“Ready, everybody? Let’s go!”
Agar leads with a dispel magic that shatters the enchantments in the area, terminating the magic with coruscating flashes. Mara follows up by focusing her faith through her holy symbol and turning undead. The pure light of Aeos plays over them, and all three kobolds and their rats turn into dust.
Malachite blinks. “Well, that was easy. Be wary of the kobold in that pile of rubble.” They move forward in a wedge formation, weapons drawn and spells readied. Priggle nudges a pile of kobold ash with one toe before checking the walls for traps.
The group pauses by the decanter of endless water that has been sealed into stone. The water from the decanter is flowing into a small stone trough, and a slit in the bottom of the trough provides a thin waterfall over the doorway. Reluctant to stick his head through the curtain of water, Velendo warns the group and stone shapes the rock away from the decanter. It falls into his hand, the waterfall ceases, and everyone glares suspiciously into the next room.
Nothing. No movement, no sound, nothing that shows up on true seeing… nothing.
Galthia glances at the still-flowing decanter. “It’s of illithid design originally. See how it’s twisted, with carved tentacles?”
“Ooh,” says Agar, “may I see?”
“And this,” Velendo addresses Galthia as he taps his holy shield with a *tink tink*, “was once of Torazian design. I took it away from a priest of murder, and Calphas converted it to the cause of good. We shouldn’t be too quick to discard useful tools.”
“Fascinating,” says Agar as he sprays his familiar with the decanter. “But we can’t walk around with it spilling out water. Let’s try some commands.” After “off!” doesn’t work, he rattles through his languages and arcane commands. It still pours forth water that drains onto the wet floor.
“Can you tell it to stop in mindflayer?” asks Velendo.
“No,” says Agar. “Illithids only speak mentally, anyways.”
Velendo’s eyes light up. He thinks “Stop flowing!” at the decanter. Nothing happens. But Galthia has had the same idea, and he reaches out with his psionic awareness to find a rich and complex weave of thought-structures around the bottle. A slight psionic nudge and a command to cease, and the water coming from the bottle stops with a revolting gurgle. Malachite reaches over and hands the decanter to Galthia.
“Maybe you should carry the decanter, as you’re the only one who can use it.” Galthia takes it without comment.
“Darn,” complains Agar. Nolin pats him on the back, and most of the group moves out of the doorway into the room beyond. The floor is covered by a few inches of water, and the door at the far side has clearly been stone shaped out of existence. The group is cautious as they surround the door and prepare to have Priggle and Galthia smash it open. The silence is only broken by splashing, one or two witty comments and an occasional “Shhh!” from Velendo.
Priggle touches the wall and concentrates, and the veins of the earth pulse as elemental energy slide around the edges of the cave. The stone in front of the deep gnome thrums as it takes on the consistency of clay. Priggle hefts his pick, and they prepare to smash down the barrier.
He doesn’t get a chance.
At first it feels like an earthquake. There are two huge *WHOOMP!* noises that echo deafeningly through the cave, and the water-slicked stone floor begins to shake. The stone in the middle of the floor buckles upwards in two separate places, and the slabs of rock tilt crazily before splashing back down into a pit of deep water that was hidden beneath the thin stone of the floor. Defenders are thrown off their feet from the shock, three of them knocked fully into the dark and oily water. Priggle and Stone Bear are nowhere to be seen, and Velendo barely manages to clutch a section of still-stable flooring to stop himself from sinking out of sight. He turns his dripping head and sees a tangled mass of huge, rotting blue-black snake heads rising from the depths behind him. They rise from a knotlike confusion beneath the water, and there are too many to easily count.
Mara breaths out a an Aeosian prayer as she takes in the sight. “Dawn to dusk, he lights our path.” Her voice is shaky, and the stench is horrible. The water continues to boil as more and more heads emerge.
Nolin isn’t in the water, although he’s balanced on a slab of stone that is already tilting badly. The bard braces himself to cast a mass haste and a flame strike. Spellcasting in such a way that the snake heads won’t be able to attack him, he shifts his balance, and the slab of stone beneath his feet cants violently at the worst possible time. Nolin‘s yell of surprise and flailing arms are enough to disrupt the complicated magical song. As the incomplete mass haste dissipates into a flowing cloud of golden motes, Nolin yells an apology. “Auggh! Sorry, guys!” He scrambles back up the unstable flooring and tries to find a sturdier place to stand and fight.
Galthia dances nimbly across the disintegrating floor. He braces himself and pounds his fists into the swaying necks. The heads above him are easily as big as his own torso, and the necks are several feet in diameter. The monk swings five times, and not one of his blows does any damage.
“We’re worried about this thing, right?” asks Agar.
“Yes!” comes the answer from a half-dozen different people. Galthia’s voice is certainly one of them.
As Burr-Lipp leaps towards the water to rescue Stone Bear and Priggle. As he does, several of the snake heads whip out and smash into his body. He’s held upright for a few seconds as one head rips off chunks of flesh. As the head lets go, the bullywug hits the water with a limp gracelessness and a flat splash.
“Gurrblup! That hurt, and I’m completely paralyzed. I can’t move at all.”
“Can you breath underwater?” asks Velendo.
“Yes.”
“Oh, well that’s convenient,” says Galthia, still staring up at the heads above him.
Malachite snorts. “Well, he is a frog.” He takes a shuddering breath and repeats Mara’s prayer. “Heaven help us. Dawn to dusk, he lights our path.”
Agar flies up and hovers above the monsters, staring down into the tangled area where each neck merges into another in a writhing column. “I think there’s just one body down there,” he cautions. Casting defensively he fires three acid orbs into the emerging bulk of the body, hitting with each of them and the third smacking perfectly into the beast and burning downwards. The acid sizzles through layers of rotting undead flesh, leaving behind hideous boils swarming with grubs or maggots underneath the skin. Nolin and Velendo both see it, but it’s Nolin who realizes that they look horribly familiar.
“Oh, bugger. Revenant worms!” screams Nolin. “Don’t let those worms touch you!”
Agar looks down as he tries to dodge the reptilian heads beneath him. “That means nothing to me.”
With his vast knowledge of undead lore, though, Malachite easily recognizes the reference. “If they touch you, they’ll burrow into your skin and head for your heart. If you don’t burn them away, they’ll kill you and turn you into undead.” He returns to his prayers as he tries to find a stable path across the remaining flooring.
“Undead used to throw them at us back when we were trying to climb the mountain where Tovag Baragu is,” Velendo calls. The old cleric looks ill. “They’re a special gift from Imbindarla.” In terror, Nolin ignites his entire body in roaring fire before any of the revenant worms touch him.
Mara prays again before she launches her attack. “Dawn to dusk, he lights our path.” Her words happen to coincide with Malachite’s simultaneous prayer, and the cavern suddenly grows as quiet as a church. Instantly and without any spellcasting, a pulse of light comes out of her. It catches Malachite and reverberates from him back to Mara, catches Mara and reverberates again. It shimmers for a few seconds, glimmering, and then explodes outwards in a silent wave of holy sunlight.
“Oh, close your eyes!” cries Mara in surprise. The sunburst splashes against the undead flesh and the visible revenant worms start bursting into greasy smoke. All the great heads are momentarily thrown back, and a wrenching howl emits from more than a dozen seared throats. It’s the first noise that the creature has made.
“Song cue!” yells Nolin. “Spontaneous holy combustion… What was that?”
“I have no idea.” Mara blinked in surprise, and turns to an equally confused Malachite. “What just happened?”
“I don’t know,” he answers over the noise of the shrieking creature. “Was that circumstantial, or do we need to be careful not to pray in unison?” Mara just shakes her head in wonder.
Over the mindlink, Velendo asks everyone who has fallen into the pool how deep the water is. “Have you hit the bottom?” Stone Bear is still underwater and desperately trying not to sink, and Burr-Lipp is floating limply. Priggle can answer, though.
“Of course I hit the bottom, I’m heavier than water. I’m going to die down here. Wet, dark and cold. Probably a fitting end.”
Velendo bites back a comment. “But how deep is it?”
“Twenty feet, or thirty, perhaps. Not that it matters. Svirfneblin are short.”
Inspired, Velendo pulls out his newly acquired kuo-toa dust of dryness. “Be careful, everyone!” he warns. “Instead of being over 30’ of water, we’ll be over a 30’ pit.”
“We’re less likely to be killed by falling than drowning,” says Nolin.
“I have no idea how this works, but I was told it eliminates a lot of water.” Suddenly pulled from the water by the strong arms of his guardian angel, Velendo triumphantly tosses the pinch of dust into the pool – and a cubic yard of water disappears. Velendo stares at it in dismay.
“Excuse me?” asks Nolin tartly. “Exactly how many pinches of dust of suck do we have? I’d hate to use them all up at once.”
“Three,” answers Malachite. “If this was a big bathtub instead of a cavern, we’d be all set right now.”
“It’s not really what I was hoping for,” frowns Velendo as the hydra’s heads start to accurately orient on its enemies. “Oh well, so much for that.”
“Shall I fly us to safety?” asks Cruciel. “It will probably attack us if I do.”
“No. I think it’s focusing on Mara and Malachite.”
“Good point,” pipes up Agar appreciatively. “Guys, thanks for distracting it from all that acid damage I did!”
The ghoulish hydra lurches upwards, trying to break more of the floor. Seven undead heads target Mara, snapping forwards in both hunger and fury. One of them bounces squarely off her shield, two miss her entirely, and four massive heads latch on to her torse with icy-cold teeth and begin to pull. Mara feels a bit like a dog’s chew toy as she’s lifted up and almost ripped apart. Her strength drains from her, and she can feel a paralyzing cold being kept away by one of her magical rings. Four more heads target Malachite, hitting him twice. He’s picked up sideways and violently spun around, also losing strength the ghoulish spittle. Finally, two more heads turn towards Agar and make a horrible retching noise. “Horrk! Horrk! Hurrraggghhh!”
“Ohhhh, no.” The halfling tries to dive out of the way, but he’s much too slow. A wave of squirming grubs cover him and begin to burrow frantically underneath his skin. Both Agar and Proty scream.
Mara is on the opposite side of the cave and can’t see what happened to Agar, but she can see that the hydra’s wounds are beginning to heal. She groans. “It’s regenerating!”
“Damn it!” Nolin tries casting defensively again, and this time successfully manages to get off mass haste. For his next trick, Nolin targets a flame strike on top of the hydra. As the dark beast begins to rise, it’s now clear to everyone that there is a body underneath the necks – and that some of the heads were from a different monster, and were grafted on after its death. Bulging fleshsacks of grubs are on the back of the monster, attached to several of the sixteen heads so that it can vomit them forth.
“Eat hot bard!” yells Nolin. The flame strike smashes down, crackling and burning.
“Nice!” yells Malachite.
“It’s what I do, baby,” says Nolin smugly, and then he corrects himself. “Well, it’s one of the things I do. I do some other stuff, but I can’t really do that here.”
Horrified by the worms writhing into his flesh, the panicked Agar catches the sound of someone spellcasting behind him. He spins to see another kobold zombie which has crawled from the pile of rubble Mara had noticed earlier. The zombie’s eyes are glowing yellow, just like the Puppeteer’s. . . and he’s casting Mordenkainen’s disjunction.
“Oh, s**t,” says Agar.
To be continued. . .
