Coldeven 6, CY 593
88—Lanthorn? Is that a typo?
The Space Between All Spaces isn’t very memorable. It is, for the most part, a place of intense pressure and no form; a lightless, topical environment that does not stimulate the mind in any lasting way. Most travelers pass through it so rapidly that they fail to even recall that any time has elapsed. Stomachs are not so easily misled as the mind, however, and often rebel against the sudden shift from then to there.
When tiny holes are punched into this pseudo-ether by magic (usually prior to objects being shoved forcefully through), there is an accompanying escape of that between—marked on the exit side of the journey by a pop and a hiss. So, when Heydricus appears within the grey interior of Daoud’s Wondrous Lanthorn, his sword already in hand, his arrival is presaged by a silibant burst (even though no one is there to hear it—the tree falling in the forest does not really consider its audience, after all).
He finds himself within a similar scene to the one that greeted Gwendolyn, save that the statues within the circle lack any sense of real presence and, of course, that they have been splattered with the unlucky wizardess’ insides. The part of Gwendolyn’s body not currently in use as decorative art is still clutched by one of the hideous black tentacles sprouting in convulsing bunches from the tops of all seven standing stones. The tentacle waves her corpse at Tritherion’s Liberator like a challenge.
“Allright,” Heydricus says to himself philosophically, deciding in that moment that for better or worse, he’s going to have to kill everything in this demi-plane. He charges toward the nearest stone, and is intercepted by the whole hideous mass lashing downward at him. He swings from the heels and instantly severs a tendril about as thick as his own meaty thigh. Fortunately, he had displaced himself just moments before being pulled into this colorless place, and the majority of the remaining tentacle-bunch passes through or around him harmlessly.
The other six stones flop down upon the Liberator like a titanic flower bud closing reflexively about a fly. Heydricus lays about him with his sword, and is battered and torn in response.
At that moment, Dabus appears with a whumpf and a yelp, and after orienting himself to the strange scene, moves forward to heal Heydricus. He is wounded in the process, but left reasonably well-off.
Jespo Crim ssssssnips in and exclaims, “Ah! Fräs, look! These are . . .” before he is snatched off his feet by a black tentacle and rudely inserted into a sphincter-like maw at the top of the nearest standing stone.
Heydricus and Dabus form up back-to-back, and Dabus immediately invokes Tritherion’s destruction on the nearest stone, reducing it to a pile of dust, and destroying the symmetry of the circle in the process. Jespo teleports free from the inside of the stone that swallowed him whole, intending to remove himself from the reach of the vile things. But he discovers to his surprise that the entire demi-plane is no more than eighty feet in circumference. He appears just outside of the stone circle, covered head to toe in some kind of viscous, clear fluid.
“Ah! Fräs! It seems,” he manages before he is immediately seized and re-swallowed by another stone.
Hastur appears with a ffwop, his bright yellow adventuring-shirt already flecked with his own spit. He manages a multi-syllabic yell that might have been some sort of battle-cry were it more intelligible, and charges squarely into the nearest mass of tentacles, hacking wildly and screaming like a madman.
Jespo teleports for a second time, and arrives directly on the spot where Hastur was just standing. He scowls deeply and mazes the nearest standing stone. To his surprise, the thing shivers, shudders, and explodes, showering the heroes with stone, rubbery tentacle flesh and ichor.
“Great Job, Crim!” Heydricus yells, as he rips chunks from another stone with powerful sledgehammer blows.
“Well, this is curious,” Prisantha remarks, as she appears next to Jespo. Black tentacles snake and whirl everywhere, to many to readily count; Jespo snickers and mumbles to himself as he fumbles with spell components while piteous Fräs-mewls emerge from the inside of a bag half-filled with tentacle-thing digestive fluid. Dabus is intoning a mighty prayer, knee-deep in severed tentacles, Heydricus at his back hacking furiously at a standing stone. Suspended above the scene, Hastur screams unintelligibly as he is whipped to and fro by a tentacle intent on either squeezing or shaking the life out of the little dwarf (although it seems to have snatched off more than it can crush). As Pris takes all of this in, Jespo is struck from behind, and falls face-first onto the cold ground with a high-pitched grunt.
Prisantha whirls on the offending tentacle just as Dabus sends a mass heal arcing though the group, restoring Jespo to consciousness. Heydricus fights his way over to where Hastur has managed to wedge himself between a tentacle clump and its base, and the two of them finish off the standing stone that seized the little yellow fellow, reducing it to helpless, quivering chunks.
Jespo stumbles to his feet, twice swallowed, twice freed, and nearly stuck dead from behind. He lashes a prismatic spray into a pair of the stones, plane shifting one and destroying it instantly. Prisantha notes his success and duplicates the tactic, eliminating another stone. Dabus joins Heydricus and Hastur, and they begin to hack their way around the circle. Before Fräs can fully extricate herself from her befouled pouch, the remaining stones are destroyed.
-----
Dabus gently coaxes Gwendolyn’s skittish soul back into her magically repaired body. She gasps and sits up, relieved to see her friends, but distraught to find herself still within the Lanthorn.
“Why are we still here?” She demands.
“We’re out of plane shifts,” Dabus explains.
“And wishes,” Prisantha clarifies.
“We were hoping you could use your cubic gate, Gwen,” Heydricus says cheerily. “But that’s not why we raised you,” he adds hastily.
Jespo sneers at the blood-spattered wizardess. Fräs hisses at his uncharitable thought. Hastur laughs.
“I don’t know where my cubic gate goes,” Gwendolyn says. “I’ve been busy.”
“Well?” Heydricus asks.
“It can’t be more depressing than here,” Gwen concedes. “Let’s try this side.”
-----
The first plane arrived at is a wretched mountainside; a never-ending incline of scorched earth—ground that emits continuous blasts of volcanic heat and reddish light. An pasty and thin ochre sun is hidden behind thick clouds fed by noxious geysers erupting from the cracked earth. Rivulets of molten rock bubble forth from the steep slope, cascading forever into abyssal depths best not considered.
“Okay, I was wrong,” Gwendolyn says as she depresses another side.
-----
Darkness and rust; the tools of war decay alone in their afterlife, un-loved and no longer feared, forgotten forever. In the sunless depths of Acheron’s hollow third layer, metal lies fallow, the fearsome machines of bygone conflicts reduced to rusting heaps. Dabus calls forth a light spell, and for a moment, the Liberators are disoriented—their eyes tell them that the space they are within is small; a room somewhere, over-full with sharp, metal things and splintered wood. But their skin and ears tell them a different story. There are no walls here, no ceiling to contain the ruined expanse or divide it into understandable pieces.
“Ah,” Hastur says, excited. “Looka’ this!”
Gwendolyn presses her cube.
