Watch Your Step

“What is this place?” Mystic asked. They were on the ground floor of a cylindrical tower made of dark stone. Not a single source of light could be seen, yet the tower was still dimly lit. It was as if the natural daylight from outside permeated the bricks themselves.

“Not sure,” Nazzeth replied, “but be wary. I sense great magic here.”

“What was your first clue?” said Lilvari. “The fact that we’re standing in an invisible tower or the burned-up cat out front that came back to life and coughed up the key?”

“Ohhh, good burn,” Dare snickered as he walked towards the middle of the empty room. To the far right, stairs wound upward inside a narrow corridor. Above him, he could see a wooden ceiling about twenty feet up. “Well, I guess we should see what’s up there.”

They all followed Dare single file up the worn stone stairs. As they neared the halfway point, he put out a hand. They all stopped.

“What is it?” Lilvari whispered. From her position at the rear, she couldn’t see the front half of the party. The curvature of the stairs was too great.

“I see light up ahead,” Dare said.

“Maybe we should try to stay quiet,” Mercarri offered. They all agreed and continued their ascent until Dare was only a few steps from the top. Before them was the second floor. This room, unlike the one below, wasn’t empty. Ahead and to his right was a hearth. A fire danced and flickered from within it. Across the room stood a desk and next to the desk was a four-post bed. The bed had purple curtains affixed to each post and to the canopy above. Dare didn’t like that the curtains were closed.

“Just go check it out,” Mystic whispered from behind him, giving him a slight push.

Dare sighed. Given their time in Darkon so far, nothing good could be behind that curtain. He started into the room but upon stepping on the topmost stair, heard a click. Dare barely had time to process the sound before he was falling.

He reached for the walls on either side and was able to keep himself from falling further. From the screams below, the others weren’t so lucky. The stairs had fallen flat, turning into a slide. Mystic who was directly behind him — was already out of sight.

Nazzeth felt the stairs fall away and was quickly able to manifest wings. He thrust them downward and became airborne a moment before Mystic came sliding under him. He reached out to grab her but was unable. He watched as Mystic slid into Mercarri. Then they were gone.

Lilvari, who’d managed to hold herself in place and keep from sliding, heard Mystic and Mercarri tumbling towards her. There was no time to react. They slammed headlong into her.

All three slid down ass over tea kettle, picking up speed as they went. A moment later, the floor came into view. Lilvari braced herself for impact, but when they hit the floor, they didn’t stop. They fell right through into darkness.

Lilvari landed first, not with a thud but a THWAK! The other followed moments later — THWAK! THWAK! — landing within a few feet of her. The hit was hard enough to knock the air from them, but that was the least of their worries. Lilvari pushed herself up from the wet, slimy ground, but the moment her hand made contact, it started burning. The screams of Mystic and Mercarri told her that she wasn’t the only one.

Lilvari scrambled to her feet and wildly scanned the floor all the while wiping the corrosive substance from her hands. The floor was covered in a black, oily substance. No light was present, but with her darkvision she could see it begin to move.

Above, Dare managed to pull himself to the second floor landing. A few seconds later, the stairs reset with a click. He heard Nazzeth’s voice in his head. “Stay there in case there’s trouble. I’m going to see what happened to everyone else.”

Dare immediately drew Talon and kept close vigil on the one place that irked him the most: the bed.

It turned out that Nazzeth had a pretty good idea what happened to everyone else. He’d heard the click when Dare stepped on that top step. He also knew that the trapped floor everyone had fallen through was capable of holding everyone’s weight. They had to walk across it to reach the stairs in the first place. Which meant…

Nazzeth pumped his wings to maintain a height of a foot or two above the stairs and followed the steps upward just until he could see the topmost step. He uttered some arcane words, and a translucent, blue spectral hand appeared near the top step. With his own hand he made the motion of pressing down, and the spectral hand mimicked it, pushing down on the top step. Again came the click, and again the stairs turned into a slide.

While concentrating on keeping the spectral hand in position, Nazzeth floated down to the ground floor where he could just make out the area of the trap. He lowered himself inch by inch onto the middle of the floor, and sure enough, it began to push open beneath his weight. The trap was made of two side-by-side panels, each about ten feet wide and fifteen feet long, and through the small opening he had made between the panels, Nazzeth witnessed a terrible sight: Three black oozes — each almost ten feet tall and just as wide had Lilvari, Mercarri and Mystic surrounded.

Mystic, who’d already been severely wounded from the day’s previous battles, knew she couldn’t take much more damage. She closed her eyes and focused on the shape and features of a giant wolf spider. She felt herself grow legs and sprout hair all over her body. Within moments, the transformation was complete. Not only did she gain the abilities of the creatures she turned into, but she gained it’s health as well. All the pain and damage she’d suffered had disappeared.

While Mystic was transforming, Lilvari attacked the closest ooze with blasts of Eldritch energy and vicious blows from her goat staff. Mercarri summoned Shit Hammer and sent it after another. She then equipped her mace, Lightbringer and said the special phrase needed to awaken its magic. Bright light enveloped the room as Lightbringer started to glow.

That’s when Lilvari spotted Nazzeth floating above them. She also saw that Dare was nowhere in sight. “Mystic!” she shouted. “Do you think you can climb out of here?”

Mystic of course, couldn’t answer in her spider form, but Lilvari had seen her transform into a wolf spider before. She could climb up walls and onto ceilings as well as any spider. “Find Dare. Make sure he’s okay. We got this.”

Mystic climbed the walls and the underside of the trapped door towards the opening made by Nazzeth. Once out, she hurried up the collapsed stone steps as fast as her eight fuzzy legs could carry her.

Below, an ooze lashed out at Mercarri while her attention was on one of its friends, hitting her across the side of the face and breastplate. The force almost knocked her to the ground, but worse was the incredible pain that shot through her cheek as the ooze’s acidic touch ate through her flesh. She screamed.

Nazzeth pointed at the ooze and after saying a few words, a skeletal hand apparated from the ground below. It’s claws raked across the ooze, giving Mercarri a chance to step back and heal herself.

“Look out!” Lilvari called.

Mercarri spun around in time to see the other ooze flailing towards her. Though the creatures hit hard, they were very slow, and it didn’t take much effort to avoid their attacks. Mercarri sidestepped it easily, then swung at it with Lightbringer. The hit landed true. The creatures, being slow and big, were easy to hit as well.

The ooze that Nazzeth had hit slithered out of sight, so he focused his attention elsewhere — specifically, on the ooze that Lilvari was now facing. When it moved, Nazzeth could see cracks forming. Pieces of goo would flake away or fail to congeal with the rest. Figuring it was the more damaged of the two, Nazzeth hurled a bolt of chaotic energy directly at it, and a thunderous roar filled the room. The creature exploded. Chunks of gel rained down.

Nazzeth then turned his attention to the remaining ooze, and that’s when the attack came. The ooze he’d hit earlier, the one that had crawled out of sight, had slithered up the wall and onto the underside of the trap door — just as Mystic had done in her spider form. Despite its size, the ooze was able to compress itself enough to fit through the small opening and attack Nazzeth. His world turned black.

Lilvari watched as Nazzeth fell through the trap, unconscious. She dropped her goat staff and managed to catch him before he hit the ground. “Gods damn it,” she grumbled. “Why does this happen every time? Mercarri, do you think you can… you know?”

“Sure,” she said as she ducked beneath an flailing tendril of black ooze. “Give me a second.”

Lilvari shrugged and tossed Nazzeth to the ground. Mercarri cast Healing Word on him from across the room. He let out a groan. He was in tremendous, burning pain, but he was alive. As he stood on wobbly legs, he heard a thump behind him. The ooze that had attacked him above had now come below to finish the job. Before he could react, the ooze pummeled him to the ground. He lay there, splayed out and unmoving.

“Seriously?” Lilvari shouted. “Again?”

Mercarri sighed.

“I guess heal him,” Lilvari said. “I’ll take care of these asshats.”

Lilvari didn’t see the green glow of Mercarri’s healing abilities. Instead she was someplace dark, someplace where her power was amplified. She focused that power and forced it to her hands until the staff glowed black with it.

Mercarri was kneeling next to Nazzeth, her hand to his chest. As green light enveloped them both, small bits of goo rained down from above. She turned to see Lilvari standing in the middle of the room, breathing heavily, the goat staff at her side. Both of the oozes were gone — reduced to nothing more than bits of gelatinous goo.

Nazzeth slowly regained his bearings, and now that the danger was over, it was time to figure out a way out of this room. Looking above, they could see that the underside of the trap doors were each outfitted with a spring-loaded hinge and a lock. With Dare and Mystic’s help above, they were able to figure out that stepping on the topmost stair caused the lock to disengage, which allowed creatures to fall through. But shortly after removing pressure from the step, the lock would reengage.

“That’s pretty clever,” Nazzeth said. Lilvari and Merccari just looked at him.

Their first attempt was a failure. Mystic held down the topmost step, and while the lock was disengaged Dare pushed down on the trap door. When he got it slightly opened, he tried to force a piton near the hinge.

Lilvari, Mercarri and Nazzeth watched from below, hopeful. They could hear Dare working. Then they heard him curse. A second later, an entire bag of pitons slipped through the hole and landed in front of them. “Any other ideas?” Lilvari said.

“Nope,” said Mercarri.

Nazzeth didn’t answer. He was staring straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. “Nazzeth?” Lilvari called, snapping her fingers in front of his face.

He looked at her with wide eyes. “I think I have an idea.”

From his backpack he pulled a small wooden box. Inside were two small jars full of a liquid and a paintbrush. He dipped the paintbrush in the paint of one and told Lilvari and Mercarri to hold onto him. They did. After concentrating a few moments, he became airborne and floated upward. When he got within a few feet of the trap, he painted a black hole. The moment he was finished, the black paint began to disappear. Behind it, a true hole formed, and they could see Dare’s puzzled face staring down at them. They continued floating upward until they were back on the first floor.

“Okay,” Lilvari said, “now that that’s over with, want to try the stairs again?”

Behind the Curtain

Team Ramrod made their way to the second floor, careful to avoid stepping on the topmost step. Dare glowered at the bed and the curtains blocking their view of what was on it. “That thing freaks me out,” he said.

After that last trap, they were going to take no more chances. While the others stood back, Nazzeth again summoned his spectral hand to push the curtain aside.

“What is it?” Dare asked from the middle of the room.

Nazzeth took a step closer. “I think you guys want to check this out.”

As they neared, they saw what it was — a thick green blanket lay on top of the bed from bottom to top. Beneath it was the shape of a body.

“Should I do the honors?” Nazzeth asked.

He took their silence as affirmation. He guided his spectral hand to the top of the blanket and pulled it down slowly. Beneath was a mummified corpse. It had leathery skin, sunken eyes and a mouth locked in an eternal scream.

“Well,” Mercarri said, “that’s pleasant.”

“I wonder what happened to this guy?” Nazzeth said, but Mercarri was already investigating. It only took her a moment. She pointed to his neck. The others leaned in and saw two puncture wounds. Nazzeth’s blood went cold. Quickly he moved his spectral hand to the corpse’s mouth, separating its taut lips.

“What are you doing?” Dare asked.

“Looking for fangs.”

When no one said anything, he explained. “Those are the marks of a vampire’s bite. If this fate befell this…. individual, then there’s a possibility that he’s a vampire too.”

“Is he?” Mystic asked.

They all looked at the corpse’s teeth. There was no evidence of fangs.

Team Ramrod agreed that it’d be good to search the rest of the room and do so carefully to avoid further traps. Lilvari examined the desk while Nazzeth went around the room, lifting the edge of the large green rug that filled the room with his spectral hand as he went. Lilvari caught him out of the corner of her eye as she opened one drawer of the desk and then the other. Nazzeth seemed to stop next to the fireplace. Then he got on his knees and peered inside. Maybe he found something.

She’d ask in a moment, but first she had her own mysteries to unravel. She’d found a leather bound journal in the second drawer with the name Azzarihm Dag’gar etched on the front, but when she opened it, she saw nothing but blank pages. What really struck her as interesting though was the inkwell on top of the desk. She’d felt warmth coming off it. Before she could look into it further, Nazzeth called them over.

Nazzeth had his head in the fire. A moment later, he crawled completely inside and disappeared. They all looked at each other.

“So… where’d he go?” Dare said.

“In here!” Nazzeth’s voice echoed from somewhere behind the fire.

They were all hesitant until they got closer and realized that the fire didn’t give off any heat. It was some sort of illusion. Dare went first, followed by Mercarri, Mystic and Lilvari. They were in a completely different room – -this one small and square. It was void of any furnishings except for a small stone chest in the middle of the floor. It was covered by a stone slab. Dare started pushing it off.

“Wait!” Nazzeth warned him. “It might be a mimic.”

“What’s a mimic?” Dare asked.

Nazzeth explained that mimics are horrible creatures that have the ability to take the form of any inanimate object. “And once you’re close they tear you apart.”

Dare backed away slowly like it was made of moldy cheese.

“Is there a way we can tell?”

Nazzeth thought about it. “Well, if it’s a normal chest, I’d say there are probably magic items in it, since its owner went through the trouble of hiding it so well. I can cast Detect Magic. If nothing inside the chest shows up as magical, then there’s a good chance it’s a mimic.”

Nazzeth proceeded to cast his spell. All at once, several items around him glowed in different colors — magic items held by his fellow adventurers and something from the bedroom they were just in. The chest, however, didn’t glow.

He told them the results.

“So now what?” Dare asked.

Nazzeth wanted to investigate the glowing item from the other room before they decided on anything else. When he crawled back through the fire to the bedroom, he saw that the glowing item was the inkwell on top of the desk. Picking it up, he noticed it was warm to the touch, but he was unable to discern what magic it held. As he was putting it in his backpack, Mystic yelled out to him to hurry back.

“Dare’s trying to open the chest!”

Nazzeth reached the room just as Dare pushed the stone slab off. It cracked into pieces as it hit the floor, but the chest didn’t attack.

“It was a regular chest after all,” Dare said.

Nazzeth peered in. “Not quite.”

His Detect Magic spell still active, he saw that the inside of the chest was coated with Abjuration magic — magic used to ‘hide’ things. Now that the lid was off, he could see that the items inside were indeed glowing.

He took them out one at a time. There was a wand made of two thin, polished branches of wood intertwined around each other, a crystal shard filled with a swirling, silver mist and a small red and silver emblem in the shape of a shield.

As they looked at the items, a yawn escaped Lilvari.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s been one hell of a day.”

Everyone agreed. They wondered how late it was and if it was dark outside.

Nazzeth again pulled out his jar of paints and proceeded to paint a small window on the wall of the room. As he lifted his brush from the wall for the final time, the stone beneath disappeared and gave them a small window to the nighttime world outside.

“I guess that answers that question,” Lilvari said.

“Is it safe to rest here?” Mystic asked.

“Just give me a minute,” Nazzeth replied, “and it will be.”

He used his paints on the other side of the room — on the wall behind the fireplace. He painted a door wider than the opening, complete with a lock and key. The moment he was done, a door melted into existence.

They stretched out in the small room the best they could. Lilvari took first watch while Nazzeth began examining their new treasures. With luck, they’d reach Maykle tomorrow then be one step closer to the task at hand — finding and killing Dare’s sister, the hag.