Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 103

Arun walked boldly down the stairs. Each step rang loudly against the metal stairs, echoing off the tight confines of the pit wall. Those steps had the sound of finality to them, and they did not slow or falter as the paladin descended into darkness.

By the time he had reached the first landing, that sound had been joined by another, a lilting melody that contrasting jarringly with the sonorous dirge of the metallic footsteps. Dannel’s song was one of hope and bravery, and while none of those present could understand the words in elvish, the sentiment shone through, lifting their spirits.

The fissure remained dark and quiet. Too quiet.

Arun reached the first landing, and without hesitation, continued toward the second. He slowed only briefly, as he reached the slippery place where the cryohydra’s snowy blasts had scored. The metal of the stairs was still coated with ice, but the sure-footed dwarf soon made his way past.

He reached the second landing. He was now within reach of the hydra’s jaws from below, if it came out into the open.

“Well?” he roared. “You coming out to get your comeuppance, or have you decided to slink off like the snake you are?”

Quiet.

From the lip of the pit above, Mole flipped a coin down into the abyss. The coin, enchanted earlier by Dannel’s light spell, glowed brightly as it descended, and as it landed with a loud metallic clatter, bouncing a few feet into the air a few times before settling, it cast its bright radiance into the fissure.

Illuminating the hydra, crouched low in the opening, poised to charge.

The companions had barely registered the appearance of the beast when it roared and rushed forward, its jaws snapping angrily at the air. Arun, caught off guard by the hydra’s sudden appearance, nonetheless stood his ground as the creature exploded into the open and rose up to its full height, several toothy maws already probing at the paladin’s vantage. A blast of cold washed over him, but he held his ground, bolstered by the divine favor of his patron that he’d invoked upon his first step back onto the stairs. He hefted his weapon—not his own familiar warhammer, but Dannel’s masterwork longsword, borrowed against this particular purpose.

The hydra had to move into position for all of its heads to be able to threaten Arun, and the dwarf’s careful positioning meant that it gave him some cover against assault from below. The hydra, however, did not hesitate, rearing up as it leapt to the attack.

“Now, Hodge!” Dannel cried. A stream of curses erupted from the far side of the pit, where sounds of heavy straining emerged from the brush that screened the pit edge.

A pair of draconic heads shot forward at Arun. The dwarf caught one on his shield, but the force of the impact was like a hit from a ram, driving him back a step. The second bit tore at his other arm, threatening momentarily to disarm him before he could pull his wrist free from its grip. His heavy bracer protected him from a crippling wound, but blood trailed from his hand as he lifted his sword to strike.

And strike he did, bringing the sword down with the full force of his strength on the exposed neck of the head that had just bitten him. The maneuver opened him to another bite, as a third head snaked in and caught him in the leg, but he shrugged off the pain as he sawed the sharp steel edge across the gash he’d opened. The hydra drew back in pain as the crippled head went flying, landing in a sick mess of blood on the edge of the platform.

But the severed stump was already beginning to twist and pulse...

Zenna abruptly appeared on the edge of the first platform, her cloak of invisibility falling from her as she incanted the words of a new spell, one she’d mastered in long nights of studying the formulae in her spellbook in camp, long after the others had already gone to sleep. She’d first seen it cast when the evil halfling mage Sarcem had hurled it at her, and now her careful preparation paid off as the coruscating energy of a scorching ray erupted from her fingers, flaring over the front of the hydra. The flames deeply seared the creature, cauterizing the stump Arun had made, ensuring that for now, at least, only six heads would threaten them.

But the hydra responded quickly, and a pair of heads swiveled toward her, and unleashed two blasts of icy cold in quick succession.

Zenna dodged back, but could not fully avoid the frozen breath. Her heritage protected her to some degree, but still she felt the bitter cold cut through her clothes and chill her to the bone. She stumbled back until she felt the hard surface of the wall against her, and barely kept her footing as she fought off unconsciousness.

With a hearty cry Hodge appeared, half-lifting, half-pushing an awkward burden. As he reached the edge of the pit he hurled it forward, nearly going over after it, until Mole caught his arm and dragged him back. The burden, which looked some bulky objects wrapped in a spare cloak, plummeted down into the pit. For a moment it looked like the missile would clip the edge of the platform where Arun stood, and the friends held their breath, but then it narrowly overshot that obstacle, and slammed heavily into the body of the hydra.

The hydra sagged as the projectile sank into its body with a meaty plop. The small boulders they’d wrapped into the cloak were heavy, but their primary purpose was to crush the small cask laid in the center, on impact...

Fire rushed outward in an eager rage over the entire upper body of the hydra, as the alchemist's fire in the cask exploded. It screamed and thrashed, trying to escape flames that could not be extinguished by normal means. It barely noticed the stings as Mole and Dannel sent arrows into it, but the flames found the wounds, and seared them. Its heads twisted and tangled, and it fired blasts of cold in random directions, trying unsuccessfully to recover enough to douse the flames that covered it.

Arun had started forward again to try and get another shot at an exposed neck, but he had to recoil as a pair of frost blasts bracketed his position. The icy blasts laid a layer of frost on the metal, and now the underlying supports creaked alarmingly, as the pounding that they had sustained finally began to overcome their structural integrity.

“Oh, da—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his thought, as the entire platform came loose, tumbling—along with the dwarf—to the floor of the pit.

Onto the thrashing form of the burning hydra.

 

[Jon Potter]

Fire rushed outward in an eager rage over the entire upper body of the hydra, as the alchemist's fire in the cask exploded. It screamed and thrashed, trying to escape flames that could not be extinguished by normal means. It barely noticed the stings as Mole and Dannel sent arrows into it, but the flames found the wounds, and seared them. Its heads twisted and tangled, and it fired blasts of cold in random directions, trying unsuccessfully to recover enough to douse the flames that covered it.

Beautiful!

I can clearly picture this scene, LB; a testament to your writing skills.

 

[wolff96]

What Jon Potter said.

Especially with Arun and the metal platform crashing down on top of the creation in the middle of the chaos. Bravo.

 

[Horacio]

At last I found your story hour, Lazybones, I've been searching for it since I came back to EN World

Now I only have to read it...

 

[Jon Potter]

At last I found your story hour, Lazybones, I've been searching for it since I came back to EN World

[HIJACK]

I'm surprised that the story hour forum managed to get by without your bumping!

Welcome back Horacio!

[/HIJACK]

 

[Horacio]

[HIJACK] Thanks a lot!!!! [/HIJACK]

Horacio goes back to reading Lazybones story...

 

[Lazybones]

Good to see you back, Horacio!

With you gone, too often I found my story on page 3...

 

[Horacio]

Good to see you back, Horacio!

With you gone, too often I found my story on page 3...

Fear no more, your story will be bumped as in ol' good times

 

[Lazybones]

Of late I've been confronted with a considerable case of Writer's Block... or more accurately, "Writer's Apathy," a common phenomenon where one is confronted by the empty page and cannot bring oneself to write anything (anyone who's written anything will likely know what I'm talking about, I suspect). Thus over the last few weeks I've been dribbling out posts rather than posting at my usual breakneck pace. Since I'm generally happier (and the slow spots at work go by faster) when I'm writing, I've elected to break through the block in the only way you really can: forcing yourself to write without really worrying about the dreck that's coming out.

Then you go back later and try to edit what bubbled up from your mind into some sort of coherence...

Since I haven't posted much in a while (2 in the last two weeks, IIRC), and since I'd like to get a cliffhanger in before the long weekend, here's a double update:

* * * * *


Chapter 104

This was easier than I thought it would be, Zenna thought, staring out into the darkness ahead.

Only it wasn’t really dark, not truly. Traces of phosphorant lichens crossed the walls of the great cavern, shedding just enough light for her to clearly make out the distinguishing features of this place. And it hadn’t really been that easy, either... but it made her feel better to think so, to place the challenges they’d faced getting her against the difficulties that no doubt faced them now, directly ahead.

The hydra... now that had been tough, although chance had favored them in their second confrontation with the creature. The wreckage of the falling staircase had crushed the creature, ending its struggles against the combined damage unleashed upon it by the companions. Whether it would have survived without that inadvertent intervention, she couldn’t be certain.

She felt rather than heard Dannel sidle up behind her, his footsteps like whispers on the uneven stone. The elf had impressed her with his skills in this dark place, almost as much as the ability of the dwarves with their uncanny knack for anticipating the dangers in these dark realms under the ground. Arun, she knew, had had to confront a fair amount of emotional baggage in returning here, to the depths of the Underdark. But the paladin seemed steadfast, as undaunted as when they’d pulled him out of the wreckage piled onto the carcass of the hydra. Dannel had intervened quickly, leaping into the chasm even as the reverberations of the collapse had faded, using his feather fall spell to ease him into a soft landing on the edges of the jagged mass of debris. He’d found Arun quickly, still struggling to free himself despite the pair of steel joists jutting from deep punctures in his side and hip. Once he’d helped the dwarf free himself and treated the most serious of his wounds, the others had made their way down to join them, descending on a rope Mole produced from her magical haversack.

Even before they explored the fissure, they’d gotten a quick reminder of what lay ahead for them. A corpse, half-encased in ice. Zenna had known what it was even before Arun confirmed it, with a dark growl.

“Drow elf.”

It was impossible to discern much from the body of the frozen elf, but the chain links of the armor shirt he wore had been mithral, and glowed in response to Zenna’s detect magic spell. Dannel wore that shirt now, the bright silvery links concealed by the darker colors of his tunic, letting him better fade into the shadows. Zenna hoped that the added protection of the magical mailshirt would help keep him safe, here in the realms of shadow.

It had taken them the better part of two days to get here, long hours descending ever-deeper into the mantle of Abeir-Toril. Zenna suspected that they haven’t covered more than ten miles or so in raw distance from the fissure, but with all the twists and turns, ascents and descents over the uneven ground, she figured that they had probably walked at least twice that. They’d had two encounters in that time, although they’d happened so fast that she hadn’t even had a chance to cast a spell. No, she corrected herself mentally, she had used a scorching ray to finish that troll, but by the time she’d reached the battle the creature was already down, with three of Dannel’s arrows stuck in its torso, one leg bent at a weird angle from a blow of Arun’s hammer, and half its side torn open by Hodge’s axe. Zenna had arrived to see its terrible wounds already beginning to knit as the creature’s regenerative properties begun to take hold, but her spell had put an end to that, turning the creature into a pyre. Dannel’s new armor had proven its worth, keeping the creature from getting a rending hold on him, but his arm had borne deep gashes where one claw had momentarily gotten a grip on him. They were fortunate that the creature had been alone, Zenna mused; trolls were deadly foes at best.

The other encounter had come and gone even quicker. They’d been crossing a small cavern, a bubble in the rock that was bisected by the tunnel, when a trio of huge bats had detached from the darkness of the cavern roof and swept down toward them. This time Zenna was the first to spot the danger, and called out a warning to the others even as she’d fumbled with the string to her crossbow. She didn’t get a shot off; the bats dove with a shriek, lunged at them with nasty bites that failed to connect with any of their targets, and then streaked off down the corridor. They hadn’t come back, and they left one of their number bleeding out its life on the stones.

Two encounters, potentially deadly, but thus far no serious injuries. Too easy.

And now they were here, the tunnel opening onto the edge of a vast cavern. Below, the surface of the cavern was flat; too flat, Zenna thought, thinking that maybe the dark sheet that glistened slightly in the faint luminescence was the surface of an underground lake. The air here was thick and moist, bolstering that supposition. But most of their attention was drawn to the structure on the far side of the cavern, excavated from the cliff opposite. The most prominent feature was a bulbous construction that jutted out into the cavern proper, a building that to Zenna’s eyes had the look of some great and terrible fish. Its eyes and mouth were dark circles that hinted at deeper spaces beyond them.

“Bhal-Hamatugn, I would presume,” Dannel said.

“I’m not looking forward to taking a swim anytime soon,” Arun commented. “How we going to get across?”

“Let’s go down and take a look,” Zenna suggested.

They made their way slowly down the steep slope from where the tunnel entered the cavern, careful not to dislodge any loose stones or make any other loud noises that might give away their position. Zenna figured it was a useless effort; when they’d entered here Mole had been carrying her small miner’s lamp, and although she’d shuttered it once they’d seen that a cavern lay ahead, no doubt anything hostile in the fish-fortress had seen its flicker across the darkness of the cavern. Carrying light sources down here was all but guaranteed to ensure that any threats would see them before they were seen, but there was no alternative; Dannel and Mole both had excellent night-vision, but unlike Zenna and the dwarves, could not see in total blackness.

They made their way down to the floor of the cavern without incident. The glossy flat surface was indeed a lake, stretching entirely across the width of the cavern. Down here their view was obscured somewhat by a faint mist that hung above the surface of the water, and the complex on the far side of the lake was just a vague shadow superimposed against the sheer cliff beyond. The occasional sound of dripping water was the only sound, punctuated every now and again by a faint splash that might have been caused by anything.

“Cheerful place,” Mole said dryly.

“I dinna s’pose yer got a boat in that pack o’ yers,” Hodge queried.

“No, sorry,” the gnome said with a shrug.

“I can swim across and take a look,” Dannel suggested.

“You’re daft, elf, but there’s no doubting your courage,” Arun said. “These lakes tend to have nasty things living in them, and they don’t take kindly to outsiders making a disturbance.”

“Well, what’s your idea then?”

Zenna quieted them with a sudden, “Shh—look!”

They all turned to the lake, staring out through the mists and what Zenna indicated with a pointed finger. A dark shadow emerged from the swirling wisps of fog, taking form and resolving into a tall, gaunt, humanoid figure directing a long canoe across the lake toward them. It bore an oar in one hand, and a spear in the other, held aloft like a pinion missing its standard.

“What in all the hells be ‘at?” Hodge said, his loaded crossbow held readied in his hands.

Even with their sharp vision, Mole and Dannel couldn’t define anything more than a shadow in the poor light. But Arun squinted into the murk, and as the strange boatman drew nearer he spat. “Goggler,” he said. “Kuo-toa.”

As if his statement had triggered the creature to action, the creature lowered its hands, letting its spear drop, and the paddle drag idly through the water in the wake of the angular craft. They could all see it, now, a cross between a fish and a man, with huge, bulbous eyes and a gaping mouth that seemed to suck at the air, the folds of flesh at its throat distending with each heavy breath. It sat there, watching them, for a long moment.

“Well, should we say something?” Mole whispered.

“It don’ look friendly to me. Best give it a bolt, just to be safe,” Hodge suggested, not taking his eyes from the creature.

It croaked something at them in a wet, guttural language, punctuated by clicks like the sound of bubbles popping.

“What’s it saying?” Mole asked.

“It’s Undercommon,” Arun reported, his feelings about the creature evident in his tone and expression, even half-hidden by the faceplate of his helm. “It said something about the ‘Eye of Darkness,’ or somesuch, and offered to take us through it.”

“Could be a trap,” Hodge said.

“Well, of course it’s a trap, silly,” Mole said. “But still, better to be ambushed in a boat than swimming with your gear, I say.”

“How ‘bout we shoot it, then take the boat?” the dwarf returned.

“I suppose it didn’t occur to you that maybe it understands what we’re saying, that maybe these things have excellent hearing, and that the building over there—let alone this lake—may have a hundred of them watching us even as we speak?” Zenna hissed, the words coming out of the side of her mouth as she kept her eyes on the kuo-toa boatman. The creature just sat there, watching them, its alien expression inscrutable.

Dannel had silently stepped forward, until he stood on the very edge of the lake, the water sloshing softly against the leather of his boots.

“Now, what’s that elf doin’?” Hodge asked.

As the others watched, Dannel began to sing, softly at first, his voice forming the outlines of a melody, wordless, the notes floating out across the water. The kuo-toa watched him intently, and seemed to tense for a moment, before sagging slightly, its body growing limp.

The song faded. Dannel beckoned, and the creature took up its paddle, driving the canoe toward them with several swift strokes. It drew the craft to a halt at the very edge of the lake, and croaked out something to them in greeting.

“It wants us to come with it,” Arun reported. “Is there a reason we should be trusting it, now, elf?”

Dannel turned to his companions, so that his body sheltered him from direct view from the kuo-toa. Quietly, he said, “I have set a charm upon the creature, so it will temporarily consider me a friend and ally. We must be careful, though; any hostile action upon it will disrupt the magic.” His eyes focused on Hodge as he spoke the final words.

“Bah,” the dwarf said. “Mark my words, it be leadin’ us into a trap.”

“Well, why don’t we ask it?” the elf replied, with a nod toward Arun.

The companions turned as one, and focused their attention upon the kuo-toa.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 105

Silence enfolded them, broken only by the soft, rhythmic splash of the kuo-toa’s oar into the flat surface of the lake. The mists formed a thick barrier all around them that pressed in close with clammy fingers against their flesh; it was as if the Underdark, the cavern, the very world about them had vanished, replaced only by a featureless, cold, wet void.

“Yer all as crazy as this goggler,” Hodge growled, his thick brows furrowed as he tried in vain to penetrate the murk.

The kuo-toa let out a croak that sounded uncannily loud in the surrounding quiet.

Their interrogation of the creature had yielded little of use, even with the prod of Dannel’s charm spell. Hodge’s judgment seemed to be accurate when it came to the kuo-toa’s state of mind, for it spoke in rambling, confused statements that Arun could make little sense of. When asked about Zenith Spintershield, the kuo-toa had replied, “I glimpse Zenith amid the great darkness, but he glimpses things beyond the dark where it is darker still. Dark than dark, yes. And I see what lies where Zenith sees, in the dark. The cold, wet dark. It’s dark, dark where I see Zenith. Are you from the dark?” When prodded about the number of guards in the complex, the kuo-toa returned with, “The children of the Sea Mother wait in the dark, wait, yes, many eyes, unblinking in the cold darkness, ever watching for her return.” When asked about who was in charge of the outpost, the kuo-toa’s answers got even more rambling, referring alternatively to someone named “Margh-Michto,” who sounded like a priest of sorts, and to someone else named “Dhorlot,” who the kuo-toa described as “the father of the sacred brood, the holy children of the Sea Mother, whose spawn will stand at Her side as the chosen.”

Well, at least there was one hopeful side to it, as Zenna had noted, “If they’re all as disoriented as this one is, maybe we won’t have such a tough time of it after all.”

“Spell or no, I’d not trust that one as far as I could toss him,” Hodge had added.

Their brief and mostly fruitless discussion had yielded little of concrete use, and they were ultimately left with the same unpleasant choices they’d faced before the creature had arrived. They’d elected finally to press on across the lake, using the boat and their guide while Dannel’s spell retained its efficacy. The elf warned them that he could not guarantee that the spell would work again once this casting faded, but he reassured them that it would retain its hold upon the mind of their captive for at least a few more hours yet.

So now they steered a course across the lake toward the fish-shaped dome they’d seen earlier, from their vantage on the far side of the cavern. The kuo-toa seemed to have no difficulty guiding them through the mists, and soon they saw a dark form loom up out of the mists ahead of them. It was a stone pillar, its uneven shape truncated by a jagged line six feet above its base, the whole jutting at a slight angle from the edge of a stone platform that extended out over the edge of the water. As the canoe drew up to the platform, they could see that stairs rose up from it in a steep ascent. The mists thinned, and they could see that the staircase vanished into a gaping maw, the main entrance to the kuo-toa outpost. The resemblance of the structure to a giant fish was even more pronounced from this angle, and the dark mouth looked particularly forbidding when it seemed poised to swallow them up. The dark orbs of the fish’s “eyes” gaped higher up, and each of the companions could feel the prickly feeling of being watched by those lifeless cavities.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they had sentries up there, watching,” Arun said under his breath as their guide fastened the canoe to the pillar.

“Just act natural, like we belong here, friends coming for a visit,” Dannel replied covertly.

“Comin’ fer dinner, more like... as the main course,” Hodge grumbled, taking up the rear as they started up the stairs. Their guide started babbling animatedly, gesturing wildly with its rubbery, webbed hands to punctuate its croaking statements.

“Canna yer shut that thing up?” Hodge asked.

“What’s it saying, Arun?” Zenna asked.

“Gibberish,” the paladin responded, “More babble about the ‘Eye in the Dark’.” The dwarf scanned the darkness around them, alert for any signs of trouble.

“I don’t like the look that that fish is giving me,” Mole said, staring up at the dark eyeholes that loomed above them as they drew nearer to the gaping mouth.

“You sure about this?” Zenna asked Dannel, quietly, as they came to stand in the black entry, the uneven stone ring of the building’s mouth dripping fat droplets of water onto the steps, as the moisture in the air condensed upon the exterior stone.

The elf looked at her. Zenna of course could see his expression clearly, even in the half-light that filtered in from the cavern, but she realized that to him, her face had to be a vague shadow. Impelled by a sudden instinct, she reached out, touched his arm, trying to offer him some assurance, that she was in fact real, not just a shadowy illusion created by this place of evil and blackness.

“It’s what we came here to do,” Dannel said, finally.

“Well, let’s be about it, then,” Arun said decisively, stepping forward to take the lead, the clank of his mail resounding slightly against the stone tunnel that continued to rise beyond the fish’s mouth.

“Wait a moment,” the elf said, reaching into his pouch. “This damp is wreaking havoc with my bowstring, I’ll need to swap out a new one.”

“You and Mole will need light,” Zenna added, as the elf changed out the string on his weapon.

“Got it covered,” the gnome said, producing her miner’s lamp once again from her magical backpack, and lighting it with a few strokes of flint on steel. As the warm glow of light spread from the wick, it shed a reassuring radiance on the pale skin of their collective faces. It also glistened on the wet skin of the kuo-toa, who croaked agitatedly at the bright flicker. In the real light of a flame, the creature looked even more a monstrosity, at home in this alien place of cold damp stone.

“It doesn’t like the light,” Arun said.

“Tell it that we need the light to make our way to the Eye,” Dannel said, testing his new string before nocking an arrow to it and holding it ready to draw in his fist.

The kuo-toa quieted, and they made their way slowly up the staircase to a landing up above. The walls around them were curved, and it was as if they were indeed in the throat of a giant fish. Water was all around them, glistening on the walls and forming puddles wherever slight dips occurred in the floor. Narrow passages led off from the landing to their left and right, and directly in front of them, on the far side of the landing, stood a pair of massive stone doors. The doors were decorated in an undersea motif, and bore a carving depicting a lobster-headed woman devouring various other creatures.

“I really don’t like the looks of her,” Mole said, but she was already heading toward the doors.

“That’s their Sea Mother,” Arun said, “She’s a real bi—” He caught himself, glancing back at the kuo-toa, but the creature seemed to have forgotten that they were there, staring at the doors with a look of fanatical devotion upon its face.

“Maybe we’d better go another way,” Dannel suggested, “before heading right in the front door.”

“I’ll just take a quick look,” Mole said. “We should know what to expect, no?” She reached the massive doors, against which she looked like a tiny child.

“You’ll never get them open,” Arun said, moving forward to join her.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Zenna said, with a sidelong look at the kuo-toa. It started suddenly, as if shaken from a dream back into awareness of its surroundings. Animated by the sight of two outsiders approaching the sacred doors, it croaked something, agitated...

Mole reached out, and placed her hand upon the door...

A pulse of raw sonic energy erupted in the hallway. Zenna felt something pop in her head, and felt a stinging pain bite hard somewhere deep inside her skull. Staggering from a sudden dizziness, she shook her head to clear it. Looking up, she saw that Mole was down on the ground, blood seeping from her nose and ears, pale, unmoving. A few paces away Arun was slumped against the wall of the corridor, groaning, stunned.

“Mole!” Zenna cried, rushing forward toward her downed friend. Dannel was only a step behind her, already drawing out his wand of healing.

Behind them, the kuo-toa had fallen to its knees, and now it emitted a loud, keening wail, almost painful in the wake of the sonic blast of the trap that Mole had triggered. “Shut that blasted thing up!” Zenna shouted, as she fell forward to kneel at Mole’s side. Her friend’s face was stained with trails of blood, and she didn’t respond as Zenna tugged at her, shook her. “Mole, you have to wake up,” the tiefing urged, her voice thick with emotion. “You can’t die on me, not after all we’ve been though...”

Hodge came up behind the wailing kuo-toa, and with a mighty two-handed stroke brought his axe down hard onto the creature’s spine. The kuo-toa went down hard, its limbs flailing, but to the dwarf’s amazement immediately started trying to get back up, even though its back had surely been crushed by the sheer force of the blow. Hodge recovered quickly, though, and before the kuo-toa could flop back to its feet, he slammed Betsy down onto the side of its neck, dropping it with a gush of turgid black blood that sprayed all over the damp stone around them.

“Mole!” Zenna cried, holding her friend against her, shaking. She was only vaguely aware of Dannel’s voice, shouting at her.

“Damn it, Zenna, let me heal her! She’s alive, listen to me, she’s alive, but we have to help her now!”

The words finally broke through, and Zenna pulled back to see the blue glow of healing around Mole’s face as Dannel poured healing energy into her. “She... she’s not breathing...” she said, faltering.

“Help me, then!” Dannel said, focusing his amber eyes upon the tiefling. “Use your power, Zenna, help Mole find her way back!”

Zenna nodded, anger and shame merging inside herself—how could she have let herself come apart so, when her friend needed her? She opened her mind to the power she’d come to know inside of her, felt that torrent of life-giving energy that was the gift of... Azuth? Esbar Tolerathkas? Her own heritage, some spark that lay deep within her? She still didn’t know the answer to that one, but she knew that she had to trust the power, to open herself to it, in order to bring her friend back from the brink.

She shook as a sudden jolt of positive energy flowed through her into her friend, more raw and pure than she’d felt when she’d cast healing spells before. Mole stirred, and her mouth opened as she drew in a huge, hungry breath of air, before coughing, flecks of blood staining her lips.

“Ow...” the gnome said, finally, when she could speak.

“Mole...” Zenna said, her tears flowing freely down her cheeks.

Dannel rose to tend to Arun, who’d slumped down against the wall, only half-conscious from the backblast of the sonic glyph. But even as the elf lifted his wand to help the paladin, his keen ears picked up the sounds of croaking, coming from one of the side passages back at the landing.

Hodge had heard it too. “We got company comin’,” he said, lifting his bloody axe.

And thus, with two members of their company barely clinging to life, Bhal-Hamatugn roused, and prepared a cold-blooded welcome for the intruders from the surface who had come to disturb its halls.


[ooc note: the trap was an 8d8 sonic glyph that did 50 points of damage, taking Mole down to -9 instantly and knocking Arun to single digits. Both Arun and Mole failed their DC19 reflex saves.].