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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1431774" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #12: Under the Lake - Episode 3 of 5Four hours pass uneventfully as our exhausted spell-casters rest. Finally, when Goldpetal, Miriel, and Novalia have completed their meditation and rest, and are all ready to continue, Miriel examines Hands of Fire. The lizard man’s eyes are filmy and milky, and he feels warmer to her touch than she remembers. “That’s clearly Slimy Doom,” she says to Goldpetal, who is looking over her shoulder. “Here, drink this,” she instructs, and even if the lizard man doesn’t understand the words, he gathers the meaning as she gives him a potion of cure disease. He drinks the contents of the vial, and the magical elixir courses through his body. Miriel and Goldpetal turn from his care to re-examine the lake. They both concur that it looks much cleaner, and even the air above it smells better. Before they have even finished, Hands of Fire is on his feet, and joins them at the lakeside. He looks much better, almost completely recovered. He bends over the water’s edge, sniffs at it, and says something incomprehensible. Seeing the confusion on their faces, he gives the thumbs up gesture which Stone has taught him: it’s good. Everyone gathers their things, breaking camp, and shouldering their packs. They all walk back up the corridor to the secret door, where Paks awaits. She has no difficulty opening the secret door, and the stone wall slides silently before us, revealing the small chamber with the stone door. The room is ten feet wide by twenty long. A ladder at one end leads to a trap door, and from there into the rat-filled room above us, while at the opposite end, the stone door is defaced with the symbol of Chern, the Titan of plagues and disease, scrawled in blood and charcoal. The rune almost seems to move of its own accord in the flickering torchlight. It is still unnaturally cold in the hallway. When we are all gathered in the room, the secret door swings shut behind us. Miriel glances back at it. “Should we block it?”“I wouldn’t,” Paks says. “It’s better to have it open in case we need to retreat in a hurry.”“Okay,” Miriel concurs. “Let’s scrub the sigil of Chern off of this door.”Miriel, Goldpetal, and Novalia set to that with a will, and quickly have all of the blood and charcoal scrubbed off. When the stone door is clean, leaving just the original carving of a wheel on its face, Miriel chalks a symbol of Madriel upon its surface instead. When their task is finished, Paks shivers. “I still don’t like the looks of this place,” she avows.Everyone knows we are going through the door, and there is no need for further discussion. With firmness of purpose, we ready ourselves. Paks draws her longsword, and Goldpetal and Novalia ready their bows. Miriel grasps her holy symbol, while Hands of Fire stands at her side. Chuck and Stone brace themselves to open the door, expecting it to be heavy and difficult to move, but Stone swings it open easily. Beyond the door is another rough-hewn hallway, ten feet wide. After about twenty feet, it opens out to the left.“Stone, can you see anything?” Chuck whispers.“Just another pool of water,” Stone says. “Do you got the butter?” This elicits a soft, nervous laugh from Chuck and Paks. Behind them, Novalia utters the quick words of a prayer for guidance. Chuck and Stone remove their packs, and set them on the floor. Stone readies his ten-foot pole.Half-orc and Vigilant walk carefully down the hallway, alert for danger and moving as silently as they can. The rest of us follow, near behind, and Paks’ chain mail makes a quiet metallic sound as she walks. We reach the opening to the left, and see a large room, perhaps twenty feet wide by thirty feet long. There is a shallow pool of standing water, and four sarcophagi. The lids of all four stone coffins have been disturbed: two are broken, while the others lie askew across about half of the coffin. The crypt is freezing, even colder than the hallway had been.As Chuck steps across the threshold, the remaining lids crash to the ground. Three ghouls stand from their graves, and the smell of death and decay rolls across us in a wave. Everyone feels nauseous, and Chuck doubles over, vomiting upon the floor. He is helpless when the first two reach him, clawing with their strong arms. He is badly injured, and goes rigid. Paralyzed, he falls slowly to the ground. His torch falls in the water, and is extinguished, leaving only Miriel’s torch to illuminate the ghastly scene. The third ghoul attacks Stone, but he nimbly dodges backward. The ghoul lurches, off-balance, where the monk had just been, and Stone punches it with a flurry of blows. Both fists connect, and he injures it badly. Paks follows up with her longsword, and her sword drops a blow deep through its side, killing it.Goldpetal shoots over Chuck’s body and wounds a second ghoul. Hands of Fire leaps over Chuck’s body, to attack the wounded ghoul. The other one bites him as he leaps past, ripping a large gash in his right thigh, and knocking the athletic lizard man off balance. He claws and bites at the wounded one, like an enraged animal, but he does not seem to injure it. The wounded ghoul attacks Hands of Fire, but the lizard man is much quicker, and sidesteps easily. The other one attacks Stone, and a claw rakes across the half-orc’s chest, paralyzing him. He, like Chuck, collapses to the cold ground, and the ghoul steps over him, snarling in defiance at Paks. Behind them, three more ghouls rush into the room from a passage on the far side. Now we face five of them, and two of our best fighters are paralyzed. Novalia pulls out a holy symbol of Tanil, steps up, and shouts “In the name of Tanil, be gone!” Miriel tries similarly, holding her holy symbol aloft. “In the name of Madriel, be gone!” She can feel the power of her goddess within her, and thinks for a moment that she has succeeded, but the ghouls seem strangely resistant, and the sight of the twin holy symbols buys only the briefest of hesitations from them.Goldpetal takes advantage of that moment to drop his bow, draw his scimitar, and step around Paks. Standing over Chuck’s body, he swings at one of the closest ghouls, but it reaches one arm up, and catches his hand in its iron grip, stopping his blow in mid-swing. Hands of Fire gives way, stepping back, to stand beside the elf. He towers two full feet taller than the slight druid, but together they block the passage. The lizard man swings his great club at the closest ghoul, but misses, smashing it against the floor at his feet. Paks steps back from the front line. She pulls out a symbol of Madriel, and mimics Miriel. “In the name of Madriel, be gone!” she cries, but the ghouls ignore her.The undead press their advantage of numbers, pushing us inexorably back as they attack. Hands of Fire parries one attack with his club. The wounded ghoul attacks Goldpetal, and claws him viciously across the chest. The elf, like so many of his comrades, collapses, paralyzed. Another ghoul steps towards Miriel. Hands of Fire tries to interpose himself, but he misses it with his club, and it pushes him aside, reaching for Miriel. Its claw gives her the merest of scratches, but her face freezes in horror as she, too, becomes paralyzed and falls. Her torch flickers on the ground, but rolls up against the wall, where it continues to burn.Only Hands of Fire, Paks, and Novalia remain, and five ghouls stand over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Novalia looses her first bowshot of the fight, striking one in the head. The arrow goes right through its head, a blow which would have surely killed a human, but its undead animation does not live in the brain, and it presses on. Paks steps in front of Novalia, and holds the holy symbol high above her head. “Madriel! Tanil! Hear my plea! Be gone, foul things!” Amazingly, the holy symbol comes alive, shining with a white light. As that holy radiance illuminates the room, all of the ghouls turn and flee from her! Hands of Fire swings his club at one of the wounded ones, but they shamble quickly out of his range, and he does not connect. The ghouls disappear through a hallway on the far left side of the room. After a moment of surprise, Novalia grabs Miriel and drags her back into the hallway. Paks grabs Stone, while Hands of Fire takes Chuck in one hand and the slightly built Goldpetal in the other. The three survivors drag their comrades back out through the large stone doors.Paks pushes the stone doors closed, and braces herself against it. “By the gods!” she exclaims, astonished and breathing hard. “I didn’t think that would work!”“It may not work for long,” Novalia says. “Let’s keep moving.” Paks nods, and bends over her fallen comrades. She takes Stone and Miriel’s daggers, and wedges them underneath the big stone door, trying to wedge it closed. Novalia, looking over the wounds, sees that Chuck and Hands of Fire are the worst injured, and she begs Tanil for healing for them. Her god grants her plea, and though she is not as powerful a healer as Miriel, the worst of their bleeding wounds close under her touch.Novalia watches the big door with bow drawn and arrow knocked, while Paks opens the secret door. As a great pounding begins against the large stone door, Paks and Hands of Fire drag their four paralyzed friends into the narrow secret corridor. When everyone is behind the secret door, Novalia slips through and closes it. Even through the secret door, we can hear the loud pounding of the ghouls bashing against the wedged stone door. Paks, Hands of Fire, and Novalia, all wait, tense, weapons ready, between their comrades’ bodies and the secret door. The tableau holds for several nerve-wracking minutes.Finally, Stone and Goldpetal start to move. Stone sites up. “What’s that pounding?” he asks.  “The ghouls,” Paks says.Goldpetal stumbles to his feet, and slips past her to the door. He is still unsteady on his feet, and when he tries to listen at the door, he stumbles against it and bruises his ear. He still looks a little queasy from the noxious stench of the ghouls. After a moment of rubbing his ear, the elf turns over to Chuck’s pack, and begins rummaging around in it.“What are you doing?” Paks asks quietly.“I want to see if I can get rid of the duck without touching it,” he says. “There’s an extra shirt in my pack,” she offers, gesturing to the pack she has set deeper down the corridor. As he opens her pack, we hear a loud reverberating stone crash. The pounding noise has abruptly stopped.“I think the other door just opened,” Paks says, turning to face the secret door. Stone steps up between the party and the door, with Hands of Fire and Paks at his back.Meanwhile, Goldpetal wraps the duck in the shirt, and takes it out of Chuck’s pack. Novalia starts dragging Chuck further down the corridor, both to relative safety and to make sure he is out of the way. Goldpetal disappears out of sight down the corridor. A loud splash follows shortly, and we can only presume that he has thrown the duck as deep into the lake as he can.Another minute passes. Novalia finishes dragging Chuck to the beach in the cavern, and helps Goldpetal drag Miriel to that relative safety as well.Stone, listening at the door, shakes his head, and turns back to face Hands of Fire and Paks. “I don’t hear anything,” he says.“Maybe they went up the ladder,” Paks suggests.The half-orc gives a firm nod, and turns back to the door. He shouts, “Hey! We’re in here!” as loud as he can. He pounds on the door for added noise. He then turns over his shoulder and says to Paks, “I think we can take ’em, one at a time.” She shrugs, face impassive, but sheathes her sword and draws her bow.He continues listening carefully at the door, and whispers, “I can hear them climbing back down the ladder.” Another minute passes, as adrenaline courses through our bodies, and we stand taut and ready for any action. The ghouls are not opening the door. Stone shouts helpfully, “The torch handle!”As Miriel starts to move, the ghouls finally figure out how to open the secret door. They rush in through the secret door, and are forced into a single-file line by the narrow confines of the corridor. As the first ghoul reaches him, Stone punches it with a flurry of blows. One fist connects hard, crushing the ghoul’s skull, and it collapses at his feet. Paks shoots her bow past Stone at the next ghoul in line, but in the dark and narrow confines, it’s a tough shot, and she misses. The second ghoul rushes Stone, but he steps back out of its way, giving ground a little. Hands of Fire throws his javelin over Stone’s head, but it bounces harmlessly off the ceiling. Miriel and Goldpetal have re-entered the corridor, and arrive at the back of the group. Back at the beach, Novalia guards Chuck, who is still paralyzed, and asks Tanil for guidance again. As soon as she sees the situation, Miriel begins a quick incantation. Suddenly, a sound burst echoes in the air in front of us, and in the narrow confines the explosive noise rings in all of our ears. Stone and Hands of Fire are deafened, but the two lead ghouls are stunned. Stone attacks the first ghoul, a solid punch to the head which has clearly wounded it. Paks shoots at it, and her arrow buries itself in the ghoul’s chest. It falls to the ground and Stone’s feet, returned to death. The second ghoul back, the first one that isn’t stunned, leaps forward to attack Stone. It slips on the bodies of the two ghouls in front of him, and stumbles heavily into the stone wall. Stone kicks it while it’s down, smashing it hard, but it struggles back to its feet. Miriel fires off another sound burst and the explosive noise actually kills the first ghoul, which Stone had wounded. It slumps to the ground with the bodies of its comrades. Paks, too, is deafened, and the explosive sounds ring painfully in the ears of those who can still hear.The remaining two ghouls are stunned, and clearly wounded. Stone steps to the side of the corridor, and waits for the ghouls to come to him. He’s balanced on the balls of his feet, clearly enjoying himself. Hands of Fire loses patience with waiting, and muscles past Stone. He charges towards the closest ghoul, but forgets how short the corridor is. His club bounces off the ceiling, and his momentum carries him up to the stunned ghoul. The one effective fighting ghoul attacks him from behind, hitting him with claw and tooth. The lizard man collapses, paralyzed like the others had been earlier. However, the ghoul trips over him and falls.Stone rushes over the fallen ghoul and kicks the stunned ghoul, a firm blow which knocks it from its knees to a prone position on its back.  Behind him, Paks steps up to the ghoul which tripped. As it tries to stand, balancing unevenly against the wall, she chops its head off with her longsword.  Stone stomps on the head of the one which he knocked down. “You ain’t so tough!” he yells. “Get up, damn you!” After a moment, it is clear that none of the ghouls will ever be getting back up, and Stone calms down. He calls back down the corridor, “It’s over!” Within a minute, everyone's hearing has recovered, and Chuck is beginning to move. When he has recovered enough to sit up, he stands, and staggers past Novalia. It takes one hand on the wall to keep his balance, but he begins working his way up the corridor. He angrily calls out, "Goldpetal, damn your black heart! What kind of camaraderie is this?  I’m paralyzed, and you steal my duck?” Goldpetal walks calmly down the corridor towards him, and says, “You have been enchanted.” His voice contains all of the placid firmness of a druid more than a hundred years old, but Chuck, in his rage, refuses to be calmed.“Sure, I was, but you stole my powers!” he yells. His hand strays to the hilt of his sheathed long sword. “I’ll never trust you again! Dirty little elf!" Goldpetal stands before him, implacably. “The enchantment was not good for you.”Rage contorts the Vigilant’s face, and just as he begins to draw his sword, Miriel steps between the two of them. “Calm down,” she says. “Calm down.” Chuck pauses with six inches of naked steel displayed, but the majority of the blade still sheathed. Behind him, Miriel can see Novalia at the end of the corridor. She has her bow drawn, and an arrow knocked, but pointed at the floor.Back up the corridor, Stone says to Paks, “I hate elves. Actually, they’re not so bad, with a little ketchup.” Chuck is breathing hard, and staring past Miriel at the elf with hate etched in his face. Miriel repeats herself one more time, “Okay, calm down,” as though speaking to one of the horses at her father’s inn.Chuck suddenly turns on her. “You let him steal my duck!” he shouts.Miriel gives him a look as though he’s crazed. “I was paralyzed!” she says, indignant. “Oh. Yeah, okay,” Chuck seems to be calming down a bit. Then, he drops to his knees and throws his head back, hands covering his face in clear anguish. “But… my duck!” he wails.Stone comes down to commiserate with him. “That was a cool duck, too,” he says, putting one arm around a shoulder. Miriel kneels with Chuck and holds him as he sobs wordlessly into her shoulder. Back at the head of the corridor, Hands of Fire stands up. He looks as though he might walk down towards the commotion, but Paks puts out a restraining hand, and they wait in the corridor.After a minute or two has passed, it seems that Chuck is quieting. Miriel continues to hold him until the sobs have ceased, talking to him all the while. Finally, when he is finished, she stands up and offers her hand to him. “Let’s go fight the ghouls,” she offers. “They did a lot of damage to us. They’re our enemies, not each other.” “My duck...” Chuck says, sadly, still on his knees. He is staring at the ground, and the tone of his voice conveys absolute heartbreak.“Chuck,” Paks calls quietly from the top of the corridor. “The ghouls might have another duck.” Chuck looks up, his face alight. Voice full of hope, he asks, “Another duck?”He rises to his feet, shoulders past Goldpetal, and goes to find his pack. He checks through it carefully, as though to make sure nothing else is gone.While the Vigilant looks through his things, Miriel turns to Paks. “I didn’t know you carried a holy symbol of Madriel. Where did you get it?” she asks.Paks gives her an odd, unfathomable look. “Milo gave it to me,” she says after a moment, “When I dropped him off in the wilderness, after we expelled him from the party.”Miriel looks as though she’s about to ask a further question, but then she closes her mouth and gathers up her other things.“Let’s push on,” Miriel says.</blockquote>

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