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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1370208" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 105Silence 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.].</blockquote>

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