"Let me take care of our beat up battle buster here."
Andrea waves the wand over Imendri. "This is fun, maybe I should've been a wizard."
Imendri speaks steadily, but quietly. "All you may be can go up de stairs, and get ready for him to come frough de door and 'play' wif de fings what stinks. I fink I could get him to be train to not get too close wif people, like a game. Eet's nowt a bad fing, dis fing. Dis Shock Litsard or somefing. I like him!"
The lizard looks up and growls a bit.
Many have attempted to capture and tame shocker lizards, but this often proves a difficult and painful task.
With that final growl, a look of sadness, then panic, then fury passes over Imendri's face, and he screams as he brings down his sword upon the lizard's neck.
"Dis fing is going to shock again! I see de fing for what eet's true! Watch out!"
"BUT..BUT..we could've just..."
Vesilyx looks on in horror. "Bloody hell! What'd you go and attack him for?! He didn't mean any harm!"
Imendri's strike goes wide of the beast. The lizard hisses at Imendri, and shocks him again.
It then scurries to the wall and on up the wall, glaring down with accusing beady eyes from the shadowy and wet dripping corner of the ceiling.
"STEADY YOURSELF, IMENDRI!"
"There are fouler beasts to come, I am certain. The more time we waste, the shorter our lives grow. Leave this cur be."
"De beest ownly has hate! You haff to see eets ice! Ownly can shock, no peece! No loff!"
"Come out off de room, need to lock dis fing in here. Eet's a fing off de enemies. Dat's how it got here. Eet's a trap for us to find."
Vesilyx wearily walks out of the room and glares at Imendri as he passes the half-elf.
"It's just a lizard, for bog's sake," he mutters under his breath.
"Upside? Might be for interesting eatin'."
Auric rolls his eyes so hard you can practically hear it.
The lizard is unimpressed by Imendri's attempts to frighten and cajole it. It continues to clutch at the ceiling, hissing and sending electrical jolts that continue down the dripping wall and into the puddles on the floor.
Imendri closes the door and looks at it for a second, listening.
Satisfied, he turns around and looks victorious. "Sow, off to slay de stink fings. Keep ice open for traps. Dey is terrible fings."
Imendri ascends the stairs and keeps his eyes open and sharp in the gloom of the tower.
Imendri stops, turns around, picks up his pack, and then ascends the stairs again, stopping before the doorway.
Vesilyx slinks cautiously behind Imendri.
I'm not letting you out of my sights. Not with that bloodlust you've just shown.
His sword is drawn and prepared for whatever may come.
You come to the door of the third level. No sound issues from within. Silent as a tomb. The stairway continues upward.
Imendri, calmer now that he is away from the terrible, horrible, malevolent shocker lizard, notes that the steps of the young troglodyte do not stop at this door, although the door has been used in the past (recent past, not like hundreds of years ago, dur).
Imendri puts his hand up and halts until the party has caught up.
*WOOSH*WOOSH* goes Auric's torch as he quickly makes his way up the stairs.
"Don't get yourself killed just yet, half-elf."
Andrea gets up real close behind the three, holding her bow at the ready.
"I have a bad feeling about this for some reason."
Andrea surveys the stairwell herself, just double checking the floor for anything out of the ordinary.
The Half-Elf bruiser pushes the door open, sword and shield ready, backpack on the stairs beside the door.
Bonk! The door is locked.
"Ehmm, hm. Eet's eh locked door. Onless som off yuu haff a key, or a way to open, may be we haff to go up first."
Imendri begins to scale the stairs to the next level, searching for traps as he goes.
Imendri finds nothing.
"Outta the way, boys!"
Andrea slings her bow over her shoulder and runs at the door, shoulder in lead, not giving one thought to the noise she's about to make.
"Ow."
Looking over his shoulder, he sees the wiry Ranger throw herself at the door, and chuckles.
"Som times eet's hard, even for me. I can giff it a try dough."
Squaring off against the fearsome door, Imendri leans back, arm tucked against his ribs, shoulder pointed at the door, and gives it a slam.
Vesilyx leans back against a wall, arms crossed and silent behind the two. He amusingly watches them throw themselves at the door.
The door deftly rebounds first Andrea, then Imendri, almost as if it is a sturdy, locked, wooden door.
"TRYIN' TO GET AWAY, EH?!??!"
Andrea sniffs and has at it again.
Waiting for the next time Andrea preps to push, Imendri winds up and steps back to kick the door in.
"Come on, Hefty. Let's do this."
Timing her slamming with Imendri's Mighty Kick, Andrea launches herself at the door once more.
"Well, that just hurt my pride."
"If you want something done right..."
Auric pushes his way past his compatriots, puts all his weight into a good shove, and likely bounces back into Andrea.
"If the bard opens this, I quit."
"Hokay, dis is silly. We haff to can open dis. Now I fink eet's my pride, not my sholter, dat hurts. All togever, same time. En... to... TRE!"
"FIVE!"
Andrea throws herself at the door with Imendri, cursing herself for revealing her bad counting skills.
Wow.
Auric hands his torch to Andrea, his sword to Vesilyx, take three steps down the stairs and runs up and almost IN to Imendri at the door.
With a wood splintering crunch, the door finally gives way. Who needs a key in the Fallen Fortress? Not these heroes!
Two stone altars, one black and one white, sit at either end of this large chamber, which takes up two wings of the tower on this level. The crumbling remains of wooden benches sag in front of each altar beneath rotting ceiling tapestries. Carved symbols and writings snake along the walls.
Disconcertingly, the burnt corpses of two troglodytes lie on the floor in the center of the room.
*whispers* "Yikes. After you, gentle sirs."
Andrea keeps behind the Venerable Order of the Smashed Portal right in the doorway, her bow at the ready, eyballing the altar.
"You know what? I've seen this before. This is for wackos who love magic and the mad god, Nethys. I found one of these in a cave in the woods once and crept up on these two lads who were licking a book. Nutters. That's what all the scribblies are, they love their words."
Auric grabs his sword and torch back and walks in the room.
The big lug lumbers gently into the center of the room and scans for anything out of the ordinary, moving things aside with sword first, then hand.