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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2527758" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 445Vhalantru’s mad cries were a reflection of the cacophony that built from the galleries of Skullrot as the beholder floated into the central hall of the citadel through the opening it had disintegrated in the wall.  Its invasion of the fortress had taken it through part of a cell, releasing an insane slaad, but the chaotic outsider was now just a gory red carcass—most of a carcass, anyway—still half-tangled in what was left of its chains.  The beholder’s eyestalks twisted as it scanned the interior for a moment, but then it began to rise, its body tilting until its burning central eye peered upward through the haze of smoke that issued from the empty socket.  “Oh no, not again,” Mole said, frozen with terror as that evil stare seemed to lock onto her. “We are in no condition for a rematch with that thing,” Dana said. “We can’t just let it have Adimarchus,” Beorna said, moving with grim efficiency as she slipped her heavy breastplate over her shoulders.  Arun moved to help her.  “Is there anything we can drop on it?” Mole asked, but as she looked around she saw only their bedrolls, and the other things they had brought with them; there were no furnishings in the room save for the great cage and its inhabitant.  Something must have shown in her face as she glanced back down the shaft, for Cal said to her, “Don’t even think about it!”  Glancing over his shoulder at Beorna and Arun, he said, “We may need an escape route!” Arun nodded, turning from fastening a buckle on Beorna’s armor and reaching, not for the holy avenger, but for the adamantine battleaxe he’d recovered from Shatterhorn.  Dana had already proven that the walls of the citadel were not invincible, although the fact that they were two hundred feet above the ground might have given them pause, had it not been for the more pressing threat rising up from below. Lok had unlimbered his bow and fired a holy arrow down the shaft at the beholder, but it was too dark to see if the shot had any effect. “Careful, it’ll be in range in a moment…” Cal began. But even as he spoke, multicolored rays of energy erupted from the beholder’s eyestalks, stabbing up through the shaft toward them.  They had the advantage of range and the cover provided by the lip of the shaft, but that didn’t protect Lok from the first beam, which shot into his chest.  The genasi staggered back but resisted the effects of the ray, which might have been disastrous if he’d succumbed to magical sleep while leaning over the edge of the shaft.  A second beam lanced through the empty space where he’d been standing a moment before, and a third impacted the floor a few feet back from the shaft’s edge, missing them entirely. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, as a segment of the floor suddenly vanished, disintegrated by the beholder’s eye ray.  Doubly so since Cal had been standing there, and now found only empty space beneath his feet.  Gravity took its inevitable hold, but even as the gnome started to fall Mole leapt across the shaft, her hand outstretched to snag hold of her uncle’s cloak.  Her momentum carried her forward, just enough for her other hand to catch hold of the new edge of the shaft by the tips of her fingers.  Cal dangled below her, one hand holding onto his cloak, the other holding a wand that he calmly aimed down at the beholder, blasting it with an acid arrow. “You… need… to go… on a… diet!” Mole gasped, fighting to maintain her precarious hold. “Hold on, Mole!” Dana said, directing the spiritual weapon she’d just conjured to harass the beholder, then diving to grab onto the gnome rogue’s wrist.  Dana wasn’t particularly strong, but Arun was there a moment later, kneeling at the lip of the chasm to help her drag the two gnomes to safety.  “It’s still coming!” Cal warned.  Lok had kept up his barrage, but was hit by another pair of beams in quick succession.  While he’d avoided being disintegrated, turned to stone, or instantly killed, as he drew back from the edge of the precipice his labored movements did indicate that he’d been slowed by the beholder.“If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!” Dana said.  As soon as Arun had pulled her up, Mole had drawn back and dug deeply into her bag of holding.  She found what she was looking for; a small wooden box that opened to reveal a number of lumpy canvas sacks stashed inside. Sometimes the old favorites are the best, she thought, taking all three of the tanglefoot bags out and tossing the box aside.  One must have had a tear or something, for the interior was hard and dried out, but the other two seemed okay.  She returned to the edge of the chasm.  Beorna, she saw, was hacking at the outer wall of the chamber with her adamantine sword; the others had fallen back from the opening, apparently yielding that defensive position to the beholder, who seemed able to target its eye-beams with precision no matter how little of them was exposed to its searching eyes. “Mole, what are you doing?” Cal asked. “Just going to tangle it up a bit!” she replied.  Then, before he could dissuade her, she lifted the bags and darted up to the edge of the opening. The first thing she noticed was that the beholder looked a lot… bigger; it had managed to climb quite some distance up the shaft and now wasn’t more than sixty or seventy feet below.  It literally was the size of a house—and one built for humans, not just the compact structures sized for gnomes that she remembered from certain neighborhoods back in Waterdeep.  It had clearly been waiting for one of its enemies to reappear; for as soon as she saw it one of the fist-sized eyes atop the twisting eyestalks flashed, sending death her way. “Woah!” she yelled, snapping her upper body back before her conscious mind could order her body to react.  She dropped the tanglefoot bags, but that was the last thing on her mind as she saw the green ray lance inches past her face, stabbing upward, finally intersecting the chain that stretched between the top of Adimarchus’s cage, through the eyehole in the ceiling, and across the room to the heavy winch set into the far wall.  Oh, no, she thought, as the beam seeped into the chain, infusing six or seven of the heavy links with a green glow that lasted less than a heartbeat before they just… vanished. Leaving the cage holding the imprisoned prince to plummet through the hole in the floor and down the shaft.  Mole would not have been who she was if she did not immediately snap back to the edge of the shaft, her eyes wide as she observed what transpired next.  She saw the cage falling toward the beholder, which fired a blue ray at it seconds before it hit.  The beam had no apparent effect upon Adimarchus’s prison, although it did leave a flickering blue glow around the bars of the cage, giving the whole of the construct an eerie corona that persisted even as the cage struck the beholder, driving it halfway down the depth of the shaft before Vhalantru twisted away and separated from it.  The cage, still glowing with the afterimage of the beholder’s power, dropped like a stone the remaining seventy feet to hit the unyielding floor below with a resounding crash.  The cage bounced into the air and to the side as if hurled away, rebounding off a nearby wall before landing again and rolling to a battered stop some distance away. As Mole’s gaze drifted to the cage, she saw that the blue glow was gone.  But even worse, it was empty, its crumpled door creaking faintly as it twisted on ruined hinges. “Oh my gods…” Mole breathed.  Adimarchus lay on the ground, a black smear in the flickering light of the torch.  This far away, he didn’t look all that different from a man, battered and tormented, the torchlight glistening on his bare ebon skin. Then he stirred, and slowly, began to rise.</blockquote>

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