"Dok not be known' why dem guard boys be down here a messin' with us folks."
The spokes-guard cleared his throat uncomfortably and glanced at his fellows again. "Um. Look. We're just down here working, ok? We don't want to fight regular people. So, um, yeah. We saw some people come through here a while back. They, uh, may have had a guy with them with a sack over his head." He gestured in the direction the party was traveling. "They went that way. Um. You might want to be careful when you get around junction 62."
One of the guildsmen poked the guard in the back with his mallet. "Hey, shut up!"
The spokesman turned and raised his hands apologetically to the other guildsman before turning back to the investigators. "Um, yeah. Just... don't tell anybody we said anything. OK? We gotta work down here all the time."
"You! You said it, Thom, not us!"
The guard turned back on the group and lowered his voice to begin what looked like a heated conversation with the sewer worker. Now that it seemed clear the party wasn't some kind of distraction, the guards had lowered their weapons and the workers started to turn back to what they had been doing when the group showed up.
Illendur visibly relaxes when the workers start talking and even further when they give directions, Right, thanks fellas, have a good night... You didn't say anything at all.
The half-elf waves before proceeding on. Moving quickly before they change their minds.
"You fellas be sfe down here in dark." Dok says with a wink as he walks past.
When they get clear of the workers, Illendur will lean in to Ash and say I think those guys were just down here wasting time, the old, if I'm not in my office, then obviously I'm working ploy...
Zander took a moment to properly take in the workmen and their workspace, as well as the tools that had been in evidence. Part of his mind went to work classifying and sorting information, even as he turned to follow the others.
And that's me learning about sewer connections today. :)
Once past the work crew, the investigators traveled for another half hour uninterrupted. Now that they'd been told the junctions were numbered they noticed that the top of each side tunnel and the wall of each junction room had a metal plate with a number etched into it, up above a normal person's eye line but where those in the know could easily refer to them.
66 was one of the large box-like junction rooms. Jixel spotted the yellow eye chalked up high near a secondary tunnel leading south-west, diverging from their until now generally south-east path.
Jixel was relieved, as she'd stayed hidden and anxiously listened on to the conversation with the sewer workers. No weapons had been drawn, and watching her new friends get some handy intel out of these folks was a really positive development. Now with a clearer picture of where they should probably be headed, she began to sneak off again, but this time leaving those directly behind with the ratfolk on the edge of their vision.
Yes, Jixel was worried, and as much as she appreciated darkness and alone-time, being caught off-guard or without support, wasn't a very attractive prospect.
Thus, she focused on being quiet, elusive, and flowing between corners and whatever cover presented itself. Then in the next junction, she waited again for the others to catch up.
So hungry. So hungry. Ration time? Mmm... must wait. And no, Peekee, this is not a place to free-range.
"I am simply saying that the labor required for optimum efficiency for the task at hand would be roughly .67% of the labor they had deployed, and that the overage was likely causing a significant decrease in efficacy, simply by dint of the limited space available to access the pipe itself."
Zander listened thoughtfully as the voice in his head continued its evaluation and critique of the workers' erstwhile repairs on the broken feeder line. He had offered some counter-thoughts, to which J'r-V'zz was responding. The conversation was, in fact, quite fascinating in its own way, and neither of them were paying particularly close attention to the environment around them as Zander walked - though J'r-V'zz did keep Zander nominally aware of where each of his new companions was in relation to himself and one another via the means of a small plot projected in one corner of his vision.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Jixel followed the trail of yellow eyes and Ash followed Jixel, both quiet as mice, which was appropriate for at least one of them. They both passed another set of iron rungs set into the wall without noticing anything out of the ordinary, but when Zander approached a beam of light lanced out of the dark from up near the ceiling.
Floating near where the ladder shaft went up into the ceiling was a huge eyeball the size of a cat, with four disgusting smaller eyeballs on stalks sticking out in different directions.
Gods above, what is that thing?!? Illendur cries, fumbling for his blade and instead deciding the unclip a chakram from his belt.
Caught in the unexpected light, Zander froze, his mind jerked from the conversation with J'r-V'zz, and immediately began berating himself for having let himself get so distracted as to not notice the threat.
J'r-V'zz, on the other hand, simply began analyzing the situation. It didn't know what the floating eye-thing was, and, after a momentary delay as it searched its - and Zander's - memories, it settled for painting the floater as a red "enemy" dot on the small plot in Zander's vision.
Jixel turned when she heard Illendur speak of gods, and was horrified to see a beam of light aimed at the metal man. The ratfolk went still and cold as ice, wondering what the eye-blob's next move was going to be.
Ash didn't know what that thing was, but it couldn't be good. Much as he tried to mitigate his reaction to "monsters" these days, his first instinct was revulsion. He drew his bow and took aim at the thing, cat-eyes judging distances.
LOL
Dok doesn't know what the eyeball is, but it doesn't look good.
He draws his longsword and moves closer to the arcane beast.
Jixel stood dumbfounded in the dark for a moment, processing the unbelievable sight. Sure, pictures of eyes and beholders on the walls wasn't exceptionally scary. Seeing a "real" one up this close though, in all its jelly-like ugly fleshiness, was really something else!
Yes, it was ugly and horrifying, but so too did something about it seem kind of quaint, probably due to its size. The ratfolk would have considered her next actions differently, had it not been so rude as to hit their metal fellow with a beam of suspicious energy.
She scurried a short distance to Zander and touched his knee.
"Peekee is looking out for you, no matter what you do to this... thing."
Dok doesn't know what the eyeball is, but it doesn't look good.
He draws his longsword and moves closer to the arcane beast.
More beams of light lanced down from the ceiling, one at Ash, who had shot it, and one at Ilendur, who had screamed.
Illendur is driven back from the gazer's gaze, stopping a good distance away. With a determined look in his eye, he flings a chakram at the thing, before realizing its unlikely he'll be able to recover it from the sludge of the sewer...
uh oh
Ash suddenly felt his heart in his throat. Everything was too loud, too bright, too crazy! He was going to die!
He took off running down the sewer pipe, teeth bared and eyes frantic.
J'r-V'zz attempted to analyze the floating patterns of the eye-thing, but wasn't able to find enough of a pattern to be useful.
Zander, having seen enough of a pattern to discern hostile intent, and bolstered by Jixel's touch, decided that was all he needed to see, and simply slashed out with his halberd at the thing above his head.
Unfortunately, he still hadn't fully recovered from the shock of being caught so unawares, and the axe-blade of his weapon merely swirled the thick air beside the eye-creature.
Zander slashed at the floating beast and Ilendur threw a chakram at it, but all that resulted in was a razor edged disk in the garbage.
Ash ran away, compelled by the monster's magic, but it quickly wore off and he came back to his senses about a hundred twenty feet from the fight.
.
Dok will close with the eyeball and attack it.
Jixel remained behind Zander as though he was a great human metallic shield.
It was hard to watch Ash run off with his tail between his legs, but the retreat was so out of character for the beastman, that Jixel vainly hoped he'd soon return.
Reaching out again, to touch a claw upon Zander's lower half, the ratfolk woman would once again bring a certain chicken's blessing upon him.
Dok slashed overhead and drew a deep wound through the creature's underside. It turned out the thing had green blood, and it screamed in pain as that green blood fell on the investigators.
The little monster focused on its most dangerous attacker, all of its eyes locking on Dok. A pair of rays lanced down at the street shaman.
Illendur closes with the flying monster, his longsword slashing overhand attempting to swat it out of the air.
"Fascinating," the voice in Zander's head said. "Green Blood? What does that indicate?" The sense of interest was drowned out when some of that green blood spattered on the crystalline suit layer protecting Zander. "Disgusting!"
"Your commentary isn't helping," Zander said, even as he hauled back to swing at the creature with his halberd.
Ilendur raced past Dok to expertly skewer the floating eyeball on his sword, killing it in one smooth, single stroke.
Ash came slinking back not long after, looking more sheepish than catlike. "I... I'm sorry about back there. I don't know what... I'm not usually prone to running away from monsters, I swear."
Illendur grins at Ash, Its not a problem, we took care of it for ya...
Looking at the very dead thing, Illendur asks, Hey do you think this has something to do with those beholder liking guys?
"Dok has da ting!" Dok shouts before the telekinesis ray shoves him bouncing down the tunnel!
Dok goes skidding away!
Zander's expression didn't change - it couldn't, really - but there was definitely a tone of disgust in his voice.
"Well done, Dok Tarley and Illendur. I am sorry to have been so ineffective in both detecting the enemy and in the skirmish that resulted thereafter. I shall endeavor to improve my performance in future encounters."
It was only then that the warforged noted that Dok Tarley had been knocked some distance away.
"Ah, it seems that Dok Tarley has been relocated. Perhaps we should reassemble into our original movement order and continue?"
"Huh?" Jixel looked back, quite surprised by how the funny Dok fellow had been shoved away, seemingly against his will. The ratfolk had never seen anything like it, some form of involuntary propulsion?
"Was that an invisible eye-lash or attack or something? He'll be ok, right? Anyway..." she pointed at the creature's remains, "...shall we take this as evidence? Or spirit it away into the river of man-dung? The friends of the eyes might not like happening upon the work of Illendur's blade."
She looked to Zander then. "Sneaky time again? I'll do my best."
Jixel looked around, wondering what the most ripe exit for investigation might be.
After about five minutes and one more turn onto another branching tunnel, Jixel found herself approaching a circular hub, different from the junction rooms and branches they'd seen before. A pair of arrow slits were carved into the walls here, facing each other across the circular island in the middle of the sewage.
A yellow chalk eye was drawn on the stone door set into the back wall of the stone ledge just to the west.
Taking note of the devious looking slits in the wall, the door and the eye graffiti, Jixel turned and scurried back a bit.
"Stop. I Come tell you," she whispered via her strange communication cantrip to Ash, before rejoining with the others.
"Round space at intersection ahead. A door on stone ledge with symbol on top. Sounds good eh? Well... two slits in walls to. Could be lookout or arrow-holes or worse. Not sure. I'm not siege defense expert."
Jixel shrugged. "Just ratfolk who is out of spells. But... I think we have to be sneaky again. Pitty we aren't dressed up as maintenance crew. Could be handy eh? I worry that we go through door, and you know, never make it back out."
Ash looked more disgusted at the idea of taking the dead mini-monster halves with them than he had at the smell of the sewer itself, but he did nod in response to Illendur's question. "I agree that we shouldn't leave evidence of our intrusion, just in case. I say we pitch it into the water and let it sink," he grimaced.
***
"They could even be traps, if the Daask are mechanically inclined," Ash mused in response to Jixel. His cultured tone grew dark as he peered into the black tunnel beyond. "A light step is most likely required, I agree, but..." He glanced sidelong at Zander, whose chassis did not appear light. "I don't think all of us are equally suited to sneaking in. But we do need to get in. Jixel, could you sneak past and open the door without anyone hearing? Just a quiet peek inside, and we'd know whether there are armed guards in wait. Otherwise, we might be better suited drawing any opposition out here, where we know we all might tackle them."