"Not like they could maneuver around Spiny and you if they were..." Eben replies, somewhat cheerfully. Then, back to the necromancer, "Where's Balabar Smenk? Is he mixed up in this too?"
"Good. You four can go ahead and check out the next door, if you wish. The bruised man will probably not escape."
As Gattel works, Carina feels something shift beneath her feet.
Without warning, the table Cuetzpalli attacked flies up into the air, along with the four chairs. They smash into the ceiling as an enormous, grayish-colored creature not unlike a manta ray surges out of a previously filled depression in the stone floor. Its hide matches the scenery flawlessly.
Two gleaming white eyes stare into Carina, and a hiss escapes it. The creature-that-was-once-a-floor slams into Carina, its 'fins' wrapping around her and smothering the alchemist.
"Oh, that's right," Filge mumbles. He tries to move and just falls on his side. "I remember 'em saying something about me being 'bait'. Prob'ly should've mentioned the trapper."
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"Not like they could maneuver around Spiny and you if they were..." Eben replies, somewhat cheerfully. Then, back to the necromancer, "Where's Balabar Smenk? Is he mixed up in this too?"
"What? Ain't he back in Diamond L—whoa! Trapper!"
"No, we thought he left and...ACK!" Eben gives what can only be described as a squeak of alarm as the floor comes to life and eats Carina. He takes a step forward to get the doorframe out of his line of fire and unloads several arrows at the thing.
Eben peppers the creature with arrows. Two lodge quite deep, and Carina feels it rumbling in pain.
"Gaaaaah!" Gattel's eyes grow wide as he studies the creature, and he accidentally knocks a vial to the floor.
Then he unsheathes his sword, stands up, and stabs the creature's tough hide, all in one movement.
Gattel's shortsword glances harmlessly off the creature's rocky hide.
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"EVIL FLOOR! EVIL FLOOR!" Farrukh yells, appalled at this new development.
Boxes, crates, barrels, the air, and now the very ground we stand on! IS NOTHING SACRED ANY MORE?
Farrukh moves in, righteously angry at this thing's very existence. He studies it, to better MURDER THIS ABOMINATION.
"DIE, FLOOR STINGRAY...THING!" Farrukh yells, and unleashes hell on the offending creature.
Farrukh slashes at it once, but his scimitar glances off its hide as well.
The odd choking sensation immediately tips Tanith off that Carina's in trouble. Stepping forward, he slashes at the bizarre creature.
"Let her go you bastard!" he roars. "Kord, give me strength!"
Tanith hacks into the creature, creating two wide gashes.
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"The floor!? I should have known!" Cuetzpalli exclaims. He darts around the table, and then begins stabbing the thing with his trident.
Unable to even so much as breathe in her panic, Carina tries to defend herself as best she can.
NONONONONONONONONOTAGAINNOTAGAINNOTAGAIN
Cuetzpalli stabs the creature brutally, but it's hard to tell if he's having an effect or not.
The godfather rushes in, stabbing the creature with his rapier. "We have to get her out of there!" he says, helpfully.
The trapper begins to squeeze its prey.
Sensing the increasing tensions of the larger-than-normal Kordite to his rear, Eben bounds up on the table before he gets crushed under a giant ham-boot.
In spite of the slight elevation, the line of fire here isn't as clear. Eben grumbles, clearly considering if it would be worth it to just put a few arrows in either Gattel or Filge to have a clean shot. In the end, he fires around the two, though his shots, by necessity, are more careful and pack less of a punch than before as a result.
Gattel drops his sword, pulls his bow from between Eben's legs, nocks an arrow, and lets loose into the creature's stone-like side.
"Hold on Carina! We'll save you from the floor!"
"No. More. DYING!" Cuetzpalli screams, jamming his tri-pronged spear into the floor-fish over and over. Spiny bellows and forces his giant (yet narrow) frame into the room.
Gattel fires an arrow, piercing the creature's hide and nearly cutting Carina's head. Carina feels her bruised diaphragm fill with air as Cuetzpalli and Farrukh hack and stab into it, slicing and skewering the huge lurker ray. It gives a horrific, human-like scream, unable to avoid the blows.
Cuetzpalli brings down his trident once more, killing the floor.
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Carina gasps for air, her face an unhealthy pale blue. Her eyes are wide, and from the terror-stricken look in her eyes, she won't be able to sleep soundly for a few weeks. She coughs, feeling several sharp pains in her ribs. At least three broken, several more cracked. Serious fractures along arms and legs. Need immediate healing.
Eventually, after catching her breath, she looks over at the dead evil floor with a look of utter hate.
"F*@! YOU, FLOOR!"
"AHAHAHAHA DIE FLOOR, DIE!"
Farrukh blinks, and lets out a breath.
"It's okay. I'm calm."
"But we're DEFINITELY burning this place to the ground when we leave."
"You okay, Carina?"
Carina gasps for breath again and coughs. This time, she coughs up some blood.
"No. Several ribs cracked. At least three broken. Arms and legs are f@@~ed up." She says, her voice shaky.
Decorum demands that I don't cuss. Decorum can kiss my pale blue ass right now.
Farrukh pats down his pockets.
"This is all I've got. Sorry." he hands her a vial containing a potion of Cure Light Wounds.
"Unless you'd rather Tanith rub you down, of course." he smirks.
Carina uncorks the potion and drinks it.
It's managed to heal her somewhat--the pain in her ribs has lessened, but she still feels very weak.
"Thanks..." She sits up, still holding her side. She's evidently still in too much pain to respond much to Farrukh's quip.
Eben gives a brief sigh upon seeing Carina rescued, nods once she's on the road to being repaired, and then turns around. His bow is slipped back into its quiver and his longsword is drawn with a hiss and he rounds on Filge, still tied and prone in his tipped-over chair. "'Probably should've mentioned the trapper'? Yeah. You should've. Unless it was your job not to." Over his shoulder to the others, he cries, "You guys should've finished him off way back. Since then he's broken Smenk out of jail, killed people in the process, and now he's working for the doppelgangers!"
Filge's eyes widen. He squirms, still lying on his side. "I ain't seen Balabar since Diamond Lake, swear it on me poor dead mother's soul! May she never crawl her way back out of Baator to torment us once more."
Tanith stomps forward and drives one of those aforementioned ham-boots into the slain floor monster. "This place is getting real old..."
The big man wraps a mammoth hand around Carina's torso to steady her. "Hold still Red, I'll fix you up."
"But you did break him out. And your zombies did kill those guards. And then you left him there to what, come here and get allies?"
"You'll get no argument from me. I was fine killing him the first time around, but Tanith let him bargain for his life."
"Although, the information he gave DID turn out very useful at the time...perhaps he'd like to make himself so useful again? Similar terms, of course."
Farrukh winks at Filge, nudges him twice, then says no more.
"I ain't even got any—f!#%, I dunno, it must've been one of them! Yeah!" Filge's eyes are wild. "They took my body! Those thieving bastards! An' they made me—I mean, fake me—steal Smenk off so nobody'd know it wasn't me!"
"You'll get no argument from me. I was fine killing him the first time around, but Tanith let him bargain for his life."
"Although, the information he gave DID turn out very useful at the time...perhaps he'd like to make himself so useful again? Similar terms, of course."
Farrukh winks at Filge, nudges him twice, then says no more.
Filge starts to sweat. "I...look, I've told you all I know! Those two prison guards weren't exactly real generous with the secrets!"
"I bet that's almost true. He's not an equal partner here, he won't know anything else, he's just their b~!@@. 'Filge, you want to live? Sit here and don't say anything about the dangerous monster in the room till someone's right on top of it and ready to be crushed.' And it almost worked."
While Tanith works, Gattel pulls out another vial, gingerly rescues the rest from Eben's boots, and gets back to work. He loads the resulting mixture into his syringe and hands it to Eben. "Here kid, this will prove if he's real or not. Probably more effective if you untie him, but your choice really."
He then picks up his sword, sheathes it, and puts his bow back in its quiver.
Filge swallows. "Oh, yeah, like she'd let me live 'cause the 'gangers said so. She told me she only even tolerates them 'cause they feed her!"
He eyes the syringe with fear. "Hey, what is that? What is that?"
Eben glances down at the syringe filled with its noxious-looking contents. "Huh. Maybe I had you wrong, Gattel..." he says, then looks at Filge with a mischievous glint in his eye. "I have no idea. Let's find out. Together." He jabs the needle- Filge's own needle, if the stories of prisoners and lunatics are to be believed- into the human weasel's neck and pushes the plunger.
Filge screams in pain, though probably a lot more than is really warranted—his syringes are of fine make.
The necromancer is clearly fighting off the magic, but nonetheless he begins to grow in size. Several of the ropes snap, freeing the necromancer, as he takes on a size almost as great as Tanith. Carina is shoved away in the process.
Eben looks at first dissapointed and then alarmed. "You could have said it was one of those, Gattel..." Eben hisses.
Carina relaxes into Tanith's hold as he heals her, looping her arms around his neck and sighing with relief.
"Thanks. Thanks so much." She smiles a little as she gets to her feet.
Then gets promptly shoved aside when Filge starts growing. "Wha--?!"
"H-hey!" Filge starts to rise, finding his bonds broken. "I did it! I'm free!"
EBen steps back warily before discovering that, between Spiny, Tanith, and now Filge, not to mention the trapper's corpse, there isn't exactly much of anywhere to step back too. "No, you're untied. Free is when we're done with you. Big difference." Aside to Gattel, he asks, "Um... does this definitely mean he's not a doppelganger?"
Gattel takes his syringe back and hugs Filge's leg. "It's really him! I'm so glad!"
He then steps back, and fits one last vial into the mechanism. "This one will fix a few of those bruises."
"Can we get out of this room, already?" the godfather asks. He has his wand ready, in case anyone needs more healing. He eyes the dead trapper. "That thing's making me nervous. Aside from the trident and stabbing wounds, the thing looks about as alive as it ever did."
Eben is distracted from the giant-sized prisoner by the godfather's talk of trappers. "Do they regenerate?" he wonders, glancing over at the mass of flesh covering the floor.
Farrukh picks up a random paper and reads it, having found the last one he read interesting.
Aro Hock — Stockholder — Compromised (see p. 17) — [Gavin Ambus brother-in-law]
Noccin Volts — Cuthbert Priest (see S.C. Church) — Cloned — [Eritai confidant; currently "on vacation" while we try to schedule time to send someone in as him]
Kilaten Gardenloppe — Stockholder — Alt. ID — [Boss, if you're reading this, seriously, stop with the anagrams. The solidbods aren't that stupid. -Ix]
Estwile — Assistant Guildmaster — Cloned
Esca Elrison — Guild Treasurer — Prying — [Needs To Die]
Sir Gavin Ambus — Guildmaster — p[Watched]
Eritai Kaan-Ipzirel — Cuthbert City Matriarch/Oligarch (see S.C. Church/D. Oligarchy) — [Watched]
Farrukh instantly recognizes the Guild of Nightwatchmen—this guild supplements the City Watch in the hours of darkness. The guild is privately funded, largely by the church of St. Cuthbert (which also contributes majorly to its ranks), but also by private contributors that feel the need for extra security at night. The Nightwatchmen have a superb reputation with everyone except criminals.
The City Watch patrols are scarce to nonexistent in the Old City, but the Nightwatchmen usually respond quickly—though only when the alarm is raised by one of their clients. Regardless, the Nightwatchmen comprise one of Greyhawk's most crucial institutions.
Unfortunately, it would take hours to completely sift through all of this information, especially since it's gotten jumbled up.