D&D 5E Tap Tap Tap

[Rylnethaz]

And even then, that would be an understatement.

ENTER THE GRUE

A loud cracking sound was heard in the back of the room, towards the door and it made everyone in the room, even Arinaksa through her pain, to turn their heads. Through a cloud of dust, debris and broken masonry, the Grue stampeded into the chamber. Diggur was in its path, still holding the wine. He was dismembered even before the glass decanter fell on the floor, breaking in a thousand pieces, ending a potentially promising career of treason. Another of the kobolds making a wet bursting sound, flattened on the wall, by a chest shoved aside by the advancing horror. While the third run to the back, towards the apparatus.

Rylnethaz tried to disengage from the half dragon bur Arinaksa stretched her hand, crackling with electricity and gave him an electrical shock and shouted, “Oh no, you are staying here with me worm, I’m taking you down with me.” Seeing that, BoldItalic, who was also fleeing to the back of the chamber, stood for a while and unleashed a succession of magical energy missiles that homed unerringly on the half dragon, buying enough time for Rylnethaz to escape the electrical grasp. “Run Rylnethaz, it’s behind you,” shouted BoldItalic. Heeding his friend’s advice, Rylnethaz run past the reeling half dragon, pausing only for a moment to hamstring her in one fluid motion and then flee to the back of the chamber.

There, behind a bookcase, BoldItalic, Rylnethaz and the kobold got a few seconds of respite listening to the sounds of Arinaksa’s futile resistance and the Grue’s subsequent quick meal.

“That escalated fast,” said Rylnethaz, “any ideas?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” BoldItalic responded, “I do have an idea. That apparatus, although broken, is still leaking magical energy. A small amount of residual energy from the original spell can also still be detected on the reverse gravity focus. If I manage to suffuse the loadstone using the apparatus, it should produce a projectile that should be enough to disrupt the Grue’s energies and allow you to strike a fatal blow with your sword.”

“Is this confirmed to work like that?”

“Well, Rylnethaz, we’ll be the first ones to try it.”

“I like it already!”

“However I need a distraction, a bait or something while I suffuse the focus with the energy from the apparatus.”

“Don’t worry, this is easy,” said Rylnethaz and with a strong kick sent the third traitorous kobold screaming and cursing towards the Grue, "there is your bait!"

 

[BoldItalic]

There was a noise. Imagine a hippopotamus eating a tray of lobsters in one go. Including the tray. That noise. Then the grue put out a huge red tongue, blinked several of its eyes and belched.

"I don't think this is going to work," said BoldItalic in a worried voice, bending over the focus. "The lodestone has gone martensitic. It's probably because the grue is radiating a fifth-order tensor field and div B is locally non-zero. The boundary conditions ..."

Rylnethaz had not the slightest idea what the old wizard was talking about, but he understood that they were trapped between a grue and a bookcase. "Double-plus ungood, then?" he offered. (He was a well-educated elf, having studied Liberal Arts at Harvard where he majored in the novels of George Orwell and he wasn't about to be outsmarted by a mere scientist.)

"What? Oh, yes, you could say that," replied BoldItalic distractedly. "What we need right now is a secret door behind this bookshelf. Are you any good at spotting them?"

Before the elf could say anything, the grue started sobbing. At least, it sounded like sobbling. "Grue! Grue! Grue!" it went, very loudly and plaintively like a lost child in a shopping mall. "I think it's calling for its mother," said Rylnethaz.

"That thing has a mother?" exclaimed BoldItalic. "And The Mother Of All Grues might arrive at any minute? There's no time to lose, then." With that, he spent a few seconds casting a little-known cantrip of his own devising, gazed at the bookshelf for a moment, then pulled down Volumes VII, VIII and IX of Frazer's Golden Bough.

"Isn't that all about druids?" asked Rylnethaz.

"Yes, but, ..." said BoldItalic, reaching into the space behind the books, " ... Ah, got it."

There was a click and a portion of wall slid open behind them, revealing a narrow flight of stone steps leading upwards, lit by flaming torches in cressets at 10ft intervals along each wall. They piled quickly through and the door closed of its own accord. Up the steps they ran, with Rylnethaz leading the way and BoldItalic close behind, clutching his staff in one hand and Volume VIII in the other.

At the top of the steps, ...

 

[BoldItalic]

... they came to a dead end. Mining had obviously been abandoned here; there was a discarded pickaxe propped up against the end wall and a rolled-up map that showed the stairway inked in and some sort of continuation beyond it, sketched in with dotted lines.

Rylnethaz picked up the pickaxe and struck the walls ahead and beside them. They were solid. He struck the roof and floor with the same result. There was no way through. What now? "We cannot go on. We can only go back. To face the grue, after all," he said.

"Let us rest awhile and regain our strength," suggested BoldItalic. So they sat down, stretched out their feet and swapped stories of their past adventures, to while away the time. Some of BoldItalic's stories were not strictly true and some were even completely made up, but Rylnethaz didn't mind. He wasn't really listening anyway.

"Did you ever come across an elf priest called Annagól One-Eye?" BoldItalic asked him.

"Hmm?"

"The keeper of the Glomb of Threy? Swallowed by a serpent? Became an immortal?"

But there was no answer from Rylnethaz. He was deep in a trance.

 

[Rylnethaz]

The thick mist was everywhere. The Hunter was deep in the forest. He had been searching for the Creature and the Creature had been searching for him. It was a game of shadows in the lush and silent forest. It had been so for days. The Creature was brutal strength personified, the Hunter was method and guile. The Hunter was now on top of a tree. He had covered himself in mud thus masking his smell, his body temperature and his presence. The Creature was below him now. He took careful aim with his silver arrow and let loose. It was a split second, seemingly lost in time and then the Creature was dead, mortally wounded by the noble metal. The forest seemed to fade and…

“I know how to kill the Grue!”

BoldItalic was startled by Rylnethaz coming out of reverie. “What? Look, I now we are in a dire situation but desperately running headlong to danger...”

“I know how to kill the Grue! Don’t look at me like that! I have just sorted out my memories and I remembered a tale told by my great grandfather. He hunted and killed a creature just like that by using silver arrows!”

BoldItalic looked in disbelief as Rylnethaz continued.

“And we are lucky too. See there, in the corner, while I was searching the walls, I saw a few silver nuggets. The only problem is how to melt them and make a temporal coating for my sword. It will not last for long but it should be enough for one battle. After all, if we don’t win this, I don’t think there will be a chance for a second one after the Grue is done with us. So, BoldItalic, do you have any spells to help us with this?”

 

[BoldItalic]

BoldItalic looked startled. "This is uncanny. It cannot be a coincidence," he said. "While you were dreaming, I was reading a little of the book that I picked up. I had just reached a passage in Chapter 34, where it describes the silver image of a goddess, with a face of jagged black stone, sitting in a wagon drawn by oxen. Look, here is the very line of text."

"Remarkable," said Rylnethaz. "The gods have indeed given us a portent. But can you heat these silver nuggets?"

BoldItalic pulled out a spellbook from his pack and started leafing through the pages. "It's not immediately obvious," he said, "but there must be something we can do." He continued to turn pages back and forth, wishing he kept his book in better order. Then he had a thought. "There might be a way. I have spell that can heat up your sword. It works on any kind of metal thing that has been crafted by mortals. If you apply the heated blade to the nuggets, there is a chance that they will fuse and coat it suitably. You would need to bind your hand or your would suffer terrible burns, and we would need to plunge the blade into water afterwards, to cool it quickly before the heat destroys the steel. How does that sound?"

Sir Rylnethaz thought, and nodded slowly. Then he unclipped his cloak from his shoulders and said "I can bind the hilt with my cloak to make it safer to grasp. Will that do, do you think? It is a good cloak of oxhide, but if it gets a bit scorched, well, needs must. I have a little water in my flask, too. Will it suffice?"

"Water, I can create in quantities," said BoldItalic, "but we need a container of some kind to hold it, and long enough to plunge the whole sword blade into it at once. The smiths use stone troughs or oaken casks, but we have none here."

"Your book spoke of oxen and we have the oxhide cloak, and it spoke also of black stone, did it not? Well, we are surrounded on three sides by black stone," pointed out Rylnethaz, "We just need a fourth. We have a pickaxe, and the stairs we have come up by are paved with small black flagstones. If we prise some loose, we could build a parapet across here that would contain water for a while, perhaps long enough."

"I think we have a plan," said BoldItalic. And suffice it to say, the plan worked, almost flawlessly. Almost. The one thing that went wrong was that, overcome momentarily by the stench of scorching oxhide, BoldItalic inadvertently dropped Volume VIII into the water where it fell instantly to pieces, the glue from the binding and the ink from the lettering mixing in some strange way that tainted the water and causing the sword blade, when it was plunged in, to be imbued with an essence that would glow forever after with a blue light that could only be masked but never extinguished.

"Well, blue light or no, we have a silvered sword," said Rylnethaz with satisfaction. "Shall we descend and let it taste battle?"

 

[Rylnethaz]

And down they went. When they reached the main chamber it was like a butcher’s shop. Body parts, blood, viscera and heaps of meat and bone everywhere. The Grue though was nowhere to be found.

“Now what?” said RYlnethaz, “it seems like we have to hunt it down.”

“Either that or the other way around,” said BoldItalic.

“I suppose there is that too. Let's go.”

They went around for a while but the Grue did not appear.

“Let’s think, what brought it to us last time?” BoldItalic started pondering aloud, “I have an idea! Both times, when the Grue appeared, we were making noise. Wait, I think I have the exact spell for this, “BoldItalic cast the spell in an empty location and a cacophony of sound reverberated in the halls. There were a few moments of absolute silence and then suddenly the pounding of heavy feet was audible everywhere.

“There it comes!” Rylnethaz pointed down a hall and fell into a defensive battle stance.

“I see it!” replied BoldItalic and prepared his spells. He might not be able to do much without silver but he could distract and delay it. Every second was critical. They both felt excitement, fear and anticipation as the charging horror drew closer.

 

[BoldItalic]

The grue came crashing into the room, the very embodiment of mindless ferocity. BoldItalic reacted quickly and threw a Slow spell at it, to try to weaken its defences and give Rylnethaz a better chance of slaying it with his silvered sword.

As the spell took effect, the monster's onward rush changed from hurtle to amble and its roaring dropped a whole octave in pitch. BoldItalic focussed all his mental energies on keeping it that way, knowing that even a dim-witted grue might shake off the effect at any moment.

"Beware the spines!" he cried out, "Those hideous barbs are deadly!"

Sir Rylnethaz, red-shielded and girt in mail, chose his moment and side-stepped the horror at the last second, piercing its flank with the tip of his blade and drawing a long wound in its side as it moved past him, carried along by its own inexorable momentum.

Purple ichor spurted from the wound and splashed upon the noble elf's shield, which began to smoulder. And yet his sword, though it had penetrated deeply the foul flesh, was unharmed. For it is that gold and silver, those elements of the sun and moon that shine so brightly in the heavens, are untouched by the woeful blood of creatures that dwell the underworld. Had it not been for its newly-wrought silver coating, his sword would have dissolved into jelly in an instant leaving him defenceless against the onslaught.

But there was no time for such reflections. The grue turned upon its plucky adversary and opened a huge maw, wide enough to drive a wagon and horses through, and displayed seven rows of enormous yellow fangs. A red tongue the size of a dozen slavering carpets rolled out and Sir Rylnethaz gagged as the stench from the grue's breath hit him full in the nostrils.

"I hope this works," he thought ...

 

[Rylnethaz]

The Grue snapped its drooling tongue right at Rylnethaz. He barely had time to avoid it before one of the hideous creature’s appendages hit him with otherworldly and malignant force. His shield arm felt numb after that hit. He was almost thrown down but he put his weight on his heel and he was only pushed back a little. Then, with a backhand blow he slashed at the retreating appendage, spreading foul ichor on the wall.

The Grue, enraged that someone had managed to hurt it, pounced on Rylnethaz who fell almost flat on the floor letting the Grue jump over him. Right at that moment, BoldItalic cast a baleful curse on the beast, further impeding its fighting ability. Noticing that, the Grue charged ahead trying to shred BoldItalic but not before launching a fusillade of barbed spines at Rylnethaz, from which only his red shield saved him. Hideously malformed appendages attacked BoldItalic in a series of terrifying attacks.

“I have never been more thankful for preparing this spell,” thought BoldItalic as the attacks where deflected by a shield of magical energy put in place in the last moment. Nevertheless, it was only going to last for a very brief time and that made him very worried.

Brief as it may have been, it was just the opening Rylnethaz had sought. Gathering all his strength and courage and hoping to keep the bile in his stomach he run straight for the beast, jumping on its tail and then run up its spine, glowing blue sword in hand, avoiding the barbed spines launched at random.

BoldItalic thought, “well, he’s either crazy and we are dead or he knows what he’s doing and we are going to survive this against all hope,” so he chose to leave himself open and instead cast a spell to haste Rylnethaz. Rylnethaz, his speed enhanced by the magic, run fast on top of the blasphemous monstrosity’s neck and started slashing in what looked like a glowing blue blur of attacks. The foul creature growled and thrashed manically but Rylnethaz managed to keep his feet on it and kept slashing, spreading ichor and foul flesh everywhere.

At last, the Grue suffered a mortal blow and collapsed with a loud thud. BoldItalic barely managed to get away and not be crushed by the beast. Rylnethaz jumped on the floor on time too and then stumbled aside. He hastily removed his helmet and convulsed. “Are you hurt?” asked BoldItalic coming closer. Rylnethaz managed to answer, “Only my pride,” before emptying the contents of his stomach on the floor.

 

[BoldItalic]

Seeing his friend's distress, BoldItalic pulled a flask of cordial from his pack. "Swallow this, if you can," he said, "it will bring some relief." Rylnethaz did so, and after a few moments began to look a little less green in the face. "Thank you," he said, and after he regained his composure added "That was a close-run thing, was it not?"

Before BoldItalic could reply, the hideous corpse heaved suddenly and the two friends leapt aside, one readying his staff and the other his sword for fear that it was not truly dead. But it soon became clear that it truly lived no more, for there was a violent eruption of foul gas as the contents of its gullet spewed forth from its still half-open maw and its now-empty hide deflated into a pathetic heap and was finally still.

Some of the discharge splashed over their boots, which began to smoke alarmingly. Bold Italic quickly conjured up a great flood of water that rose briefly above their ankles before ebbing away, having flushed the floor of the chamber clean. A number of solid objects remained, however, that the grue had evidently swallowed in the past but not digested. Some were unrecognisable, perhaps thankfully so; but the magnetic focus, now useless, was amongst them, as were a kobold's boot, a drinking horn, a silver chalice, the leg of a table, a gold figurine of a horse, a tree stump (possibly an elm tree, thought Rylnethaz), and obsidian sword-hilt, a golden casket (empty, alas) and, last but not least, a jewelled golden crown fit for a king.

Rylnethaz picked up the crown and gazed at it thoughtfully. "Could this be the crown of my ancestor Orfindel?" he wondered, "We found none in his tomb," and he placed it upon his head, to try it for size. It fitted perfectly. "It looks well on you," said BoldItalic admiringly, "Keep it, and strive to win a kingdom of your own. Then you may wear it with pride."

"In shall do this," said the elf looking suddenly regal, "But you must be there to set it on my head when the time comes; for you, as much as I, have won it in battle this day. And you must take your reward too. The gleaming chalice, the horse and the casket, at least take those. You may be able to trade them in a city for scrolls and tomes of your choosing."

"Your majesty is most gracious," said BoldItalic with a bow, "But if I might venture some advice, there is first the small matter of getting out of here. We are deep in a maze of tunnels and our guide has carelessly made himself unavailable."

 

[Rylnethaz]

“I must admit that his untimely disappearance was extremely rude but we should expect nothing better from a kobold. Since we are lost anyway, any direction is as good as any,” said Rylnethaz. “Any special preference? This corridor looks promising, at least it smells better.”

BoldItalic nodded in agreement and added, “Any corridor without a monster trying to kill us is promising. There is also another way to find our way back to the surface, either through the stairway we used to descend here or through a different opening, if there is one.”

“What is on your mind?”

“If we encounter another group of kobolds we might persuade them to lead us there, provided they know the way out of course.”

Rylnethaz replied, “That could potentially same us a lot of trouble my friend. I never expected I would say that, but finding some kobolds while we are wandering in a dark and dump maze would actually be a stroke of luck under the circumstances.”

The two adventurers wandered for a couple of hours without any apparent result when suddenly they heard some voices. They came from around the corner. Flat against the wall Rylnethaz leaned slightly just to see what was around the corner.