"The one that completes this home..."
The halfling thinks what that could mean.
"We saw several balconies and windows under eaves when we approached the house, but did anybody count them? Are there in fact nine? If there are only eight, then maybe the right key has a design that is the ninth eave. That's my best guess.
Or, it could be a play on words of some sort. Nine-Eaves... Nine Leaves?
Maybe I'll have a better idea once we find these keys."
"Yes Lola, I would be happy for a bit of speed."
Coral tries to follow the steps of the dance, and finds her feet moving faster.
"Now that is something!"
Vlad leads the group up the stairs where the path dead ends with doors on the west and east side. Both doors are sliding doors and the eastern pair appears to be locked and won't open. The western set of doors open up into a drawing room with several overstuffed chairs and a few low tables and cabinets. Sliding doors lead back to the east and south, while to the north a glass door opens onto a small semicircular balcony.
Marya refreshes her light spell yet again, even if there is plenty of ambient light, which might strike her companions—particularly those that joined more recently—as odd. She taps her sword on the door frame leading west. ”I say we check this drawing room first to make sure there aren’t any monsters waiting to jump us.”
Marya finds a few items of interest in the room. First are foremost, an orgami grasshopper sits in the middle of the room on the floor an looks extremely out of place. Opening it up you find a handwritten note which reads “The new Master wants you gone from here. I have little patience.”
In addition, she finds that the liquor cabinet contains six fine glasses engraved with a detailed image of a snail, dice and gambling items and a ivory box that contains a deck of cards.
Lola increases Coral, Vlad, and Marya’s movement speed by briefly strumming a few simple chords, laden with magical energy, that get their toes tapping.
When they enter the parlor upstairs, Lola peers over Marya’s shoulder, ”interesting. The original owner was ursurped? Que malo, you folks would rather get your stamp from a psychopomp than a sakhil.” She peeks at the things they find, but mostly keeps her eyes and ears out for enemies.
Coral looks around the room for anything else of interest.
"North, onto the balcony?"
She peers through the glass door.
"We know there are more sakhils somewhere..." The halfling fidgets with her holy symbol and bounces on the balls of her feet a bit. She has her rapier in hand.
Coral looks through the glass door and sees a small empty balcony that is 3'x6' wide. Vlad opens the door and steps out onto the balcony, but finds nothing but the swirling grey mist of the beyond visible in the distance.
Lola says cheerfully, ”well, let’s keep opening doors until we find something interesting, the old master, or a monster.” Lola detects magic briefly and hums cheerfully to herself.
But she appears to be extremely distracted.
Not finding anything to the north, Lola urges the party to slide the southern double doors open. Beyond them you find an elegant library that is in shambles. Piles of shredded books are heaped untidily throughout the room. A small desk is scarred by deep grooves across its surface. Several large, umbrella-shaped masses of parchment and torn paper hang from the ceiling. Sliding double doors lead out of this room to the north and south, and a narrow glass door in the west wall leads to a small semicircular balcony. The glass of the door is badly cracked.
Lola points are the paper, ”Cuidado, those are wasp nests. Do you all have any area weapons in case we get swarmed?” She checks her own bag.
"They haven't come out yet, so let's back up and close the doors."
"I do have flasks of acid and alchemists' fire. I would rather not burn up all the books and papers, but if those wasps start swarming we're going to need Feena's fire spells. Let's all get ready, I guess?"
Coral pulls out her two flasks and offers the alchemists' fire to anybody who doesn't have a splash weapon.
Damian sucks in a breath at the sight of the vandalized library. It hurt his soul to see books treated such, and he sets his mouth in a determined line. "If they swarm, we can lure them out of the library and destroy them without harming the books. And perhaps repeat the trick with closing the doors - split them up so we only fight a few at a time." He holds out his hand for one of the alchemist flasks.
”Gods f#+$ing damn f#&*ing bug swarms I swear to Iomedae f+$*ing wasps.” She feels the urge to scream or stomp but restrains herself. She tries to slow down her breathing to calm down, pausing talking periodically to breathe. ”Maybe someone quiet and careful...could sneak by...and not disturb them?” She has a feeling that they will all have to fight the damn bugs anyways, but she would very much prefer to not have to.
"That sounds like my job, Marya. I could try, but if they swarm me, I'd need you all to back me up.
Maybe there's nothing in the next room and so no reason for us to bother with the swarms.
But if there is something there, and I need you to follow me, then we're back to fighting them.
I rather like Damian's idea. With a twist. Rather than waiting to see if they swarm and we react to it (hopefully fast enough), we instead force the issue and lure them out of the library by bombing their nests with acid."
Coral will listen at the door to hear if the wasps are buzzing.
Coral hears no wasps, the doors are opened and she steps in.
"Now!"
Coral will throw an acid flask at a wasp nest.
As they made their way through the spooky house Feena was on guard for more trouble. When they found the library she thought she'd be in heaven but unfortunately it didn't look like it had been well kept. Fortunately for them the swarms were something she could deal with. "If they swarm and we can pull back I can blast them with fire. I don't want to hurt the library, or what's left of it anyway, but my flames should do a pretty thorough job of purifying the place of the wretched bugs."
Lola will take one of the offered splash weapons and stuffs it into her empty wrist sheath, still holding her longspear.
"Trick I learned a few years ago, in case you get ambushed." She pats her wrist sheath, and stands next to Coral.
Lola pops out the flask and readies to throw at the wasps should they emerge.
Coral's vial smashes against the ceiling right above a nest, and some of the acid hopefully gets the wasps.
Feena was loathe to cast any spells that might set what remained of the library ablaze. To do so would be wrong and she couldn't bring herself to risk it. With that in mind she stayed back and waited to see if the wasps would come to them.
Vlad Coral both launch their projectiles into the room, but only Vlad's hits the mark and just barely at that. Coral's flask flies off the mark and strikes the nearby of books on the floor instead.
There is some minimal damage to the wasp nest, but it seems to agitate the wasps more than damage them as they begin to erupt from their hive and flood the room. As the wasps emerge, Lola tosses her flask and strikes the creatures as well.
\
Seeing the damage to the library and the smoldering books from the fire flask Feena felt a pang of sorrow tear through her at the loss. Still What was done was done though and she couldn't just let them burn for nothing. The sooner they finished this the sooner they could put the flames out. "Back away from the door, I'll burn them when they come through." With that she prepared to cast her spell when the swarms came for them.
Feena realized that what she hoped to do wasn't going to work as soon as she said it so she did something she had never expected to. Moving quickly into the room and around the swarm Feena got into a relatively clear space and then cast her spell sending the gout of fire to envelope the swarm. As the flames of the blast started to fade she then became enveloped in a flames aura.
Feena's blast and aura severely injury the swarm, burning nearly half of them to a crisp and charring the threats before they can sting her. The wasps get away from her as quickly as possible, moving out of the room and north into the room with the party in it. Agitated now, the wasps furiously swarm Vlad, Lola, Coral and Marya, stinging them repeatedly.
Damian takes a step back from the furious swarm, pondering his options. He could throw the flask, but then four of his companions would be caught in the blast. Besides, it looked like they were already hurting from the numerous stings. No, best to keep them on their feet and trust in Feena's fiery powers.
Lola hisses and steps away from the swarm, moving to the corner.
Breathing a sigh of relief, but clearly sick, she just moves away into the corner.
Coral tries to keep a level head and move out of the swarm.
She takes a single move and then readies to move back where she was if the swarm comes back into the library.
Marya is not prepared for the onrushing swarm and finds her reflexes sapped. She channels, using her newfound ability to select-out the swarm, then evacuates the swarm.
Letting the aura of flames drop away Feena moved up beside Marya and then chanted and gestured. She was loathe to use this last spell but it was needed and a gout of flames shot in front of Marya and up through the doorway to burn more of the bugs.
Feena's flames ignite paper and books in the library, the heat too intense from her aura of fire. Vlad's flask explodes on the wasps just as Feena's burning magic also ignites and burns through the remainder of the wasps, eliminating the threat.
Marya is suddenly very glad that she always prepares Create Water.
Marya creates water again and again until the fire is out, figuring that water-damaged books are better than ashes.
Coral grabs her bedroll and tries to smother some flames with it.
Feena was relieved to see the wasps go down but the damage she had caused to the library in ending them was heartbreaking. It was luck that Marya had a means to put the flames out quickly and as she did Feena went about casting a simple spell to try and quickly dry them out to prevent anymore harm from coming to the information within and only the fact they hadn't been burning for more than a few seconds gave her any hope of saving them.
Once the flames were out and the books dry Feena cast the cantrip she'd used once more and created a tiny twister that flew through the room and dispersed the smoke. Once that was done she began to look through the books, particularly those that had been damaged by the fire, and attempted to see if any were of interest and what might have been lost.
The group quickly puts out the flames, but damage has been done and numerous items are blackened or crispier than they had been only moments earlier. To make matters worse, now half of the items are soaking wet and no longer in whatever terrible organizational structure they were previously.