Delemental
First Post
Boiling Point
It took the party two and a half weeks to make the trip up from Stacks to the city of M’ioch, which stood at the end of the pass between Medos and the Dwarven Confederates. From there it would only be a short journey to M’ioch’s sister city in the Confederates, Krek, and from there north through Laeshir, along the Lassh River to Aleppi, and then east to Merlion. The party again found themselves having to adjust to life on the trail after a month spent living at the inns of M’dos. Among the adjustments were the campsite arrangements; there were Kyle and Autumn, of course, who now shared a tent, and Osborn also now packed a small tent of his own, having decided after Tolly’s departure that he preferred having space to himself. Razael tended to sleep outside, deigning to seek shelter only in the worst of weather. Lanara, Xu, Arrie, and Maddie debated whether or not they would change their own sleeping arrangements, but decided for the time being to remain in their large four-person tent.
As the party drew closer to M’ioch, they noticed an unusual amount of traffic on the road. Soon things had slowed to a crawl, with several horses, wagons, and people jostling for position.
“What’s the holdup?” Lanara called out to a drover nearby, who shrugged. Others nearby gave the same answer.
“Why don’t I ride ahead to the gate and see what I can find out?” Osborn offered. He turned Rupert out of the pack, and circled around outside the crowd, heading for the city gates.
It was about an hour before he came back. “There’s a major problem,” Osborn said, “the pass into the Confederates is blocked.”
“Blocked?” Arrie said, somewhat surprised. “Blocked how?”
“Landslide, I think, I couldn’t tell for sure. Up at the gate they’re telling folks it’ll be a month before it’s cleared.”
“A month?” Lanara groaned. “We’re stuck in M’ioch for a month?”
“What’s wrong with M’ioch?” Kyle asked.
“It’s an Ardaran strongpoint, that’s what’s wrong,” the cansin replied. “It’s not that different from Laeshir. Fewer dwarves, that’s all.”
The party all shook their heads. They’d spent a month in Laeshir the last time they’d been through the Confederates, as Tolly had needed time to finish working on his armor. The only thing that had kept their stay from becoming unbearably tedious was the Midsummer festival, although even that was marred when Maddie’s bastard son Marrek had framed Lanara for a crime in the city.
“I’m surprised they’re not sending riders out from the city to tell people what’s going on,” Arrie mused.
“They’re working on it, I think,” Osborn said. “Sounds like they’re trying to get things organized inside the city first.”
Osborn began spreading the word among the other travelers and merchants near them, and the news spread quickly. Several of the smaller caravans and groups began to extricate themselves from the line, turning around to head for another city. Later, as messengers from M’ioch began to arrive and relay the news officially, others also chose to depart. Some of the larger merchant caravans were directed off the main road and led in toward the open fields surrounding the city; M’ioch itself wasn’t large enough to accommodate everyone for an entire month, so campsites were being established outside the walls where the merchants could wait for the pass to reopen. Thus by the time the party reached M’ioch, they were still able to find lodging, at rates only moderately higher than normal.
They spent the better part of the next day getting supplies. Details of the landslide that had blocked the pass were beginning to circulate through the city. Apparently, the children of a clan of stone giants that lived near the pass had been out playing, and had accidentally triggered the slide. The giants were helping with clearing the pass, as were crews from both Krek and M’ioch, but the slide was immense. Though most of the essential goods were going to the crews helping with the pass, but fortunately the party was already fairly well supplied with the basics, and were only seeking a few esoteric goods.
That night, they discussed their options. “So, we agree that no one wants to wait out the month here,” Arrie said, “so what can we do?”
“There are old tunnels that extend under the mountains,” Maddie said. “I heard someone else talking about them. Apparently it’s how the dwarves got goods in and out of their lands before the passes were secured. Not much use to a big caravan, but smaller groups would be fine. Problem is, they’re not patrolled any more like they used to be, so no one’s sure what’s down there.”
“I’ve had enough danger and uncertainty for a while, thanks,” Lanara said, wrinkling her nose. “What else?”
“Well, the pass to the Peca Provinces is still open,” Arrie observed. “Northeast to the Plingold River, then sail down into the Provinces to the coast, and take a gnomish galleon to Tlaxan.”
“Yargh, more boats?” Lanara complained.
“Well, missy, could be we just follow the Plingold rather than sail it,” Razael offered, “and instead of going all the way to the coast, we can cut across and go through Tengolt.”
“I like that better,” the bard admitted, “but why not just find another pass through the Confederates? There can’t be only one.”
“No, likely there’s other ways of getting across the mountains,” Razael mused.
“But how is that any better than the tunnels?” Kyle asked. “Just as likely to be dangerous, plus we have to worry about finding the pass and crossing it while dealing with the elements.”
“I’ll give you that. But you got any better ideas, now’s the time, boy,” Razael said.
“Well, I could try to teleport us.”
Autumn looked at Kyle. “Since when do you know that spell?”
“I don’t. But it’s not an uncommon spell, I could probably find it here.”
You’re saying you could teleport us to Krek?” Arrie asked.
“No, actually, I’d aim for Laeshir. I’ve never been to Krek, but we spent a month in Laeshir.” Kyle fell silent for a moment. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I could get us all the way to Noxolt from here.”
“Pretty sure?” Razael asked. “How many times you done this, boy?”
“Well, none. But it’s simple in theory. It’d take a couple of trips, of course. I’m assuming that we aren’t getting Defiance or Ghost into Autumn’s portable hole.”
Razael sniffed. “Ain’t worth going somewhere if you can’t walk. And I’m not sure we can trust your ‘theories’ anyhow.”
Kyle frowned, and shrugged. “Fine. We wanted to get to Tlaxan; I made a suggestion. Sorry that you find it so objectionable.”
Razael leaned over to Arrie. “Is he always getting his feelings hurt like this, Princess?” Arrie only shrugged in response.
“Okay, then,” Kyle said, “how about this? There’s a blocked pass, right? Sounds like they need help clearing it, right? And we’re supposed to be helping people, right? Why not go help with the pass? It might not open the pass any faster, but we stay busy and do something useful.”
“I agree with that,” Autumn said. “We’re not above common labor.”
“Some of us aren’t as good at that common labor,” Lanara pointed out. “And why should we clean up their mess?”
“Yeah, what am I supposed to do?” Razael added.
“Well, I’m sure the workers could use some entertainment, or some rousing songs to help them work. And I’ll bet they’ll need help hunting to feed all those workers.”
“Yeah, well, the problem with working with giants is they tend to forget you’re there,” Razael said.
“Yeah, I agree,” Osborn said. “Getting stepped on? No thanks.”
The others failed to be inspired by the idea of clearing rubble, so the idea was dropped. “What do you think, Arrie?” Autumn asked.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter to me. While I’m not in a huge hurry to be in Tlaxan, since I’m going to have plenty of time to enjoy it later…”
“It’s not like we’re going to Tlaxan to live,” Kyle snapped. “We’re there long enough for Autumn to get this Duchess thing squared away, find ourselves a ship, and we’re gone.”
“I know, I know,” Arrie said, “it’s just a mental thing for me.”
“I’d prefer to take the pass to the Provinces, myself,” Razael said. “I’m not too fond of being underground.”
“Well, if we can avoid any boats, then I’m up for that,” Lanara said. “I’ve never been to the Provinces.”
“Anyone opposed?” Arrie asked. When no one spoke up, she nodded. “Peca it is then. We can head out in the morning.”
As everyone got up and went on with their night, Autumn grabbed onto Kyle’s arm gently. “Are you all right? You seem to be in a bad mood.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t believe you. Earlier today you were up in our room alone for over an hour, and after that you were testy. What’s going on?”
“I said it’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Autumn frowned. “Kyle…”
Kyle sighed. “Look, really, it’s just a mood. I was working on something upstairs earlier, and it didn’t… work out like I thought it would. But I really haven’t had time to figure it out yet, and I don’t want to get all worked up over something that’s probably a simple mistake. Once we get to Tlaxan, I can spend a little more time on the problem. I was kind of hoping people would go for the teleporting idea just to speed things up a bit. I think that Razael’s comment about not trusting me just rubbed me the wrong way.”
Autumn looked up at Kyle for a while. “All right, then. You usually tell me when something’s wrong, so I guess I can trust you when you say this is just a mood.” She smiled at him. “Now, why don’t you come to bed? I can help take your mind off the day.”
“Now there’s an offer I don’t need to think twice about.”
But even as he walked back to the rear of the inn, Autumn’s arm in his, Kyle’s mind couldn’t help but pick at his ‘failed’ experiment. I had to have made a mistake somewhere, he thought, or I’m forgetting something simple. It never was my strongest area of study at the Tower. Because it just doesn’t make sense.
* * *
It was a week out of M’ioch before they reached the head of the Plingold River. They had to explain several times to the baffled gnomes that they weren’t going to be taking a ship downriver, but would be riding their horses. After a while the gnomes, who couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take a boat, ended up just shrugging and waving a friendly goodbye.
The trail was thin in places, but navigable. The party saw no other travelers as they rode; presumably those others who had also chosen to head into the Provinces from M’ioch were taking gnomish riverboats. As they rode, Razael frequently doubled back and obscured their trail, still wary after their experiences with Hungai and Aranal. At one point the river split in two, and the party was forced to follow the smaller branch, as the more navigable portion fed into a sheer ravine that allowed no trail for the horses. The gnomish guides they had consulted indicated that the branch would rejoin the main river when they were nearly out of the mountains, and that they’d find a few small fishing towns along the way.
The party rode for another three days before they saw signs of civilization. On the morning of the third day, the river valley opened up into a natural caldera, and the river fed into a decent sized lake, with a town sitting on the southern shore. They could see steam rising off the lake, and occasionally the water would ripple as an air bubble rose and broke the surface.
“Hot springs?” Xu asked Razael. When he nodded, Lanara grinned. “Wonderful!” Beside her, Maddie was also smiling from ear to ear.
Kyle sighed. “Looks like we’re here for another month.”
“Something’s wrong,” Osborn said. “The gates are closed, and no one’s moving inside.”
“And what’s that over there?” Arrie asked, pointing. Further south, well outside the town walls, they saw a tent city set up, just before the caldera began to climb back into mountains.
“I hope it’s not another siege,” groaned Autumn.
“We can go around,” Razael observed.
“Or,” Osborn said quickly, “we could go see what’s wrong.” Razael and Lanara both rolled their eyes.
“I can go talk to them,” Arrie said.
“I’ll go with you,” Autumn said. “Anyone else?”
Lanara and Xu volunteered to go down as well. Razael turned to Maddie. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going down to talk to the gnomes.”
He sighed. “Then I guess I’m going with you.”
“I’ll stay here, just in case,” Osborn said.
“Me too,” Kyle said, “just wave if it’s okay to come down.”
The party, minus Kyle and Osborn, made their way down the trail toward the town, splitting off once they reached the bottom of the road to head for the tent city. They were greeted just outside the tents by a small cluster of friendly, if slightly haggard gnomes.
“Welcome, strangers,” one of the gnomes said. “I’m sorry we don’t have much in the way of hospitality to offer you, but please, if you need a place to rest, feel free to join us. I must warn you to stay away from the lake, however. It’s become quite a bit more dangerous as of late.”
“Yes, we were kind of wondering why you were all out here,” Arrie said.
“If you’d like to come have breakfast with us, we can explain. Your friends can come down too, if they want.” The gnome pointed past the party to where Kyle and Osborn sat watching.
“Breakfast sounds good,” Lanara said. She waved at Kyle and Osborn, who started down the slope toward the tents.
The party was led into the middle of the tent city. Looking around, they could see that the gnomes were barely getting by. They caught glimpses of families boiling roots in iron pots, or trying to stitch up threadbare tents. The party was offered a breakfast of thin, watery soup and dry bread; they ate sparingly, not because they weren’t hungry but because they felt awkward eating what were obviously very thin supplies.
When they finished, the gnome that had greeted them introduced himself as Zander. “It all started about the onset of spring or so,” Zander said. “Or what passes for spring up here. We’re pretty prosperous up here, even in the winter, since the lake is heated from below. It’s a… it’s a… oh, there’s a word for it that the smart folks use. Starts with a G.”
“Geothermal?” Razael offered.
“That’s the one. Anyway, we exist mainly on the fish here; we salt and smoke them and sell them to the Confederates and the rest of the Provinces. The fish are adapted to the water here, and it gives them an unusual flavor, so we have a market for our fish even down by the coast where fish are plentiful. We also sell scrimshaw. It’s enough to get by, even way out here.”
“So what happened in the spring?” Kyle asked.
“Well, we’d started our spring fishing run,” Zander began, “and about a week into it some of our boats were attacked by these big lobster-like creatures. Kind of like a cross between a lobster and a snail, actually, with these dangly tentacles on their mouth.”
The party looked around at each other, seeing if any of them recognized the creature by its description. Arrie and Razael seemed to recognize it; Arrie turned to the others and quietly mouthed the word “Chuul” so as not to interrupt.
“They’d attack the ships, dump the people overboard, and grabbed them. We weren’t able to recover some of the bodies. Some of the survivors report seeing sharks under the water along with the lobster creatures. But this is a fresh-water lake, so it must have been something else. Besides, in certain areas this lake is hot enough to boil. The native fish are fine, but anything not adapted to it would boil alive.”
“That is unusual,” Arrie said. “Is it possible that the lake is…” she struggled to choose words that Zander might understand better, “is it possible that the lake is of purer water than normal?”
“I don’t know,” Zander admitted. “We don’t swim in the lake a lot. It’s cool enough near the shore, but further out and you run the risk of swimming into spots that’ll scald the skin off your bones.”
“I just wonder if it might be more elemental water,” Arrie explained, “something that might have affected these creatures.”
“Oh,” Zander said, but then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
“How long has this been going on?” Maddie asked.
“About three months,” Zander said. “The reason we came out here is that shortly after the lobster creature attacks started, people started disappearing from town. We decided to leave the town to protect ourselves. The disappearances have stopped, but if we can’t get back into our town we may have to abandon it and move away.” Zander’s face fell as he considered the option of leaving his home.
“Did any strangers arrive in town around that time?” Maddie asked.
“No, just us. We don’t get many travelers, so new people would have been noticed.”
“Chuul are somewhat intelligent,” Razael pointed out.
“And amphibious,” Arrie added. “They could have come into town.”
“I don’t see how,” Zander said. “We never found a trace of the people who vanished or who took them, and those lobster… chuul are big and crab-like.”
“It seems pretty horrible for you guys,” Arrie said, “would you mind if we took a look around?”
“That would be wonderful! Is there anything we can do to help?”
Razael sighed heavily. “I thought we were trying to get to Tlaxan.” Next to him, Lanara muttered her agreement.” Kyle, sitting next to them both, leaned over and tapped the Tower graduation tattoo on the back of the Lanara’s hand.
“This means that you should expect frequent delays,” he said to them quietly. Razael held up his own hand, showing that he didn’t have a tattoo.
“But she does,” Kyle said, nodding toward Maddie.
Arrie had continued speaking with Zander, asking for information about the layout of the town, and to speak with survivors of the chuul attacks. She suggested to Razael that as long as they were staying, the tracker could try and hunt down some game so that the town had better than root stew for dinner. Instead, Razael decided to take a few of the younger gnomes out into the wilds and help them identify a few more edible roots and plants to supplement their diet.
“If nothing else, we can help tide them over and make things a little more comfortable,” Arrie said. “Kind of like that first exercise we did at the Tower.”
“I’d like to take a peek at the lake,” Kyle said.
“Why don’t we check out the town?” Osborn suggested. “See if the chuul are still coming into the town now that the people are gone.”
The party spent more time questioning the townsfolk before heading for the town later that afternoon. The gnomes seemed to respond well to Autumn, sensing a kindred spirit in the aasimar, and opened up to her easily. They learned that all the people taken lived close to the lake, and were taken without sounds or signs of struggle. All the disappearances happened at night. The description of the chuul attacks indicated that they didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat of the lake, at times swimming right through patches of boiling water. A few survivors did describe seeing sharks or shark-like creatures swimming well below the water. A couple of the fishermen noted that on the occasions when a local priest of Krûsh or one of the town’s holy warriors was on the lake, their boat would be attacked first.
By the time Razael had returned, the party was ready to investigate the town in person. They talked as they walked to the town gates.
“So, we have chuuls that are immune to fire, and seem to target priests and holy warriors,” Arrie observed.
“Sounds like fiendish creatures to me,” Kyle said.
“It’d make a lot of sense,” Arrie agreed, “and might explain the sharks. If one of them was a sort of unholy warrior or priest, then they could be summoning the sharks.”
“Okay, then,” Kyle said, “so we dangle Autumn from a rope in the middle of the lake, and when the chuul come we blast them.” When everyone looked at Kyle, he threw up his hands. “Oh, come on! You know I’m joking!”
“You know, Kyle, I think it would work,” Razael said. “In that armor she kind of looks like a lobster.”
“I was joking,” Kyle said again.
“We are not boiling my sister,” Arrie said.
Autumn was looking down at herself. “I don’t look like a lobster,” she pouted.
“Of course you don’t. You look just fine in your armor,” Kyle said, putting an arm around her.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she said.
“Yeah, but he thinks you look better out of your armor,” Lanara quipped.
Kyle grinned and shrugged, as if to say ‘I can’t argue with that’. “Well, before we do anything with whatever’s under that lake, I’ll want to take a day to prepare new spells. Sonic spells are really best for underwater use.”
“A thought occurs to me…” Arrie said.
“Is that what that noise was?” Lanara quipped.
“Thank you, Lanara,” Arrie said mockingly.
“Sorry, Arrie.”
“We may have to help teach these gnomes to defend themselves,” Arrie continued. “We don’t know how big the problem is. Kyle, is there any way to whip up some thunderstones or similar items for the gnomes to use?”
“Can’t really say. Depends on what they have in the town.”
“What if we poisoned the lake to get rid of them?” Maddie asked.
“Then that kind of screws the gnomes too, doesn’t it?” Lanara pointed out.
“And anyone downstream,” Razael added.
“We can’t just deal with whatever’s down there now,” Autumn said. “We need to find and eliminate the source of this incursion.”
“Well, the lake is hot…” Arrie said.
“Yes, so?”
“So, whose element is fire?”
Autumn sighed. “Grabâkh. So you think the rift is under the lake.”
“The lake’s been hot for a while, so I don’t think that’s the entire story,” Arrie mused. “Maybe something happened recently to change things. An earthquake exposed some sort of planetary portal or something. Once we get to the town, we can look at the lake and see if we spot any glaring abysses of evil. But for now, dealing with chuul are bad enough. From what I remember from classes at the Tower, because I did occasionally pay attention,” the last part she said particularly loudly in Autumn’s direction, “is that chuul are incredibly strong, and they have some sort of paralyzing substance on their tentacles. They’re also more intelligent than they look. If these chuul are enhanced by fiendish energies as well, then this could be ugly.”
The party arrived in town, and began looking around. Osborn and Razael slipped off to see what they could find, trying to stay hidden in case they were being watched. The rest of the party meandered through the streets, not seeing anything unusual other than the fact that they were the only souls present.
They finally made it to the edge of the lake, and looked around, but saw nothing but empty fishing boats bobbing at their piers. A couple of the boats had chunks missing from the sides. Razael and Osborn came back a few minutes later.
“No sign of chuul tracks,” Razael said. “Just what you’d expect to see. I’d say they haven’t been in the town since the gnomes packed up and left.”
“No sense going to the market if the stalls are empty,” Lanara said.
“Well, something’s been through here,” Osborn said. “I checked out a few of the homes, and it looks like they’ve been tossed by thieves. Jewelry and valuables missing, stuff like that.”
“Thieves passing through?” Maddie asked, but Osborn shook his head. “Zander said they haven’t had any strangers in town for months. Even from where they are now, there’s no way they could miss people coming into this valley from either end.”
“One of their own, then, sneaking in at night to help themselves to their neighbor’s goods?” Razael asked.
“Doesn’t make sense. It’s not in the nature of gnomes to steal from one another like that, and besides, where would a thief stash all that stuff? In his tent?” Osborn looked out across the lake. “No, they’re all too terrified of the chuul for one of them to get the nerve to sneak back in here for that.”
Osborn noticed that Kyle was staring out across the water intently. “Hey, pal! What’s up?”
Kyle continued to look out across the water. “Well, I’ll be.”
“What?” Autumn asked.
“The lake… there’s a Node out there somewhere.”
“Are you sure?”
Kyle nodded. “I can’t tell what kind it is from here. A Water Node is the most obvious, but in this situation I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Fire Node.”
“A Fire Node would explain the heat, and the evil,” Arrie said.
Razael wandered off a short distance while the others discussed the Node. He’d run across a few Nodes in his lifetime, and he didn’t see what the big deal was. Arcanists seemed to go nuts over them, though. “I’m going to check out the shoreline outside of town a bit,” he called out. “Make sure those chuul haven’t thought to start exploring the rest of the valley looking for food. Y’all stay put.”
It was about an hour before Razael came back, and the sun was already halfway below the edge of the mountains that surrounded them. “I saw something I can’t make heads or tails of,” he said to the others.
“What was it?” Arrie asked.
“Well, down that way, I saw a set of tracks coming out of the water. They were bipedal, like a man, and I’d say about the same size and weight as Kyle there. But they had long, webbed toes – about three times as long as a human’s toes.”
“That is strange,” agreed Kyle.
“It gets better. About ten paces from the edge of the lake, the tracks change into wolf tracks, and go off into the mountains. I tracked them a bit, but lost the trail.”
“What on this earth would come out of the water and turn into a wolf?” Osborn asked.
“Were-duck?” Kyle said quietly.
“Yeah, you may be right there,” Razael said sarcastically.
“You said the tracks were humanoid?” Arrie said.
“Well, other than the webbed feet, yeah, the tracks look like what something shaped like a person would leave. Before they turn into wolf tracks, that is.”
“Sounds like a druid,” Arrie said. “They can turn into wild animals.”
“Yeah, but there ain’t no animals that leave webbed-feet tracks like that.”
“I think the webbed feet might be its natural form, Razael.”
“So,” Kyle said, “we’ve got an aquatic humanoid creature, probably evil, that can turn into other animals. Osborn, didn’t you say that those houses looked like they’d been gone through deliberately?”
“Sure did. Nothing professional by any means, but whoever did it knew what they wanted – jewelry boxes flipped, mattresses cut open, that kind of thing.”
“I’d suspect a water-touched druid,” Arrie said, “but stuff like this would be against their nature. I have trouble picturing an evil water-touched.”
“It’s not impossible, though,” Kyle said. “being Touched doesn’t automatically mean you follow the morals of your outsider ancestors.” Kyle hooked a thumb at Autumn. “I’m sure there are a few evil aasimar out there.”
“There was that fire-touched tavern owner, Grog, from Dagger Rock,” Osborn said. “He seemed a decent fellow.”
“And water-touched still look mainly human,” Kyle said, “not big webbed toes.”
“So, something extraplanetary?” Arrie asked.
“Well, any outsider with feet like that would probably come from Chelesta,” Kyle said. “Krûsh’s planet is the only one that would require that. And if they’re coming from there, then it really is impossible for them to be behind the chuul attacks or the burglaries. Krûsh’s minions are good by nature.”
“What about kuo-toa?” Razael asked. “They seem to fit the bill. Didn’t think about them at first, seeing as the fish-men pretty much stay in the ocean.”
The others thought about Razael’s theory, and nodded. “Kuo-toa do make sense,” Arrie agreed. “Their priests do practice nature magic. But why all the way up here?”
“Well, we could just feed the gnomes for another day, then head on out and send someone else to look at it.”
“No, I think we should investigate further,” Arrie said. “I’m just saying that the theories we’re coming up with are…”
“Out there?” Razael finished for her. “Not worth bothering with?”
Arrie sighed. “Look at it this way, Razael. The bigger name you make for yourself as a philanthropist out here…”
Razael interrupted. “A what now?”
“A goody two-shoes,” Lanara said.
“The bigger reputation you make, the better chance you have of getting to return home to Tlaxan of your own choice and staying.”
“Ain’t likely, Princess,” Razael said. “I get in trouble there without even trying. At least your husband only banishes me. His father liked to have me whipped.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. “So, thoughts?” Autumn asked at last.
“I think the kuo-toa theory is the best one we have,” Kyle said. “The chuul could be acting as their allies, or their slaves.”
“It might explain the sharks, too,” Maddie said. “The sharks could have been the kuo-toa druids watching the chuul to make sure nothing went wrong.”
“And coming into the town to steal,” Osborn said. “Kuo-toa are pretty greedy.”
“Does anyone have any valuables?” Maddie said suddenly.
“Yes, but not that I’m giving to the fish-men,” Osborn said.
“No, I’m thinking that we bait whoever’s behind this. They’re coming into town looking for jewelry and stuff, right? So we set up a ‘shiny shrine’ and then hit them when they come to check it out.”
“An ambush?” Razael said, “sounds good. We could set up a false camp with a few items scattered about, make it look like we’re scavengers or something. Then we could just watch and see what happens.”
The others agreed to the plan. They quickly went about setting up a camp, trying to make it look like it was being used. Razael and Osborn took up positions to observe the camp while the others wandered about the town “exploring”. It was morning by the time everyone came back to the camp, which had obviously been searched.
“Well, we called it right,” Razael said, “it’s the kuo-toa. They came and looted the camp last night. There were two of them, but I didn’t see any chuul. I followed them back to the lake, and when I saw them swimming away I noticed that they were weaving and dodging back and forth. I think they’ve figured out where the hotter parts of the lake are and have learned to avoid them.”
Autumn sighed. “Well, at least we know for sure what’s behind this. Any sign they had fiendish blood?”
Osborn shook his head. “As far as I can tell, they were normal. For fish-people, that is.”
The party spent a few minutes reviewing what they remembered from their classes at the Tower about the kuo-toa, or what Razael remembered from his experiences. Little of it explained why the amphibious creatures would be here, in a mountain lake so far from the ocean.
“So, now what?” Arrie asked.
“Well, for all we know there’s a whole colony of those fish-men down there,” Razael said.
“So the gnomes should move,” Lanara suggested.
“You may have it right, missy,” Razael agreed. “We could send word to the government, let them know there’s an infestation up here. That way we could leave.”
“I like the way he thinks,” Lanara said.
Kyle, however, scowled at the suggestion, and Xu shook her head. “But where is the glory in that? The honor?”
“If you want glory, I can write a song,” Lanara said.
“You know, you humans are just too absorbed in this glory concept. I’ve been around for five hundred years, and it don’t matter what glory you’ve got.”
“That’s because you have any,” Autumn said.
“I don’t agree with that, and I’m not human,” Maddie said.
“Me either,” Osborn chimed in.
“You’re young,” Razael said to Maddie, “you’ll learn.”
“Oh, thanks Daddy,” Maddie said sarcastically.
“The thing is,” Kyle said, “we don’t know how extensive the problem really is. It seems early to be talking about leaving and handing this mess off to someone else.”
“Well, we can assume at least two monitors and a whip,” Razael said, using the kuo-toan titles for their monks and druids, “plus the chuul.”
“I wonder if the chuul are treated as equals, or slaves.” Arrie mused. “Maybe it’s a colony of kuo-toa and a separate colony of chuul.”
“That seems a bit much,” Osborn said.
“Here’s a crazy idea,” Lanara said, “why don’t we take this information to the gnomes, and let whoever’s in charge decide what they want to do?”
“Well, that does make sense,” Autumn said. “We can go back to them now and ask what they want us to do to help.”
“Oh, goody,” Lanara said, “just in time for more root stew.”
The party returned to the tent city and found Zander, who helped them locate the town’s mayor, a bright-eyed old gnomish woman by the name of Magladeena. The party filled her in on the chuul and the kuo-toa, and what had been happening in the town since they had left.
“Hmm,” Magladeena said, “this is disturbing.”
“Well, at least the kuo-toa won’t bother you in the day,” Razael pointed out, “they can’t see.”
“Yes, but the chuul can, have, and do,” the mayor pointed out.
“Well, I’m just telling you, is all.”
“Swell. So, it’s move or die?”
“That’s kind of what it sounds like,” Lanara said.
“You could fight,” Maddie suggested.
Magladeena scoffed. “We can’t fight that,” she said, “none of us are strong enough.”
“Do you have an army?” Xu asked.
“Sort of. The Provinces never needed a large army; were surrounded on all sides by the Dwarven Confederates. What army we have is usually on the northern border, helping fight the goblins in the mountains. Most of our military is in our navy, really, and even that isn’t large. We gnomes are not an aggressive people, and we have few quarrels with anyone.”
“Can you send to your capital for aid?” Maddie suggested.
“Never been to Peca, have you?” Magladeena asked. “We don’t have a capital. We have a wandering monarch whose court travels all around from province to province. But he’s more concerned with things pertaining to the nation as a whole; each province is self-governing.”
“Do you want us to see if there’s anything we can do to clear up the problem?” Autumn asked.
“If you can do what you can, it would be appreciated,” Magladeena said. “This is all we have. If we leave here, we’re nothing but homeless beggars.”
Behind her, Lanara slapped her forehead, and Razael sighed loudly. Kyle, sitting next to Autumn, turned around and glared.
“You know, if the two of you would like to leave, the river goes out that way,” he growled, pointing east.
“Well, I can’t,” Razael said, glancing at Maddie.
“That’s right,” the favored soul said to him.
“Like it or not,” Kyle continued, “this is what we do. If you don’t like it, then you have a choice to leave.”
“The last time I went off by myself, it didn’t turn out too well,” Lanara observed. “So I’ll stay. I just don’t relish fighting fish-men.”
“I’ve been doing things I don’t like since before you were born, Kyle,” Razael said, “so I can put up with it a bit more.”
The party wandered out of the gnome’s tent city to discuss their plans. “I suggest the following,” Arrie said. “We’ve got one shot at surprise. The kuo-toa are clever enough to figure things out once we give away that we’re here. And obviously going down underwater where they have the advantage isn’t the best way to use that surprise.”
“Remember that ambush we did once with the rope trick?” Maddie said.
“Yeah, when I was pretending to be Aralda,” Lanara said.
“When was this?” Razael asked. “From what I heard, that was all before you met these folks, Madrone.”
“Oh, did I say ‘we’?” Maddie blushed a little. “I didn’t mean to include myself in that. Of course I wasn’t there.”
“I do remember,” Xu said. “We used the rope trick to spring an ambush on some thieves. Such a tactic might work again.”
“Sure. We set up the camp again, and then hit them when they come back,” Maddie said.
“They probably will start bringing more people with them,” Arrie said thoughtfully, “since they already know that someone else is in the town too.”
“I suggest we move the camp,” Razael said. “The kuo-toa didn’t try to hide the fact that they’d been through our first camp, so if we set up again like nothing happened they’re bound to get suspicious. So make it look like we moved somewhere safer.”
“Good idea,” Arrie said.
“What can we use against them to lure them out of the water otherwise?” Osborn asked.
“Do they have a strong sense of community?” Maddie wondered aloud.
“Or an overdeveloped pride?” Kyle added.
Razael shook his head. “The fish-men tend to pretty much be out for themselves. No real strong social bond, but sensible enough to stick together when things are rough.”
“So, even if the ambush works and we take out a few,” Kyle said, “there’s no guarantee that having people missing will bring the rest of them up to find out what happened.”
“Maybe not right away,” Madie said, “but in a couple of days, maybe. They might not care about the missing people, but they will care that there aren’t any more valuables coming down to them.”
“I think we should restock our campsite with some ‘shiny stuff’,” Osborn said, “just to make it look like we’re still working on scavenging and found a few more items.”
“Okay, let’s take a look at the town and decide how to set this ambush up,” Arrie said.
* * *
They were ready by afternoon. They moved their ‘camp’ to the courtyard of a small inn, which gave only one access point to the area. Razael took up a position on a distant rooftop overlooking the camp, while Xu and Lanara took up positions on the inn’s roof. Kyle, Autumn, and Maddie chose to use Kyle’s rope trick to hide at the center of camp, while Arrie waited closer to the alley the kuo-toa would come through, hidden in a pile of rags and holding very still. Osborn took up a position flanking the camp, near where Arrie was hiding.
It was only a short time after sunset that Osborn heard the wet flapping of feet on the cobblestones. The party watched as four figures emerged from the alley leading to the inn, looking around carefully as they approached the camp. Two of the kuo-toa held spears and carried small shields on their arms. The other two carried a pair of foot-long iron rods with large crossguards, a weapon that Xu had called ‘sai’. The two with the sai, presumably the monitors, hung back near the alley while the two whips moved forward to explore the camp.
Within seconds, it was over. Arrows slammed into one of the monitors from several blocks away, and daggers perforated one of the whips. Arrie rose up to menace the kuo-toa, as did Xu, leaping down from the roof. The real impact, however, came from Autumn, who came down on top of one of the whips from the rope trick with her greataxe over her head, bringing it down and splitting the fish-man open. Her momentum hardly spent, she continued the swing around in a circle as she stepped over to the second whip. Already reeling from Osborn’s daggers, the whip wasn’t even able to bring an arm up to defend himself, and moments later the two halves of the whip hit the wall of the inn with a wet smack.
The monitors tried to turn tail and run, as they were pelted with Arrie’s chain, Maddie’s quarterstaff, Razael’s arrows and Kyle’s spells. They got about halfway down the alley before a shout spell from Kyle blasted one senseless, and Xu caught and killed the second with little effort. Kyle quickly placed a resilient sphere around the lone remaining kuo-toa, and the party circled around it as they decided what to do.
“Are we going to kill it?” Razael asked, as he walked up.
“Let’s question him first,” Kyle said. “Lanara?”
“On it.” The bard cast tongues on herself, then waited for Kyle to drop his spell.
The kuo-toa did not resist when freed from the sphere, surrounded as he was by eight menacing figures. Lanara tried a couple of times to charm the monitor in order to make interrogation easier, but the fish-man’s mind was as slippery as its body. Finally, Lanara pulled out her fiddle and began to play, singing an entrancing song that wore away the kuo-toa’s resistance and made him amenable to influence.
“I think that you should go back to the ocean after we talk to you, and take your friends with you.” Lanara told the monitor through her song.
“I will do that,” gurgled the kuo-toa, “but the others will not like that.”
“What others?” Kyle asked after Lanara translated, “how many?”
Lanara relayed the question musically. “When I leave, there will be four, plus The Claw, and his pets.”
“Pets?”
“You call them chuul.”
“Define ‘The Claw’,” Lanara asked.
“He is the leader, the Mighty Whip. He says he came to us from the sun, and led us here from the ocean.”
“Why did The Claw bring them here?” Kyle asked.
“Easy prey,” came the answer.
“Well, at least he gets points for being honest,” Autumn said. “Ask what The Claw looks like.”
“He is one of us, of course,” said the kuo-toa, “but his scales have been blackened by living in the sun. He has a crown of horns on his head. He also has… other limbs on his back, like those of the sky-swimmers.”
“Wings,” Lanara interpreted.
“Definitely fiendish,” Kyle said, “I’d go so far as to say a half-blood, or at least a quarter, if he really did ‘come from the sun’.”
Autumn frowned. “The direct spawn of the devils can be as formidable as their fiendish parent.”
“Don’t forget,” Osborn said, “we’ve run into other people who’ve claimed they were ‘from the sun’ who really weren’t. Remember Sun-Harrow and Takar?”
“True,” said Arrie, “but Sun-Harrow and Takar were trying to subvert a clan of Grabâkh- worshipping orcs, so saying that made sense. Since kuo-toa hate sunlight, it seems that claiming to be from the sun wouldn’t be a good selling point to claim leadership if it weren’t true.”
“What else should I ask?” Lanara asked.
The kuo-toa relayed that besides The Claw, there were two more whips and two monitors, and a pair of chuul. It was uncertain if the others would come up to the town once it was obvious that the four that had been sent tonight were not coming back. The monitor said that they were living in a forgotten temple under the lakebed. It told how The Claw was able to swim through the hottest part of the lake unharmed and tell the others what places to avoid, further cementing the idea that The Claw was a half-fiend.
“What do you plan to do when the ‘food’ runs out?” Kyle asked.
“I do not know. The Claw will decide.”
“Why did The Claw bring you here, in particular?” Lanara asked.
“Easy prey,” the kuo-toa repeated. “They have food, they have wealth; it is easy to take.”
“So, basically your leader is lazy and is making you do all his work for him.”
The monitor shrugged, as well as a fish-person could shrug. “He finds us easy meat. He finds us wealth. We take it because we are strong enough to take it, and those who have it are not strong enough to keep it.”
“Are we done with him?” Razael asked.
No one could think of any other questions. After a moment’s quiet discussion, Osborn stepped up and quickly put a dagger into the kuo-toan’s spine, killing it painlessly. Though Lanara’s suggestion would have caused it to leave as promised, the party surmised that it would likely have reported back to The Claw before going, ruining any element of surprise they had remaining.
“Well, I say we wait a couple of days,” Razael suggested. “See if any of the rest of them come up to see what’s happened. I mean, the only other way they can find out what happened is through divination.” He turned to Kyle. “In your experience, most of the time that divination stuff doesn’t sit well with those evil types, does it? I mean, they don’t do it much, right?”
“Oh, they do,” Kyle said. “There’s nothing about being evil that prevents them from being smart. But kuo-toa practice nature magic, and I don’t think nature magic is too strong in the area of divination. Of course, The Claw could be a priest of Grabâkh, and he might have some things he could do.”
“I agree with Razael,” Autumn said. “Let’s wait a day or two and see what happens.”
“After that, we can consider storming the water,” Razael said, “though I don’t relish that idea.”
“Should we leave the bodies where they can be found?” Maddie asked.
“Or throw them into the lake,” Xu suggested.
“I don’t think so,” Kyle said. “Let’s not tip our hand right away.”
“Okay, then,” Arrie said, “let’s get to work on setting up a camp in town – a real one, somewhere safe and hidden. And then, we can wait.”
* * *
After two days of waiting, the group decided they needed a new plan.
The remaining kuo-toa, as far as anyone could tell, had not come into the gnomish fishing town to look for their missing men. The party spent their days sleeping and exploring the town, except for Razael, who would go out hunting in the surrounding mountains to provide food for the gnomes. They quietly observed Xu’s 21st birthday the day after the ambush, promising her a more elaborate celebration later even as she insisted that it was unnecessary. They found that the town had already been fairly thoroughly looted by the kuo-toa, and the local temple of Krûsh had been defiled.
“So, it looks like we might have to goad them a bit,” Kyle observed. The party was sitting in their hidden campsite, waiting for Razael to get back from a hunting trip. The tracker had been seen little in the last two days; he stood both the first and last watches, and was out most of the day. “Maybe write some offensive graffiti on a rock and throw it in the lake?”
“What kind of graffiti would be offensive to a fiendish kuo-toa?” Osborn asked.
“I don’t know… pictures of happy dolphins beating up fish people, sunny days, that kind of thing.”
Razael walked into the small storage building they’d commandeered and sat down. “Found something interesting,” he said.
“What?” asked several people at once.
“You remember those tracks I found a couple days ago, the webbed feet that turned into wolf tracks?”
“Yeah, the kuo-toan druids that were shifting into wolves,” Arrie remembered.
“Well, I spotted a new set of those tracks, fresh from last night. Seems it was out looking for something. There was another set like that in another spot on the beach, probably from two nights ago.”
“So they are coming up, just not into the town,” Arrie said. “Why? Is there anything in this area they’d be interested in?”
Everyone shook their head indicating that they had not heard of anything significant being in this area. “Of course, that Node’s here,” Kyle mentioned, “and no one knew about that.”
“Can’t you wizards get control of those Nodes?” Razael asked.
“Yes, but not from here. I think this is a pretty low-powered Fire Node, so I’d have to be right on top of it to control it.”
“Okay, then,” Razael said, “we tie a rope around your waist and a rock to your ankle, and send you down.”
Autumn glared at the old elf to indicate she didn’t approve of his plan.
“I have a question,” Arrie said, “if the kuo-toa can come up out of the lake pretty much anywhere, how far can they get away from the water?”
“As far as they like, I’d guess, especially if they’re shifted into the shapes of land animals,” Kyle said.
“Well, then, should we be leaving the gnomes unprotected?”
“That’s a good point,” Osborn said. “Even if the kuo-toa don’t try anything, there’s other dangerous stuff in the mountains out there, and those gnomes aren’t in a very safe spot right now.”
“Maybe a couple of us should go back to the camp and stay there, just in case,” Kyle said.
They ended up drawing straws to see who would go, and Autumn and Osborn were chosen. Osborn mentioned as they packed up to leave that it would be nice to spend a little time around some properly sized people.
“I can start patrolling the shore at night,” Razael offered after Autumn and Osborn left. “See if I can pick up one of their trails and figure out what they’re looking for out there.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kyle said.
The others agreed to the plan as well. Razael went outside the town at sunset, and began walking up and down the shore of the lake, watching steam rise as the air over the water cooled. As near as he could figure, the fish-men were coming onto land at random spots. He’d have to be lucky to run across tracks that were fresh enough to be useful for his purpose.
As it happened, Ladta smiled upon him. He came across a new set of the changing prints in the pebbly sand surrounding the lake, no more than fifteen minutes old. Razael quickly studied the tracks carefully, memorizing the details in the prints as well as calling on his Talent to allow him to pick up the subtleties of the druid’s scent.
He followed the ‘wolf’, staying apace of it but not catching up, as he didn’t want to alert the kuo-toa to his presence. He noted that once it reached the foothills, the wolf began moving about randomly, looking like it was searching for something. Eventually the wolf turned and started heading back to the lake. Razael tried to speed up to catch the druid, but by the time he got to the lake he saw the kuo-toa as a dark shadow in the water, swimming away.
The next morning Razael returned to relay his findings. “Hey, sexy,” Lanara called out to him as he came inside.
“Love you too, darling,” he replied.
Kyle looked at the two of them. “Are the two of you going to need a tent of your own soon, or something?”
“Nah, just need a new playmate,” Lanara said. “Some things aren’t as much fun with Maddie as they were with Kavan.”
“Maybe you should try it sometime and see if that’s true,” Maddie said, smiling.
“Okay, I think Razael wants to tell us about his night, doesn’t he?” Arrie said, a little too loudly.
“Yeah, well, I got lucky, ran across the trail of one of those kuo-toan whips, out wandering around in the mountains. It seems they aren’t interested in the gnomes, at least for now.”
“So, what could they be looking for?” Kyle wondered.
“Actually, come to think of it, it wasn’t like it was looking for something,” Razael said, “more like someone. But someone that wasn’t there.”
“So, it’s crazy,” Arrie said.
“No, I’d guess it was looking for the ones we killed,” Razael said. “So, should I give them a toe?”
“Don’t you need all of yours?” Lanara asked.
“I was thinking of the fish-men’s toes, thanks.”
“Isn’t it kind of odd that they’re looking for them way out there, when up until now the kuo-toa have been coming into the town?” Kyle asked.
“It don’t make a lot of sense to me, either,” Razael admitted.
“Maybe they think that the missing ones found some really sparkly bit of treasure and they ran off with it instead of bringing it back to The Claw,” Maddie suggested.
“That makes sense, actually,” Arrie said. “Kuo-toa are pretty greedy and don’t have a huge sense of loyalty.”
“But they probably need those missing people back,” Maddie continued, “because now there’s not enough of them left to threaten the town.”
Kyle thought for a while, but then sighed. “That won’t work,” he said.
“What, Kyle?” Arrie asked.
“Well, I was thinking that we could try and disguise ourselves as the missing kuo-toa in order to get close enough to take them out. But it’d have to be a magical disguise, and the only spell I know that would come close to doing that is alter self. But there’s limits on how far away I can get from ‘human’ with that spell, and ‘kuo-toa’ is too much of a change.”
“Well, we could always let Maddie skin the dead ones we have, and we could disguise ourselves that way,” Arrie suggested.
They all looked at Arrie, and then at Maddie, whose expression did not indicate whether she was offended or excited by this proposition.
“You know, I’ve done that before,” Razael said, “and it worked pretty well. But that was with a mammal. I don’t know how well it would work with scales.”
“Um, I probably should go ahead and lodge my official protest against the idea of mutilating corpses and defiling the dead,” Kyle said, “seeing as I’m apparently the only one here now with any morals.”
Maddie gave a slight shrug, as did Razael. Arrie, Xu, and Lanara said nothing. “Look, Kyle, I understand your point,” Razael said, “but at this point, what use do the kuo-toa have for it?”
“I’m just saying, that’s all,” Kyle said.
“Well, if you’ve got an alternative, I’d love to hear it,” the tracked said. “I ain’t too keen on getting inside a fish-man skin.”
Kyle sighed. “Nothing off the top of my head.”
But nearby, Maddie and Arrie were whispering excitedly to themselves. “Hey, Kyle?” Arrie said.
“Yeah?”
“Come with us,” Maddie insisted.
* * *
Kyle, Osborn, and Razael looked up at the three story house, and then, despite knowing that the town was abandoned, still looked up and down the street out of habit before walking in.
The home had once belonged to a gnomish illusionist named Bilkin, who was one of the kidnapping victims when the kuo-toa had first started raiding the town. Maddie and Arrie had come across the house yesterday while wandering around, and though they saw nothing of interest, they could tell the home belonged to a mage of some sort. They had managed to track down the illusionist’s apprentice, a gnomish woman named Okam, who confirmed her master’s abduction.
“I was out with… a gentleman that night,” she explained. “Master Bilkin was gone when I came home the next morning.”
“Do you know where he kept his spellbooks?” Kyle asked.
“In his study on the third floor,” Okam said. “Though I don’t know beyond that. The master never let me into the study. I do know that you have to turn the knob twice to the left and once to the right to open it.” She thought for a moment. “Or was it once to the left and twice to the right?”
“Mind if we take a look?” Kyle asked. “Your master may have had spells that would be useful to us to help save the town.”
“I don’t see why not. It’s not like he’s using it any more.”
Osborn studied the knob on the study door while Kyle and Razael stood nearby. Then the hin reached out and turned the knob once, pushing the door open.
“Seems as though Bilkin liked to play tricks on his apprentice,” Osborn said. “Nothing unusual with the door at all.”
They stepped into a small, slightly dusty room. Gnome-sized bookshelves lined the walls, and a desk sat in the middle on top of a brightly colored rug.
“Wow,” Kyle said, looking around.
“What’s the big deal?” Razael said, “they’re just… books.”
“There’s a lot of magical auras in here,” Kyle said. “Mostly illusion. I’d guess most of them are false auras. Kind of a little obvious, really – if it were me, I’d just hit a few odd items in the room with the fake enchantments. When you cover everything in magic, you know it can’t all be real.”
Kyle tried to hit the room with an area dispel to clear out the numerous decoy auras, but the spells were well-established and didn’t respond to his attempt to disrupt them. Kyle went about the slow process of hunting for Bilkin’s spellbooks, while Osborn and Razael sat back and waited. Besides the books on arcane theory, there were several philosophical texts about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. Razael picked up a book and started reading.
Eventually, Kyle found two spellbooks. Pulling them out, Kyle sat down on the floor and started reading, as the desk was far too small for him to sit at.
“You know, you can just take those with you,” Razael said.
“Oh, sorry,” Kyle said. “You guys don’t need to stay here. I’ll be a while.”
“No, I mean, you can take those with you,” Razael repeated.
“But… they’re not mine.”
Razael just stared at Kyle. “The illusionist is dead.”
“So, these should stay here and go to his kin, or to Okam, if she wants them. I just need to borrow them to see if there’s any illusion spells I can use.”
“We could just tell Okam we didn’t find the books,” the elf suggested.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, “but there’s that whole ‘morals’ thing I mentioned before.”
Razael shook his head. “Whatever makes you feel better.”
It took Kyle the rest of the next day to decipher the spellbook. He found an illusion spell that would help him create the image of four living, breathing kuo-toans that could be used to fool The Claw’s minions. At first it was suggested that they have the illusion swim back to the underwater temple, with the ‘dead’ party in tow, but that proved too logistically problematic. Then Maddie suggested that they instead place the illusion somewhere in the mountains, and have the kuo-toa act as if celebrating.
“The ones that are searching for them think they’ve run off, right?” the favored soul said, “so we make it look like that’s what happened. Lure them to the cave, and then jump them.”
It took another day to find a suitable location in a shallow cave, and set up the ambush. Razael created a very faint scent trail to the cave using what remained of the dead kuo-toa, then sat on the trail leading up to the cave and acted as a sentry in order to give Kyle enough notice to cast his spell. Autumn and Osborn were pulled in from their guard duty, and they sat back and waited. Luck was with them, and about an hour after sunset a lone wolf approached the cave, saw the illusion of the dancing kuo-toa, and shifted back into its natural form.
The ambush they had staged several nights ago had been a bloodbath when it was eight against four. At eight against one, it was almost a non-event.
They staged a successful second ambush against another kuo-toan whip the next night (with the illusion appropriately adjusted to include five of the fish-men). No other scouts came for the next two nights, lending credence to the claims of their former captive that only two whips had remained among The Claw’s forces.
“Well, looks like we have to go down there and get him,” Arrie said in the morning after they returned from their last night at the cave.
“Problem is that we don’t exactly know where ‘down there’ is,” Lanara said.
“I could summon a celestial companion that could swim down and find this temple,” Autumn offered.
“What about the heat?” Arrie asked.
“I can take care of that,” Kyle said. “I’ve had a resist energy ready to go since the first day we started dealing with this.”
The party walked to the edge of the lake, where Autumn summoned a celestial dolphin and Kyle cast his spell on the animal. The dolphin swam away, returning two hours later. The dolphin sat at the lake’s edge, looking up at Autumn, then began chattering.
“What’s it say?” Razael asked.
“The link between us is mostly empathic,” Autumn explained, “so I don’t know what he’s actually ‘saying’. But he’s fairly intelligent, smart enough to know what we’re looking for. I think…” she paused a moment. “Yes, I can sense where he’s been. The temple’s at the bottom of the lake, almost right in the middle.” She paused for another moment. “There’s a few dangerously hot areas between here and the temple. I can’t get a sense of exactly where they are, but we’ll have to watch out for them.” She paused one more time, then smiled. “And he wants some fish now.”
After feeding the dolphin a few fish they’d found in a cold storage warehouse in town, it promptly vanished. “Looks like we have some planning to do,” Arrie said. “Let’s go discuss what to do, and we can get some sleep tonight. May as well plan our attack for the next morning, when the kuo-toa will be sleepy.”
The next morning, they were ready. The party elected to have Autumn and Osborn remain with the gnomes again, just in case things went poorly below and they needed to help protect the townsfolk against attack. Leaving two people behind also extended the time for Kyle’s water breathing spell by nearly an hour, which they figured would give them enough time to get down and back.
They eased into the warm water. Arrie and Xu, who were stronger swimmers, stayed close to Razael and Lanara to help them along. Kyle used a spell that changed him into a shapeless, ooze-like mass that was able to swim easily through the water, and he stayed close to Maddie to help her. It was slow going; they swam almost straight down, and then followed the lakebed. Several times they had to pull up short to avoid a geothermal vent; though scalding water scorched several of them, none of them were seriously burned.
They finally reached the temple, a squat, solid structure half buried in muck. Bubbles rose from several spots on the roof, and the water surrounding the temple was quite warm, even by the lake’s standards. They located a set of stairs at the bottom of the mound of muck leading up into the temple. A few steps up, they broke through the surface of the water and found the temple was filled with air.
“Odd,” Arrie said, coming up out of the water.
“The kuo-toa did say that there was air in the temple,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, but I thought he meant a couple of stale bubbles of air in a corner somewhere.”
“Any reason you can think of why this air is here, Kyle?” Lanara asked.
He shrugged as he started passing out light globes to the party. “Could be a lot of things. Interaction between the Fire Node and the lake water, maybe. Maybe the whips created this air pocket on purpose. Maybe…”
Suddenly, both Maddie and Razael hissed “Quiet!” and pointed to the left, down a corridor at the end of the stairs. Pausing, everyone heard the rapid approach of scuttling, chitin-covered feet.
Arrie and Xu ran forward just as the first chuul came up to the stairs, lashing out with its claws and tentacles. Unlike most creatures of its kind, this one was covered in blackened chitinous armor, which betrayed its fiendish nature. A second one was right behind it, but was unable to crawl past its companion, and was forced to wait. The two women were able to ward off the chuul’s initial attacks, striking back in return, but the creature’s hard carapace resisted their blows. Maddie enveloped everyone with the power of a lesser vigor before stepping up to combat the creature, while Kyle tried to blast it with magic missiles, but the bolts of energy dissipated harmlessly, disrupted by the chuul’s magical resistance.
Razael stepped forward, it between the chuul and Maddie. “What’re you doing up here, woman?” he shouted. He turned to fire arrows at the chuul, but had to get close in order to get a good shot, and was quickly snatched up by a large claw and stuffed into the chuul’s tentacle-ringed maw. Lanara, in a panic, dropped a sound burst into the midst of the melee, which hurt everyone except the chuul.
Xu ran up, and with a well-placed series of kicks, caused the chuul to drop Razael. Razael stood and staggered away as Xu continued her assault, felling the fiendish creature. Maddie came up and healed the tracker even as he fired a shot at the second chuul, which was already advancing on the group.
More magic missiles flew through the air, this time penetrating the chuul’s natural resistance. Arrie also lashed out at the chuul, first hurling a shotput then lashing out with her spiked chain. The aquatic creature fought back, striking both Xu and Razael again, requiring Maddie to expend more healing energy on the old elf.
“Who’s protecting who, again?” Kyle said quietly to Lanara.
“I was just wondering that myself,” she replied.
“As long as I’m taking it, she’s not!” Razael said through gritted teeth, even as Kyle sent more magic missiles at the chuul. “Don’t you have anything better than a magic missile?”
“Yes, but why would I waste them on these things?” Kyle replied.
By this time the chuul had decided it disliked being repeatedly struck in the head and body. Unfortunately, the room in which their master had ordered them to wait and attack any intruders had no other exits, and so retreat was impossible. Moments later, the battle was over.
Lanara walked up and pressed a vial into Razael’s hand, even as Maddie poured more divine energy into healing his wounds. “Here. It’s a healing potion. Are you going to be all stupid and not take it?”
“Well, I’ve stopped bleeding,” he said. “I’ll probably just put it in my pouch for now.”
“Drink it!” Lanara snapped. “Arrie’s our stupid one, drink the damn thing!” Lanara started to stomp off. “Sorry, Arrie!” she called back.
Razael looked at Arrie, who shrugged. “I haven’t needed a healing potion for a really long time.”
Kyle walked up, and winked at Arrie. “Gee, think that there’s something more to Lanara’s grumpiness toward Razael than meets the eye?”
The party spent a few moments preparing themselves before moving on, casting spells on themselves. Then they moved down the corridor to their right, Arrie in the lead. They came to a T intersection, and split up when they saw that each hallway turned again a short distance away. Arrie went to look around the right corner; Xu went to the left, while the rest of the party waited in the middle.
“I can’t see the end of my corridor,” Arrie said.
“I see a door, perhaps forty feet down on the opposite wall,” Xu said.
They decided to check the door first. Opening the door, they saw it led to a short, twenty-foot long corridor that ended in another door. Kyle noted that the doors were made of a blackened, petrified wood. On the other side of the door was a chamber they could only assume was a kuo-toan bedroom. A pile of wet rags was in the center of the room, and they saw several large, black scales on the floor. Gnomish bones littered the floor, and in one corner a gnomish head sat, some flesh still clinging to the skull. After a cursory search, the party backed up and went back around to the corridor Arrie had looked down. About a hundred feet down, they came to another door. On the other side of the door, they could hear a low rushing sound, like a raging bonfire. The door was very warm.
“I think we’ve found the Node, Kyle,” Arrie said. “Think The Claw will be in here?”
“Probably,” he said. “Especially if he knows we’re here.”
Everyone got ready, casting their last-minute preparatory spells and readying their weapons. Then, with a sharp blow from Arrie’s boot, the door burst open and they rushed inside.
The hallway on the other side continued for a few feet before turning to the left. Stairs let up into a small chamber, where two kuo-toans waited at the top, each bearing a pair of sai. The center of the room was filled with what looked like a pit of leaping flames, extending at least five feet into the air and filling the air with a visible heat shimmer. Standing in the back corner of the room, obscured by the flames, was a large kuo-toan with black scales and large wings. Sharp claws extended from each hand.
“Oh, good,” Razael said. “They have the fire pit ready for an old-fashioned fish fry.”
The kuo-toan in the back, who could only be The Claw, pointed at the party and burbled something in their native tongue. Everyone glanced at Lanara, who had cast a tongues spell. “He said, ‘Get them!’” she said. “Come on, did you really need me to tell you that?”
The party rushed forward even as the two monitors braced for the assault. Lanara’s bardic music echoed through the small chamber as Arrie and Xu moved up to engage the two monks. The monitors attempted to disarm Arrie’s spiked chain, but despite their speed and precision, she managed to keep her grip on the weapon. Xu slammed a fist into one of the monitor’s heads as she moved past quickly, tumbling inside the room.
The others crowded forward, waiting for an opening into the room. Kyle used magic to try and improve his aim, and then fired a dimensional anchor at The Claw. Unfortunately, even with his enhanced accuracy the leaping flames made it difficult to see, and the green ray hit the back wall of the room with no effect. Razael also fired at The Claw, and although he managed to hit, most of the arrows bounced off its magically toughened scales. Only one lodged in the kuo-toan’s chest, piercing his lung. In response The Claw gestured, and blasted the party with a flame strike, missing only the ever-cautious Lanara, who was outside the pillar of flame, and Razael, who managed to dodge out of the way just in time.
Arrie and Xu forced an opening, and the party began to push through. Between the assault of Xu’s fists, Arrie’s chain, and a searing light from Maddie, one of the monitors fell in a bloody heap, its blood sizzling against the hot stones in the floor. This gave them the opening they needed to get to The Claw himself. Xu punched and kicked at the fiendish kuo-toa, finding her blows were nearly ineffective against his stone-hard flesh.
As more arrows also flew in at him from Razael, The Claw spat out more orders, and the remaining monitor concentrated its attacks on the tracker, whittling down his vitality with a combination of magical fire and cold damage from his sai. Maddie stepped up to help, bashing the monitor with her quarterstaff. Razael, irritated that he was not only being hit once again but also that Maddie was again putting herself in harm’s way, snarled as he shot the monitor at point-blank range, killing it.
Kyle moved forward and tried another spell, one meant to blind The Claw. The spell managed to penetrate his fiendish resistances, and overcome his formidable constitution, and The Claw’s eyes turned white as his sight was stolen from him. The Claw roared in rage and swung wildly with its claws in the air. A moment later, he regained his composure and summoned a fire elemental next to him. The elemental surged forward and swung a flaming appendage at Kyle, badly burning him.
“I’ll keep this thing busy!” Kyle shouted, as he conjured up a lance of force and began jabbing the elemental, “You go after The Claw!”
Xu jumped over the Fire Node, easily clearing the leaping flames to get to the other side of the room where she would be safe from attacks from the elemental. She punched at The Claw, hoping to stun him, but wasn’t able to land her blow in the right spot. Arrie stepped up behind Xu, swinging her chain over Xu’s head. From across the room, Lanara launched magic missiles from a wand, though they did not penetrate The Claw’s resistances. Arrie managed to wrap her chain around The Claw’s feet, and pulled the blind kuo-toan whip off his feet. Now under serious pressure, The Claw uttered words of magic and gestured out into the room, and suddenly the room was filled with a storm of fist-sized hail that pounded down on everyone.
It was an act of futility. By that time Arrie and Xu had established a steady rhythm of knocking The Claw off his feet, then pounding him while down. Razael would shoot more arrows into him when he did rise. Soon they managed to overcome the stoneskin spell protecting the fiendish kuo-toa, and that spelled a quick end for The Claw. As he collapsed, the fire elemental vanished in a burst of heat and ash.
They spent another hour looking through the temple, collecting valuables. Most of the back portion of the temple was flooded, and appeared to be where the lesser kuo-toa had slept. There was far too much for them to gather it all up and get it back to the surface before their water breathing spell expired, so they decided to come back the next day, taking with them only the personal possessions of the kuo-toa, as well as the corpse of The Claw and one of the chuul to show the gnomes that it was safe to return home.
That evening, the party was treated to a celebration, hastily thrown together by the gnomes as they returned to their town. There would be much work ahead for the gnomes to rebuild and catch up on their lost months of fishing, but tonight that was a distant consideration for everyone. Kyle returned Bilkin’s spellbooks to Okam, though she said that he was free to copy anything he’d like before they left.
The next day was spent in hauling treasure up from the temple and sorting through it. Autumn and Osborn volunteered to go down to recover the valuables, not only because neither of them had been able to see the temple before, but because Autumn’s portable hole and Osborn’s skills at searching for hidden stashes of goods would make the job easier. They would have been ready to depart by the next morning, but they decided to stay one more day, mostly because the next day, the 28th of Canith, was Autumn’s twentieth birthday.
It was a simple celebration, with the town having little to offer in the way of amenities and the party having had no chance to prepare or buy gifts. Autumn insisted that none of it was necessary, that all she wanted was to be with her friends and family. The one gift she did accept from the party, however, was when they offered to let her and Kyle spend the afternoon and evening together alone. Kyle borrowed one of the gnomish fishing boats, and the two of them sailed out across the lake, heading for the far shore.
They returned much later, as the sun was starting to disappear behind the mountains. They walked back into the inn where they’d been put up by the gnomes (the same inn that they’d used to stage their ambush of the kuo-toa in the town), walking with their arms around each other and smiling.
“Have a good time?” Arrie asked when they walked in.
Lanara stood and walked over to them, and plucked a blade of the long, thin grass that grew near the shore of the lake out of Autumn’s hair. “I’d say they did,” she said.
“So, what else did you two do?” Maddie asked.
“Oh, I just gave Autumn her birthday present,” Kyle said.
“We know that, Kyle,” Lanara said, “we asked what else you did.”
A small smile crept onto Arrie’s face. “So, what did you get, Sis?”
Grinning ear to ear, Autumn held out her left hand. Sitting on her finger was a large, sparkling sapphire ring.
“We’re engaged,” she said.
It took the party two and a half weeks to make the trip up from Stacks to the city of M’ioch, which stood at the end of the pass between Medos and the Dwarven Confederates. From there it would only be a short journey to M’ioch’s sister city in the Confederates, Krek, and from there north through Laeshir, along the Lassh River to Aleppi, and then east to Merlion. The party again found themselves having to adjust to life on the trail after a month spent living at the inns of M’dos. Among the adjustments were the campsite arrangements; there were Kyle and Autumn, of course, who now shared a tent, and Osborn also now packed a small tent of his own, having decided after Tolly’s departure that he preferred having space to himself. Razael tended to sleep outside, deigning to seek shelter only in the worst of weather. Lanara, Xu, Arrie, and Maddie debated whether or not they would change their own sleeping arrangements, but decided for the time being to remain in their large four-person tent.
As the party drew closer to M’ioch, they noticed an unusual amount of traffic on the road. Soon things had slowed to a crawl, with several horses, wagons, and people jostling for position.
“What’s the holdup?” Lanara called out to a drover nearby, who shrugged. Others nearby gave the same answer.
“Why don’t I ride ahead to the gate and see what I can find out?” Osborn offered. He turned Rupert out of the pack, and circled around outside the crowd, heading for the city gates.
It was about an hour before he came back. “There’s a major problem,” Osborn said, “the pass into the Confederates is blocked.”
“Blocked?” Arrie said, somewhat surprised. “Blocked how?”
“Landslide, I think, I couldn’t tell for sure. Up at the gate they’re telling folks it’ll be a month before it’s cleared.”
“A month?” Lanara groaned. “We’re stuck in M’ioch for a month?”
“What’s wrong with M’ioch?” Kyle asked.
“It’s an Ardaran strongpoint, that’s what’s wrong,” the cansin replied. “It’s not that different from Laeshir. Fewer dwarves, that’s all.”
The party all shook their heads. They’d spent a month in Laeshir the last time they’d been through the Confederates, as Tolly had needed time to finish working on his armor. The only thing that had kept their stay from becoming unbearably tedious was the Midsummer festival, although even that was marred when Maddie’s bastard son Marrek had framed Lanara for a crime in the city.
“I’m surprised they’re not sending riders out from the city to tell people what’s going on,” Arrie mused.
“They’re working on it, I think,” Osborn said. “Sounds like they’re trying to get things organized inside the city first.”
Osborn began spreading the word among the other travelers and merchants near them, and the news spread quickly. Several of the smaller caravans and groups began to extricate themselves from the line, turning around to head for another city. Later, as messengers from M’ioch began to arrive and relay the news officially, others also chose to depart. Some of the larger merchant caravans were directed off the main road and led in toward the open fields surrounding the city; M’ioch itself wasn’t large enough to accommodate everyone for an entire month, so campsites were being established outside the walls where the merchants could wait for the pass to reopen. Thus by the time the party reached M’ioch, they were still able to find lodging, at rates only moderately higher than normal.
They spent the better part of the next day getting supplies. Details of the landslide that had blocked the pass were beginning to circulate through the city. Apparently, the children of a clan of stone giants that lived near the pass had been out playing, and had accidentally triggered the slide. The giants were helping with clearing the pass, as were crews from both Krek and M’ioch, but the slide was immense. Though most of the essential goods were going to the crews helping with the pass, but fortunately the party was already fairly well supplied with the basics, and were only seeking a few esoteric goods.
That night, they discussed their options. “So, we agree that no one wants to wait out the month here,” Arrie said, “so what can we do?”
“There are old tunnels that extend under the mountains,” Maddie said. “I heard someone else talking about them. Apparently it’s how the dwarves got goods in and out of their lands before the passes were secured. Not much use to a big caravan, but smaller groups would be fine. Problem is, they’re not patrolled any more like they used to be, so no one’s sure what’s down there.”
“I’ve had enough danger and uncertainty for a while, thanks,” Lanara said, wrinkling her nose. “What else?”
“Well, the pass to the Peca Provinces is still open,” Arrie observed. “Northeast to the Plingold River, then sail down into the Provinces to the coast, and take a gnomish galleon to Tlaxan.”
“Yargh, more boats?” Lanara complained.
“Well, missy, could be we just follow the Plingold rather than sail it,” Razael offered, “and instead of going all the way to the coast, we can cut across and go through Tengolt.”
“I like that better,” the bard admitted, “but why not just find another pass through the Confederates? There can’t be only one.”
“No, likely there’s other ways of getting across the mountains,” Razael mused.
“But how is that any better than the tunnels?” Kyle asked. “Just as likely to be dangerous, plus we have to worry about finding the pass and crossing it while dealing with the elements.”
“I’ll give you that. But you got any better ideas, now’s the time, boy,” Razael said.
“Well, I could try to teleport us.”
Autumn looked at Kyle. “Since when do you know that spell?”
“I don’t. But it’s not an uncommon spell, I could probably find it here.”
You’re saying you could teleport us to Krek?” Arrie asked.
“No, actually, I’d aim for Laeshir. I’ve never been to Krek, but we spent a month in Laeshir.” Kyle fell silent for a moment. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I could get us all the way to Noxolt from here.”
“Pretty sure?” Razael asked. “How many times you done this, boy?”
“Well, none. But it’s simple in theory. It’d take a couple of trips, of course. I’m assuming that we aren’t getting Defiance or Ghost into Autumn’s portable hole.”
Razael sniffed. “Ain’t worth going somewhere if you can’t walk. And I’m not sure we can trust your ‘theories’ anyhow.”
Kyle frowned, and shrugged. “Fine. We wanted to get to Tlaxan; I made a suggestion. Sorry that you find it so objectionable.”
Razael leaned over to Arrie. “Is he always getting his feelings hurt like this, Princess?” Arrie only shrugged in response.
“Okay, then,” Kyle said, “how about this? There’s a blocked pass, right? Sounds like they need help clearing it, right? And we’re supposed to be helping people, right? Why not go help with the pass? It might not open the pass any faster, but we stay busy and do something useful.”
“I agree with that,” Autumn said. “We’re not above common labor.”
“Some of us aren’t as good at that common labor,” Lanara pointed out. “And why should we clean up their mess?”
“Yeah, what am I supposed to do?” Razael added.
“Well, I’m sure the workers could use some entertainment, or some rousing songs to help them work. And I’ll bet they’ll need help hunting to feed all those workers.”
“Yeah, well, the problem with working with giants is they tend to forget you’re there,” Razael said.
“Yeah, I agree,” Osborn said. “Getting stepped on? No thanks.”
The others failed to be inspired by the idea of clearing rubble, so the idea was dropped. “What do you think, Arrie?” Autumn asked.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter to me. While I’m not in a huge hurry to be in Tlaxan, since I’m going to have plenty of time to enjoy it later…”
“It’s not like we’re going to Tlaxan to live,” Kyle snapped. “We’re there long enough for Autumn to get this Duchess thing squared away, find ourselves a ship, and we’re gone.”
“I know, I know,” Arrie said, “it’s just a mental thing for me.”
“I’d prefer to take the pass to the Provinces, myself,” Razael said. “I’m not too fond of being underground.”
“Well, if we can avoid any boats, then I’m up for that,” Lanara said. “I’ve never been to the Provinces.”
“Anyone opposed?” Arrie asked. When no one spoke up, she nodded. “Peca it is then. We can head out in the morning.”
As everyone got up and went on with their night, Autumn grabbed onto Kyle’s arm gently. “Are you all right? You seem to be in a bad mood.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t believe you. Earlier today you were up in our room alone for over an hour, and after that you were testy. What’s going on?”
“I said it’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Autumn frowned. “Kyle…”
Kyle sighed. “Look, really, it’s just a mood. I was working on something upstairs earlier, and it didn’t… work out like I thought it would. But I really haven’t had time to figure it out yet, and I don’t want to get all worked up over something that’s probably a simple mistake. Once we get to Tlaxan, I can spend a little more time on the problem. I was kind of hoping people would go for the teleporting idea just to speed things up a bit. I think that Razael’s comment about not trusting me just rubbed me the wrong way.”
Autumn looked up at Kyle for a while. “All right, then. You usually tell me when something’s wrong, so I guess I can trust you when you say this is just a mood.” She smiled at him. “Now, why don’t you come to bed? I can help take your mind off the day.”
“Now there’s an offer I don’t need to think twice about.”
But even as he walked back to the rear of the inn, Autumn’s arm in his, Kyle’s mind couldn’t help but pick at his ‘failed’ experiment. I had to have made a mistake somewhere, he thought, or I’m forgetting something simple. It never was my strongest area of study at the Tower. Because it just doesn’t make sense.
* * *
It was a week out of M’ioch before they reached the head of the Plingold River. They had to explain several times to the baffled gnomes that they weren’t going to be taking a ship downriver, but would be riding their horses. After a while the gnomes, who couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take a boat, ended up just shrugging and waving a friendly goodbye.
The trail was thin in places, but navigable. The party saw no other travelers as they rode; presumably those others who had also chosen to head into the Provinces from M’ioch were taking gnomish riverboats. As they rode, Razael frequently doubled back and obscured their trail, still wary after their experiences with Hungai and Aranal. At one point the river split in two, and the party was forced to follow the smaller branch, as the more navigable portion fed into a sheer ravine that allowed no trail for the horses. The gnomish guides they had consulted indicated that the branch would rejoin the main river when they were nearly out of the mountains, and that they’d find a few small fishing towns along the way.
The party rode for another three days before they saw signs of civilization. On the morning of the third day, the river valley opened up into a natural caldera, and the river fed into a decent sized lake, with a town sitting on the southern shore. They could see steam rising off the lake, and occasionally the water would ripple as an air bubble rose and broke the surface.
“Hot springs?” Xu asked Razael. When he nodded, Lanara grinned. “Wonderful!” Beside her, Maddie was also smiling from ear to ear.
Kyle sighed. “Looks like we’re here for another month.”
“Something’s wrong,” Osborn said. “The gates are closed, and no one’s moving inside.”
“And what’s that over there?” Arrie asked, pointing. Further south, well outside the town walls, they saw a tent city set up, just before the caldera began to climb back into mountains.
“I hope it’s not another siege,” groaned Autumn.
“We can go around,” Razael observed.
“Or,” Osborn said quickly, “we could go see what’s wrong.” Razael and Lanara both rolled their eyes.
“I can go talk to them,” Arrie said.
“I’ll go with you,” Autumn said. “Anyone else?”
Lanara and Xu volunteered to go down as well. Razael turned to Maddie. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going down to talk to the gnomes.”
He sighed. “Then I guess I’m going with you.”
“I’ll stay here, just in case,” Osborn said.
“Me too,” Kyle said, “just wave if it’s okay to come down.”
The party, minus Kyle and Osborn, made their way down the trail toward the town, splitting off once they reached the bottom of the road to head for the tent city. They were greeted just outside the tents by a small cluster of friendly, if slightly haggard gnomes.
“Welcome, strangers,” one of the gnomes said. “I’m sorry we don’t have much in the way of hospitality to offer you, but please, if you need a place to rest, feel free to join us. I must warn you to stay away from the lake, however. It’s become quite a bit more dangerous as of late.”
“Yes, we were kind of wondering why you were all out here,” Arrie said.
“If you’d like to come have breakfast with us, we can explain. Your friends can come down too, if they want.” The gnome pointed past the party to where Kyle and Osborn sat watching.
“Breakfast sounds good,” Lanara said. She waved at Kyle and Osborn, who started down the slope toward the tents.
The party was led into the middle of the tent city. Looking around, they could see that the gnomes were barely getting by. They caught glimpses of families boiling roots in iron pots, or trying to stitch up threadbare tents. The party was offered a breakfast of thin, watery soup and dry bread; they ate sparingly, not because they weren’t hungry but because they felt awkward eating what were obviously very thin supplies.
When they finished, the gnome that had greeted them introduced himself as Zander. “It all started about the onset of spring or so,” Zander said. “Or what passes for spring up here. We’re pretty prosperous up here, even in the winter, since the lake is heated from below. It’s a… it’s a… oh, there’s a word for it that the smart folks use. Starts with a G.”
“Geothermal?” Razael offered.
“That’s the one. Anyway, we exist mainly on the fish here; we salt and smoke them and sell them to the Confederates and the rest of the Provinces. The fish are adapted to the water here, and it gives them an unusual flavor, so we have a market for our fish even down by the coast where fish are plentiful. We also sell scrimshaw. It’s enough to get by, even way out here.”
“So what happened in the spring?” Kyle asked.
“Well, we’d started our spring fishing run,” Zander began, “and about a week into it some of our boats were attacked by these big lobster-like creatures. Kind of like a cross between a lobster and a snail, actually, with these dangly tentacles on their mouth.”
The party looked around at each other, seeing if any of them recognized the creature by its description. Arrie and Razael seemed to recognize it; Arrie turned to the others and quietly mouthed the word “Chuul” so as not to interrupt.
“They’d attack the ships, dump the people overboard, and grabbed them. We weren’t able to recover some of the bodies. Some of the survivors report seeing sharks under the water along with the lobster creatures. But this is a fresh-water lake, so it must have been something else. Besides, in certain areas this lake is hot enough to boil. The native fish are fine, but anything not adapted to it would boil alive.”
“That is unusual,” Arrie said. “Is it possible that the lake is…” she struggled to choose words that Zander might understand better, “is it possible that the lake is of purer water than normal?”
“I don’t know,” Zander admitted. “We don’t swim in the lake a lot. It’s cool enough near the shore, but further out and you run the risk of swimming into spots that’ll scald the skin off your bones.”
“I just wonder if it might be more elemental water,” Arrie explained, “something that might have affected these creatures.”
“Oh,” Zander said, but then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
“How long has this been going on?” Maddie asked.
“About three months,” Zander said. “The reason we came out here is that shortly after the lobster creature attacks started, people started disappearing from town. We decided to leave the town to protect ourselves. The disappearances have stopped, but if we can’t get back into our town we may have to abandon it and move away.” Zander’s face fell as he considered the option of leaving his home.
“Did any strangers arrive in town around that time?” Maddie asked.
“No, just us. We don’t get many travelers, so new people would have been noticed.”
“Chuul are somewhat intelligent,” Razael pointed out.
“And amphibious,” Arrie added. “They could have come into town.”
“I don’t see how,” Zander said. “We never found a trace of the people who vanished or who took them, and those lobster… chuul are big and crab-like.”
“It seems pretty horrible for you guys,” Arrie said, “would you mind if we took a look around?”
“That would be wonderful! Is there anything we can do to help?”
Razael sighed heavily. “I thought we were trying to get to Tlaxan.” Next to him, Lanara muttered her agreement.” Kyle, sitting next to them both, leaned over and tapped the Tower graduation tattoo on the back of the Lanara’s hand.
“This means that you should expect frequent delays,” he said to them quietly. Razael held up his own hand, showing that he didn’t have a tattoo.
“But she does,” Kyle said, nodding toward Maddie.
Arrie had continued speaking with Zander, asking for information about the layout of the town, and to speak with survivors of the chuul attacks. She suggested to Razael that as long as they were staying, the tracker could try and hunt down some game so that the town had better than root stew for dinner. Instead, Razael decided to take a few of the younger gnomes out into the wilds and help them identify a few more edible roots and plants to supplement their diet.
“If nothing else, we can help tide them over and make things a little more comfortable,” Arrie said. “Kind of like that first exercise we did at the Tower.”
“I’d like to take a peek at the lake,” Kyle said.
“Why don’t we check out the town?” Osborn suggested. “See if the chuul are still coming into the town now that the people are gone.”
The party spent more time questioning the townsfolk before heading for the town later that afternoon. The gnomes seemed to respond well to Autumn, sensing a kindred spirit in the aasimar, and opened up to her easily. They learned that all the people taken lived close to the lake, and were taken without sounds or signs of struggle. All the disappearances happened at night. The description of the chuul attacks indicated that they didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat of the lake, at times swimming right through patches of boiling water. A few survivors did describe seeing sharks or shark-like creatures swimming well below the water. A couple of the fishermen noted that on the occasions when a local priest of Krûsh or one of the town’s holy warriors was on the lake, their boat would be attacked first.
By the time Razael had returned, the party was ready to investigate the town in person. They talked as they walked to the town gates.
“So, we have chuuls that are immune to fire, and seem to target priests and holy warriors,” Arrie observed.
“Sounds like fiendish creatures to me,” Kyle said.
“It’d make a lot of sense,” Arrie agreed, “and might explain the sharks. If one of them was a sort of unholy warrior or priest, then they could be summoning the sharks.”
“Okay, then,” Kyle said, “so we dangle Autumn from a rope in the middle of the lake, and when the chuul come we blast them.” When everyone looked at Kyle, he threw up his hands. “Oh, come on! You know I’m joking!”
“You know, Kyle, I think it would work,” Razael said. “In that armor she kind of looks like a lobster.”
“I was joking,” Kyle said again.
“We are not boiling my sister,” Arrie said.
Autumn was looking down at herself. “I don’t look like a lobster,” she pouted.
“Of course you don’t. You look just fine in your armor,” Kyle said, putting an arm around her.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she said.
“Yeah, but he thinks you look better out of your armor,” Lanara quipped.
Kyle grinned and shrugged, as if to say ‘I can’t argue with that’. “Well, before we do anything with whatever’s under that lake, I’ll want to take a day to prepare new spells. Sonic spells are really best for underwater use.”
“A thought occurs to me…” Arrie said.
“Is that what that noise was?” Lanara quipped.
“Thank you, Lanara,” Arrie said mockingly.
“Sorry, Arrie.”
“We may have to help teach these gnomes to defend themselves,” Arrie continued. “We don’t know how big the problem is. Kyle, is there any way to whip up some thunderstones or similar items for the gnomes to use?”
“Can’t really say. Depends on what they have in the town.”
“What if we poisoned the lake to get rid of them?” Maddie asked.
“Then that kind of screws the gnomes too, doesn’t it?” Lanara pointed out.
“And anyone downstream,” Razael added.
“We can’t just deal with whatever’s down there now,” Autumn said. “We need to find and eliminate the source of this incursion.”
“Well, the lake is hot…” Arrie said.
“Yes, so?”
“So, whose element is fire?”
Autumn sighed. “Grabâkh. So you think the rift is under the lake.”
“The lake’s been hot for a while, so I don’t think that’s the entire story,” Arrie mused. “Maybe something happened recently to change things. An earthquake exposed some sort of planetary portal or something. Once we get to the town, we can look at the lake and see if we spot any glaring abysses of evil. But for now, dealing with chuul are bad enough. From what I remember from classes at the Tower, because I did occasionally pay attention,” the last part she said particularly loudly in Autumn’s direction, “is that chuul are incredibly strong, and they have some sort of paralyzing substance on their tentacles. They’re also more intelligent than they look. If these chuul are enhanced by fiendish energies as well, then this could be ugly.”
The party arrived in town, and began looking around. Osborn and Razael slipped off to see what they could find, trying to stay hidden in case they were being watched. The rest of the party meandered through the streets, not seeing anything unusual other than the fact that they were the only souls present.
They finally made it to the edge of the lake, and looked around, but saw nothing but empty fishing boats bobbing at their piers. A couple of the boats had chunks missing from the sides. Razael and Osborn came back a few minutes later.
“No sign of chuul tracks,” Razael said. “Just what you’d expect to see. I’d say they haven’t been in the town since the gnomes packed up and left.”
“No sense going to the market if the stalls are empty,” Lanara said.
“Well, something’s been through here,” Osborn said. “I checked out a few of the homes, and it looks like they’ve been tossed by thieves. Jewelry and valuables missing, stuff like that.”
“Thieves passing through?” Maddie asked, but Osborn shook his head. “Zander said they haven’t had any strangers in town for months. Even from where they are now, there’s no way they could miss people coming into this valley from either end.”
“One of their own, then, sneaking in at night to help themselves to their neighbor’s goods?” Razael asked.
“Doesn’t make sense. It’s not in the nature of gnomes to steal from one another like that, and besides, where would a thief stash all that stuff? In his tent?” Osborn looked out across the lake. “No, they’re all too terrified of the chuul for one of them to get the nerve to sneak back in here for that.”
Osborn noticed that Kyle was staring out across the water intently. “Hey, pal! What’s up?”
Kyle continued to look out across the water. “Well, I’ll be.”
“What?” Autumn asked.
“The lake… there’s a Node out there somewhere.”
“Are you sure?”
Kyle nodded. “I can’t tell what kind it is from here. A Water Node is the most obvious, but in this situation I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Fire Node.”
“A Fire Node would explain the heat, and the evil,” Arrie said.
Razael wandered off a short distance while the others discussed the Node. He’d run across a few Nodes in his lifetime, and he didn’t see what the big deal was. Arcanists seemed to go nuts over them, though. “I’m going to check out the shoreline outside of town a bit,” he called out. “Make sure those chuul haven’t thought to start exploring the rest of the valley looking for food. Y’all stay put.”
It was about an hour before Razael came back, and the sun was already halfway below the edge of the mountains that surrounded them. “I saw something I can’t make heads or tails of,” he said to the others.
“What was it?” Arrie asked.
“Well, down that way, I saw a set of tracks coming out of the water. They were bipedal, like a man, and I’d say about the same size and weight as Kyle there. But they had long, webbed toes – about three times as long as a human’s toes.”
“That is strange,” agreed Kyle.
“It gets better. About ten paces from the edge of the lake, the tracks change into wolf tracks, and go off into the mountains. I tracked them a bit, but lost the trail.”
“What on this earth would come out of the water and turn into a wolf?” Osborn asked.
“Were-duck?” Kyle said quietly.
“Yeah, you may be right there,” Razael said sarcastically.
“You said the tracks were humanoid?” Arrie said.
“Well, other than the webbed feet, yeah, the tracks look like what something shaped like a person would leave. Before they turn into wolf tracks, that is.”
“Sounds like a druid,” Arrie said. “They can turn into wild animals.”
“Yeah, but there ain’t no animals that leave webbed-feet tracks like that.”
“I think the webbed feet might be its natural form, Razael.”
“So,” Kyle said, “we’ve got an aquatic humanoid creature, probably evil, that can turn into other animals. Osborn, didn’t you say that those houses looked like they’d been gone through deliberately?”
“Sure did. Nothing professional by any means, but whoever did it knew what they wanted – jewelry boxes flipped, mattresses cut open, that kind of thing.”
“I’d suspect a water-touched druid,” Arrie said, “but stuff like this would be against their nature. I have trouble picturing an evil water-touched.”
“It’s not impossible, though,” Kyle said. “being Touched doesn’t automatically mean you follow the morals of your outsider ancestors.” Kyle hooked a thumb at Autumn. “I’m sure there are a few evil aasimar out there.”
“There was that fire-touched tavern owner, Grog, from Dagger Rock,” Osborn said. “He seemed a decent fellow.”
“And water-touched still look mainly human,” Kyle said, “not big webbed toes.”
“So, something extraplanetary?” Arrie asked.
“Well, any outsider with feet like that would probably come from Chelesta,” Kyle said. “Krûsh’s planet is the only one that would require that. And if they’re coming from there, then it really is impossible for them to be behind the chuul attacks or the burglaries. Krûsh’s minions are good by nature.”
“What about kuo-toa?” Razael asked. “They seem to fit the bill. Didn’t think about them at first, seeing as the fish-men pretty much stay in the ocean.”
The others thought about Razael’s theory, and nodded. “Kuo-toa do make sense,” Arrie agreed. “Their priests do practice nature magic. But why all the way up here?”
“Well, we could just feed the gnomes for another day, then head on out and send someone else to look at it.”
“No, I think we should investigate further,” Arrie said. “I’m just saying that the theories we’re coming up with are…”
“Out there?” Razael finished for her. “Not worth bothering with?”
Arrie sighed. “Look at it this way, Razael. The bigger name you make for yourself as a philanthropist out here…”
Razael interrupted. “A what now?”
“A goody two-shoes,” Lanara said.
“The bigger reputation you make, the better chance you have of getting to return home to Tlaxan of your own choice and staying.”
“Ain’t likely, Princess,” Razael said. “I get in trouble there without even trying. At least your husband only banishes me. His father liked to have me whipped.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. “So, thoughts?” Autumn asked at last.
“I think the kuo-toa theory is the best one we have,” Kyle said. “The chuul could be acting as their allies, or their slaves.”
“It might explain the sharks, too,” Maddie said. “The sharks could have been the kuo-toa druids watching the chuul to make sure nothing went wrong.”
“And coming into the town to steal,” Osborn said. “Kuo-toa are pretty greedy.”
“Does anyone have any valuables?” Maddie said suddenly.
“Yes, but not that I’m giving to the fish-men,” Osborn said.
“No, I’m thinking that we bait whoever’s behind this. They’re coming into town looking for jewelry and stuff, right? So we set up a ‘shiny shrine’ and then hit them when they come to check it out.”
“An ambush?” Razael said, “sounds good. We could set up a false camp with a few items scattered about, make it look like we’re scavengers or something. Then we could just watch and see what happens.”
The others agreed to the plan. They quickly went about setting up a camp, trying to make it look like it was being used. Razael and Osborn took up positions to observe the camp while the others wandered about the town “exploring”. It was morning by the time everyone came back to the camp, which had obviously been searched.
“Well, we called it right,” Razael said, “it’s the kuo-toa. They came and looted the camp last night. There were two of them, but I didn’t see any chuul. I followed them back to the lake, and when I saw them swimming away I noticed that they were weaving and dodging back and forth. I think they’ve figured out where the hotter parts of the lake are and have learned to avoid them.”
Autumn sighed. “Well, at least we know for sure what’s behind this. Any sign they had fiendish blood?”
Osborn shook his head. “As far as I can tell, they were normal. For fish-people, that is.”
The party spent a few minutes reviewing what they remembered from their classes at the Tower about the kuo-toa, or what Razael remembered from his experiences. Little of it explained why the amphibious creatures would be here, in a mountain lake so far from the ocean.
“So, now what?” Arrie asked.
“Well, for all we know there’s a whole colony of those fish-men down there,” Razael said.
“So the gnomes should move,” Lanara suggested.
“You may have it right, missy,” Razael agreed. “We could send word to the government, let them know there’s an infestation up here. That way we could leave.”
“I like the way he thinks,” Lanara said.
Kyle, however, scowled at the suggestion, and Xu shook her head. “But where is the glory in that? The honor?”
“If you want glory, I can write a song,” Lanara said.
“You know, you humans are just too absorbed in this glory concept. I’ve been around for five hundred years, and it don’t matter what glory you’ve got.”
“That’s because you have any,” Autumn said.
“I don’t agree with that, and I’m not human,” Maddie said.
“Me either,” Osborn chimed in.
“You’re young,” Razael said to Maddie, “you’ll learn.”
“Oh, thanks Daddy,” Maddie said sarcastically.
“The thing is,” Kyle said, “we don’t know how extensive the problem really is. It seems early to be talking about leaving and handing this mess off to someone else.”
“Well, we can assume at least two monitors and a whip,” Razael said, using the kuo-toan titles for their monks and druids, “plus the chuul.”
“I wonder if the chuul are treated as equals, or slaves.” Arrie mused. “Maybe it’s a colony of kuo-toa and a separate colony of chuul.”
“That seems a bit much,” Osborn said.
“Here’s a crazy idea,” Lanara said, “why don’t we take this information to the gnomes, and let whoever’s in charge decide what they want to do?”
“Well, that does make sense,” Autumn said. “We can go back to them now and ask what they want us to do to help.”
“Oh, goody,” Lanara said, “just in time for more root stew.”
The party returned to the tent city and found Zander, who helped them locate the town’s mayor, a bright-eyed old gnomish woman by the name of Magladeena. The party filled her in on the chuul and the kuo-toa, and what had been happening in the town since they had left.
“Hmm,” Magladeena said, “this is disturbing.”
“Well, at least the kuo-toa won’t bother you in the day,” Razael pointed out, “they can’t see.”
“Yes, but the chuul can, have, and do,” the mayor pointed out.
“Well, I’m just telling you, is all.”
“Swell. So, it’s move or die?”
“That’s kind of what it sounds like,” Lanara said.
“You could fight,” Maddie suggested.
Magladeena scoffed. “We can’t fight that,” she said, “none of us are strong enough.”
“Do you have an army?” Xu asked.
“Sort of. The Provinces never needed a large army; were surrounded on all sides by the Dwarven Confederates. What army we have is usually on the northern border, helping fight the goblins in the mountains. Most of our military is in our navy, really, and even that isn’t large. We gnomes are not an aggressive people, and we have few quarrels with anyone.”
“Can you send to your capital for aid?” Maddie suggested.
“Never been to Peca, have you?” Magladeena asked. “We don’t have a capital. We have a wandering monarch whose court travels all around from province to province. But he’s more concerned with things pertaining to the nation as a whole; each province is self-governing.”
“Do you want us to see if there’s anything we can do to clear up the problem?” Autumn asked.
“If you can do what you can, it would be appreciated,” Magladeena said. “This is all we have. If we leave here, we’re nothing but homeless beggars.”
Behind her, Lanara slapped her forehead, and Razael sighed loudly. Kyle, sitting next to Autumn, turned around and glared.
“You know, if the two of you would like to leave, the river goes out that way,” he growled, pointing east.
“Well, I can’t,” Razael said, glancing at Maddie.
“That’s right,” the favored soul said to him.
“Like it or not,” Kyle continued, “this is what we do. If you don’t like it, then you have a choice to leave.”
“The last time I went off by myself, it didn’t turn out too well,” Lanara observed. “So I’ll stay. I just don’t relish fighting fish-men.”
“I’ve been doing things I don’t like since before you were born, Kyle,” Razael said, “so I can put up with it a bit more.”
The party wandered out of the gnome’s tent city to discuss their plans. “I suggest the following,” Arrie said. “We’ve got one shot at surprise. The kuo-toa are clever enough to figure things out once we give away that we’re here. And obviously going down underwater where they have the advantage isn’t the best way to use that surprise.”
“Remember that ambush we did once with the rope trick?” Maddie said.
“Yeah, when I was pretending to be Aralda,” Lanara said.
“When was this?” Razael asked. “From what I heard, that was all before you met these folks, Madrone.”
“Oh, did I say ‘we’?” Maddie blushed a little. “I didn’t mean to include myself in that. Of course I wasn’t there.”
“I do remember,” Xu said. “We used the rope trick to spring an ambush on some thieves. Such a tactic might work again.”
“Sure. We set up the camp again, and then hit them when they come back,” Maddie said.
“They probably will start bringing more people with them,” Arrie said thoughtfully, “since they already know that someone else is in the town too.”
“I suggest we move the camp,” Razael said. “The kuo-toa didn’t try to hide the fact that they’d been through our first camp, so if we set up again like nothing happened they’re bound to get suspicious. So make it look like we moved somewhere safer.”
“Good idea,” Arrie said.
“What can we use against them to lure them out of the water otherwise?” Osborn asked.
“Do they have a strong sense of community?” Maddie wondered aloud.
“Or an overdeveloped pride?” Kyle added.
Razael shook his head. “The fish-men tend to pretty much be out for themselves. No real strong social bond, but sensible enough to stick together when things are rough.”
“So, even if the ambush works and we take out a few,” Kyle said, “there’s no guarantee that having people missing will bring the rest of them up to find out what happened.”
“Maybe not right away,” Madie said, “but in a couple of days, maybe. They might not care about the missing people, but they will care that there aren’t any more valuables coming down to them.”
“I think we should restock our campsite with some ‘shiny stuff’,” Osborn said, “just to make it look like we’re still working on scavenging and found a few more items.”
“Okay, let’s take a look at the town and decide how to set this ambush up,” Arrie said.
* * *
They were ready by afternoon. They moved their ‘camp’ to the courtyard of a small inn, which gave only one access point to the area. Razael took up a position on a distant rooftop overlooking the camp, while Xu and Lanara took up positions on the inn’s roof. Kyle, Autumn, and Maddie chose to use Kyle’s rope trick to hide at the center of camp, while Arrie waited closer to the alley the kuo-toa would come through, hidden in a pile of rags and holding very still. Osborn took up a position flanking the camp, near where Arrie was hiding.
It was only a short time after sunset that Osborn heard the wet flapping of feet on the cobblestones. The party watched as four figures emerged from the alley leading to the inn, looking around carefully as they approached the camp. Two of the kuo-toa held spears and carried small shields on their arms. The other two carried a pair of foot-long iron rods with large crossguards, a weapon that Xu had called ‘sai’. The two with the sai, presumably the monitors, hung back near the alley while the two whips moved forward to explore the camp.
Within seconds, it was over. Arrows slammed into one of the monitors from several blocks away, and daggers perforated one of the whips. Arrie rose up to menace the kuo-toa, as did Xu, leaping down from the roof. The real impact, however, came from Autumn, who came down on top of one of the whips from the rope trick with her greataxe over her head, bringing it down and splitting the fish-man open. Her momentum hardly spent, she continued the swing around in a circle as she stepped over to the second whip. Already reeling from Osborn’s daggers, the whip wasn’t even able to bring an arm up to defend himself, and moments later the two halves of the whip hit the wall of the inn with a wet smack.
The monitors tried to turn tail and run, as they were pelted with Arrie’s chain, Maddie’s quarterstaff, Razael’s arrows and Kyle’s spells. They got about halfway down the alley before a shout spell from Kyle blasted one senseless, and Xu caught and killed the second with little effort. Kyle quickly placed a resilient sphere around the lone remaining kuo-toa, and the party circled around it as they decided what to do.
“Are we going to kill it?” Razael asked, as he walked up.
“Let’s question him first,” Kyle said. “Lanara?”
“On it.” The bard cast tongues on herself, then waited for Kyle to drop his spell.
The kuo-toa did not resist when freed from the sphere, surrounded as he was by eight menacing figures. Lanara tried a couple of times to charm the monitor in order to make interrogation easier, but the fish-man’s mind was as slippery as its body. Finally, Lanara pulled out her fiddle and began to play, singing an entrancing song that wore away the kuo-toa’s resistance and made him amenable to influence.
“I think that you should go back to the ocean after we talk to you, and take your friends with you.” Lanara told the monitor through her song.
“I will do that,” gurgled the kuo-toa, “but the others will not like that.”
“What others?” Kyle asked after Lanara translated, “how many?”
Lanara relayed the question musically. “When I leave, there will be four, plus The Claw, and his pets.”
“Pets?”
“You call them chuul.”
“Define ‘The Claw’,” Lanara asked.
“He is the leader, the Mighty Whip. He says he came to us from the sun, and led us here from the ocean.”
“Why did The Claw bring them here?” Kyle asked.
“Easy prey,” came the answer.
“Well, at least he gets points for being honest,” Autumn said. “Ask what The Claw looks like.”
“He is one of us, of course,” said the kuo-toa, “but his scales have been blackened by living in the sun. He has a crown of horns on his head. He also has… other limbs on his back, like those of the sky-swimmers.”
“Wings,” Lanara interpreted.
“Definitely fiendish,” Kyle said, “I’d go so far as to say a half-blood, or at least a quarter, if he really did ‘come from the sun’.”
Autumn frowned. “The direct spawn of the devils can be as formidable as their fiendish parent.”
“Don’t forget,” Osborn said, “we’ve run into other people who’ve claimed they were ‘from the sun’ who really weren’t. Remember Sun-Harrow and Takar?”
“True,” said Arrie, “but Sun-Harrow and Takar were trying to subvert a clan of Grabâkh- worshipping orcs, so saying that made sense. Since kuo-toa hate sunlight, it seems that claiming to be from the sun wouldn’t be a good selling point to claim leadership if it weren’t true.”
“What else should I ask?” Lanara asked.
The kuo-toa relayed that besides The Claw, there were two more whips and two monitors, and a pair of chuul. It was uncertain if the others would come up to the town once it was obvious that the four that had been sent tonight were not coming back. The monitor said that they were living in a forgotten temple under the lakebed. It told how The Claw was able to swim through the hottest part of the lake unharmed and tell the others what places to avoid, further cementing the idea that The Claw was a half-fiend.
“What do you plan to do when the ‘food’ runs out?” Kyle asked.
“I do not know. The Claw will decide.”
“Why did The Claw bring you here, in particular?” Lanara asked.
“Easy prey,” the kuo-toa repeated. “They have food, they have wealth; it is easy to take.”
“So, basically your leader is lazy and is making you do all his work for him.”
The monitor shrugged, as well as a fish-person could shrug. “He finds us easy meat. He finds us wealth. We take it because we are strong enough to take it, and those who have it are not strong enough to keep it.”
“Are we done with him?” Razael asked.
No one could think of any other questions. After a moment’s quiet discussion, Osborn stepped up and quickly put a dagger into the kuo-toan’s spine, killing it painlessly. Though Lanara’s suggestion would have caused it to leave as promised, the party surmised that it would likely have reported back to The Claw before going, ruining any element of surprise they had remaining.
“Well, I say we wait a couple of days,” Razael suggested. “See if any of the rest of them come up to see what’s happened. I mean, the only other way they can find out what happened is through divination.” He turned to Kyle. “In your experience, most of the time that divination stuff doesn’t sit well with those evil types, does it? I mean, they don’t do it much, right?”
“Oh, they do,” Kyle said. “There’s nothing about being evil that prevents them from being smart. But kuo-toa practice nature magic, and I don’t think nature magic is too strong in the area of divination. Of course, The Claw could be a priest of Grabâkh, and he might have some things he could do.”
“I agree with Razael,” Autumn said. “Let’s wait a day or two and see what happens.”
“After that, we can consider storming the water,” Razael said, “though I don’t relish that idea.”
“Should we leave the bodies where they can be found?” Maddie asked.
“Or throw them into the lake,” Xu suggested.
“I don’t think so,” Kyle said. “Let’s not tip our hand right away.”
“Okay, then,” Arrie said, “let’s get to work on setting up a camp in town – a real one, somewhere safe and hidden. And then, we can wait.”
* * *
After two days of waiting, the group decided they needed a new plan.
The remaining kuo-toa, as far as anyone could tell, had not come into the gnomish fishing town to look for their missing men. The party spent their days sleeping and exploring the town, except for Razael, who would go out hunting in the surrounding mountains to provide food for the gnomes. They quietly observed Xu’s 21st birthday the day after the ambush, promising her a more elaborate celebration later even as she insisted that it was unnecessary. They found that the town had already been fairly thoroughly looted by the kuo-toa, and the local temple of Krûsh had been defiled.
“So, it looks like we might have to goad them a bit,” Kyle observed. The party was sitting in their hidden campsite, waiting for Razael to get back from a hunting trip. The tracker had been seen little in the last two days; he stood both the first and last watches, and was out most of the day. “Maybe write some offensive graffiti on a rock and throw it in the lake?”
“What kind of graffiti would be offensive to a fiendish kuo-toa?” Osborn asked.
“I don’t know… pictures of happy dolphins beating up fish people, sunny days, that kind of thing.”
Razael walked into the small storage building they’d commandeered and sat down. “Found something interesting,” he said.
“What?” asked several people at once.
“You remember those tracks I found a couple days ago, the webbed feet that turned into wolf tracks?”
“Yeah, the kuo-toan druids that were shifting into wolves,” Arrie remembered.
“Well, I spotted a new set of those tracks, fresh from last night. Seems it was out looking for something. There was another set like that in another spot on the beach, probably from two nights ago.”
“So they are coming up, just not into the town,” Arrie said. “Why? Is there anything in this area they’d be interested in?”
Everyone shook their head indicating that they had not heard of anything significant being in this area. “Of course, that Node’s here,” Kyle mentioned, “and no one knew about that.”
“Can’t you wizards get control of those Nodes?” Razael asked.
“Yes, but not from here. I think this is a pretty low-powered Fire Node, so I’d have to be right on top of it to control it.”
“Okay, then,” Razael said, “we tie a rope around your waist and a rock to your ankle, and send you down.”
Autumn glared at the old elf to indicate she didn’t approve of his plan.
“I have a question,” Arrie said, “if the kuo-toa can come up out of the lake pretty much anywhere, how far can they get away from the water?”
“As far as they like, I’d guess, especially if they’re shifted into the shapes of land animals,” Kyle said.
“Well, then, should we be leaving the gnomes unprotected?”
“That’s a good point,” Osborn said. “Even if the kuo-toa don’t try anything, there’s other dangerous stuff in the mountains out there, and those gnomes aren’t in a very safe spot right now.”
“Maybe a couple of us should go back to the camp and stay there, just in case,” Kyle said.
They ended up drawing straws to see who would go, and Autumn and Osborn were chosen. Osborn mentioned as they packed up to leave that it would be nice to spend a little time around some properly sized people.
“I can start patrolling the shore at night,” Razael offered after Autumn and Osborn left. “See if I can pick up one of their trails and figure out what they’re looking for out there.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kyle said.
The others agreed to the plan as well. Razael went outside the town at sunset, and began walking up and down the shore of the lake, watching steam rise as the air over the water cooled. As near as he could figure, the fish-men were coming onto land at random spots. He’d have to be lucky to run across tracks that were fresh enough to be useful for his purpose.
As it happened, Ladta smiled upon him. He came across a new set of the changing prints in the pebbly sand surrounding the lake, no more than fifteen minutes old. Razael quickly studied the tracks carefully, memorizing the details in the prints as well as calling on his Talent to allow him to pick up the subtleties of the druid’s scent.
He followed the ‘wolf’, staying apace of it but not catching up, as he didn’t want to alert the kuo-toa to his presence. He noted that once it reached the foothills, the wolf began moving about randomly, looking like it was searching for something. Eventually the wolf turned and started heading back to the lake. Razael tried to speed up to catch the druid, but by the time he got to the lake he saw the kuo-toa as a dark shadow in the water, swimming away.
The next morning Razael returned to relay his findings. “Hey, sexy,” Lanara called out to him as he came inside.
“Love you too, darling,” he replied.
Kyle looked at the two of them. “Are the two of you going to need a tent of your own soon, or something?”
“Nah, just need a new playmate,” Lanara said. “Some things aren’t as much fun with Maddie as they were with Kavan.”
“Maybe you should try it sometime and see if that’s true,” Maddie said, smiling.
“Okay, I think Razael wants to tell us about his night, doesn’t he?” Arrie said, a little too loudly.
“Yeah, well, I got lucky, ran across the trail of one of those kuo-toan whips, out wandering around in the mountains. It seems they aren’t interested in the gnomes, at least for now.”
“So, what could they be looking for?” Kyle wondered.
“Actually, come to think of it, it wasn’t like it was looking for something,” Razael said, “more like someone. But someone that wasn’t there.”
“So, it’s crazy,” Arrie said.
“No, I’d guess it was looking for the ones we killed,” Razael said. “So, should I give them a toe?”
“Don’t you need all of yours?” Lanara asked.
“I was thinking of the fish-men’s toes, thanks.”
“Isn’t it kind of odd that they’re looking for them way out there, when up until now the kuo-toa have been coming into the town?” Kyle asked.
“It don’t make a lot of sense to me, either,” Razael admitted.
“Maybe they think that the missing ones found some really sparkly bit of treasure and they ran off with it instead of bringing it back to The Claw,” Maddie suggested.
“That makes sense, actually,” Arrie said. “Kuo-toa are pretty greedy and don’t have a huge sense of loyalty.”
“But they probably need those missing people back,” Maddie continued, “because now there’s not enough of them left to threaten the town.”
Kyle thought for a while, but then sighed. “That won’t work,” he said.
“What, Kyle?” Arrie asked.
“Well, I was thinking that we could try and disguise ourselves as the missing kuo-toa in order to get close enough to take them out. But it’d have to be a magical disguise, and the only spell I know that would come close to doing that is alter self. But there’s limits on how far away I can get from ‘human’ with that spell, and ‘kuo-toa’ is too much of a change.”
“Well, we could always let Maddie skin the dead ones we have, and we could disguise ourselves that way,” Arrie suggested.
They all looked at Arrie, and then at Maddie, whose expression did not indicate whether she was offended or excited by this proposition.
“You know, I’ve done that before,” Razael said, “and it worked pretty well. But that was with a mammal. I don’t know how well it would work with scales.”
“Um, I probably should go ahead and lodge my official protest against the idea of mutilating corpses and defiling the dead,” Kyle said, “seeing as I’m apparently the only one here now with any morals.”
Maddie gave a slight shrug, as did Razael. Arrie, Xu, and Lanara said nothing. “Look, Kyle, I understand your point,” Razael said, “but at this point, what use do the kuo-toa have for it?”
“I’m just saying, that’s all,” Kyle said.
“Well, if you’ve got an alternative, I’d love to hear it,” the tracked said. “I ain’t too keen on getting inside a fish-man skin.”
Kyle sighed. “Nothing off the top of my head.”
But nearby, Maddie and Arrie were whispering excitedly to themselves. “Hey, Kyle?” Arrie said.
“Yeah?”
“Come with us,” Maddie insisted.
* * *
Kyle, Osborn, and Razael looked up at the three story house, and then, despite knowing that the town was abandoned, still looked up and down the street out of habit before walking in.
The home had once belonged to a gnomish illusionist named Bilkin, who was one of the kidnapping victims when the kuo-toa had first started raiding the town. Maddie and Arrie had come across the house yesterday while wandering around, and though they saw nothing of interest, they could tell the home belonged to a mage of some sort. They had managed to track down the illusionist’s apprentice, a gnomish woman named Okam, who confirmed her master’s abduction.
“I was out with… a gentleman that night,” she explained. “Master Bilkin was gone when I came home the next morning.”
“Do you know where he kept his spellbooks?” Kyle asked.
“In his study on the third floor,” Okam said. “Though I don’t know beyond that. The master never let me into the study. I do know that you have to turn the knob twice to the left and once to the right to open it.” She thought for a moment. “Or was it once to the left and twice to the right?”
“Mind if we take a look?” Kyle asked. “Your master may have had spells that would be useful to us to help save the town.”
“I don’t see why not. It’s not like he’s using it any more.”
Osborn studied the knob on the study door while Kyle and Razael stood nearby. Then the hin reached out and turned the knob once, pushing the door open.
“Seems as though Bilkin liked to play tricks on his apprentice,” Osborn said. “Nothing unusual with the door at all.”
They stepped into a small, slightly dusty room. Gnome-sized bookshelves lined the walls, and a desk sat in the middle on top of a brightly colored rug.
“Wow,” Kyle said, looking around.
“What’s the big deal?” Razael said, “they’re just… books.”
“There’s a lot of magical auras in here,” Kyle said. “Mostly illusion. I’d guess most of them are false auras. Kind of a little obvious, really – if it were me, I’d just hit a few odd items in the room with the fake enchantments. When you cover everything in magic, you know it can’t all be real.”
Kyle tried to hit the room with an area dispel to clear out the numerous decoy auras, but the spells were well-established and didn’t respond to his attempt to disrupt them. Kyle went about the slow process of hunting for Bilkin’s spellbooks, while Osborn and Razael sat back and waited. Besides the books on arcane theory, there were several philosophical texts about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. Razael picked up a book and started reading.
Eventually, Kyle found two spellbooks. Pulling them out, Kyle sat down on the floor and started reading, as the desk was far too small for him to sit at.
“You know, you can just take those with you,” Razael said.
“Oh, sorry,” Kyle said. “You guys don’t need to stay here. I’ll be a while.”
“No, I mean, you can take those with you,” Razael repeated.
“But… they’re not mine.”
Razael just stared at Kyle. “The illusionist is dead.”
“So, these should stay here and go to his kin, or to Okam, if she wants them. I just need to borrow them to see if there’s any illusion spells I can use.”
“We could just tell Okam we didn’t find the books,” the elf suggested.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, “but there’s that whole ‘morals’ thing I mentioned before.”
Razael shook his head. “Whatever makes you feel better.”
It took Kyle the rest of the next day to decipher the spellbook. He found an illusion spell that would help him create the image of four living, breathing kuo-toans that could be used to fool The Claw’s minions. At first it was suggested that they have the illusion swim back to the underwater temple, with the ‘dead’ party in tow, but that proved too logistically problematic. Then Maddie suggested that they instead place the illusion somewhere in the mountains, and have the kuo-toa act as if celebrating.
“The ones that are searching for them think they’ve run off, right?” the favored soul said, “so we make it look like that’s what happened. Lure them to the cave, and then jump them.”
It took another day to find a suitable location in a shallow cave, and set up the ambush. Razael created a very faint scent trail to the cave using what remained of the dead kuo-toa, then sat on the trail leading up to the cave and acted as a sentry in order to give Kyle enough notice to cast his spell. Autumn and Osborn were pulled in from their guard duty, and they sat back and waited. Luck was with them, and about an hour after sunset a lone wolf approached the cave, saw the illusion of the dancing kuo-toa, and shifted back into its natural form.
The ambush they had staged several nights ago had been a bloodbath when it was eight against four. At eight against one, it was almost a non-event.
They staged a successful second ambush against another kuo-toan whip the next night (with the illusion appropriately adjusted to include five of the fish-men). No other scouts came for the next two nights, lending credence to the claims of their former captive that only two whips had remained among The Claw’s forces.
“Well, looks like we have to go down there and get him,” Arrie said in the morning after they returned from their last night at the cave.
“Problem is that we don’t exactly know where ‘down there’ is,” Lanara said.
“I could summon a celestial companion that could swim down and find this temple,” Autumn offered.
“What about the heat?” Arrie asked.
“I can take care of that,” Kyle said. “I’ve had a resist energy ready to go since the first day we started dealing with this.”
The party walked to the edge of the lake, where Autumn summoned a celestial dolphin and Kyle cast his spell on the animal. The dolphin swam away, returning two hours later. The dolphin sat at the lake’s edge, looking up at Autumn, then began chattering.
“What’s it say?” Razael asked.
“The link between us is mostly empathic,” Autumn explained, “so I don’t know what he’s actually ‘saying’. But he’s fairly intelligent, smart enough to know what we’re looking for. I think…” she paused a moment. “Yes, I can sense where he’s been. The temple’s at the bottom of the lake, almost right in the middle.” She paused for another moment. “There’s a few dangerously hot areas between here and the temple. I can’t get a sense of exactly where they are, but we’ll have to watch out for them.” She paused one more time, then smiled. “And he wants some fish now.”
After feeding the dolphin a few fish they’d found in a cold storage warehouse in town, it promptly vanished. “Looks like we have some planning to do,” Arrie said. “Let’s go discuss what to do, and we can get some sleep tonight. May as well plan our attack for the next morning, when the kuo-toa will be sleepy.”
The next morning, they were ready. The party elected to have Autumn and Osborn remain with the gnomes again, just in case things went poorly below and they needed to help protect the townsfolk against attack. Leaving two people behind also extended the time for Kyle’s water breathing spell by nearly an hour, which they figured would give them enough time to get down and back.
They eased into the warm water. Arrie and Xu, who were stronger swimmers, stayed close to Razael and Lanara to help them along. Kyle used a spell that changed him into a shapeless, ooze-like mass that was able to swim easily through the water, and he stayed close to Maddie to help her. It was slow going; they swam almost straight down, and then followed the lakebed. Several times they had to pull up short to avoid a geothermal vent; though scalding water scorched several of them, none of them were seriously burned.
They finally reached the temple, a squat, solid structure half buried in muck. Bubbles rose from several spots on the roof, and the water surrounding the temple was quite warm, even by the lake’s standards. They located a set of stairs at the bottom of the mound of muck leading up into the temple. A few steps up, they broke through the surface of the water and found the temple was filled with air.
“Odd,” Arrie said, coming up out of the water.
“The kuo-toa did say that there was air in the temple,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, but I thought he meant a couple of stale bubbles of air in a corner somewhere.”
“Any reason you can think of why this air is here, Kyle?” Lanara asked.
He shrugged as he started passing out light globes to the party. “Could be a lot of things. Interaction between the Fire Node and the lake water, maybe. Maybe the whips created this air pocket on purpose. Maybe…”
Suddenly, both Maddie and Razael hissed “Quiet!” and pointed to the left, down a corridor at the end of the stairs. Pausing, everyone heard the rapid approach of scuttling, chitin-covered feet.
Arrie and Xu ran forward just as the first chuul came up to the stairs, lashing out with its claws and tentacles. Unlike most creatures of its kind, this one was covered in blackened chitinous armor, which betrayed its fiendish nature. A second one was right behind it, but was unable to crawl past its companion, and was forced to wait. The two women were able to ward off the chuul’s initial attacks, striking back in return, but the creature’s hard carapace resisted their blows. Maddie enveloped everyone with the power of a lesser vigor before stepping up to combat the creature, while Kyle tried to blast it with magic missiles, but the bolts of energy dissipated harmlessly, disrupted by the chuul’s magical resistance.
Razael stepped forward, it between the chuul and Maddie. “What’re you doing up here, woman?” he shouted. He turned to fire arrows at the chuul, but had to get close in order to get a good shot, and was quickly snatched up by a large claw and stuffed into the chuul’s tentacle-ringed maw. Lanara, in a panic, dropped a sound burst into the midst of the melee, which hurt everyone except the chuul.
Xu ran up, and with a well-placed series of kicks, caused the chuul to drop Razael. Razael stood and staggered away as Xu continued her assault, felling the fiendish creature. Maddie came up and healed the tracker even as he fired a shot at the second chuul, which was already advancing on the group.
More magic missiles flew through the air, this time penetrating the chuul’s natural resistance. Arrie also lashed out at the chuul, first hurling a shotput then lashing out with her spiked chain. The aquatic creature fought back, striking both Xu and Razael again, requiring Maddie to expend more healing energy on the old elf.
“Who’s protecting who, again?” Kyle said quietly to Lanara.
“I was just wondering that myself,” she replied.
“As long as I’m taking it, she’s not!” Razael said through gritted teeth, even as Kyle sent more magic missiles at the chuul. “Don’t you have anything better than a magic missile?”
“Yes, but why would I waste them on these things?” Kyle replied.
By this time the chuul had decided it disliked being repeatedly struck in the head and body. Unfortunately, the room in which their master had ordered them to wait and attack any intruders had no other exits, and so retreat was impossible. Moments later, the battle was over.
Lanara walked up and pressed a vial into Razael’s hand, even as Maddie poured more divine energy into healing his wounds. “Here. It’s a healing potion. Are you going to be all stupid and not take it?”
“Well, I’ve stopped bleeding,” he said. “I’ll probably just put it in my pouch for now.”
“Drink it!” Lanara snapped. “Arrie’s our stupid one, drink the damn thing!” Lanara started to stomp off. “Sorry, Arrie!” she called back.
Razael looked at Arrie, who shrugged. “I haven’t needed a healing potion for a really long time.”
Kyle walked up, and winked at Arrie. “Gee, think that there’s something more to Lanara’s grumpiness toward Razael than meets the eye?”
The party spent a few moments preparing themselves before moving on, casting spells on themselves. Then they moved down the corridor to their right, Arrie in the lead. They came to a T intersection, and split up when they saw that each hallway turned again a short distance away. Arrie went to look around the right corner; Xu went to the left, while the rest of the party waited in the middle.
“I can’t see the end of my corridor,” Arrie said.
“I see a door, perhaps forty feet down on the opposite wall,” Xu said.
They decided to check the door first. Opening the door, they saw it led to a short, twenty-foot long corridor that ended in another door. Kyle noted that the doors were made of a blackened, petrified wood. On the other side of the door was a chamber they could only assume was a kuo-toan bedroom. A pile of wet rags was in the center of the room, and they saw several large, black scales on the floor. Gnomish bones littered the floor, and in one corner a gnomish head sat, some flesh still clinging to the skull. After a cursory search, the party backed up and went back around to the corridor Arrie had looked down. About a hundred feet down, they came to another door. On the other side of the door, they could hear a low rushing sound, like a raging bonfire. The door was very warm.
“I think we’ve found the Node, Kyle,” Arrie said. “Think The Claw will be in here?”
“Probably,” he said. “Especially if he knows we’re here.”
Everyone got ready, casting their last-minute preparatory spells and readying their weapons. Then, with a sharp blow from Arrie’s boot, the door burst open and they rushed inside.
The hallway on the other side continued for a few feet before turning to the left. Stairs let up into a small chamber, where two kuo-toans waited at the top, each bearing a pair of sai. The center of the room was filled with what looked like a pit of leaping flames, extending at least five feet into the air and filling the air with a visible heat shimmer. Standing in the back corner of the room, obscured by the flames, was a large kuo-toan with black scales and large wings. Sharp claws extended from each hand.
“Oh, good,” Razael said. “They have the fire pit ready for an old-fashioned fish fry.”
The kuo-toan in the back, who could only be The Claw, pointed at the party and burbled something in their native tongue. Everyone glanced at Lanara, who had cast a tongues spell. “He said, ‘Get them!’” she said. “Come on, did you really need me to tell you that?”
The party rushed forward even as the two monitors braced for the assault. Lanara’s bardic music echoed through the small chamber as Arrie and Xu moved up to engage the two monks. The monitors attempted to disarm Arrie’s spiked chain, but despite their speed and precision, she managed to keep her grip on the weapon. Xu slammed a fist into one of the monitor’s heads as she moved past quickly, tumbling inside the room.
The others crowded forward, waiting for an opening into the room. Kyle used magic to try and improve his aim, and then fired a dimensional anchor at The Claw. Unfortunately, even with his enhanced accuracy the leaping flames made it difficult to see, and the green ray hit the back wall of the room with no effect. Razael also fired at The Claw, and although he managed to hit, most of the arrows bounced off its magically toughened scales. Only one lodged in the kuo-toan’s chest, piercing his lung. In response The Claw gestured, and blasted the party with a flame strike, missing only the ever-cautious Lanara, who was outside the pillar of flame, and Razael, who managed to dodge out of the way just in time.
Arrie and Xu forced an opening, and the party began to push through. Between the assault of Xu’s fists, Arrie’s chain, and a searing light from Maddie, one of the monitors fell in a bloody heap, its blood sizzling against the hot stones in the floor. This gave them the opening they needed to get to The Claw himself. Xu punched and kicked at the fiendish kuo-toa, finding her blows were nearly ineffective against his stone-hard flesh.
As more arrows also flew in at him from Razael, The Claw spat out more orders, and the remaining monitor concentrated its attacks on the tracker, whittling down his vitality with a combination of magical fire and cold damage from his sai. Maddie stepped up to help, bashing the monitor with her quarterstaff. Razael, irritated that he was not only being hit once again but also that Maddie was again putting herself in harm’s way, snarled as he shot the monitor at point-blank range, killing it.
Kyle moved forward and tried another spell, one meant to blind The Claw. The spell managed to penetrate his fiendish resistances, and overcome his formidable constitution, and The Claw’s eyes turned white as his sight was stolen from him. The Claw roared in rage and swung wildly with its claws in the air. A moment later, he regained his composure and summoned a fire elemental next to him. The elemental surged forward and swung a flaming appendage at Kyle, badly burning him.
“I’ll keep this thing busy!” Kyle shouted, as he conjured up a lance of force and began jabbing the elemental, “You go after The Claw!”
Xu jumped over the Fire Node, easily clearing the leaping flames to get to the other side of the room where she would be safe from attacks from the elemental. She punched at The Claw, hoping to stun him, but wasn’t able to land her blow in the right spot. Arrie stepped up behind Xu, swinging her chain over Xu’s head. From across the room, Lanara launched magic missiles from a wand, though they did not penetrate The Claw’s resistances. Arrie managed to wrap her chain around The Claw’s feet, and pulled the blind kuo-toan whip off his feet. Now under serious pressure, The Claw uttered words of magic and gestured out into the room, and suddenly the room was filled with a storm of fist-sized hail that pounded down on everyone.
It was an act of futility. By that time Arrie and Xu had established a steady rhythm of knocking The Claw off his feet, then pounding him while down. Razael would shoot more arrows into him when he did rise. Soon they managed to overcome the stoneskin spell protecting the fiendish kuo-toa, and that spelled a quick end for The Claw. As he collapsed, the fire elemental vanished in a burst of heat and ash.
They spent another hour looking through the temple, collecting valuables. Most of the back portion of the temple was flooded, and appeared to be where the lesser kuo-toa had slept. There was far too much for them to gather it all up and get it back to the surface before their water breathing spell expired, so they decided to come back the next day, taking with them only the personal possessions of the kuo-toa, as well as the corpse of The Claw and one of the chuul to show the gnomes that it was safe to return home.
That evening, the party was treated to a celebration, hastily thrown together by the gnomes as they returned to their town. There would be much work ahead for the gnomes to rebuild and catch up on their lost months of fishing, but tonight that was a distant consideration for everyone. Kyle returned Bilkin’s spellbooks to Okam, though she said that he was free to copy anything he’d like before they left.
The next day was spent in hauling treasure up from the temple and sorting through it. Autumn and Osborn volunteered to go down to recover the valuables, not only because neither of them had been able to see the temple before, but because Autumn’s portable hole and Osborn’s skills at searching for hidden stashes of goods would make the job easier. They would have been ready to depart by the next morning, but they decided to stay one more day, mostly because the next day, the 28th of Canith, was Autumn’s twentieth birthday.
It was a simple celebration, with the town having little to offer in the way of amenities and the party having had no chance to prepare or buy gifts. Autumn insisted that none of it was necessary, that all she wanted was to be with her friends and family. The one gift she did accept from the party, however, was when they offered to let her and Kyle spend the afternoon and evening together alone. Kyle borrowed one of the gnomish fishing boats, and the two of them sailed out across the lake, heading for the far shore.
They returned much later, as the sun was starting to disappear behind the mountains. They walked back into the inn where they’d been put up by the gnomes (the same inn that they’d used to stage their ambush of the kuo-toa in the town), walking with their arms around each other and smiling.
“Have a good time?” Arrie asked when they walked in.
Lanara stood and walked over to them, and plucked a blade of the long, thin grass that grew near the shore of the lake out of Autumn’s hair. “I’d say they did,” she said.
“So, what else did you two do?” Maddie asked.
“Oh, I just gave Autumn her birthday present,” Kyle said.
“We know that, Kyle,” Lanara said, “we asked what else you did.”
A small smile crept onto Arrie’s face. “So, what did you get, Sis?”
Grinning ear to ear, Autumn held out her left hand. Sitting on her finger was a large, sparkling sapphire ring.
“We’re engaged,” she said.
