Jominda takes her light mace from her belt and looks at it, comparing it with Herm's Earthbreaker. "Why?"
Kendra moves up, finally, and looks between the rest of the party. "That looks ominous. Considering what we found in these buildings so far, I'm not keen on finding out what's hiding in these waters."
She casts a quick spell and her eyes flare purple once again as she looks around the room.
There is a wide corridor running across behind the door. Straight ahead is a flight of stairs, that is blocked by rubble. The view to the left is blocked by the door, but to the right the corridor runs around the corner.
Jominda starts working with her mace on the stone to create a drain for the water, but it becomes clear that she is the wrong person and the mace the wrong tool for that.
"I unfortunately have no magic to shape the rock." Kendra admits, seeing Jominda working so hard.
Herm moves forward stepping into the crossroads, peering down each of the corridors before motioning for the others to follow.
Herm sees nothing that would worry him.
"We try the left?" Herm asks while slogging that way
As Herm slowly moves through the three feet deep water suddenly the ground gives way and Herm finds himself attacked by a swarm of leeches. They suck out his blood and spit their poison into the wounds.
Herm wretches as he flounders in the water, doing his best to back up
Herm makes it back to the safety of dry land. But he doesn't look good. And the water where he left is swarmed with leeches.
"Ewww. That's... disgusting and frightening." Jominda voices as sh esees the water full of these creatures and the effect they have on Herm. "There is another one." she points to a leech that is half visible udner the sleeve of Herm's clothes.
"Ugh, get that thing off of him. Put it on dry land so it dries out in the sun, or... uh... salt! Salt works too."
"But I don't want stale food from now on. How much salt would it take?" Jominda asks, unsure of how much salt Kendra is talking.
"You could always try to bomb them out there Jominda." Herm retorts
"I would, but my bombs create fire effects. That doesn't work underwater." Jominda answers. "I've never been in need to fight something in water and I'm completely unprepared for that."
"But I could get some of the salt in the kitchen. There is a small barrel. If that is enough to help here. But I still would prefer to get rid of the water. who knows what else resides in there and with no way to fight it, I'd rather not stand hip deep in it."
"You will be fastest to get over to the house and back since you can fly and the rest of us cannot. We will hold the fort here and await you return?" Herm looks like he knows that he cannot protect Jominda if she flies away
Jominda takes off, but stays close to the path they took by foot, to avoid drawing additional attention from anything that might be around.
Back in the manorhouse, while rummaging through the food provisions to find that barrel of salt she remembers having seen a tool that could be useful. Running upstairs she confirms that memory and drags along the pick from that one bedroom.
Then it takes her another five minutes to put the small barrel into a sack and tighten the pick at her belt. As she finally takes off back to the rest of the group her wing based flying isn't a pleasant hum anymore, but more like the sound of a heavy load helicopter. While flying over she i swaying up and down and almost runs into the rock below the entrance. She has to take a second attempt to get up to where the group waits.
She puts the sack with the barrel down and hands Herm the pick. Still heavily panting she tells "See what I found. Maybe we can walk in there on dry foot."
"That is unbelievable, Jominda. Well done!" Kendra says. "Having no water at all would indeed be the much safer approach."
She looks back to the building they just came from, and up at the sky.
"However, hacking a path for the water to drain will take quite some time, I suppose, even if we take turns to keep exhaustion at bay. And there is a creature in there that might wake up come nightfall." Kendra points.
Herm takes the pick and gets to work on trying to make a path for the water.
There is only a thin border of about a foot of stone between the flight of stairs and the steep cliff. The hardest part is to find a place to stand without danger of falling down and no tstanding in the water.
But with the pick Herm manages quickly to break a way for the water. It takes him about half an hour. The swarm of leeches tries to back away from that, but the current produced by the amount of water rushing in from the building is too fast, once greater pieces break off, and the vermin falls 200 feet down with the water into the river. After a few minutes the water is mostly gone, but some mud remains in the corners and an inch of water doesn't want to go.
"This should give us a much clearer view of where we're heading, and a much safer route too." Kendra comments.
"Will you lead the way, Herm?"
"It is still disgusting. Jominda comments and carefully walks in to get a view over the whole corridor.
The corridor still leads to the left and right. It is kind of hidden by the water, but now visible to the observant eye when approaching, that there is a pit trap in the left corner where Herm fell in earlier. It stands open, and is filled with water, making passage into the further corridor complicated.
Herm goes back to the door and wrestles it off the hinges, moving it into the room and placing it over the pit trap.
Herms idea works like a charm, once he has managed to knock the iron door off the hinges which takes a while.
Behind the corner is a large double door. You can see from the trickle coming out that there is more water behind.
Herm approaches the door, "Maybe get to the sides so if the water is a lot it won't wash anyone away?"
The water comes out, in a strong gush, but with the precaution nobody is washed away. A rotting stench comes from a trio of headless, apelike creatures inside heavy iron cages. The waters lap against these corpses, while the twisted remnants of an iron walkway lie half-submerged in the water. Two doors sit high in the north and east walls, thirty feet above the floor.
"This place is a mansion of madness, I almost feel like I want to burn it down and allow the count to suffer whatever fate he has brought upon himself." Herm states stepping into the room.
"Ewwww, this stinks. And over there are the ape heads with wings for ears!" Jominda calls out pointing to the iron walkway.
Kendra wrinkles her nose in disgust.
"Ugh, this water smells rank." she comments.
Listening to Herm's passionate remark, she tries to calm him a bit, saying
"I don't think we should judge the count before hearing him out. It could be a misconception, just as with Thomas."
Kendra doesn't notice the flying heads until Jominda points them out.
"You don't want these to get close to you. And never let them kiss one of us, because that'll detach our heads and make them fly like those!"
One of the vargouilles comes out of hiding and shrieks.
Jominda covers her ears "That is horrible."
Herm shakes off the scream and moves to stand at the fore front of the group to hold the beasts off.
Harrold resists the scream also but gets attacked by the flying heads.
Jominda throws a bomb at the vargouilles attacking Harrold, excluding her companions.
One vargouille is badly burned and catches fire. The other one is struck with Herm's earthbreaker and caught in the blast of the bomb. Both are close to their end.
Harrold shrugs off the poison, steps back and throws a vial at the varguoilles.
Harrold ends the two vargouilles that attacked him.
Kendra grits her teeth against the horrible noise, but manages to shake off the effects as well.
She rolls her hands through the air, forming a ball of acid, which she then flings at the remaining creature
Kendra hits the vargouille, but for minimal effect. Now this head shrieks with it's horrible noise. It stays out of reach of Herm's hammer.
Herm drops his hammer unslinging bow and taking aim at the creatures.
"IF we back up maybe we can make them come to us, someone grab my hammer please so I don't lose it." Herm says
Jominda throws another bomb.
This ends the vargouille threat. There is nothing else of interest in this room.
There are double doors leading onwards on this level. As well as two normal sized doors on the upper level, where the metal walkway was mounted.
Kendra picks up Herms hammer, ready to move back into the hallway as the last vargouille drops to the floor past her, trailing smoke.
Sheepishly, she holds the heavy weapon out to Herm, straining slightly to hold it with outsretched arms.
"Shall we check the ground floor first?" she inquires.
"From what I can tell, the whole building was to be visited by entering the first floor through the now blocked staircase and then walking around on that broken off iron walkway. And walking around down here led us into a leech pit and to this monsters."
"Maybe we try the first floor first? If might be hard to get there, but I expect that we can take a look into most of the rooms down here from up there." Jominda suggests as an alternative.
Herm puts his bow away and takes the hammer from Kendra.
"Thank you, I would be hard pressed with this weapon and all your aid." Herm says, " I can lift someone up there if needs be, Kendra or Jominda, then you can lower a rope for the rest of us?"