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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 3642873" data-attributes="member: 939">Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Sizteen – Mental Midgets Accost Us    The interior of this zigarraut was absolutely enormous.  The central corridor seemed to stretch on forever.  After a rather long walk, we finally reached what must have been the center (and it turned out it was).  There was an intersection there with another corridor equally huge that was perpendicular.  Morwen scouted ahead.  Poseidon followed close behind her.  When she reached the intersection, she glanced in both directions down the cross-hall, and as she looked, two creatures appeared to either side of her.  They had pale skin and tentacles covered their faces.  Then the air shimmered around them and I could feel their minds send out waves of force against all of us, missing Morwen only because she was standing between them instead of in front of them.      I glanced to my right and, unsurprisingly, saw Ee’s brain could not take the strain and he was standing there, slack-jawed, staring ahead blankly.  The mind blasts passed harmlessly over my own mental defenses, like a soft breeze running past an adamantine-bricked fortress.  Mind flayers are such mental midgets.      Poseidon morphed himself into a stone giant and ran forward.  Tuvstarr transformed herself into an large angelic creature that reminded me of Moria.  Four more mind flayers appeared ahead and then sent a volley of magic missiles toward Poseidon.  Higgins cringed and weaved some protective magic, then I could hear his impecible accent in my mind taunting the mind flayers to target him with their missiles.  Fortunately for them, they never did.      I decided that I needed to see what I could do to protect the minds of my companions.  I concentrated and extended my mind out toward them, and suddenly felt a connection stronger than I’d ever felt before linking me to them all.  The first thing I did was protect myself with precognition, setting my reflexes on edge as I felt myself anticipate moves against me with great clarity.  I felt my protection surge outward through my connection to my companions, granting them the same boost to their reflexes and the same protection to their minds.      In the meanwhile, Higgins stepped up behind me and pulled out a scroll.  As the parchment burned away from his incantation, Ee’s eyes came alive and Ee then charged forward to the mind flayers on the right.  With my next thought, I protected myself with an invisible shield of force, then felt with satisfaction as that protection surged down the mental connection I had to all of my companions and protected them as well.  Just let those little mental midgets try and get to my companions now!    Tuvstarr sent a raging storm of snow and ice forward, covering everyone, including Poseidon and Morwen in with the mind flayers, but only harming our enemies.  Those that did not resist the magic entirely, that is.  Impressive.  Though from what I could tell from Higgins’s mind, it might not be so harmless to Higgins and myself.  Apparently the celestial powers that be don’t appreciate the more nuanced point of view of a neutral arbiter of the law.      Higgins sent one last enchantment Ee’s way, enlarging his form to that of a giant as he charged forward.  Before he could connect his axe to a mind flayer’s head, they did some magic of their own and suddenly each mind flayer was surrounded by six identical images of itself.  Higgins’s mind told me that this was not the only protective enchantment they had going on themselves.  Skin of stone was the most obvious.  He was unsure of the rest.  I decided I needed to do something about that.  Pulling together my concentration, I called forth a massive, huge creature of ectoplasm, cutting off the escape of the mind flayers on the left just as those in the middle crumbled under Ee’s, Morwen’s, and Poseidon’s blows.      One of the mind flayers tried to touch Ee, but missed, its enchantment wasted.  Then three of them again tried to mind blast my companions.  I knew Ee’s mind would probably need my help again, and so I surged up my own immediate mental protections, which were then transferred to Ee (and everyone else) by my special connection.  And just in time.  I could feel the blast bounce harmlessly off of my new mental shield around Ee, but only barely.  Ee’s thoughts, as transparent as always, echoed back to my mind, “Cordozo did something to me!  Ta da!  Me feel the power!”      Higgins cast one more enchantment before the fight was over, speeding everyone’s reflexes.  Then he sat back and saved his strength for what lay ahead as we mopped up the remaining mind flayers, who could not escape because of the teleportation blockage.  I stripped away the magical defenses of one of the flayers, ending its images, softening its skin, and evaporating away several other enchantments I could not identify.  Poseidon and my ectoplasmic servant then quickly turned that now defenseless flayer into paste.  The remaining two fell soon after.      Our minds still connected, and ready for battle, we quickly searched around the rest of the base level of the zigurraut, but we found nothing.  We went up to each of the other five levels to the top, still searching, and we still found nothing.  It was quickly approaching evening and so we had to make a decision about where to rest for the night.  Staying down below seemed a poor choice.  Then Morwen pointed out that we had not searched the flayer bodies.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Seventeen – Mental Midgets with Money     The mind flayers were all wearing magical mithral shirts – very pretty in the torchlight.  They also all had magical rings of protection.  But not much else.  Then Morwen discovered a folded cloth on one of them that looked very familiar.  Morwen laid it out on the floor in the intersection to open it and confirmed that it was, indeed, another portable hole.  And she discovered something else as well – that the floor in the intersection covered a shaft heading downward.  Given the late hour, we opted to leave that for another day.      Morwen laid the portable hole to the ground outside the intersection and was then able to discern its actual contents.  More gold than I could easily count, though Morwen later did count it at 174,000 pieces of gold.  I wondered where they had gotten such wealth.  I later wondered if it was part of what they intended to use to transform themselves at the cradle (had they lived to see it).      As we left for the surface, I noted that Tuvstarr took all of the bodies, mentioning something about material components.  I wondered if she’d wear their brains as adornments.  It would only be poetic justice for such foul mental midgets.      Once we reached the surface, we hiked out of the area of death and then Higgins created a magical shelter for the night.  We then returned to the zigurraut in the morning.      Not wishing to rush forward without information, I summoned Moira and then had Higgins make her invisible so she could scout ahead down the shaft.  We did not know how deep it went or how long we might need to fly to explore its depths.  As it turned out, we need not have worried.  It was a mere 300 feet down.      Moria told me over our link that the shaft opened into a cavern that had large drop-offs to either side and led to a blindingly bright light at its end.  Standing in front of the light were eight figures.  Four were huge creatures with a dozen heads each, what could only have been Hydras.  And four were constructs, what could only have been the Inevitables that Tuvstarr had heard were guardians of the cradle.  None of them seemed to notice Moria’s presence.  I asked her to wait until we could join her.  A plan formed in my mind and then the real preparations began.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hudnred Eighteen – Strength of One to Many    My mind fresh from the night’s rest (and in anticipation for this moment) I sprang into action.  I quickly linked myself to all of my companions, including a new companion conjured up from the ectoplasm just for this occasion.  I then engaged every form of protective power that I knew, all at maximum strength, draining a great deal of my internal reservoir in the process.  In parallel, Higigns cast spell after spell on all of us, speeding us up, cloaking us in further protections, aiding our weapon’s hands with luck, divine providence, and morale.  He gave divine agility to Morwen and hardened her skin.  When the dust settled from our frenzy of mind and magic, strong protections surged around all of my companions, almost making Ee and Morwen feel invincible.  Through one means or another, every one of us then vanished from sight, leaving only my huge ectoplasmic friend to be seen in the torchlight.  To aid us in seeing each other and in seeing anyone else who might be hidden from view, I sent one past power to my companions, allowing them to see through a psychic touch.  Finally, Higgins enchanted all of us for flight.      Only then did we then fly down the shaft to face what would likely be a difficult battle.  My ectoplasmic friend came last, and only when he came within sight of the guardians below did the inevitables speak.      “This place is forbidden.  Leave now or be destroyed!”  was all they said.  Then battle was joined.      With my protections in place, my companions barely suffered a scratch.  The guardians had difficulty landing even a single solid blow, made more difficult by Ee’s and Poseidon’s displacement from vision.      Morwen charged forward, then deftly appeared from her invisible cloak, striking four quick blows in rapid succession to one of the hydras.  I’d never seen such precise strikes before.  Just four quick pokes of her rapier and the hydra fell to the ground, dead, its heart overloaded from the shock.  There was barely even a trace of blood evident.      The rest of the guardians fell quickly after, one by one, as they failed to do much harm to us.  I was about to raise a finger to disintegrate one of the remaining hydras when suddenly the remaining two Inevitables caused an earthquake, sending rubble down on top of us and wiping away the platform we were standing on, sending it down into a deep abyss below us.  Thankfully, Higgins’s flight was still bestowed upon us all, and so beyond a few bruises, we were all find.  All that remained was the blindingly bright necrotic cradle hovering before us.      Not wanting to waste another moment, Ee flew forward into the light.  He began immediately to feel his flesh melt away.  But with all of the protections and with all of his flesh, it took rather a long time for it to melt completely away.  When it did, Ee died and was then instantly reborn, still Ee, yet changed.  Ee found his new destiny.  I looked up at the cradle, then at my companions, and then we all walked toward the surging artifact.  When we emerge, we will be different.  I stepped into the light…</blockquote>

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