Ravyn and Caress sat and caught their breaths, attending to their injuries as Mythram and Lyra scoured the cavern for any sign of interesting things. Somewhere in the darkness of a passageway, another doppleganger passing as drow lay in a mindless heap, body catching up to brain in the race toward death after the sorcerer had ripped their mind to pieces. Bugbear corpses lay about the scene of the fight. destroyed by forces divine and eldritch.
"I think that this may be what they were looking for," Lyra suggested as she indicated a long dead dwarven corpse embedded mostly into the mud. "These gauntlets have a bit magic to them. I think they might make someone stronger."
"My first thought is to give that to Caress, but..." Mythram looked over to the yuan-ti.
"Sharess guides my arm, I'm not sure enhanced strength will do me much good."
"Yeah that's what I thought," the rogue said.
"Well, we'll set aside for a bit later," Lyra said. "And I guess the next question is to which direction we should turn to after this."
"It looks like this passage will give us another route past those doors from before," Mythram said, pointing past the doppleganger's corpse.
 |
| Rest and Reconnaissance |
"The big ones set up to be very portentous and noisy when opening?" Ravyn asks.
"That's them."
"That seems like a good next step." Lyra said. "Are the two of you good?"
"I am... becoming stretched thin, but I am good for now," Caress noted. "Lead on, if you will."
The sound of low voices drifted through the stone halls as the adventurers crept forward and saw the passage open up into a massive temple room with a towering dwarven statue set with gleaming gem-like eyes. Lyra edged her way forward, trying to get a good look into the dimness beyond Mythram's lantern light. Unfortunately, the eyes beyond weren't those of a doppleganger wearing a drow likeness, but that of an actual drow, and the mage turned to catch sight of the approaching adventurers.
"You idiots," he shouted to a pair of bugbears. "Stop them!"
There wasn't much worry to start as the bugbears rushed forward, but then the spiders scuttling about on the ceiling made themselves known, spraying Mythram and Lyra each with webbing, though Ravyn dodged out of the way of bundle of sticky threads as Caress rushed forward to cut free Lyra and Mythram each with a radiant lash of divine power.
"You could have just surrendered, you fools."
"Sure we could have, but that wasn't going to happen." Lyra called out.
"I would have kept you alive long enough to learn who sent you at least. There's still time, you can still give up your patrons."
As the mage monologued, a thick, magical darkness descended upon them and choked off all sight. Caress could hear Lyra's eyes rolling as she sighed loudly and cast the spell to summon her moonlight down upon the mage that had decided that he didn't need to reposition after blinding his enemies. There was a shriek of pain and the darkness cracked almost as soon as it had appeared. Almost immediately, she was casting another spell to grant herself the breath of dragons.
And then Mythram's arrow flew past Caress's shoulder and planted deeply into the mage's throat, taking the Black Spider down in a moment. Angered, one of the spiders skittered down into the passage's ceiling and snapped ineffectually at Mythram only for Ravyn to blast it heartily with a purplish blast and then duck behind cover.
Lyra then dodged aside another projected thread of spider silk, and unleashed the magic of her Glassstaff to repel the morningstar of one of the bugbears. The spider spitting its web at Mythram was more successful, and wrapped up the rogue again, but that was short-lived as Caress's radiantly imbued whip lashed upward and slew the spider immediately above her, sparks from the attack burning away the webs about Mythram.
Looking between the burning spider and the dead mage, one of the bugbears fled out the massive doors, not stopping to look over his shoulder.
The bugbear that had battered against Lyra's arcane shield was telekinetically lifted and shoved back, opening space for her to step into the temple underneath the other three spiders and unleash a torrent of flame from her mouth. In the eruption of light, Ravyn took the chance to send a bolt of eldritch might cascading across the battlefield into one of the spiders. Its exoskeleton cracked and leaked ichor about, but it held onto life.
Stubbornly, the remaining bandit growled and tried to bring his morningstar crashing down on Lyra, but she simply stepped aside of it as it's blow failed to land. More spider webs flew through the air, but Lyra either dodged them or summoned a shield to block the threads, leaving her untouched. Though they made Caress's approach difficult and she failed to find a good opening to strike the bandit, her whip cracking wildly off-target in the confusion of motion.
Gouts of fire are unleashed and one of the spiders shriveled up crashing down upon Lyra and Caress, leaving them tangled in its fragmented pieces. Yet another spider falls prey to the rogue's arrows, falling from great height onto the sorcerer. Taking the opportunity, the bugbear bandit swung his morningstar against the enemy who hadn't shown a history of summoning magical force fields, but even tangled in spider corpse, Caress managed to block the blow. Unfortunately it left her open to the bite of one of the spiders, as poison sapped her strength and burned into her veins.
 |
| The Black Spider is down. |
The courtesan returned the strike, however, burning the spider with her own might and searing the bugbear with the divine fires that stripped off in the speed of the moment. The final spider corpse crashes to the ground and while Caress was able to avoid this one, it tangled up Lyra and the bugbear in its death throes.
Lyra was the first to shake free of the new entanglement and turned to breathe upon the bandit who was still contending with limp, clicking arthopod legs. He made a valiant attempt to dodge out of the way, but it wasn't enough and he landed in a seared and burned lump upon the floor.
"Well, I've got spider ick everywhere... no, wait, no I don't." And in a blink of an eye, Lyra was as clean as if she'd walked out of a Neverwintan spa. "And let me help you with that, Caress."
"Oh, thank you, I imagine it's quite hard to get that blood out." the yuan-ti returned before addressing her and Lyra's wounds in return.
In the meantime, Mythram was working on an old rusted door, moving to find the dwarven prisoner they'd come to rescue lying senselessly on the bed.
"What are you... you've come question me again? What do you want...You're not my captors."
"No, we've been hired by your brother."
The dwarf looked past the rogue at the eclectic group and sighed. "I see, looks like my brother managed to find far better mercenaries than we had a right to expect."
No comments:
Post a Comment