Still holding her blade ready Jathal listens carefully for any footsteps coming closer?
"Can anyone heal the Dwarf?" She hisses.
Dayana wordlessly looks to the bard bearing the wand at Jathal's inquiry.
Finally able to see once more, Aelion stepped away from the doors he had closed after listening carefully.
He approached the badly injured dwarf, doing his best to bind her wounds with limited resources.
With their enemies defeated and the darkness banished, Cecilia raised her arms in triumph. This transformed into a gasp of alarm as she sees Morgrym is broken and bleeding on the ground. Pulling out the wand that the witch had given them, the bard ignored the elf's attempts to bandage the wounds. She had never been much good at stemming the flow of blood.
As all of the dwarf's injuries began to mend themselves, Cecilia turned towards the others. She didn't know how many more charges the little crystal baton held, but she assumed it had at least a few more.
"Anyone else here need a little bit of positive energy flowing through their veins?" The bard asked, spinning the wand between her dexterous fingers, feeling much more sprightly now that Morgrym was on the mend. "Perhaps some for those not yet skilled enough to avoid the enemy's arrows and swords?
Zalindra, hearing that help was needed with the dwarf, goes over and tries to help
but ends up just barely able to not make things worse.
She says Sorry to Aelion, and goes back to looting, grateful to have something to wipe her hands on after getting dwarf blood all over them.
Morgrym sits up, groaning.
"Wonning?" he asks, in almost-common tongue, then looks around, counts the bodies and nods to himself. "Wonned."
He draws his cup, and with a murmured word he conjures water and drinks deeply.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Aelion strains to hear anything at the doorway but the elf detects no hint at what may lie beyond the the doors before moving to help Morgrym.
Searching through the goblin's pockets, Zalindra recovers an unworked ruby, a decorative pepper shaker; shaped like an exotic cat, a jar of green olives, a piece of cut malachite, and a gold tooth; slightly stained by the blood of its former owner.
The hobgoblin wears a polished copper ring, and carries the now familiar Black Arrow longsword that seems the standard issue for Sinruth's servants. On the body of the druid, the rogue finds three scrolls, a flask of oil, two delicate vials of shimmering red liquid, and a small pouch of spell components.
Relieved to find his efforts unneeded, Aelion nodded his thanks to Zalindra and stepped aside to allow Cecilia room to work. Wiping the blood from his hands on the cloak of a dead hobgoblin, he looked back when Cecilia offered to use the wand again.
"If there are no others in great need, I would take healing," he requested, looking around to judge the state of those wounded.
Rhona shakes her head looking at Morgrym.In common she says,"What am I gonna do with you!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dayana will go ahead and cast detect magic on the items Zalindra has uncovered.
Zalindra smiles when she sees Dayana cast a spell on the little pile of things, hoping something is magic.
Seeing that the rest of the party seems to be healthy and well (or at least as healthy as one can expect after fighting their way through a room full of goblins) Cecilia uses another charge of the wand on Aelion.
With the elf fully healed, the bard placed the wand back in her pack. Once again pulling out her crimson whip, Cecilia allows the party a moment to examine the treasures taken from the bodies of their fallen foes. Shes uses this time to reapply the Prestidigitation Spell on her clothing, keeping herself cool.
After Zalindra and Dayana have had sufficient time to comb through the small pile of trinkets, Cecilia begins moving towards the doorway that Aelion had been standing next to earlier. Her father's weapon at the ready, she slowly opens the door and peers into the next room.
Aelion thanked Cecilia, untying the scraps of cloth he had been using to cover the wounds, and letting them fall to the floor. "I am glad death did not take you this day, Morgrym," he told the dwarf, aware that he wouldn't understand but making the attempt all the same. Then he saw about topping up his quivers with any available arrows.
He joined Cecilia at the door, bow ready, when all were prepared.
Rhona translates for Aelion and chuckles as she looks at the elf then Morgrym and snorts before she laughs some more.
As Dayana examines the items, she finds that faint magical auras emanate from all three scrolls, as well as the flask of oil.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
→
"Let's see... an oil for temporarily enhancing one's weapon to function as magical...; a minor healing scroll...; not sure what that one is, but it's transmutation...; a scroll to enhance one's jumping capabilities..." She shrugs. "I'm sure we'll find a use for them." Finished speaking, Dayana's attention turns to staring silently but longingly at the piece of cat kitsch for just a brief moment before she snaps herself out of it and goes to join the group readying to move on.
Zalindra sees Dayana's eyes on the cat, and she offers her the pepper shaker.
She leaves the scrolls for the magic users to claim, and the olives because she doesn't like them, putting the gold tooth, the uncut ruby, and the malachite in her pocket until they can be appraised.
As Rhona finishes translating, Morgrym bows to Aelion. Quickly he pulls out his dictionary, flicks to a page, and responds "I also. I halp you."
True to his (mangled) word, he starts to retrieve arrows, carefully checking the fletching for damage as he does.
Rhona heads over to the next door and wonders what exactly is awaiting on the other side.
Dayana accepts the pepper shaker, smiling down at it before tucking it into her satchel. Beledia, still inside the bag, is not terribly amused and slithers around the small figurine.
Surprised by Morgrym's kind gesture, Aelion shot him a smile of thanks as he gathered up what he could.
Dwarves are a hardy and honorable people, he thought to himself. I could find much worse companions in my quest for justice... His gaze turned considering, but then he shook his head to clear it of those thoughts. For now, it was enough to find the last kidnapped citizen, and free her.
"Maybe I could learn some Dwarven, while you learn the Common tongue?" he suggested as he worked side by side with Morgrym.
***
At the door, he glanced back at the others. "Ready to go?"
At their signal, he ventured forth, quiet as he could be.
Zalindra follows the party, and if no one picks up the scrolls, she will also bring them along (but she hopes someone takes them to use them).
As the party assembles behind Aelion at the western doors, the elf slowly cracks them ajar and peeks through.
A staircase stretches down before the group, leading into a long corridor shrouded in darkness. It seems to continue westward, not quite lining up with the dwarf's described directions.
Cecilia took a step back from the door, tapping the side of head as she tried to think. The bard attempted to reconcile what she was seeing with the directions Adronsius had given them. She really should have written it all down.
"I don't think this is the way the remaining prisoners were taken." Cecilia said, instead pointing to the north. "But I remember our good friend dwarf mentioning some stairs to the right..."
Still holding her whip, the bard begins walking towards one of the room's side corridors.
Zalindra follows Cecilia.
Not satisfied with the path ahead, and heading to another exit, Cecilia opens the northern door, revealing the short corridor on the other side.
The path ahead of the bard leads to another set of stairs, but is bisected before it reaches them by another passage crossing east to west.
Jathal moves up to the opened door by Cecilia and scans the corridor ahead.
Abandoning his previous path (and closing the western doors again), Aelion joined the others near the north door. "Stairs... it looks like you were right, Cecilia. Let's scout, Jathal."
Carefully, Aelion eased down the passage, alert for trouble.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"This place is big for a crypt!" Rhona says as she follows suit behind the others axe over one shoulder.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Morgrym lags behind - not out of fear of danger per se, but out of the reasonable fear that his unfamiliarity with sneaking might alert the enemy ahead.
She sees others trying to stealth she slips into a more stealthy stance and whips her ax forward and slips her shield over her head.
As the group moves slowly into the corridor ahead, Zalindra notices the faint sound of dripping water echoing up the stairwell ahead of them.
Peering around the corners at the intersection, Aelion can see that both passageways soon end in solid wooden doors. There are no threats as far as the elf can see, but Rhona and Zalindra can both pick up the subtle sounds of movement on the other side of the eastern door.
Cecilia allows the others to take the lead, advancing slowly along behind them with the weapon for which she was named in her hands.
She notices both the dwarf and the human staring at the door to the east. "Is there someone in that there room?" She whispers, standing near the corner. "If there is, we should certainly investigate."
The bard waits for the moment, wanting to know what the others think before committing to any course of action.
Zalindra responds
I hear dripping water up the stairway, and there is someone, or well, maybe something, moving behind the Eastern door.
Aelion shook his head sharply to clear it. "I agree with Cecilia," he whispered to the others. "Even if it's not who we're looking for, we shouldn't leave anyone at our backs if we can avoid it."
He ventured closer to the eastern door, wary of traps.
He listened at the door carefully, trying to guess who or what might lie behind it. Was there the clink of armor? Goblin voices? What had Zalindra heard?
Aelion attempts to identify the source of the sounds coming from the next room, but try as he might, whatever sound his companions heard, the elf can not pinpoint it again over the sound of his own breathing as he presses himself to the cold, damp wood of the door.
Nothing. He heard nothing.
Of course, it was possible that whatever was in there had stopped moving.
Aelion turned back towards the others with a shrug, and shook his head. He pantomimed opening the door, giving them a questioning look.
"Z how about we creep up and check it out, if anything comes out swinging I can help cover you while our friends wait here"she says quietly as she flips the head of her ax in a spin.
She blinks watching the elf go up and open the door and her jaw drops just for a moment before she clinches it back up. She follows the elf hoping to help the elf if he gets hit by something.
Rhona up there slips her shield on to her back and passes the Ax to Aelion. She begins to take her time to inspect the door.
If there are no traps she'll try to pull her shield out and disarm them
She curses silently in dwarf and then try to open the lock.
Zalindra nods at Rhona and proceeds to go quietly to the door.
Once there, she looks to make sure everyone is ready, and then opens it quickly.
Morgrym, a little lost but gamely carrying on, does his best to sneak closer to the door and ready himself to attack.
Once Rhona has checked the door and ensured it isn't trapped, Zalindra sidles up and pushes it open as quietly as possible.
The room beyond reeks of old bones and rusted metal. Keeping close to the door as she carefully advances, the rogue catches a glimpse of the southern wall of the chamber, filled floor to ceiling with skeletal remains packed into over a dozen burial alcoves. Along the top of the wall the epitaph "Honor the Heroic Guardians of Rivenroar" repeats, interspersed among small engravings of the Rivenroar crest and the black sun sigils.
As more of the room is revealed, those in the doorway can see that not all of the dead are content to rest in the room's walls. Standing before a small annex with a fountain in the eastern wall, four skeletal figures carry a small boy toward a wide corridor leading north while two more watch on from between the stone pillars there.
Their bones creak and clatter as they drag the limp child, none seem to notice the approaching intruders.