarf agreed. "On 3?"</p><p></p><p>"Alright," the captain answered. "1...2..."</p><p></p><p>On 3, they suddenly disengaged from the battle and left the crawler facing the door which was about to burst open. Uthas dashed through the door left from where he entered. The guards dashed right. Uthas wondered if they should not have clarified their direction of retreat. </p><p></p><p>He banged this door shut behind him as well, then rushed through the short corridor to open another door, which he, too, closed once he was in a much wider and longer corridor stretching to both sides. If his sense of direction was not off too bad, going left would bring him right back to the ghoul's lair. He had no intention to go there again, it had smelled a lot worse than the room he had just left.</p><p></p><p>Right across the corridor was a broken down door. He could hear rustling sounds behind it and carefully peeked in. A giant spider and a few young were nested here. Uthas shrugged. Since knowing Flip's spider ally, spiders wouldn't attack him. They had done some strange ritual to ensure that. He still saw no need to go in there, no wormwraith would be there. Come to think of it, he had no intention of meeting the wormwraith alone, either. Turning right, Uthas carefully made his way down the corridor, glad for his darkvision. He found another door, now to his left, a bit down, but he dared not to open it, even with no slime trails visible anywhere. To his dismay, the corridor rturned right and ended in another dead end. "Bad use of space," he mumbled to himself. "Very bad." </p><p></p><p>As he turned and walked back to where the ghoul lair was, seeing no other way out, the door he had so cautiously passed by opened with an eerie screech. "Uh-oh," he whispered.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lwaxy, post: 5833155, member: 53286"] Uthas chuckled as he helped the dwarf out of the pit trap. "I thought with your stone sense or whatever it is called you'd see it!" The dwarf dusted himself off and looked towards the end of the short corridor they were standing in. "Traps ain't nothing to do with it." He pointed forward. But that the supposed dead end is none, I can see from here." "Alright, then." The captain of the guard walked towards the badly concealed hidden door, which was basically some dirt behind stones trying to look like a solid wall. "Care to break it down for us, hero?" "I thought you'd never ask," Uthas grinned and started running. He bumped full speed into the wall, sending dust and stones everywhere. The others coughed, but he had had the sense to hild his breath. The small chamber behind the wall was occupied. There was a fire in the middle, with smoke going through a hole in the ceiling. Some bedrolls and equipment was arranged around the fire, and a young man jumped up from a chest in a corner at the noise of the crumbling wall. The half-orc and the half-gnome stared at each other. "Gunge?" Uthas asked. "Uthas?" the other wondered. "You two know each other?" The guards, who had their swords drawn, lowered their weapons. "Yeah, met this guy and his friends in a tavern a few days back. They're retrievers," Uthas explained, trying to hide the fact that they were also thieves. Retrievers, he had been told, were a well known phenomena in Freeport and the surrounding lands. Forgot something at a place you were not supposed to be in, needed a ring back you've given to the wrong woman at the wrong time, or anything else like that and you hired retrievers. They were operating in a grey area, but weren't seen quite as thieves, more as a way to stop scandals before they happened. "What are you doing here?" Gunge asked. "No more snake men and weird temples, I hope." "Wormwraith," the guard captain said with a grave face. Gunge visibly paled. "You mean, the necromancer allowing us to camp down here is a wormwraith?" "Necromancer?" Uthas asked, totally confused. The dwarf and the captain looked at each other. They seemed to get it. "Wormwraiths," the dwarf whispered to Uthas," kill people and then live in their skins, so to say. The one we were following must have had a skin to live in." "You may be correct," the guard captain said to Gunge. "We were following it in here after we found a murdered citizen." "Worm.. wormwraith," Gunge whispered and grew paler yet. Then he fell over with a thud. It was followed by an even louder thud as Uthas could not stomach the description of the wormwraith's detailed methods either. The dwarf chuckled. "Hero of Freeport, alright." Nev went to check out the doors leading from the antechamber of the complex they had accidentally found. "Choose another path," a voice suddenly boomed. "This way leads only to death." He got the same response from both doors though. "So, what now?" he asked, leaving the decisions up to the prince as always when he was out of ideas. "It's just some cheap magic," Orthas decided. "Just to deter fools from going on. This is just like in the stories of our childhood. We found a magic place, let's explore." "Are you quite sure about that?" Nev asked. He was tense but also at the ready. The idea of a "real adventure" like in the stories thrilled him. The whole thing with the snake people and Drac had been intense and exciting, too, but a real dungeon type place was something else entirely. Riddles and traps, which you'd both be able to beat with a bit of thinking and maybe a treasure at the end. All different from fighting evil cultists "Seriously, what could happen? We're both mages with high credentials. Our power reservoir has gone up quite a bit lately, and we learned a lot new spells. We're ready for this." "So, which way?" Nev looked from one door to the other. "Let's go straight first," Orlath decided, a bright, boyish grin on his face. "Treasure, he we come." The door opened without problems, much to their surprise. It did not even squeak. They found themselves in a corridor leading a few meters straight to an intersection. "Oooh, more choices," Orlath laughed. "We'll figure you all out, though." "Didn't anyone tell you talking to dungeons is the first sign of madness?" Nev laughed. "Less of a dungeon, well build as this is, more of an aaargh..." Having gone sightly ahead of the prince, Nev triggered the pit trap and the intersection and found himself an elf's length in the ground. "Oh bah, I need to watch it, I guess," he admitted, not having been hurt by the short fall. Orlath chuckled. Let me help you out of th..." He didn't get to finish. The trap closed again, covering up his friend. "Nev!" he protested. Looking around for something to spring the trap again to let Nev out, he could see nothing that would have helped. Nev's voice came from behind him, slightly irritated. "I've just been teleported back to the entrance. It is not dangerous, just annoying." "Bah." The prince was checking the walls and floor for a way to disable the pit, but he didn't have much success. "Maybe we should go through the other door?" Not too much later, they had triggered the same kind ot trap at an intersection behind the other door, once again it had been Nev falling in. Just this time, he got out quickly enough. "How do we get past this thing?" "What about, triggering it and then jumping out of it into the passage we want to take?" offered Orlath. "Sounds good to me. Here or the other corridor?" "Well, we are here already, so..." Orlath tried to peek around the corner to their left but could not make anything out as the area of the trap was too big. The other passage straight ahead had a door made of what looked to be thin wood. It would be difficult to climb out there. "Around the corner, I guess." Their plan to jump in and out of the trap worked well enough, although Orlath almost fell back in and had to be caught by his friend. They faced another short corridor opening up into a circular room. Then the door seemed to close, then to reopen. Then to close again. The two of them stared until it finally dawned on Nev. "The room is rotating all the time! What a waste of energy." "Maybe it only rotates once someone has come in here," Orlath guessed. "Anyway, there are two doors only visible for a moment. We can't get through." Nev squinted. "There is a lever in the middle of the room, maybe that's for turning it off." "So we'd have to jump only once but I have no intention to be squashed." "Ah but if it isn't too stuck..." Nev concentrated and made an upward motion with his right hand while snapping his left finger and mumbled a single syllable when he saw the lever next. With a screeching noise, the lever flipped over, and the room's rotation started to slow down. "What are we wizard for?" the elf grinned. "Well done," Orlath grinned back. "Let's move on." They could just pass the otherwise unremarkable room now. The corridor behind it went slightly to the right and ended in another, smaller antechamber. There was only one door from here. This one had a real handle instead of just having to be pushed. Orlath tried it but it didn't move. Nev grinned and pushed the handle upward instead of down. "Old trick, we used it to keep the dogs out of the labs," he explained. They entered an irregularly shaped room with two alcoves, in the north and south walls. The eastern part of the room narrowed in two steps. It looked a bit like an unfinished cathedral to them. There seemed to be no other door. Suspended from an iron chain in the middle of the room was a small sphere made of red crystal. Beneath it was a 3 legged round table carved with coin sized circles at the end of spokes, much like a wheel, all forming a larger circle. Stacked in the center of it were some coins. "Ohh this must be a riddle. I love those." With a wide smile, Orlath went to the table to count the coins. There were 11 gold coins, numbered from 1 – 11. As he was barely done counting, a voice boomed again. "10 and 8 and 8 and 10. Arrange them all or face death again." Nev stared in confusion. Numbers were not exactly his strong part. Orlath only chuckled and started putting coins into the carved slots. "Easy peasy. My teacher has done such stuff with me since I was small." Once he had put them all so that the sums of each line totaled 18, the sphere above him suddenly shattered into a lot of sharp shards. A key made of a red sort of metal dropped onto the table. "Huh, I wonder where we'll need that one. I like this place." With a grin, he took the coins as souvenirs. Uthas, on the other hand, did not like the place he found himself in when he came to again. Through dazed eyes, he started up at a giant armored man with a sword, an axe, a hammer and a bow in 4 muscular arms. He blinked and the picture focused. It was a glowing blue statue of the Warrior God. And from what he could see he was lying at an intersection of 4 corridors. He must have been carried to here, but why escaped him. After a careful check to see if everything that was part of him was still in place, he got up and looked around again. To the left was where they must have come from, the dust and dirt on the floor clearly had a trail from him having been dragged along. Right ahead, behind the statue, he could see a larger room at the end of a corridor with a coffin in the middle. For some reason, his mind screamed 'vampire.' To his right, the corridor ended at a wall. Remembering his former experience with dead ends, he suspected there might be a secret door as well. Behind him was a slightly open wooden door through which the sounds of fighting could be heard. A nasty smell also drifted up from there. From the shouts and commands, it sounded like the two guard had whatever they were fighting well under control, so Uthas decided not to mess with the situation. Instead, he went for the supposed secret door. Flip had told him you could know if there was a door, or rather not much wall, when you knocked at it. When there was a hollow sound, it most likely meant something was behind it. Forcefully, the half-orc knocked against the wall. Pieces of dust fell to the ground, and the sound was definitely hollow. Satisfied with himself, Uthas walked a few steps back to gain enough speed and went tun run the wall down again. It certainly worked. Once more, he stood in a cloud of dust and had rubble pile up at his floor. Through the dust, he could hear munching sounds that suddenly stopped. He felt stared at. When the dust settled, he faced 4 large ghouls staring at him, the remains of smelly bodies dug up from one crypt of the other still in their disgusting clawed hands. In the Realms, ghouls had their own society and were considered intelligent undead. Some even joined adventuring parties, as weird as that seemed to most people. They were also known to aid the military in bad times. Uthas had no idea how it was in Freeport, but those 4 didn't look friendly at all. Still a bit shaky from having fainted before and with a hurting shoulder from running down walls, Uthas said the only thing that came to mind. "Parley?" After quite some searching, Nev accidentally found the secret door leading out to the left of the riddle room when he, frustrated, leaned against the wall and triggered a pressure plate. The door slid open, and the elf tumbled down a slightly inclined corridor which seemed to end after a few meters. But before he came to a rest at the wall, he was lifted up and vanished from Orthas' view. "Aaaaah... ouch," he yelled a moment later. Without thinking, Orthas followed his friend. As he tried to peer up the shaft Nev had vanished in, he suddenly felt upside down, and the tug of gravity pulled him after the other wannabe dungeoneer. He landed soft on top of Nev. "Ouch," complained Nev again. Orthas reoriented himself and grinned widely. "Hey, a reverse gravity spell!" "You don't say," grumbled Nev as he sorted himself out. There would be a nice bump on his head the next day, he guessed, and he hurt here and there from where Orlath had landed on him. Orlath already rushed through the door they were now facing, remembering to turn sideways so he would not drop to the floor in the normal gravity room. As all the others, it opened easily enough. As he turned to Nev, he saw a glimpse of his friend before he vanished back down the shaft which seemed to now have normal gravity again. "Aaaah ouch," Nev shouted once more. Bewildered, Orthas looked out of the room to the now again down. "What happened?" "Guess opening the door up there dispelled the gravity reverse. Do you happen to have a rope?" Nev looked disheveled and was limping as he got up. "I guess so... let me check." Orthas went to check his not very full backpack. Indeed, after a moment, he found the rope coiled up at the bottom of the pack. As he was just about to announce his success, his friend came sailing from what was down a second ago to the new down in the once more reversed gravity. Orthas was barely able to move his head back into the room before Nev hit once more. This time, the wizard just groaned in pain. "Are you alright?" Orthas asked the dumbest question coming to mind. "Does it look like it?" As quick as he could, Nev pulled himself inside the room, where the once more normal gravity dropped him half a meter again. "I feel terrible." "Look, another riddle!" Orthas exclaimed. On the wall opposite the door were the outlines of 5 rows of 5 boxes each. In each was a letter. As Orlath and the limping Nev came closer, another voice boomed. "Speak the hidden sentence or against doom there is no defence." "Ugh, they aren't going to win even the local poetry contest with that one," Nev moaned. "That's about as bad as aunt Len's verses." Orthas stared at the letters, trying to make sense of it. But try as he might, he was at a loss. His frown deepened after a while, as he had the feeling to be on a timer. "You found the hidden sentence?" Nev asked, slightly impatient. The way he felt, he would rather they would be done with it or at least be able to heal him up. To their both surprise, at the sound of Nev's voice, the square swung open to expose a key made of a yellow metal. Orlath groaned. "'You found the hidden sentence' was the hidden sentence?" He checked the square again and slapped his forehead. Nev took the key and could not help but laugh, despite the pain getting worse. "Whoever made this has a weird sense of humor." Orthas sighed and turned back to the door. "We need to get up.. down... whatever, there again," he realized. "How badly are you hurt, really?" "It hurts when I laugh, might've broken a rib or two. My legs hurt, my head got bumped and I was kicked in the gut when you landed on me." "Sorry about that." Orlath went out of the room and stared up to where down really was. "We have no way of fixing a rope there, and even if, someone would have to get there first." "Indeed." Nev followed, rotating himself with more difficulty than his friend. "Maybe a spell..." Without thinking, Nev closed the door behind him. Suddenly they felt themselves falling down again. This time Orlath was almost knocked out when Nev landed on him with yet another cry of pain. Orlath bit back his own shout. "We better get out of here quick before we go... well, there again." Nev could not agree more. Uthas made good speed as he rushed to where the sounds of fighting had intensified. It was only a short distance, good thing, as he was not good to run for long distances. The ghouls were right behind him. Not impressed by his attempt to negotiate, the undead had decided fresh meat was better than corpses. The half-orc had not been to worried until his hand had gone to where his axe usually was. There had been nothing. His hope was that, whatever the others were fighting, they would have room for a few more opponents. And maybe know where his weapon was. The room he banged into was full of rubbish, including spoiled food, and bloated bodies. The dwarf and the captain were fighting the largest carrion crawler Uthas had ever seen, standing with their backs to the door. The dwarf turned for a moment, and his eyes went wide when he saw the half-orc rush in, followed by the undead. Uthas had a moment of clear mind and banged the door shut so the ghouls would need a while to break through. "Dude!" he yelled at the dwarf. "Have you seen my axe?" "Statue!" the dwarf yelled back. "Took yours gave me this spear instead." He was swinging, as Uthas could not see, not only a hammer but also a large spear which was glowing in a faint blue light. The hammer seemed to do little damage to the crawler, but the spear had made a few wounds here and there. The captain's sword kept bouncing back from the crawler's natural armor as well. "The statue?" Uthas had heard of Warrior God statues doing weapon exchanges before but he had never seen it happen. "Give me the spear, then, you wield it like a child would." Before the dwarf could respond, Uthas seized the spear from his hands. While the ghouls were banging at the door and would soon be through, the 3 of them made little to no progress with the crawler. "Where to those other doors out here go through?" Uthas yelled. "No idea," the captain yelled back. "We should make a run for it and let the crawler say hello to the ghouls," Uthas suggested. "Great idea," the dwarf agreed. "On 3?" "Alright," the captain answered. "1...2..." On 3, they suddenly disengaged from the battle and left the crawler facing the door which was about to burst open. Uthas dashed through the door left from where he entered. The guards dashed right. Uthas wondered if they should not have clarified their direction of retreat. He banged this door shut behind him as well, then rushed through the short corridor to open another door, which he, too, closed once he was in a much wider and longer corridor stretching to both sides. If his sense of direction was not off too bad, going left would bring him right back to the ghoul's lair. He had no intention to go there again, it had smelled a lot worse than the room he had just left. Right across the corridor was a broken down door. He could hear rustling sounds behind it and carefully peeked in. A giant spider and a few young were nested here. Uthas shrugged. Since knowing Flip's spider ally, spiders wouldn't attack him. They had done some strange ritual to ensure that. He still saw no need to go in there, no wormwraith would be there. Come to think of it, he had no intention of meeting the wormwraith alone, either. Turning right, Uthas carefully made his way down the corridor, glad for his darkvision. He found another door, now to his left, a bit down, but he dared not to open it, even with no slime trails visible anywhere. To his dismay, the corridor rturned right and ended in another dead end. "Bad use of space," he mumbled to himself. "Very bad." As he turned and walked back to where the ghoul lair was, seeing no other way out, the door he had so cautiously passed by opened with an eerie screech. "Uh-oh," he whispered. [/QUOTE]
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