Hamlin was pretty badly beat up, and
Dante offered to walk him to the priests, stating using up all of Cairn's
spells so early on in our exploring would be a waste. I think he was being a
little lazy as well, not wanting to possibly fight stuff again right away. But
mainly the badly injured thing.
The room we fought those last creatures
in was apparently an old, run down prison. Cells were all along the lower
level, with a wooden catwalk up above, which led to a small stone hallway.
There were two doors in the connecting
room, and Cairn asked which way we should go. I went up to the eastern door and
examined it quickly, and unlocked it. Cairn opened the door and an orange mist
came out of the door suddenly and my face felt itchy for a minute. Stairs led
down to a floor with wooden pallets scattered about.
I moved to the southern door and put my
ear to it.
"They wouldn't trap two doors in
the same room," Cairn said from behind me.
I shrugged. That made as much sense as
anything else, so I pushed the door open. A ruined office-like room was behind
the door, with three identical doors, each with a seven-pointed star engraved.
I vaguely recalled reading a book that had the symbol in it. "Something...
magical?" I asked aloud.
"Magic?"
"Yeah, that symbol reminded me of
something I read once. Something to do with magic."
Cairn narrowed his eyes while looking at
the doors, then turned abruptly toward the ruined desk in the room, reaching
down and pulling out a scroll case. He removed a scroll, looked it over
briefly, then put it back in the case and shoved it in his pack. "Mhmm,
magic," he said, nodding. I nodded back.
Cairn moved to the first door and pushed
it open. A deformed, humanoid skeleton was chained to the wall. One arm was
smaller than normal, it had an extra leg, and second skull appeared to be starting
to grow out of its original skull.
I opened the second and third doors, and
found similar scenes. Skeletons with odd deformities, extra limbs, etc.
I headed out of the room and saw a big,
black cat with reddish tints to its fur sniffing around.
"What the-!? There's a... uh,
mountain lion out here!"
"Oh. Shadow. You come looking for
me?" Cairn said to the feline. "Shadow's my cat friend. We travel
together. Shadow, Mat. Mat, Shadow." He pet Shadow's head and motioned me
over to say hello.
"Uh... hi, Shadow," I said
semi-nervously as I patted my hand on the cat’s head a couple times.
Cairn motioned with his hand as he moved
toward the stairs. "Let's go."
“So… is Shadow your pet?”
Cairn shook his head. “Shadow is my
friend.”
We went down the stairs and there were
wooden pallets, apparently covering pits in the floor, moaning noises emanating
from them.
Cairn moved into the room first and
readied himself to attack, turning toward the left side of the stairs. I
couldn’t see whatever it was he was reacting to.
"What are you doing here? You're in
my queen's territory. She doesn't want you around the little ones. I watch the
little ones," I heard someone say as I reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Well, we’re here to kill the
little ones, you little- what the heck is
that thing!?" I said, changing my words mid-sentence as I saw what Cairn
had been looking at.
In the corner of the room was a goblin
the size of a human, with an arm growing out of its back. It was holding a
wicked-looking red sword that seemed to be emanating smoke in one hand, a
dagger in the other, and a handaxe in the arm on its back.
I was rather surprised at seeing it and
took a step back, pulling up the hand crossbow I'd taken earlier and letting
fly the bolt I'd readied in it. The shot flew wide.
Cairn moved around the pallets and took
a chunk out of the goblin, his cat companion moving into place to flank the grotesque
goblin. I couldn't get in close for an attack. I hooked the crossbow back on my
belt and readied my shortbow as I moved to be able to shoot around Shadow, but
missed again.
The goblin unloaded a flurry of blows on
Shadow, his burning sword carving into the large cat, and his axe chopping into
Cairn, who returned the favor with another swing of his two handed axe while
Shadow ripped a wound in its side with his claws.
The goblin hit the druid with his sword
and Cairn collapsed. I shot an arrow into the thing and Shadow avenged his
companion with two final swipes of his claws.
I rushed to Cairn and fed him a healing
potion. When he came to, we searched the goblin’s body.
I picked up the sword, and was surprised
to find there was no heat emanating from the smoldering blade. It wasn't even hot
to the touch. I smacked one of the pallets with the sword and it burst into
flame.
"I think this was Koruvus, the
'hero' of the mosswood goblin tribe. He was rumored to have a magic longsword,"
I said. Cairn nodded in agreement.
The dagger was made of silver and had a
skull carved into the pommel, and the hand axe turned out to be rather finely
crafted. It would fetch a decent price since none of us were interested in
using hand axes.
The pits all had zombies in them. Cairn
suggested we destroy the unnatural creatures. I agreed and took careful aim to
kill a few with one arrow each, while Cairn used his sling to literally knock
the brains out of the rest. It only took a few minutes to finish with them all.
There was a spiral staircase down the
next branch in the hallway, but we walked up to the door at the end of the hall
first. I put my ear to it and could hear what sounded like bits of static
electricity.
I slowly inched the door open, and
peeked inside. Behind the door was a spherical room lined with a strange, red
metal. Black lightning seemed to arc through the air randomly. Periodically,
the lightning would form Thassalonian runes. “Angst”, “revenge”, “anger”, and
other similar words were what appeared.
There was a book floating in the middle
of room. Orbiting around the book was a scroll, a glass bottle, a dead raven
covered in maggots, and a twisted iron wand with a forked tip.
I looked back at Cairn and gestured
toward the room, opening the door a little further so he could see inside. He
looked intently at it all then shrugged. "I got nothing," he said.
We decided to leave the room alone for the
moment, and went back to the spiral staircase. The stairway suddenly collapsed
in front of us as we moved only a handful of steps down. We didn’t get caught
in the collapse at all, but we weren't going to be moving any further down
after that.
Right as the stairs collapsed, I heard
what sounded like a ghostly, animal-like wail.
As we moved back to the main hall and
headed south, we came across a dais with a black marble basin, a white marble
statue of a jackal-headed pregnant woman behind it. Later, I would realize this
was a statue of Lamashtu.
A little further down the hall was a set
of double doors, the seven-pointed star engraved on each. They stood open. A
large chamber lay beyond, a ring of skulls seemingly floating nose-deep in the center
of a circular pool of water about 20 feet across. The water looked to be about
two feet deep outside the ring of skulls, and much deeper in the middle.
I could just make out a triangular pedestal
in the middle of a platform with stairs on either side at the back of the room.
A small basin sat in the top of the pedestal, filled with a thick, glowing
liquid. Wisps of steam and smoke wafted up from the strange substance.
We had only taken a couple steps into
the chamber when a mysterious, high-pitched voice came from somewhere near the
pedestal. "Who dares enter the sanctuary of my mother's sanctum? Do you
bring news of the raids?"
I whispered to Cairn. "Should we
tell the weird voice that we destroyed the raids and stuff?"
And Cairn replied to the voice, "We
have come to stop the raids."
"Or we can do that," I muttered
with a shrug.
"That will not do. The Mother wills
that the raids be successful. I will destroy you." A foot-tall,
goat-horned, demonic-looking woman with wings was suddenly standing at the
triangular pedestal. She cut her hand and drops of blood fell into the basin on
top of it. The light coming from the basin flickered briefly and the demon lady
had a worried expression flash across her face for a moment.
The ring of skulls in the pool in front
of us lit up with blue flames and the water began to froth, two sin eaters rising
up from the middle of the ring. The demon woman then vanished in a sparkle of light.
I struck one of the creatures with an
arrow, and it stalked up to me, missing with a swipe of each clawed hand and a
bite from its grotesque mouth.
Shadow moved around it and took a bite
out of it, and I followed up with a stab of my rapier as Cairn moved up to keep
the other one from surrounding me. Shadow finished the one we started on and
Cairn repositioned himself to be flanking the other.
Cairn was readying an attack, but
suddenly froze in place, and the demon reappeared back by the altar.
“I hate magic,” I said. Cairn managed to
grunt while magically restrained. “When it is used by our enemies,” I finished.
I circled around the remaining sin eater
and skewered it with my rapier.
The foes in front of us downed, Shadow
took off across the room, leaping ten feet up onto the platform the pedestal
was on, lunging at the tiny demon, barely missing.
Inspired by his cat's heroic action,
Cairn visibly shook off the paralyzing spell that had been cast on him.
The demon shook its hands in Shadow's direction,
and the big feline curled up and fell asleep.
"Well, that sucks," I said as
I hurried up the steps on one side of the platform.
Cairn charged through the water, icy
tendrils licking at his feet. He pulled out a potion, but as he finished it, he
threw the vial it was in on the ground, seeming enraged, looking around with an
angry look on his face, switching his gaze between me and the demon, settling
on her as he growled.
I noticed she was just barely closer to
him than I was. “I really hate magic,” I muttered to myself as I made certain
to keep my distance from Cairn for the moment.
The tiny demon flew out over the water
in the middle of the room and threw a small dagger, missing Cairn. It vanished
just before hitting the ground, reappearing in her hand.
I stood on the platform, pulling out my
bow again and unleashing an arrow into the demonic creature assaulting us.
Cairn howled and stepped toward our
enemy, but even in his enraged state, he stopped at the edge of the waters and
used his sling to throw a rock at the thing. If he stepped into the water, he
wouldn’t have been able to reach it with his axe.
I struck her with another arrow, and saw
Shadow stir awake and move to the edge of the platform, watching the small
flying creature, which darted past Cairn, scratching him with a claw.
In its new position, I had to run back
down the stairs to take another shot with the bow, but missed.
Cairn's rage seemed to be over just as
suddenly as it started, and Shadow jumped off the platform, leaping at the
demon again and barely hitting it with a swipe of a claw.
The demon tried to cast some spells but
failed, and Shadow got in two more claw swipes, Cairn swung with his axe and
was dodged, and I charged in with my rapier and got a good stab in, and Shadow
followed up after another failed spell, knocking it from the air for good.
"No, Shadow! Don't eat!" Cairn
called out.
Searching the body, we found the tiny
magical dagger she had thrown at Cairn before, a little tiara, and an obsidian
holy symbol of the strange jackal-headed deity. A scroll of Glitterdust was
also on the body, and I handed it to Cairn to keep.
We searched the two rooms on the sides
of the large chamber, and they appeared to be storage rooms. One had a bunch of
dead ravens covered in maggots in it, the other was empty.
After clearing out this level of the
tunnels, we returned to the spherical room. I searched for traps beyond the
door, and determined the flashing runes appeared to be harmless. Regardless, I
ran in quickly and grabbed the items, then bolted back out of the room.
I was able to determine the book was
written in Abyssal, which I added to the mental list of languages I needed to
learn while traveling, and the bottle turned out to be a normal bottle of wine.
Neither of us really felt like drinking from it, though. The wand was enchanted
with the Shocking Grasp spell. I kept it for myself. Having seen a few wizards
use them before, I figured I could manage to use the wand if need be.
We moved back to the large chamber to
make sure we didn’t miss anything, when we suddenly heard footsteps coming from
down the hallway, in the direction of the way out.
