A short respite, part 4 of 4
As the arcane powers of the wizard's magic hit him, Torn felt the strength draining out of him. And not only was he feeling weaker, but clumsier, more fatigued and stupider at the same time. Trepat, who came around the corner at the time noticed that he had never seen this particular spell, „affliction“ before- and kept it in mind in case he would want to use it himself, one of these days.
The rest of the friends rushed in and the armored humanoids intercepted them, positioning themselves between the adventurers and the evil mage. Ben, who was in his spider form, the weakened Halforc and Jan engaged them in melee and their opponents fought with an effective but soulless precision.
While Trepat supported the others with spells, Niklas tumbled past their direct opponents, too quick for them to react and now he found himself in front of the wizard. Before the spellcaster knew what was coming he hit him with his steel-like fists. In return the mage, who was now standing with his back to the wall cast another spell. Now the monk felt magical powers tug at him and as he was overcome by a feeling of vertigo he noticed that the wizard in front of him was growing rapidly to gigantic proportions. But no- the buildings were growing as well. The wizard isn’t growing, I am shrinking, Niklas mind screamed at the monk. In spite of his training he wanted to scream out as well, only to find that his voice failed him and he barely managed a croaking sound. Looking at what had become of his hand and being able to look at everything around him, Niklas realized the truth- he had been transformed into a toad.
Meanwhile, Jan had managed to defeat one of the armored opponents, and to his surprise, he saw that the pieces of armor simply fell loudly to the ground- empty. In fact, the armors seemed to have a life of their own!
Seeing that the wizard had dispatched of the monk, Ben used the gap that had opened up and attacked the spellcaster now as well, biting at him with his poisoned fang, while from behind, Trepat kept on attacking the wizard with his melf’s acid arrow, knowing that the constant burning agony that the acid created made it hard to concentrate on properly casting spells.
Jan kept on fighting with the animated armors as Torn advanced on the spellcaster as well. He simply tried to tumble past his opponent, as he had done many times before, but since he was still suffering from the magical affliction, he slipped on the wet floor and the animated armor cut him a deep gashing wound into his arm with it’s blackened sword.
He ignored the pain as good as he could and as he swung his chain, the wizard started to cast yet another spell. However, the acid seemed to distract him enough that he slightly mispronounced one of the arcane syllables, and the spell fizzled.
Now, for the first time, real fear crept into the eyes of the wizard. Until now, his face had shown a confident sneer- and it was the kind of arrogant confidence based on many won battles. Before, all fights had had one thing in common: no matter how they had developed, the end was always the same- his enemies would beg Jhovintus the necromancer for mercy and receive none. This, however wasn’t going according to plan at all...
The automaton that had battled Torn was now attacking Jan as well, who now had to deal with three of the things. He kept them at bay, but soon he was tiring from blocking their repetitive blows, and every now and then they found a gap in his armor as well.
Then, however, Ben had sunk his jaws into the jugular vein of the magician who died screaming while the incarnate was mercilessly pumping his poison into him. Already, Torn turned around and together with the aid of Trepat, Jan shortly afterwards defeated the armors. Ben tossed the stinking corpse of the wizard to the wall, already turning into his halfling shape again, as something odd happened.
As the blood of the necromancer hit the wall of the pillar, a part of it started to glow, forming strange runes. The friends recognized them as oldfashioned, but still legible Orcish, saying: „Beware the sunkiller who shall...“
Suddenly, an excited female voice shouted out behind them: „This is fantastic!“.
They turned around to see a petite, youthful woman of fair complexion who was dressed in simple, dun-colored clothes. She stood in the gap and smiled to the men: „Oh, I am sorry. You must wonder who I am! My name is Ara Koska Tabir and I am one of the scholars who work at the digsite near town. I have followed you with due distance after I saw what the wizard had done... The guards of the town are already on their way as well, only I was a bit faster, not wearing any heavy armor, you know...
She stopped shortly in order to get some air, and then she continued: „And now I am of course intrigued by that writing there! I think you have helped us a great bit!“.
Ben was flattered and offered to help her find more stones, so that they could maybe complete the message. She agreed, openly showing a fondness for the halfling, and the two of them started working. Niklas, a toad sitting on one of the wet rocks, croaked sadly, and Torn showed mercy on him by adressing Ara: „Say, is Silian still leading the scholars here?“
„Oh, yes, of course he is!“.
„Fine. I know that he is a competent wizard. See, our friend here would probably like to be a human once again, and since we obviously did him a favor, maybe he could transform him back out of pity and as a form of reward?“
„I am so sorry I forgot about that! Let’s go now!“
They went past the guards whom they promised to give a full report later that day and came to Silian’s house again. The old wizard looked just like the last time Torn had seen him and remembered him right away. After Ara had told him what had happened he not only promised to return Niklas to his old human self again on the next day, but also hinted that there would be something else he would like to talk about.
So, on the next day, after Niklas was finally a man again, after having spent an entire day as a toad, Silian and Ara lead them around in his mansion, showing them a vault where the scholars stored artifacts of the mysterious ancients and then he sat down with them for a hearty lunch in the library.
„We could use the help of competent young folks like yourself. You see, we are searching for an entrance to what is called the halls of Dunai. If you would find them, or even better, enter the halls yourself, we would be willing to pay you with some of those priceless artifacts we had shown you or money, if that is what you prefer. Before I go on, however, I would like to know whether you would generally be interested in that kind of work.“
All of them nodded, and he handed out pergaments to all of them, sighing heavily as he leaned over the table. On each of the pergaments there was a handwritten text of a transcript. It seemed to be a translation of a slarecian text about a three headed guardian of the Halls of Dunai.
When he saw that all of them were done reading, Ara, who sat next to Ben, spoke up: „ Even though the text was written in Slarecian, we are pretty sure that the Ancients weren’t serpentine creatures like them, but something else altogether. Furthermore, we are certain that by the time the Slarecians ruled the lands, the time of the Ancients had already been long, long gone.
„ Anyway, we are byy now pretty sure that the heads are in fact entrances. However, we only know that one of them is somewhere in the Kelders. We are all pretty much stuck here, so you may find out more if you would travel. So, your task would be to find at least one entrance, enter it, and find out as much as you can.“
They talked for a little while longer, discussing details of their contract and then, when they were alone, the friends decided to start out their search in Mithril. After all, they could ask Chel Azatan and if he couldn’t help them, they could try the library of the brotherhood of the fist, even though that was pretty much a labyrinth with little apparent logic to it.
