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A bullet rips through the octopin. It hesitates, giving a gurgle of pain, and Astraden presses the advantage. Her rapier slices through the octopin like a hot knife through butter, and it gives a keening wail.
Arrows and rays zoom all around Zyrxog, missing again and again, when one arrow suddenly thuds into his back. In a ridiculously lucky shot, Tanith has hit the mind flayer. It doesn't seem to have done any major damage, but it has torn into his bag, and several items are tumbling out into the muck below.
Zyrxog seems to stagger in mid-flight. He is bleeding profusely, his blood a horrid green-purple, oily-looking fluid. Some of his enchantments—such as the displacement—seem to be fading away at last. He looks at the adventurers. He looks at the dead octopins and at his spent magic items. He looks at the wrecked pool, at his flooded chamber.
"This...kikk...is not over. Th-there will...ughk...be a time you do not...chssss...ex—expect. The...writhing doom...you have but closed a door, propped shut a window. I...will...be back. Maybe years...maybe months...when you least—"
The bloodied illithid vanishes from sight with a loud pop.
Rodrigo begins cursing once he realizes what happened. He doesn't stop.
Farrukh drops his bow and picks up his sword and shield.
He glares at the last Octopin with the raging intensity only a murderhobo an adventurer denied the chance to destroy his evil, cowardly, no good, yellow bellied, tentacle head having foe can muster.
"Next. You." he manages.
"Nonononono!" Eben wails as Zyrxog vanishes. He points his bow at the empty space formerly occupied by the mind flayer, as though to send an arrow several seconds backwards in time.
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Carina's eyes widen when Zyrxog starts monologuing. He's leaving. He's fleeing. No, this can't happen. THIS. CAN'T. HAPPEN.
She knows it's a long shot. She knows it's probably futile.
She yanks her last bomb from her belt and throws it anyway.
"No."
The bomb clips the balcony.
"no no no no no"
The bomb arcs through the air.
"NO NO NO NO NO"
The bomb misses Zyrxog entirely.
As the illithid winks out of existence, Carina's heart sinks into her feet. "He... he... teleported into another plane! HE TELEPORTED! TO!
Her rage is palpable. It could make one wonder whether she recently took a level of Barbarian.
Astraden stabs forth again, this time puncturing the octopin's eyeball. The octopin trembles, flailing at her with its claws. It shakes and spasms, but finally slumps, its claws falling to the floor with loud clangs. Twisted life has earned a straight death.
Farrukh's eye twitches.
"Please tell me that did not just happen. He's here, invisible or something, right? Some super-invisibility this See Invisibility thing can't get through? RIGHT!?!?"
Carina glowers at where Zyrxog once was.
"...no. He's gone." She grumbles, stooping down and retrieving her crossbow. "F&!@er plane shifted out of here. He's not on this plane anymore. He's gone and I couldn't stop him."
She starts walking down to rejoin the others. "Come on--we need to regroup and plan our next step."
"The least we can do is take the valuables and smash everything else. If he comes back we want to leave him with NOTHING."
Farrukh smirks.
"Tanith already killed his "child" if my guess is right. Now we just need to twist the knife."
Tanith shrugs and lowers his stolen bow. "Let him run back to whatever pit his spawning from and lick his wounds. We've already undone whatever he was working toward and humiliated him. He'll think twice about crossing paths with us again."
The big man moves back to the drained pool to make sure the Smenk-thing is thoroughly dead.
The creature formerly known as Balabar Smenk gurgles as Tanith prods it. It lies in the shallow remnants of the pool, and seems to be struggling to breathe.
Without a second thought, Tanith drives the heel of his boot through the fleshy thing's head.
Carina arrives at the room Zyrxog's pool resides in time to see Tanith squash something under his boot.
"Tanith? What's--" She stops short and her eyes widen. "--is that Balabar Smenk?!" Her jaw drops open and she pales.
Tanith feels something rigid beneath Smenk's raw flesh where his brain should be—something rubbery and wriggling.
Once Smenk's spasms have stopped, he is able to identify it as one of the dark tadpole creatures—only a good deal larger. Deprived of its host, it has already died.
Farrukh investigates Zyrxog's bedroom.
"I think so or it was Smenk at least. I guess that answers the question of what happened to him after the dopplegangers picked him up. I'm not sure if he's uglier with or without the tentacles..."
Astraden groans, pulling her rapier out of the monster's eye and stumbling back to dip it in the clean-looking waters of the pool. "How injured are the rest of you? she calls. "I can manage one more healing burst and then we'll be back to wands."
"I'm perfectly okay. Surprised nothing attacked while I was out of it."
Carina snorts. "Nothing attacked YOU, definitely. Zyrxog wanted to kill Astraden and I with octopins, lightning & fire. You didn't rate so much as a blip when he zapped you--shows how mistaken he was."
She steps forward and looks over the remains of Balabar Smenk. As foul a man as he was, there was still a part of her debating whether he really deserved something like this.
She doesn't feel anything else as she looks upon the body. Just... fatigue and numbness.
Rodrigo stops cursing and strides into the room. He takes a couple moments to brush the singed bits off his clothes, and to call the archons down to his side. "Well...that was anti-climactic. What now?"
"We figure out what the hell he had against us." Carina sighs. "Well, before Tanith broke his pool at any rate."
She turns to Rodrigo and approaches him. "I have to admit, I was worried whether you'd be able to pick up the slack." She gives him a little tap on the shoulder. "Thanks for showing me you can."
Rodigo bows to Carina. "I try my best, m'lady."
"Some burns", Tanith answers Astraden. "But nothing too bad. Let's see what he's been hiding down here other than one fat soggy mine manager."
Farrukh searches Zyrxog's private quarters. The bookshelves are full of books pertaining to the Free City and the areas below it.
In the sealed bag that lay beside Tanith's bow are items all stamped with the sign of a rampant rooster perched upon a large gold coin. These may have been Smenk's possessions, though they imply a somewhat more adventurous past than one might have assumed.
The lock to the chest is well-crafted, but he's able to break it open. Inside are several large bags of coins and gemstones.
Finally, on the desk is a ledger written in Undercommon.
3 identical wands of calcite.
1 ledger
950 cp, 620 sp, 500 gp, and 25 pp.
A fifth bag contains loose gemstones totaling 1,500 gp in value.
On Zyrxog (salvaged from what he dropped):
A long, twisted rod of fused red-hot metal and bone. Part of the bone is slightly cooler and safe to touch, forming a handle. Pictured here.
A golden ring featuring a piece of highly reflective crystal.
A ring crafted out of pumice.
Smenk's Bag (and the bow you found)
A mithral dagger
A cold iron dagger
2 masterwork daggers
Masterwork composite shortbow +2
A cloak woven with Smenk's symbol in gold threads.
Masterwork studded leather armor.
An S-shaped wand of willow wood.
A silver ring engraved with images of shields.
A hollow mithral tube about one foot long.
100 gp.
Carina takes in the sight of all the loot the party has earned. It brings a bit of a smile back onto her face.
"Let's gather all this up and get going. We can identify this stuff when we're safe." Her smile fades, replaced by an anxious look. "And... I... need to get a sending out to Mom."
Let's check that one out.
Tanith nods in agreement after he finishes piling up the loot. "Sounds good Red."
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As people mill around, smashing tadpoles and looting the place, Eben remains focused on the empty air. "He could just have gone invisible and made Carina think he teleported! He gets in your head like that!" Every few seconds he launches an arrow at a patch of air where he thinks he sees movement. After a few minutes have gone by with no results (aside from a few near-misses as gravity compels the arrows back to the ground where his friends are...) he grudgingly puts his bow away. "Okay, maybe he's gone. Maybe. Nobody stand too close together, just in case!" He then goes in search of the two adamantine arrows he shot right before Zyrxog vanished.
He sighs as they turn up ruined. One of them skewered a tadpole as it hit the ground, and he carries it around like a grotesque fondue fork. "So... these were his babies? And in order to grow, they had to go inside someone's head? And that turns that someone- Smenk, in this case- into a mind flayer? You were right, Carina. I really didn't want to know his spawning details...." He pokes his head in the mind flayer's study. "There was also a room with a bunch of stuff in it between here and the balcony... I kinda just rushed through, don't know if any of it was valuable, but we should make sure not to leave anything behind regardless."
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Eben's shooting of arrows into the air doesn't make Carina flinch, even as one or two of them come dangerously close to hitting her.
"So... these were his babies? And in order to grow, they had to go inside someone's head? And that turns that someone- Smenk, in this case- into a mind flayer? You were right, Carina. I really didn't want to know his spawning details...."
"I DID warn you." She says without looking up.
"There was also a room with a bunch of stuff in it between here and the balcony... I kinda just rushed through, don't know if any of it was valuable, but we should make sure not to leave anything behind regardless."
"Yeah, I passed through it on the way down." Carina looks up and sighs. "We might as well check it out--but with Farrukh giving it a good once-over first. Right?" She nods at the Ketite.
"Yeah. Was just getting ready to head over there."
The group returns to Zyrxog's museum.
In the center of this large chamber is a grotesque ebony statue of a vultureheaded humanoid with large feathery wings and razor sharp talons at the end of avian digits. The rest of the room is taken up by large glass cases, each full of dark twisted artifacts, from a shrunken head to a tome chained shut and a number of jars containing the severed parts of numerous creatures.
Carina looks around the museum room, this time with a more critical eye. She's tempted to touch some of the items, but refrains from doing so until Farrukh gives the all-clear.
Farrukh slaps Carina's hand away from whatever she was going to touch.
"Nobody touch ANYTHING. If we mess with anything in this room, that statues comes to life and tries to kill us."
This is a trap. It can be disabled.
...Huh." Eben says as Farrukh explains the trap. "Good thing it didn't include touching the door when I did my solo run down here, then..."