Croft thinks he finally figured out the puzzle on the door. He says its a nursery rhyme. I have no idea why he would know this, but as I have said he is a strange one. Every one has tried to open the door and failed and nearly impaled by spears from hidden traps within the door. Croft takes his turn and to our surprise and relief the door opens just as we hear an orc battle horn. We look into the dark, dank portal then look back at a sure death we push forward into the darkness with unknown dangers.
Devil Horn says something and the Dor'Thain's hammer lights up like a bright torch. We close the door shut, hoping the trap resets but more importantly hoping the door will hold off the fast approaching orc war party.
We look around and see a dusty chamber and see a mummified dwarven upper torso laying on the floor. His chain mail shirt rusted solidly into one piece on his paper thin skin. There is a few side rooms leading off the main chamber, we decide to take a quick look around before we go any further into the darkness. We could use more tools to help us succeed in our quest.
But even with death and one door holding an orc war party at bay and the unknown and uncaring darkness ahead of us, I can't help but teasing the Big Guy. He is looking at everything so seriously and with so much concentration, he never noticed me sneak behind him and scream BOO! at him. He jumped and almost hit his head on the dwarven made ceiling. He half heartily swung his axe at me, which I easily dodged, he wasn't too happy but I noticed Croft giggled a little bit. It was worth it.
In several places I found hard metal disk with dwarven faces stamped on them and many hard rocks of pretty colors red, green, blue and clear, but not shiny like my buttons. When I showed them to the group no one seemed to care except for Wendall. His eyes narrowed and twinkled and he said I will hold on to these baubles, no use weighing you down with them. I saw no use for them and handed them over, but I noticed he looked at them the way I look at a new shiny button. Maybe I should start collecting these too.
In the last room we find a very large metal chest. It is locked but shows no signs of rust or disrepair. I am able to pick it but barely. I was going to check to see if was booby trapped but Devil Horn realizing I could not possibly lift such a heavy lid came up and being the strapping human he is lifts up the lid before I even think to warn him. Out comes spinning blade over my head and sinks deep into his thigh. He did get the lid open though, silly human.
We hear the orcs pounding at the door and hear quite a few screams as well. We all smile knowing some stupid orc just got stuck with a spear. We look inside the chest and see a dwarven dagger made of mithiril with what Croft says are dwarven runes. I have no idea but it's nice. We realize we need to get a move on, we aren't sure if the door will hold or not. We don't want to stick around and see off toward the darkness. Croft puts the dagger in his pack for now.
We go through the winding tunnel part natural and part worked. It goes down and down, all the time getting darker. Light is unnatural here as we all are. Only Croft and Wendall seem to be at ease here. I am feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the stones over my head. Breathing is become labored not from exertion but from anxiety. I don't know how deep I am, I don't know where I am going and I feel at any moment the mountain will crash down on me like an ant under Devil Horn's boot.
We finally reach what appears to be the bottom, the tunnel opens up into a huge natural cavern. There is a small pool being feed by a stream, stalactites and stalagmites are like a strange rock forest. I feel just as insecure, but I gain my wits finally. I take note of my environment and somewhere in the distance I hear a faint clicking sound. It reminds me of the summer locust in the plains.
We decide to rest near the pool of water orcs be damned we are all tired and hungry. Croft notices white milky looking fish in the water. He tries to catch them, but he is hopeless. I go over flick my dagger a few times and catch us some fish. Lorn makes a wonderful white fish and wild mushroom stew. After the meal I take a quick walk around and I notice orc tracks in the silt, relaxing is over we have to be on the move soon but for now we we take up watches and get some much needed sleep.
During my watch a couple wild orts come to the pool to drink. As soon as they notice me they run away like a bolt from a crossbow. Not long after I hear a roar, barely noticeable if it were not for my elven heritage I am sure. What ever made that noise sounded big and angry. I hope we do not meet it and find out.
We continue to walk guided only by Croft's supposed knowledge of Dwarven markings. He is so smug, one of these days I will slap him so hard he won't be able to smile. The trail is pretty easy going considering that most of us aren't comfortable being under a million tons of earth. Our first natural challenge was a five foot crevice that could be easily traversed, but some of the smaller ones couldn't really jump. I guess if you fell it would hurt a lot or more than likely kill you considering we had no idea how deep it was. Croft threw a rock and it was several seconds before we heard it hit anything. But we got over it with little problems, a slip here and there and we were on our way again. On the other side I saw something so bizarre it's hard to put into words. There was a big pile of sand or silt with bones sticking out of in all different angles as I looked closer I realized this was excrement from a very large creature. Maybe falling down the crevice would not be such a bad idea after all, better than being digested and squeezed out the arse of some giant monster.
We traveled a little further until we looked down and noticed we were walking in a pool of black, foul smelling sticky stuff. It was spread out into a shallow pool surrounding a huge shape. It was black and looked like it had a shell like a bug or crab, two legs and pincers where hands should be. It's head had huge eyes that looked somewhat humanoid. It was a scary looking thing even though it was dead. Lorn said she had heard about these monsters and they were called Thorn. I just know I didn't want to come out the wrong side of that thing no matter what it is called.
We leave the dead thing and move on it is of no concern or use to us. We see a crudely dug out crater in wall and floor and see the remains of several orts, giant bugs and countless other creature we could not recognized not only because of unfamiliarity but also due to decay and whole parts chewed off or just gone. It was a gruesome scene, the kitchen of a Thorn was not a place I wanted to be. As we turned to leave a huge black shape filled my vision, it was another Thorn charging toward our group. It reached out with it's one and only pincer and skewered Wendall before he could even turn around, the monster flicked him off it's pincer as if it just swatted a fly. We took up positions around knowing this may be our last fight, but we could not and would not run. I had no desire to be in close combat with this giant man-roach, I backed away as melee began. Devil Horn and Lorn stood toe to toe with the monster each scoring hits and being hit. Croft was working toward it's flank, like me he didn't want to be near that pincer. Devil Horn seemed to go limp and stop fighting we knew there was trouble and I screamed and concentrated at the same time. The Thorn went limp and Devil Horn was back in the fight, he took his axe and cracked open the giant bug, Lorn beat on it, while Croft spiked it's rear. By the time I got near it, it was a broken pile of black ichor and shell fragments. I knew that it was me that brought the monster down, but I just wasn't sure how I was able to daze it like that. Wendall was dead and Devil Horn was wounded. Lorn knew she could not help the poor gnome and Croft did what any pragmatic creature would do, he took Wendall's things that might further our mission. Devil Horn healed himself somehow and we started to march on.
We travelled for two more days into a darkness so dark that it seemed to steal the light from the Dor'Thain's enchanted axe. In the distance we hear metal banging on metal, we knew there was a fight near us, but did we want to go near it? Probably not, but according to Croft we were on track to meet dwarfs soon. That is when we heard orc grunts and dwarven battle cries. We had no choice we had to help the dwarfs if we could. As we neared the battle scene we saw orc and dwarf bodies cut up every where. The orc bodies were at least two to one if not three to one of the dwarfs. There was several orcs alive though and only two dwarfs still standing.
Our small band goes to the aid of the last two fighting dwarfs even though they are better fighters they are out numbered five to one. Devil Horn charges in, while Lorn unleashes her power on the orcs. Croft goes in search of an unaware target and I notice one of the orcs is bigger and wearing better armor. I assume he is the leader and I decide to go after him. Still wondering about what I did to the Thorn I attempt the same feat on the orc leader. I scream an orc obscenity that Croft taught me while concentrating at the same time. He just stands there looking dumb. I get behind him and stab into his back finding a kidney he drops to his knees, with a wild chop from Devil Horn's axe finishes what I started. The rest of the orcs go down and so does one of the dwarfs. We took a bit of a beating, but were able to help at least one of the dwarfs while destroying more orcs, always a good thing.
The surviving dwarf thanks us for his rescue. He is saddened by the death of his brother in arms, but welcomes us as friends. He introduces himself as Golan of the Cardel Clam and welcomes us to come with him into the Poledrum Holdfast. We readily accept, we are road weary, lost, hungry and need a real rest. We follow Golan toward his home.
We head down a winding path that has iron poles dug into the stone with orc heads atop each of them. Golan places the large orc head that I killed on top of one of the few empty poles and we head down. The orc heads look older and drier as we go down. This is obviously a warning to the orcs, one they don't seem to understand considering there was more orc heads than I could count.
We came to a spot on the path that narrowed and at the end was a carved dragon head with it's mouth wide open, presenting a doorway so low that I had to duck, poor Devil Horn and Lorn had to crawl through. I had to admit though it was inconvenient it was a good way to stop any orc march. We went through the dragon's maw for several minutes and it opened up into a larger path way.
We continued down for a few moments longer when we reached a large stone and iron gate. We looked up and saw spears and cross bows pointed at us. If we moved or spoke wrong we were dead. A voice rang into our ears, before we could speak Golan says in Trader's tongue that we are his friends and he vouches for us. The gates slowly open for us, but the spears and cross bows are still trained on our every move. As we walk through the gate and it shuts behind us, I could not help but be glad I wasn't an orc right now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment