"That statue... I looked at it so closely, yet I never understood it. I still don't understand it. It's not a religious symbol or a particular creature that I recognize."
"Hmm… alright. Just a thought," Cath says. "If we're gonna rest for the day, I think we should leave these rocks for now and then move them in the morning." He pauses for a moment and then adds, "Whenever that is… hard to tell down here."
Langblade looks around the small antechamber before saying, "I agree, this room is big enough for all of us, if ya dont mind squishing." She winks up at Tainesh from her spot on the floor. "We can lock the gate and be somewhat secure I think." She yawns in the sputtering torchlight. "And whatever time it is, I'm beat. That fight took it out of me."
"I do not want to be locked in a small room if something should come. And what if it comes from the direction we have not yet explored?" Sparks asks. "Should we not guard the one tunnel we know leads to the surface and only retreat to the room if it for some reason become necessary?"
"Do what you want, Flakes." She leans against the wall with the soft clink of armor on stone. "I'm staying here." The warrior's eyes close and it almost looks like she fell asleep on the spot.
In Sharlstown. Saw a posting with a big reward! A big reward means big adventure! It turned into a footrace to find the employer, a grieving mother named Leah Elenath. In an empty and dismal tavern aptly named The Hole… Umros pauses, experiencing a moment of clarity. Could it be, that it was empty because the barkeep was not “in” on the rest of the abductions like the guards and mayor? He pushes the thought aside and resumes writing. Her boy James Elenath was missing for two weeks, and no one, not the guards or Mayor, would help find him. So myself, Umros Whippoorwill, and the other footracers, Cath RIngor, Ms. Langblade, Sparks Clearpath, and Tainesh Ludor, agreed to search him out for the posted price. She allowed some of us to search their house for clues, and inside we found very little of interest. Now, at the time of writing this, I ought to have paid more attention to the wooden tentacled figurine on the mantle. His young, playful friends were a delight, though they missed him dearly. They spoke of the Shining Lady, who calls children to the forest. So into the forest, the five of us went! We reached a clearing and a mama bear didn’t want us there. Before I could reason with her, she and the son-bear attacked us! Brave Langblade and Cath kept them at bay with steel, while huntress Sparks showed her skill with the bow and Tainesh her talent with the arcane magics. I wasn’t much use, unfortunately. The bears would not be deterred, and they were killed. We pushed on further into the forest, for miles! I picked some blackberries. Eventually we found a cave in a mountainside, and I talked to a raven. He didn’t know much. Inside the cave, Sparks and I found a starving, sickly wolf, but an arrow kept me from communing with the poor beast. For the best, I suppose. We made camp at the mouth of the cave. The next day we explored deeper… Again the old gnome pauses with a frown. He strongly believed that the truth of all stories should be known, but just as strongly is his affinity for personal freedom. He knew that anonymity gives a form of freedom, even if he did not personally prescribe to it. Mind made up, the storyteller wets the quill and continues. ...and found clues of someone being dragged deeper into the winding cave system. Down and down we went. The tunnel turned and turned and got colder. Eventually, we found a chamber with pillars and beautiful murals! Beyond that, more corridor that led to a room with strange water and pedestals with pods. The chiseled murals were beautifully done, beyond compare to anything else I have ever seen! Very old. Magical in a way I couldn’t describe. There was a body in the water, but it seemed of little consequence at the time. Following the tunnel further, we happened upon an enormous cavern, filled with spiders! Big ones, bigger than me! All of them, suitors to a wicked Gorgoroth, who came clawing up from under the cave floor! Full of terror and venom. I nearly died. Lady Luck saw fit to send these friends with me, and by their efforts, I still walk with the living. Though she is now dead, the Gorgoroth’s venom has made me very weak. We sifted through the filth of the nest to find other victims, long-dead adventurers from centuries passed. The oldest one carried a journal with him. Ether Gales is his name, and his story has some similarities to Leah Elanath’s. A missing child (Leena), unhelpful townsfolk, a strange sea-creature item in their house, and rumors of the Shining Lady. We are all tired from our journey and the battle with the spiders and their wicked mistress, so we plan to rest here tonight, and seek out what became of Gales’ daughter and Elanath’s son. We have not yet encountered anything resembling a ‘shining lady’, but we may yet. I do not look forward to sleeping without the sight of stars overhead, but I trust that Desna’s grace will find me even in these depths. I write this for the sake of my own memory, and in case something keeps us from returning to the surface, I worry that another missing child will draw more seekers to this dark place.
Leaving the parchment alone to allow the ink to dry, the old wanderer listens to the rest of the group. The troubled nature of the elf maiden now made sense, but he did not want to press the sensitive subject. Umros grimaces at the thought of locking everyone inside the grate. He rereads his written account. For some reason, his knack for storytelling did not translate very well when put to paper. Too permanent… he mused. A question comes to mind, and he picks up the discovered journal to see if he can find the answer. He starts where Ether Gales goes to Dutos.
Reading the last entry again, Umros tugs at one end of his white moustache. I will pray after I rest, for Desna to steel our courage and abolish any fear that takes hold…
Satisfied that the ink is dry and the story at least conveys the important information, he rolls up the parchment and drops it onto his weatherproofed map case. A stream of light briefly streams out when the lid pops open, and Umros grins. His hands replaces the written tale with an everburning torch, and snaps the case closed again.
“Don’t lock up just yet. Tired as I may be, my eyes and feet itch to wander, for only a little bit…”
The Desna-worshipper rights himself back onto his threadbare boots, light in hand, and trundles back out into the immense cavern. There, he wanders, looking over the bones, the scant remnants of webbing, scattered crates, and spider corpses. Eventually he edges his way to the upturned earth from which the eight-legged abomination clambered.
“Sparks,” he calls from the open cavern. He waves her over to where he stares at the oversized spiders that lay dead.
“Poison can be risky to brew, even when you have the right equipment. But it sells at a high price to the right buyer. If you’re in need of a lot of money… these spiders did all the hard work of ‘brewing’ for you. I’ve seen you dress a rabbit. Harvesting their venom might be easy for you, so long as you’re careful with it. I’ll help you dig it out, if you’d like…”
"Flakes? Oh..." Sparks says as she quickly grasps Langblade's... What? An insult? "Why do that?" the elf says in hurt response before she turns her back on the rude, ungracious woman and heads back into the main chamber.
She begins unrolling her bedroll and organizing her things against the wall far opposite the tunnel the group entered through in preparation of sleep when Umros calls her over. Reluctantly, Sparks goes to hear what the Gnome has to say, her foul, frustrated expression brightening as she realizes the kindness Umros is offering.
"I would like that very much. Thank you," Sparks replies. Carefully following the gnome's instructions, she cuts into the most accessible spider and attempts to drain the correct fluid into the flask she emptied earlier.
"So, who is Eolande? If you do not mind my asking?" Sparks asks as she works.
Umros has heard over the course of his studies of a paste called Predators Acumen. There have been many ways to make it, but the only universally agreed upon requirements are ingredients that come from predatory animals. It is generally accepted that the more variety, the more potent the paste when ingested. With the ingredients Umros has collected, including the spider ichor he just harvested, the Gnome feels confident he can produce his own variant of the bitter consumable.
A small reminiscent smile shows on the gnome’s face as the two work with the spider carcasses to harvest what they can. “When you wander the dreamworlds for one hundred years, you have ample opportunity to raise a family, and then some. Eolande is one of my daughters, the second. She has hair white as snow, just like yours! And violet eyes, like my mother’s. Such a gentle spirit; I miss her, well, all of my children. I miss them,” he adds evenly, lacking any wistfulness or sadness in his tone. His mouth twists in effort as he pulls against a particularly tough spider tendon. The grimace releases when the tissue relents. Umros smirks at the irony of storing poison in the vial that once contained antitoxin, but he says nothing of it. “But one thing I’ve learned about the roadfolk, wanderers like me, is that I keep running into fellow rovers. My children, now grown and roving on their own, will find me, if I don’t bump into them first! Hah! I can’t be the only one who has crossed from this world to the realms found in dreams, for how easy it was. Hmm, I wonder...” His eyes glance over to Tainesh as he works, puzzling over something. He shrugs. Before long the moustachioed smile grows, and silver eyes gleam. “Until then, the graceful goddess of travelers and wanderers, Desna, watches over us all. Here,” the gnome indicates that Sparks can take most of the venom he was able to collect. “I just want this one dose. I’ve had enough venom for one day, don’t you think?” He smiles, perhaps sensing that his color has not fully returned to his face.
Predator’s Acumen… the alchemist recalls all the odds and ends in his pack. I haven’t brewed that in awhile, but it might be time for some Hop-To Stew for tomorrow…
Dusting off his knees as he stands, complete with the grisly task, he asks the elven maid. “Could I borrow the pot you scavenged from the late Ether Gales? I promise to clean it when I am done...”
"Even many decades away, the thought of raising a family of my own is appealing and at the same time terrifying. I will certainly give your regards to yours should I ever meet them, though," Sparks replies in between the more delicate moments of collecting the dangerous fluids.
"Once again, your kindness is seemingly boundless," Sparks says as she takes the additional vials of poison from Umros. "I will insist you keep two, however. If one is for some reason necessary, it is always a comfort that you are not using your last one."
"Of course you may borrow them," Sparks says of the oddly shaped cookware. It only takes her a few moments to retrieve the set from her bag. With the pots handed over, she stores the ten doses of poison in a secure place within her pack then continues with what preparations remain for a long rest.
One overlong eyebrow raises when the gnome doesn’t quite see the ‘terrifying’ aspect to child-rearing. He knows that everyone reacts to surprises differently. After recalling a few brushes with danger to his children -all very exciting and educational at the time- he supposes that is the worry the young elf refers to. He smiles at her promise to offer regards. “Thanks!”
Umros takes another portion of venom with a nod, and positively beams at the allowance to use her cookware. “Double thanks!”
Pot handle in one hand, the wanderer trundles over to the crate exploded by the warrior Cath during the battle with the spiders. He picks up pieces of wood suitable for kindling and a cookfire, and dumps the armload near the grate. Preferring to not use paper, he searches for a substitute. Ancient clothes, errant strands of webbing, anything will do…
A few minutes later, he gently blows on a tongue of flame. He nurses it into a small fire, just big enough for the pot. As it snaps and smokes, he gathers a few more bits of wood to save for later. Then, the alchemist lays out all of his ingredients next to the pot: bear liver oil, wolf stomach bile, bear claw, spider ichor, chalk, blackberries, and his bottle of red wine.
“Tainesh! I’m about to cook up some Hop-To Stew! Predator’s Acumen. Want to watch?!” Umros’ enthusiasm is a touch too high for the task at hand. Without waiting a second, he snatches up the bear claw and drops it clanging into the empty dry pot. “Ah! But first things first!” A practiced thumb uncorks the wine easily and the glass meets his lips as he upends the bottle nearly half his size. A hearty swig prolongs, gulp after gulp after gulp, until at last he lets out a refreshed sigh and the leaves the bottle standing beside him.
“Now we’re ready to cook!” he snickers, his breath heavy with wine.
Tainesh quietly withdraws from the conversation and walks around the cavern with her quarterstaff Lit.
How can she contribute? She wasn't an adventurer. She wasn't a fighter. She wasn't even a fully accredited scribner. She was an apprentice wizard with a bag full of spells, and when that bag was empty, her operational worth to the party fell considerably.
Cath was an adventurer with a ton of stories to tell. Umros was enough adventurer for three grown men, packed a Gnome-sized package. Sparks, for all of her protestations to the contrary, was an adventurer. Langblade, as prickly as she was, knew her way in a fight. They all did.
Tainesh wasn't a great fighter. She'd left childhood fistfights behind as soon as she began to learn magic and her brothers were too afraid to pick a fight with her, and she'd never been in an actual fight since. But when the party had run into the bears, and when the spiders and the spider-shaped abomination had attacked, Tainesh had felt... frustrated. Terrified. Angry. Elated? Exhilarated? Confused? Excited? She'd felt a whole mixed pot of emotions, and she couldn't put a label to the combination.
How did she feel about fighting? How did she feel about mortal danger? Why had she been so frustrated after that fight with the spiders? It wasn't just that she'd been entangled in web, she hadn't landed one good hit on the creatures, and for some reason greasing the ceiling under that one spider didn't count. But even with magical assistance, shooting a bolt into the Golgoroth's eye had felt like an accomplishment.
It felt like a childhood dream come true.
By the time Tainesh reached that conclusion, she'd also reached the conclusion of her walk around the chamber, picking through old cobwebs and things too deep into decay to judge. All the while, she'd been searching the walls for symbols and images and words like in the chamber above, or creepy carvings of eggs like in that other, even more creepy chamber above.
"What do you think, Cath? Is it safe to make camp in here?"
Cath quietly listens to the others talk and watches Tainesh move around the cavern, her youthful form awkwardly making its way through spider webs and other rubbish. There was a winsome innocence to her movements that were in decided contrast to the gloomy and dangerous reality of their current environment. It was oddly refreshing. The fighter never expected to have children of his own, but something about the young wizard sparked a sense of parental protectiveness in him that felt as natural as it was unfamiliar and unexpected.
It wasn’t until he started to answer her question that he realized he was smiling. ”Well… I’d bet that those spiders scared off any other creatures a long time ago. And they’re dead now, so we’re probably on our own for the night.” He thinks quietly for a moment before adding, ”I’m not keen on closing that gate, though. Not until we know what’s on the other side of the rocks in the morning, at least. I’ll take first watch just in case.”
Cath gathers his pack and lays out his bed roll for the night. He picks up the bow that Sparks had remade, feeling its weight and testing the new string. ”This has a strong draw. You going to keep this?,” he asks the ranger.
"You are quite welcome," Sparks replies to Umros before returning to her bedroll against the far wall opposite the room's entrance. She double checks everything else is in its place... but seems to have a moment of doubt as to where her newly obtained sword should go. She first hooks it into her pack, but then tries placing it against the wall before finally laying it alongside her bedroll, within easy reach should it be needed.
"I'd prefer the last watch, if it is all the same. I'd much rather have to only awake to this place once..." the elf comment when she hears the others talking about watches.
Not really waiting on a reply, the weary huntress lays down on her bedroll and has just finished pulling her heavy blanket around herself when Cath asks about the bow.
"The draw is too strong for me. I would only strain myself, or worse, if I tried to make full use of it." she says, looking up at him.
Growing quiet, Sparks watches the others for a few minutes as she lays on her side. Tainesh's constant movement, lost in though while at the same time searching for new clues, reminds the elf of herself to some extent. As does Cath as he inspects his new bow. Then, of course, she is drawn to Umros and the small brewing fire he assembles. For a minute more, she watches the small flames closely as they lick at the oddly shaped pot.
Before too long, however, Sparks finds herself rolling over to face the dark, dreary, dust covered wall, even though she is much too far away to feel the small fire's heat. Not wishing to be a concern to the others, she lays still, pretending she is asleep even as her mind is busy turning through the events of the last couple of days. Slowly, though, her thoughts become more distant and the warm darkness of her blanket hugs her closer and without... really realizing it... Sparks Clearpath falls into a peaceful sleep.
One eye pops open at Caths words from where the swordswoman leans against the wall. "I'll wressle ya for it." she tells him after Sparks refusal. Her tone suggests she's only half-joking.
”Want to do it the old way, eh?” Cath says with a grin. He sets up his pack and shield as a makeshift table and sits down, beckoning Amber over. ”Arm wrestle, let’s go.”
At the good-natured match of strength, Umros looks up through the vapors roiling up from the bubbling water wherein the bear claw tumbles and rolls. He sniffs absently. A few more minutes, and I’ll need to crush the claw as the bile steeps. The alchemist’s attention strays from the arm-wrestle as he turns to powder the stick of chalk in his pocket. He takes a break for another swig of wine, leaving a faint white gnome-sized handprint on the bottleneck. A tingling warmth spreads over Umros’ face and his smile widens.
Using a move he once watched a wild man employ to pluck a squirming fish from a river, the softened claw falls to his feet, steaming as he sucks air through his teeth and wrings his hand free of scalding water. While softening the claw, some of the water had boiled away, but not enough, so the gnome bides his time retrieving the wolf bile. He whistles the tune of the whippoorwill, and the lilt echoes softly overhead off the cavern walls.
Adding one ingredient after another in a haphazard fashion, Umros pauses for sips of wine here and there. For all his tipsy carelessness, the alchemist’s wobbly hands seem practiced and his measurements probably mostly exact.
"Ha!" barks the swords woman at Caths suggestion. "You're on, Champ-o!" She sets herself opposite the shield cum table and plants an elbow gripping the half-elfs hand with her own, heavily calloused as it is.
Not a second after clasping, the fighter from Dutos easily slams her knuckles into the heavy wooden surface with enough force to cause the room to echo. A dumbfounded look takes Langblade's face before scrunching into an expression of frustrated consternation.
"Best two of three!" she declares defiantly!
"Hah, are you sure you can even draw that bow?" Cath jokes as Amber wrings her hand. "Sure, let's go again."
Her normal smirk settles into a hard line as she rolls her shoulders and prepares for combat!
It's clear at the second go round that the fighter means business now as she quickly and efficiently slams Caths arm to the table. The smirk returns as the two square off one final time. Langblade again strikes quickly, hoping for another easy pin, but Cath too launches himself into the test of strength. It's back and forth in the most contested of the three contests, but eventually Ringor is able to pin Langblades arm once more. Though it takes a good deal of effort in the doing.
"Wheh, damn Cath." She says as she flexes and unflexes her wrestling arm. "Thought I had you there this time." She smiles as she climbs to her feet and sketches out a gracious, if short, bow to her opponent. "But verily alas! I am defeated!" the fighter declares in mock court-speak.
Her voice returns to normal as she concedes the weapon. "The bow is yours, fair and square."
After exchanging a few words with Cath, Tainesh wanders over to where Umros is brewing his concoction. Her mind had bubbled with questions when he mentioned his experience as an alchemist yesterday morning, but nothing comes to mind. Maybe she should turn in, call it a night, prepare to replenish her spells in a few hours.
No, wait, there was a question worth asking, but it didn't have anything to do with alchemy. It's about Umros's dreamworlds. Tainesh is reluctant to ask about something so private, but if the Gnome was speaking openly about it, perhaps it wasn't so private.
"Umros, I've been wondering. Is it possible that the dreamworlds you've been speaking of are some sort of demiplane?"
Umros grins up at the young wizard. Some color is returned to his cheeks, though it may very well be the wine. He continues to stir the concoction, which is starting to give off a foul smell.
“Demiplanes, perhaps. Hard to quantify every mile of the Great Beyond, no? I didn’t really chart my travels at first, and I never ended up in one place for very long. Some realms were definitely different from the Material plane, and others were so similar, I wondered if I was merely too far for anyone to have heard of Dutos or Sharlstown. Or, as you point out, they also could have been demiplanes. So yes, probably, to answer your question.” The wooden spoon taps on the rim of the steaming, angular pot.
“Some planes were wonderfully unpredictable with magic. And others were, ah, not…” He licks his lips and continues. “If you ever get the chance, the Astral Plane is a fun place to study. I traveled there when I was a student, apprenticing under a great wizard. But alas, as you might guess, my apprenticeship did not last.”
Umros’ silver eyes meet Tainesh’s gaze. “If you are not opposed, would you mind if I leaf through your spellbook? I promise to take good care of it...”
Umros doesn’t want to talk about how some planes can suppress magic. Something bad probably happened to him while he was on one of them.
"I'm not sure that it would make much of a difference, dream or demiplane," Tainesh says. "Except you said that you had children in the dreamworld. In a demiplane, they would be flesh-and-blood offspring. You are separated by time and space, but there's always the slim chance that you may find each other one day."
Left unsaid is that this wasn't true for dreams. Barring certain communication spells and some of the annoyingly hard-to-independently-verify methods of divine intervention, dreams were just dreams. What happens while the mind is sleeping is lost the moment the dreamer wakes. At least, Tainesh hoped so. The life of a wizard apprentice inspired surreal nightmares on a regular basis, and the world was a better place if that's all they were.
At Umros's request, Tainesh takes out her spell book and passes it to him. The cover is tattered and limp from several years of extensive use, but the pages inside are neat and written in neat, concise handwriting. Each page contains the method of preparing and casting the spell, as well as whole columns of text devoted to the theories underpining the spell. Although she uses a hasty mix of shorthand and Common for the notes, the preparation instructions are purely Common and written in extra large print to boot.
There are twenty nine pages of spells in the book, written on this year's vellum. On page thirty, and for most of the book after that, Tainesh has scribbled down partial spells and musings on magical theory, and not a few diagrams either. Tainesh's casual writing plays fast and loose with the grammar, and whole words seem to have been omitted as redundant.
Crabs legs. Tainesh had never eaten crab before, but she somehow knew that they didn't taste much different from the giant spiders sitting over there. And somehow, she knew that there were about twelve different poisonous glands in the common giant spider, but she couldn't quite recall which ones. Or where she'd read that factoid.
The wizard shakes her head and turns back to Umros, who is minding his frothing concoction with one hand as he follows a line of print with the other. The little Gnome is a splendid multitasker, but could he answer questions on top of all that?
"Your apprenticeship didn't last? Why did you leave? Or, er, did tragedy strike?"
The wanderer nods knowingly, and adds simply. "Some dreams seem so very real. Time will tell. He is, after all, the best storyteller..."
His silver eyes widen over the lines and columns of text. Reading through the portions of Common dusts off dozens of memories, though he has to concentrate when he finds the shorthand. Every arcane scholar he met in his travels believed their personal hand to be the most efficient, and the variations of each one delighted the whimsical gnome. Umros never had the time or patience to suss out his own spellscript.
It takes him a bit of time, but the failed apprentice is able to read Tainesh's shorthand with some ease. He found her occasional nonadherence to grammar quite fun. He studies spell after spell, imagining the incantations and effects in his buzzing mind. A small frown takes his brow for a moment when he happens upon the entry that evokes fear upon the targets of the spell. He hopes Tainesh knew to use such magic responsibly, but says nothing at the moment. The next spell, one of the Illusion school, is so open-ended in application, his imagination fully distracts him for a few moments.
The reader does not look up to answer the young wizard, though his smile falters somewhat in remembrance. "Only the tragedy of parting ways and breaking fellowship. There was a place in the Astral Plane, the floating city of Virnuux Mih, held under tyrannical rule. I wanted to stay and help the oppressed folk. My teacher insisted it was not our business, not our fight. He left, and I remained." Umros' eyes glint with reminiscence, and a new smile slowly grows when he meets the eyes of his listeners. "And how I helped Virnuux Mih is another story altogether..."
He looks back down at the spellbook, reading and occasionally stirring the pot.
"Virnuux Mih," Tainesh says, trying the words out. She'd never heard of the place before, but the Astral Plane was big. Really big. It was vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big, and time turned this way and that and back on itself like a river flowing through flat country. It would be more surprising if Umros had mentioned a place she had heard of.
Somewhat anxiously, she watches the Gnome pour through her spellbook. She had a grand total of nine spells to her name, all of which she'd reconstructed after her graduation ceremony. IT made her seem less capable... well, she was less capable than she was a few weeks ago. Her independence from Halumgolum had been celebrated with tea brewed over her burning research notes. All of her scrap work, all of her handwritten notes on her master's lectures, her master had insisted that she destroy them and start anew.
There comes a time to build, and a time to destroy. A time to stand on the shoulders of giants, and a time to set off into the world with only one's wits to survive. "Get in over your head," he'd said, "But not too far over your head. And if you do get into trouble, a fire spell will get you out of it in a jiffy." Clearly, he'd expected her to hold off on the cavern-spelunking and kidnapper-hunting until she'd reconstructed a fireball spell from first principles.
"A story for another night?" she asks as she pushes away some dark thoughts about the non-tangible benefits of independent thaumaturgical research and where Halungolum can stuff them. "I'm so tired, I'm afraid I might fall asleep halfway through the telling."
Proving her point, she pauses to stifle a yawn before she continues."But your master... you respected him, didn't you?"
The old gnome slowly blinks. "It's been a day, for sure. One for the books..."
"Davian Mambrino. Yes, I respected him. Though the man was quite different from his legend! I heard tales of his magical prowess, the wonders he had accomplished, and how he was considered a friend to every living creature. Such was my curiosity, I crossed a sea to find him and sought out his tutelage. His acceptance of my apprenticeship is also another story..." The little storyteller grins.
Umros sniffs at the pot and grimaces. "This is pretty much done, and it looks like there's only enough for one. Predator's Acumen, have you heard of it? Tastes like the wrong end of a goblin, and the blackberries only help a little..." The alchemist gets carried away, describing the recipe step by step to the drowsy wizard girl.
"...and it goes down easier while its still warm. After it settles in your gut, this stuff helps with your reflexes."
Using the wooden spoon to lump all the sludge into one corner of the pot, the wanderer cringes. His sharp sense of smell had certainly saved him from a scrape or two, but more often than not, it was especially keen on picking up unpleasant scents. He sets his jaw with determination, and his tiny fingers pinch the wooden charms on his bracelet for good luck. It would be a waste, and an embarrassment, if I couldn't keep this down!
The small gnome sets his hat down. After a look to those around him, his little head tucks into the pot and scarfs down the concoction. His companions can hear him stifle coughs and gags as he shovels it down with the wooden spoon.
After the frenzied moments pass, he rolls onto his back to catch his breath and pat his belly. He had done it. After some rest, the beneficial properties will have seeped into his joints and muscles, but at the moment it felt like a rock in his gut. He sits up uncomfortably.
"Well Cath, I don't think I'll be sleeping for a bit. I can take first watch..." Umros glances down at the dirty pot. He could clean it quietly while everyone else slept.
"Alright, suit yourself!" Cath goes back to his bedroll and lies down.
Umros quietly cleans the pot, and sets near Sparks' belongings. The little gnome wondered if it was on his watch that the dwarf snuck past them the night before. This time, he resolves, he would not stay in one place and tempt sleep.
So he wanders the cave in silence. He watches, listens, and occasionally sniffs the air. Tainesh's writings are still fresh in his mind, and it recalls old memories. Days of study in dusty libraries, tiring his tongue on proper enunciation, and watching a spell unravel before him when his fingers fumbled the somatic component. The old learnings weave and mix themselves with what he read that evening -a jumbled, fluid mess of shorthand, equations, and sigils. Alphabet soup. From time to time a faint whisper accidentally escapes his lips as he recalls half-remembered, or half-invented, incantations.
The quiet sounds of the cavern fill the air as the party settles down for the "night." Bedrolls are unfurled and filled while eyes shut, with the fatigue of the past day softly taking each away from the conscious world.
Umros doesn't notice anything during his watch, and he gently wakes Cath, so too does the evening progress, with each waking the next in line until all finally have their rejuvenating sleep.
A thick spatter of blood streaks itself over and down as your opponent crumples to the dirt floor. The jeers of the crowd erupt into cheers and you let yourself relax as the fight comes to a close. You're about to turn for the exit when the pit begins to move, slowly, ponderously, but definitely. The floor bucks and turns under your feet, gently like waves on a day of little wind. You start to lose your balance and as you fall forward, so too does the floor fall away from you, leaving a melted hole stretched out as if in taffy.
The ground envelopes you in a warm embrace, strong and impossible to break free from. You feel yourself carried aloft as if on clouds made of dirt and blood and your vision blurs until all you can see is mere blotches of color. This is how you wake, sweat only just starting to pool under your armor.
You smile at the sight and join them, their bubbly chatter weaves and turns like a spring through the woods from topic to topic and you feel yourself relaxing and relishing the idle time spent in their company. Once or twice you think you hear something in the woods, just out of sight. A low buzzing, or rumbling sound. But there is nothing there and you need not worry. This is how you wake, with the happy sounds of your families voices in your ears.
Each opens onto a different scene. One, a room, empty save for a table, and on the table, a corpse. But not a nasty, vile corpse, but a clean, human corpse. Carefully cut open and laid bare for examination. A second room shows a waterfall of color, each droplet of spray an unknowable symphony of thought. A third opens to a cave, similar to the one you are sleeping in, but colder, darker, deeper. You do not go into that room.
Each room is that room. Each room is the cave. Each room is colder, darker, deeper than the last. You cannot escape. There is no hallway. There are no doors. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. You are in that cave. This is how you wake, body rooted to the floor in paralysis, but before you can cry out, it releases it's hold and you are able to move again.
The ground is springy underfoot, hardly like the rough dirt trails of the real world. Here is a world worth living in! You smile and break into a sprint, no longer weighted with your heavy pack and countless years of age. You are young again! Young and free! You know this place!
Wait, you know this place! It is imminently familiar to you. Not in that passing way in which one might recognize the layout of a new city, but in that intimate way one knows the stretches and wrinkles of a lover. You have been here before, years ago, decades ago, a century ago? You can't remember. But you do remember this path. It curves ahead. Yes, to the right, and then through that copse! There! You see her, shining bright, just like you remembered.
She's not the same. The details are different, but she bears the same beatific smile you knew for ages past. And why shouldn't she look different? Haven't you changed in your time apart? You go to her, hands at your side, but rising to meet her, almost unbidden. She smiles again, and opens her arms to you. As you walk towards her you sing the song in your heart, the song in your chest, the song that pumps your blood.
But something is wrong. You can't reach her. She smiles, but is still so distant. You look deep into her eyes. Something is wrong. Her eyes are begging, pleading for help. Something is wrong. You need to wake up. Something is wrong. You can't reach her. Something is wrong. You need to wake up. Her form begins changing, diminishing. You need to wake up. She shrinks from what she once was, though she still smiles. Something is wrong. Her eyes are pleading, begging for help. You need to wake up. Something is wrong.
This is how you wake, with a burning piercing sensation engulfing your small hands, the image of your long off lover melting into nothing.
Morning comes with no change in the atmosphere of the room save the all too apparent passing of time.
Sparks starts a bit at being awoken in an unfamiliar place by an unfamiliar person, but quickly rises and takes on the last shift of the watch with zero complaint. Being awoken from her pleasant dream to the dark, depressing cavern does not put her in a cheerful mood, certainly, but... the words that her father spoke to her many decades ago when she was just a small child still ring true in her ears even this morning:
"Those who are unable to keep watch cannot be trusted with anything at all."
So, Sparks does her job well and is on her circular patrol of the room when the others begin to awake.
Still in the cave.
For an instant, Tainesh feels panic welling up in her. She can't move. She can't control her breathing, and even that will become erratic if she lets terror get the best of her.
Obviously, somehow, she must have been poisoned in the fight last night, or something had crept up and bit her while she slept. Now she was paralyzed everywhere but the eyes, and hopefully (Ohdeargodsletitbeso!) it would pass as her body broke down the poison. And even if it were permanent, there were plenty of famous wizards who hadn't let full-body-paralysis get in the way of reshaping mountains and summoning outsiders. With luck and a little bit of skill, she should be able to rewrite her spells to remove the somatic and verbal req-
Oh, wait. She could move again. Weird.
Tainesh sits up, rubs her eyes, lays back down, and dozes for a few minutes. This time she dreams of wheels of fire and shadows armored in shadows.
"Well that was weird..." Cath mumbles as he blinks himself awake. He rubs his face and stands, nearly smacking his head against the stone wall in the process. He goes about packing his gear and then starts working on dismantling the stone blockage in the passageway.
Sparks moves to help and...
...though she struggles a bit with the stones she does manage to speed the process slightly.
Umros bolts upright with a sharp yelp, jerking his tiny hands away from... oh... nothing. He touches his fingertips to his forehead as he calms down, and gently clearing his throat as he pushes himself to his feet. All the while blinking, as one might with a minor headache or an unwelcome thought. He meets the eyes of his companions with a small sheepish smile, mildly embarrassed at his outburst.
The Predator's Acumen, in conjunction with the residual effects of the venom, gives the little gnome an odd sensation as he moves. His bones ache, but his joints feel loose and responsive. His pulse is weak, but his senses seem slightly heightened -like a prowling wolf moving with his pack, or a spider ready to dance over strands after its prey. Overall, the sensation is unpleasant.
But he resolves to not let it deter his spirits. The first thing he liked to do, whenever possible, was to go for a walk. Cath and Sparks are already hard at work on the collapsed stone, but the small wanderer did not feel like he would be much help on that endeavor. Onward through the large cavern he strolls, skips, and hops through the filthy remains of spiders and crates by the light of his everburning torch. In no time, it seems, he circles the perimeter of the big cave a few times, and for the third time, he reaches the opening they entered from yesterday.
Umros sniffs the air from that tunnel, very much tempted to wander further, even if it meant to retrace his steps. He turns and looks across the expanse to the youngsters.
"I need to go for a short walk," he calls, smiling reassuringly. "Don't worry -I'll stay in earshot, and I'll keep whistling as I go. I'll be back soon."
His patchwork cloak twirls as he spins and skips down the corridor they traveled through the day before. The call of the whippoorwill trills off the dark stone walls. Soon it is just his tall purple hat and his glowing torch, growing smaller while bouncing to the gnome's whimsical gait.
Tainesh dreams.
Not of five tessellated streets of Dutos, or of a road through a valley, or any of the mish-mashed landscapes where her dreams so often take place. She dreams of noplace. Nothing. A void with nothing even to call darkness.
Nothing but her. And maybe something more.
"You aren't welcome here."
Those words were faint and hovered at the edge of Tainesh's hearing, but they brooked no argument. The woman who spoke them sounded very old, and full of the authority that came from age and power.
"We ain't here by choice, are we?" a man's voice replied. Louder but harder to understand. What kind of accent was that? "And we can't hardly leave either."
"You can be removed." A different woman's voice this time, louder than the first. Or maybe closer.
"Well that's quite different," the man said, and he was barely intelligible over an explosion of rough language Tainesh had never heard before. Not Orcish or Elven, closer to Dwarven but spoken by humans.
"Pardon me if I'm blunt," the man said. "But I've locked horns with a bunch of mages in my time. I've got a general idea of how your kind thinks. If you were able to get rid of us, you'd have banished us already."
"On the contrary, sellsword. You understand so very little," a third woman said, so close that Tainesh could hear her as if listening through a heavy door.
So she opened the door.
Or rather, she opened her eyes.
She'd been here before. It was a haphazard cross between the Ludor family kitchen and her study room. Around the table, backlit by a roaring fire, were five people who were clearly not her family. There was a man, dressed in the cast-off armor of less fortunate warriors. Facing him were three ancient matrons, one dressed in rich red silks, another in a simple traveller's cloak with the hood pulled up, and a third dressed in widow's garb. Behind the man stood an- no, two others. One was a grayish blur, the other a patch of darkness that clung to a nearby pillar. A man, a ghost, and a shadow.
"I think I'm on to something, actually," the man said. "You lot can't banish us. And if you can't, who can?"
The shadow man uttered a single word, and all six turned as one to stare at Tainesh. For a moment, the only movement in the room was the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the wavering of the shadow man.
Two of the women surged to their feet at the same time as the sellsword, and the third woman rocked out of her chair. They were all shouting at each other except for the ghost and the shadow, who chittered at each other in their strange, heathen language, but the women's shouts got lost in each other and they couldn't match the sellsword in volume or timbre.
"Let's all remain calm. We'll talk this out first!" he bellowed, drawing a stubby shortsword as arcane lights danced around the woman in red silk.
"There's no time for that!" shrieked the woman in the travelling cloak. "She's in danger!"
"And we can teach her how to fight!" the man yelled back.
Tainesh caught movement in the corner of her eye. It was the ghost, approaching fast with a slab of polished metal in one hand and... what looked like surveying equipment built from black metal dangling from the other. Now that he was this close, she could see that he was a man clad in armor made from cloth and metal and glass. Shadows were imprisoned in his armor and made to hide his movements, and somehow this had been done without magic. One eye was left bare by the cloth mask he wore, the other would be bare too if it weren't covered by a slab of the same metal and glass, but he could see with both eyes somehow.
She understood, and she wasn't sure how she understood. The man wasn't a ghost, he was the sellsword's shadow, and the shadow man was his shadow.
He stopped a step away from her cot and he met her eyes with his eye and he pointed the slab of polished metal at her head and the slab had a hole bored into the end as deep and menacing as an open grave and he said "Wake up" in the most thickly accented common Tainesh had ever heard.
There was a roar and a flash of light. She woke up.
----------
No, she was still asleep. If she were awake, she'd still be underground. This was Dutos, and she didn't have to look to know that the streets tessellated.
Some of her dreamscapes were so unchanging from dream to dream that she could almost believe that she was visiting a real place, somehow leaving her body while she slept to explore another world. And when she woke, that world would persist in her absence. It was as if she was a visitor, not a dreamer.
Intellectually, she knew it was a side effect of the many mental exercises that Harungolum had made her do. Memory games were a pastime under his tutelage, on the principle that learning everything a wizard needs to know involved remembering everything a wizard has ever read.
And whether this was a regular dream or not (It was certainly less confusing than the last!) Dutos was no exception. It was morning, rather than the late afternoon it had been when she'd last dreamed this place, but the mausoleum was still split open where Harungolum had come strolling out and open foundations gaped where there had once been a completely sessile inn.
Tainesh stands from the bench where she had been sleeping and wanders off in a completely random direction. Random because she doesn't care where she was going, she just felt the need to get on her feet. What had Halungolom said about this place? It was triggered by meeting someone new or visiting a strange place or doing something? It didn't make sense! Her brain was, in spite of the best efforts of a nest of spiders and one magical abomination, still in one piece. If one part had to talk to the other, it could just talk. Why was her brain trying to communicate to itself through riddles hidden in dreams?
No, this isn't a riddle. Riddles have rules. She couldn't walk up to a random stranger and ask "What do I have in my pocket?" That was a game played by children. This place was a riddle with no rules an a thousand different answers with no way of...
"I hope that's not serious," she says aloud.
A plume of smoke was rising in the far distance, barely visible over the roof of a distant tailor's shop. Ordinarily a fire of that distance would be a haystack well outside the town, but this was a seemingly endless facsimile of downtown Dutos. An infinite town meant that the fire could spread an infinite distance.
Dream or not, she had half made up her mind to investigate the source of the fire and put it out if she could when she heard a sound like a rock falling.
She stopped midstride.
There came the sound again, as if a rock had dropped from shoulder height and rolled on a stone floor.
She followed the sound and the sound after that. It led her past two bakers and a butcher to the front porch of the bookstore, where a raven was dropping pebbles one by one into a narrow flask of water.
The raven gave her a long look, and then it went back to piling the pebbles in the water. Each one made a heavy thud and a rolling sound as they fell to the bottom of the flask.
Tainesh gently brushed it aside and scooped the last of the pebbles into the flask. It hopped back and forth on the small table, impatiently waiting for a drink. Oddly, it wasn't one of the regulars she'd befriended when she was a child, but she suspected that crows were smart enough to teach their offspring... only this was a dream. The crow should be a memory or a composite, but it was too large and couth to be a resident of Dutos.
It hopped onto her arm and drank its fill, staring her in the eye each time before plunging its head back into the flask. When it was done, it walked across the table, fished a long red ribbon out from a knothole and flew off.
As it disappeared over the rooftops, Tainesh heard it calling like a whippoorwill.
With nothing else to do, Tainesh opens the front door and steps into the family bookstore.
She's back awake. Cath and Sparks are unblocking the door, Langblade is being Langblade, and Umros is... somewhere.
Tainesh rolls out of her pack and opens her spellbook. She leafs through it for a few seconds before snapping it closed, only to let it fall open and page over to her jumbled notes. Two ideas are warring in her head, and it doesn't help that she's feeling stronger. Like a coiled spring, like a roaring fire, like a bar of hot steel under a Dwarven trip-hammer. She was a better person than the Tainesh that had woken up yesterday morning.
She snaps the spellbook closed one last time and wanders around the cave. One idea is coming together, slowly refining itself in her mind. The other is strong and perhaps a bit more practical, but...
Tainesh wanted to fight. She wanted to use this new, slightly stronger power like a blunt instrument. To defend herself, of course, and Sparks and Cath and Umros and even Langblade. Of her two ideas, one would serve that purpose well. The other involved conjuring spider web, and as useful as that sounded, it just lacked the oomph of the first.
Quickly, she harvests important-looking bits of one of the large spiders and tucks them neatly into her component pouch. A bare arrowshaft, the head having snapped off and the fletching long since rotten away, serves as a spool for four feet of spiderweb. The wizard wraps the result in a patch of old cloak and stuffs it into her scrollbox.
Properly prepared to have her idea shot down, she approaches the other two adventurers as they finish unblocking the doorway.
"I've been thinking about the spiders and the swarms last night. I need a spell that can fend them off from a distance, but there's nothing like that in my spellbook. I can put a spell together. I got this idea for something, I know it'll work and I've seen something similar done before, but... uh... it involves fire. Scary fire."
"Are you telling us... or are you seeking our permission?" Sparks asks softly, clearly not enamored by the idea of "scary fire."
"Asking permission? I'm not asking permission, I just don't want to sling arcane fire around someone who is terrified of fire... so I am asking permission.
"I need advice from the people who've been out in the field longer than I have. I can hack together a spell from bits of other spells, which would summon a five-foot ball of spongey fire that I can move with my mind. That would be perfect for clearing out these corridors, but if you don't think it'll work, I could also make a conjuring spell that creates a spiderweb. I'm not sure if that would be very effective if we run into more spiders."
"The torch up there on the nearby wall..." Sparks begins slowly. "...I can feel the heat it is giving off even from here. I can feel it a little on my face and can especially feel it if I look at it directly with my eyes and..." she closes her eyes and her words become slightly softer, slight more fearful "... and even though I know it will not, I constantly fight the small fear that it might fall and somehow light the floor and walls and ceiling ablaze. That I will be trapped within that hell again, in so much pain that my only thoughts are my wishes for death so that the pain might stop."
Sparks opens her eyes and looks to Tainesh and says sadly, "Your fire spells will frighten me. They will remind me of how my mother used all of her power to heal and protect me at great cost to herself. There is no way around that. But we have both already seen that we may need more than swords and arrows if we wish to make a difference."
"I will simply grieve for poor souls you inflict your fire upon..."
"If I use fire magic, or any other kind of evocation, I will cast it with great care. I will cast it with great care and only if its clear that we have no other option. In fact, I think I'll save the fire spells for the next soulless creature like the Golgoroth, just to save you the trouble of grieving."
Tainesh regrets the words as soon as she says them. Sparks' fear of fire was understandable and even justified, and the wizard felt that she had no place to confront Sparks like that.
"I'm sorry," she says, perhaps too quickly. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Hacking a spell together like this won't necessarily be best practices, but I'll try extra hard to make sure that it works flawlessly. And since it's an evocation, it won't consume all the air down here!"
Yeah. Tainesh could tell that the Elf ranger wasn't impressed. She shrugs and walks back to her bedroll.
"I'm going to prepare my spells for the day. If you want to watch, you might learn a few things about magic."
"I will be back shortly," Sparks says to Cath before following Tainesh.
"I feel I should apologize as well," she says one the two reach Tainesh's bed roll. "I did not mean to imply cruelty on your part. I was simply stating what will be whether I wish it or not. It is... not a pleasant thing to entirely unable to escape one's fears... and I did not intend to punish you over them."
Sparks sits and watches with interest as Tainesh begins her preperations. As she does so, she pulls her knife into her hand and begins idly whittling away the remaining damage to her prized bow that was caused when she dropped it to the hard ground after the previous day's battle.
"Perhaps you could show me this spell when you are finished with it? It might help if I know what it looks like and what it feels like before... if... we find ourselves in another tense struggle."
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Umros Whippoorwill whistles onward. He communes in the joy of wandering, even if it is confined to a rocky tunnel deep underground. Feeling of one step in front of another brings him much happiness, and he cannot help a smile. The small gnome realizes at the moment that his lips are quite tired of whistling, and instead decides to start singing a Desnan walking song. He pauses just long enough to begin at the rhythm of his footfalls.
"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."
He repeats the verse once more, and then decides it is best to turn back. Refreshed, he considers the trials faced the day before, as well as the quiet moments too. The last entry of Ether Gales' journal bothered him, as did Umros' dream from last night. The faithful wanderer prays as he goes, requesting that the Song of Spheres grant him and his companions the courage, luck, and wit to see these mysteries through to the end. Where had James gone? Who, or what, is the Shining Lady? What was it that terrified Ether Gales? What secrets are the folk of Sharlstown keeping? How long have they been kept?
He begins to whistle again, and nearly chokes in surprise. It was his whistle, but there was a new tone he could feel to it. One that he had heard before, a very long and blissful time ago, but until now was unable to replicate. The little old dreamer smiles, and resumes his whistling tune, savoring the memory for awhile.
In what feels like no time, he walks back into the great open cavern. Though he still appears a little sickly from yesterday's wound, Umros' mood is bright and rejuvenated.
"Alright! Let's get going! Is everyone ready?" Umros marches across the expanse, and through the iron grate. His companions can hear the smile in his voice.
"Cath, how's the cave-in coming?" he asks, his silvery eyes doing over the warrior's progress.
The dream shifted and though Sparks knew she was still asleep she somehow also awoke… in a different time and place. Or, at least she tried to… She was drowsy. So drowsy. It was all she could do to open her eyes and bear the aches in her bones and muscles and skin and soul each time the wagon, whose hay she was laying, on rolled over a bump or dip in the path.
The path… home?!
Sparks’ pained, blood shot eyes widened as she recognized the familiar archway of limbs and branches that lined the path to her home. She’d passed under them so many hundreds… no… thousands of times that she knew them by heart. She’d made it home! Somehow. Which meant there was just one last thing to do…
Her weak hands tightened around the flask she held between them, making sure to keep the red liquid with the shifting, inky black swirls as steady as possible.
Some minutes later the slow movement of the wagon stopped and Sparks gritted her teeth as she forced herself to sit… but that was all she could manage. Fortunately, her friends were there to help her. She… she could no longer recall their names… it made her head throb with pain to shift her thoughts to anything but the present… but she recognized them all the same.
There was the young woman, tall and thin… always talking so fast, thinking so fast. She’d… she’d become so much more than she had been when they first met. She helped Sparks move to the edge of the wagon and swing her feet so the hung towards the ground.
Then there, there was her strong, fair, protective, and kind half-elven friend. Still in his armor, though many pieces of it had swapped out and changed… hadn’t they? He helped her stand and held her up when it was clear that she no longer could.
And finally was the short old Gnome… always so cheerful and so wise. Always humming a tune or singing a helpful song. Always so compassionate even to a stranger like her, even at the times where he had no need to be so. He took her hand and led her towards the makeshift home that she’d set out from so many years ago.
Her other hand kept a strong grip on the flask… despite the pain the liquid it held drew from her….
As they neared, her father emerged, and her sister Inapita Sasa as well! Her sister’s limp, though still present, had improved so much! They both greeted her with concern. With panic. But Sparks quickly hushed them with sharply spoken Elven words issued from her cracked lips and burning throat.
Another sentence or two and their faces fell, their smiles and even their concern swept away by grief as they led Sparks and her companions inside, to the room where her mother lay on a large, comfortable bed that had not been there before.
At the doorway, Inapita gave her sister a long tearful hug before moving aside. Sparks’ father did much the same, leaving her with whispers of love and of pride.
The others, too, held back to the safety of the next room as Sparks moved inside under what was left of her own power. Her steps were heavy and sluggish. Her labored breathing shallow and quick. But somehow she made it to the bed, then up onto the bed so as to stretch out alongside her still disfigured mother.
The sounds her mother made, her excited whimpers and her worried moans, they all saw Sparks smile and cry.
Sparks forced herself to sit up again, as difficult as it was to do so, then used all her remaining strength to pull the stopper from the flask of odd liquid that she’d been protecting these last few weeks.
She shakily ran one hand gently, lovingly across her mother’s cheek then, with the other, she put the open end of the flask to her mother’s mouth and slowly poured the frightening liquid across her mother’s lips.
Not much of it made it down into her mother’s mouth, but not much had to. It was the act of willful offering that mattered here.
The candles in the room snuffed out. The sounds of the outside world grew strangely quiet. Even the rays of the sun streaming in through the window to cast what had been bright patters across mother and daughter grew dim even though they still shown brightly everywhere else.
Sparks had only but a short moment to watch her mother’s eyes flash fear and alarm before her own eyes grew heavy and closed. Somehow it felt as if the room had begun to spin around her even though she could no longer see.
She put her head back down to the pillow and felt herself become wrapped tightly in a loving embrace even as everything… her pain, her fear, her thoughts, and even her love dulled down to a flat, deep, even numbness.
U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika Njia’yawazi held the cold body of her first born daughter tightly with arms that she had not been able move in years, with fingers she had not possessed since the fire. Tears flowed down the renewedly smooth skin of her face as she gently rocked her daughter and wept and wept.
“Binti yangu binti yangu? Umefanya nini? Umefanya nini?” she asked with lips that had not spoken a word since they had commanded the gods to cover her Mkali Moto Kipande with protection against the fire and smoke and crushing timbers that were soon to fall on them both.
“Kutimiza ahadi yangu na wewe...” Sparks somehow whispered contently in reply.
Wrapped tight in her weeping mother’s arms, and also beneath her heavy blanket deep down in the cave filled with the corpses of villagers and spiders, Sparks drew in and then gently release her last and final breath.
Cath turns from where he and Langblade struggle with the rubble. "It goes as well as it may." The pit fighter says wiping the sweat of his brow with the back of his hand.
"Though it would go quicker, hrg-" Landblade pushes over a particularly heavy stone. "If everyone helped." She finishes with an irritated glance at the two of the group not active with the clearing.
"I already explained, there is not enough room for all of us in the passage. We'd just get in each other's way." Tainesh recites, with the air of a long-suffering professor. Langblade just snorts and returns to the task, adjusting the sword-belt to better be able to reach the fallen detritus. A sharp eye might have caught Caths quick grin at the exchange but it is soon gone with the strain of labor.
The grin on Umros's face, however, is bright and apparent for all to see as he skips over to where the fighters had made headway in the clearing. "I can help!" He beams up to the pair, "I'm small!" and true to his word he ducks in between the two and starts worrying at a stone much the same size and shape as a cantaloupe.
The trio continue in this manner for a good half-hour before Cath and Langblade confer and conclude that they are likely near the end of the blockage. "Nothing like a little honest labor to keep the bones limber!" Umros quips as he leans on one of the remaining stones. Cath looks to be about to agree before his eyes widen in the dim torch-light, he reaches out to try and grab the Gnome as the stones begin to give way!
"Look ou-!" Langblade's voice is cut off by the mounting roar of rocks falling into the short passageway! Umros and Cath tumble forward into blackness, their torch sputtering and dying in a hail of dirt and rocks. It's pitch black when the fighter and wanderer open their eyes. A gasping coughing sound lets them know that the other fighter, Langblade is nearby.
"Well, shit." The raven-haired warrior says in the darkness. "Does anybody have a light?" The sounds of searching fill the oppressive space and before too long a sputtering flame is brought to life by the half-elf from Dutos. A brief appraisal of their situation reveals that most of Umros and Caths belongings made it through the avalanche, though Langblades pack was too far from the work area. All she had after the collapse was her armor and sword, though she jokes that the items are all she needs.
Before too long the trio give up hope on the rest of their party making it through the newly filled passageway. Resigning themselves to the trek yet further underground they begin making their way through the long-disused tunnel.
Back in the spider cavern above the wizard and ranger give a token effort at clearing the rocks out and searching for their companions before deciding it's a lost cause. Figuring their best bet at recouping the cost of their adventure was to cut their losses and return to Sharlstown. They make good time and are soon back in the town, though both studiously avoid confronting the grieving mother. Sparks returns to her labors at bow-making and lives a quiet peaceful life, now relocated south to Dutos where there's more of a market.
Tainesh signs on with the next adventuring group that comes through the town. She goes on to become a powerful and well known wizard and full fledged adventurer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The three in the long-dead tunnel pick their way gingerly down through the uncertain footing, the way much more difficult than the previously thought abandoned tunnels leading to the cavern of the Golgoroth. They walk for a few hours before, for the first time since leaving the Dwarven home above, they see light in the tunnel that doesn't belong to them! The flicker of a fire or torch can be seen ahead along the shadowy path!
“Is everyone alright?” Umros wheezes, still coughing from the dust that settles from the collapse. Soon he hears that Cath and Langblade are alright. They are a tough pair, but the Desnan worshipper wonders if they were protected by Lady Luck. For his part, Umros knows he is not especially tough or strong, and trusts the goddess of travel to see him through such dangers. The travelling alchemist wonders for a second if the Predator’s Acumen had a part to play is his survival.
When he learns that Tainesh and Sparks are not with them, he shouts into the wall of rubble between himself and the spidery cavern. “Sparks! Tainesh! Are you alive?!” The gnome hears nothing in response, and his dread is put to action as he claws away at rocks in the dark, sparing only a moment to pull his everburning torch out from the cannister and letting it clatter to the floor. His little fingers pry and pull frantically at the grimy, shifting stone.
At length, he finds the digging useless. Some of the rocks were too heavy, and once already he ignored a rebuke from Langblade when a rock he removed brought a brief cascade of stones from above. After the second shower of rubble, he backs away. With a sigh of frustration, he pauses to think. They were not close to the small tunnel, perhaps the cave-in missed them. They just might be alive... Umros whispers a prayer on their behalf, hoping that they are alive, and if so, are in a condition to leave the dour cave system.
He turns his silver eyes up the two warriors. “Off to a rocky start, it seems,” Umros grins wryly. The wanderer picks up the everburning torch. “and only one way to go. I hope it leads to a way out.”
And with any luck, we find young James along the way...
He raises the light as he picks his way through the tunnel. The little gnome remains quiet as he continues alongside the others for the next few hours. At the sight of the distant light, he gasps softly and conceals the glowing end of his torch behind his back. He absently sniffs the air.
“Shh,” he whispers to the fighters, “Slow and quiet. Let’s see what that light is about…”
With a prayer, he lays a hand on a knee of Cath and Langblade, requesting guidance from Desna to help muffle the sound of their footsteps. He would need the light to keep from stumbling over his own feet, but he hopes that he can be silent enough to inspect the light without drawing attention from any other creepy crawlies of the deep.