Horven leans toward Gared and whispers. "Is that a tiefling mating ritual?"
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"Well, I at least-" Carmina begins to respond to Yamyra, but is interrupted when Ganer suddenly starts looking her over. "Look, Ganer," she finally says when the other tiefling moves onto examining her mouth. "I know that I have a pretty face, but would you please admire it from a little bit further away?"
As Ganer examines Carmina for possible injury, Yamyra once more calls up healing energies about Fancy.
A bemused & possibly slightly (?annoyed?) expression on her face, Fancy tolerates Yamyra's fussing for a time before gently pressing her back as the Eidolon turns once more to examine their surroundings.
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The stairs slope up gently as the eidolon follows them up, with no monsters or other hazards accosting her. The stairs open to an empty chamber with two exits on the other side. The first one leads up a door in the north wall which according to Yamyra's map matches the door you bypassed earlier. Another passage leads south for a short distance before ending at a pair of closed double doors in the west wall.
"Well," Yamyra considers, facing the double doors. "We have eliminated one possibility..."
"At least all the others have doors. Closed, even." She adds.
Ganer seemed to recoil from Carmina's words, though any pain she might have caused seemed to be quickly brushed aside. Still, there was a certain irritation clear in his voice when he said, "You have almost died once since we have arrived in this place, and possibly on other occasions that I have forgotten. Despite that, you continue to act in the same manner without hesitation, so I must take special care to ensure your safety." The redness of his cheeks suggested that might not have been the complete answer, but it was at least the truth.
"So this one next?" Horven asks Yamyra, moving forward to inspect the double doors.
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Horven experiments with the door and determines it is not locked or trapped. After listening to see if anything lurks on the other side, he hears nothing. Gripping the door handle tightly, the halfling pulls the door open.
Holding aloft the everburning torch, he sees two flights of steps descend into a wide pool of murky water in this room. Pillars carved to look like coiling tentacles support the vaulted roof, rising from the pool to the north and south. While he is sure something is on the other side of the pool, his light source cannot reach that far.
All is quiet.
'Fancy love, try to find how much farther it goes, please?'
Nodding at her anchor's silent request, Fancy steps forward & through the doors. Descending the stairs, she looks down into the water to attempt to determine depth.
Gared moved quickly to catch up to Horven, peering further into the room with his keen dwarven senses.
"Hrmmm..." Yamyra contemplates the sight before them. "I have a bad feeling we are going to have to cross that..."
Turning once more to the hallway to the North, "However, there are two other doors we can check first." She adds, brightening.
"Huzzah, doors!" Horven says. "If you're not feeling comfortable with it right now, Yamyra, we can come back later."
Her features scrunched in contemplation, Yamyra replies. "We should be able to cross with comparatively little difficulty...
if there are no threats concealed within. I believe I might use the bond between Fancy & I to call up, perhaps a water elemental or somesuch, to investigate & be certain there are no threats..." Her indecision is plain.
Horven takes a deep breath and walks up beside Yamyra. "It can wait."
"Hold on a second, I think I know how we can check if the water is safe," Carmina says to the concerned halflings and steps a bit closer to the pool. She begins to recite a brief arcane chant, which culminates in a grey sea mammal appearing a little over the surface of the water before plummeting down with a splash.
"Yell if there's monsters in there!" Carmina shouts after the summoned creature. "Or... uh... I guess you could just squeak or something."
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Carmina finishes her summoning of the fiendish whale and it soon swims under the surface heading towards the other side of the pool.
Even as the tiefling starts casting another spell you all notice movement in the pool, three shadowy forms emerging from the far corner underneath the surface converge on the dolphin. The hapless mammal tries to head back away from the threat but it is too late for it. There is a thrashing frenzy as the dolphin breaks the surface with a loud splash, bleeding profusely from its wounds. The forms of its attackers you recognize as sinspwan, albeit of an aquatic variety.
After a few more seconds, the dolphin vanishes as it is slain by a wicked bite from one of the sinspawn, leaving behind only a chunk of flesh.
Eyes wide at the speed & ferocity of the attack, Yamyra quickly calls up a gobbet of acid to hurl at the closest of the abominable creatures.
Horven quickly fires his crossbow at the sinspawn Yamyra attacked and reloads.
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Yamyra sees an opportunity to strike at the unnatural sinspawn and does not hesitate, letting loose a gobbet of acid at the closest one. It strikes true impacting the creature on its face! That is followed by Horven and Gared's shots, which is enough to kill it!
As its body floats to the surface the other two sinspawn, either unable or unwilling to venture out of the water, swim underneath the surface of the pool and out of immediate sight, though you can tell they swam to the other side of the pool in the opposite corner.
"We're definitely going to need to deal with those if we have to cross that to find the shard..." Yamyra muses.
"I don't think I want to see the lure again..." Horven says softly.
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"I have other lures..." Yamyra replies.
"" She exclaims. "Those other doors are looking much more promising now, don't you think?" Clearly not wanting to face this obstacle until absolutely necessary, Yamyra proceeds back up the hallwway & through to the long-abandoned labratory in which the 'fleshdregs' were found.
Once more, Fancy moves to preceed her companion. At the door, she leans in to listen carefully.
Horven plods along, clearly unsettled by Yamyra's behavior. Answer yourself honestly, Horven: Do you really want to see where those feelings for her lead to?
When she was uncertain or nervous, Horven felt a rising heat in his heart, a stupid chivalry that gnawed at him. It was when she was vulnerable that he saw something he could love in her, but those moments weren't often. No, she was strong and stoic, completely unreadable. That's who the true Yamyra was at this moment. In her eyes, Horven saw practicality and goals...an interior heart shut away by logic.
Then again...he was a rogue and always enjoyed a good challenge. If a feeling woman existed behind the thinking woman, that possibility kept him from just forgetting about her altogether.
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"Do we not have a scroll to animate the dead? Perhaps we could raise the one we killed as a lure for the others?" Ganer suggested. Clearly he was not as broken up about things dying for his purposes as Carmina. "I do not like the idea of wandering away with these creatures still alive and aware of us. Who is to say they would not follow and ambush us later?"
"For the same reason I do not wish to confront them in there." Yamyra retorts. "Clearly, they are at their best in the water, while we are stronger on land."
"I am not suggesting that we wade into the water. You lot seem quite capable of killing one in a short time at range, so if we repeat the same process twice more, that should solve the problem quickly enough."
"..."
Sighing in exasperation, Yamyra continues. "I meant, they are unlikely to come out of the water to ambush us for the same reason I did not try to send Fancy in to fight them in the water, it is clearly not their element."
"Are you willing to risk that they won't? Better to kill them now from range than hope that they will do as you expect." As he spoke, Ganer watched the water, as though he was expecting the beasts to rise and attack them at any moment.
"Fine, fine!" Fancy snaps, clearly not wanting to confront the creatures again so quickly.
'Fancy, love, I'll call you back when it's over.'
Calming herself, Yamyra unhurriedly intones Fancy's dismissal & watches, unhappily, as her friend disperses into cog-like motes to evanesce upon the air.
"I'm going to try a water elemental. It's only be a small one, but it should be a bit more able to hold it's own against them. Everyone, be ready."
Setting deed to word, Yamyra calls upon her link with Fancy to draw in a smallish spirit of the water, focusing upon the steps just above the edge.
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Yamyra waves everyone into position as she readies to lure the remaining sinspawn out of their hiding spot. With arrows and bolts ready to fire, Yamyra conjures forth her elemental which immediately swims to the center of the pool.
As expected, the two sinspawn head towards the elemental. Once they break the surface of the water , Yamyra lets her spell loose which impacts on its head! The spawn gurgles in pain as the acid burns its skin before being washed away by the water.
Horven aims and fires at Yamyra's target. ;
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"You will pay for what you did to the poor little fish!" Carmina shouts, drawing her own crossbow and shooting at the same sinspawn as the halflings had.
Ganer drew his sling and a bullet, and began to swing it. Following tradition, he attacked the same one as the others had.
Gared unleashed another deadly volley at the beasts, noting where his arrows were left in the pool.
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saved.
With the combined efforts of your attacks, another sinspawn is slain and also the final one is wounded as Gared's arrows prove devastating to them. The elemental advances towards the remaining sinspawn and then changes form to a swirling vortex of water, causing the pool to become a churning body of motion! Unfortunately the vortex has little effect on the sinspawn , other than keeping it occupied.
Horven loads and fires again.
; ;
It worked. It actually !
Heartened by the success of her 'plan', Yamyra calls forth another acrid gobbet, flinging it at the remaining creature. Only to find her aim thwarted by the elemental's actions...
Ganer loaded another bullet, trying to keep the beast in view as he launched another shot at it.
Carmina starts loading another bolt into her rather large crossbow, taking a considerable time to do so.