"I don't suppose any of you guys have a cleaning spell? The stuff I found... could use it. And I definitely could."
Then she notices the the half-dwarven corpse. And the other half-dwarven corpse. "What the hell?" then the swinging pendulum. "Why? Who would do this?" she said, her voice rising slightly in pitch. She finally settles on a frown, with a look of confusion.
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As he comes upon Millorn's horribly mangled body, Horgus blanches, and starts to dry heave. Even Anevia pales a little.
"Holy s+&&." Anevia glances at the trap. "Victim of his own trap?" she offers.
Aravashnial turns toward Ary's voice. "What was that about a statue? Did you find something?"
Li'an's eyes light up as she flips through the spellbook. "There are some nice spells here, invisibility, mage armor, quite a few others. Would you mind carrying the spellbook Ehren? I'd love to get a chance to transcribe some spells from it at some point, but it'll be hard for me to move quietly with another book on me."
"He ran right into it Ary... There was nothing that could be done," she said, shaking her head grimly. Turning to Anevia she adds "I'm not sure if it was his trap, this looks awfully complex to be set up by a dwarf who fled down here don't you think?" She took the time to point out the tripwire and lever to Aneiva.
Turning back to Ary she continued, "We'll do something about his body before we move on. Crazy or not, turncoat or not, he was once a crusader. We can't just leave him here to rot."
"It's..." she isn't taking her eyes off the body, and the pendulum. "Don't move forward. Just stay here." she says quickly.
Right. Uh. The statue." she says, removing it from where she'd stuck it in her belt pouch for the quick climb. "It's a little man, carved out of stone with a spear. It's a little messy, but you can examine it if you like." she had tried to clean it, but, her human hands were no match for magic.
If he holds out his hand for it, Ary will put the little spearman into it. She forcibly took her eyes away from the grisly scene; blood shouldn't be that dark...
"Yeah. We need to do something." she says to Li'an, turning her attention back to the woman. "But yeah. I was more wondering who in the world -would- set up something like this."
Aravashnial runs his fingers along the statue. "Marble? Simple weaponry? Likely Sarkorian. If it's worked stone its likely pretty old though, and probably originated in one of the lost cities of Sarkoris - probably Storasta, the closest metropolis."
Anevia does what she can to help the other two crusader women clean up the mess. "I don't think we're going to find any soft ground for a burial," she says sadly.
Valaria nods, her face somber. "Let's at least take him down to his cave. At the very least, he saw it as his. It's the best we can do right now."
She perks up slightly at Aravashnial's explanation. "I wonder how many things like this exist. These little remnants of Sarkoris may be all that's left from before the Worldwound devastated everything."
Ary nods slowly. "I guess we can use the frayed rope to lower him down." she says, swallowing hard. She slowly inhales and then exhales. She closes her eyes and sees all of the crushed bodies beneathe the stones they'd landed around when they first arrived.
When she opens her eyes, she sets about the grim task of doing what she'd suggested... using the frayed rope to lower him down, and doing her best to pay no attention to all of the nastiness.
Anevia cheekily floats alongside Ary while she takes care of all the dirty work, hunched over her crutch like an old woman with a cane.
Between the business of searching Millorn's campsite, going through his stuff, and of giving him a dignified place to rest, the Alter Self spells wear off. Anevia is able to float back up the shaft just before levitate spell dissipates.
After that business is done, Anevia dusts herself off. "Well, forwards?"
Valaria nods again. "Right. I'll stay up front like usual."
Ary gives Valaria an appraising look. "It might be wise not to press on without some help from Avi's wand, Butterfly; you aren't looking as good as you were, yesterday. You're missing a bit of the wiggle." she said, trying to make a joke.
"Ary's got a point, Val," she says, nodding in agreement. "We don't want to take any more chances today."
"Hopefully we can find someplace safe to rest before too long, that fight and this... mess... definitely took its toll on the group." Li'an adds, before moving up to the front of the group to prepare to move out.
Hrut nods in agreement, incredibly sore from being crush earlier, rolling his shoulders and flexing his limbs, every breath painful and creaking.
"Yes let us move on from this place, we need to get back to the surface before this place consumes us."
Valaria tries to put on a cocky grin, but her smiles looks a little forced when she's obviously not moving quite right. "I've lived through worse injuries. Don't worry, you'll get to see me wiggle again once I get a little rest."
She looks at Li'an with a pout. "You too Li'an?" It feels a bit strange, having people concerned about her health so much. "If I'm so outnumbered, I know better than to argue, but I still think I can manage without it." She has a cheeky grin as she looks between the two of them.
"Hey, it's your choice, Butterfly." Ary shrugs. "But better safe than sorry. I'm ready whenever you are."
At Li'an's agreement, Aravashnial pulls out his wand from his robes, offering Valaria false life as some temporary protection against anything that might lay ahead.
The two women lead the way using the limited dim light from Markus' quarterstaff down what feels like an endless, upwards tunnel. The heroes move along like this for another thirty minutes.
Suddenly, the very earth begins to tremble, vibrating slightly beneath the heroes' feet. This builds into full on tremors, as the ground begins to shake violently. Dust pours from the ceiling and onto everyone.
Then as suddenly as it started, it stops.
"I'll be careful and stay close to the group so I've got some back up," she promises. "But we have no idea how long we'll be down here and I don't want everyone to use too many resources on me. If it looks like we'll get into another fight, Aravashnial can cast his spell on me then."
Valaria keeps close to Li'an, not wanting to get too far from the group. The walk is long and a bit dull, but bearable and thankfully devoid of more attacking creatures, or mad men. The sudden shaking nearly sends her tumbling to the ground and she catches herself against the wall before she falls.
Looking up at the ceiling, she suddenly feels very nervous. "We need to move. That does not look at all stable," she says quietly, not sure how bad the ceiling is and definitely not wanting to take chances.
The trek upwards through the tunnel was harder than the previous day's travel, but Li'an was happy to be making progress up towards the surface.
After a long period of quiet during their travel, she is surprised when the ground gives way to tremors. She freezes in place and looks nervously at the ceiling, suddenly aware that there's tons of rock above her waiting to collapse. When the tremors stop she takes a deep breath.
"Lets hope we don't have any more of whatever that was..."
She stops and scans down the now dust-filled hallway and tries to listen for signs of anything in the distance.
"Lets get everyone through here quickly then," she says, noting Valaria's concern.
Ary nods, and keeps as much pace as she can, with Aravashnial in tow. "Kinda wish I'd trained more for underground stuff, now. At least then, I'd be able to maybe tell how far we'd fallen, and how much further we had to go."
"I'm sure that there isn't too much farther." pipes in Markus. He stops for a moment to put a hand on the wall beside him when the tremors start, and leans away from it when they start. "There - you feel that? There were tremors just before the attack on Kenabres, remember? Do you think the demons mounted another one?"
As the tremors start up, Ehren lets out a shout, not of surprise, but of pain. He falls to his knees once more, gritting his teeth and clutching his shoulders. The agony lasted only an instant, but it was more than enough to drown out all sensation. Even after the shakes end, he remains on the ground, breathing haggardly. Already laid low, he places his palms against the ground and closes his eyes, reaching out, feeling for the closest ley line. Markus' question sounds distant to him, but through heavy breaths, Ehren manages a reply.
"I think... they're trying to destroy it... what's left of it, at least..."
Ary would stop as Ehren did, concern on her face, chewing her lip. When Ehren confirms Markus's question, "Rocky... probably a bad time to ask, and insanely insensitive, but... can you tell how far we are? Are we closer to it now, or further? Arriving in the city will be much different from outside the city."
"I... don't know," Ehren replies, pondering the idea, "I have never tried it before... but I also don't think it works that way."
Anevia stops to help Ehren back up, looking concerned. "But...it's still there, right? The wardstone?"
She looks at the hairline cracks in the ceiling, suddenly urgent.
"Valaria is right. We need to move. Now."
Dust begins to fall from the ceiling once more, as the tunnel begins to crack under its own weight.
Anevia and Horgus run for it, and are able to escape the tunnel as it collapses. Anevia is surprisingly agile with her injury when she needs to be, and Horgus runs like the fires of the Abyss are behind him. As they escape, the tunnel caves in, burying the way back with several tons of rock. In the cavern behind them, they can hear even more rocks from the ceiling fall and crash to the ground, but miraculously, after a moment, the ground seems to settle and the cavern holds.
The tunnel lets out into a massive cavern. Cylindrical rock formations along the walls arch up to make a domelike chamber, but the walls and floor are riddled with fresh cracks. At the center of the cave, a stone tower that may have once reached the seventy-foot high ceiling has collapsed onto its side, a victim of the recent tremors.
As everything starts to go to hell (somewhat literally!), Ary shoves Aravashnial roughly out of the way of the cavein, it isn't much, but since she had been guiding him, simply putting him in the right direction.
In the process, Ary gets pinned under a rock that just happens to have wedged itself under a rock before placing its crushing weight upon her... and then several more stones fall atop that.
She yelps... but then holds perfectly still, the rock resting across her leg in such a way that it's impossible for her to personally lever it (DC 25 is beyond her).
"Right. Lovely." Ary lays back uncomfortably across the rocks, making a sound of pure frustration. She looks into the darkness behind her, wondering just how much has collapsed; she still plans to get Avi back there... if she survives... but it may be significantly more expensive.
After a moment, she closes her eyes and returns to steady breathing forcibly. "Thank the Inheritor it wasn't a full collapse."
Hrut just does not move as fast as he did before, clearly the injuries are taking their toll on the large man, he see's the rocks but cannot get past them to safety, once again barely able to move or talk being crushed once again.
"Uhh... Can't... Breathe..."
At Anevia's warning, Li'an takes off in a sprint down the hall, stopping only after she'd hears the collapse come to a halt. She turns around and looks at the collapsed ceiling in disbelief. After a moment she begins looking for the others, trying to figure out if everyone made through alright.
She started to head back in after hearing several people crying out, and finds Aravashnial stumbling forward without Ary. Li'an reaches out and grabs hold of his arm when she sees him. "I've got you Master Aravashnial, lets get you out here where it's safe," she said, leading him out and around the corner up against the wall. "Wait here, I'm going back in to help."
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"Just a whisper of it remains..." he murmurs dejectedly, before hearing Anevia's sudden warning. "Oh."
Perhaps his apparent affinity for rocks has something to do with it, but Ehren manages to scramble back onto his feet and start running like his life depended on it. He just barely manages to clear the tunnel in time, a small rock clipping the back of his heel, but nothing more. Safe (for the time being), he stoops over and pants.
At the first crack, Valaria leaps forward, trying to get away.
She dashes forward, barely ahead of the rock fall and manages to avoid getting caught by the falling rubble. "I am really starting to hate caves," she grumbles. Seeing several of the others didn't make it clear, she heads back to help try and free them.
Markus was not fast enough to get out before the rocks pile down.
Aravashnial pants, seeming shaken. "There was a cave-in?" he asks.
"Y-yeah." Anevia replies. "I think the others need help. Li'an? Valaria? Ehren?"
Surprisingly, Horgus is the first one in, rushing to Ary's side for once, and trying to help dig her out rather uselessly (he cannot dig fast enough, and rubble keeps sliding down over the parts he is trying to dig). But between Anevia, Valaria, Ehren, and Li'an, the rest of the heroes are excavated out in under a minute.
Seeing that Ary is more or less unharmed, Horgus huffs. "I was worried my best bodyguard had died for a moment, so I needed to do something," he explains.
Anevia looks over Hrut's wounds, concerned. "Woah, big guy. You're not looking too good."
The dirty work done, Anevia collapses onto the floor. She kisses the ground, and raises her hands to the cavern ceiling, whispering, "Thank you Lady Desna for gracing me with your luck today. I beg thee to watch the road ahead as we travel..." She continues to pray for the time being.
"Yikes, that could have been way worse than it was," Valaria says as she helps pull Hrut clear of the rock fall. "Okay, he needs some one to treat this fast, before it gets worse. Does anyone have anything left?"
She looks at Anevia and then takes a deep breath. "Still looking out for me after all, my lady. I suppose I owe you yet again. I know you like when people explore new things, but sending us to explore some place less lethal would be nice."
Ary smiles at Horgus. "You continue to surprise me." If anything good was coming of this, it was that Horgus wasn't as bad as she'd expected. Maybe it was that he was just innately gruff... or maybe, as Anevia had pointed out, he was putting on a show. "Thank you, everyone." she said, but kept her eyes on Horgus.
She moved to kneel beside Hrut, once freed. "Yeah, I think it's about time you took one of the healing vials, big guy. I don't think it's going to come down to anyone needing it more than you."
'Thank you for good friends, at the very least.' she thought, as she looked back to the front.
"Once we patch Hrut up, if we can, we need to get moving... if it's still 'whispering', I don't doubt they'll hit it again. And we don't want to be here, if they do."
"Desna was certainly watching over us today for sure," she said, echoing Anevia's sentiment. "That was certainly too close for comfort though, Hrut barely made it out. If we get ambushed in this condition..."
"I don't have anything helpful healing-wise, and it seems what little we had is almost gone now. We really need to start thinking about finding a defensible place to rest. If we run into more Darkmantles we could be in trouble," she said, trying to point out the group's condition without alarming anyone.
Horgus points his nose into the air. "Yes, well. You're the only one out of the lot of you who is actually working hard for the money I am paying all of you," he says to Ary, simply.
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Still catching his breath, Ehren moves to help with the digging efforts. He is not particularly strong, but the concerted effort is successful regardless. Frowning at the sight of Hrut's wounds, Ehren opens his belt pouch, retrieving the healing potion from the healing kit they found earlier.
"From Torag's temple. I am sure he would approve of one of his faithful using it," he says, offering the vial to Hrut.
Ary frowned, tilting her head at Horgus as he said that. "Well.. I mean.." she actually somewhat appeared bashful, at what she saw as a compliment from him. "I'm just doing my job, really, yeah?"
She doesn't, for once, step to the defense of the others. She knew that they'd all been working hard, and especially some of them, were well out of their element.
"I have a few others to thank for saving my bacon, as well." she smiles slowly.
She watches as Ehren gives the potion to Hrut, nodding agreement. "Seems like he agrees as well. Hrut's already back to fighting fit... or close to it! I know our resources are down, but we can probably safely press on for just a little longer, yeah? Whoever carved that stuff is surely nearby..." Ary suggested. "That, and I'd kill for some running water. I am in terrible need of a shower. If the Inheritor could see me..." she says, shaking her head, and making a tsking sound.
Horgus seems to have lifted her spirits significantly.
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Valaria nods. "He's better than he was. As long as we don't run into anything else too aggressive, we'll probably be alright. I think there's some kind of pillar or something like that ahead, so maybe it's another thing made by whoever did those carvings."
She laughs. "I think we could all use a shower right now. Maybe if we find an underground stream or something we can all get a quick bath." She glances at the men with a teasing smile. "As long as the boys can be trusted not to peek."
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Ehren coughs into his fist and turns away from the women to hide his face. Just some rock dust lodged in his lungs, nothing more.
"Lets go investigate that tower then, even if it wasn't in use recently, perhaps part of it is still intact. If so it'd give us a place to fall back to if we can't find anywhere else to go," Li'an said, her voice more serious than usual. The collapse had shaken her somewhat, and she felt a strong need to ensure the group's safety before allowing herself to relax again.
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"Hey. Ehren can -make- water. Sure, it's cold, but I'm pretty sure that if I don't get this ick off, he can watch all he wants. I'm only worried about 'no touching.'" she grins, as she slips back into position as rearguard, morale having recharged significantly... possibly at Ehren's expense. "Perks of being a medic that can summon water, I suppose." she says, giving him a wink, if he's paying attention to her, once more.
Valaria can hear the seriousness in Li'an's voice. "Yeah. We need to find somewhere to take a break, or even somewhere to fall back to and sleep later."
"And towers are generally good for defending," Ary offers, reinforcing the idea of them pressing forward to the structure.
Valaria nods. "Right, well lets get a move on then, assuming everyone's up and able to walk again." She takes the front again, as they head toward the fallen tower, doing her best to keep an eye for more dangers, though she doesn't see much of anything important. Her gaze flicks up occasionally, making sure the ceiling isn't about to fall in again.
Li'an taps Valaria on the shoulder to get her attention, and then gestures for her to stop. Making it clear they need to keep quiet, she points out several figures out by the tower, seemingly absorbed in digging.
When Valaria starts to look at the creatures by the tower, Li'an turns to let the rest of the group know they should stop and try to remain quiet.
Valaria stops at Li'an's gesture, squinting into the darkness. Once Li'an points them out, she can barely see the moving people. "Right," she whispers. "Well, we really can't go any other way. Let's be careful."
Unfortunately Valaria was not very quiet.
Li'an and Valaria can see two humanoid figures focused on slowly and carefully digging through the tower's rubble. Now and then they call out, and a muffled voice in the rubble answers back.
The taller of the two figures turns, squinting at the distant light from Ary's longsword. He drops into a defensive position, hissing a warning to his companion, drawing a club he carries at his side.
In a loud, raspy voice, speaking in strangely accented but quite eloquent Common, the tall figure calls out: "Strangers! If your intentions are ill, we ask you to move on and leave us in peace. If they are good, then perhaps you can help. As you can see, misfortune has befallen us."
Catching Ary's wink, Ehren clams up, mortified by the teasing. Are all women like this? he is left to wonder, his twin misfortunes of social ineptitude and inexperience with the fairer sex clearly showing. He does not complain about it however, though he does mumble a few things imperceptibly. It was almost enough to keep his mind off the doom and gloom from before.
He remains quiet as something in the dark speaks out to them, content to let the others do the talking.