Caress watched as Mythram scaled up the giant-sized bricks of ice kept magically frozen and resilient, beside her Lyra's eyes followed the process as well and produced a subdued "Hmm" as they watched the rogue seem to suddenly slipped on to the roof. The paladin almost hadn't noticed it, and probably wouldn't have if the sorcerer had not reacted.
"Well, that's odd."
In the distance, Mythram looked over the edge of the roof down at them with similar confusion.
"She... skipped the forbidden floor, am I right?"
"Yes, sort of a crimp in space, just...zip right along they went."
"I think I just missed something," Ravyn said, reminding them that her sight and hearing were currently up with her familiar Ibjeet. "We're on the roof. And there are ogres. Mythram is lowering a rope."
There were indeed ogres on the roof, tending a massive siege weapon, larger than anything she'd ever seen on the walls of Neverwinter or Waterdeep. Granted those had been defensive installations, built by people size like her and the elves. This thing, felt like a weapon of war and destruction.
 |
| Sneaky sneak |
Mythram pointed ahead and gestured for silence before creeping forward, a whispered prayer to Shar that covered Lyra's approach behind them. She could feel the dark goddess's presence slip through the field of Sharess's blessing around her and she thought back to that cavern where Selune, Sharess, and Shar stood facing each other. Then she focused ahead, stopping at a hatch that Mythram leveraged open with her gauntleted strength.
They dropped down through and landed in a small room. with a wooden apparatus etched with runes in the giant alphabet, a staircase leading down below...
"And now the forbidden level is above us again," Lyra said with a sigh.
"I thought I was being clever," Mythram said with a sigh.
"All-Clear, North, Veil, Drift..." Ravyn commented. "This is a command post."
"You can read giant?" Caress asked.
"I read goblin which uses the same symbols," Ravyn explained.
"There does appear to be something else here," the sorceress said. "Another twist in space it doesn't lead far."
"To the forbidden level?" Caress asked.
"Maybe, but we don't know the command world."
Mythram turned back to look at them. "There's a secret door here... and it leads..."
The door was leveraged open silently and they turned to look at a giant seat for a man many times the size of their kind.
"It's a pooper." Mythram chuckled.
"Made of magical permafrost and cleaned by prestidigitation."
"Somehow still less arcane than the one at Larry's," Caress asserted. "So, it stands to reason..."
Mythram raised a hand for silence and listened. "There's a giant in the next room taking a bath."
"Maybe just close it back up again and we go the other way?" Ravyn suggested.
"And the other way...?"
Slipping to the stairs and down to the floor below, they came to a door.
"Arcane lock," Lyra said as soon as she saw the door. "That's where this lies. The Red Wizards."
"I thought it might be," Caress said.
"And the Red Wizards are where I think we should go next," Mythram said. "They're the most isolated."
"I'm good with this," Ravyn said. "No one in their right minds believes they've stopped slaving people."
"One of these days, we should talk about the Serpent Kingdom sometime," Caress said, gesturing somewhere out to the west and north.
"Not through this door, though," Mythram commented. "Let's head back up."
Some minutes later, they were at the common door to the chamber of the Red Wizards, Caress in her courtesan robes, whip about her waist as a lovely belt as it was designed to appear, dagger wrapped about with her hair. The only tell to the disguise was the shield at her back and she reached over to knock on the massive door and sighed when her forceful impacts produced a barely perceptible tap. She turned back to look at Mythram.
"Let me just step up here." And the door resounded with the knocks from the rogue's knocking. Then they stepped back, allowing Caress to compose herself again.
"What is it?"
"We bring letters to you from Wormreader Talis."
"Then open the door and bring it to me, or do you brutes not know how to operate doors?"
The yuan-ti's eyes arched briefly and she turned toward mythram who stepped forward to shove the door open letting the four of them walk in.
"Well, out with it," one of the two wizards said. "You may approach the dais with these letters of yours."
"That one is yuan-ti," the other wizard warned.
"Why not, their cult is colorful enough. Approach. Last I heard of this Talis, she certainly had no lofty title, what is it she asks."
"Well..."
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| Surprise Round |
Caress glanced slightly over her shoulder and Mythram moved. She followed swiftly behind the rogue, gripping her whip with a cry to Sharess as radiant energy lashed between the two wizards and especially striking hard into the arrogant man at the center. A beam of moon light struck down into the table moments before Lyra telekinetically pulled the wizard leader into it and two arcane bolts of eldritch power slammed into the wizard.
A gargoyle leapt from its stationary camouflage to slash at Mythram who shifted away from it to slash at wizard, only to see an illusory double take his place as she stepped away from the moonbeam. However he did not escape Ravyn's blasts, and his body tumbled to the ground wetly. Immediately the gargoyle backed off and it seemed clear to Caress that with that wizard did it was no longer compelled to fight. She pointed off to a corner of the room and as it fled out of the way, she stepped up and shoved the second wizard into the moonbeam then slashing with her whip at the wizard, but finding the woman's tumble too erratic.
Lyra called upon a whip of a different sort, tearing through the woman's mind and she died in the moments afterwards, seared by moonlight and mind aflame.
"Well, that went very well," Ravyn noted as the gargoyle turned the walls incorporeal and flew out of the castle to fly away.
"We should get a rest."
--------
In the morning, Mythram turned to all of them and said, "All right. We need to discuss vampires."
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