Happy New Year!
* * * * * * * * * *
The next morning, the Angels and their allies prepare to head towards the entrance. For once, Luna is actually not the most impatient or disgruntled person around, with the blackscale lizardfolk apparently not having taken well to the night spent within the confines of a rope trick. Enitharmon is even more irascible, grumbling constantly about the fact that he had to spend so many hours waiting.
“I actually had to sleep, so as to have something to do,” the planetar mutters to nobody in particular, “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I slept? Or what that feels like?”
“I have no idea,” Six replies dryly, “But it must be horrible.”
The planetar turns its frowning gaze on the warforged, but before it can express its ire at his sarcasm, Nameless hurriedly interrupts. “Invisible stalkers! There are two of them on the top of the hill above the entrance. We need to stop them before they warn of our arrival.” Wanting to keep Enitharmon busy, he looks at the planetar and the leader of the blackscales, and asks, “Can you take care of them? I would like to conserve our spells as much as possible.”
“Of course,” says Enitharmon, drawing his sword. With a flap of his wings, he takes to the air and arrows towards the two invisible stalkers. The six blackscales are quickly left behind him, being both clumsier and slower than the celestial.
The invisible stalkers crouched low atop the hill only realize that they have been detected as a faerie fire from Luna marks them out, and by the time they fly hurriedly towards the entrance below, it is too late. Enitharmon descends on them in a fury, hewing with fierce abandon. Seconds later, the lizardfolk arrive to complete the job.
When the Angels reach the spot, Nameless studies the corpses of the invisible stalkers critically. Noting the tentacles and other growths protruding from their amorphous bodies, he says, “Definitely pseudonatural. And they each had a faint divination on them. Probably an alarm or detection spell of some kind. They might know we are here, though hopefully these two didn’t manage to communicate much.”
“Who cares?” Enitharmon says dismissively, floating above the group and wiping off his sword. “There will be many enemies, I presume, so some at least will know we are coming.” He raises his sword above his head and smiles as it flares momentarily into flame. “For all the good that it will do them.”
Oh boy! The alienist takes a deep breath and carefully says, “Perhaps, but I would like us to be careful, nevertheless. Whether they know we are here or not, a little misdirection would be helpful. Would you be willing to disguise yourself? Perhaps using a hat of disguise?”
The planetar looks down at Nameless with a disgusted expression. “Certainly not! I agreed to aid you, but I am not about to disguise myself!” The angel flaps its wings to rise a little higher, and then says, slightly less irritably, “But if you wish me to surprise our foes….” And disappears from view, though Nameless can still see his now invisible form. “There. Now let us go in.”
“Very well,” says Nameless, before addressing the group. “Remember our plan. The creatures here probably have multiple defenses, so we want to engage them and make them think we’re making a frontal attack. Hopefully they’ll use some of their resources and magic preparing, and then we pull back, sending in a diversionary force, and come in the top of the cavern.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Korm says, before adding cheerfully, “Not that it’ll ever work.”
The Angels and their allies proceed to head in, with the invisible planetar taking the lead. Since the tunnels that lead into the earth vary in size from approximately ten feet in height and width to over twenty feet, travel is not difficult, though it is slower going with the larger group. Barely ten minutes after they entered, some members of the group hear the sounds of movement up ahead, including the suspicious scraping of metal against stone.
Pausing for only a few moments to prepare themselves, they proceed briskly and soon enter one of the many large caverns that break up the winding monotony of the tunnels. Awaiting them are eight large creatures, roughly akin to stone giants, albeit ones with bat-like wings growing out of their shoulders. They strongly resemble the ones which the Angels saw come through the portal in the Mournland, though these are smaller, only a dozen feet in height each.
Wearing suits of plate armor which have clearly been crafted for the specific wearers and wielding proportionately large saw-toothed falchions, the creatures roar a wordless challenge and rush the intruders. Only to be brought up short momentarily as Enitharmon appears before them, smiling with pleasure as he hacks into the leading giant, almost severing its arm with a single blow. The giants swarm around the planetar, some of their powerful blows penetrating its armor and inflicting some damage, but Enitharmon seems unconcerned, merrily engaging the majority of them on his own.
Enitharmon’s action works especially well for his allies, since it gives them just the time they need, and the rest – Gareth, Korm, Six, Luna and the blackscales – charge into the giants, while Nameless follows up with spells. The giants are powerful and durable, and if the Angels were alone here they would have had a hard fight. But with all the allies present the battle is soon over, though not before two of the blackscales fall.
The planetar looks around, blood streaming from his sword, and grins, “Now that was a good fight!”
“Yes!” says Korm, looking down at the two surviving giants, which he had rendered magically asleep. “I’m not used to that working!” The Gatekeeper looks over at Nameless. “Shall we finish them off?”
The alienist nods. “Do it. I doubt we’d learn anything useful from them.”
“Okay.” Korm proceeds to decapitate one, while Gareth steps up to dispose of the other.
“Korm, did you eat any of the giants?” asks Nameless, causing the planetar to spin around and ask, “What?!”
The Gatekeeper grins and replies, “I can gain the powers of aberrations by eating part of them. It’s a long story.” Turning to Nameless, he continues, “And no, I haven’t. I should do so. Now which one…”
“Hey,” mumbles Luna indistinctly, one tentacle inside her giant maw, “I can give you a lump. I bit a big piece off and it’s stuck here.” She makes a nauseating gurgling sound as she attempts to extract a piece of pseudonatural giant.
Korm raises both hands hastily, only part of the horror on his countenance feigned, “NOOOOOOO!!!”
Ignoring the interchange, Six asks, “Should we pull back now? If we’re going to send in some of them ahead of us, we need to do that before we run out.” He nods to indicate the four blackscales, which are carefully removing the equipment their companions bore.
“Good point,” says Gareth. “I don’t want to waste time on unimportant fights.”
“Yeah!” grumbles Luna, rubbing a tentacle on the top of her now gigantic green head. “It’s uncomfortable going through these damn tunnels as a tendriculos, and I need to be like this in case of trouble.”
“Yes,” says Nameless, “This would be the right time to pull out. Enitharmon will come with us, while the blackscales head towards the ziggurat as fast as possible using their ability to fly. We can summon a number of elementals which can go with them, and they can fight whatever they encounter along the way. That should draw attention to them, use up enemy resources, and hopefully provide a distraction from us.”
As the alienist commands the blackscales what to do, they nod stolidly, seemingly having resigned themselves to whatever comes next.
A number of spells are cast, at the end of which eight large air elementals stand in the chamber too. The entire group of lizardfolk and elementals are hasted, provided with other magical protections, and then sent off. But not before Nameless casts a chain of eyes spell, so that he can watch through the eyes of one of the creatures as they proceed. While he and the others exit the tunnels, the alienist keeps up a running commentary of what he sees.
To his surprise, the elementals and lizardfolk encounter no opposition till they enter the cavern. But what they find in there is very different from what the Angels left behind on their previous visit a month ago. The dolgrim city is almost completely destroyed. The magical pillars which lit the area are gone, reduced to piles of rubble, leaving it pitch black. Whatever the elementals and blackscales – and Nameless through them – can see of the entire cavern is overgrown with a tangle of plants. These seem to be vines, covered in a mix of sickly grey-brown leaves with off-white ones speckled in. The leaves have long barbs and thin red lines running through them, which look like pulsating veins. And dotted through the area are scores, if not hundreds, of bodies, most of them dolgrims, with some dolgaunts. The weeds seem to have grown both around and through the bodies, each of which is pale and sickly white, but otherwise well-preserved.*
“Now there’s absolutely nothing about that which could be suspicious,” says Korm as Nameless relays the details of the sight. “Are any of those bodies moving?”
“They … are now,” says the alienist, as the elementals and blackscales fly into the cavern. “And so are the plants.”
As the elementals, moving far faster than the blackscales, fly into the cavern, the closest bodies rise awkwardly and shamble towards them, reaching up with pale arms. Each of them, Nameless can now see, has a long vine attached somewhere to its body, which connects it to the larger mass of tangled vegetation. Other vines rise into the air too, unattached to any corpse and clearly moving of their own volition.
While the corpses cannot reach the elementals, the vines can, and they lash up to heights of twenty feet above the ground, dozens of them latching onto each of the elementals. As the blackscales arrive, more vines strike out at them, writhing around the unfortunate creatures. Though he cannot hear them, Nameless sees the lizardfolk cry out as the animated plants strike. Each vine terminates in a set of claw-like suckers, which bites deep into the flesh it meets, and then the tendril snakes around its prey. In seconds, blackscales and elementals alike are drawn down to the ground.
The shambling, pale corpses promptly rush them, each one punching and clawing at the closest target. There is no strategy and no evidence of intelligent thought, with the creatures bumping into each other in their hurry to attack, but they are clearly not zombies, as evidenced by both their appearance and speed. In fact, from the effects that their blows have on their targets, Nameless surmises that they are akin to vampire spawn in their ability to drain the energy of their foes as well as their resistance to damage.
As he watches, the blackscales and elementals strike desperately around them, smashing enemies to the ground or hacking them apart. But they are heavily outnumbered, and the combination of the vampiric undead and the plants is too much, and they fall one by one. As they do so, Nameless quickly transfers the sensor created by his spell from one to another of his allies, trying to follow the battle as much as he can.
The blackscales are the first to fall, their power aiding them little against the numbers they face. The elementals, however, have other options, and each of them transforms into a whirlwind, sweeping up enemies and flinging them away, while attempting to break away from the plants that have seized them. Despite their efforts, only two of the elementals finally manage to extricate themselves, rising swiftly to the ceiling of the cavern above the plants’ grasp. Then, following the instructions that Nameless had given them, they fly toward the far end of the area.
In a couple of seconds, the ziggurat comes into view. Nothing here seems to be any different, with even the giant mass of vegetation ending at the underground river that divides the floor of the cavern in two, so that the area around the ziggurat seems just the same as it was the last time Nameless saw it. Or at least so it seems, for the few seconds that he has before the summoning spell ends and the elementals disappear.
Nameless blinks as his vision clears, and then explains to the others what he saw. “I’m pleased that we didn’t just fly in there with the blackscales. Without the ability to use teleportation magic there, we would have been in serious trouble.”
“It does sound like it,” says Korm. “Now let’s see what happens when we go in the back way.”
“Wait,” says Nameless. “Let’s give it some time before we do so, since there are very likely other defenders that we didn’t see. If they used spells or magic items to prepare for the assault, we can give them time to expire.”
The others agree, though Enitharmon grumbles a bit about the delay, and they settle down to wait. After well over an hour, the alienist suggests that they head in now. “Korm?”
The Gatekeeper nods and focuses, calling on one of the powers granted him by the combination of Mordain’s restructuring of his body and one of the aberrations he has fed on (ironically, within the tunnels below him). Korm’s body begins to expand and stretch, though the effect ends swiftly, leaving him looking a good twenty pounds heavier than he was moments earlier.
“Hey, you got chunky…,” Luna begins, before she pauses in surprise as Korm begins to hurriedly take off the loose shirt he wears. “What happened?”
“Acid!” Korm explains, ripping off his vest to reveal his chest. Which is just as muscular and hairy as always, and completely mucous, being covered with a thick gray fluid.
“Ewww! What’s that?”
“Delver slime, or something like it,” says Korm, before dropping to his knees and then placing himself chest first on the ground. He wriggles awkwardly and mutters, “This is awkward. But it seems to be working.”
As the others watch, Korm begins to sink into the ground swiftly as the earth beneath him dissolves. The Gatekeeper shifts back and forth constantly to expand the tunnel that is being formed, so that it is large enough for the others to use too.
The planetar, who has been standing and watching Korm’s actions with a bemused expression, shakes his head in wonder. “I have seen many worlds, and you might be the strangest collection of creatures that I have ever met.”
“I,” Six says dryly, as he walks over to the tunnel that Korm is creating, “Am not at all surprised.” Shadows wreathe the warforged’s form, and he steps over the edge, clinging easily to the side of the tunnel as he descends behind the Gatekeeper.
Nameless flies over to tunnel and floats down beside Six. The others also move to follow him, but then Korm says, “Wait!”
“What?” asks Luna, still in the process of working out what form to take that would let her fit down the tunnel.
“I feel movement in the earth,” the Gatekeeper says, climbing to his feet. Cloaker-like wings sprout from his shoulder-blades and he flaps awkwardly into the air. “Something’s coming. Or things.”
“I hear it too,” says Six, hurriedly climbing back upwards as well.
Nameless flies back up to the area outside the tunnel too, pulling a gnarled staff from his bag of holding. He triggers it multiple times, causing four huge earth elementals to appear before him. “Luna?”
The druid, having transformed back into a tendriculos, begins to speak in the harsh, grating tongue of the elementals, which sounds more like rocks clashing together than an actual language. Without a word of response, the elementals disappear into the ground below them.
As the Angels and Enitharmon prepare themselves, the muffled sounds of conflict emerge from the ground below them. Which is followed barely a quarter of a minute later, by the ground cracking in three areas as the hidden enemies are revealed. A tangle of long necks emerges from each spot, each one topped by a large reptilian head ending in jaws full of sharp fangs. The hydra heads and necks emerge from huge, squat bodies, each surrounded by a collection of thick tentacles.
Enitharmon, Nameless and Korm are all in mid-air at this point, so the creatures lunge at Six, Luna and Gareth, ripping and tearing at them. Though each of the targets has powerful protections and defenses, there is only so much they can do to fend off a dozen heads each. Tendriculos bark, warforged wood and metal, and Gareth’s magical plate-mail buckle and tear under the assault.
The three embattled Angels fight back, inflicting deep wounds, while Nameless and Korm lash the creatures with magical power. Enitharmon charges into the closest of the creatures, ignoring the heads that snap at him, their bites inflicting only shallow tears in his celestial flesh.
The affray is short and sharp, both sides handing out much more damage than they can actually absorb. The sheer number of attacks that each of the strange beasts can make serves to inflict significant wounds on their foes, but the Angels both outnumber them and have healing ability at hand. Plus, moments into the battle, three of Nameless’ elementals also emerge to join the fight.
Seconds later, the Angels stand amidst the carnage of the three huge corpses. Gareth, wiping blood off his face and channeling energy to close his many wounds, says, “Those things were tough! I hope there aren’t more down near the ziggurat.”
“Only one way to find out,” says Korm, flapping his way down to join those on the ground. After seeing that everyone’s wounds have been tended to, he says, “Shall we continue?”
“Yes,” says Enitharmon before any of the others can respond. “Hopefully, that was only a warm-up.”
Hopefully you’re wrong. Nameless simply says, “Yes, we should go on.”
The group heads back to the tunnel Korm was creating and follow him into it, Nameless’ elementals helping expand it for the few seconds that they are still in existence. Slowly, they descend into the hill, coming closer and closer to the cavern within which the ziggurat awaits them.
* That was a collection of Shadowrot Weeds and their minions, kindly created by Solarious.
