Idrassa stood back, crossbow at the ready, Tweety loyally by her side. But the pair moved carefully off to the side against the impending wave of refuse.
Declan held out the keycharm towards the barrier. Magical sparks jumped as he felt it try to make a connection. He was like an awkward spider, his three free limbs braced against the walls of the tunnel. But the brownish roiling effluence on the other side of the barrier, only inches from his face, made him pause. He stared at it.
Suddenly, Declan pulled his hand back, severing the tenuous connection. He scrambled back down the tunnel, faster than he had crawled up it. Clambering out of the entrance, he pressed the keycharm into Zander's hand.
"You have a forcefield, right? And it's probably better to ensure the largest of us can fit down there. No reason to get a sewage bath if I don't have to."
Zander accepted the key.
"Your armor constructs are formed from astral matter solidified via a psycho-crystalline matrix that incorporates and is strengthened by - but does not require - my own physical form. Technically, they are more properly described as 'psychically manifested ecto-crystalline constructs,' not 'a force field.'" J'r-V'zz had his pedantic tone in full voice in Zander's head.
"Indeed," Zander thought back at his psicrystal companion, the one now physically merged with the skinsuit construct that covered him.
"Which means it is probably fortunate that you have no actual sense of smell."
"What?"
Recognizing that his non-armored companions would likely prefer there to be a minimum of biomass remaining in the tunnel after Zander went through it, he gave the ecto-crystalline construct around him a psychic command. As he walked forward, the skin-tight suit bulked out, adding layer-upon-layer of crystalline protection, until Zander looked to be encased in a suit of full armored plate, made of translucent, smoky-blue crystal. It was Zander's armor in what he thought of as "heavy configuration," but which others had called "juggernaut mode."
It wouldn't fill the pipe completely, that would have been impractical, but it made Zander a much more substantial presence.
Having completed the change, Zander set about making his way down the tunnel.
"Presdigitation, Skylar," the blue-haired woman intoned from memory, her voice sing-song. "You will thank me later! Now again, a hundred times." She grinned. "I suppose there's only so much muck it can get out."
She slid up next to Idrassa, who seemed to have the right idea. While she waited for the tunnel to be less clogged, she put the cantrip to good use. She managed to banish the worst of the bloodstains, but the rips and tears remained.
Thraag steps back and waits to see what happens to the wall of sludge.
Eyve steps into position to follow Zander through after witnessing if there were any hazards triggered by his entrance.
With Zander acting as a ram on two legs- more precisely, on hands and knees since the pipe was barely large enough to accommodate him even crawling- the group was able to push through the mucky wall that had built up on the inside of the force field and make their way through the pipe up into the tower compound. In less than ten minutes they found themselves standing in the shadow of the towers, inside the wall.
"Your previous comment was accurate, yet incomplete," J'r-V'zz observed, as biomass continued to slide off of the crystalline armor-form that encased Zander's metallic form. "I must also admit to being pleased at not having a stomach."
Zander did not smile. He lacked the ability to do so.
As it was, the golden-skinned Warforged was looking up at the towers.
"I will fly one day."
Only if one had been willing to stand closer to Zander than the smell of the biomass still clinging to him would make inviting, would they have heard the words.
If they had been willing to trade their sense of smell (and possibly their last meal) for the ability to hear what Zander had said, the listener would have likely been touched by the depth of the longing those five words contained.
At least, they would if they were not the kind of person that believed Warforged were soulless, unfeeling machines.
To everyone not close enough to hear him, Zander was simply standing, covered in filth, staring up at the sky in silence.
For her part, Idrassa was staring up at the towers a good deal more skeptically. "Let's head this way," she said quietly to the others, gesturing toward the back side of the tower. "If we spy an open window we could send Tweety up and see about getting a line up to it."
Thraag will nod and follow along as quietly as he can.
Taking in the new environment, Eyve nods, following Idrassa's lead.
Declan rolled his shoulders, thankful for Zander's wisdom in taking the brunt of the filthy bath. Still, he was going to scrub himself for an hour when they returned to the Trollskull.
He nodded to Idrassa's lead. "We need a quiet way in." And followed along with soft footfalls, his bow in hand.
When it was made obvious that the group was transitioning back to a scouting mission, Zander sent his armor a command, and the construct shifted again. Layer after layer of the crystalline plate flaked away - taking the biomass with it - until Zander once more stood with only a hair's-thickness of midnight-blue coating his body. In a circle around him was a mix of filth and translucent blue ectoplasm. In less than a second, the ectoplasm evaporated, leaving only the biomass from the tunnels, which Zander neatly stepped over.