Alicia pierces the ooze's membrane once again. The blob is leaking profusely and half-deflated, but there is still room inside it for Marikel to be trapped.
"Yeah, that's what I'm doin'," Banny shouts back. She has no way of knowing that the situation has worsened since she ran around the corner, as she did not see the engulfing of Marikel.
In the secret tunnel, Banny hurries to the far wall and starts running her fingers over the stone. (She draws her axe as she moves, because she doesn't see much point in punching a big block of goo.)
In the dark, Banny easily discerns the outlines of a door in the cracks between the stones of the wall.
Not sensing any other prey in its chamber, the ooze seems satisfied to stay in place and digest Marikel, half-heartedly swiping around the corner at the source of the repeated punctures. Alicia presses herself against the wall to avoid the slimy touch.
"Marikel's engulfed by the slime, Banny!" Alicia yells, taking another jab at the leaking ooze. "Maybe we can feed that troll to it!"
Alicia stabs the dwindling blob yet again.
Banny's brows dance around as she hears Alicia's yelling. "Don't think I got the time to haul that big ol' lunk of meat in here," she shouts back drily. "Sides, she's our witness."
"....ah hellll," she rasps as she sees that Marikel is, indeed, now engulfed. She doesn't have time to attack just now...
From his position toppled against the statue, Vhailor hears Banny arrive behind him and feels the dwarf's hands seize him and pull him, still holding the extinguished torch in his immobile hand, into a dark and narrow corridor.
The ooze swipes a dripping protuberance at Alicia once again. This time, she doesn't duck behind the corner quickly enough.
Alicia doesn't react quickly enough, catching an oozy tentacle across the forearm as she belatedly throws herself back behind cover.
Banny stands frozen a half-second after dragging the paralyzed form of Vhailor behind her into the other corridor, as she sees that Alicia is now frozen and stiff as well. Gods-be-damned, what the hell is this thing?
Some part of her brain whispers that the prudent course would be to get the hell out of here. If that thing can make people lock on up like this, then running forward to combat it could just put her in the same cave as the cleric, floating limp in the globby form. She could pick up the gnome, carry him too... save two lives, anyhow.
But... that's not how it goes, in Trunau. You don't scarper off cuz it's gettin' dangerous-- or there wouldn't be a town here at all, deep in the orc territories. You stay and you fight and you watch everyone else's back.
Teeth gritted, Banny moves forward and tries to bring her axe down with all the power she can muster. "Come on, you big bag'a snot!" she yells.
Banny sidesteps the stone wheel and brings her axe around in an emphatic slash. Its edge cuts through the ooze's membrane in a wide arc; plasm pours out in a gush before the entire creature, having lost too much fluid to hold together, collapses with a splash. Marikel's body tumbles prone onto the floor, and the ping of metal bouncing off of stone announces that other small items that were trapped in the blob are now loose as well.
It seems like a moment for a rousing cheer ... but Alicia and Vhailor remain stiff and silent, and Marikel, his flesh blistered and red, isn't looking very healthy.
"..."
With the commotion passed over Carbonel emerges from relative safety with a questioning "Rwoarr?" before padding over to the unmoving body of Vhailor to nudge at it. Sensing no response the cat circles back and sits on it's haunches - looking upwards with a tilt-headed regard.
Banny stands, catching her breath and looking wildly around for any further threat. Instead she's just treated to the motionless forms of Alicia, Vhailor back in the tunnel, and Marikel, who looks badly off indeed. And, of course, the cat.
"I dunno!" she answers the cat, and, not knowing what else to do, she crouches by Marikel, with some notion of using the water in her waterskin to wash off the slime still on his body, or checking his pulse, or something.
Keeping his eyes on Banny as she drops to tend to Marikel, Carbonel is initially skeptical... before narrowing his eyes and padding over. The curiously eyed moggy fixates on the worst of the cleric's wounds... and begins to lick at the open sores...
Trying to gauge the priest's condition, Banny notices a small satchel Marikel has been carrying since the morning. Its clasp is the same longsword symbol as the mosaic on the floor in the room to the northeast.
After an agonizingly long time (or at least it seems that way--more than likely, it was only a minute or two), Alicia suddenly finds that she can move her hand again. She flexes it a few times, and then discovers that the rest of her seems to be working properly now too. "Ugh," she murmurs. Climbing to her feet again from her position propped against the wall, she rounds the corner and gives Banny an approving nod. "Well, at least we're not ooze food."
The blond rogue glances at Marikel, the faintest flicker of worry crossing her features. "I hope...?"
Banny exhales as Marikel's breathing seems to even out, but beyond that, she's really not sure what to do... at all. Everyone's still all locked and frozen stiff. She throws a glance towards Alicia, just as the young woman comes out of it.
"He's breathin'," she answers, relieved that someone else is able to move, at least-- she supposes she COULD have carried them all back to town, but it woulda been a trek-- "but he's hurt bad, I dunno how to get him back on his feet."
Banny looks around still feeling helpless. She notes the pouch at Marikel's belt and starts opening it out of a dearth of other bright ideas.
"A ton'a stuff fell outta that thing when it burst...."
The first sign of life from the gnome is a hesitant blinking that grows into a squinted shutting of the eyes. Bit by bit he works through the rest of his muscles top down from head to toe to make sure they're working... before staring at the now extinguished torch for a few moments as though trying to figure out why it wasn't lit. He then totters to the wall and props himself upright, Carbonel mews and moves over to rest not on but near to his feet.
"Well... that was new..." looking over at Marikel and tint of concern fading slightly at word that the cleric is breathing. He adds sotto voce "So that's why it smelled in here"
After a few more moments he sees fit to remove the comfort of his vertical stone support and begins nudging through the disgorged detritus from the cube with the butt end of his staff.
Banny opens the satchel with Iomedae's sword as the clasp. The leather is a little scarred by its immersion in the ooze, but it wasn't engulfed long enough to render it useless; and the metal clasp appears almost shined and polished by the plasm.
Inside are eight vials, each secured against breakage or spilling by a strap against the inner surface of the sack. Three are made of thick pottery and five of clear glass; all are stoppered with cork and a wax seal. The flickering torchlight can't stymie Banny's dwarven eyes: neatly-lettered labels on the three opaque vials read "Curative."
In the meantime, Vhailor pokes around the puddles left by the defunct ooze. Everything that survived seems to be made of metal or stone: scattered handfuls of coins, a quartz amulet on a chain, a falchion, a steel scroll case, and a pile of mesh that proves, when spread with the end of the gnome's staff, to be a chain shirt are all clean and shining, as any organic material that might once have clung to them was eaten away by the hungry interior of the ooze.
"Hey!" Banny says triumphantly as she squints down at the bottle. "Maybe this stuff'll help-- well, if I don't drownd him pourin' it down his throat..."
Uncorking one of the three bottles that is labeled 'curative', Banny tries to dribble some down Marikel's throat, while half-turning him as well so that he doesn't, ideally, choke on the sweet-smelling liquid.
Absentmindedly, Alicia steps out of line of sight of the party in the ooze's corridor. Her hand going to the sack she acquired earlier, she pulls it out as she visually confirms that the flood troll is not going to jump them. Satisfied, she sheathes her rapier and inspects the sack's contents.
Marikel blinks and slowly focuses on Banny.
"Did I save Vhailor?"
Marikel coughs, staggers to his feet and looks about. His eyes grow wide when he sees Alicia missing.
"Is Alicia okay?" Marikel panics.
When she reappears he shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I've endangered you all. Hold a second. I'll see what I can do."
Marikel clasps his holy symbol and mutters a quiet prayer, and the soothing wash of positive energy that flows from him takes the sting from everyone's wounds.
He continues to pray and a second pulse follows the first.
"Hang on!" Banny blurts before Marikel can do his second channel.
She drags the still-bound troll into the room, because she does not want to have to lug the troll on her back all the way back up the hill into town. Best to get it in the range of the prayin' Marikel's doing.
"Anyhow-- it looked kinda close for a bit, but Alicia stabbed it some then I chopped it. Everyone alright?"
Taking one of the coins out of the sack, she then secures the sack itself at her belt.
Alicia steps back into the corridor with the rest of the group and holds up the singular coin between her thumb and forefinger for Marikel's inspection. "Don't these coins usually have an Iomedaean sword on the other side...?" The coin itself is a platinum coin, marked with a shield on one side and a winged eye on the other.
Marikel does wait for Banny to bring their prisoner before his second prayer.
He takes the coin from Alicia, and turns it twice before returning it to her.
"Iomedae is the inheritor of Aroden. This coin appears to have been minted before he died. That makes it at least a hundred years old. And platinum. Where did you get it?"
Alicia gestures vaguely in the direction of the secret corridor Marikel and she had entered earlier. "Found it under a loose stone in the ground earlier," she says. "In there."
She seems to wrestle with an idea for a moment. With a sigh, she gestures at a small sack at her belt. "Along with another few dozen of the same."
Gingerly and after wiping quite thoroughly with a tail end of his cloak Vhailor attempts the seal on the scroll case, looking to see if the contents somehow miraculously survived being in the cube's gullet.
Frowning at the rest of the gear Vhailor clicks with his tongue "Remind me to rethink my focus again overnight... would be worthwhile finding out if there's anything more than special here... you know with" waggling his fingers in a magical air.
The seal on the scroll case looks to have been both air- and ooze-tight. Inside is a single scroll.
Spellcraft:
Vhailor cannot interpret the scroll without further study.
The flood troll regains consciousness with an ill temper and a number of vile curses and insults that only Vhailor can understand.
Vhailor frowns and looks over lens free glasses frames at the troll and tuts "Now that's hardly sporting... or I think physically possible..."
"I've endangered you all enough for one day."
Marikel looks guiltily at Alicia.
"We should take this creature to Miss Blackblade."
Banny's brows arch up at Alicia's saying she found a sack of coins. "In this cellar?" She looks as though she might be about to say something else, but she doesn't-- instead, the growling from the troll makes her turn that way, and matter-of-factly elbow the troll in the ribs in a bruising fashion.
"Yeh, let's get back to town. I'm about ready for a drink."
With some prodding, the flood troll is set upright and marched back the way the party came in. Hobbled by ropes as she is, getting her up the narrow staircase is slow going, but she whines and growls her way to the ground floor and out the front door.
While the party has been underground, the sun has traveled well to the west of Bloodmarch Hill, leaving them to complete the circuit of the hill in its own long shadow stretching eastward across the badlands. The missed midday meal is making its absence known in everyone's bellies.
As they come around the northern edge of the huge ancient boulder which makes part of Trunau's outer palisade, the Patrol members on guard at the gates give them a welcoming glance which quickly becomes an alarmed double-take at the hogtied monster accompanying them. By the time, the group rejoins the road into town, they've already seen a runner sent up the switchback toward the Upper Quarter, and the pair of guards are holding their weapons at the ready. "What's going on?" one barks, as the party approaches.
"Turns out there's an unauthorized mining operation going on not far away from where Kerst was killed," Ali claims. "And we have a troll who claims that he was with another half-orc--the half-orc who killed him."
Marikel glares at Alicia.
"We've a prisoner for Miss Blackblade," he informs the guard. "She may have further information to announce later."
The insouciant rogue gives Marikel a cheeky grin.
Banny just keeps a firm hand on the troll's bindings, though her eyes close briefly at Alicia's declaration of the half-orc as murderer-- closing in something like absolution. Let them hear it. Kerst didn't kill himself; her friend won't go down with that to his name.
She offers no words of her own, just stands, stolid and steady, keeping the troll under wraps.
Vhailor for his part keeps low and inconspicuous, leaving the talking to Marikel.
"Turns out there's an unauthorized mining operation going on not far away from where Kerst was killed," Ali claims. "And we have a troll who claims that he was with another half-orc--the half-orc who killed him."
"'Where Kerst was...?' Where he landed, you mean?" one of the guards asks, confused.
"We've a prisoner for Miss Blackblade," he informs the guard. "She may have further information to announce later."
The other guard nods. "Sent a runner up when we saw the ... is that a flood troll? Never seen one in person myself." He gazes with open curiosity at the troll, who responds with a sneer. "Someone will be down from the Longhouse presently. Hope you don't mind waiting out here. No offense, but we're not letting that thing inside the walls."
Marikel nods unsmilingly.
"If you say so."
The party waits more or less patiently until a small group of people can be seen to be making their way down the road toward the gates. As it nears, it can be seen to be comprised of Halgra Blackblade, Graths senior and junior, and five other members of the Patrol in full kit.
"Well," Halgra drawls as she arrives at the gate and is saluted by the guards, "a flood troll. And we haven't had any rain to speak of since the 28th of Neth. What's she doing so far from the Kestrel?"
"She was down in the old church," Banny says darkly, from her position half behind the troll, hands still firmly on the ropes. "And, accordin' to signs we saw and the troll's own words, she also spent time under Trunau itself-- in some minin' shafts below town. Beggin' pardon, Miz Blackblade, but this talkin' oughta happen where not every manjack can hear, ma'am, on account some of what we got to say has personal meanin' for some folk," she says, trying to give a small nod in the direction of the Graths.
Halgra's gaze falls steadily on Banny for a moment. "Patrol, I trust you can keep this troll under guard for a while? Maybe move it away from the main road; don't want to panic anyone coming or going. Padre," she addresses Marikel as she turns back toward town, "do you think your priestess would mind if we used a room in the mission for a trice?"