As Longhelim and I were having this exchange, everyone else was searching this room; we picked up the ioun stone that had been flying around the throne and then John found a secret door in the corner of the room. We poked around in the banqueting room but found nothing else. So, we opened the secret door. It led into a very short corridor, which ultimately crossed the known corridor and led into a room with a table and a map. A cantrip revealed that the map was magical.
Carefully I looked at the map. I could see that it showed the surrounding area; I tried to roll it up but as soon as I touched it, a transparent snake appeared and struck at me; thankfully, I managed to dodge; I recognized it as a magical trap for the unwary; be that as it may, I still took the map. One never knew when it could be useful.
There was one final room to explore but this was a kitchen and held nothing of interest except pots and pans.
We decided to return to the chapel and speak to the gnomes but before we did Felix led us to the room which contained the skeletons which must have been the servants:
“John, please open that door. Those poor wretches don’t deserve the fate they are suffering; no one does.”
As John ordered his invisible friend to do so, Felix summoned his holy power and the skeletons shattered into many, many pieces. Wordlessly, we carried on walking. I was saddened by what we had had to do; I could just imagine what being a servant in Coaltongue’s castle must have been like; and then, just to finish things, these self same servants were animated as skeletons after some overwhelming catastrophe whose nature we still had to determine.
When we returned to the chapel, we could see that the gnomes were still resting but keeping a good watch. Jorine raised her head at our approach and said:
“All finished? Did you find much more?”
We gave her a quick version of what happened, especially our little encounter with the ghouls. She wrinkled her nose:
“Nasty creatures; and you say this thing on the throne wanted to talk? How odd. Well, never mind; they question has become irrelevant. It will be quite some time before there is enough water pressure to raise the lift. I suggest you rest as we plan to go up as soon as it works.”
So, we waited, while conversing quietly with the gnomes. They were very pleased with how things had been working out to this time. Finally, after a long period, they rose and Jorine said:
“Well, we’re ready. The water pressure should be high enough by now. You coming? Oh, we have to leave Ernest, Zooten and Veraine behind; we need someone to guard our treasure and from the size of the platform, there won’t be enough room on it for all of us.
Oh, one other thing. I was telling Oller about the lift room, the lever and what you believed but he didn’t think that this castle had eight more floors. He doesn’t think it’s big enough.”
John frowned and replied:
“He may be right; there are an awful lot of very strange things going on here; we’re going by the number of positions for the lever; it makes sense that the lever is some sort of instruction set for the lift; you know, we want to go here so we put the lever position here. It’s what makes the most sense to us but until we actually do it, we can’t prove whether it’s right or wrong. Thanks for letting us know anyway.”
Jorine smiled and then said:
“Shall we go?”
We joined them but I was less than happy as nearly all of our defensive spells had run out. Still, we needed to go now. We didn’t have unlimited time.
So, we departed towards the lift room.
It was still the same. The lift was down with the mechanism and its gear set on the unlabelled slot. Oller examined it and said that it was trapped. That was news to us. John approached the lever and decided to look at it more closely but he couldn’t find anything; then suddenly, we could all feel a magical attack as several of us froze momentarily, unable to do anything. Felix, unaffected, frowned:
“That was a divine spell; but a very complicated one; it is certainly one I couldn’t manage myself at the moment. Thankfully, it won’t last long but still….”
As predicted, everyone was able to shake off the magic quite quickly; John had another search of the lever but found nothing else, so he moved the lever to position B and all of us jumped on as the platform began to ascend.
It was a very slow ascent. Frankly, I could have climbed faster but at least this was much safer; the platform also stopped at the slightest provocation; well, it stopped regularly but at this rate, it was going to take us a very long time to reach the top of the shaft. As I began to look up to where we were going, as mentioned previously, we began to discern that the top of the shaft was covered in a strange barrier, seemingly made out of liquid silver. I wasn’t sure what the meant but I was a little perturbed.
I pointed it out to Longhelim:
“Look at that! We haven’t talked about it before but I think we should start! Do you know what it is? I don’t like it.”
Longhelim looked up but was unperturbed.
“Faden, so far as we’re concerned, the Torch wasn’t on the floor below; therefore, we have to search above us. If we’re right, then there are eight more floors to look through. There is really very little choice but to go up, silver barrier or no silver barrier.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we at least……”
At this point, a ball of fire exploded at the bottom of the platform, burning everyone with the exception of John and Oller, who somehow managed to dodge around the flames; then a creature of fire, an elemental, appeared in the air above us and jumped on top of Victor on the platform, smothering him in flame. Of course, our spells which protected us from fire had finished at this point so there was a bellow from the warrior. Despite the burning and the proximity of this thing, I managed to cast my spell of speed and Victor wriggled from under its position while hitting it several times with his sword. He managed to send it back to its fiery plane but then another appeared, burning people again. Thankfully, this time Victor was in a better position and it was met with the warrior’s swings; it met the same fate as its companion.
Unfortunately, the platform was still rising at a very slow rate and while the elementals did not cause anyone to lose consciousness, they still manage to burn several people quite badly. Thankfully, Drudge, Longhelim, Felix and John all used their wands, healing everyone to some extent.
Then the lift began to rise again and moments later, the walls literally exploded, showering the whole floor with spikes.
Victor shouted:
“Caltrops! Sweep them to the side! Use your cloaks! Don’t use your feet!”
Vigorously, he began to use his cloak to brush the floor and sweep these three pronged little spikes to the side of the platform. Immediately, I saw what he was trying to do and began to do the same while I could see that the gnomes were already doing the same and helping each other once someone’s position had been swept. Then, just as we were finishing, the shaft sprang its next surprise, and it was a doozy!
As the platform crawled up the shaft again, I felt a magical spell go off and suddenly, Victor began to babble uncontrollably; I paled. It was a magic I recognized. I had a version of it in my own spell book. It seized the victim’s brain for a short period but once it had a hold of that person, it could force him or her to commit or perform totally random actions. These ranged from doing nothing or just standing there babbling, like Victor, to attacking your friends. In fact, it was very likely that Victor would end up attacking someone on the platform, which was going to be very, very bad.
It wasn’t very good for the gnomes either; I could see that Jorine had also been affected as had Oller; Grellfinn was the only one who remained sane among them. The gnome paladin obviously knew what this magic was as well since he immediately grabbed the gnome magician in an embrace and tried to hold her; she was squirming like a fish in a net.
Then, just to add to the merriment, another of the shrouded undead with the changing faces appeared in the shaft, speeding through the wall and landed next to me. Somehow, I managed to lurch to the side just as it attempted to touch me and I avoided its deadly attack but that had been pure luck. Things were very bad; Longhelim managed to get next to the undead; Felix had just attempted to get rid of that horrible magic which had been affecting Victor, who was still babbling importantly. Then he used his holy power and forced the shrouded undead to flee from us into the wall with a frustrated, hissing shriek; it had obviously been looking forward to attacking us on the lift.
Moments later, Victor was cowering in a corner of the lift, his head in his hands and looking at us fearfully. Somehow Jorine had managed to squirm out of Grellfinn’s arms and was just about to cast some sort of spell when he managed to snag her again. Oller however, was swinging his daggers at the platform and a moment later, Victor leapt up and also began swing at the platform with a will. That was a little dangerous as even without his brain working, Victor hitting the platform made it shudder alarmingly. Thank the gods that he didn’t have the mind to use his hammer! That would have been a disaster! Or a destroyed platform and us plummeting down the shaft!
At that moment, spears shot out of the walls! Several of them struck people, including Victor. He swung at them with his sword but he had several nasty, deep wounds in his side as a result. As I looked around warily, looking for more spears, I saw the silver barrier was now considerably closer and it continued to give me a sense of great unease. I had never seen anything like it.
Suddenly, with a feral cry, Oller flung himself at Jorine and stabbed her several times with his daggers; each blow was calculated to be as deadly as possible and there was little she could do while she was being held by Grellfinn. She began to gush blood and abruptly stopped squirming as more blood came out of her mouth.
“NOOOOOO” a bellow from Grellfinn.
“What have you done?” an anguished shout at Oller. The other gnome looked at him triumphantly, as if he had just vanquished a hated enemy.
As this drama was playing out, another voice was shouting; Victor’s voice!
“Longhelim, take my sword, quick!”
It looked as if the warrior had a moment’s lucidity and had handed his sword over to the paladin, leaving himself weaponless although he still had thick, gauntlets; which was very fortunate as a moment later, he landed a beauty of an upper cut on the paladin only to follow almost immediately by cowering in the corner, as if deathly afraid of something only he could see.
At that moment, Drudge began to shoot arrows into the platform. That was something new; he hadn’t been affected by the magic previously. He began shouting:
“Fire! Fire! Chain Devil! Behind you, Faden!”
He began to fire at the platform again.
Frantically, I looked around but couldn’t see anything. I flinched, awaiting a blow that I was sure was coming from somewhere; probably an invisible enemy! I tried to dodge but nothing came. Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, Longhelim had dropped Victor’s sword and began to swing his own sword, shouting:
“Chain Devil, in front of me! Fire, fire! The platform’s about to burn! Get ready for the fall!”
Again, I looked around me, but still I couldn’t see any change; the lift was still rising slowly and majestically towards the silver barrier. From the corner came another voice, Victor’s but high and child-like, which kept repeating:
“We’re going to heaven, we’re going to heaven!”
Both Longhelim and Drudge kept either swinging into thin air or firing into the platform as previously while, Grellfinn, tears streaming down his face, grabbed Oller and smothered him in his arms. The other gnome was babbling uncomprehendingly.
Then, Victor sprang up and gave Longhelim a good right hook in the chin this time before he suddenly stopped and looked around him. He looked at the paladin with wide eyes:
“We were bespelled, weren’t we? I’m sorry about the clout!”
Longhelim answered: “Believe you me, that could have been so much worse! I find it difficult to believe that we suffered so little harm!”
Drudge was looking around with a surprised look in his eyes. The lift had stopped again but then began to move, where upon, John cleared his throat and said:
“Gentlemen, we’ve got a problem. There’s a magical barrier just below the silver one; it’s one of those indestructible walls that Faden can do; I recognize it; it’s invisible, but it’s there all right. If we don’t do something quick, this lift is going to crush us against it!”
Longhelim whirled around:
“Faden, how do you get rid of that spell!”
I thought furiously:
“There’s nothing we’ve got that can do it! We have to send the lift down. Victor, smash the chains! That’ll do it! Otherwise we’ll be crushed!”
As Victor rushed to the chain, taking out his hammer at the same time, there was a shout behind me:
“She’s dead! And it’s your fault!”
I had been moving behind Victor and glanced back to see Oller glaring at me, tears flowing down his face this time. Grellfinn still had his arms around him, partly holding, partly hugging. He stared at me and just shook his head. I ignored Oller and carried on.
“It was no one’s fault, Oller. She knew the risks.”
This was a gentle voice, coming from Grellfinn.
We were still ascending, slowly but suddenly one of the corners of the lift sagged as Victor smashed his hammer against one of the chains and parted it in one blow. Then, there was another shout:
“Oh, you idiot, John. The rod, the bloody rod!”
This shout was actually from John himself and I saw him digging out the rod we had taken from below. He put in it the air and snapped the command word. It suddenly stood in the air, just fitting between the platform and the barrier.
That was the last thing anyone could do before invisible force compelled us to the floor and for an endless moment, we felt unbearable pressure and agony. Bones creaked, tendons strained and muscles screamed; there was a screech from the lift as the floor bulged just under the rod which John had activated; then it was driven through the metal floor of the lift! However, it did create enough of a gap for John to be spared the crush. He was the only one though. I was being crushed against the barrier……which suddenly disappeared!
As we rolled and groaned on the floor, the lift went up the shaft and we finally went through the silver barrier; unfortunately, I was in so much pain, I didn’t even notice and then the floor had risen above it and stopped. This time, there were a couple of exits from the platform so it looked as if we had finally arrived at our first destination.
One of the exits was a door while the other was an open entrance into a room.
Before we went anywhere though, we had to take care of ourselves. Everyone was hurt to a lesser or greater degree, with the exception of John, who had been saved by the rod and who somehow had avoided all hurt on the horrific ascent. Unfortunately, the rod was probably still hanging in the shaft beneath us now. So, Felix, Longhelim and John began to prepare to heal everyone with their wands but then I said:
“Before you start using those, I think we need to learn our spells again. We are in a completely new place and I know we are not feeling it but look at the two gnomes; they are sweating as if they were in the middle of the plane of fire. We need the spells which protect us from fire at the very least. I think it very likely that there are a lot of fire using creatures here.“
Longhelim replied:
“We can’t rest here. We’d be jumped for sure.”
I had already thought about this:
“I agree. Resting here for the normal period and then re-learning spells would be madness; so we will have to cram them; I hate doing it because I can think of few more dangerous things that weakening ourselves in this place; but unfortunately, one of those things is wondering through this place without any defensive spells, especially fire protection.”
Longhelim nodded:
“Yes, I see that; right, we’ll do it.”
While we were talking, John had already explored the exit into the room.
“There’s loads of rods and gears in this place, with pulleys and things; I think all this stuff works the lift.”
“Can we rest in there for an hour or so?” I asked.
“It’ll be a squeeze but we should be able to do it,” was the reply.
Felix began to put his wand away.
“In that case, I’ll use what spells I have instead.”
Having formulated our plan, Felix and John healed everyone with a mixture of spells and wands and then we all moved into the room which seemed to contain the mechanism for the lift. It was very cosy but we spell casters were able to concentrate and managed to gain access to our spells. As usual, after doing that, I felt as if my head was full of wool, my tongue felt several times too large for my mouth and I could barely open my eyes; John and Felix’s eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. I expect I looked little better.
John whispered to me:
“Gods, the way we look, we could pass for castle denizens.”
Longhelim speared him with a look:
“I heard that and it is not funny!”