Lazybones's Keep on the Shadowfell/Thunderspire Labyrinth

[Lazybones]

I have five updates drafted at the moment, but my schedule's still a bit up in the air, so I can't commit to regular updates for the future. I should be able to get a few up this week and next, however. Thanks to my regular readers for their patience.

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Chapter 53


While Khal Durga’s warriors were fighting through the ambush set by the party from Winterhaven, a smaller drama was playing out at the rear of the goblinoid war party.

At first, those in the rearguard were not fully aware of what was happening at the front of the line, as Khal Durga’s phalanx separated them and it was difficult to see ahead; furthermore, the low ceiling blocked a clear view up the staircase to the first level of the complex. However, as the leading columns of grunts began to take losses, it became obvious from their shouts that the strike team had stumbled into an ambush. Khal Durga rapidly restored order, but a majority of the vanguard failed to return from the staircase.

As soon as he realized what was happening, Balgron drew back and turned toward Splug, only to find that the goblin wasn’t there. Looking back down the passage, he caught sight of him slinking back along the wall, trying to avoid notice. The goblins’ eyes met at the same moment, and for a moment a silent dialogue passed between them. Balgron’s crossbow had come up, almost by reflex, but even as his lips tightened in anger, the former goblin leader held his shot.

Unfortunately for Splug, Balgron’s movements had drawn the attention of the hobgoblin archer, who instantly divined the situation, and put the pieces together. He did not hesitate, lifting his bow and drawing in a single motion. Splug let out a tinny cry and darted around the far corner, but the archer did not miss, his arrow taking the goblin in the back near his left shoulder even as he disappeared from sight. The archer started to go after him, but the hobgoblin warcaster stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“We are needed,” he said. The caster—a nasty bastard of a hobgoblin named Zhadroff—fixed his eyes on Balgron. “Bring him back, alive preferably, but dead if necessary. I shall plant his head upon my totem staff, or yours, goblin.”

Balgron felt a cold fist clench in his gut, but he did not have a chance to reply, as Zhadroff and the archer made their way forward in response to Khal Darga’s summons. He could only comply, his bulk shaking under him as he ran after the traitorous runaway, hoping that the archer’s arrow had done his job for him.

Splug had fled to the south, and Balgron followed, tracking the occasional splotches of blood that glistened wetly on the stone tiles of the floor. The goblin leader had never come this way before, and as soon as he’d left the main passage behind he slowed his rush to a more prudent creeping approach. The side corridor opened onto a larger chamber up ahead, and since there was no other way that the renegade goblin could have gone, Balgron followed.

What he found was disturbing.

The chamber was occupied, but its inhabitants were dead. Unlike the wreckage he had encountered in the main passage on his scouting mission, these bodies were intact, standing silent and still in an almost random array about the chamber. They had been humans in life, or at least most of them; one had an orcish look about him, although his face had been smashed in with a club or mace, making a detailed identification difficult. Most of them looked to be barely holding together, the flesh hanging from their rotten corpses like a tattered robe.

There was no sign of Splug, but Balgron noticed an archway on the far side of the room that opened onto another area beyond. He started forward, slowly. The zombies paid no heed; Balgron knew that they had been given orders not to molest goblinoids, but he trusted the sinister workings of necromancy only so far.

He was only about halfway across the room when he noticed that the bloodstains stopped well before the far archway.

Suspicious, he stopped and scanned the room. There; a zombie rotter with the remains of a cloak hanging about its legs. Intact enough to provide cover…

Sensing that he’d been detected, Splug backed into view. “Don’t shoot me,” he said, lifting a hand. “I didn’t do anything.”

“And I suppose that ambush that the hobgoblins walked into was an accident?” Balgron asked.

“Those hobgoblins hate us,” the goblin replied. “What do you care what happens to them?”

“In truth, I care nothing,” Balgron replied. “But it remains a fact that they are going to kill one of us, and I prefer it not be me.”

“Wait!” Splug hissed. “I know where they hid your treasure!”

Balgron hesitated, but only for an instant. “I never did like you, Splug.” He lifted his crossbow. Splug hurled himself aside, but Balgron was a good shot, and the steel head of the bolt tracked his movement cleanly. But as Balgron’s finger tightened on the trigger of his weapon, a bit of cobweb dangling from above brushed his left cheek, and he flinched. The goblin leader’s shot sliced by Splug’s head, close enough to sever several strands of straggly hair, and then buried itself in the belly of one of the zombies standing near the far arch.

For a long second, no one moved. Then the zombies began to shift, stirring as some deep-set instinct toward self preservation overrode the orders that they had been given. Shambling forward on uncertain legs, they started toward the goblins.

“Oh, crap,” Balgron said.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 54


“Everyone up the stairs!” Mara yelled, pointing with her shortsword ahead of her. In her heavy armor, she was the slowest of the companions, but most of them could not help looking back, even if they could not immediately see the hobgoblins that they knew were pursuing them.

Jaron and Beetle were their rearguard, and they could see the enemy, at least from the way that Jaron kept turning and hastily loosing arrows into the darkness behind them. Beetle was hopping merrily along beside him, looking as though he were dancing through a summer meadow instead of fleeing ahead of an onrushing horde of hobgoblins intent on his life.

“Come on!” Mara urged, pausing for just an instant at the bottom of the stairs to verify that the halflings had heard and were obeying. Devrem was already up the stairs, no doubt preparing their position for the assault that would be coming sooner rather than later.

Mara started up the stairs as the halflings rushed after her. She spared one last glance and saw the hobgoblin phalanx, moving together as a disciplined wedge, appear in the passage to the south. They were moving quickly but carefully, each step taking in unison, without so much as a crack in the shield wall that was held before them. The hobgoblin warlord formed the point in that wedge, his long spear held out ahead of him from a tiny crack in the wall of shields. No doubt he had been what Jaron was shooting at, but if the creature was injured, Mara couldn’t see it.

Mara passed Elevaren on the stairs. “Hurry, get into position, they’re right behind us!” she urged her friend. But while the eladrin stepped aside to let them pass, he held his ground. “I may be able to do some damage before they get to us. Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you!”

Mara shook her head, but there was no time for further discussion. She ran up the stairs, Jaron almost on her heels. Beetle lingered a bit, wanting to see what the warlock was going to do.

Elevaren crouched, so that he could see farther into the room at the base of the staircase. The hobgoblin line swung out as it rounded the pit in the center of the room, adjusting with practiced precision as they shaped their formation to the layout of the room. The tread of their boots was like the beating of a drum, each step forward coming one upon the other in a rapid cadence.

Elevaren summoned his magic; a dark cloud of fey power formed around his head and his hands, and his pupils became black orbs that saw into realities that transcended the material realm. He drew deep from that power, and focused it upon the enemy ranks.

The hobgoblin on the left end of the enemy line faltered, breaking ranks with the others and falling out of the formation. His comrades tried to adjust, but the soldier, caught in the curse of the dark dream, stumbled, his perceptions clouded by the warlock’s magic. He did not even see the pit that gaped before him, and did not scream as he plummeted into the waiting darkness where rats swarmed in a wild horde.

One of the hobgoblins started to go to his aid, but the warlord drew him back into line with a sharp bark of command. The hobgoblins rushed forward, breaking into a run that still did not dislodge their formation. Elevaren rushed up the stairs, Beetle close behind him, the halfling flicking a last knife behind him as he ran. The missile glanced off the helmet of the hobgoblin leader, but inflicted no damage. Beetle outpaced the warlock, the halfling’s nimble feet carrying him up the stairs faster despite the difference in stature between them.

At the top of the stairs, Mara and Devrem were working together to roll a broken length of stone pillar into position. The ruins provided ample raw materials for improvised defenses, but the debris also made it hard to maneuver; Mara cursed as their weapon snagged on a protruding wedge of stone. Grunting with effort, she levered her end of the pillar up over the obstacle. Jaron, leaning precariously over the lip of the stairwell, arced a shot over the head of the warlock. The arrow flew true, but hit a shield instead of a hobgoblin soldier’s body, and bounced harmlessly aside. The excellent armor of the hobgoblin veterans and their ability to work together had thus far protected them from any serious injury, other than the one that Elevaren had witched into the pit below. But with five of them left, plus the leader, it looked grim for the clash of arms that looked to be inevitably approaching.

And in fact they were coming faster than the companions had expected, surging up the stairs with their leader driving them to a still-faster pace. They were overtaking Elevaren, for all the disparity in armor and foot speed.

“Elevaren, look out!” Mara warned, even as the leader thrust his spear forward.

The warlock spun, and hurled his magic at the hobgoblin warchief. But the witchfire missed its target, flaring around the edges of the leader’s head instead of driving into his eyes and ears.

The hobgoblin did not miss. He slammed the head of his spear into the warlock’s side, driving him roughly back. The eladrin did not cry out, but he groaned as the impact sent him reeling against the steps. Bright red droplets fell from the spearhead to litter the stone around him, and a plume of the same color began to spread quickly across his tunic.

“Elevaren!” Mara yelled. She started to her friend’s aid, but Devrem seized her arm, roughly holding her back.

In any case, she would not have reached him in time, as the hobgoblin rush continued forward, surging toward the disabled warlock like a wave.

 

[javcs]

Awesome as ever, Lazybones.

I think it's time for the eladrin to 'port himself away ... assuming, of course, that he manages to survive long enough to pull it off.

 

[Tamlyn]

In any case, she would not have reached him in time, as the hobgoblin rush continued forward, surging toward the disabled warlock like a wave.

You can't kill him! He's my fifth favorite character in the group!

 

[Richard Rawen]

Fans of LB's first two campaigns would no doubt be measuring Elevaren's casket. He is, after all, a pure caster... and we all know how well they fared in the early writings.
The Graves series took a different tact towards the arcanists... we'll have to see which way our author leads this new story =-)
Either way, that big rock better roll down the stairs soon or the group is in the soup... Deep!

 

[Lazybones]

Heh, you guys know me well. Maybe a bit too well...

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Chapter 55


For a moment, it looked like Elevaren was a dead man. The lead hobgoblins had even lifted their swords to strike, barely easing the pace of their rush as it looked like they would walk right over him, leaving him bleeding out his life behind them.

But before the killing thrusts came, the warlock reached out to Faerie, and the power that bound him to the Feywild. He used that power to transport himself through that alternative realm, to return for just an instant to that place he’d been trying to reach ever since that night so long ago, when he’d been lured into the material realm for a purpose that he still hadn’t quite uncovered. As always, he felt a moment of ecstasy at that transition, only to have it yanked away as he completed his fey step and rematerialized behind Jaron above the upper lip of the staircase.

Devrem was ready. “Now!” he cried, pushing hard on his end of the fallen pillar. After the slightest hesitation Mara echoed his effort, and the two rolled the heavy stone down the stairs. The broken cylinder had to weigh at least a few hundred pounds, and it picked up speed as it bounded down the rough slope.

The hobgoblins saw it coming, but there was little they could do to evade; the pillar stretched across almost two-thirds of the entire width of the stair. The hobgoblin warchief fell into a crouch and vaulted it, narrowly clearing the tumbling pillar and landing in a slightly awkward stance in its wake. The hobgoblins on the edges of the formation pressed up against the walls and narrowly avoided being struck, but the three in the center were hit hard as the pillar struck a stair and bounded up into their shields. Two of the soldiers were bowled over, falling onto their shields and sliding down after the descending pillar down the steps. The third screamed as he was knocked down, landing solidly on his backside only to have the pillar roll up over him, driving the upper edge of his shield roughly into his jaw. The pillar’s fall became more erratic after that, as one end caromed off the side of the stairway, and it spun into a jolting, uneven trajectory that finally ended with it sliding onto the floor of the chamber below, where it finally came to a stop. The warcaster and archer, following along behind the phalanx, had stopped to extract the soldier that had fallen into the rat pit, and avoided the threat entirely.

The attack had thrown the hobgoblins into disarray, but the warchief recovered quickly, thrusting the end of his spear down to recover his balance before flipping the point back down to an attack position. A shower of divine sparks flared around him, but Devrem’s attack had no effect. The hobgoblin rushed up the stairs to engage the cleric before he could ready another barrage, but Mara stepped forward to block him, her swords hissing as slid drew them from their scabbards. Her long blade intercepted the war leader’s spearhead and knocked it aside, but the hobgoblin recovered quickly, darting back and recentering the weapon before she could get inside his reach. For a moment each of them took the other’s measure, and then the hobgoblin snarled and lunged forward again to attack. Again Mara pivoted and parried, but the hobgoblin drew back the spearhead and shifted his thrust in a blur. Mara twisted her torso with the the hit, which struck her hard in the right shoulder, but by the grimace that twisted her features, the blow had hurt. She launched a quick counter intended to foul her enemy’s legs and unbalance his footing on the stairs, but the hobgoblin was a veteran combatant, and he merely shifted, letting the solid metal greaves that covered his legs turn the blow without effect. The hobgoblin’s heavy armor and shield protected him exceptionally well, even without his soldiers present to protect his flanks.

The odds were starting to turn quickly, as the other hobgoblins rushed to their commander’s aid. The two that had avoided the rolling pillar surged ahead, their shields raised to protect them from further attacks. Unfortunately for them, they had foes to either side as well as ahead, and they had the advantage of position, on the stone faring that surrounded the stairwell at its summit. From that position Jaron fired an arrow that thudded deep into the thigh of one of the hobgoblins, turning his charge into a painful limp. Beetle, meanwhile, had found a piece of ruined masonry twice the size of his head, which he’d managed to lift and carry over to a position overlooking the stairs. As soon as the hobgoblin turned his shield toward the archer, the halfling dropped it down squarely onto the foe’s head. The hobgoblin was wearing a helmet, but twenty pounds of rock carried a considerable force regardless, and the creature staggered against the wall, stunned by the impact.

The soldier on the other side of the stairs surged forward to join his warchief and further turn the odds against Mara at the top of the steps. But even as he surged ahead, Devrem stepped forward, his staff extended before him. “Know the certainty of your death,” the priest intoned, pointing the iron-shod head of the staff directly at the charging hobgoblin.

The hobgoblin was a sturdy veteran, but he saw the cleric’s staff twist and distort in the man’s hands, becoming a silver bird with glowing red eyes that flew directly at his face, claws extended to pluck out his eyes. The soldier screamed and fell back, overcome with fear, and fled back down the stairs.

Jaron and Beetle had finished off the wounded soldier. Beetle continued to hurl rocks down onto his neck and back even as he collapsed on the steps, arrows jutting from his armored body. But the three that had been knocked down by the pillar had gotten back up to their feet, and despite the beating that they’d taken, they reformed their line, linking shields before starting back up the steps. At the head of the stairs, Mara and the warchief continued their violent exchange. Mara had finally gotten inside the hobgoblin’s reach, only to take a colossal wallop from the warchief’s shield that had knocked her back several steps. She narrowly avoided a thrust that would have pierced her gorget, had it not slid off of the magical shield of faith that Devrem had invoked around all of them at the start of the encounter. She leapt back in, turning the hobgoblin’s spear with her short blade, and then spun as she drove down her longsword into the haft. A loud crack announced her success at breaking the warchief’s weapon, followed by a tinkle of metal on stone as the head landed in the rubble a few feet away.

Sparkles of fey magic flared around the chief as Elevaren hit him with an eldritch blast. But again the warchief’s incredible durability protected him from the attack, and before the warlock could muster his magic again an arrow streaked up from below and impaled his right arm just above the elbow. The eladrin was flung back, and he sagged against a nearby pile of rubble, pale and weak from loss of blood.

The hobgoblin soldiers cried out loudly as they reached the top of the steps, reforming their line around their commander. Devrem stepped forward to join Mara, but the pair were now considerably outnumbered, and their advantageous position was becoming increasingly precarious. The hobgoblin chieftain drew a shortsword with a steel blade that seemed to glisten in the weak morning light, and thrust it at Mara. The sword crunched into her hip, denting the metal scales protecting her and drawing blood. The fighter, now bloodied, cried out in pain but kept fighting, barely bringing her shortsword up in time to parry a downward swipe from a hobgoblin’s flail.

The phalanx pressed forward, and the defenders were forced slowly back. A grim smile began to spread across the face of the warchief, as the eventual outcome of this battle seemed to take form. “Take the woman alive,” he said to his companions, laughing as he turned another of Mara’s thrusts with an almost casual sweep of his shield. The attack opened Mara to a counterattack from the hobgoblin soldier to the warchief’s right, and the spiked end of his flail clanged hard off her helmet, staggering her with a stunning blow. On the far side of the melee Devrem tried to come to her aid, but the other two soldiers pressed him hard, and he nearly dropped his staff as the ball of a flail clipped his hand, hard enough to crack bones. “Any others you take are profit for yourselves, lads!” the chief roared, but his eyes were focused on Mara, who now could barely stand, let alone hold off the pair of foes that were seeking her doom.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 56


Elevaren felt a strange calm come over him. The pain of his wound was real, but it seemed almost ephemeral, something unimportant. Reaching up with his good hand, he seized the head of the arrow and snapped it off, then pulled the shaft free. His right arm was slick with blood and weak; he could barely lift it.

It didn’t matter; his power was not derived from the strength of his body.

He looked up and saw Mara and Devrem, fighting for their lives against the hobgoblin line, the pair slowly giving ground despite their best efforts. His friend was taking hits, and as he watched, one struck her in the head with his flail, leaving her dazed.

The warchief. He was the key, the force that drove and bound the line together. Elevaren rose, and moved closer to the battle. He was careful to stay clear of the staircase, and the line of sight of the archer who had shot him before. But his focus was on the warchief, and he felt his magic building within him, the fey power that he both commanded and served.

“I curse you,” he whispered, and extended his good hand. Flashes of rainbow-colored light surrounded his hand, and lanced out in a stream into the warchief’s face. This time, the eldritch blast had an obvious effect, and the hobgoblin snarled as he shook his head to clear it of the lingering magic. The attack had hurt him, but he was by far the toughest combatant on the field, and it wasn’t clear how even the warlock’s full powers could bring him down.

But Elevaren wasn’t the only one helping the pair holding the line. Jaron leapt up onto the stone lip of the stairs, deliberately exposing himself to fire from below. An arrow came up at him almost immediately, but the halfling wasn’t done; he twisted and rolled, somehow keeping his footing on the narrow line of stone. He came up with his bow drawn, and fired a shot directly into the small of the hobgoblin warchief’s back. The chief’s armor protected him to some extent, but it was obvious by the way that he stiffened that the shot had penetrated. But even that wasn’t enough to bring him down, and he lifted his sword for a strike that would bring the melee in front of him to a close.

A tinny halfling yell sounded over the noise of the battle, as Beetle appeared, charging at a full run through the tumbled rubble of the ruins. He sprang up onto the stone lip of the stairwell as Jaron had, but this was just the first step of a leap that carried him over the open space below, flying out in a wild arc over the shaft, a trajectory that ended with him landing hard on the shoulders of the hobgoblin warchief. Snagging precariously onto a protruding ridge of the chief’s helmet with one hand, the halfling—now roaring with laughter as much as battle rage—stabbed down with the knife in his other hand, sliding the short length of steel into the narrow crevice between the chief’s gorget and helmet.

Blood shot up in a narrow jet from the nasty wound, and Beetle hallooed as the hobgoblin spun around, dropping his sword as he tried to clutch at the hilt of the knife protruding from his neck. Mara, drawing upon some deep reserve of boundless endurance, half-lunged, half-staggered into the hobgoblin soldier facing her has he glanced distracted at the stricken warchief. Knocking aside his shield with her left hand, she jammed her longsword hard into his torso with her right. The steel blade slid up under the metal scales and through the leather underneath into his flesh. The thrust did not penetrate too deeply, but the hobgoblin staggered back, seriously injured.

Devrem had taken a beating from the pair of soldiers facing him, but the power of the Raven Queen still came readily at his call, and he was using it both to assail his foes and bolster his comrades. The two hobgoblins would have overcome him shortly, but the collapse of the right side of their line changed their situation for the worse. As the warchief finally fell, Beetle still shouting as he rode his body down onto the stairs, the hobgoblins started to fall back, holding up their shields to protect their retreat. While this offered a united front against Devrem and Mara, it offered less protection from behind, a fact that Jaron exploited a few seconds later as he fired an arrow into the back of one of them. Now feeling utterly surrounded, the hobgoblins picked up the pace of their retreat. Unfortunately, that retreat brought them back to Beetle, who cut the right hamstring of one of them, causing him to crumple in agony with his next step. The halfling rogue narrowly avoided getting shot by the archer, and sprang up onto the wall of the stairwell, pulling himself up to rejoin the others. The halfling barely paused before running to grab another big rock to throw down at the retreating foe.

Mara and Devrem were in no condition for pursuit, and the cleric had to hold the fighter upright as he summoned healing magic to treat her wounds. “Why’d they give up?” she asked. “They almost had us, even with the death of their chief.”

“I suspect these hobgoblins fight for money, rather than loyalty to Kalarel’s cause,” Devrem replied. Another arrow shot up from below, clipping Jaron’s arm but inflicting only trivial damage. The halfling ranger fired off a last shot and then dropped back into cover, while Beetle finished off the one he’d crippled before it could crawl away after his companions. The heavy thud of the rock as he dropped it onto the hobgoblin’s neck marked the end of the battle, as no further attacks issued forth from the bottom of the stairs.

Once he was certain Mara could support herself, Devrem stepped away and walked over to the top of the staircase. He stood there exposed for a moment, his robe flaring out behind him, his staff clanking hard against the stone as he slammed it down onto the first step.

“Our fight is with the cleric of Orcus,” the priest intoned. “Any who stand in our way will suffer his fate, but we do not seek additional distractions at this time.”

No answer came from below, and after a moment, Devrem turned and walked back to the others. He couldn’t see the bottom of the stairs, where the archer had lifted his bow as soon as the cleric had stepped into view. But the warcaster put a hand on his arm, and shook his head. Even as the cleric drew back out of sight, the hobgoblins, most of them nursing serious injuries, turned and retreated back the way they had come.

 

[Richard Rawen]

The Hobgobs new leader seems more interested in cementing his position than pursuing the battle. That's good news as the group (hopefully) has eased the way to their main foe.

Not that this is necessarily good news for them, knowing how nasty LB's Bosses tend to be!!!

 

[Tamlyn]

Remember the Seer in Doomed Bastards. Similar situation and he came back. Albeit much, much later.

 

[Lazybones]

With the usual holiday slowdown, I've been able to spend more time working on the story. I'm approaching the end of the module, but am still not quite certain of where I want to go from there. Stay tuned.

LB

* * * * *

Chapter 57


After taking some time to rest and recover, with Devrem calling upon his healing magic to treat their wounds, the companions set out once more into the dungeon under the ruined keep.

They were alert to the likelihood of an enemy ambush, and Jaron scouted ahead, slipping in and out of the shadows as though he were a part of the darkness. While Beetle was better at remaining unseen, the other halfling was just a bit too flighty to be a reliable scout. Not that they could have escaped notice; their foe knew they were coming, and would have had ample time to prepare.

But for all their vigilance, nothing emerged from the dungeon corridors to threaten them. They made their way back down to the second level of the dungeon, where they found a scene of carnage at the bottom of the stairs. In addition to the hobgoblin grunts they had killed, there were fresh bodies there—“fresh” being a relative term, for it was clear that they had been animated undead, rotting corpses given necromantic life.

“More zombies,” Elevaren said. “I wonder where these came from?”

“There were a number of passages we didn’t explore, last time,” Jaron pointed out.

“At least they gave the hobgoblins some trouble, by the look of it,” Devrem said. And indeed there were a few hobgoblin corpses scattered amongst the hacked up dead, grunts that had survived the initial battle in the stairwell only to be killed by the zombies later. All of them had been thoroughly looted of any valuables.

“I wonder what happened to Splug?” Beetle asked, but none of them had any answer; there were no signs of the goblin anywhere that they could see.

They made their way forward, past the ruined sigil in the floor, to a chamber that contained another stair leading down. Based on Splug’s earlier feedback, they expected to find the hobgoblins waiting in ambush there, but the chamber at the foot of the steps was deserted. There was an open pit in the center of the room, which they gave a wide berth. As they began spreading out to search the area, they began to suspect that this part of the complex had been abandoned entirely.

They’d barely started poking around when a call from Beetle drew their attention to a corridor opposite the stairs they’d used to enter the chamber. “Look over here!” came the halfling’s voice, sounding startlingly loud in the uneasy stillness of the complex.

“So much for stealth,” Mara muttered, as they hastened to discover what their companion had uncovered.

The corridor opened onto an annex that was almost as large as the entry chamber itself. A nasty stink greeted them, which seemed to come from an empty cage of iron bars driven into the floor and ceiling on the far side of the place. The door of the cave was partially open; whatever resident had occupied it was likely long since gone. They found Beetle, and a message, which had been left for them on the wall to their left.

The message came in the form of the goblin leader, his fat body sagging against the iron spikes that had been driven through his wrists and shoulders, pinning him against the wall. Balgron’s head hung separately from a spike that had been driven through his open mouth. His eyes were open, and seemed to peer at them with accusation as they approached.

Above the goblin’s mutilated corpse, someone had taken the time to draw letters upon the stone, apparently from the blood of the dead goblin.

THIS IS NOT FINISHED, the grim warning read.

“An unpleasant threat,” Elevaren observed. But Devrem was more upbeat.

“The fact that they have not challenged us, and felt the need to leave this warning, may indicate that the route to Kalarel is now clear,” the cleric said. “We have to finish this, before it is too late.”

The others were not quite so enthusiastic—with the possible exception of Beetle, who was studying the goblin corpse with interest—but they followed the cleric out of the room, pushing deeper into the complex toward the inevitable confrontation with the evil cleric whose ritual continued to tear at the boundary between Nethir Vale and the Shadowfell.