“Brrribbit!”
With a tremendous spring, the bullywug gladiator Burr-Lipp whom Malachite had saved in Akin’s Throat leaps over the line of kuo-toa warriors, using his momentum to jam his longspear entirely through an enemy’s torso. A pincher staff snares him, dragging the bullywug to the ground.
“Don’t let him get surrounded!” Malachite advances down the ramp with Tao and Mara, the two radiant knights of Aeos forming a miniature shield wall around the divine agent of Galanna. Their swords and maces flash, darting back and forth in an intricate dance of pain, and any enemy in reach tumbles down into bloody ruin. The kuo-toa burble in alarm. Stone Bear and Galthia also tumble into battle, beating back kuo-toa who had thought to try and slip behind the main rank of fighters. Within seconds, they’ve freed Burr-Lipp from the crush of attackers.
“Watch out! I’m going to flame strike them!” shouts Nolin.
“Wait!” Tao yells back, even as she twists her second longsword up to gut a kuo-toa. “No flashy spells. We don’t want them to know we’re here.”
Nolin pauses, thunderstruck, and looks at Tao as if she was dropped on her head as an infant. “Don’t want them to know we’re here? Tao, they just threw a lightning bolt at us. I think they’ve figured it out.”
Velendo lays a hand on the bard’s shoulder. “I think she means that we don’t want them to know that we have such powerful magic. Flame Strike can be seen from a long ways away. It may need to come as a surprise later.”
“Ohhhkay,” says Nolin dubiously, and instead launches into an inspiring song comparing kuo-toa to gaffed fish. His words embolden his allies, and the next volley of dwarven crossbows finds quite a few targets. Nolin just sings more enthusiastically.
Down below, another squad of kuo-toa emerges from the oily water, and Agar shakes his head. Giving Proty a knowledgeable look, Agar calls forth unspeakable words as he plunges his hands deeply into the coils of the magic swirling around him. As he does so, jet black tentacles spring forth from the stone in response, whipping like eels around the advancing kuo-toa.
“Ah,” says Nolin knowledgeably. “Evard’s Black Testicles.”
Agar just grins happily as his spell takes effect. Many of the chanting kuo-toa are caught in the pitch-black tentacles, and the lightning bolt that their utterances have been building instead sputters away into the water. Within a minute, only the toughest kuo-toa troops are still left alive, and Priggle’s sharp eyes pick out Monitor Thoobel poling a longboat back towards their location at the side of the cavern.
“Here comes our ride,” says Priggle, but no one hears him. He tries again. “I said, Thoobel is returning.” Nothing.
“Oh, Thoobel’s coming!” Nolin also sees the boat, and his words immediately catch everyone’s attention. Priggle sighs, unnoticed once again.
“Just.. a.. minute!” Caught by a deadly kuo-toa pincher staff, Malachite flexes his muscles to stop from being fully grappled, and Mara swings her mace into the tired kuo-toa’s belly. It continues out the far side, and the creature falls away as the pincher staff clatters to the stone ramp. “Okay. We’re ready.”
One of Thoobel’s assistants glubs to Nolin, who translates. “He says that more of the Sea King’s troops are probably on the way, so we should move. He’ll probably be very angry that we survived.”
Tao rolls her eyes. “I feel for him. Really, I do.”
Nolin laughs. “Liar. Hey, look!” He points up towards an odd sight. About fifty feet above the water, hanging in empty air, is a statue of some great human warrior. It is hard to tell in the poor light, but it looks like a statue of a man that was once seated on a horse. The horse is long gone, now, and the statue just dangles in mid-air.
“Odd.” No one has time to thoroughly investigate, though, for they hurry down the stone ramp onto the long flatboat that Monitor Thoobel has just poled into position. The armored Defenders rock the boat somewhat as they board, but within seconds Thoobel has pushed off and is poling the boat out into the wide canal surrounding the city. Dead kuo-toa bodies are emotionlessly pushed aside by his pole, and the corpses bob silently on the current, their bulging dead eyes silently condemning the Defenders even as the carcasses are carried downstream around Glubyal and out into the Sunless Sea.
The longboat passes over a foul-smelling current of effluvient carried out of the city by the tide, and then without warning the boat… sinks. Several people begin to panic, but the air begins to sparkle, and it’s quickly apparent that a bubbling sphere of oxygenated air has surrounded the boat. “For visitors,” burbles Thoobel. “Traders who come from afar. Usually drow.”
The boat moves underwater through the gloom of the canal and turns right into a series of winding, narrow coral passages just barely large enough to maneuver through. Thoobel never speaks a word, but everyone gets the impression that he fears that the group is being followed; certainly, the winding and circuitous route he takes is too complex for even Tao to memorize. The defenses of Glubyal slowly become apparent. The kuo-toa city has been carved or built out of stinging coral, and the maze-like passages into the city are riddled with bolt-holes and dead ends. An invading force would have a tremendously difficult time trying to invade. Thoobel even asks Agar to disintegrate a coral wall in front of him, which he later seals up with a wand once the boat has moved through. After fifteen or twenty minutes, Thoobel steers the boat upwards, and it surfaces along a broad and largely deserted promenade.
The Defenders of Daybreak step off of their craft onto dry land, damp and cold. Velendo can’t help notice that in addition to the construction here looking run down, there is absolutely no decoration on any of the buildings. None at all; no decorative carvings, no statues, no murals, nothing. It is almost intimidating in its squat and ugly sameness, and the alien nature of the structures puts everyone on edge. The Monitor leads the group through an oblong doorway, down a spiral staircase and through innumerable round tunnels into a large, water-filled basement. Wide stone platforms rise from the water like stepping stones in a stream, and the group plops themselves down on one of these to relax. As above, the are no decorations whatsoever, and only huge luminescent slugs provide illumination. “I will send a slave with food and drink,” burbles Monitor Thoobel, waving his webbed fingers expressively. “A human slave, to make you feel welcome. You are safe here.”
“Thank you,” says Velendo. “You have human slaves?” He tries to sound polite.
“Oh, yes! Very good. I only have those I could free from Blel-Plibbit. I am much better than he, and kill many less. They love me, and obey quickly, as they should.”
Velendo swallows drily, careful not to offend just yet. “I’m sure. Where are we right now?”
Monitor Thoobel crouches down, rapidly tracing a map on the stone with a wet finger. “This is my part of the city, the southern edge” he says. “From here, I will conquer all of Glubyal, but only to remove the false king from power!”
“False king?”
“Oh, yes.” Thoobel sounds deadly earnest. “”Blel-Plibbit has no right to rule. I saw this when I was a bodyguard to him in the Palace of the Sea Mother. He abuses his power, sells away the heritage of our people, spawns with breeders who are not worthy of his seed. He is dangerous to all of us. I will remove him, and perhaps the Sea Mother will find me worthy to replace him. If not, I will help raise the successor, and teach him in the proper things that a true king should know.” Thoobel’s eyes glint crazily in the gray light.
“I’m sure you will,” responds Nolin politely. “Say, have you ever heard of the Shrine of the Glass Pool?”
“Oh, yes,” nods Thoobel’s scaly head, and traces a new location on his rough map. “It is in the royal plaza in front of the palace, and it is sacred to the Sea Mother. It is not truly glass, you know, but is instead ice that has been polished to a mirror sheen. The shrine is the heart of the sacrifice pool, and the Sea Mother sees all that happens there.”
“Oh, great,” moans Priggle, but Thoobel is still talking.
“The false Sea King Blel-Plibbit goes there for inspiration, as have the Sea Kings before him. He speaks to Blibdoolpoolp there, and she whispers to him of oracles and great visions. This is not information that he should have!” Thoobel’s eyes harden and his voice rises. “I should be the one who hears the voices, as I have heard them before! They told me I couldn’t, you know. They thought to imprison me in a jail where others had also learned the truth. But the truth can not be contained, and I showed them the error of their beliefs. Now they are being judged by the Sea Mother, and she has freed me to do her will.”
Everyone draws a little bit away from him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He raises one fist above his head and shakes it as his mouth gapes and sputters.
“The depth of my faith fills the fathoms, even as my artists have endeavored to show the Sea Mother of my abundant worship! I freed the others who had seen as I do, and now we lead the righteous rebellion. I am pleased,” his voice calms abruptly into gentle tones, “that you have chosen to assist us. For that you will be blessed in the great deep, and the sacrifice of your lives will bring about great changes.”
Tao gives him a look. “You know, we might not die while helping you,” she ventures.
Thoobel gives her a toothy smile and a knowing look. “Indeed.” He bows slightly and withdraws from the room, turning at the doorway. “I will bring you a true map of the palace area, including the Spawning Pools and the Shrine of the Glass Pool. Perhaps it will be helpful.” His head disappears, and he is gone.
“What makes us think,” asks Stone Bear quietly, “that we’re helping the right one?”
“Well, he isn’t the one allied with the ghouls,” grumbles Mara. “But I see your point.” She pries one of her boots off, and wrinkles her nose as she starts picking off swollen leeches from her ankles. “Yuck.”
“I think we should just kill all of them.”
“That would be genocide.”
“It would also destabilize this place. I like having an ally in charge here, even a crazy one, but I like having no one in charge even more. That way they can fight amongst themselves, and stop taking human slaves.”
I agree,” says Malachite coldly, “and we’re going to have to do something about that.”
“So what is this place?” wonders Galthia, looking around the room. “I can’t determine its function.”
“Probably a mess hall,” says Stone Bear with a straight face, “where they eat visitors.” His raven launches itself from his shoulder, flaps down next to Mara, and eagerly gulps down each leech that is offered to it by the paladin. Behind her, her war horse Luminor whickers in comfort.
They are interrupted by the sound of splashing, as frothy water begins to pour into the large room through pipes set in the walls. Carried on the water are dozens of wriggling, squirming fish-things the size of puppies. “Fingerlings!” exclaims Nolin in surprise. “I’ve heard of these. They’re baby kuo-toa. We must be in some sort of playroom for the kuo-toa spawn. Usually, they’re only fertilized in quantity by the King. I’m guessing that if these belong to Thoobel, he really does have delusions of Kingliness.”
“That was obvious.” Stone Bear gets an odd look on his face. As Nolin begins singing to the fingerlings, they all splash over and surround the platform, wriggling in their own slime and reacting to the bard’s song. Stone Bear reaches down and scoops one up, sliding it into a sack at his waist. He reaches down again and grabs two more, placing one in a pouch and one into the folds of a small bag. The fingerlings don’t seem to mind, but everyone stares at Stone Bear.
“What are you doing?”
The shaman raises his eyebrows over dark and empty eye sockets, and casually shrugs. “Taking some insurance with us." He smiles. "I'm going to strap these little guys onto my body. If we’re going to have to assault the heart of the kuo-toa city today or tomorrow, it won’t hurt to have some baby shields.”
To be continued…
