The party’s journey continues through the Feydark. While the caverns beneath the real world are dark and dank, those in the Feydark are completely lightless and dripping with moisture. While strange smells and growths dot the world’s cave walls, the surfaces of the Feydark seem to swarm with strange fungi, and the air is redolent with the smells of the underworld.
Torinn and Vann-La lead the others through a winding succession of tunnels, Cook muttering and periodically harvesting things from the walls and stuffing them into a food bag. At each intersection, and periodically besides, Vann-La bends down to study the cavern floor for signs of the goblins that the party is pursuing. Slowly the distance to the troops of the Six-Fingered Hand continues to close.
“You know,” Torinn pipes up, scratching the bronze scales of his chin, “if these goblins ally with the fomorians, there really won’t be anywhere safe.”
“Too true,” agrees Iggy. “Listen, we have to stop that from happening. You guys aren’t from here- you don’t understand about the fomorians. They’re evil, insane and very powerful. If the Hand can bring them in on their side, this war were fighting will get even more hopeless. We-“
“Shh!” hisses Vann-La. The eladrin’s mouth snaps shut.
Ahead, there is a scintillating glow coming from around a corner.
“What the hell is that?” whispers Hkatha.
The party creeps forward into an open cavern. Torinn stretches his neck forward and peers around the corner- and gasps. His eyes seem to lock on to whatever he is seeing.
“What’s-“ Vann-La doesn’t have time to finish her thought. Something dark suddenly flies overhead, slashing her with a claw and knocking her prone! The elf gives a surprised cry, and chaos erupts.
Two dark winged forms keep flying by and attacking. Horns, teeth, claws- all rip at the party. When they move forward into the lit area, they stagger as hypnotic, flowing colors draw their attention in, slowing and dazing them.
Then, to make things worse, scintillating beams of multicolored light shoot out, blinding both Torinn and Hkatha.
“What the hell is that thing?” shrieks the tiefling.
“Some kind of snail,” Torinn answers, shaking his head to try to clear it and firing a sacred flame at it. The holy power blasts it, but barely harms it through its thick shell. In the shadows of the scintillating color, the dragonborn can make out- Does it have multiple heads? “I think it has multiple heads,” he gasps. He can’t tear his eyes from the scintillating colors of its shell.
“Watch out!” Vann-La cries. “There’s some kind of plum-colored mold on the ground!”
The snail surges forward into the patch of mold. A burst of russet spores rises up, and those too close gag and cough.
“Russet mold!” warns Cook, recognizing the stuff by its smell. “Oi, not good to eat!”
If a dwarven cook thinks it’s no good, it must really be no good.
WHAM!!
Vann-La sprawls back with a grunt. Picking herself up, she growls, “It has multiple heads, all right- but they’re flail heads!”
“Of course!” Sta’Ligir exclaims. “It’s a flail snail!”
“Oi, now that’s good eating!” Cook says enthusiastically. “At least, if it’s not too old. Too old, it gets too tough and rubbery. I will make us a good sauce of butter and garlic, and even if it is a little chewy, we-“
“Shut up and KILL IT!” cries Hkatha, blasting it with a force orb.
Cook slips into the shadows. The two flying things keep making swooping passes, clawing and biting viciously as they go by. The dwarf frowns, shielding his eyes from the shimmering colors long enough to resolve them: gargoyles. No good to eat, he thinks mournfully, then hurls a shuriken at one as it flashes past him. Thunk! A solid hit to the neck, and Cook chameleons himself. Snarling and howling, the gargoyle flies overhead- but cannot seem to find him.
Finally, the party seems to find their balance. Vann-La roars, “COME AND GET IT!!” The enemies converge on her, only to face a withering series of attacks from the party. Both gargoyles are badly wounded and seem to freeze into a petrified state, while the snail takes blow after blow. Vann-La’s tide of iron cracks its shell as it flails wildly about with its deadly heads.
Torinn charges in, taking it from the side. His spiked chain cracks forward like a whip, smashing the flail snail in the stump from which its flail heads emerge, and there is a sickening smack. Fluids and grey flesh splatter everywhere; one of the flail heads actually falls off. The scintillating colors flowing on its shell abruptly stop.
Hkatha fires a scorching burst at the two petrified gargoyles. “Those things are regenerating!” he cries. Then the tiefling’s eyes widen. No effect! They must turn to stone so that they are resistant to damage while they heal!
But now that the snail is dead, the entire party can turn their attention to the gargoyles. Even in their rocky form, they are soon reduced to rubble.
After a brief respite, the party hurries past the cavern of the snail in hot pursuit of the goblins.
***
The path heads onward and downward, then twists up a steep slope of scree. Rocks slide out from under their feet, and only Sta’Ligir’s feather fall prevents a potentially deadly fall. They reach the top of the slope and move for several hours down a long, very tall passage. The walls have scintillating luminescent crystals within them; digging them out is a difficult task that proves too time-consuming, given the circumstances. The crystals shed a dim yellow glow throughout the passage, which the group follows for six exhausting hours.
“We should forge ahead without too much of a rest,” Vann-La opines when they take a brief rest, taking a drink from her waterskin.
“I agree.” Heimall takes a deep breath. “If we hurry up, we’ll catch the goblins. If we take our sweet time, we won’t.”
The group continues their journey, finally leaving the tall tunnel behind as they move into a cluster of four chambers, each roughly circular and about 30’ across. 10’ wide passages connect them in a square patters. Makeshift barriers of thick fungal material, hard as wood, make it obvious that this is another checkpoint.
Indeed- it is manned by a pair of spear-wielding cyclopes and three trolls. A fierce battle breaks out, with blazing explosions of flame raining down in a terrific display of arcane might from Hkatha and Iggy. The trolls hit hard and are hard to keep down, and the cyclopes fight valiantly, but in the end, our heroes triumphantly defeat the last of them. They leave one cyclops alive to question.
The cyclops turns out to be named Bortheleze, and once his position becomes obvious to him, he chooses to guide our heroes after the goblins- who he confirms are indeed trying to ally with the fomorian King Thrumbold- rather than face execution.
“How long ago did they pass through?” demands Cook.
“About a day,” Bortheleze replies.
“And how far away are the fomorians?”
“About four days.”
The party hurries on, force marching for several more hours before finally making camp and resting. After all, they still have a fair amount of distance to close. Once they wake, still tired but ready to go, they move along. They walk through an area of caves full of increasing amounts of fungi, and soon into a great chamber burgeoning with huge mushrooms and puffballs bigger than any of our heroes.
“This cave is home to a clan of myconids,” explains the party’s cyclops guide. “They will probably not emerge, since I am guiding you.”
“What are myconids?” asks Heimall.
“Mushroom folk.”
***
The party presses on. If their information is accurate, and if the goblins aren’t hurrying too much, the heroes should be nearly upon them.
And, as they round a corner passage, they spy the goblins ahead.
Next Time: Slap that Hand!