Watching Ulfr engage with the devil bumble Zev makes a sound near Ryn which, while not quite a growl, anyone who had spent time around canines would know of.
His tail was also stiff.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"You're quite the talented liar. I suppose it must come naturally." Ryn says aloud looking at the creature. Between her own instincts, Ulfr's aggressive untrusting posture, and the sound Zev made when he had his hackles up, she was pretty sure the creature was lying to them.
The accuser devil snorts. "Alright, you got me. This 'Suzerain' doesn't have the shard on him--but he does know where it is. He's a pathetic coward, so you shouldn't have trouble wringing the information you need out of him."
And you're telling us this for free.... Why? Ulfr asks with obvious suspicions.
”Thank you!”
"Oh, come now--it's patently obvious. I have no hope of competing with you physically, and I get the impression that you'd rather be out of this place sooner rather than later."
"So does having him dealt with free you to leave? There's obviously some sort of self-serving catch involved" Run says dryly.
"Well, it'd certainly be a start. But, no. Whatever magics keep me bound here have much to do with the shard that keeps us all here."
”Huh, well, where is Suzerain?” Zev asks the fiend.
"The Suzerain's 'court' (if you can even call it that) is to the northwest, off the main entranceway."
”Thank you!” Zev brightly replies.
Ulfr shrugs and strolls toward his next target, this Suzerain. All that really mattered was the Shard. If he freed a puny demon while obtaining it, whatever. Made little difference to him.
He whistles a jaunty tune as he walks.
Ada follows Ulfr. "I don't know if we want to let a demon run loose." she touches her shard nervously.
Zev nods. ”Hopefully we’ll have a good outcome for this.”
"If it seems like it'll be too much of a danger to others, we'll just her to put it down." Ryn says in a matter of fact tone.
"... that works too, yes."
With a new goal in mind, the party leaves the putrid accuser devil and its minions behind. They pass through the twisting, nigh-on monotonous rooms of the Crow’s bowels before reaching the dungeon floor’s northwest quadrant.
A thirty-foot diameter, softly glowing circle of runes shimmers on the floor of the first room the party passes through. What appears to be a single flickering flame burns with no apparent source of fuel in the middle of the room.
A mischievous cackling comes from a room down the hall nearby.
Ulfr pointedly avoids the circle and makes his way toward the cackling.
Zev likewise avoids the circle and follows behind Ulfr, at a distance.
"Well that's not ominous at all," says Azura as she looks about for the source of the cackling. "This place is really selling the 'dungeon' theme."
Curiously, when the party reaches the room the cackling is coming from, it seems to be empty. An alcove to the south is partially blocked by a curtain of red mesh formed from fine steel chains, rusty from long exposure.
The smell of rotting flesh wafts from beyond the chains, along with the sound of something... gelatinous moving around.
"Very much so." Ryn answers, keeping the shield up as she looks around for the cackler.
"Because that's not an trap!" she exclaims looking at the rusty chains.
"Do we have anything non important we could throw at it?" Zev asks, his nose twitching uncomfortably.
Ryn doesn't see any visible source of the cackling, but when she speaks it promptly stops.
The squishing sounds of moving slime come to a halt as well. The curtain of rusted chains is promptly pulled back, revealing three masses of roiling, corpulent flesh with half-melted heads and limbs. Behind them is a circle of glowing and jagged red runes.
They let out a piteous moan as they start to lurch forward.
"Halt!" A voice comes from the glowing circle, and the blobs of flesh stop moving.
"Who dares trespass into the Court of the Suzerain of Little Erebus?!"
"We do. We're looking for the Shard of Wrath, we were told you knew where to find it." Zev bluntly states, arching a brow at the flesh... things.
"OH?" The Suzerain says.
"You were told rightly, rightly so indeed. In fact... the way forward is much closer than you think." The flesh-blobs start to withdraw. "You see this runic circle, yes?"
”The obnoxiously bright glowing circle? Yes.”
Ulfr nods and waits for the obligatory test or challenge or whatever. So far this whole experience had felt like an epic poem. No reason for it to stop now.
"Well, it just so happens that this circle serves a purpose other than glowing--it's a conduit to your prize." The Suzerain chuckles. "Of course, actually activating it is another matter--it requires that a devil's head be offered up as a sacrifice."
"And not just any devil either, so don't get any ideas about the lemures here or the nupperibos elsewhere--it has to be of a devil of some importance. Such as..."
"...an accuser devil, perhaps." The voice does the audio equivalent of a wicked grin. "Or, I suppose, one of those lesser imps flitting about."
”And what’s the actual way to the shard?” Zev asks as his eyes drift northwest of the circle.
Ada studies the circle and then snorts. We'll there used to be something here. A fire something. This circle is a Protection against Law circle."
"That circle will take someone somewhere or bring someone or something here. It does have teleportation magic."
"Oh, the long way to the shard would necessitate tromping through even more of those monotonous, ever-long stone corridors and slogging through more interminably tedious creatures. I've no interest in remaining here any longer--but so long as that shard remains, so I am bound here."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ulfr sighs. This place reeks of Polotics. Deadly politics, but still.
So, say we go drag that accuser devil over here and let you two "talk it out". What happens then? Basically, I've known you for thirty seconds and I'm already annoyed by you. Both of you are unworthy of song.
No, wait. That would mean going back through that portcullis.
Would your head work?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ulfr's question causes a dead silence to spread throughout the room.
It's broken by a tentative and unnerved "Uhhh...".
I'll take that as a yes. So, I need at just one very compelling reason to go back through that pain in the butt portcullis and not to take your head after I turn the rest of you into chunky salsa and then claim my prize...
"...you could always go around it?"
A beat passes.
"Oh, hell. GET THEM!" The Suzerain shrieks, and the lemures wobble to the attack!
Ulfr charges one of the blobby flesh things and doesn't honor them with even the hint of a battle song.
Ryn takes a single step forward, slamming her shield forward to hit another of the fleshy creatures.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Zev trots over behind the gladiators and tries to get one of the devils.
The three warriors flood into the room, brutally tearing one lemure to shreds and turning on the others. Ryn's strike lands, but the thing's gelatinous flesh bends around her shield and absorbs her blow without even flinching.
Saersha comes up behind the crew and stays there, her fingers flexing and her magic throbbing in her palms.
With a shriek of fright, the Suzerain reveals itself--a red imp of above-average size, flying with its stinger out right at Ulfr!
The stinger strikes Ulfr right in the shoulder, which starts to go numb...
...and at that moment Saersha weaves her spell. Her palm becomes engulfed in electricity, and it lances out towards the flying creature!
The imp shrieks in surprise and pain as electricity wracks its body. It starts smoking, but it doesn't fall.
Ulfr shrugs off the sting without issue, then looks the Suzerain directly in the eye and Smiles.
Azura settles into her cadence next to Ryn, keeping the lemurs busy with her rapierto make an opening for the gladiatrix.
Of course, she’s a terrible fighter and of no real use.
Ada moves to where sh can see the imp and gives it the evil eye.
The imp blinks, but doesn't seem to be too affected by Ada's baleful gaze.
Embyr comes up behind her mistress, but makes no move to engage yet.
The remaining lemures slough their ways forward to attack...
Ryn bats aside her lemure's two clumsy swipes, but Zev gets a claw to the bicep for his trouble.
Ulfr brings his club Wooshing around at the Suzerain in a downward arc!
But the timing is off.
The imp yelps and flits away from the incoming club.
"Ow!" Zev yelps before bringing his sword back over his head.