Monster Party Book Six: Only mortal trust or faerie dust.
Chapter Ten: They say that it's time that you lost your crown…
The group eventually departed from the Malachite Palace's treasure room with a frankly incredible amount of loot in tow.
Flushed with pride and satisfaction, the six adventurers got to work on the door next to the treasure room, after all, it wasn't impossible that it might be a second vault!
Once again, Florence used her magic to reduce the lock to nothing more than an inert piece of metal and then James started picking it. After some work, he was reward with a soft "click" and the door swung open.
This chamber was decorated in elegant tapestries and plush furs. Comfortable pillows were thrown about, although they could see no tables or chairs of any kind. Two unsual sources of light illuminated this room; dozens of insects with brightly glowing backsides flitting to and fro, periodically contributing their own yellow-white flares.
In addition to these blinking flashes of light, vases with delicate luminescent flowers stood in every corner, throwing rainbow hues on the gleaming black walls. They cast shadows which seemed to twist and writhe, as if trying to escape from the multicolored glow. Along one wall stood a great bed, draped like a veil of mist.
As they looked through the gauzy folds, it suddenly struck them that someone was peering back at them! As quickly as fear and adrenalin began to grip at their hearts, another realization struck them, someone was not staring at them, something was!
It was a carved female face, protruding from the dark wood of the headboard. Her appearance had been crafted so exquisitely that it was possible for the group to realize that they'd seen this woman before in one of their recently acquired paintings.
"How much magic is there to worry about in this room?" Alexander pressed.
Florence started casting and soon enough had her answer.
"None." She answered after a quick cantrip.
"Can you do something about the bugs? I mean, they're not spiders, but still, bugs belong outside not inside!" James Firecat asked, swatting away at any of the glowing insects who seemed to be drifting in his direction.
Florence raised her hands and chanted a different spell. A moment later a powerful gust of wind blew past them. It caught up all the insects, carried them across the room, and slammed them into the far wall. There were numerous soft "splat" sounds as the insects were squished into tiny puddles of glistening (if cracked) shells and brightly colored fluids.
James flashed Florence a quick thumbs up in approval and made his way into the room. He was unable to locate any new traps or any great stores of treasures for them to take, but buried under a number of pillows and some carefully folded sheets he discovered a small black pouch.
Inside the pouch was neither perfectly crafted platinum, glistening gold, shinning silver, or even copper coins. Instead, when he reached his hand in, all he pulled out was half a dozen walnuts.
"Alex?" He asked the silver haired man, as if wondering what his eyes might see that the werecat's didn't.
"They're walnuts." The black clad man declared after a moment's study..
"Why would someone bother to hide walnuts so carefully?" Devi pondered.
"Leilani talked about how her people create exquisite meals for their fellow Arak from various plants. It is possible that those things are some kind delicacy." Florence suggested.
That was the best theory that any of them could think of for the moment.
"Should we try them ourselves in case they grant some kind of mystical power?" Cal pondered, as always more or less groping around in the dark when it came to what "rules" magic worked by.
"Not a chance." Alexander insisted straight away.
"I'll admit I don't know magic much better than you do, but I know stories. There's exactly one situation where eating food given, traded, or stolen, from the Fey ends up well for the mortal who does it.
That time is when the person is question happens to be suffering from a mortal wound, barely clinging to life, and in some stories it can still be a mistake even then. You see 'eat of these and you shall never die' doesn't mention anything about being healed. Instead, it leaves the knight who does it 'immortal' but still 'mortally' wounded with his guts torn out, laying there to suffer the pain of his wounds for centuries, never healing, never dying.
No, we'll just take these as a little more payback for the people of Briggdarrow, since whoever has a room this fine must be some well trusted servants of Loht's. We won't eat them though, not when we have plenty of more trustworthy food on hand." Alexander insisted.
Since there were no other great treasures to be found in this room, the group departed, though their spirits were still buoyed be their previous bonanza. Sharing smiles they headed up the staircase towards the roof.
They all could still recall Maeve's words about how she had hidden the Crown of Arak within the Palace's undying flame. Likewise, they had all been able to see the powerful pillar of fire rising from the palace's roof when they'd approached. If there was any place which would allow them "easy" access to the crown it was the roof.
So they trod upwards across stair after stair, each one exquisitely craved, though they were in little mood to appreciate the brilliance of the architecture. Ignoring various side passages that lead off the stairway (Alexander felt that the group had spent enough time randomly poking around the Malachite Palace and was certain their luck couldn't last forever) they ascended straight to the roof.
Like the rest of the palace it was crafted of gleaming black stone. Four gigantic spires rose up from the corners of the structure like the talons of a great beast, but they were hardly the roof's most impressive feature.
No, that honor easily went to the pillar of red fire rising out of a huge circular hole. It streamed into the darkness overhead, washing everything in a blood-red light. The heat from the inferno was so great that it seemed capable of scorching them even when they stood well clear of its licking flames.
"Huh, I guess if you wanted hide to something that couldn't be destroyed, that's a pretty good way to do it." Cal couldn't help but admit.
"Any ideas how we can get the crown?" Devi sighed as for the moment she clearly had none of her own.
"If you subtracted the entire 'constantly on fire' thing from the equation I could probably climb down and grab it. I can stand sunlight just fine, but real actual fire, especially magical fire, that stuff could easily burn me to a crisp..." Mirri pointed out.
"I can handle the fire, and I know how I can get the crown out." Florence insisted.
"Umm… how?" Cal asked, glad that someone besides him was going to handle this particular problem.
"To be perfectly honest, your little trick with the floating cork gave me the idea..." The dryad answered with a smile.
Then she muttered a quick spell upon herself before starting to climb up into the air, as easily if she was walking up an invisible flight of stairs. The dryad eventually rose high enough up into the sky that she was able to stand above the roaring flames without being consumed by their heat.
Then she began to chant and wave her hands about, but was too far away for any of them to clearly hear what she was saying. They were not too far away to see the results though, not even close.
A huge wave of water erupted from Florence's hands, and it shot downwards at a tremendous speed. There was an almost choking blast of steam as it slammed into the roaring magical fire. The water kept pushing, and even the fire could not restrain it.
Water began to shoot down one side of the huge open shaft that the fire had been shooting up only a few moments ago. The liquid pressed itself all the way down to the bottom of the shaft, and then proceed to curl around, inevitably starting climbing back up the other side of it.
As it did so, there was a small gleam of gold, just barely possible to see among the huge wave of blue. As the water came rushing up, Florence took a few steps to the side, and reached out her hands. With a single flick of her wrist, she managed to grab a golden crown out of the pillar of water.
The rush of water that she had summoned ceased, and soon still more steam began to fill the air, as the flame that it had managed to temporarily extinguish began to spring back to life.
The dryad meanwhile gently drifted down to the ground, landing back beside Alexander. In her left hand she now clutched a delicate looking knotwork of fine silver strands with a large black opal set in the front.
"As I suspected, if that fire wasn't able to melt it down, water wouldn't be able to crush it either." She pointed out proudly.
Then suddenly there was the sound of clapping.
It didn't come from any of the six adventurers, it came from the singlestaircase leading up to (or down from) the rooftop.
Ascending said stairs was a tall figure with pale skin and hair like fire. His broad smile was anything but friendly as he looked upon the six.
"A most marvelous piece of magic, too bad you won't be able to wield it in your defense now. I am Mohrg, Dancing Prince, Lord of the Muryan, and the Guardian of the Malachite Palace. You have served my master Loht well by recovering the Crown of Arak. If you will now kindly turn it over to me, you may be assured of a quick, honorable, and nearly painless death. If not..." He let the comment drift off without seeing any need to clarify.
"Oh great, you mean we did the thing where we rush to get the important mystical artifact just so that we can end up giving it to the villains? I really hate that..." Callan Wright groaned.
"You really expect us to turn over the crown and meekly accept death on your word alone?" Alexander shot back taking a step towards the Arak prince.
"I'm hardly alone, just as you have hardly gone unnoticed in your meandering..." Mohrg chuckled.
As he did so the group's shadows split apart, one half remained right where it was doing nothing at all out of the ordinary. The other half skittered across the rooftop, before bubbling upwards and transforming into the body of a tall thin pale skinned pointy eared elf like figure wielding a needle sharp rapier.
"Prince Loht lent me a few of his retainers, since this was a matter of such great importance to him. Not the sort of lads I'd trust to have my back in a fight… but they can kill well enough if they have to." The muryan pointed out playfully.
Given that they'd been able to hide as shadows, clearly these new Arak were sith rather than muryan, but a foe who loved death was hardly less dangerous than one who loved battle. Wolf Claw was still in it sheath, so were James' knives, while Phoenix was strapped to Cal's back, and Devi's flail curled innocently around her arm.
In short the situation was, somewhat less than ideal.
Before they could strike however, Alexander acted. He snatched the Crown of Arak from Florence's hands and twisted his wrist back, ready to toss it.
"Florence Bastien is one of the most powerful spell casters I have ever met anywhere in the Core, and that includes this land as well. You may know where the Crown is… but how quickly do you think you'll be able to get it back from those flames...?" Alexander inquired raising an eyebrow ominously.
"All I have to do is give the order and you'll be impaled in an instant." Mohrg scoffed.
"All I have to do is twist my wrist and the crown you want so badly is surrounded by a barrier of magical fire." The silver haired man shot back.
"Foolish mortals. You have no idea what time is to us. Loht will happily have the Brag take the entire Malachite Palace apart one brick at a time if is necessary to regain his father's crown!" Mohrg insisted.
"You say that, and yet you still haven't given the order to kill us yet..." Alexander taunted.
"Just because Loht is willing to spend centuries, even millenia getting the crown back, doesn't mean he wants to. His father has waited long enough. So, if you give me that crown now, I'll be especially generous and offer to actually let you live, so long as you leave this place and never return." The muryan explained.
"That's a very interesting offer." Alexander admitted.
"Wait you mean we're actually going to get to do things the easy way for once?" Cal gasped in surprise.
"Let's just say that I've found Mohrg's offer a rather illuminating, being allowed to live casts this entire situation in a brand new light." The silver haired man insisted, sounding completely calm and reasonable.
"Good, now just..." Mohrg began.
"Catch." Alexander interrupted him and then his wrist twisted.
The Crown of Arak flew straight up into the air, propelled by every ounce of strength Alexander could muster.
Seven pairs of Arak eyes couldn't help but follow the crown as it tumbled end over end upwards.
Florence Bastien dropped her staff and threw herself to the ground, words in Sylvan rushing from her lips at an incredibly fast rate.
James Firecat, Devi Skye, Alexander Diamondclaw, and Cal Wright did the same.
Mirri Catwarrior didn't.
She rushed straight at one of the Sith, her white gloved hands ready for battle.
A rapier flashed and punched through her body, but being already dead she barely even noticed. The Sith on the other hand noticed quite a bit when Mirri's rush knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling backwards.
In fact, he rolled right back into the wide open pit whose flames were now fully reignited.
The Arak barely even had time to scream.
The other five Sith rushed forward, ready to start stabbing away at the adventurers while they were in no position to defend themselves. Alexander rose up off the ground Wolf Claw in his hands, the only one of the five able to stand back up.
Cal Wright meanwhile was still laying on the ground, utterly and completely prone. Which was just a fancy way of saying that he was in more or less a perfect firing position.
Phoenix slid into place against his shoulder, and he sighted it in.
CRACK!
The bullet punched through a sith's forehead and his body evaporate away into nothing before it could even hit the ground.
James Firecat's knives slid into his hands and he just barely manged to roll to the side, then deflect a rapier thrust with his own blades.
Devi's flail lashed out and wrapped around the rapier along with the arm wielding it. She yanked hard and pulled the Sith in close to her, the rapier slipping away.
Devi Skye and Arak lay on top of one another, and began to battle in the most primitive way possible. There was no room for style, grace, or elegance, only brutality rage and fury. Devi Skye tried to break the Arak's fingers, bite at his ears, and jam her kneecaps into his kidneys.
The sith tried to fight back, tried to execute careful exquisite maneuvers, but by the time he was halfway through one of them Devi had already landed her own more pedestrian strikes, making sure to throw in a quick headbutt just further confuse her opponent.
"Don't try to hurt my pack..." Alexander declared as he casually decapitated a sith.
"Don't try to hurt my Kitten either!" Mirri declared as she grabbed the neck of the Arak who had been attacking James only a moment ago, and wrenched it so far around he could "look her in the eye" for a moment before his body faded away.
James repaid the favor by planting a knife in the head of another sith just as he'd been trying to sneak up behind Mirri.
There was an ugly squishing sound as Devi drove her thumbs into her foe's eyes and proceed to pummel him till he lay still.
Alexander sheathed Wolf Claw and held out his hands, just in time for the Crown of Arak to finally bleed off its momentum and fall neatly into them.
"Missing something?" Scoffed Mohrg.
While the group had been busy defending themselves from the sith, the muryan hadn't even bothered to draw either of his two blades. Instead, he'd danced into the chaos that Alexander had created and grabbed Florence Bastien.
He now held the dryad with one arm wrapped tightly about both of her limbs and the other firmly fixed over her mouth.
"Pretty hard to cast magic spells when you can't speak or do fancy had gestures isn't it love?" He cooed in Florence's ear.
As he spoke he dragged her closer and closer to the huge pillar of fire, a cold smile on his face.
"Can you burn love… I bet you can..." He mocked her, thinking that the Dryad would suffer from the excess heat even worse than he would.
"STOP!" Alexander growled as he took a step toward Mohrg.
"You stop!" Mohrg growled right back.
"Swear that you'll leave and give me the crown and I'll let you have her, anything else and I'll…." He began.
He never quite got a chance to finish.
Mohrg was stronger than Florence, but at the moment he was using only one arm to roughly restrain both of the dryad's.
That was enough to keep her from making any complicated gestures. It wasn't enough to keep her from twisting a hand so that it pointed more or less directly at her captor's head.
A beam of brilliant white light shot forth from her palm and slammed into Mohrg's skull evaporating flesh and bleaching the bones beneath.
The muryan prince staggered backwards, and Florence easily slipped free from his grip, spinning around to face him.
"Yes it is hard to cast spells. It isn't hard to use spells I've already cast though." Florence pointed out before blasting Mohrg with another beam of concentrated sunlight.
By the time she decided to throw in a third one for good measure there wasn't anything left of his body.
"You were too gentle to him." Alexander snarled.
Florence blinked then threw back her head and laughed.
"I never imagined you tell me I was being too gentle to an Arak!" She pointed out, amused by the absurdity of their situation.
That was when the air began to fill with the sound of singing. Clearly while Mohrg might have been the leader of the muryan present, he wasn't the only one.
Now that Mohrg had sprung his ambush (even though it had failed) there were plenty of others who wanted a turn. The group would have to fight through who knew how many mores Arak if they were going to escape. At least they would need to if they planned to play fair.
Alexander Diamondclaw didn't like to play fair.
"Still got enough magic to help us fly?" Alexander pressed, adjusting his eye patch so that it would cover his right eye once again.
"Shouldn't be a problem, get in a circle and hold onto me tight." Florence insisted.
The group did, and she cast another spell. A moment later, a group of muryan warriors burst onto the roof of the Malachite Palace, their blades already drawn.
They were greeted by an utterly empty rooftop as half a dozen different wisps of smoke drifted bast them and shot out across the sunless sky.
End Chapter
AN: The fancy room that they break into is actually Loht's. There's a hidden trap to it to, among all the fancy insects 99.9% of which are completely harmless, there is one whose sting will impart a weird disease that first causes your shadow then your entire body to fade away. Luckily it is no more resilient than any of the other bugs and Florence's wind spell made it go squish. Arachnophobia/Entomophobia, you say mental disorder, James Firecat says you can't be paranoid if the spiders and bugs really are out to get you!
Likewise, as you might have possibly guessed the fancy walnuts were actually a gift from a powrie for him to use on his foes and a highly poisonous. Fey food, for those who have grown tired of living.
The sunbeam spell is an interesting thing. It's a little sub optimal in some (maybe even a lot) of ways, because it requires a standard action to cast and doesn't actually do anything when it's cast in and of itself. What it does is give you the option of taking another standard action to emit a beam (60 feet ray) of dazzling light from your hands which does 4D6 damage plus blind, reflex save for half damage and ignore the blind effect. Anything to which sunlight is unnatural or harmful (Arak unquestionably included) takes double damage combined with any damage being out in the sun itself may deal to them. Undead, fungi, mold and oozes (the later three because of the UV properties of the magic light) are going to enjoy the discovery that it's a save or die effect instead with a reflex save meaning they only take half caster level D6 (max 20 before being halved) damage.
You can emit one beam per every three caster levels, max 6 at level 18. The spell only lasts one round per level, so it's not really something you can cast on yourself before combat unless you know that you're going to be provoking a fight and start it exactly at the moment you want, in which case odds are you've probably already won.
The spell itself has verbal and semantic components, but as Mohrg discovered… once the spell is cast, the beams of light themselves don't. So whatever else you can say about sunbeam, the fact that you get to use it multiple times per casting means that you can get quite a lot of use out of it which is why it's a natural fit for Florence's fighting style, nature all wins in the end, why be concerned about how long it takes?
Also I try to keep Florence to around 15th level, but she's clearly been earning some XP since she just let loose with the level 9 spell Tsunami, a neat little spell for carving out a nice sized chunk of an army, or wipe out the entire thing if they're trying to cross a relatively narrow bridge. It creates a wall of water 20 feet (40 if you're at sea) by your caster level wide. Anyone struck by it takes caster level D6 damage, with fortitude save for half.
Then if they aren't gargantuan size or larger, they get no save to resist being picked up and dragged along by the water. So long as they're being dragged along each turn they take that D6 per caster level all over again. The only way to stop taking this damage is to make a DC 20 swim check or wait it out, in which case you should be aware it will last for one round per caster level.
Level 9 spells, when save or die becomes die or die more slowly.