"Do this for me, and I will spare you my infernal wrath!" Baz shrieks.
"Je vais vous montrer à quoi ressemble la vraie colère," Fallende mutters under her breath before turning to glare at Isabel, confused as to why they're not cutting this upstart to ribbons.
Glad that the not-quite-human has finally seen reason, Fallende strides forward with her blade.
"You wish to see wrath, n'est-ce pas?!" she questions with a grin. "I will demonstrate!"
"Insolent mortals!" Lord Baz shrieks as you defy him!
Before you can react, he raises his pudgy arms and summons a swarm of rats! The rats snap and squeak as they crawl over you.
The two imps swoop down and sting Fallende.
The first set of rat bites got Charlotte's attention enough she managed to avoid the worst of the second set.
Quickly she cleans and dresses a particularly nasty bite out of Fallende's flesh, and then draws her dagger.
Wesley takes a few rat bites but emerges mostly none the worse for wear. He backpedals out of reach of the rats before casting a spell, sending tendrils of darkness from his fingertips to strike the rats and Lord Baz.
The tendrils completely annihilate the rats, causing them to vanish! They go on to claw at Baz, leaving bleeding wounds behind.
Both Fallende and Isabel land powerful hits on Lord Baz. The devil shrieks for mercy, but then the bleeding from the tendrils sap the remainder of his strength and he collapses to the ground. The two imps squeal as they turn invisible and flee!
The ancient zither in this room is a work of art and a true treasure of Thassilon worth 50 gp.
Fallende gives a nod towards Wesley, respectful of his demonstrated magic before turning to Isabel.
"It was less unpleasant than dealing with those previous creatures," she comments as she cleans her blade. "But, yes, I agree that we should find this other fiend and deal with it as well."
Bandages and ointments comes out of the ever dwindling healer's kit. Cleaning lightly every bite, then a light wrapping of gauze. Charlotte would like to say something about reducing the touch of hell on their world is always a good thing, but she does not, and will not.
You return to the entry chamber and head west to find this self-proclaimed Suzerain. It doesn't take long, as the first room you come across has walls marred by crude inscriptions rendered in charcoal. These scribblings are written in Infernal and repeatedly claim the “domain” in the name of the “Suzerain of Little Erebus."
An emaciated imp crouches in the center of the room, flanked by a pair of groaning lemures. The imp grins when he sees you. "Aha! Welcome, mortals, to my kingdom. I have an offer for you. To the east dwells my hated enemy, the zebub who calls himself Lord Baz. Slay him, and I will give you great riches!"
"We will deal with you as we dealt with this Baz," Fallende declares, showing her teeth and adjusting her grip on her sword. "With steel!"
"Eek!" the imp shrieks, recoiling. "Wait! If Baz is already dead, I have no quarrel with you! Take this and go!"
The imp hurls a leather pouch full of coins to you, hoping you will go away.
The imp shrieks and orders his lemures forward!
The elf wades into battle with a laugh.
Leaving Cheliax was supposed to mean less devils, Charlotte might said lightly, if she was that kind of person. Instead her lips form a firm line and she waits until she has to rush forward to sew, bandage, and heal, while not getting in the way to the lethal blades of the two women.
Hoping to end this fight quickly, Wesley blasts the imp with magic missiles. As Fallende annihilates the lemures, Isabel moves in and bashes the imp with her mace that she anoints with holy water to exploit the devil's weakness to good damage. It's more than enough to finish off the already wounded imp, who dies with a whimper.
Having dealt with the devils swiftly and efficiently, you feel like your skills are getting stronger...
"Do not fear, good doctor," Fallande declares, pumped with victory. "We will be eradicate every trace of the hells from these halls. The fiendish will fall before my blade!"
A smile tugs softly at the doctor's lips, the reactions of Bel and Fallande making her feel better, even more than the brutal death of the devils had done.
"Thank you." she says as she gets closer, looking over them both. "No injuries" a diagnosis that holds respect for the battle prowess.
After resting, you head south, where both wings of this complex convene again. A line of pillars runs down the center of this hall, between which lie the ruined remains of what was once an immense magical laboratory. Crumbled tables, broken stone urns, rusted cauldrons, and ancient fragments of broken glass lie scattered throughout. The northern wall depicts a vast mural of armies of deformed monsters and demons gathering on the shores of a mountainous island. Above, a woman’s face has been carved into the mountaintop, and an immense bridge arches out from just below this woman’s face. Below the mountain, at the end of a side view of a tangled network of caverns, lies a vast underground vault in which an immense monstrosity of tentacles surrounds a central fanged mouth; within the mouth glares an angry red eye.
Fallande looks over the mural with a shake of her head. "L'ostentation des humains.," she mutters before turning to the scattered debris.
"Is there anything récupérable is this ... mess?" she asks, poking around in the remains of the supplies.
There doesn't seem to be anything valuable left here. Isabel recognizes some of the fleshwarped creatures as sinspawn and others like the sluglike beings you fought earlier. She's not sure exactly what the tentacled monstrosity might be, but it doesn't look good!
Continuing to the south, you enter a curving corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling of this corridor are sheathed in rusty plates of iron that have been bolted in place. Scorch marks mar this armor plating at periodic intervals, and the gnawed fragments of blackened bones are scattered here and there. Row after row of tiny runes have been etched into each iron plate.
"Intriguing," Wesley says as he examines the runes. "This entire chamber is built to be some sort of device to focus planar energies. The layout of the walls and their rune-infused iron plates designed to create a thin spot between the planes at the center of the maze. I've read about things like this before. A rift siphon. It must be focused on Hell--that would explain all the devils!"
You can hear the sound of claws clicking along the stone floor somewhere further along the confusing corridor. Growls and howls echo ominously off the walls...
"At least we know what we'll face in advance," Fallende grumbles before moving forward through the maze.
The ominous sounds grow louder as Fallende leads the way through the maze. It doesn't take too long before you come face-to-face with the source of the noises--a hulking hound with flesh the color of burning pitch, teeth as sharp as any fiend's pitchfork, and a shroud of ever-burning hellfire!
The hound bounds forward eagerly, exhaling a blast of flames before chomping down on Fallende's leg!
Charlotte grasps her hands tightly to keep them from shaking even before Wesley announces what plane this room is focused on. The smell, the faint screams, they might be imagined, but does that matter.
The claws were not, they grated against her brain, Then the creature is attacking, allowing her to focus on anything other than the past.
A compress made cold from her magic is pressed against the bleeding wound in Fall's leg.
The staggers back from the onslaught, but rallies quickly with Charlotte's attentions, engaging with her blade.
|
"We're going to be fine Lottie." Isabel says softly, letting Fallende lead into the maze without back-u[ rather than neglect her friend. "I'm here with you, and you're here with me. We're going to get through this, shut the portal and make things better for everyone in Magnimar. I promise."
She kisses the shorter woman's forehead softly and then pulls back to grin brightly. "And I always keep my promises, don't I?"
------------------------------------
Half expecting something like this Isabel twists aside from the worst of the flame before stepping forwards to bring her blade down sharply on hellspawned flesh.
Wesley extends a magical claw but misses the hound. Isabel lands a solid blow, while Fallende hits it twice. Badly wounded, the hound continues to bite at the elf! With two bites, it takes her down.
The elf continues to bleed out.
A soft smile breaks the stoic set of her face at the kiss and the promise. "You do. Thank you. I feel better now. Again you have saved me Lady Rhelian." a whisper of a tease in her voice.
Despite the combined horrors of burning flesh and gory wet ripping sounds, Charlotte remains calm and heals their fallen comrade. The warmth, like sunlight bathing the skin, spreads so deeply that the elf is nearly healed completely.
Her healing is not being helped by that DOG still eating away. So Lady Plumth throws her dagger at it. "Get. A. WAY." she orders with solid punctuation of every word.
Coughing up the blood that threated to choke her, Fallende looks around before gesturing for Charlotte to fall back. Spitting scarlet at the infernal hound, she rises to her feet and sets upon it again with her blade, attempting to shove the creature back.
Isabel bashes the hound, and as Fallende rises, she slices its head clear of its body! The fiend falls and lies still.
|
|
"Getting a little too friendly with that particular doggie, non?" Isabel says with a smile, stooping to collect Fallende's fallen cloak. "I wonder if it was a female, then you'd both be -"
"Bel!" Lottie interjects and Isabel stops talking with a wide grin. "Seriously though, thanks for getting in front." She adds, handing the cloak over. As the pair's hands brush briefly there's a muted flash of gold and Fallende feels warmth flow up her arm.
The elf's eyes narrow and she wipes some of the blood and soot from her face.
"We would both be ... what?" she asks, her voice filled with suspicion.
A glare, a yelling name, and eventually a rather loving smile on the doctor's face, before she gets down to wrapping any remaining wounds of their poor pincushion of an elf. "She does appreciate it, even though she is exploring the tenets of rudeness. My DEAR friend is attempting to get to the Expert level in that particular skill, so please leave a good review for her." could that be banter from the stoic doctor, could things be settling in her mind enough to let down walls...
no.
she remembers.
Screams, fires, blood.
Her lips settle in a firm line, and she gets down to what she is good for. Helping others for as long as she can.
|
|
"Lottie's funny." Isabel replies, pulling the attention back to her as she sees the frown that means Lottie is doing her repression thing again. She makes sure to snag one of the Doctor's hand while her remaining graze is being cleaned, to remind her friend that she isn't alone.
"Ok then! Let's push on." She says, sparing a smile for Wesley whose useful contributions somehow always seem to pass unnoticed among the bigger personalities in the group. "Lots more opportunities for Fall to... be brave."
You make your way out of the spiraling maze and arrive at a gatehouse. Past a rusty iron portcullis, a hall heads to the south. Pillars carved to look like coiling tentacles support the vaulted roof.
The tunnel slopes downward, and after a span of 100 feet, another short flight of stairs leads down to a thirty-foot-square chamber with a cistern filled with dark water taking up most of the floor. Troughs of this dark water run east, west, and south through hallways alongside five-foot-wide walkways. Soggy timbers have been draped over the gaps to provide unstable-looking bridges over the troughs. An ornamental torch made of onyx burns in a sconce next to a hallway heading east, from which the distant sound of someone singing with a raspy throat wafts down the hall. The words of the song are in Necril--the language of the dead.
Having received no real answer to her inquiry, the elf considers her suspicions confirmed, but doesn't press the issue. Right now she feels that it's more important for her to do her job.
"Of course," she responds to Isabel's suggestion. Her tone conveying that she felt that there was no need to state the obvious.
You head east along the narrow walkway. A stone bridge supported by stone pillars curves through this cylindrical reservoir. A few feet below the bridge, dark water fills the room. The walls within a few feet of the water’s surface have been painted into a remarkable mural that depicts the skyline of Magnimar, complete with numerous ships seeming to float on the waters of the room.
An aquatic ghoul floats in the water, singing as he works to add another ship painting to the mural. He turns towards you as you approach, though, abruptly cutting off his song. "Avast, ye landlubbers! What brings ye to my domain?"
Charlotte is mesmerized by the mural, so much so she answered the question before looking "Appreciating art, apparently. This is amazing are you the-" she looks, swallows then finishes "- artist?"