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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 15566" data-attributes="member: 143">Part 21Trapped in the alleyway, with enemies around and above them, the companions found themselves the victims of a carefully planned ambush.  Something crashed into Lok, splattering open as it hit his heavily armored body.  The light revealed the item to be a sack of some sort, which as it ruptured spilled a thick, gooey substance all over the genasi’s upper body.  He tried to brush the stuff off of him, but it clung tenaciously to his fingers, working its way into the cracks of his armor as he tried to shake loose.  “Tanglefoot bags!” Cal shouted as he realized what their adversaries were using against them.  A second bag missed and splattered against one of the alley walls, and a third hit Benzan on the leg and burst, its sticky contents fixing the tiefling solidly to the ground.  But while the alchemical goo was a hindrance, it was not as dire a threat as the crossbow bolts that lanced down from above.  Delem cried out as a bolt sank deep into his shoulder, and Cal was barely able to roll out of the path of a second.  Another bounced off Lok’s armor, and stuck in the tanglefoot mixture.  At the same time, the men blocking the exits lunged forward to attack, wielding short but deadly swords.  One stabbed at Benzan, ripping through his expensive tunic but failing to penetrate the magical shirt of chain links that the tiefling wore underneath.  As the danger of the situation finally made its way felt through his drink-befuddled senses, he drew his scimitar, but looked down in confusion as the tanglefoot goo held him firmly in place.“What the--?  Why can’t I move?”Lok faced off against two attackers, ignoring the hindrance of the rapidly hardening mixture as he fended the two men off with his magical axe.  He’d left his shield in their room back at the inn, along with their missile weapons, earlier that day, but his masterwork armor, crafted by his own hands, turned the attacks of his enemies.  His own first attack missed, largely due to the difficulties caused by the tanglefoot concoction.  Delem staggered against one wall of the alley as a sudden wave of weakness, beyond the considerable pain of his wound, flashed through him.  Forcing himself to ignore the twisting sensations inside him, he lifted his gaze to the rooftops above, where dark forms were moving around, angling for better shots.Twin bolts of liquid fire flared into the night, darting unerringly into one of the shadowy archers.  The target of Delem’s magic missiles let out a strangled cry of pain and slumped forward, falling the twenty feet to the stones of the alley below, narrowly missing Cal as he hit the ground with bone crushing force.  That was one enemy that would not be getting up.  Cal had not yet been hit, and while his first instinct was to deal with the archers above, he was interrupted by the charge of one of the assassins coming in from the alley entrance.  He felt pain as man’s blade sliced along his arm as he dodged back, but responded with a color spray from his wand that sent his attacker unconscious to the cold ground.  He barely had time to look up, however, before two bolts slammed hard into his body, staggering him.  “Poisoned,” he gasped, as he too felt the dark tingle of venom entering his veins.  Adrenaline burned away some of the fog of alcohol as Benzan swung his scimitar at his opponent, but he badly miscalculated and struck sparks against the stone wall of the alley instead.  The assassin retreated a step, out of his reach, but seemed content to wait there, warding the entrance of the alley.  The tiefling couldn’t understand why he wasn’t trying to finish him off, but realization struck a moment later when an explosion of pain blossomed in his back as a crossbow bolt jabbed him hard between his shoulders.  Lok, meanwhile, had taken a hit from one of his two opponents, as the two assassins expertly flanked the hard-pressed fighter.  Lok ignored the shallow puncture wound in his hip, however, and instead launched himself hard at the man in front of him.  The agile assassin tried to dodge back, but he wasn’t fast enough to escape the sweep of Lok’s axe as it tore deep into his torso.  The assassin staggered and fell.  His ally sought to take advantage of Lok’s distraction to backstab him, but to his surprise Lok swept his axe back in a sudden backswing, catching him with a glancing blow to the side of his face.  The magical axe crushed the assassin’s jaw and froze it into a bloody mess, and he too fell to the ground, dying.  Another crossbow bolt glanced from the wall just inches above Delem’s face, but luckily for him his companions had drawn enough fire to leave him unharmed for the moment—and dangerous.  He took aim with his wand of sleep, releasing its magic toward a group of bowmen as they reloaded their crossbows.  Three of the shadowy forms dropped from view, temporarily neutralized as threats.  But that still left two on the opposite roof, as far as he could tell, and suddenly he felt very vulnerable as they turned their weapons on him.  But Cal, still fighting off the effects of the assassins’ poison, came to his aid.  Seeing the effectiveness of Delem’s efforts, he cast his own sleep spell on the other group of bowmen.  His low-light vision allowed him to mark them clearly, and one slumped into unconsciousness, while the last resisted the magic and dropped back out of sight.  Lok had come back down the alley to help Benzan and Cal, but the last assassin on the ground, clearly seeing the way that the tide had turned, had already vanished back into the night.  “Help me get out of this damned goo,” Benzan said, adding a few obscenities as he cut at the mixture with his scimitar.“You’re going to cut your foot off,” Delem protested.  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he pulled out the bolt from his shoulder, and using his newly awakened clerical powers healed his wound.  Across the alley from him, Cal was doing the same with his new wand.  “Is everyone all right?” Cal said.  They were all injured, and all but Lok were still feeling weak from the lingering effects of the poison, but they were all otherwise sound.  Benzan managed to free himself, and slipping his scimitar into its scabbard, turned to the stone wall behind him.“What are you doing?” Delem asked.  “We’ve got to get out of here.”“Nobody shoots me in the back with a crossbow and walks away from it,” the tiefling growled, his earlier drunkenness replaced by a simmering anger that shone in his eyes.  Whether it was directed entirely at their attackers, or perhaps also at his own earlier foolishness, none of them could tell.  “You’re going to break your neck,” Cal warned, but the tiefling started up the wall anyway, using a rain gutter that descended to the alley floor as an impromptu ladder up onto the roof.  Near the top he slipped, nearly fulfilling Cal’s prediction, but he recovered and a moment later he vanished atop the roof.  “What are we going to do?” Delem asked his companions.  “Well, we need to get out of here, first thing.  We need to rest, and decide how to proceed in the light of the morning,” Cal said.  “What about these bodies?” the sorcerer asked.  “Shouldn’t we go to the authorities?  Elturel’s supposed to be a safe city.”“I know,” Cal replied, “and that’s why I’m not going to talk to anyone about this, not yet.  Not until we get a chance to learn more, first.”  He looked over at Lok, who was crouched over one of the bodies.  “Are you all right, Lok?”“Yes,” the genasi said.  They joined him to see that he had ripped away one of the assassin’s black tunics, revealing a suit of well-crafted studded leather armor underneath.  “What is it?” Delem asked.  “This armor,” the genasi said, “and these weapons,” he added, indicating the man’s shortsword.  “They are masterwork quality.”“Such items are commonly available, if expensive, in a city of this size,” Cal said, not understanding what the genasi was trying to say.  Lok looked up at him.  “These items—they were manufactured from the same forge as Zorak’s armor.”“Are you sure?” Cal asked in surprise.  “I will look more carefully tomorrow,” Lok said, gathering up the items he’d collected into a small bundle.  “But I believe that it is so.”They turned as Benzan jumped back down to the ground behind them.  His face was a grim mask and his eyes seemed to shine eerily in the night.  “Those archers won’t be conducting any more ambushes,” he said.  “But we should get out of here.  I sensed others, watching.”“Where are the town guards?” Delem asked.  “Shouldn’t they have heard the ruckus, and come to investigate?”“I don’t know,” Benzan said.  “But it would be a good idea if we found someplace safe to spend the night.  Lead on, Lok—your darksight will give you an advantage.”“And you?” Cal asked.  “I will follow behind,” the tiefling said, and as he tugged his cloak close around him, it was as if he was absorbed into the surrounding night.  “To make sure that no one follows us.”“We need to recover our gear back at the inn,” Cal pointed out.“Fine,” Benzan said.  “But we take the back door in, and we leave quick.”“Won’t the back door be locked, at this time of night?” Delem asked. “Leave that to me.”</blockquote>

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