Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 348
Out of Time
Ernie lashes out with his sword and hacks a gash in the nearest of the chittering spiders. The creature drools out strings of goopy saliva and clacks its mandibles. Ernie makes a face of disgust. “Ewwwww!”
Aravis activates two of his new magic items: his gloves of the displaced source which allow a spell to be cast from a spot nearby, and his battlestone of St. Jenniver which will cause an area spell to heal allies caught in the blast. He casts a maximized cone of cold which flashes over all half-dozen of the arachnids, while providing a bit of healing to his friends.
Kibi follows up with a scroll of horrid wilting, which sucks moisture out of most of the spiders. Two of them are utterly desiccated, their corpses shriveling even as they collapse to the grass. But the remaining four let out another synchronized screech; their wounds heal as their skins swell and ripple like the surface of a bubbling stew. Their skin changes from a dark red to a deep black, and when they’re done stretching and writhing, they stand as tall as giants. Kibi swears and quickens an earthbolt at the nearest two, blasting them with shards of rock thrown up from the ground.
Grey Wolf confidently casts the reliable combination of a quickened ironstorm followed by chain lightning. The raging electrical storm crackles as powerfully as ever, but though many trees are left smoking, none of the spiders are affected in the slightest. They have acquired spell resistance in their latest incarnations! Dranko tumbles to the side and launches a whip attack on the closest monster, but all of his strikes thump harmlessly against its leathery hide. It seems the spiker-seki has become physically tougher as well.
Morningstar steps back and casts a flame strike that sears the spiders with cold holy flames; her spell penetrates their resistance, and they have no immunity to cold damage. They squeal obscenely in their pain.
Two of the spiders heave their bodies over to Dranko and savage him with their mandibles and barbed claws. Dranko winces as one of the mandibles sinks into his shoulder, just missing his jugular. He sees from the corner of his eye that the remaining two spiders have scuttled over to Kibi and are doing similarly to the dwarf.
Flicker cringes at the sight of his friends being ripped open by spiders, but retains his focus enough to tumble beneath the legs of the closest beast, spring up on the opposite side from Dranko, and plunge his dagger deep into its convulsing bulk. He is rewarded with a gout of ichor to the face, and grins as he splutters. Ernie casts flame strike on the two spiders attacking Kibi, but while they suffer the holy wrath of Yondalla, the creatures have become immune to fire.
Aravis casts a chain lightning of his own into the ironstorm. Flicker quickly ducks behind a tree and flinches as its trunk is blasted, and then looks on dismayed as again the spiders are unharmed. Aravis is sure he imbued his spell with the focus to pierce the creatures’ resistance; they must be immune to electricity as well as fire! He curses, takes a step, and quickens a mass haste.
Kibi casts defensively and blasts the spiders in front of him with a maximized cone of cold, which gets through their spell resistance. One of them falls backward, frozen, and the remaining ones chitter and froth in unison. Not wanting to stick around for another attack, he sinks into the ground via xorn movement.
Grey Wolf casts reverse gravity on the closest of the remaining three spiders. It soars upward until it crashes into the thick mass of overarching branches some thirty feet above, but there it stays, waving its enormous legs madly. Grey Wolf gives it a sardonic wave.
Dranko tries again with the whip, and this time, with Flicker’s dagger distracting his target, his attacks have more success. Two strikes rip out huge chunks of arachnid flesh, and the third tears the monster’s mandibles right from its head, killing it from shock. That leaves two remaining, and these thrash and chitter, their skins stretching and undulating and taking on a chitinous sheen. A conspicuous bulge forms right behind the head of the spider facing Dranko, as if it has developed a hunched back. The whole of its body has grown again, and it looms over Dranko, casting him in its misshapen shadow.
“For the record,” says Dranko, “I do not want one of these for a pet.”
Morningstar quickens a flame strike upon the spider towering over Dranko; since her fire spells deal cold damage, she’s more optimistic about its effects. But it seems that with their latest transformation the enormous spiders have become immune to cold attacks as well. Despite its size, the spider nimbly dodges part way out of the column of black flames, and is only minimally damaged by its holy power. Morningstar frowns, but still finds the wherewithal to cast heal on Dranko, bringing him back to robust health. And just in time! No sooner has she healed his wounds, does the towering spider pierce his shoulder with a razor claw and sink fangs the size of tennis rackets into his thigh. High above, the spider caught in the inverted gravity column flips itself over and scuttles along the underside of the tree canopy until it clears the spell area, at which point it drops thirty feet to the ground. It heaves itself to his feet, looks around for a victim… and vanishes.
Aravis smiles. “Enjoy the maze, he says.
The remaining spider still proves problematic. It shrugs off a searing light from Ernie, endures whip-strikes from Dranko, and evades both Flicker’s stabs and Morningstar’s attacks with Ell’s Will. Kibi pops up from the ground and blasts it with a maximized and empowered earthbolt but it resists the magic of that as well. Grey Wolf has the most success, melting a section of its body with an acid orb, but having withstood the party’s attacks, the spider again savages Dranko. If not for Morningstar’s recent healing, it’s not at all clear that Dranko would still be alive.
Ernie’s had enough. He casts withering palm, steps beneath the spider’s great bulk, and slaps it with his open hand. Strength and life force drain rapidly from the huge arachnid, and in seconds it collapses backward in a jittering heap.
So, for the moment, there are no more enemies, as the last remaining unit of the Seki is trapped in Aravis’s maze. They crowd around the spot where it vanished, ready to deliver a group coup de grace. Two minutes later, it arrives, and immediately transforms one final time. It grows again, shoving the Company backward, and its skin hardens into rock-solid chitin. The hump on its back bulges outward, and a deformed human torso bursts forth. The creature almost resembles an arachnid centaur except with two heads, or a riding beast with a stubby malformed rider atop it. It’s as if the thing was trying to grow a person out of its back, but failed. The misshapen head of the humanoid figure opens its mouth and lets out a piteous howl.
Kibi casts Otto’s Irresistible Dance, thinking that if the creature is rendered helpless, it will be easier for his friends to finish it off. Alas, this is how they discover the final form of the Seki is imbued with spell turning. Kibi feels the spell discharge back into his own body, and he immediately starts executing a capable dwarven wedding dance. His face goes red, and he bellows with anger. The mouth on the human head twists into a smile.
It stops smiling as it fails to dodge a disintegrate from Aravis. Chunks of its body are blown outward and sheared away by the force of the blast, and the main ray leaves a clear hole directly through its middle. Ernie waves at Grey Wolf through the gap before it starts to fill up with gore. Kibi is so pleased that he dances with joy.
Grey Wolf quickens a true strike and channels acid storm through Bostock. The sword itself shears through two of its legs, and the weakened body of the Seki dissolves into a huge puddle of sickening goo.
Again, the forest is silent.
“Yuck,” says Morningstar. The others quite agree.
/*/
“We’ve learned one thing,” says Ernie, as he and Morningstar attend to the post-battle healing. “We’ve come to the right place. Those things must have been put here to guard the Sharshun.”
That may be, but there’s still no sign of any habitation, Sharshun or otherwise. Kibi concentrates and focuses his mind again on the Earth Magic permeating the forest, and thinks he can discern the direction of it source. They head off into the quiet woods, all of them keeping a constant lookout for anyone watching, or more spiders, or simply anything out of the ordinary. (Grey Wolf regrets his application of enhanced senses, since the reek of dead spider fills his nostrils long after the others have ceased to notice it.)
The strength of the Earth Magic grows, until Kibi reaches the edge of a small clearing. He takes a few steps into the clearing itself, finding that the sensation maintains its peak intensity.
“We’re here,” he tells the others.
They look around. The trees around the clearing are sparse, and pleasant light slips through the leaves high above their heads. The meadow itself looks no different than a dozen others they’ve passed while traversing the Greatwood. There’s no sign of any man-made structure or other habitation. Their telepathic bond is still functional, which means the Sharshun aren’t employing Divination Sinks in the area.
Given that it’s Earth Magic they’ve been following, Kibi sends Scree on an underground scouting trip. The elemental sinks into the earth and makes constant reports. “It’s very strong down here, all over the area. It’s uneven; there are stronger and weaker pockets. I don’t think the Earth Magic is coming from the rock, which makes no sense to me. Where else could it be coming from? I can’t tell! Oh… wait. I think I’ve found the edge of it. Now the Earth Magic is growing weaker.”
“Can you trace the perimeter of where the Earth Magic is strongest?” asks Kibi.
“Sure! It’ll take a few minutes, though. I’m well over a hundred feet from you. It’s nice down here, you know. Some interesting minerals, though nothing exotic. I always enjoy finding a bit of quartz, don’t you? Not there’s anything wrong with a nice slab of granite, mind…”
When Kibi tries to convey the details of Scree’s geological survey to the others, Dranko snorts. “This is the most boring part of adventuring,” he says. Kibi just smiles.
“Remember,” Morningstar reminds the others, “Moirel was an Earth Mage, and she created the Eyes. If she’s Darkeye, it stands to reason there’d be strong Earth Magic around here.”
“One more thing,” says Scree. “When I go downward more than about thirty feet, the Earth Magic starts to get weaker again. One second… okay, done. The area is hundreds of feet long and just about as wide. Or maybe it’s hundreds of feet wide and just about as long. It depends on how you look at things! But there’s no sign of anything else unusual, besides the fact that I can’t figure out the source of the power.”
“I’ll bet they’re in an extra-dimensional space,” says Dranko, when he hears Scree’s report. “We should use every magical detection method we have. I’ll go first.”
One of the “gifts” granted to Dranko by the creature from the Far Realms was the permanent ability to detect magic. He walks around the area described by Scree, but detects no magic beyond what his friends are carrying. Morningstar goes next; she casts true seeing and scans the woods. For just a second she thinks she spots something out in the trees, but it’s gone before she can focus on it. She stares in that direction for an extra minute; no, it must have been nothing.
“Damn,” she says. “I almost thought there was something out there.”
“Let me try,” says Dranko. “I’m better at spotting things than you.” Over the protests of Morningstar and Ernie, he reaches into the lurking madness buried in his brain, and calls upon his own true seeing. His eyes un-focus, and an unsettling light gleams in his eyes. “I can see them all around,” he giggles. “Tips of worms, squiggling into our world, squirming, probing. Maybe they’re looking for me?”
He retains enough of his sanity to remember what he’s doing. He gazes outward into the zone of Earth Magic, and with his heightened senses he grasps for clarity. He almost sees… almost sees… yes! There’s something, large and blurry, an enormous object or building or creature, in and around the trees here, sliding always away from his direct vision.
For a panicked second he thinks he’s looking directly into the Far Realms; there is a flash of stars, a space, a charged emptiness. But no, it’s something else, somewhere else. There is no madness there, only… nothing. It’s a confusing distortion of space. He forces himself to concentrate harder, pushing back the madness, and… there, right over there, part of the edge of the blurriness is brighter than the rest. It reminds him of an arch, but it’s not an arch. It’s nothing. It’s gone.
“It’s here,” he whispers. “It’s here, but it’s not, but it is, and it’s filled with stars. There’s a gateway, that there isn’t, and it’s here.”
Dranko strides to a spot at the edge of the clearing about a hundred feet away, and mutters to himself. Kibi moves to join him, and standing on that very spot he puts his hand on the ground. To the dwarf’s mind comes a clearer, sharper sense of Earth Magic – not just in its intensity, but in its specific application. He’s felt this aspect of the magic only once before now… when the Company stood within the Mirrors of Semek and traveled impossibly into the past. He tells this to the others, and everyone is quiet for a second.
“Ooooh,” says Ernie. “They’re out of synch with time.”
…to be continued…
