Aith is, ridiculously, almost offended when the supposed sword disappears - some sort of illusion, she supposes? - only for things to get even worse as Yasmeena's encouraging burst of magic is followed by ray from the bizarre thing that rises from the depths and Aith feels her limbs lock even as her heart speeds up with magic and adrenaline.
It's all terribly unfair, and if she could grit her teeth as she musters her mental energy to shake the binding spell off, she would.
Haleen takes her bow and shoots at the creature too. She is also not interested in taking a bath right now.
Aithaloessa slowly but steadily slides on the slippery bridge towards the edge. Yasmeena makes three arrows stick and wounds the creature badly. Haleen too adds an arrow.
The beast shoots back two rays. One at Yasmeena and one at Haleen.
Yasmeena, seeing the ray strike her, activates her moment of greatness.
She draws and fires again in a blur of motion, backing up Haleen's attack with her own melodic twangs.
Whether the haste speeds her racing thoughts up too, or if it's just regular fear, Aith can't get a mental purchase on the enchantment gripping her to shake it off after another few agonizing seconds, but keeps struggling.
Yasmeena learns an important lesson about eyes from the deep. They'd better stay in the deep, because they can't take that many arrows. The creature gurgles in its own blood before sinking back into the water.
Aithaloessa slides in slow motion to the edge and over it, when gravity takes over and she falls like a tilted column into the water.
Tariq runs to the closest place he can reach Aith from solid ground and tries to find her and grab an extremity.
Without Aithaloessa's cooperation there is no way to reach her without becoming wet.
Tariq runs to the closest place he can reach Aith from solid ground and tries to find her and grab an extremity.
Oh no no no! Aith has just time to think as she feels her unresponsive body unable to compensate for the sloping, slippery surface of the bridge and her own weight carries her to – and over – the edge.
The shock and the splash as she hits the water provides the stimulus she needs, and she kicks out desperately to right herself.
Despite the deserts of the Mana Wastes being a particularly unpromising place for learning how to swim, generally speaking, there is the Ustradi River flowing through her hometown, so Aith isn't completely hopeless.
As her head breaches the surface, she shakes the sodden mass of her hair out of her eyes and finds the bridge again. With a small self-deprecating grin, she reaches up to grab the hand Tariq extends.
In another moment, a sopping wet mage stands dripping on the end of the bridge, grimacing as she tries to squeeze as much water off herself as she can.
"Well, at least it wasn't a kraken-type thing this time. No tentacles!" she chirps, trying to look on the bright side. Turning to the door, she adds, more seriously, "A locked door, though? Looks like we're getting close, especially with Mr. Dog-head there. Once we get through, I can try to give us all another burst of speed if this is the dog's house after all."
Checking the door shows that no hole to put a key in disturbes the art carved into the stone.
Squelching forward, Aith goggles at the sight the door provides, rubbing her eye and brushing another few drops of water out of her eyebrow to make sure that she’s seeing properly.
"Calistria's kiss," she curses. "That is very clever. I never trained for an assault unit, and I didn't prepare general countermagic this morning, so if we want to get through right now, we're going to have to do it the hard way. Unless ... ?"
She quirks a damp eyebrow hopefully at Tariq.
Yasmeena looks over the door, searching for mundane devices or traps.
There is no trap, only the very small crack where the stone door fits perfectly into the surrounding stone.
"Alright, then. Open!" Tariq shouts, holding his medallion.
The door doesn't obey Tariq's request.
"Any more magic to try, or shall we bring out the pick-axe. That we don't have."
Aith’s gaze upon the door persists contemplatively as Tariq’s attempt to dispel slips off the knot of magic keeping the way closed. It’s the sort of look that might suggest the advisability of taking cover, to those who’ve had the pleasure of travelling with her for a while.
She considers the seam of the door’s edge…
… and huffs a breath of frustration. “Bad enough that I don’t have that sort of unbinding spell prepared, and even if we wanted to take a more hands-on approach, with it being made of stone…”
“There’s a tiny chance – if I loosen things up a bit – that I could hand one of us a momentary planar link to blink across to the other side, but that’s asking a lot of Calistria and Nethys’ good humour.”
Haleen grabs Aithaloessa before something 'magical' happens. "I'd like to hear a second opinion on that. What are the chances to easily open the door from the other side?" she states, looking at Yasmeena.
"Bring it on."
Haleen hands Tariq her light mace. "That's the best tool I have. And with that I won't even scratch the stone."
Yasmeena sighs. "If we can't get in there, this is a dead end, I guess. Should we see if there's anywhere else our quarry could have gone? Maybe we'll find a scroll or wand that could help us open this door and we could come back."
"I'd rather be done with it. So far we killed most of the workers for the One Source Merchant's Guild's workers we met and we have nothing to show for it. I'd rather not meet the city guard again, before we met that Jackal."
“Worst case, we could set up camp on the other end of the bridge, and I could prepare a dispel,” Aith offers. “There’s nothing to say that there’s not another exit on the other side of that, but, if the Zephyr Guard are being unhelpful, at least they’re not getting in our way, and I doubt they’d have the nerve to side with a pack of thieves in the end.”
Maybe that’s being optimistic. And, speaking of being optimistic, she gives one last glance to the edge of the door. It would be slow, boring, and loud, but if she started blasting away, maybe she could chip off enough that the spell wouldn’t “latch” onto the stone? Maybe especially if Tariq joined in as Haleen suggested might be possible.
Or. The elf turns to the fighter with wide, pleading kitten eyes. “Could I throw just a tiny bit of wild magic at it? Just the once? And if it doesn’t work, I promise I’ll settle in for whatever else we decide.”
Patiently not trying to wriggle out from where she was restrained a moment ago, and still dripping a bit and with her cuff of fungus all over her weapon arm, the mage milks the pathos for all that it’s worth.
After Aithaloessa turns the cave into an interesting display that one would usually only encounter in the night sky in few areas. She incapacitates half the party again, but luckily no one is around to utilize that.
The door is sturdy, but against the strength of Tariq it takes only a few minutes until the door is reduced to gravel and a hole allows passage. As a side effect Tariq gets to practice to smash in the face of a Jackal.
The 30 foot long corridor has a door at its end, and one on the right side about halfway.
“Right. Acquire some opening transmutations, and more abjurations,” Aith huffs to herself under her breath, grinning apologetically for the delay imposed by her fruitless (though thankfully otherwise harmless) attempt at bypassing the door by raw chaos.
Tariq’s brute force methods work much better, and she sheepishly adds, as he shakes off the tension of his exertions while everyone gathers themselves, “Thanks! That was a wicked trick, and I’ll certainly try to think of ways to avoid getting caught out by something like that again.”
She peers curiously down the passage beyond for another second before advancing carefully, just in case there are any more unpleasant surprises. Accordingly, she pauses to give the door halfway down a try, though it doesn’t sound like it contains anything bothered by the adventurers’ breaking their way in.
The door halfway down the corridor is locked. This time the classical way with a mechanical lock.
The pit below the grating is only 4 feet deep, and caked with filth and 2 inches of seawater. Currently there are no prisoners there.
Opening the door straight ahead leads into a real room and not a cave or a dump. The floor of this room is covered with a black, gold-trimmed carpet. Statues of jackal-faced men stand in the four corners of the room.
Yasmeena looks almost embarrassed. "Let me see if I can figure out how to open this door," she murmurs. "I might be able to trick the lock into opening." She doesn't explain the kit of tools she draws out from a concealed place in her leggings.
She casts a spell and hums to herself as she works .
The second door behind the first gives Yasmeena a lot of trouble. "Rusty," she says darkly to excuse her failure. Then it clicks and opens, and she coughs at the smell behind it. "Maybe some kind of sea creatures were kept in here?" she suggests. "But now it looks like it is empty. That's disappointing."
When they proceed into the carpeted room, she looks around carefully.
The four statues open their stony jaws and emit loud, piercing howls.
Aith goes unusually quiet at the sight of the oubliette, and her jaw sets. She says nothing as the group moves on, but the uneasy peace doesn’t last long as the statues in the next room begin to howl.
Her instincts kick in, heightened by Yasmeena's magic and a strangely soothing impulse emanating from the mushrooms growing over her own arm.
"Oh, hush!" she tuts primly, a tight smile forming on her face as she turns briefly to the others, raising her voice to be heard. "Don't worry, it's just an alarm, and with Tamir having got away, I wouldn't be surprised if it's already been raised."
That said, she raises her pistol ahead of her as she advances into the room, bracing herself for an ambush, and thoughts racing over the words for any of several spells she might want to cast very soon.
The noise is really loud and annoying, but nothing else happens. The statues don't move and no one is coming to check.
There are three doors leading out of the room in addition to the one the knights came into it.
"Hmm," Aith hesitates only a moment before trying the rightmost door from where she's standing. She's frantically trying to outwit Tamir and the Jackal at whatever game they're playing, even with the disadvantage of not being able to see the whole board, to circle around, maybe, instead of blundering straight on against a dug-in defensive position.
This large cave is filthy with slime and ooze—thick, gelatnous sheets of the stuff cling to the floors and ceiling of the place. The floor slopes down sharply as the cave dips away into darkness to the south.
The reason for this mess is easily located. Lashing furiously, this semi-gelatinous abomination surges forward upon a wave of tentacular legs. These artery-like legs knot into a single stalk capped by a bulbous, fleshy head dominated by a huge mouth and a yawning, empty eyesocket. The thing’s disgusting trunk and head float within a transparent body of vein-riddled ooze, like a gigantic jellyfish.
Yasmeena quickly draws her bow and fires an arrow into the flesh of the creature, dancing gracefully in place.
Haleen walks in front of Aithaloessa and readies for an attack.
Yasmeena draws first 'blood' on the creature.
The beast glides over on the whirling mass of tentacles and bites at Haleen. Also it gazes right into the souls of its enemies having them shaken to the bone.
Tariq calls for divine help and quickly runs to Haleen's side .
"Two targets better than one!" he cries while launching a big slash at the beast.
“What is that?!!” Aith shrills, embarrassingly, her mind already flitting ahead to the question of whether it sees, what with the horrid gaping eyesocket. So, probably no glitter this time. Instead, she digs quickly into a pocket for a bit of licorice root and calls up the words and gestures she needs to speed everyone up.
Taking advantage of the mobility her spell offers her, she quickly moves to start a wide circle around the monster to where she can get a clearer shot, but keeps it slow enough that the thing will leave an opening to Haleen and Tariq if it tries to break past them.
Tariq learns that the monster is very grapply, but luckily the tentacle slides off his armor. He cuts deep into the monster.
Reckless Aithaloessa is reckless again, which is a bad idea in reach of a tentacle monster. Instead of casting a spell, she gets a very uncomfortable hug.
Haleen rolls her eyes and gives stabbing the ugly another try. As the beast easily penetrates her defenses, she gives up on the careful part, and goes all in.
Yasmeena stares bravely into the creature's gaze before firing a volley of arrows at it.
She winces at the pain, which briefly throws off her aim as she notches her first shot.
Yasmeena hits the outlandish monster once, but that doesn't impress the creature. It keeps pulling the elf in, until Aithaloessa is engulfed by the acidic jelly and pressed against the skull like thing in it.
Tariq discharges slash after slash in a race against time, worried that Aith could get eaten before they can help her.
He secretly hopes Aith still needs a long time to be cooked.
For the first few seconds of being grabbed by this – this terrestrial jellyfish! (which, what with that sand kraken before, what is wrong with this place?!) so much adrenaline floods Aith’s system that she can’t even think.
Then, even once desperate prayers do start forming in her thoughts, although there’s just enough time for a sharp squawk of dismay to be squeezed out of her, before she can open her mouth again (mercifully), the unlucky mage flails about as she gets plunged into the gooey trunk of the monster.
A lot more stabbing and a lot more successful stabbing is needed quickly. But Haleen doesn't get warm with that kind of enemy.