Warned into defensive posture Gethric raises his shield.
Gethric raises his shield.
Aronida can't see the creature, but she trusts Darla. She sends two arrows flying in the general direction Darla was pointing.
Aronida fires blindly into the shadows, but both her arrows clatter against the stone walls.
Gellius peers into the end of the room but can't make out what Darla is perceiving. He holds his rapier at the ready, hoping he will see the ooze before it engulfs him.
The next moment, something that might have been dust or cobwebs or a trick of Alek's flickering light shifts, revealing itself to be a transparent cube sliding steadily toward the party, slurping over the fallen armor racks as if they aren't there. As it nears, Gellius quickly stabs it twice with his rapier, but the clear liquid spurting from the punctures does nothing to slow it.
Alek just manages to stumble back out of the door as the cube advances. He uses his large blade to slash several weeping holes in that side.
"Ah. So that's what you saw." Once Aronida is able to actually see the thing, avoiding it isn't too much of a challenge.
With nowhere to run, Darla is bodily crushed against the north wall by the cube's entire girth. The stone wall isn't going to give, so eventually the cube's outer membrane does, sucking the terrified bard inside before instantly healing the rift.
Gethric can do little but squeak an alarmed note before he's swallowed up by the amorphous beast, his ability to control his body fading as an acrid scent fills his nostrils and a brush fire seems to spark within his skin.
Having stood his ground long enough to attack the advancing cube, Gellius is unable to leap out of the way and finds himself engulfed and immobilized in the stinging goo.
Aronida has no time to think as three of her friends are immediately engulfed by the creature. She wants to get away, but scrambling over the detritus on the floor proves difficult. Near panic, she whirls around and fires two arrows in quick succession.
"..."
Feeling her face burning from the cube's internal acid, Darla holds her breath and tries to escape the deadly prison.
With all the strength she can gather, Darla tries to break though the surface tension of the cube. At first, it seems she has failed, as the outer skim repulses her, but then, with a heroic squirming, she uses the cube's own response to her stimulus to propel herself past the motionless form of Gethric and out the other side. Slimy and breathless, she nonetheless restarts her battle chant.
Aronida puts what distance the cluttered floor will let her between herself and the cube and release a pair of arrows. They pierce the surface and almost immediately hang in stasis. their momentum quelled by the ooze, but drips down the face of the cube show that they have done some damage to its cohesion.
The injured cube shivers and snaps its sides like a sheet on laundry day, striking out at the unseen things depleting its bodily integrity.
"..."
Feeling the last of his strength fading, Gellius tries desperately to cut his way free of the cube.
;
;
Small amount of distance gained, Aronida focuses on slamming as many arrows as possible into the creature. "Hold on!"
Darla's face shows panic, but she displays courage, too, standing by the deadly cube, singing and trying to carve its side open so her friends and new ally might escape.
for
for
Darla keeps chanting, puncturing the leaking cube twice.
Gellius slashes toward the nearest edge of the ooze, trying to cut his way free. After his last desperate swing, he feels a moment of disequilibrium, and then he is expulsed from the cube, along with a gush of its interior protoplasm.
Aronida releases another flurry of arrows, only the first of which lodges alongside her first pair inside the cube.
The diminishing ooze quivers again, slapping its sides against the enemy.
On the other side of the door, Alek wields his large blade again, slashing into the ooze. At last, the leaking cube can no longer hold itself together and collapses into a viscous puddle around the motionless form of Gethric.
The laid out form of the stealthy halfling slowly curls from lying flat on the floor into a shuddering foetal ball, skin raw and made bloody by the assault of caustic cube contents. His breath comes shaky and indistinct, and teeth chatter through gritted teeth.
Darla takes a deep, shuddering breath and then spits out some wayward glop that found its way into her mouth. She moves to Gethric and casts a soothe spell on the poor halfling.
After announcing that she's already out of quality spells for the day, she suggests returning to the Bumblebrashers to rest, or at the very least get some much-needed healing from Revka. Then she casts a prestidigitation cantrip to de-slime herself and the others from the gelatinous cube's tacky innards.
Collapsing down next to Gethric to regain his strength, Gellius nods his agreement with Darla.
"I don't have much fight left in me," he confesses. "That was...that was horrible. A night's rest or at least some patching up by Revka would go a long way to making me feel better."
Thanking Darla when she cleans him up, he stands up again and waits for the group decision.
Gellius notices something in the viscous puddle that had been the cube: a rapier, perhaps the last remains of a previous adventurer who hadn't been fortunate enough to escape the ooze.
"You all certainly don't look well enough to face anything else hostile that we might encounter," Alek remarks frankly, looking over the trio that had been engulfed by the cube. "I've a few burns myself. I suppose a quick R&R might be the better part of valor, in this instance."
"I wish we could have done more, but that was definitely intense. I thought...well it doesn't matter now." Aronida is more than a little shaken by the encounter with the cube, even though it hadn't hurt her at all. "Resting sounds like a good idea."
She walks over to Gethric and puts a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. We're all okay. You did great."
The soothing touch takes much of the tension out of Gethric's contortion as his breathing eases, a few span of seconds later he's able to straighten and rise. Spoken word still halting and quivering he adds "That was horrible... what... what was it? I didn't see it coming, and then it swallowed me up and I couldn't move" warily eyeing the puddles of gelatinous mass that was the creature.
Gathering what skerrick of courage remains he hesitantly pokes through the cluttered room commenting "I think a rest is a fine idea, though I'm not necessarily looking forward to the Bumble's culinary arts... pity we can't duck back to pick up some buns.."
Apart from the rapier, a search of the rest of the room reveals nothing of any particular value. The dispirited party trudges back to the safety of the Bumblebrashers' home.
Furrowed brow and a mite disconsolate Gethric queries the rest of the party "We're making progress right? Clearing the way for the bumble's to feel safe and sound... just... I dunno..." kicking at a tuft of dirt on the walk "This squishing around with oozy things in broken rooms lack a bit of the heroic aura that we had... liberating the citadel from the dragons just sat a bit better in the playground of my imagination."
As the party reenters the Bumblebrashers' domain, Warbal hurries up to them. "That was quick. What happened?" She looks wide-eyed at the acid-burned men.
Wiggling the last of gelatinous protoplasm out of one ear Gethric shrugs "Oh, you know... the normal... swallowed up by a big see through cube of acidic jelly... anything interesting happen here while we were about?"
"It was rough," Aronida adds to Gethric's explanation. "I've never seen a creature like that before. Nothing I did seemed to harm it overly much. We're fortunate Alek and Gellius' blades proved more effective."
She leans against a nearby wall. "Unfortunately Darla had to use most of her spells fixing Gethric up, and Gellius is still hurt. Is Revka around? We could use some extra healing."
Warbal nods sagely. "Helba said there were monsters." She seems deeply satisfied to have the chieftain's words verified.
"Is Revka around? We could use some extra healing."
"She's with Hairy," Warbal directs them. "Over there."
Revka is chatting in Draconic with the charau-ka.
As Revka hits them all with divine healing, Aronida tries her best to aid via more mundane means. "Sit down, Gellius. I can't reach your shoulder."
With limited success she spends the next forty minutes traveling from party member to party member, fixing what she can.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Gellius sits quietly as the group tends to his wounds, head hanging. As his strength returns, he stands up and stretches; testing the bandages and poultices.
“Thank you,” he says to Darla, Aronida and Revka. “I must admit, despite all my training….I’ve been in more danger in the last two days than I’ve seen my entire life! There’s no way I would still be here without all of you.” Climbing to his feet, he takes out the salvaged rapier to examine it.
“That pile of goo was simply awful,” he continues, shaking his head slightly. “It would be nice if we were to at least walked away with something to show for it besides an uncomfortable, sticky bath.”
Darla listens to Gellius speak before chiming in herself. "That works both ways. If you weren't such a...danger magnet...the rest of us might well have been killed by some of the foes we've faces thus far. What's that old saying: That which does not kill you makes you stronger?"
The bard then casts detect magic and examines the rapier more closely.
Darla does detect an unfamiliar aura when she casts the cantrip.
Gellius examines the rapier more closely and discovers a potency rune etched into the hilt.
Wanly smiling at the banter Gethric attempts to engage "If for nothing else it's been a fine education in pain. I used to think I knew what that was when I burnt myself on da's oven... turns out I've been sorely mistaken"
Gellius gives a few practise swings with the new rapier, before looking to the others.
“This is a very fine weapon,” he announces. “With your permission, I’ll hold onto it as we explore further? We still have Alek’s signet ring to find and we shouldn’t leave until the citadel is safe. There’s plenty of hours left in the day. Shall we continue our explorations?”
Aronida eyes Darla with concern. "I can continue, but Darla, are you up for it? I know you spent a lot of spells on the ooze."
In the meantime she packs away her healer's kit with some relief. "Thought this might come in handy, didn't realize quite how much."
Darla shrugs at Aronida. "I won't be able to do much more than inspire you folks in battle," the bard admits. "And maybe attempt a stab or two here and there. I won't be able to heal, cast magic missile, or infuse a weapon with magic, though. Not until tomorrow after a good rest."
"If we are confronted by the undead," Alek offers, "I have some offensive abilities to harm them, but I have no more healing to offer. I suggest we stand ready to retreat if anyone is badly hurt."
With a wry smile Gethric bookend's Alek's words "Which given our luck so far won't take us too long... I'm game to risk it"
The group returns to the main vaultway and eyes the three corridors leading south. "Any preference which we should try first?" Alek asks.
Aronida leads the way down the narrow corridor. Like the ones to the north, it doglegs and ends in a heavy wooden door.
Gethric creeps forward to the door, placing an ear against the wood to see if aught can be heard and testily testing the handle to determine if it's locked or unlocked.
Unless given pause in his proceedings by enlightened information coming from either preceding action, he proceeds to open the portal.
As Gethric pushes past to scout, Gellius remains quiet with both weapons drawn, shuffling back in the narrow corridor to make room.
There is no sound at all from the other side of the door. Gethric carefully pushes it open.
Inside is a dark and still room with four sarcoghagi in its center. The one nearest the door is cracked and broken open at one corner, its heavy lid askew.