Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
“First things first. I’ll cast magic circle of protection, and everyone should plan to stay within ten feet of me. That way our brains won’t squirt out our ears.”
“Good plan.” Priggle looks discomfited. “But I’ll have to scout ahead.”
“You’ll get one of your own, Priggle. You’re too important to lose.”
The deep gnome looks slightly mollified by this vote of confidence, and Velendo casts his spells. Agar immediately gets a horrified look on his face. “Aaah!”
“What?”
“Umm. . . I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you hear that buzzing noise in our brains? It’s some sort of mental energy that’s breaking down our protection spells.”
Velendo’s bald head snaps up. “What, already?”
The alienist nods. “Not right away, but pretty steadily. The protection from evil will be gone within a minute or two. Priggle’s is breaking down, too.” He swallows. “I can’t begin to tell you how unhappy this makes me.”
Galthia looks at him with a hint of worried humor, almost a first for the githzerai. “Oh, I can begin to tell you.”
“I better get moving.” Priggle slides into the darkness ahead. His telepathic voice whispers back, slightly crackly and hard to understand from psionic static. “I’m now about sixty feet ahead of you, heading downhill. There’s a huge cliff ahead, but the ground drops away before then. I’ll see what’s ahead.”
Priggle sneaks away, sliding through the deep shadow like a wraith. “I’ve just passed the last of the trees. The stone dips down here, and there’s a bridge with some dark fluid on either side. I can’t see into those dark holes yet but I can hear liquid. Hang on. . . Okay. The water – or whatever it is - is black, viscid and greasy; it looks like there’s tendrils in it. It sounds like blood dripping, and smells horrible. I think it's steaming a little.” His mental voice is phlegmatic, as if this sort of thing happens to him all the time.
Mara’s face twists. “Did you say tendrils?”
Agar perks up. “This gets better all the time.”
“Don’t investigate it!” Velendo is emphatic over the mindlink. “We don’t need it trying to eat you, or something horrible like that.”
Priggle’s voice becomes almost mournful as he replies. “It probably wouldn’t even like how I taste. No one ever does.” He takes a second to rethink his comment before continuing. “I’ll wait for you here while you catch up. There’s something down there near the base of the bridge. It looks like a big walking brain. Like if you took a person and replaced their flesh with brain. It has legs.”
Galthia tries to clarify. “It’s a brain shaped into the form of a humanoid?”
“Yes.”
Agar looks ill. “Wonderful.”
“Maybe we can tell it to let us pass, and that we won’t cause any more damage.”
“I’m not so sure that’ll help, Velendo.” Agar rubs his chin. “I wonder if that’s what is powering all this psionic energy.” They begin moving towards it.
“Is it a construct?” asks Mara.
Velendo thinks about it. “Maybe it’s a brain golem?” Everyone rolls their eyes at that possibility.
They move carefully forward across the sticky stone, making sure that they can’t easily get knocked into the river of fluid nearby. Ahead of them they can hear the same sort of terrible keening that had disappeared when Tao turned all of the flesh sculptures into trees. “Waaaaaaaaaaeeeeoo.” The sound skitters across the stone, burrowing into synapses and triggering headaches.
Velendo sighs. “This is horrific. This is the grossest place we’ve been.”
“You always say that.” Nolin blinks. “Hey! Are you suddenly finding it easier to see?” He looks up and sees a light source on the ceiling swaying downwards towards them. To the bard it looks almost as if a drop of clear syrup was dribbling from a pitcher – only the blob of syrup is greenish-white, the size of a large cow, and shedding a pale illumination as it dribbles downwards from the roof above.
“That’s a blob of gel-like ectoplasm,” identifies Galthia. “They can use it to kill, capture, or simply illuminate.” Mara uses her radiant knight abilities to channel the sun. Even as the sunlight bolsters the group’s armor, Agar can’t help but notice that their circle of protection is falling and their mindlink has been pierced in five or six places by inquisitive psionic feelers.
“We’re being listened to,” warns the halfling. “I can’t drop the mindlink, so just be aware that we’re compromised.”
“Let’s hope they can’t read minds through that thing,” hazards Velendo in a vain fit of optimism. “We should probably wait here and see if the bridge-thing or the ceiling-thing do anything.”
Priggle’s voice sounds wearily in their heads. “Then I’ll just stay here with the oozing ectoplasm.”
“Nah, we’re coming for you, Priggle. First, though, that damn keening is giving me a headache.” Nolin tries to counter the tuneless song that keeps getting underneath their fingernails and eyelids. He isn’t especially successful.
Velendo focuses his attention outwards and thinks over the mindlink, “I know you’re listening to this. All we want to do is pass through and not cause any more trouble.” His voice is resigned, knowing that he isn’t going to have any success. “If you just let us go, that will be best for everyone. If you launch any kind of ambush or attack, in the best case for you a lot of you are going to die. But we don’t want any of that. We just want to pass through.”
The flat response comes unexpectedly. “Greetings. You have healing magics available.”
Velendo raises his eyebrows, surprised. “Are you asking me or telling me?” Nothing. “Do you need healing?”
“Answer the question.”
“Why does it matter to you? I’d like to answer, but not if you’re going to use the information for some plot to hurt us.” He can feel something squirming around in his brain as the voice speaks; not taking residence, but there none the less.
He makes a noise in exasperation. “Answer the question,” suggests Agar at his elbow.
“Yes, I have healing magic.”
“You heal us and you may pass freely, despite what we have said before.”
“And how do I know you aren’t lying?” There is no answer. “What are you suffering from?”
The powerful mental voice tastes like aluminum in his brain. “You will see.”
“And what will you do after I heal you, assuming that I do?”
Malachite’s voice is worried as he breaks in. “Velendo, we can’t make a promise untiil we know. . .”
“I will allow you to pass freely.”
“And what then?”
“Seal the way behind you.”
Silence. Then Velendo whispers hopefully to the Defenders, “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Malachite nods his head. “Not if we’re being followed. Which we are.”
Velendo thinks of the obvious loophole. “All of us? Or just me?”
“There is one amongst you who belongs to us.”
The cleric responds flatly. “No deal.”
There is a long pause. “We will consider.”
Meanwhile, Agar notices that the brainlike guardian of the bridge in psionically intertwined with the bridge itself. “Either the bridge disappears when that thing dies, or the brain golem can probably take the bridge down,” he points out in concern.
By now the shining drop of ectoplasm has descended to nearly forty feet above them, and is bouncing slightly as it sheds greenish-white light. Velendo tries to ignore it. “Well, we don’t intend to cross the bridge.” He focuses back on the mind link. “While you’re considering, what is your relationship with the forces of undead down here?”
“You have already been informed of that.”
“We've been told two different things at different times. So no, we don’t have any solid information either way.”
“Reveal.” There is an interogative in Velendo’s mind. Velendo mentally responds.
“We have some evidence that there is an elder brain who has been turned to undead, and that would lead us to believe that all the mindflayers are controlled by undead or even are undead. On the other hand, we know that the mindflayers fought against the undead, and at least one mindflayer has told us that you fought off the ghouls successfully and are now defending this area. We don’t know which report is true.”
“The infection has been contained, but must be reversed.”
“Is that what you want me to heal?”
“Indeed.”
Agar taps his finger against his chin as he muses. “An undead elder brain. . .”
Like smaller crystals off a larger chandelier, lesser blobs of solidified thought are dribbling down from the dangling blob of ectoplasm. Those smaller drops of fluid are glowing as well.
Galthia suspiciously manifests combat prescience, sensing the weak spots of the people around him, even as Velendo responds to the voice on the mindlink.
“My inclination is to help you. Our primary enemy right now, the ones we are focused on, are the undead. That is the reason that any of our number staying behind is *not* negotiable. We need them to continue fighting the undead after we leave.”
The voice is dismissive. “The undead are contained. They may not pass this way again.”
“The undead are causing other problems for other people, and those problems are our problems.”
“And that is a concern of ours?”
Velendo’s smile is humorless. “It is if you want me to heal you, yes. It seems as if everyone’s problems are intertwined with everyone else’s these days.”
“Your options are heal us and pass, or do not heal us and perish.”
“Well, we can heal you and pass, if all of us pass.” Mara’s musical voice is emphatic.
Malachite nods. “In addition, we can not guarantee that our healing will be successful until we know the nature of the malady. We will certainly attempt a cure, but we can not guarantee success.”
“Indeed.” Pause. Galthia feels something squirming around in his head, and racial memory triggers something close to panic. “You are of the slave race.”
Galthia refuses to answer. He swallows the horrible anger boiling inside of him, refusing to give in to racial instinct.
“Why have you returned here?”
“There are no slaves.”
“Untrue.” He feels it squirming around, trying to find a foothold.
His voice is measured, deceptively calm. “You might as well leave. You will find nothing to grab hold of here.”
“Do you not wish to give yourself willingly?” The mental voice sounds somewhat surprised.
“No githzerai gives himself willingly.”
“Untrue. But you are to be the exception.” It sounds amused.
Velendo’s voice has a core of iron. “He’s under my protection.” His shield thrums in accompaniment.
The mental voice is thoughtful. “If you attempt the healing, and it is unsuccessful, he will be claimed. If you attempt the healing, and it is successful, he may pass as well.”
“No deal.” Malachite’s voice is quiet.
“Then there is no deal.”
“I’m confident,” Velendo tells his companions as he shifts his shield.
“Right. We lose nothing by agreeing, comparitively speaking,” points out Agar. “We should try.” The cleric and both paladins look at him.
“If we agree, we agree. It is not my intention to betray it,” begins Velendo with some heat, but Malachite reaches out a hand to stop him.
“No, Agar’s correct. We can give our best effort. Attempting to heal it and failing is the same as not accepting the offer,” he explains. “It puts us exactly where we are now, under threat of death. We lose nothing by attempting to help.” Other than aiding something evil, he thinks to himself. But he can solve that problem after we finish with the White Kingdom, one way or the other.
A second huge glob of crystallized thought begins to coalesce on the ceiling.
Velendo takes a deep breath and addresses the unseen voice. “I suspect that there are no proofs that you can give that you will keep your word in this. I’m going to trust you anyways and simply warn you that if I heal you and it is successful, and you attempt to prevent us from leaving. . .”
“We did not want you here in the first place. You were informed that you were not allowed. You chose to break through the barriers.” It sounds slightly petulant.
“Yes. We need to pass to the other side. We need to brook as little delay as possible.” One of the little tiny crystal things hits the ground nearby and sizzles slightly; it appears to be made out of translucent fluid-filled stone, and the oozing crystal picks up the sunlight streaming from Mara and reflects it outwards. Mara catches little tiny glimpses of herself in the ectoplasm, almost as if there were thousands of mirror facets within it.
“Proceed.”
To be continued. . .
“Good plan.” Priggle looks discomfited. “But I’ll have to scout ahead.”
“You’ll get one of your own, Priggle. You’re too important to lose.”
The deep gnome looks slightly mollified by this vote of confidence, and Velendo casts his spells. Agar immediately gets a horrified look on his face. “Aaah!”
“What?”
“Umm. . . I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you hear that buzzing noise in our brains? It’s some sort of mental energy that’s breaking down our protection spells.”
Velendo’s bald head snaps up. “What, already?”
The alienist nods. “Not right away, but pretty steadily. The protection from evil will be gone within a minute or two. Priggle’s is breaking down, too.” He swallows. “I can’t begin to tell you how unhappy this makes me.”
Galthia looks at him with a hint of worried humor, almost a first for the githzerai. “Oh, I can begin to tell you.”
“I better get moving.” Priggle slides into the darkness ahead. His telepathic voice whispers back, slightly crackly and hard to understand from psionic static. “I’m now about sixty feet ahead of you, heading downhill. There’s a huge cliff ahead, but the ground drops away before then. I’ll see what’s ahead.”
Priggle sneaks away, sliding through the deep shadow like a wraith. “I’ve just passed the last of the trees. The stone dips down here, and there’s a bridge with some dark fluid on either side. I can’t see into those dark holes yet but I can hear liquid. Hang on. . . Okay. The water – or whatever it is - is black, viscid and greasy; it looks like there’s tendrils in it. It sounds like blood dripping, and smells horrible. I think it's steaming a little.” His mental voice is phlegmatic, as if this sort of thing happens to him all the time.
Mara’s face twists. “Did you say tendrils?”
Agar perks up. “This gets better all the time.”
“Don’t investigate it!” Velendo is emphatic over the mindlink. “We don’t need it trying to eat you, or something horrible like that.”
Priggle’s voice becomes almost mournful as he replies. “It probably wouldn’t even like how I taste. No one ever does.” He takes a second to rethink his comment before continuing. “I’ll wait for you here while you catch up. There’s something down there near the base of the bridge. It looks like a big walking brain. Like if you took a person and replaced their flesh with brain. It has legs.”
Galthia tries to clarify. “It’s a brain shaped into the form of a humanoid?”
“Yes.”
Agar looks ill. “Wonderful.”
“Maybe we can tell it to let us pass, and that we won’t cause any more damage.”
“I’m not so sure that’ll help, Velendo.” Agar rubs his chin. “I wonder if that’s what is powering all this psionic energy.” They begin moving towards it.
“Is it a construct?” asks Mara.
Velendo thinks about it. “Maybe it’s a brain golem?” Everyone rolls their eyes at that possibility.
They move carefully forward across the sticky stone, making sure that they can’t easily get knocked into the river of fluid nearby. Ahead of them they can hear the same sort of terrible keening that had disappeared when Tao turned all of the flesh sculptures into trees. “Waaaaaaaaaaeeeeoo.” The sound skitters across the stone, burrowing into synapses and triggering headaches.
Velendo sighs. “This is horrific. This is the grossest place we’ve been.”
“You always say that.” Nolin blinks. “Hey! Are you suddenly finding it easier to see?” He looks up and sees a light source on the ceiling swaying downwards towards them. To the bard it looks almost as if a drop of clear syrup was dribbling from a pitcher – only the blob of syrup is greenish-white, the size of a large cow, and shedding a pale illumination as it dribbles downwards from the roof above.
“That’s a blob of gel-like ectoplasm,” identifies Galthia. “They can use it to kill, capture, or simply illuminate.” Mara uses her radiant knight abilities to channel the sun. Even as the sunlight bolsters the group’s armor, Agar can’t help but notice that their circle of protection is falling and their mindlink has been pierced in five or six places by inquisitive psionic feelers.
“We’re being listened to,” warns the halfling. “I can’t drop the mindlink, so just be aware that we’re compromised.”
“Let’s hope they can’t read minds through that thing,” hazards Velendo in a vain fit of optimism. “We should probably wait here and see if the bridge-thing or the ceiling-thing do anything.”
Priggle’s voice sounds wearily in their heads. “Then I’ll just stay here with the oozing ectoplasm.”
“Nah, we’re coming for you, Priggle. First, though, that damn keening is giving me a headache.” Nolin tries to counter the tuneless song that keeps getting underneath their fingernails and eyelids. He isn’t especially successful.
Velendo focuses his attention outwards and thinks over the mindlink, “I know you’re listening to this. All we want to do is pass through and not cause any more trouble.” His voice is resigned, knowing that he isn’t going to have any success. “If you just let us go, that will be best for everyone. If you launch any kind of ambush or attack, in the best case for you a lot of you are going to die. But we don’t want any of that. We just want to pass through.”
The flat response comes unexpectedly. “Greetings. You have healing magics available.”
Velendo raises his eyebrows, surprised. “Are you asking me or telling me?” Nothing. “Do you need healing?”
“Answer the question.”
“Why does it matter to you? I’d like to answer, but not if you’re going to use the information for some plot to hurt us.” He can feel something squirming around in his brain as the voice speaks; not taking residence, but there none the less.
He makes a noise in exasperation. “Answer the question,” suggests Agar at his elbow.
“Yes, I have healing magic.”
“You heal us and you may pass freely, despite what we have said before.”
“And how do I know you aren’t lying?” There is no answer. “What are you suffering from?”
The powerful mental voice tastes like aluminum in his brain. “You will see.”
“And what will you do after I heal you, assuming that I do?”
Malachite’s voice is worried as he breaks in. “Velendo, we can’t make a promise untiil we know. . .”
“I will allow you to pass freely.”
“And what then?”
“Seal the way behind you.”
Silence. Then Velendo whispers hopefully to the Defenders, “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Malachite nods his head. “Not if we’re being followed. Which we are.”
Velendo thinks of the obvious loophole. “All of us? Or just me?”
“There is one amongst you who belongs to us.”
The cleric responds flatly. “No deal.”
There is a long pause. “We will consider.”
Meanwhile, Agar notices that the brainlike guardian of the bridge in psionically intertwined with the bridge itself. “Either the bridge disappears when that thing dies, or the brain golem can probably take the bridge down,” he points out in concern.
By now the shining drop of ectoplasm has descended to nearly forty feet above them, and is bouncing slightly as it sheds greenish-white light. Velendo tries to ignore it. “Well, we don’t intend to cross the bridge.” He focuses back on the mind link. “While you’re considering, what is your relationship with the forces of undead down here?”
“You have already been informed of that.”
“We've been told two different things at different times. So no, we don’t have any solid information either way.”
“Reveal.” There is an interogative in Velendo’s mind. Velendo mentally responds.
“We have some evidence that there is an elder brain who has been turned to undead, and that would lead us to believe that all the mindflayers are controlled by undead or even are undead. On the other hand, we know that the mindflayers fought against the undead, and at least one mindflayer has told us that you fought off the ghouls successfully and are now defending this area. We don’t know which report is true.”
“The infection has been contained, but must be reversed.”
“Is that what you want me to heal?”
“Indeed.”
Agar taps his finger against his chin as he muses. “An undead elder brain. . .”
Like smaller crystals off a larger chandelier, lesser blobs of solidified thought are dribbling down from the dangling blob of ectoplasm. Those smaller drops of fluid are glowing as well.
Galthia suspiciously manifests combat prescience, sensing the weak spots of the people around him, even as Velendo responds to the voice on the mindlink.
“My inclination is to help you. Our primary enemy right now, the ones we are focused on, are the undead. That is the reason that any of our number staying behind is *not* negotiable. We need them to continue fighting the undead after we leave.”
The voice is dismissive. “The undead are contained. They may not pass this way again.”
“The undead are causing other problems for other people, and those problems are our problems.”
“And that is a concern of ours?”
Velendo’s smile is humorless. “It is if you want me to heal you, yes. It seems as if everyone’s problems are intertwined with everyone else’s these days.”
“Your options are heal us and pass, or do not heal us and perish.”
“Well, we can heal you and pass, if all of us pass.” Mara’s musical voice is emphatic.
Malachite nods. “In addition, we can not guarantee that our healing will be successful until we know the nature of the malady. We will certainly attempt a cure, but we can not guarantee success.”
“Indeed.” Pause. Galthia feels something squirming around in his head, and racial memory triggers something close to panic. “You are of the slave race.”
Galthia refuses to answer. He swallows the horrible anger boiling inside of him, refusing to give in to racial instinct.
“Why have you returned here?”
“There are no slaves.”
“Untrue.” He feels it squirming around, trying to find a foothold.
His voice is measured, deceptively calm. “You might as well leave. You will find nothing to grab hold of here.”
“Do you not wish to give yourself willingly?” The mental voice sounds somewhat surprised.
“No githzerai gives himself willingly.”
“Untrue. But you are to be the exception.” It sounds amused.
Velendo’s voice has a core of iron. “He’s under my protection.” His shield thrums in accompaniment.
The mental voice is thoughtful. “If you attempt the healing, and it is unsuccessful, he will be claimed. If you attempt the healing, and it is successful, he may pass as well.”
“No deal.” Malachite’s voice is quiet.
“Then there is no deal.”
“I’m confident,” Velendo tells his companions as he shifts his shield.
“Right. We lose nothing by agreeing, comparitively speaking,” points out Agar. “We should try.” The cleric and both paladins look at him.
“If we agree, we agree. It is not my intention to betray it,” begins Velendo with some heat, but Malachite reaches out a hand to stop him.
“No, Agar’s correct. We can give our best effort. Attempting to heal it and failing is the same as not accepting the offer,” he explains. “It puts us exactly where we are now, under threat of death. We lose nothing by attempting to help.” Other than aiding something evil, he thinks to himself. But he can solve that problem after we finish with the White Kingdom, one way or the other.
A second huge glob of crystallized thought begins to coalesce on the ceiling.
Velendo takes a deep breath and addresses the unseen voice. “I suspect that there are no proofs that you can give that you will keep your word in this. I’m going to trust you anyways and simply warn you that if I heal you and it is successful, and you attempt to prevent us from leaving. . .”
“We did not want you here in the first place. You were informed that you were not allowed. You chose to break through the barriers.” It sounds slightly petulant.
“Yes. We need to pass to the other side. We need to brook as little delay as possible.” One of the little tiny crystal things hits the ground nearby and sizzles slightly; it appears to be made out of translucent fluid-filled stone, and the oozing crystal picks up the sunlight streaming from Mara and reflects it outwards. Mara catches little tiny glimpses of herself in the ectoplasm, almost as if there were thousands of mirror facets within it.
“Proceed.”
To be continued. . .
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