Hammerhead
Explorer
Yeah, I'm kind of stupid that way, so sure. How much?
Shemmy's Planescape Storyhour #2 (Updated x3 10-17-07)
- Thread starter Shemeska
- Start date
Shemeska
Adventurer
Issues of the Draconic Kind
A note for this update: It's a hell of a lot longer than I expected, largely because if I'd stopped at the first decent pause point it would have been maybe 5 pages long, so instead you've got one about triple that. I figure it makes up for the two week pause in this storyhour, though admittedly this one will be like that with about 1 update for each 2 or 3 of the first SH.
Enjoy
“We’ve never met your wife… umm… sir?” Ankita said quickly.
The wyrm quirked an eyebrow and shifted on its bed of coins to get a closer look at the intruders. As it moved into the light and leaned forwards more, it became painfully obvious that the dragon was indeed male, and a rather healthy one at that too.
“Then I suppose that you want something else from me then. That’s what most of the dust here on the floor wanted at one time or another before they did something wrong, or made some offense, or got greedy, or maybe I was just in a bad mood. Something like that…”
Ankita glanced over to Victor.
Echoing softly in the cleric’s mind, and then to everyone else save the dragon, “He’s huge. There’s no way in bloody burning Gehenna that we could reasonably kill him if he has the tile we want.”
Inva made no response to the telepathic warning as she stepped forward and bowed to the wyrm. “We mean no disrespect sir, but we came looking for a tile, likely metallic, and part of a puzzle of sorts that might let us leave.”
The dragon nodded, “As I said, what they typically want. And yes I have it.”
He reached down, dug under his scaled bulk for a second and then held out a slim tile very much like the two that the group already possessed.
“If you want it, you’ll have to get something for me in return.”
They looked at one another and nodded to the dragon who seemed pleased as he gave a wide, toothy grin.
“I want my spellbook back and my wife has it. I don’t really care what you have to do to get it back, but I want it back badly. The b*tch can’t even get out of her own cavern. Our parents send us off to have a clutch of our own and she sets herself up, all bottled up in her own lair, and does nothing but gorge herself on coins. So much for a clutch and all that entails. She can’t do more than waddle by this point most likely.”
Despite what the blue wyrm was saying, it was also obvious that his own solitude hadn’t done wonders for him either. He would have probably gone to ask her himself, but given his own size he probably couldn’t fit out of his own cavern either. The problem he decried her for, he had himself just as much.
“Well, we’ll go ask her on your behalf then sir.” Victor said with a bow that was followed up moments later by the others.
“Whatever, I don’t expect much out of you. She’ll probably just mope and moan and eat you like she does most everything else. She’s like a pig, a giant pig, a giant dire half-nalfeshnee piggy with scales. I swear that…”
The dragon was still droning on about his wife as the group backed out of his cavern. Trying not to say anything too loudly that might offend him, they wandered out into the chamber that joined his and his wife’s adjoining lairs.
“The brute couldn’t fit out of his own cave, and he’s whining about his wife?” Marcus said as he rolled his eyes.
Ankita put a finger to her lips. “Not so damn loud. He hears you saying that about him and our deal with him might be gone.”
Marcus waved a hand dismissively and brushed it off. Somewhere behind him, Inva’s tail bobbed silently with its bladed tip an inch away from his back, but she did nothing and walked out into the light.
“Well, we don’t have much of a choice in the matter given that he could fry us with an errant sneeze.” Velkyn said with a sigh.
“True enough. We might as well go see what the mistress is like.” The tiefling said as she trotted up to the start of the other cavern.
They slowly followed her as the carpet of rust grew deeper as they went, several inches deep in places, and the walls were streaked with verdigris and pockets where perhaps a sneeze or errant breath by the wyrm had raked the side of the passage, perhaps against intruders entering her lair in the past. The latter thought was not pleasant and weighed on Garibaldi, Victor, Marcus, and Francesca’s minds as they glanced at their weapons and armor.
But then they were through the small and winding passage that connected from the middle cavern and into the lair of the rust dragon, the female of the draconic pairing. It wasn’t difficult to find her in the least. She wasn’t hidden, nor was the light dim like in her husband’s lair. Just as large as her mate, she sprawled across a giant bed of golden coins, those being immune to rust and tarnish, with a literal dune of rust several inches deep built up around her.
Her hide was a dull greenish-brown color with darker patches like tarnished pewter or dull tin, and her folded wings were more membranous, almost insect-like in some strange way, than those of her husband who was a fairly typical chromatic dragon as far as his own features went. And while her husband had smelled of ozone, a harsh and distinctive odor, she herself reeked of oxidizing metal like a ton of iron left to corrode in an acidic rainstorm.
As they approached, she glanced up from where she lounged on her side with a large bone or ivory goblet in front of her that seemed filled to the brim with copper coins. She barely paid attention to the group as they slunk closer and closer. Instead she exhaled softly on the coins, liquefying a bit of the top layer of metal and then sipped the corroded metal like a vintage wine.
“Madame?” Velkyn asked tentatively.
She perked an eyebrow and turned towards them, shifting her rather chubby bulk forwards rather than truly getting up and moving. As she did so, the carpet of rust around her shifted and three golden colored constructs, each shaped like a wyrmling dragon, rose up to face her guests.
The rust dragon waved one hand dismissively to the constructs like so many curious hatchlings she never had. “Oh don’t worry babies, Hlal’s joke on the world next door sent them.”
“Oh yeah… no chemistry. Damn.” Ankita’s telepathic voice confirmed to her companions the exact same thought on their own minds.
She rolled her eyes and exhaled a long, carefully controlled snuff of browning air over the goblet of copper. Instantly the coins shimmered and broke down into a greenish, semi-liquid, bubbling haze that she partially snorted and partially drank in a single pass of her tongue.
As she finished, she motioned for the group to go ahead and say what they came to say. And all the while the golden constructs kept watching like clockwork draconic toddlers.
Ankita spoke first, and tentatively. The last thing they could afford to do was royally piss off a dragon.
“We wanted something from your husband, and while he was willing to give it to us, he wanted us to get him back his spellbook from you first.”
The reaction couldn’t have been worse.
“Oh… Garyx take his tail…” She rolled her eyes. “The limp little jack*ss stole my favorite mirror! And he expects me to give him back his spellbook? Pah!”
Ankita’s voice whispered in the minds of the others, “And I say again that wow do these two have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever…”
The wyrm had rolled over on her back, her neck extended out, looking at them upside down as she continued to ramble about her ‘darling husband’.
“The stubby little runt could drag his ozone smelling ass into my lair and just ask me for it. But oh that’s right! He can’t! He’s too fat to fit out of his own lair and he never learned that polymorph spell when mummy offered to teach it to him.”
“And of course I don’t have the option of just leaving him and finding myself a boyfriend half my age, sharing my hoard with him, and…”
She coughed and trailed off. “You get the picture.”
Velkyn laughed and nodded, “Well, I know some but they’re a bit young, and not really your type at all. Otherwise I’d suggest them.”
The half-drow gave a wink to her and she seemed to take it in good humor, but promptly used it as an excuse to segue into a further rant on her current partner. Old married humanoid couples had nothing on the two dragons in the least.
And so they politely stood there and allowed the dragon to vent what probably was centuries of pent up grief over a failed and seemingly arranged marriage.
“Well mummy and daddy said it was for the best to have us together. Said it would keep the family line pure and all. And so we went along with it, but then he changed the moment we had lairs of our own.” She said with an extended and melodramatic groan.
Something broke in Velkyn’s head all of a sudden and he felt worse for it. Oh damn. They’re f*cking inbred. Inbred dragons… I don’t want to think about this… that’s just disgusting…”
The others winced over the next minute as they came to the same conclusion while the rust dragon continued to ramble.
“So, how does that sound?” She said, gaining their attention again. “He gives me the mirror back and –then- I’ll give him his spellbook back. That’s all I’ll do, otherwise you’re snacks. Go work it out yourselves with him now.”
“That won’t… oh hells, alright.” Velkyn said with a sigh, as he walked back out of the lair with the others in tow.
The moment that they had gotten clear of the rust dragon’s lair, Ankita made a retching motion. “Scaly perverts… they’ve got larger issues than marital problems. Ugh.”
Inva made to smack Ankita on the rear with the flat of the blade on her tail, stopping at the last minute but leaving the insinuating in place. “Fiends are worse ‘hon. Dragons have nothing on them; ‘s the reason I’m here after all.”
Ankita shot her a weird look, both for the unwanted suggestion and for reasons she wasn’t going to reveal to the rest of the group. ‘You have no idea about fiends. None at all.’ She thought to herself as they wandered back to the blue dragon.
“So I take it you have my spellbook? Or do I have lunch?” The wyrm said with a massive, toothy grin.
Marcus spoke first. “She’ll give you back your spellbook if you give her back her mirror.”
Ankita winced and Inva backed away from a direct line with the others.
“Oh Falazure rot her rancid guts!” He snarled before giving a resigned sigh. “And here I was, going about stealing that to make her actually take the time to visit me. B*tch just moped around though.”
“So…” Velkyn asked tentatively. “Will you give it to us to bring back to her?”
“Hardly. She’ll just kill you and keep the mirror and my spellbook. Or you’ll keep the spellbook and use it to get out this place.” He snorted with a wash of ozone-tinged air spilling from his snout.
Inva coughed and gave a suggestion to the dragon. “How about if several of us stay here as collateral if you will, for making sure that the rest of us actually bring you the spellbook back?”
The dragon reached up a claw and tapped the massive bony spike at the end of his snout. He seemed somewhat intrigued. “You and him.” He pointed to Marcus. “You two stay here and if you double cross me…”
He left the threat unspoken as he produced a large bejeweled mirror. The others nodded and accepted it as he handed it over to them to go present to his wife.
They ignored the little rustproof faux wyrmlings when they walked back into the female’s lair and presented the mirror to her, hoping for the best.
“Haha! Oh you have my mirror!” The rust dragon exclaimed as she leaned forwards to snatch it out of their arms and promptly stare at her own reflection with a giddy smile.
Almost as an afterthought she tossed a large, hidebound tome to them.
“That’s what my husband wants. Tell him to learn something so he can actually talk to me for once without having to go through others.”
Ankita ventured a suggestion, “You know, you two could try to talk to each other, maybe try to work something out. Send a construct out to pass messages, maybe strike up a dialogue?”
She continued to look in the mirror, smiling and looking at her teeth. “It would have been so much easier if he’d actually learned that polymorph spell you know.”
Velkyn spoke up and added his own thoughts. “Well there’s ways besides that, and he isn’t really angry at you so much as the situation. He just seems grumpy, and the separation seems like it’s just making it worse. Really, I think you can work things out if you try. He really does have feelings for you regardless of being cranky.”
The dragon had put her mirror down on the ground and was scratching her scaly chin thoughtfully as they left and returned to her husband.
Back in the other lair, the blue wyrm snatched up the book with classically draconic greed. He tossed them the tile without a second thought as he opened his grimoire and began to go page by page, muttering to himself about ‘so did she take any of the pages to snub me?’.
Velkyn spoke up and mentioned to the dragon, “She seems to be doing rather well actually.”
The dragon looked up and peered down over the length of his snout. “You don’t say…”
“Really she is, she was just grumpy about the mirror, just like you and your spellbook. She does like you. The separation just seems to have taken a toll on you both. Maybe you could work things out. She didn’t seem averse to the idea if you two could find a way to talk more regularly, maybe eventually find a way to visit one another.”
Like her with the mirror, he put down his spellbook and seemed to give a long hard look at nothing in particular as he pondered it.
Finally he spoke. “It has been terribly long, and maybe I was being too hard on her. You know, I remember her back when we first came here. She had the most lovely pattern of verdigris over the scales between her wings. I really do miss her come to think of it.”
Ten minutes of discussion with the wyrm later and they left carrying their newly found tile, their third of five. Behind them, snouts sticking out of the passages to their individual lairs, the happy couple was, for the first time in years, looking at one another with a pleasant, reconciliatory expression. And by the time the group had begun to climb back down to the center chamber down from their lairs, the two dragons were looking rather… well… frisky at one another and their tone of voice and choice of language was starting to match the gleam in their eyes.
Not wanting to be present, and not being ones to stand in the way of love, regardless of how you might define it, they hurried down the rope and left the happy couple to their own devices.
Finally back into the central chamber they glanced at the two remaining doors. Still wary of the idea of a mindflayer lurking somewhere unseen, and given the seemingly obvious danger indicated by the mural above the western door, they moved to the northern one.
Metallic and covered with its thin sheen of ice, it at first resisted their efforts to dislodge it from its frame.
“I’ve got it. This can’t be that bad.” Victor said as he approached the door, braced himself and tugged at the handle.
It ended poorly, and he realized that fact as he hit the ground and looked up, dazed with flickers of light running through his field of vision after his foot slipped on the doorframe where he’d braced himself.
“Niiiiiice…” Inva said as she bent over the cleric and glanced down at him.
Softly his brother chuckled.
“Oh to hell with that door.” The elf said as he picked himself up off the floor, dusted his vestments off and kissed his holy symbol before fiercely yanking at the door handle a second time.
With a sudden fierce cracking sound, a shudder ran through the ice coating the edges of the door and it broke free in a cloud of frost and flecks of ice. Victor beamed with that minor triumph as he held the door open with a flourish for his companions.
“I repeat my previous statements about my god.”
Ankita looked over to Marcus. “Next time we need him to do something, you laugh again and make like he can’t. That seems to work.”
Marcus said nothing openly, but Victor’s cohort Garibaldi glanced at the sorceress and gave a quick, surreptitious nod of agreement.
The corridor was bitterly cold as they ascended its upward slope into the darkness. Roughly five minutes later they began to see a glimmer of light at its terminus and a slight rush of fresh, if cold, wind from the same direction.
“Looks like another cavern this time.” Velkyn said, as his eyes began a slow transition from one spectrum of vision to another as the light grew closer.
“So long as there’re no carnivorous trees I’m alright with it.” Ankita said with a groan.
“So long as there’s no mile high hike up a mountainside with nothing but a bad joke to show for it.” Inva chipped in from somewhere in the darkness.
But when they emerged from the cave mouth and into the light, what they saw was very much not a mountain that filled the cavern, one even larger than the previous one. A forest stretched out across the shallow bowl of a valley, the soil of the forest floor coated in a glittering carpet of frost like a winter’s morning in some verdant barony on the prime.
“Well, no mountain at least. Trees yes, and they might even be hungry ones for all I know. But no sodding hike up a mountain.” Inva’s voice was as optimistic as she got.
Victor shrugged, “Well, mountain or not, the place is huge and we’ll have a hike ahead of us either way.”
Following the trail that led away from their position and down towards the forest it seemed to pass through what resembled fallow agricultural fields, or at least fields that had been untended and gone wild. Beyond the fields the forest emerged, in places looking less like a forest than orchards that had grown wild in the years since they had been abandoned.
All around, everything glittered with ice in the light like a scattering of diamonds strewn across the frozen surface of a field. But things glittered even outside of the ice that coated the trees like salt rime on a sailing ship.
Ankita grimaced, “What the hell is up with the trees down there. I swear if they’re like the last ones…”
Velkyn reached into his satchel that also held his spellbook and drew out a long telescoping spyglass. The half-drow pulled it out to its full length and turned his gaze down to the wild orchards and thicker forest beyond them. The frost glittered in the light, but the trees themselves glittered as well. Every one of them seemed to be carved from metal, from gnarled roots gripping the shallow soil, down to the blades of grass that grew up through the frost across the untended fields.
“Everything down there is made of metal.” Velkyn finally said, answering the question that hung on the lips of the others.
“More and more I think I know where we are.” Inva said with a petulant shrug.
Victor nodded with a grimace, “And it’s not a healthy thought either.”
“And that’s not all that’s out there either. Hmm…” Velkyn muttered as he focused with the spyglass.
Past the glittering forest, shrouded in frost, was a stone keep atop a hillock, or at least the ruins of one. Nearly opposite it on the other side of the cavern was also what appeared to be a clearing and a cave mouth.
Velkyn mentioned both locations to the others and they nodded.
“We’ll figure out where to go once we’re through the wood. And let’s stay clear of the trees this time also, just to be safe.”
And so they slowly made their way down the trail and into the valley, the frost crunching softly under their boots or hooves as they went. By the time they had reached the fallow fields before the edge of the orchards, they could make out more details.
“The trees may look like metal, but they’re still alive and growing up right out of the soil of this place, though there’s presumably metal under the soil at some point.” Velkyn said as he glanced at one of the fruit trees; apple if he judged it right based on the dull silvery fruit that grew from the branches.
“Silver.” Marcus said as he bent over to pick up a handful of loose leaves from the ground.
True enough, each leaf upon the ground was made of the thinnest, almost pliable silver, tarnished at the edges and dotted with black in places like the rot upon a living, organic leaf. It was alive, or had been, and was made of solid silver.
There was astonishment in Marcus’s voice as he walked up to the nearest tree and examined it. “The trees, they’re made of solid silver, everything here, right down to the fruit.”
Rancid fear suddenly shot through Ankita’s mind as she glanced at the trees, all dangling silvery promises of pain, and fallen individual leaves that would be a nightmare in a stiff breeze. She proceeded very hesitantly as they continued through the fields and into the orchards.
As the trail continued, it soon became obvious that the source of the bitter cold that washed over the valley was not a meteorological phenomenon, but a property of the strange silver trees themselves. The living metal apple trees and grape vines of the orchard, and the argent firs of the forest beyond them, they all exuded a chill onto the air cold enough to frock their limbs with icicles and patinas of frost. The trees seemed to leach the heat from the group as they made their way into the wood.
Soon the trail began to meander, passing through the forest that was patchy and disorganized. Here and there might be snow dusted clearings, while in other places the forest was so thick with trees and frost that it formed nearly a solid silvery wall around them save for the path. Soon enough though, the path abruptly forked at the base of massive standing stone.
“Does anyone know where we are in relation to that keep and the other thing Velk saw? I’ve lost my sense of direction here in the woods.” Victor said.
“It’s too damned cold.” Inva grumbled as she walked up to the tall spike of stone. The tiefling’s attire was as brief as might be possible and yet remain entirely practical for her skill set. But if it was one thing, that one thing was not warm.
Velkyn suddenly became much more appreciative of the greatcoat that he wore as he wrapped it around himself a bit tighter and glanced up at the sky.
“Same here, the path hasn’t been straight, so I’m in the same position here. Ankita?”
The sorceress nodded, “I could try to levitate up above the tree line and look, but I’d rather not risk it.”
She left the exact reasoning for that decision unspoken.
“I wouldn’t suggest it either.” Marcus said as he looked up into the sky.
A flicker of movement above the forest and a soft shadow that graced the ground were all they saw as something passed high overhead. Looking up for a few minutes they saw it again: a flap of heavy wings, a dark form against the sky, claws and fangs.
“What the hell was that thing?” Victor asked warily.
Whatever it was, there was more than one in the sky and it seemed to pay little attention to them, though they weren’t entirely sure if it was aware of them or not.
Velkyn looked up with the spyglass and slowly tried to focus on one of the creatures.
“Gargoyles, of a sort. They look partially silver colored, just like everything else.”
Ankita winced, “Lovely.”
Inva tapped the spade on the end of her tail against the standing stone with a dull chink of metal on stone. “It might not be necessary.”
Ankita raised an eyebrow and walked over to see as she bundled her cloak up, though entirely for effect rather than from actual cold. “Oh?”
The tiefling brushed away the frost on the surface of the standing stone. It was more than just a decorative stone or a boundary marker, it was an archaic signpost. Two arrows pointed in opposite directions down the two branches of the path, and a series of runes were cut into the stone under each along with a pictogram. Oddly, the stone itself was either cut from a silver rich ore, or in and of itself it was being slowly transmuted to silver.
Ankita tilted her head sideways in an odd perplexed expression. “I’ve never seen that language before.”
The others said more or less the same thing; though Velkyn thought it similar in some ways to the dwarven runic script, and Marcus was almost certain it was related to a script he had once seen on a weapon of giantish making.
“Don’t look at me, I don’t speak it either and I don’t have any spells to read it.” Inva said as she tapped the marker with her tail again. “But, I’ve worked out a little bit from context and some smatterings of other languages I’ve heard before but not fully learnt.”
The pictograms were of a castle while the other was of a serpent of sorts coiled around the runes.
She flicked her tail in one direction and than the other, “Something about a lord of the land; self explanatory with that castle image. And something about danger and a mine.”
“I’m in favor of the castle myself. I’m rather getting tired of caves.” Victor said.
Velkyn nodded, “Same here. But either way, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Maybe an hour, and if we don’t find a tile there, it’s double that over to the cave. But time’s wasting as it is.”
“Irony as the drow agrees about caves.” Inva said with a chuckle.
Velkyn rolled his eyes, “Don’t get me started. Or about spiders. Spiders everywhere, webs on everything. It’s an unhealthy fixation… or something.”
“The castle sounds as good as anything else really. So lets be off then.” Marcus said as he started down the path with the others soon to follow.
Over an hour and a half later they arrived at the edge of the forest and the base of the hill atop which rose the keep. It was centuries abandoned; the roof was caved in, the walls cracked, the eaves coated in ice and the windows shattered, their panes covered in frost. A broken path led up the hill to the fortress where the gates stood open and rusted, their tarnish that of silver rather than of ferrous rust.
“I’m not holding my breath about this.” Inva said as she gazed up at the rubble.
“Hell, it might just be hidden here even if there’s nobody home.” Victor added with a hopeful shrug.
And so they approached the keep, wary for traps or lairing beasts but they found none of either as they made their way to the gates. Beyond the yawning doorway was the entry hall of a once grand manor, the demesne of some lord or baron, assuming of course wherever they were wasn’t just created for their torment.
The entire keep and its interior walls were made of a smooth gray stone, and like the stone plinth in the forest, the stone was either an ore rich in silver, or it had begun to slowly transmute to that metal over time. Tattered flags and tapestries fluttered in forgotten glory of places and people lost to the ages as wind intermittently blew down from the holes in the roof open to the sky.
The group walked into the entry hall slowly and cautiously, all except for Ankita who remained at the threshold. She was looking at the streaks of silver running across the floor with dread. She did not want to have to expose herself to touching that metal. She briefly considered not entering at all, or levitating and perhaps pushing herself along with a stick.
“…wait…” She thought, feeling incredibly stupid for a moment. “…I’m wearing shoes. Never mind that.”
She laughed at herself as she caught up with the others.
“You alright?” Velkyn asked her, having noticed her hesitancy.
“I’m fine.” She said, brushing off the question.
Velkyn shrugged and continued into the keep.
There was little left but ruined walls, tarnished suits of armor standing like silent, rusting guardians, and the cold frost-borne wind that whistled down through the crumbled, collapsed roof.
The doors and ceilings were oversized and so were some of the pieces of dry rotted furniture. Between them and the banners and ancient heraldry that still hung upon the walls, they confirmed their earlier suspicions that the ‘lord of the land’ was a giant or similar creature. One of the intact banners showed a tall man who towered, smiling benevolently, over peasants tilling fields and tending orchards and vineyards.
Then there was the final intact room of the keep, what had once been a banquet hall and throne room, and it was still occupied by its lord of years long past. A single figure sat in the room, nestled in the corner and talking to himself in a pleasant tone as he looked at a painting of persons long gone and passed away.
As they stepped into the chamber the man looked up at them. His skin was a pale shade of blue, a pair of small white horns grew from his forehead, and his features were middle aged, bordering on elderly and he was very obviously blind. He was dressed in the faded, archaic clothing of nobility, and had he stood he would have been at least twelve feet tall.
“Greetings my loyal servants, welcome welcome. Do the fields do well this season? Do the grapes still taste as sweet from the vine as they have in years past?”
The group gave glances to one another.
Victor spoke preemptively. “Yes. Yes they do. All is good and well.”
A smile passed over the man’s face. “That is good. I was worried that the great serpent might once more be terrorizing my lands and my loyal subjects. But all is well. I am so very happy for this.”
Ankita’s weary voice echoed in the minds of her companions, “Damnit, he’s a f*cking petitioner. He won’t remember much, if anything, about this place if he really did rule over it at one time, however damned long ago that was. We might as well be talking to a wall.”
A rain of pebbles clattered across the floor and Velkyn and Inva glanced up. A dozen or more, maybe even as many as twenty of the silvery gargoyles sat perched on their haunches above them on the remnants of the keep’s roof, rafters and outer walls. How long they had been there, they couldn’t say, but the beasts were watching them intently.
Ankita looked at the others after they had all been made aware of the watching creatures.
“I don’t think they’re hostile. They’d have done something long before now.”
Victor nodded, “I’ve got to agree. Can anyone here talk to them?”
The sorceress nodded and reached out her mind to the first of the gargoyles.
“Hello. We came here without meaning any harm. We’re looking for a small metal tile, part of a lock of sorts preventing us from returning to our homes.”
“If you had meant harm you would have been dead in the forest. You have been respectful to the voievod, and we appreciate this. He still thinks himself the king and protector of his people of old, and we see to it that he remains in his blissful nostalgia, untroubled by his ancient foe.”
“Ancient foe?”
The gargoyles looked to the east in the direction of the cave or mine, the place denoted with a serpent on the stone in the forest. “The twin serpents. The wyrms who troubled him and his province and his people for so many years. In the end they ransacked his lands, destroyed his keep and slew him. They are still here with him now in death and we keep watch over them to ensure that they do not come here. One of them wanders from the mine while the other remains within guarding their stolen hoard always.”
Ankita nodded and relayed the information to her companions.
“Do you know if your lord here has the item we are looking for?”
“He does not. All that he has are books and portraits of the long dead. He reads them and remembers, he talks to them at times, his world of his memories is his bliss before he eventually fades. He does not have what you seek, though the serpents might. The others who came to the wood several days ago, they were searching for something as well. That may have been it.”
Ankita blinked. “Others? Who? Are you sure?”
“Yes, though they did not approach the keep and so we left them observed but unmolested.”
“What did they look like? And how many?”
“A half dozen of them in all. One in robes, a leader perhaps, one who we sensed but could not see and who flew as fast as we did, and the warriors that went with them; black as soot was their armor. Very strange, we had never before seen such as they.
“They fought one of the serpents, the golden one without limbs, and they may have killed it, but one of their own was killed.”
Velkyn ran his hands through his white hair. “Sh*t, we have competition.”
“Not for long…” Inva said darkly.
A note for this update: It's a hell of a lot longer than I expected, largely because if I'd stopped at the first decent pause point it would have been maybe 5 pages long, so instead you've got one about triple that. I figure it makes up for the two week pause in this storyhour, though admittedly this one will be like that with about 1 update for each 2 or 3 of the first SH.
Enjoy
***
“We’ve never met your wife… umm… sir?” Ankita said quickly.
The wyrm quirked an eyebrow and shifted on its bed of coins to get a closer look at the intruders. As it moved into the light and leaned forwards more, it became painfully obvious that the dragon was indeed male, and a rather healthy one at that too.
“Then I suppose that you want something else from me then. That’s what most of the dust here on the floor wanted at one time or another before they did something wrong, or made some offense, or got greedy, or maybe I was just in a bad mood. Something like that…”
Ankita glanced over to Victor.
Echoing softly in the cleric’s mind, and then to everyone else save the dragon, “He’s huge. There’s no way in bloody burning Gehenna that we could reasonably kill him if he has the tile we want.”
Inva made no response to the telepathic warning as she stepped forward and bowed to the wyrm. “We mean no disrespect sir, but we came looking for a tile, likely metallic, and part of a puzzle of sorts that might let us leave.”
The dragon nodded, “As I said, what they typically want. And yes I have it.”
He reached down, dug under his scaled bulk for a second and then held out a slim tile very much like the two that the group already possessed.
“If you want it, you’ll have to get something for me in return.”
They looked at one another and nodded to the dragon who seemed pleased as he gave a wide, toothy grin.
“I want my spellbook back and my wife has it. I don’t really care what you have to do to get it back, but I want it back badly. The b*tch can’t even get out of her own cavern. Our parents send us off to have a clutch of our own and she sets herself up, all bottled up in her own lair, and does nothing but gorge herself on coins. So much for a clutch and all that entails. She can’t do more than waddle by this point most likely.”
Despite what the blue wyrm was saying, it was also obvious that his own solitude hadn’t done wonders for him either. He would have probably gone to ask her himself, but given his own size he probably couldn’t fit out of his own cavern either. The problem he decried her for, he had himself just as much.
“Well, we’ll go ask her on your behalf then sir.” Victor said with a bow that was followed up moments later by the others.
“Whatever, I don’t expect much out of you. She’ll probably just mope and moan and eat you like she does most everything else. She’s like a pig, a giant pig, a giant dire half-nalfeshnee piggy with scales. I swear that…”
The dragon was still droning on about his wife as the group backed out of his cavern. Trying not to say anything too loudly that might offend him, they wandered out into the chamber that joined his and his wife’s adjoining lairs.
“The brute couldn’t fit out of his own cave, and he’s whining about his wife?” Marcus said as he rolled his eyes.
Ankita put a finger to her lips. “Not so damn loud. He hears you saying that about him and our deal with him might be gone.”
Marcus waved a hand dismissively and brushed it off. Somewhere behind him, Inva’s tail bobbed silently with its bladed tip an inch away from his back, but she did nothing and walked out into the light.
“Well, we don’t have much of a choice in the matter given that he could fry us with an errant sneeze.” Velkyn said with a sigh.
“True enough. We might as well go see what the mistress is like.” The tiefling said as she trotted up to the start of the other cavern.
They slowly followed her as the carpet of rust grew deeper as they went, several inches deep in places, and the walls were streaked with verdigris and pockets where perhaps a sneeze or errant breath by the wyrm had raked the side of the passage, perhaps against intruders entering her lair in the past. The latter thought was not pleasant and weighed on Garibaldi, Victor, Marcus, and Francesca’s minds as they glanced at their weapons and armor.
But then they were through the small and winding passage that connected from the middle cavern and into the lair of the rust dragon, the female of the draconic pairing. It wasn’t difficult to find her in the least. She wasn’t hidden, nor was the light dim like in her husband’s lair. Just as large as her mate, she sprawled across a giant bed of golden coins, those being immune to rust and tarnish, with a literal dune of rust several inches deep built up around her.
Her hide was a dull greenish-brown color with darker patches like tarnished pewter or dull tin, and her folded wings were more membranous, almost insect-like in some strange way, than those of her husband who was a fairly typical chromatic dragon as far as his own features went. And while her husband had smelled of ozone, a harsh and distinctive odor, she herself reeked of oxidizing metal like a ton of iron left to corrode in an acidic rainstorm.
As they approached, she glanced up from where she lounged on her side with a large bone or ivory goblet in front of her that seemed filled to the brim with copper coins. She barely paid attention to the group as they slunk closer and closer. Instead she exhaled softly on the coins, liquefying a bit of the top layer of metal and then sipped the corroded metal like a vintage wine.
“Madame?” Velkyn asked tentatively.
She perked an eyebrow and turned towards them, shifting her rather chubby bulk forwards rather than truly getting up and moving. As she did so, the carpet of rust around her shifted and three golden colored constructs, each shaped like a wyrmling dragon, rose up to face her guests.
The rust dragon waved one hand dismissively to the constructs like so many curious hatchlings she never had. “Oh don’t worry babies, Hlal’s joke on the world next door sent them.”
“Oh yeah… no chemistry. Damn.” Ankita’s telepathic voice confirmed to her companions the exact same thought on their own minds.
She rolled her eyes and exhaled a long, carefully controlled snuff of browning air over the goblet of copper. Instantly the coins shimmered and broke down into a greenish, semi-liquid, bubbling haze that she partially snorted and partially drank in a single pass of her tongue.
As she finished, she motioned for the group to go ahead and say what they came to say. And all the while the golden constructs kept watching like clockwork draconic toddlers.
Ankita spoke first, and tentatively. The last thing they could afford to do was royally piss off a dragon.
“We wanted something from your husband, and while he was willing to give it to us, he wanted us to get him back his spellbook from you first.”
The reaction couldn’t have been worse.
“Oh… Garyx take his tail…” She rolled her eyes. “The limp little jack*ss stole my favorite mirror! And he expects me to give him back his spellbook? Pah!”
Ankita’s voice whispered in the minds of the others, “And I say again that wow do these two have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever…”
The wyrm had rolled over on her back, her neck extended out, looking at them upside down as she continued to ramble about her ‘darling husband’.
“The stubby little runt could drag his ozone smelling ass into my lair and just ask me for it. But oh that’s right! He can’t! He’s too fat to fit out of his own lair and he never learned that polymorph spell when mummy offered to teach it to him.”
“And of course I don’t have the option of just leaving him and finding myself a boyfriend half my age, sharing my hoard with him, and…”
She coughed and trailed off. “You get the picture.”
Velkyn laughed and nodded, “Well, I know some but they’re a bit young, and not really your type at all. Otherwise I’d suggest them.”
The half-drow gave a wink to her and she seemed to take it in good humor, but promptly used it as an excuse to segue into a further rant on her current partner. Old married humanoid couples had nothing on the two dragons in the least.
And so they politely stood there and allowed the dragon to vent what probably was centuries of pent up grief over a failed and seemingly arranged marriage.
“Well mummy and daddy said it was for the best to have us together. Said it would keep the family line pure and all. And so we went along with it, but then he changed the moment we had lairs of our own.” She said with an extended and melodramatic groan.
Something broke in Velkyn’s head all of a sudden and he felt worse for it. Oh damn. They’re f*cking inbred. Inbred dragons… I don’t want to think about this… that’s just disgusting…”
The others winced over the next minute as they came to the same conclusion while the rust dragon continued to ramble.
“So, how does that sound?” She said, gaining their attention again. “He gives me the mirror back and –then- I’ll give him his spellbook back. That’s all I’ll do, otherwise you’re snacks. Go work it out yourselves with him now.”
“That won’t… oh hells, alright.” Velkyn said with a sigh, as he walked back out of the lair with the others in tow.
The moment that they had gotten clear of the rust dragon’s lair, Ankita made a retching motion. “Scaly perverts… they’ve got larger issues than marital problems. Ugh.”
Inva made to smack Ankita on the rear with the flat of the blade on her tail, stopping at the last minute but leaving the insinuating in place. “Fiends are worse ‘hon. Dragons have nothing on them; ‘s the reason I’m here after all.”
Ankita shot her a weird look, both for the unwanted suggestion and for reasons she wasn’t going to reveal to the rest of the group. ‘You have no idea about fiends. None at all.’ She thought to herself as they wandered back to the blue dragon.
“So I take it you have my spellbook? Or do I have lunch?” The wyrm said with a massive, toothy grin.
Marcus spoke first. “She’ll give you back your spellbook if you give her back her mirror.”
Ankita winced and Inva backed away from a direct line with the others.
“Oh Falazure rot her rancid guts!” He snarled before giving a resigned sigh. “And here I was, going about stealing that to make her actually take the time to visit me. B*tch just moped around though.”
“So…” Velkyn asked tentatively. “Will you give it to us to bring back to her?”
“Hardly. She’ll just kill you and keep the mirror and my spellbook. Or you’ll keep the spellbook and use it to get out this place.” He snorted with a wash of ozone-tinged air spilling from his snout.
Inva coughed and gave a suggestion to the dragon. “How about if several of us stay here as collateral if you will, for making sure that the rest of us actually bring you the spellbook back?”
The dragon reached up a claw and tapped the massive bony spike at the end of his snout. He seemed somewhat intrigued. “You and him.” He pointed to Marcus. “You two stay here and if you double cross me…”
He left the threat unspoken as he produced a large bejeweled mirror. The others nodded and accepted it as he handed it over to them to go present to his wife.
They ignored the little rustproof faux wyrmlings when they walked back into the female’s lair and presented the mirror to her, hoping for the best.
“Haha! Oh you have my mirror!” The rust dragon exclaimed as she leaned forwards to snatch it out of their arms and promptly stare at her own reflection with a giddy smile.
Almost as an afterthought she tossed a large, hidebound tome to them.
“That’s what my husband wants. Tell him to learn something so he can actually talk to me for once without having to go through others.”
Ankita ventured a suggestion, “You know, you two could try to talk to each other, maybe try to work something out. Send a construct out to pass messages, maybe strike up a dialogue?”
She continued to look in the mirror, smiling and looking at her teeth. “It would have been so much easier if he’d actually learned that polymorph spell you know.”
Velkyn spoke up and added his own thoughts. “Well there’s ways besides that, and he isn’t really angry at you so much as the situation. He just seems grumpy, and the separation seems like it’s just making it worse. Really, I think you can work things out if you try. He really does have feelings for you regardless of being cranky.”
The dragon had put her mirror down on the ground and was scratching her scaly chin thoughtfully as they left and returned to her husband.
Back in the other lair, the blue wyrm snatched up the book with classically draconic greed. He tossed them the tile without a second thought as he opened his grimoire and began to go page by page, muttering to himself about ‘so did she take any of the pages to snub me?’.
Velkyn spoke up and mentioned to the dragon, “She seems to be doing rather well actually.”
The dragon looked up and peered down over the length of his snout. “You don’t say…”
“Really she is, she was just grumpy about the mirror, just like you and your spellbook. She does like you. The separation just seems to have taken a toll on you both. Maybe you could work things out. She didn’t seem averse to the idea if you two could find a way to talk more regularly, maybe eventually find a way to visit one another.”
Like her with the mirror, he put down his spellbook and seemed to give a long hard look at nothing in particular as he pondered it.
Finally he spoke. “It has been terribly long, and maybe I was being too hard on her. You know, I remember her back when we first came here. She had the most lovely pattern of verdigris over the scales between her wings. I really do miss her come to think of it.”
Ten minutes of discussion with the wyrm later and they left carrying their newly found tile, their third of five. Behind them, snouts sticking out of the passages to their individual lairs, the happy couple was, for the first time in years, looking at one another with a pleasant, reconciliatory expression. And by the time the group had begun to climb back down to the center chamber down from their lairs, the two dragons were looking rather… well… frisky at one another and their tone of voice and choice of language was starting to match the gleam in their eyes.
Not wanting to be present, and not being ones to stand in the way of love, regardless of how you might define it, they hurried down the rope and left the happy couple to their own devices.
***
Finally back into the central chamber they glanced at the two remaining doors. Still wary of the idea of a mindflayer lurking somewhere unseen, and given the seemingly obvious danger indicated by the mural above the western door, they moved to the northern one.
Metallic and covered with its thin sheen of ice, it at first resisted their efforts to dislodge it from its frame.
“I’ve got it. This can’t be that bad.” Victor said as he approached the door, braced himself and tugged at the handle.
It ended poorly, and he realized that fact as he hit the ground and looked up, dazed with flickers of light running through his field of vision after his foot slipped on the doorframe where he’d braced himself.
“Niiiiiice…” Inva said as she bent over the cleric and glanced down at him.
Softly his brother chuckled.
“Oh to hell with that door.” The elf said as he picked himself up off the floor, dusted his vestments off and kissed his holy symbol before fiercely yanking at the door handle a second time.
With a sudden fierce cracking sound, a shudder ran through the ice coating the edges of the door and it broke free in a cloud of frost and flecks of ice. Victor beamed with that minor triumph as he held the door open with a flourish for his companions.
“I repeat my previous statements about my god.”
Ankita looked over to Marcus. “Next time we need him to do something, you laugh again and make like he can’t. That seems to work.”
Marcus said nothing openly, but Victor’s cohort Garibaldi glanced at the sorceress and gave a quick, surreptitious nod of agreement.
The corridor was bitterly cold as they ascended its upward slope into the darkness. Roughly five minutes later they began to see a glimmer of light at its terminus and a slight rush of fresh, if cold, wind from the same direction.
“Looks like another cavern this time.” Velkyn said, as his eyes began a slow transition from one spectrum of vision to another as the light grew closer.
“So long as there’re no carnivorous trees I’m alright with it.” Ankita said with a groan.
“So long as there’s no mile high hike up a mountainside with nothing but a bad joke to show for it.” Inva chipped in from somewhere in the darkness.
But when they emerged from the cave mouth and into the light, what they saw was very much not a mountain that filled the cavern, one even larger than the previous one. A forest stretched out across the shallow bowl of a valley, the soil of the forest floor coated in a glittering carpet of frost like a winter’s morning in some verdant barony on the prime.
“Well, no mountain at least. Trees yes, and they might even be hungry ones for all I know. But no sodding hike up a mountain.” Inva’s voice was as optimistic as she got.
Victor shrugged, “Well, mountain or not, the place is huge and we’ll have a hike ahead of us either way.”
Following the trail that led away from their position and down towards the forest it seemed to pass through what resembled fallow agricultural fields, or at least fields that had been untended and gone wild. Beyond the fields the forest emerged, in places looking less like a forest than orchards that had grown wild in the years since they had been abandoned.
All around, everything glittered with ice in the light like a scattering of diamonds strewn across the frozen surface of a field. But things glittered even outside of the ice that coated the trees like salt rime on a sailing ship.
Ankita grimaced, “What the hell is up with the trees down there. I swear if they’re like the last ones…”
Velkyn reached into his satchel that also held his spellbook and drew out a long telescoping spyglass. The half-drow pulled it out to its full length and turned his gaze down to the wild orchards and thicker forest beyond them. The frost glittered in the light, but the trees themselves glittered as well. Every one of them seemed to be carved from metal, from gnarled roots gripping the shallow soil, down to the blades of grass that grew up through the frost across the untended fields.
“Everything down there is made of metal.” Velkyn finally said, answering the question that hung on the lips of the others.
“More and more I think I know where we are.” Inva said with a petulant shrug.
Victor nodded with a grimace, “And it’s not a healthy thought either.”
“And that’s not all that’s out there either. Hmm…” Velkyn muttered as he focused with the spyglass.
Past the glittering forest, shrouded in frost, was a stone keep atop a hillock, or at least the ruins of one. Nearly opposite it on the other side of the cavern was also what appeared to be a clearing and a cave mouth.
Velkyn mentioned both locations to the others and they nodded.
“We’ll figure out where to go once we’re through the wood. And let’s stay clear of the trees this time also, just to be safe.”
And so they slowly made their way down the trail and into the valley, the frost crunching softly under their boots or hooves as they went. By the time they had reached the fallow fields before the edge of the orchards, they could make out more details.
“The trees may look like metal, but they’re still alive and growing up right out of the soil of this place, though there’s presumably metal under the soil at some point.” Velkyn said as he glanced at one of the fruit trees; apple if he judged it right based on the dull silvery fruit that grew from the branches.
“Silver.” Marcus said as he bent over to pick up a handful of loose leaves from the ground.
True enough, each leaf upon the ground was made of the thinnest, almost pliable silver, tarnished at the edges and dotted with black in places like the rot upon a living, organic leaf. It was alive, or had been, and was made of solid silver.
There was astonishment in Marcus’s voice as he walked up to the nearest tree and examined it. “The trees, they’re made of solid silver, everything here, right down to the fruit.”
Rancid fear suddenly shot through Ankita’s mind as she glanced at the trees, all dangling silvery promises of pain, and fallen individual leaves that would be a nightmare in a stiff breeze. She proceeded very hesitantly as they continued through the fields and into the orchards.
As the trail continued, it soon became obvious that the source of the bitter cold that washed over the valley was not a meteorological phenomenon, but a property of the strange silver trees themselves. The living metal apple trees and grape vines of the orchard, and the argent firs of the forest beyond them, they all exuded a chill onto the air cold enough to frock their limbs with icicles and patinas of frost. The trees seemed to leach the heat from the group as they made their way into the wood.
Soon the trail began to meander, passing through the forest that was patchy and disorganized. Here and there might be snow dusted clearings, while in other places the forest was so thick with trees and frost that it formed nearly a solid silvery wall around them save for the path. Soon enough though, the path abruptly forked at the base of massive standing stone.
“Does anyone know where we are in relation to that keep and the other thing Velk saw? I’ve lost my sense of direction here in the woods.” Victor said.
“It’s too damned cold.” Inva grumbled as she walked up to the tall spike of stone. The tiefling’s attire was as brief as might be possible and yet remain entirely practical for her skill set. But if it was one thing, that one thing was not warm.
Velkyn suddenly became much more appreciative of the greatcoat that he wore as he wrapped it around himself a bit tighter and glanced up at the sky.
“Same here, the path hasn’t been straight, so I’m in the same position here. Ankita?”
The sorceress nodded, “I could try to levitate up above the tree line and look, but I’d rather not risk it.”
She left the exact reasoning for that decision unspoken.
“I wouldn’t suggest it either.” Marcus said as he looked up into the sky.
A flicker of movement above the forest and a soft shadow that graced the ground were all they saw as something passed high overhead. Looking up for a few minutes they saw it again: a flap of heavy wings, a dark form against the sky, claws and fangs.
“What the hell was that thing?” Victor asked warily.
Whatever it was, there was more than one in the sky and it seemed to pay little attention to them, though they weren’t entirely sure if it was aware of them or not.
Velkyn looked up with the spyglass and slowly tried to focus on one of the creatures.
“Gargoyles, of a sort. They look partially silver colored, just like everything else.”
Ankita winced, “Lovely.”
Inva tapped the spade on the end of her tail against the standing stone with a dull chink of metal on stone. “It might not be necessary.”
Ankita raised an eyebrow and walked over to see as she bundled her cloak up, though entirely for effect rather than from actual cold. “Oh?”
The tiefling brushed away the frost on the surface of the standing stone. It was more than just a decorative stone or a boundary marker, it was an archaic signpost. Two arrows pointed in opposite directions down the two branches of the path, and a series of runes were cut into the stone under each along with a pictogram. Oddly, the stone itself was either cut from a silver rich ore, or in and of itself it was being slowly transmuted to silver.
Ankita tilted her head sideways in an odd perplexed expression. “I’ve never seen that language before.”
The others said more or less the same thing; though Velkyn thought it similar in some ways to the dwarven runic script, and Marcus was almost certain it was related to a script he had once seen on a weapon of giantish making.
“Don’t look at me, I don’t speak it either and I don’t have any spells to read it.” Inva said as she tapped the marker with her tail again. “But, I’ve worked out a little bit from context and some smatterings of other languages I’ve heard before but not fully learnt.”
The pictograms were of a castle while the other was of a serpent of sorts coiled around the runes.
She flicked her tail in one direction and than the other, “Something about a lord of the land; self explanatory with that castle image. And something about danger and a mine.”
“I’m in favor of the castle myself. I’m rather getting tired of caves.” Victor said.
Velkyn nodded, “Same here. But either way, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Maybe an hour, and if we don’t find a tile there, it’s double that over to the cave. But time’s wasting as it is.”
“Irony as the drow agrees about caves.” Inva said with a chuckle.
Velkyn rolled his eyes, “Don’t get me started. Or about spiders. Spiders everywhere, webs on everything. It’s an unhealthy fixation… or something.”
“The castle sounds as good as anything else really. So lets be off then.” Marcus said as he started down the path with the others soon to follow.
Over an hour and a half later they arrived at the edge of the forest and the base of the hill atop which rose the keep. It was centuries abandoned; the roof was caved in, the walls cracked, the eaves coated in ice and the windows shattered, their panes covered in frost. A broken path led up the hill to the fortress where the gates stood open and rusted, their tarnish that of silver rather than of ferrous rust.
“I’m not holding my breath about this.” Inva said as she gazed up at the rubble.
“Hell, it might just be hidden here even if there’s nobody home.” Victor added with a hopeful shrug.
And so they approached the keep, wary for traps or lairing beasts but they found none of either as they made their way to the gates. Beyond the yawning doorway was the entry hall of a once grand manor, the demesne of some lord or baron, assuming of course wherever they were wasn’t just created for their torment.
The entire keep and its interior walls were made of a smooth gray stone, and like the stone plinth in the forest, the stone was either an ore rich in silver, or it had begun to slowly transmute to that metal over time. Tattered flags and tapestries fluttered in forgotten glory of places and people lost to the ages as wind intermittently blew down from the holes in the roof open to the sky.
The group walked into the entry hall slowly and cautiously, all except for Ankita who remained at the threshold. She was looking at the streaks of silver running across the floor with dread. She did not want to have to expose herself to touching that metal. She briefly considered not entering at all, or levitating and perhaps pushing herself along with a stick.
“…wait…” She thought, feeling incredibly stupid for a moment. “…I’m wearing shoes. Never mind that.”
She laughed at herself as she caught up with the others.
“You alright?” Velkyn asked her, having noticed her hesitancy.
“I’m fine.” She said, brushing off the question.
Velkyn shrugged and continued into the keep.
There was little left but ruined walls, tarnished suits of armor standing like silent, rusting guardians, and the cold frost-borne wind that whistled down through the crumbled, collapsed roof.
The doors and ceilings were oversized and so were some of the pieces of dry rotted furniture. Between them and the banners and ancient heraldry that still hung upon the walls, they confirmed their earlier suspicions that the ‘lord of the land’ was a giant or similar creature. One of the intact banners showed a tall man who towered, smiling benevolently, over peasants tilling fields and tending orchards and vineyards.
Then there was the final intact room of the keep, what had once been a banquet hall and throne room, and it was still occupied by its lord of years long past. A single figure sat in the room, nestled in the corner and talking to himself in a pleasant tone as he looked at a painting of persons long gone and passed away.
As they stepped into the chamber the man looked up at them. His skin was a pale shade of blue, a pair of small white horns grew from his forehead, and his features were middle aged, bordering on elderly and he was very obviously blind. He was dressed in the faded, archaic clothing of nobility, and had he stood he would have been at least twelve feet tall.
“Greetings my loyal servants, welcome welcome. Do the fields do well this season? Do the grapes still taste as sweet from the vine as they have in years past?”
The group gave glances to one another.
Victor spoke preemptively. “Yes. Yes they do. All is good and well.”
A smile passed over the man’s face. “That is good. I was worried that the great serpent might once more be terrorizing my lands and my loyal subjects. But all is well. I am so very happy for this.”
Ankita’s weary voice echoed in the minds of her companions, “Damnit, he’s a f*cking petitioner. He won’t remember much, if anything, about this place if he really did rule over it at one time, however damned long ago that was. We might as well be talking to a wall.”
A rain of pebbles clattered across the floor and Velkyn and Inva glanced up. A dozen or more, maybe even as many as twenty of the silvery gargoyles sat perched on their haunches above them on the remnants of the keep’s roof, rafters and outer walls. How long they had been there, they couldn’t say, but the beasts were watching them intently.
Ankita looked at the others after they had all been made aware of the watching creatures.
“I don’t think they’re hostile. They’d have done something long before now.”
Victor nodded, “I’ve got to agree. Can anyone here talk to them?”
The sorceress nodded and reached out her mind to the first of the gargoyles.
“Hello. We came here without meaning any harm. We’re looking for a small metal tile, part of a lock of sorts preventing us from returning to our homes.”
“If you had meant harm you would have been dead in the forest. You have been respectful to the voievod, and we appreciate this. He still thinks himself the king and protector of his people of old, and we see to it that he remains in his blissful nostalgia, untroubled by his ancient foe.”
“Ancient foe?”
The gargoyles looked to the east in the direction of the cave or mine, the place denoted with a serpent on the stone in the forest. “The twin serpents. The wyrms who troubled him and his province and his people for so many years. In the end they ransacked his lands, destroyed his keep and slew him. They are still here with him now in death and we keep watch over them to ensure that they do not come here. One of them wanders from the mine while the other remains within guarding their stolen hoard always.”
Ankita nodded and relayed the information to her companions.
“Do you know if your lord here has the item we are looking for?”
“He does not. All that he has are books and portraits of the long dead. He reads them and remembers, he talks to them at times, his world of his memories is his bliss before he eventually fades. He does not have what you seek, though the serpents might. The others who came to the wood several days ago, they were searching for something as well. That may have been it.”
Ankita blinked. “Others? Who? Are you sure?”
“Yes, though they did not approach the keep and so we left them observed but unmolested.”
“What did they look like? And how many?”
“A half dozen of them in all. One in robes, a leader perhaps, one who we sensed but could not see and who flew as fast as we did, and the warriors that went with them; black as soot was their armor. Very strange, we had never before seen such as they.
“They fought one of the serpents, the golden one without limbs, and they may have killed it, but one of their own was killed.”
Velkyn ran his hands through his white hair. “Sh*t, we have competition.”
“Not for long…” Inva said darkly.
***
Ryltar
First Post
Nice update, once again 
.
Now, does Ankita have some kind of lycantrophy thing going here, or does it have to do with her (assumed) past dealings with / possible origins as a fiend? I wonder ...
Introduction of "another party" is always nice, as this is the point where the adrenaline kicks in
. "What, you mean we can't just take our time anymore? Hurry!" However, their description doesn't give away much. Damn, now I'll have to wait another two weeks 
.
[edit] And I just love the tail-blade. Great idea, that.
.Now, does Ankita have some kind of lycantrophy thing going here, or does it have to do with her (assumed) past dealings with / possible origins as a fiend? I wonder ...
Introduction of "another party" is always nice, as this is the point where the adrenaline kicks in
. "What, you mean we can't just take our time anymore? Hurry!" However, their description doesn't give away much. Damn, now I'll have to wait another two weeks .[edit] And I just love the tail-blade. Great idea, that.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Man, I need to update more, can't let this slip down to page three
It took them over two hours to make their way from the ruins of the keep and its petitioner king over to the edge of the frozen silver forest where it rose into hills and up towards the supposed lair of the great golden serpent. As they wrapped their cloaks tighter against the bitter chill, the gargoyles flew overhead, watching them out of curiosity rather than any malice.
“I’m not looking forward to this. Another group in here with us changes everything.” Velkyn said as he shivered in his cloak.
“I am.” Inva said as she tapped the edge of her sword against the sheen of ice on an adjacent tree and then skewering a fallen, tarnished husk of one of its silvery apples.
“Well, it might not come to that, and it might even help actually. Maybe they have the key from beyond the other door that we haven’t been through yet.” Victor mused.
“Or it might end up that we’re being pitted against one another for the amusement of someone.” Ankita muttered. The cold didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest and at times she was forgetting to pretend to shiver.
“I find that much more likely given what we’ve seen so far.” Marcus said as they continued walking.
Gradually the forest thinned, the path rose, and they stood before the approach to the mouth of the mines and the lair of the twin wyrms. The gargoyles no longer flew overhead. They were wary of the presence of the serpents that they had spoken of.
“Damn there’s been a fight here…” Victor said as they walked up into the carnage.
Around them, the evidence of a recent battle was obvious. The remnants of a fierce display of magic were visible; charred patches of terrain, melted silver that had cooled into misshapen puddles on the grown, the scent of cinders and ozone and the bitter smell of acid. And then there were the two corpses at the heart of it. Both of them lay in the open space that stood before the yawning entrance of the abandoned mine.
The so-called wyrm was massive; though rather than a giant snake or a true dragon, it had the head of a human woman. The ‘wyrm’ was a naga. The corpse was scaled from head to tail in a glittering patina of emerald and gold, though blue-black blood discolored it where it pooled according to the whim of gravity and where it gave way into the viscera in bloody gashes and angry bruises from physical blows. But though its hide was marked by the gashes of blades and spears and magic, it seemed to have been killed by whatever retributive spell seemed to have erupted before or upon the death of the second corpse that lay near it in a veritable smoking crater, seemingly a wizard.
That other corpse was little more than a charred husk, possibly from some final attack of the naga or perhaps from its own dying contingencies. The man, if it had been male, was dressed in the remains of a black robe, sullied with soot and bits of ice. Portions of the corpse were gone entirely as if they had been melted away by acid, but from what they saw, he had not been human. Bits of fur remained on the body and the blackened, fire seared skull was elongated and vaguely canine.
“A gnoll perhaps?” Victor said, looking for some sort of holy symbol and failing to find one. “They’ve got a known practice of being led by their shamans, so this might have been one of them.”
Inva stepped around it, tapping the burnt remains of its robes with the tip of her sword.
She frowned. “Whatever it was there’s not a bent copper left on the body. Either is wasn’t carrying anything or their companions stripped them clean after they died.”
“The wyrm though, it’s a guardian naga.” Velkyn said as he looked at the corpse.
“You say that like it’s strange. Why?” Marcus asked curiously.
“Well, they’re not evil as far as I know.” The wizard replied. “Lawful yes, but not necessarily good. And the petitioner king didn’t strike me as an evil type either. Probably a dispute over something that didn’t really amount to malice by either of them.”
“Kingdoms have been to war over less, believe me.” Marcus said with a sigh.
For a few more minutes they clustered around the body, giving it a more detailed examination and looking for track or other evidence on the ground that might tell them about the other group that was presumably already in the mines.
Ankita said nothing, but she knew how wrong they were. The body wasn’t damaged by anything the naga had done. Rather, the body was dissolving on its own, leaking back in pieces across the planes to its home, dissolving into a puddle of acid and manifest evil as it broke down into its metaphysical constituents. Far from being a gnoll or some other monstrous humanoid, the wizard had been an arcanaloth.
Though she said nothing, the metaphorical wheels in her head were spinning like those of a train gone off its track and hurtling down with the ragged flow of gravity over the edge of a cliff. Thoughts came unbidden to her, thoughts of family, the smiling jackal’s countenance of her father, the withering and snarling disdain of her grandfather; she saw all of that reflected back up to her in the eyes of the dead.
Looking past the corpse and into the yawning mouth of the cave, she worried what they would find past it, down into the darkness. How would those things react to her? And how would her current companions react to such?
“Ankita, you ok?” Velkyn said, nudging the sorceress from her thoughts.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” She said as she brushed it off and walked towards the cave entrance where the others were waiting.
The fighters went first with Marcus, Francesca, and Garibaldi heading into the darkness. Victor went next with a conjured globe of light fixed to the tip of his mace. Last were the two casters standing behind the more heavily armored members of the group, and finally Inva slunk behind them all, intentionally staying out of the fringes of their lights.
They descended down into the gloom of the mines, their light glinting off of the silver-veined rock walls. The passage was winding, highly irregular in its descent, and a coating of rock and silver dust coated the walls and the floor.
Ankita winced at the surroundings and began to hover slightly off of the ground, allowing gravity and a few nudges against the wall to propel her in line with the others. She was frightened just as much by the surroundings as she was by the possibility of full-blooded fiends waiting for them down below.
“There’s a light up ahead. Hold on.” Victor said as he held up a hand for the others to stop and cover their own light sources.
Though they worried about persons lurking in the mine, the source of light was anything but. Further down the passage the walls were covered with a sort of semi-organic, phosphorescent silvery moss that gave off a dim glow. It was fine, almost like metallic tinsel. They gawked at it for a moment before shrugging and continuing down, noticing the oddly shaped footprints that tracked through the moss. They didn’t look human. In fact, in places where the moss was trampled they saw the evidence of flecks of dried blood, and the air was despoiled with a growing stench of brimstone.
“Whoa! Stop!” Inva hissed suddenly from the rear of the group. “There’s something on the ground.”
The tiefling stepped out of the shadows like she stepped out of a thick layer of oil; it clung to her for a moment before letting go and giving her up to the light.
“Sh*t… you already stepped over it.” She said before she added a curse in an archaic tongue and slipped past Victor.
Directly beneath Marcus was something that glowed with magic as she whispered a cantrip to make out its nature and patterns. Inva looked at a faint symbol there, a rune traced in the air and the silvery dust of the tunnel floor, holding the powdery metal like iron filings to the lines of force of a loadstone.
“What the hell is that?” Marcus asked as he looked down, finally seeing the outline of the symbol that lurked below his feet.
“It’s a variation on an explosive rune spell. It’s a poor-man’s symbol, but it doesn’t seem to be active for whatever reason. Normally you’d be missing your legs at this point. Bully you.” Inva tapped the blade on her tail against the stone and smirked. “I can’t really tell anything more about it though. It might be keyed to go off for something specific, but I can’t say for certain. Don’t directly touch it and everyone should be fine.”
Inva glanced up to Velkyn and the wizard nodded in agreement. While she had been talking he had whispered the same cantrip and reviewed the quiescent rune. He couldn’t tell anything more about it than her.
And they were fine as they gingerly stepped over the latent rune, all until Francesca crossed its border and it erupted in a discharge of heat and flames. Francesca had been the first of them to cross it who had been good.
“Sh*t!” The fighter said, as she winced against the burns across most of her lower body.
Velkyn was at her side and activating a wand to heal her wounds almost immediately.
“Knew this wand would come in handy.” He said as Francesca slowly recovered.
“Well, now they know that we’re coming. And if not that, then you berks in heavy armor who don’t know the meaning of the word quiet.” Inva smacked a hand against the wall and sighed.
Once they had recovered, bickered over fault, and made certain of no more traps waiting for them, they continued. Fifteen feet down and the passage opened up into a cavern, and ten feet into it the radius of their light was swallowed by darkness.
Velkyn blinked. The darkness wasn’t natural and his own heritage wasn’t piercing the gloom. The darkness was conjured by magic and something lurked behind it, waiting for them and watching.
“Guys, that darkness is magical. There’s something back there.” Velkyn said as he fingered a wand at his belt.
Ankita sighed and stepped forward to the dim strip of failing light, that no-man’s land between them and the fiends. She reached out with her mind, broadcasting to any who might listen.
“Who are you?”
There was an insectile chatter in the conjured darkness and the rustle of wings high above them. Something reached out to answer the sorceress. The voice was septic, a smug snarl of something newly elevated to a position of power.
You’re an odd one… what’s wrong with you?
Absolutely nothing. She replied back to the mind of the other fiend. It felt like a greater ‘loth, but only barely. And if you ever wish to be more than you are now you’d know not to question your superiors in such a way. Am I clear on that?
The figure up in the darkness seemed surprised and momentarily cowed by her tone.
What are you doing here? The sorceress mentally demanded of the being up in the darkness, a Nycaloth she was certain. Show yourselves.
Back in the light, Ankita held up her hand to calm her companions as a trio of black-shelled mezzoloths, their eyes like smoldering coals, stepped out of the magical darkness and the dim figure of a bat-winged nycaloth, nearly seven feet tall, hung from the ceiling as it dispelled the darkness that had cloaked it as well. After a pause, and a glance behind itself, the nycaloth snarled softly up in the gloom as it looked down at the sorceress and her companions.
“We were summoned here under the immediate command of the Yagnaloth, Rezzivus.” The nycaloth said, addressing Ankita and ignoring the others entirely. “We are currently bound to this place till we can recover a series of items.”
“And where is the Yagnaloth?” She asked him skeptically.
“The room behind us.” He replied. “Rezzivus is bound to the chamber there and it is also warded against our kind. We cannot release him, nor gain the item we require. The arcanaloth who had been with us previously would have dispelled the wards, but the bloody b*tch naga outside the mine killed him.”
Victor and Velkyn both narrowed their eyes at the fiend, Inva was conveniently not visible as far as anyone could tell, and the fighters were nervously considering the odds of having to fight two mezzoloths in close combat. The fiends were unimaginative, dumb of rocks, the least manner of yugoloth there was, but they were brutally effective fighters as fodder for the Blood War. If they came to blows they would not be assured of victory.
“You however. You could break the warding I assume, yes?” The ‘loth said with a hungry look in its eyes.
“I don’t have the spell myself, but our wizard does.” Ankita stepped forward and glanced past the fiends and into the room beyond. There, sitting within a glittering circle of runes was a red skinned, massively muscled Yagnaloth, a petty baron as far as ‘loths went. “I think we can work out some manner of deal.”
The sorceress then paused suddenly and looked out across the room. Something wasn’t entirely right. There was one other mind out there in the darkness.
“How many of you are there?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.
The nycaloth raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You see us. Why do you ask?”
“Don’t lie to me.” She said with a shake of her head. “There’s one more of you out there in. What was it I said before, do you remember that?”
What she had said to the fiend, about promotion, about how to address his superiors, that was something she hadn’t spoken out loud, and something she had no intention of getting into with her companions. They didn’t know what she was, and she wasn’t of the mind to tell them given the current situation.
Swathed in shadows, Inva was staring at the bound fiend in the chamber beyond them. The tiefling surreptitiously whispered a cantrip and took a close look at the yugoloth. It glowed with illusion magic and a fierce glow of abjuration. The ‘loths were indeed likely warded from entering the chamber, but there was no Yagnaloth therein.
Inva stepped out behind Ankita and whispered into her ear. “That Yagnaloth isn’t real. It’s an illusion.”
“The nycaloth.” Ankita said into the minds of the others. “He lied to us, probably wants us to walk in there and set off a trap, or whatever else is inside.”
“A Yagnaloth hmm?” Ankita said with a glare up at the nycaloth. “That’s twice now that you’d lied to me. What, you think I wouldn’t notice? Do you take me as stupid?”
“…my apologies. We could still come to some manner of bargain with regards to the wardings on that chamber however. Yes?”
Ankita frowned. “Let me discuss it with my fellows.
”Now. If you’re going to make a move on them, do it now. We can’t trust them not to dick us over on this.” The sorceress’s mental voice echoed to her companions and they sprung into action.
Velkyn was first, gesturing with his fingers and whispering harshly in draconic. The spell leapt from his hands like an electric spark into the midst of the fiends. Nothing happened. Nothing at all happened as it was swallowed up by their innate resistance to magic.
“Damnit!” The half-drow shouted as he withdrew several more feet behind the fighters.
The fiends were next and two of them were suddenly surrounded by rapidly swelling clouds of sickly black vapor that caused the group of stumble and cough. But if the fiends had been hoping for it to incapacitate them, they had been far too hopeful as both Marcus and Francesca charged the closest of the three mezzoloths.
The fiend raised its trident to block the first blow from Francesca but it was stabbed twice by Marcus and given a shallow cut by a backhanded blow from his cohort. Still, much of the damage was healed immediately by the fiend’s supernatural flesh.
The third mezzoloth leaned backwards and hurled its trident at Victor. The black iron weapon whistled through the air and slammed into the cleric’s shoulder. He winced against the pain as he nocked an arrow and shot at the commanding nycaloth, putting off the wound in his shoulder. The arrow that impacted the fiend a moment later was ensorcelled with a magical sleep effect, but though it struck home, the fiend was either immune to it or its magical resistance had once again protected it from harm. Victor cursed.
“Lying son of a b*tch…” Ankita snarled as he pointed to the nycaloth and hurled a bolt of lightning at it with a sudden resounding clap of thunder. The greater yugoloth managed to evade a portion of the bolt and it seemed little more than singed as it glared back at the sorceress.
With a laugh at the sorceress’s ineffectual assault, the nycaloth launched off of the ceiling with a single flap of its wings to hurtle towards Victor. It caught him with one of its hind claws as the cleric tried to dodge and opened a foot long gash across his chest before flapping its wings again to carry it out of the range of attack.
Velkyn was chanting again, calling forth another spell from memory, and once again cursing the undead from earlier that had robbed him of his most potent spells. They would have been supremely useful in their current fight, but as it was he hurled a series of glowing missiles at the nearest mezzoloth, only to again watch them be swallowed up to no effect.
“F*ck this!” The wizard said as he backed up and hid himself as best he could in the darkness.
As Velkyn withdrew and Victor cursed against the pain that threatened to make him black out, Marcus and Francesca had both drawn pistols and taken aim at the mezzoloth in close combat with them. Their guns went off with sharp percussive snaps and the fiend’s chest was nearly ripped open clear to the other side by one of the shots. It staggered and collapsed in a twitching pool of blood, acid and chitin.
The other mezzoloth, seeing its fellow collapse, turned and charged the two fighters as they held empty pistols with no readily available weapon to block its attacks. The fiend jabbed its trident into Francesca’s chest in rapid succession. She screamed in pain as crimson blossomed across her clothing and she stumbled, woozy from the loss of blood.
Ankita was ready to hurl another spell when Velkyn harshly whispered to her out of the dark.
“You have telekinesis. The floor is covered in silver dust. Grab it and shove it down the damn nycaloth’s throat!”
She blinked and looked down at the floor as up above the nycaloth was preparing to swoop down again to rake its claws over another victim. The greater fiend had spread its wings and begun its descent when the dust twitched and stirred, began to eddy like a dustdevil, and then rose up in a funnel to meet and envelope the nycaloth in its burning embrace.
A scream rent the air as the fiend inhaled the cloud of silver and had the metal forced into its eyes, its pores, and the membrane of its wings; every fold and pocket of its flesh was coated in that cloud of agony. It broke off its dive and began to writhe and bat and claw at its own flesh, trying in vain to divest itself of the allergic agony that burned it like a hot brand, like cold iron to a pixie. Ankita laughed at him even as she concentrated on his death.
One of the two remaining mezzoloths brandished its trident and charged the sorceress. It caught her unaware as she continued surrounding the nycaloth with that burning cloud of silver dust. The trident sunk into her chest with a sickening crunch and the mezzoloth snarled in triumph for but a moment before the wounds sealed themselves without any lasting damage.
Stupid, stupid fool! You think you could attack me and accomplish something? Idiot!
Ankita snarled at the insectoid fiend as it realized to an extent just how f*cked it was for attacking what it believed to be a higher caste fiend and thinking it could have gotten away with it. The mezzoloth lowered its trident, clacked its mandibles together in worry and fell back whimpering submissively.
Velkyn put off his shock at the effect of the mezzoloth’s attack on the sorceress as he glared at the cowed fiend from where he stood in the shadows. “Switch sides. NOW.”
The mezzoloth whimpered and glanced at the half-drow wizard, then to the snarling sorceress and finally back to his nominal commander. The nycaloth had stopped screaming in pain and seemed to momentarily phase out of existence, but all was for naught as he lost concentration and his attempt to teleport away to safety failed miserably. The mezzoloth’s morale was breaking.
The other mezzoloth was still blindly following orders and it was preparing to hurl its trident at Velkyn when Garibaldi charged it. He landed a blow that staggered it, disrupted its intended actions, but did little actual harm to the fiend. Still, its guard was down, its position compromised, and moments later Inva’s blade was buried in its back as she emerged out of the shadows.
The fiend winced and stumbled forwards, taking another series of blows to its body as Marcus and a terribly injured Francesca moved up on it as well. They were doing little damage versus the yugoloth’s innate resistance to weapons, but they were slowly wearing it down. However, in the meantime it was savaging them with one or two rapid jabs from its own polearm.
Marcus was caught under the ribs by the fiend and hurled backwards before it swiveled and jabbed the blunt end of the weapon into Garibaldi’s face. Given a momentary respite as Victor backed off to heal his brother and Inva had once more vanished, the fiend glared angrily at its fellow mezzoloth who had simply stood there and not given it aid.
Ankita snarled at the nycaloth as she continued to hold the burning, searing cloud of silver dust around it like a white-hot cloak. It was dying, and there was little it could do to escape the cause of its agony.
“Whose side are you on anyway?” The sorceress said to the whimpering turncoat mezzoloth. “Make a decision now.”
The answer was blunt and succinct, and it was entirely ‘loth: “The side that’s winning.”
There was no time to respond though as the other mezzoloth snarled at its former companion and turned on it. It jabbed at the traitor fiercely, and in turn the traitorous ‘loth leapt at it and slashed at its neck where the chitin plates joined at an exposed angle. The still loyal mezzoloth was doomed though, even if it could defeat the other fiend it was being assaulted by the three fighters at once as they surrounded it. Even though the fighters were all injured, some brutally injured, they had numbers of their side.
But while that fight was drawing to a quick and bloody end, the Nycaloth’s thoughts had turned from escape and self-preservation to revenge. Ankita had only a moment to look up into the flaming figure’s snarling face as it launched out of the darkness and sunk its claws deep into her flesh, grappled her in its embrace.
“Get the f*ck off m…” She screamed into its mind a second before it grabbed her head, breathed in a cloud of silver swirling around it, pressed its lips to hers and forcefully exhaled into her lungs.
Ankita gasped for breath and belched flame out of her mouth in ragged bursts of searing bloody mist as she collapsed onto the ground next to the corpse of the nycaloth as it shuddered and expired. It was dead but it had shared its pain with her in a vicious perversion of a lover’s embrace.
Victor had healed himself and then quickly approached her to offer the same to her, but he was stopped by the mezzoloth as it raised its trident and glanced down at her. It snarled at the cleric and interposed itself as he tried to reach the sorceress.
The yugoloth looked down at her as she struggled to get to her feet on slashed and bleeding limbs, and regain her breath through crippled lungs. It spoke to her obediently, like a puppy seeking the approval of its master. “Mistress… one of your servants wishes to reach you. Shall I allow him?”
“Yes,” she said to it through ragged speech that left spatters of blood and tissue on the ground. “Assume unless I tell you otherwise that they are acting with my approval. They know what they need to do, and they know their place. Be aware of yours.”
The fiend bowed its head nervously and slunk after her like a dog that had been smacked on the top of its muzzle. It did not speak without being asked a question after that point as the cleric chanted a prayer to his deity and began the process of healing the sorceress’s horrific burns and slashes. Still, the fiend exuded a deep disrespect for the cleric, but as the elf was useful, and helping his new mistress, he was to be tolerated.
The others periodically stared at Ankita’s ‘pet mezzoloth’, but so long as it didn’t harm them, they didn’t press the issue. Questions were left lingering in their mind though, even if they didn’t ask them.
In the aftermath of the conflict Inva had walked up to the edge of the chamber the ‘loths had been trying to get them to enter. Past the doorway, the illusory Yagnaloth still strained against the nonexistent wardings that bound it.
“I’ll be right back.” The rogue said as she nodded at Ankita.
The tiefling ducked her head into the chamber and immediately back out.
“No Yagnaloth, but there definitely is something bound in there.” Inva said with a wary chuckle. “They’ve got a very angry looking bone naga coiled in front of the back wall, right in front of a small chest you can see in there.”
“Ankita?” Velkyn asked the sorceress. “Can you snag that chest in there without actually walking in? If we can avoid having to actually fight that thing…”
She nodded. “I’ll try, but it depends on how far away and how heavy it is. But given that I used half my decent spells just now, I’m not in the mood for another immediate fight.”
A minute or so later, the illusion faded to reveal a coiled mass of serpentine ribs and vertebrae topped with a humanoid skull, greenish light leaking from the eye sockets. Ankita didn’t look at it as she reached out a hand and delicately tried to grab hold of the chest behind it. The distance was longer than she was used to, and the box was heavy. She managed to make it rattle, but she couldn’t fully lift it up. And even if she could, she might not be able to lift it up high enough to avoid the naga simply snatching it away.
Victor looked at the bone naga. The wyrm was very obviously undead, though he wasn’t entirely sure how powerful it might be and how resistant to his deity granted powers over such creatures it was. Still, it was worth a try.
“I can’t turn undead many more times while we’re here, but I’m going to try and hold this thing at bay. I really don’t think I can destroy it, but if I can manage to hold it back, do you think you can run inside and grab the chest near it Inva?”
The tiefling looked at the cleric askance. “You turn it first. And if you manage it, then I’ll run.”
Victor nodded and held out his holy symbol towards the undead naga. He shouted an invocation to his deity and the room was brilliantly lit by a rush of sunlight that streamed forth and pinned the serpent against the back wall of its chamber. The wyrm screamed and hissed as it tried to edge away from the light. It seemed incapable of taking any other action at all as Inva dashed into the room, snatched the box, and then bolted out as fast as she could.
‘And I won’t even get into a discussion with you about which god is or isn’t the ‘right’ one. Another time.’ Inva thought as she exited the room and held up the chest once Victor stopped channeling the power of his deity.
“Another one down.” Inva said as she popped the lock on the chest and held up a slim metallic tile.
Behind them, the bone naga raged impotently as its prize was snatched from it without it having so much as a chance to fight them.
“Not bad.” Victor said with a grin. “One more and we can finally get out of this happy little place.”
Back in the central chamber they looked at the final door and hesitantly approached it. The mezzoloth was still behaving like a fearful, loyal pet to Ankita, still treating her companions wordlessly like they were chattel and nothing more. It was protective of the sorceress even as it seemed to be in awe and fear of her.
“Alright… I’ll go first.” Victor said as he glanced at the fiend that had stepped between the door and Ankita, visually prompting the others to enter first and expose themselves to any danger that might lurk within.
Ankita shrugged and gave an apologetic look to the others as they stepped into the passage beyond. Eventually the fiend would become a liability, and before that happened she would need to find some way to be rid of it. Besides, she had no special loyalty to it other than it was currently useful to her, a mentality that probably came right from the same source of her heritage that had also birthed the ‘loth. For the moment the other half of that lineage was being quiet except for a disdain for the fiend that would eventually cause it’s death most likely. In that final respect, both halves of her essence were in agreement on what would happen.
The passage opened into a small room with three iron doors, each with a still, silent figure standing before them. The figures were golems, one before each door, guarding them presumably and currently inactive as they gathered into the cloistered confines of the room. The first golem was an awkward, lopsided aggregate of the stitched and sutured flesh of a dozen races, many of them only vaguely compatible. The second was a convoluted mass of dangling chains, some of which seemed to be taught and rigid, allowing the thing to stand and keep its mass at shoulder height. Finally, the third golem was a rough humanoid carved of stone, male, but with vague serpentine features.
“I hate golems. Please don’t tell me I have to fight them.” Velkyn said.
“Second that opinion.” Ankita muttered. “Bloody magic immune wastes of jink.”
“Consider that opinion shared.” Inva added as she glanced at the lack of handles or locks on the doors.
“So…” Victor said. “Three doors, three golems. Flesh, chain, and stone.”
“The stone one.” Ankita pointed at it. “What sort of thing is it carved to be? Yuan’ti?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Velkyn said. “Look at the hair, there’re snakes carved in there. Some Yuan’ti have that, but if you ask me, it looks like a male medusa, a meadar.”
“Male medusa? Aren’t they all female?” Ankita asked.
“Then you wouldn’t have a species if they were, unless you’re a Night Hag, and then nobody knows how it works.” Velkyn replied.
“And nobody wants to find out either.” Victor said with a shudder.
“And then there’s the joy of yugoloth gender distinction.” Inva said with a glance at the mezzoloth.
“Please, let’s not discuss that.” Ankita said wearily.
The mezzoloth snarled and drooled a thick stream of mildly acid mucus onto the ground. It was loyal but it was dumb; tact and subtlety was lost on the fiend.
Marcus approached one of the doors, the one in front of which stood the flesh golem. He’d meant to examine the door itself, but as he approached, the golem suddenly animated with a crackle of electrical discharge.
“I do not have what you want.” The patchwork golem said in a slow, warped and stilted voice.
It held out its hand and the door behind it opened into a small room. Nothing was visible inside.
Marcus stepped back abruptly, and as he did, the golem fell silent and inanimate once more, and the door closed again.
“Well, at least one of them won’t kill us for looking.” Marcus said with relief.
“Doesn’t mean that the rooms are safe. Or that they won’t make a move after we walk inside.” Inva remarked.
“True.” The fighter said as he backed up.
Victor approached the stone golem. It animated and the door behind it opened.
“I know who has what you seek.” It said with a smile. Beyond it was not a room but something else, though they couldn’t easily tell just what immediately.
“I’m up for at least looking. We can always come back if we don’t find it.” Victor said.
They stepped warily through the door, half expecting the golem to suddenly attack them, but it didn’t. Still, despite that, the mezzoloth was turned towards the construct with its trident held to strike out at it even after they had all passed into the chamber beyond.
Rather than a passage or a small room, they had emerged into a cavern once more, though it was nowhere near the size of some others that they had seen during the last few hours. The terrain was a study in sloping hills, each covered by a carpet of thick, dense lichen or a similar plant that sprouted up from the metallic surface. Further ahead, crowning some of the hills were actual trees, themselves seeming to sport a carpet of lichen, possibly surviving in symbiosis with the smaller plants.
But there were also other figures that dotted the landscape other than the trees. Statues, or the crumbled remains of statues; they dotted the hills in small clusters. They were carved into various creatures of a dozen different races, mostly humanoids, but some more exotic types, all mortal and all strikingly lifelike. All of them were either smiling and looking forward or half averting their gaze from something or shielding their eyes with limbs or shields.
“The meadar.” Inva said. “Sh*t, those aren’t statues. There’s probably a medusa here.”
They exchanged wary glances as they slowly crept up the hill and peered over the lip and into the vale beyond. In the bowl of the valley, nestled between a series of rolling hills they saw a small clearing strewn with statues and the bits of refuse that were the telltale signs of occupation. At the far side of the clearing was a darkened cave mouth out of which the soft, eerily pleasing sounds of music or humming seemed to emanate from, beguiling almost as it carried softly across the valley to their ears.
Two men, naked but for loincloths, and armed with spears, stood within the clearing, one of them sitting and smiling as he watched two young children play. Both of the men had snakes entwined with their long dark hair, and their skin had an odd, silvery-green tone to it, almost like a sheen of scales. Of the children, there was a young boy who was strikingly similar to the two adult men, and a young girl had her back turned as she played with a tiny rag doll and hummed in a singsong fashion like the same sounds coming from the cave. The young girl’s hair was a mass of tiny wriggling serpents.
It took them over two hours to make their way from the ruins of the keep and its petitioner king over to the edge of the frozen silver forest where it rose into hills and up towards the supposed lair of the great golden serpent. As they wrapped their cloaks tighter against the bitter chill, the gargoyles flew overhead, watching them out of curiosity rather than any malice.
“I’m not looking forward to this. Another group in here with us changes everything.” Velkyn said as he shivered in his cloak.
“I am.” Inva said as she tapped the edge of her sword against the sheen of ice on an adjacent tree and then skewering a fallen, tarnished husk of one of its silvery apples.
“Well, it might not come to that, and it might even help actually. Maybe they have the key from beyond the other door that we haven’t been through yet.” Victor mused.
“Or it might end up that we’re being pitted against one another for the amusement of someone.” Ankita muttered. The cold didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest and at times she was forgetting to pretend to shiver.
“I find that much more likely given what we’ve seen so far.” Marcus said as they continued walking.
Gradually the forest thinned, the path rose, and they stood before the approach to the mouth of the mines and the lair of the twin wyrms. The gargoyles no longer flew overhead. They were wary of the presence of the serpents that they had spoken of.
“Damn there’s been a fight here…” Victor said as they walked up into the carnage.
Around them, the evidence of a recent battle was obvious. The remnants of a fierce display of magic were visible; charred patches of terrain, melted silver that had cooled into misshapen puddles on the grown, the scent of cinders and ozone and the bitter smell of acid. And then there were the two corpses at the heart of it. Both of them lay in the open space that stood before the yawning entrance of the abandoned mine.
The so-called wyrm was massive; though rather than a giant snake or a true dragon, it had the head of a human woman. The ‘wyrm’ was a naga. The corpse was scaled from head to tail in a glittering patina of emerald and gold, though blue-black blood discolored it where it pooled according to the whim of gravity and where it gave way into the viscera in bloody gashes and angry bruises from physical blows. But though its hide was marked by the gashes of blades and spears and magic, it seemed to have been killed by whatever retributive spell seemed to have erupted before or upon the death of the second corpse that lay near it in a veritable smoking crater, seemingly a wizard.
That other corpse was little more than a charred husk, possibly from some final attack of the naga or perhaps from its own dying contingencies. The man, if it had been male, was dressed in the remains of a black robe, sullied with soot and bits of ice. Portions of the corpse were gone entirely as if they had been melted away by acid, but from what they saw, he had not been human. Bits of fur remained on the body and the blackened, fire seared skull was elongated and vaguely canine.
“A gnoll perhaps?” Victor said, looking for some sort of holy symbol and failing to find one. “They’ve got a known practice of being led by their shamans, so this might have been one of them.”
Inva stepped around it, tapping the burnt remains of its robes with the tip of her sword.
She frowned. “Whatever it was there’s not a bent copper left on the body. Either is wasn’t carrying anything or their companions stripped them clean after they died.”
“The wyrm though, it’s a guardian naga.” Velkyn said as he looked at the corpse.
“You say that like it’s strange. Why?” Marcus asked curiously.
“Well, they’re not evil as far as I know.” The wizard replied. “Lawful yes, but not necessarily good. And the petitioner king didn’t strike me as an evil type either. Probably a dispute over something that didn’t really amount to malice by either of them.”
“Kingdoms have been to war over less, believe me.” Marcus said with a sigh.
For a few more minutes they clustered around the body, giving it a more detailed examination and looking for track or other evidence on the ground that might tell them about the other group that was presumably already in the mines.
Ankita said nothing, but she knew how wrong they were. The body wasn’t damaged by anything the naga had done. Rather, the body was dissolving on its own, leaking back in pieces across the planes to its home, dissolving into a puddle of acid and manifest evil as it broke down into its metaphysical constituents. Far from being a gnoll or some other monstrous humanoid, the wizard had been an arcanaloth.
Though she said nothing, the metaphorical wheels in her head were spinning like those of a train gone off its track and hurtling down with the ragged flow of gravity over the edge of a cliff. Thoughts came unbidden to her, thoughts of family, the smiling jackal’s countenance of her father, the withering and snarling disdain of her grandfather; she saw all of that reflected back up to her in the eyes of the dead.
Looking past the corpse and into the yawning mouth of the cave, she worried what they would find past it, down into the darkness. How would those things react to her? And how would her current companions react to such?
***
“Ankita, you ok?” Velkyn said, nudging the sorceress from her thoughts.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” She said as she brushed it off and walked towards the cave entrance where the others were waiting.
The fighters went first with Marcus, Francesca, and Garibaldi heading into the darkness. Victor went next with a conjured globe of light fixed to the tip of his mace. Last were the two casters standing behind the more heavily armored members of the group, and finally Inva slunk behind them all, intentionally staying out of the fringes of their lights.
They descended down into the gloom of the mines, their light glinting off of the silver-veined rock walls. The passage was winding, highly irregular in its descent, and a coating of rock and silver dust coated the walls and the floor.
Ankita winced at the surroundings and began to hover slightly off of the ground, allowing gravity and a few nudges against the wall to propel her in line with the others. She was frightened just as much by the surroundings as she was by the possibility of full-blooded fiends waiting for them down below.
“There’s a light up ahead. Hold on.” Victor said as he held up a hand for the others to stop and cover their own light sources.
Though they worried about persons lurking in the mine, the source of light was anything but. Further down the passage the walls were covered with a sort of semi-organic, phosphorescent silvery moss that gave off a dim glow. It was fine, almost like metallic tinsel. They gawked at it for a moment before shrugging and continuing down, noticing the oddly shaped footprints that tracked through the moss. They didn’t look human. In fact, in places where the moss was trampled they saw the evidence of flecks of dried blood, and the air was despoiled with a growing stench of brimstone.
“Whoa! Stop!” Inva hissed suddenly from the rear of the group. “There’s something on the ground.”
The tiefling stepped out of the shadows like she stepped out of a thick layer of oil; it clung to her for a moment before letting go and giving her up to the light.
“Sh*t… you already stepped over it.” She said before she added a curse in an archaic tongue and slipped past Victor.
Directly beneath Marcus was something that glowed with magic as she whispered a cantrip to make out its nature and patterns. Inva looked at a faint symbol there, a rune traced in the air and the silvery dust of the tunnel floor, holding the powdery metal like iron filings to the lines of force of a loadstone.
“What the hell is that?” Marcus asked as he looked down, finally seeing the outline of the symbol that lurked below his feet.
“It’s a variation on an explosive rune spell. It’s a poor-man’s symbol, but it doesn’t seem to be active for whatever reason. Normally you’d be missing your legs at this point. Bully you.” Inva tapped the blade on her tail against the stone and smirked. “I can’t really tell anything more about it though. It might be keyed to go off for something specific, but I can’t say for certain. Don’t directly touch it and everyone should be fine.”
Inva glanced up to Velkyn and the wizard nodded in agreement. While she had been talking he had whispered the same cantrip and reviewed the quiescent rune. He couldn’t tell anything more about it than her.
And they were fine as they gingerly stepped over the latent rune, all until Francesca crossed its border and it erupted in a discharge of heat and flames. Francesca had been the first of them to cross it who had been good.
“Sh*t!” The fighter said, as she winced against the burns across most of her lower body.
Velkyn was at her side and activating a wand to heal her wounds almost immediately.
“Knew this wand would come in handy.” He said as Francesca slowly recovered.
“Well, now they know that we’re coming. And if not that, then you berks in heavy armor who don’t know the meaning of the word quiet.” Inva smacked a hand against the wall and sighed.
Once they had recovered, bickered over fault, and made certain of no more traps waiting for them, they continued. Fifteen feet down and the passage opened up into a cavern, and ten feet into it the radius of their light was swallowed by darkness.
Velkyn blinked. The darkness wasn’t natural and his own heritage wasn’t piercing the gloom. The darkness was conjured by magic and something lurked behind it, waiting for them and watching.
“Guys, that darkness is magical. There’s something back there.” Velkyn said as he fingered a wand at his belt.
Ankita sighed and stepped forward to the dim strip of failing light, that no-man’s land between them and the fiends. She reached out with her mind, broadcasting to any who might listen.
“Who are you?”
There was an insectile chatter in the conjured darkness and the rustle of wings high above them. Something reached out to answer the sorceress. The voice was septic, a smug snarl of something newly elevated to a position of power.
You’re an odd one… what’s wrong with you?
Absolutely nothing. She replied back to the mind of the other fiend. It felt like a greater ‘loth, but only barely. And if you ever wish to be more than you are now you’d know not to question your superiors in such a way. Am I clear on that?
The figure up in the darkness seemed surprised and momentarily cowed by her tone.
What are you doing here? The sorceress mentally demanded of the being up in the darkness, a Nycaloth she was certain. Show yourselves.
Back in the light, Ankita held up her hand to calm her companions as a trio of black-shelled mezzoloths, their eyes like smoldering coals, stepped out of the magical darkness and the dim figure of a bat-winged nycaloth, nearly seven feet tall, hung from the ceiling as it dispelled the darkness that had cloaked it as well. After a pause, and a glance behind itself, the nycaloth snarled softly up in the gloom as it looked down at the sorceress and her companions.
“We were summoned here under the immediate command of the Yagnaloth, Rezzivus.” The nycaloth said, addressing Ankita and ignoring the others entirely. “We are currently bound to this place till we can recover a series of items.”
“And where is the Yagnaloth?” She asked him skeptically.
“The room behind us.” He replied. “Rezzivus is bound to the chamber there and it is also warded against our kind. We cannot release him, nor gain the item we require. The arcanaloth who had been with us previously would have dispelled the wards, but the bloody b*tch naga outside the mine killed him.”
Victor and Velkyn both narrowed their eyes at the fiend, Inva was conveniently not visible as far as anyone could tell, and the fighters were nervously considering the odds of having to fight two mezzoloths in close combat. The fiends were unimaginative, dumb of rocks, the least manner of yugoloth there was, but they were brutally effective fighters as fodder for the Blood War. If they came to blows they would not be assured of victory.
“You however. You could break the warding I assume, yes?” The ‘loth said with a hungry look in its eyes.
“I don’t have the spell myself, but our wizard does.” Ankita stepped forward and glanced past the fiends and into the room beyond. There, sitting within a glittering circle of runes was a red skinned, massively muscled Yagnaloth, a petty baron as far as ‘loths went. “I think we can work out some manner of deal.”
The sorceress then paused suddenly and looked out across the room. Something wasn’t entirely right. There was one other mind out there in the darkness.
“How many of you are there?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.
The nycaloth raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You see us. Why do you ask?”
“Don’t lie to me.” She said with a shake of her head. “There’s one more of you out there in. What was it I said before, do you remember that?”
What she had said to the fiend, about promotion, about how to address his superiors, that was something she hadn’t spoken out loud, and something she had no intention of getting into with her companions. They didn’t know what she was, and she wasn’t of the mind to tell them given the current situation.
Swathed in shadows, Inva was staring at the bound fiend in the chamber beyond them. The tiefling surreptitiously whispered a cantrip and took a close look at the yugoloth. It glowed with illusion magic and a fierce glow of abjuration. The ‘loths were indeed likely warded from entering the chamber, but there was no Yagnaloth therein.
Inva stepped out behind Ankita and whispered into her ear. “That Yagnaloth isn’t real. It’s an illusion.”
“The nycaloth.” Ankita said into the minds of the others. “He lied to us, probably wants us to walk in there and set off a trap, or whatever else is inside.”
“A Yagnaloth hmm?” Ankita said with a glare up at the nycaloth. “That’s twice now that you’d lied to me. What, you think I wouldn’t notice? Do you take me as stupid?”
“…my apologies. We could still come to some manner of bargain with regards to the wardings on that chamber however. Yes?”
Ankita frowned. “Let me discuss it with my fellows.
”Now. If you’re going to make a move on them, do it now. We can’t trust them not to dick us over on this.” The sorceress’s mental voice echoed to her companions and they sprung into action.
Velkyn was first, gesturing with his fingers and whispering harshly in draconic. The spell leapt from his hands like an electric spark into the midst of the fiends. Nothing happened. Nothing at all happened as it was swallowed up by their innate resistance to magic.
“Damnit!” The half-drow shouted as he withdrew several more feet behind the fighters.
The fiends were next and two of them were suddenly surrounded by rapidly swelling clouds of sickly black vapor that caused the group of stumble and cough. But if the fiends had been hoping for it to incapacitate them, they had been far too hopeful as both Marcus and Francesca charged the closest of the three mezzoloths.
The fiend raised its trident to block the first blow from Francesca but it was stabbed twice by Marcus and given a shallow cut by a backhanded blow from his cohort. Still, much of the damage was healed immediately by the fiend’s supernatural flesh.
The third mezzoloth leaned backwards and hurled its trident at Victor. The black iron weapon whistled through the air and slammed into the cleric’s shoulder. He winced against the pain as he nocked an arrow and shot at the commanding nycaloth, putting off the wound in his shoulder. The arrow that impacted the fiend a moment later was ensorcelled with a magical sleep effect, but though it struck home, the fiend was either immune to it or its magical resistance had once again protected it from harm. Victor cursed.
“Lying son of a b*tch…” Ankita snarled as he pointed to the nycaloth and hurled a bolt of lightning at it with a sudden resounding clap of thunder. The greater yugoloth managed to evade a portion of the bolt and it seemed little more than singed as it glared back at the sorceress.
With a laugh at the sorceress’s ineffectual assault, the nycaloth launched off of the ceiling with a single flap of its wings to hurtle towards Victor. It caught him with one of its hind claws as the cleric tried to dodge and opened a foot long gash across his chest before flapping its wings again to carry it out of the range of attack.
Velkyn was chanting again, calling forth another spell from memory, and once again cursing the undead from earlier that had robbed him of his most potent spells. They would have been supremely useful in their current fight, but as it was he hurled a series of glowing missiles at the nearest mezzoloth, only to again watch them be swallowed up to no effect.
“F*ck this!” The wizard said as he backed up and hid himself as best he could in the darkness.
As Velkyn withdrew and Victor cursed against the pain that threatened to make him black out, Marcus and Francesca had both drawn pistols and taken aim at the mezzoloth in close combat with them. Their guns went off with sharp percussive snaps and the fiend’s chest was nearly ripped open clear to the other side by one of the shots. It staggered and collapsed in a twitching pool of blood, acid and chitin.
The other mezzoloth, seeing its fellow collapse, turned and charged the two fighters as they held empty pistols with no readily available weapon to block its attacks. The fiend jabbed its trident into Francesca’s chest in rapid succession. She screamed in pain as crimson blossomed across her clothing and she stumbled, woozy from the loss of blood.
Ankita was ready to hurl another spell when Velkyn harshly whispered to her out of the dark.
“You have telekinesis. The floor is covered in silver dust. Grab it and shove it down the damn nycaloth’s throat!”
She blinked and looked down at the floor as up above the nycaloth was preparing to swoop down again to rake its claws over another victim. The greater fiend had spread its wings and begun its descent when the dust twitched and stirred, began to eddy like a dustdevil, and then rose up in a funnel to meet and envelope the nycaloth in its burning embrace.
A scream rent the air as the fiend inhaled the cloud of silver and had the metal forced into its eyes, its pores, and the membrane of its wings; every fold and pocket of its flesh was coated in that cloud of agony. It broke off its dive and began to writhe and bat and claw at its own flesh, trying in vain to divest itself of the allergic agony that burned it like a hot brand, like cold iron to a pixie. Ankita laughed at him even as she concentrated on his death.
One of the two remaining mezzoloths brandished its trident and charged the sorceress. It caught her unaware as she continued surrounding the nycaloth with that burning cloud of silver dust. The trident sunk into her chest with a sickening crunch and the mezzoloth snarled in triumph for but a moment before the wounds sealed themselves without any lasting damage.
Stupid, stupid fool! You think you could attack me and accomplish something? Idiot!
Ankita snarled at the insectoid fiend as it realized to an extent just how f*cked it was for attacking what it believed to be a higher caste fiend and thinking it could have gotten away with it. The mezzoloth lowered its trident, clacked its mandibles together in worry and fell back whimpering submissively.
Velkyn put off his shock at the effect of the mezzoloth’s attack on the sorceress as he glared at the cowed fiend from where he stood in the shadows. “Switch sides. NOW.”
The mezzoloth whimpered and glanced at the half-drow wizard, then to the snarling sorceress and finally back to his nominal commander. The nycaloth had stopped screaming in pain and seemed to momentarily phase out of existence, but all was for naught as he lost concentration and his attempt to teleport away to safety failed miserably. The mezzoloth’s morale was breaking.
The other mezzoloth was still blindly following orders and it was preparing to hurl its trident at Velkyn when Garibaldi charged it. He landed a blow that staggered it, disrupted its intended actions, but did little actual harm to the fiend. Still, its guard was down, its position compromised, and moments later Inva’s blade was buried in its back as she emerged out of the shadows.
The fiend winced and stumbled forwards, taking another series of blows to its body as Marcus and a terribly injured Francesca moved up on it as well. They were doing little damage versus the yugoloth’s innate resistance to weapons, but they were slowly wearing it down. However, in the meantime it was savaging them with one or two rapid jabs from its own polearm.
Marcus was caught under the ribs by the fiend and hurled backwards before it swiveled and jabbed the blunt end of the weapon into Garibaldi’s face. Given a momentary respite as Victor backed off to heal his brother and Inva had once more vanished, the fiend glared angrily at its fellow mezzoloth who had simply stood there and not given it aid.
Ankita snarled at the nycaloth as she continued to hold the burning, searing cloud of silver dust around it like a white-hot cloak. It was dying, and there was little it could do to escape the cause of its agony.
“Whose side are you on anyway?” The sorceress said to the whimpering turncoat mezzoloth. “Make a decision now.”
The answer was blunt and succinct, and it was entirely ‘loth: “The side that’s winning.”
There was no time to respond though as the other mezzoloth snarled at its former companion and turned on it. It jabbed at the traitor fiercely, and in turn the traitorous ‘loth leapt at it and slashed at its neck where the chitin plates joined at an exposed angle. The still loyal mezzoloth was doomed though, even if it could defeat the other fiend it was being assaulted by the three fighters at once as they surrounded it. Even though the fighters were all injured, some brutally injured, they had numbers of their side.
But while that fight was drawing to a quick and bloody end, the Nycaloth’s thoughts had turned from escape and self-preservation to revenge. Ankita had only a moment to look up into the flaming figure’s snarling face as it launched out of the darkness and sunk its claws deep into her flesh, grappled her in its embrace.
“Get the f*ck off m…” She screamed into its mind a second before it grabbed her head, breathed in a cloud of silver swirling around it, pressed its lips to hers and forcefully exhaled into her lungs.
Ankita gasped for breath and belched flame out of her mouth in ragged bursts of searing bloody mist as she collapsed onto the ground next to the corpse of the nycaloth as it shuddered and expired. It was dead but it had shared its pain with her in a vicious perversion of a lover’s embrace.
Victor had healed himself and then quickly approached her to offer the same to her, but he was stopped by the mezzoloth as it raised its trident and glanced down at her. It snarled at the cleric and interposed itself as he tried to reach the sorceress.
The yugoloth looked down at her as she struggled to get to her feet on slashed and bleeding limbs, and regain her breath through crippled lungs. It spoke to her obediently, like a puppy seeking the approval of its master. “Mistress… one of your servants wishes to reach you. Shall I allow him?”
“Yes,” she said to it through ragged speech that left spatters of blood and tissue on the ground. “Assume unless I tell you otherwise that they are acting with my approval. They know what they need to do, and they know their place. Be aware of yours.”
The fiend bowed its head nervously and slunk after her like a dog that had been smacked on the top of its muzzle. It did not speak without being asked a question after that point as the cleric chanted a prayer to his deity and began the process of healing the sorceress’s horrific burns and slashes. Still, the fiend exuded a deep disrespect for the cleric, but as the elf was useful, and helping his new mistress, he was to be tolerated.
The others periodically stared at Ankita’s ‘pet mezzoloth’, but so long as it didn’t harm them, they didn’t press the issue. Questions were left lingering in their mind though, even if they didn’t ask them.
In the aftermath of the conflict Inva had walked up to the edge of the chamber the ‘loths had been trying to get them to enter. Past the doorway, the illusory Yagnaloth still strained against the nonexistent wardings that bound it.
“I’ll be right back.” The rogue said as she nodded at Ankita.
The tiefling ducked her head into the chamber and immediately back out.
“No Yagnaloth, but there definitely is something bound in there.” Inva said with a wary chuckle. “They’ve got a very angry looking bone naga coiled in front of the back wall, right in front of a small chest you can see in there.”
“Ankita?” Velkyn asked the sorceress. “Can you snag that chest in there without actually walking in? If we can avoid having to actually fight that thing…”
She nodded. “I’ll try, but it depends on how far away and how heavy it is. But given that I used half my decent spells just now, I’m not in the mood for another immediate fight.”
A minute or so later, the illusion faded to reveal a coiled mass of serpentine ribs and vertebrae topped with a humanoid skull, greenish light leaking from the eye sockets. Ankita didn’t look at it as she reached out a hand and delicately tried to grab hold of the chest behind it. The distance was longer than she was used to, and the box was heavy. She managed to make it rattle, but she couldn’t fully lift it up. And even if she could, she might not be able to lift it up high enough to avoid the naga simply snatching it away.
Victor looked at the bone naga. The wyrm was very obviously undead, though he wasn’t entirely sure how powerful it might be and how resistant to his deity granted powers over such creatures it was. Still, it was worth a try.
“I can’t turn undead many more times while we’re here, but I’m going to try and hold this thing at bay. I really don’t think I can destroy it, but if I can manage to hold it back, do you think you can run inside and grab the chest near it Inva?”
The tiefling looked at the cleric askance. “You turn it first. And if you manage it, then I’ll run.”
Victor nodded and held out his holy symbol towards the undead naga. He shouted an invocation to his deity and the room was brilliantly lit by a rush of sunlight that streamed forth and pinned the serpent against the back wall of its chamber. The wyrm screamed and hissed as it tried to edge away from the light. It seemed incapable of taking any other action at all as Inva dashed into the room, snatched the box, and then bolted out as fast as she could.
‘And I won’t even get into a discussion with you about which god is or isn’t the ‘right’ one. Another time.’ Inva thought as she exited the room and held up the chest once Victor stopped channeling the power of his deity.
“Another one down.” Inva said as she popped the lock on the chest and held up a slim metallic tile.
Behind them, the bone naga raged impotently as its prize was snatched from it without it having so much as a chance to fight them.
“Not bad.” Victor said with a grin. “One more and we can finally get out of this happy little place.”
***
Back in the central chamber they looked at the final door and hesitantly approached it. The mezzoloth was still behaving like a fearful, loyal pet to Ankita, still treating her companions wordlessly like they were chattel and nothing more. It was protective of the sorceress even as it seemed to be in awe and fear of her.
“Alright… I’ll go first.” Victor said as he glanced at the fiend that had stepped between the door and Ankita, visually prompting the others to enter first and expose themselves to any danger that might lurk within.
Ankita shrugged and gave an apologetic look to the others as they stepped into the passage beyond. Eventually the fiend would become a liability, and before that happened she would need to find some way to be rid of it. Besides, she had no special loyalty to it other than it was currently useful to her, a mentality that probably came right from the same source of her heritage that had also birthed the ‘loth. For the moment the other half of that lineage was being quiet except for a disdain for the fiend that would eventually cause it’s death most likely. In that final respect, both halves of her essence were in agreement on what would happen.
The passage opened into a small room with three iron doors, each with a still, silent figure standing before them. The figures were golems, one before each door, guarding them presumably and currently inactive as they gathered into the cloistered confines of the room. The first golem was an awkward, lopsided aggregate of the stitched and sutured flesh of a dozen races, many of them only vaguely compatible. The second was a convoluted mass of dangling chains, some of which seemed to be taught and rigid, allowing the thing to stand and keep its mass at shoulder height. Finally, the third golem was a rough humanoid carved of stone, male, but with vague serpentine features.
“I hate golems. Please don’t tell me I have to fight them.” Velkyn said.
“Second that opinion.” Ankita muttered. “Bloody magic immune wastes of jink.”
“Consider that opinion shared.” Inva added as she glanced at the lack of handles or locks on the doors.
“So…” Victor said. “Three doors, three golems. Flesh, chain, and stone.”
“The stone one.” Ankita pointed at it. “What sort of thing is it carved to be? Yuan’ti?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Velkyn said. “Look at the hair, there’re snakes carved in there. Some Yuan’ti have that, but if you ask me, it looks like a male medusa, a meadar.”
“Male medusa? Aren’t they all female?” Ankita asked.
“Then you wouldn’t have a species if they were, unless you’re a Night Hag, and then nobody knows how it works.” Velkyn replied.
“And nobody wants to find out either.” Victor said with a shudder.
“And then there’s the joy of yugoloth gender distinction.” Inva said with a glance at the mezzoloth.
“Please, let’s not discuss that.” Ankita said wearily.
The mezzoloth snarled and drooled a thick stream of mildly acid mucus onto the ground. It was loyal but it was dumb; tact and subtlety was lost on the fiend.
Marcus approached one of the doors, the one in front of which stood the flesh golem. He’d meant to examine the door itself, but as he approached, the golem suddenly animated with a crackle of electrical discharge.
“I do not have what you want.” The patchwork golem said in a slow, warped and stilted voice.
It held out its hand and the door behind it opened into a small room. Nothing was visible inside.
Marcus stepped back abruptly, and as he did, the golem fell silent and inanimate once more, and the door closed again.
“Well, at least one of them won’t kill us for looking.” Marcus said with relief.
“Doesn’t mean that the rooms are safe. Or that they won’t make a move after we walk inside.” Inva remarked.
“True.” The fighter said as he backed up.
Victor approached the stone golem. It animated and the door behind it opened.
“I know who has what you seek.” It said with a smile. Beyond it was not a room but something else, though they couldn’t easily tell just what immediately.
“I’m up for at least looking. We can always come back if we don’t find it.” Victor said.
They stepped warily through the door, half expecting the golem to suddenly attack them, but it didn’t. Still, despite that, the mezzoloth was turned towards the construct with its trident held to strike out at it even after they had all passed into the chamber beyond.
Rather than a passage or a small room, they had emerged into a cavern once more, though it was nowhere near the size of some others that they had seen during the last few hours. The terrain was a study in sloping hills, each covered by a carpet of thick, dense lichen or a similar plant that sprouted up from the metallic surface. Further ahead, crowning some of the hills were actual trees, themselves seeming to sport a carpet of lichen, possibly surviving in symbiosis with the smaller plants.
But there were also other figures that dotted the landscape other than the trees. Statues, or the crumbled remains of statues; they dotted the hills in small clusters. They were carved into various creatures of a dozen different races, mostly humanoids, but some more exotic types, all mortal and all strikingly lifelike. All of them were either smiling and looking forward or half averting their gaze from something or shielding their eyes with limbs or shields.
“The meadar.” Inva said. “Sh*t, those aren’t statues. There’s probably a medusa here.”
They exchanged wary glances as they slowly crept up the hill and peered over the lip and into the vale beyond. In the bowl of the valley, nestled between a series of rolling hills they saw a small clearing strewn with statues and the bits of refuse that were the telltale signs of occupation. At the far side of the clearing was a darkened cave mouth out of which the soft, eerily pleasing sounds of music or humming seemed to emanate from, beguiling almost as it carried softly across the valley to their ears.
Two men, naked but for loincloths, and armed with spears, stood within the clearing, one of them sitting and smiling as he watched two young children play. Both of the men had snakes entwined with their long dark hair, and their skin had an odd, silvery-green tone to it, almost like a sheen of scales. Of the children, there was a young boy who was strikingly similar to the two adult men, and a young girl had her back turned as she played with a tiny rag doll and hummed in a singsong fashion like the same sounds coming from the cave. The young girl’s hair was a mass of tiny wriggling serpents.
***
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