Dungeons & Dragons/Saltmarsh
Episode 20
As the two other quaggoths climbed over the fallen corpse, the fight was on. Rev sprang into action slashing the first one through the narrow cave entrance. Triton backed up to the wall of the chamber and charged forward, pouncing on the quaggoth with his knife-like claws on his toes. They fall to the ground, tumbling together.
Merantha moved to the center of the room and blasted at the quaggoth still in the tunnel, but she missed and Rev heard the sound of pots shattering in the chamber beyond. The drider in the other room let out an alarmed shout.
The quaggoth climbed forward, placing his dragging arms on Triton as he tried to crawl over the writhing mass of fur and scales still battling on the floor, but Ruanea hit him with a withering blast of ice that froze in his white fur.
Triton lifted his head high for just enough time for Borassos to get a swing in, smashing the quaggoth in the head as Elgoth stabbed at the same time. Then Elgoth climbed up onto Triton and the two dead quaggoths beneath him so he could stab his scimitar through the neck of the last one.
Suddenly a darkness descended on the passage, an inky black so thick and deep, it looked like the depths of the ocean had descended on the air in front of her. Rev backed up instinctively. Normally she could see in the dark, and to be blinded disconcerted her. She couldn't see Elgoth or Triton at all, or the pile of quaggoths. The drider was coming.
A squealing roar came from the black. Merantha and Ruanea sent spells flying blindly into the pitch. More pottery and wood broke somewhere down the passage.
Rev huffed a deep breath, held her sword fast, then ran into the utter darkness. She felt the bodies of the quaggoths beneath her as she clambered forward. A putrid stench hit her, reeking of dead flesh rotting in an animal's gut. The hot breath broke in a wave over her face, and with her eyes wide, but seeing nothing, she stabbed feeling her blade sink into flesh and hearing the quaggoth snarl in pain in front of her. Something brushed against her side, a leathery hide that was cool to the touch, Triton.
Rev kept a hand resting on his back as the dinosaur dashed out of the inky black pulling Rev with him. The normal dark almost hurt her eyes in its brightness. Borassos' shield glowed like the sun in the chamber. Triton again backed up to the wall and charged into the fray.
Merantha grabbed her staff and ran into the darkness. Something crashed, then a terrified scream filled the chamber. "The drider is on the ceiling!"
Ruanea and Borassos looked at each other, then both charged into the darkness. A sudden rush of wind filled the cave and pulled Rev toward the tunnel. Elgoth smiled, twirled his glowing scimitar in a graceful loop, then disappeared into the black, leaving Rev alone.
"Are you the witch that has been breaking my pots?" an unfamiliar voice shouted.
Rev tightened her grip on her swords and ran forward. She stumbled over the quaggoth bodies, and felt the rough wall of the passage rubbing against her shoulder as she pushed on through the darkness. As she came out of the darkness, again she was blinded by the sudden light, although it was nothing more than Borassos' shield and a fire burning on the far side of what was a living chamber.
Caged by legs. Spider legs. Rev looked up, following the torso of an elf with dark purple-gray skin and white hair. The gleam of light caught on the sword he held above her.
"I believe in you, short-tips," Elgoth whispered as he passed by her side to position himself near the drider's legs. A jolt of shock like lightning erupted in her, and Rev swung her blades with two brutal strikes right at the belly of the spider-elf.
She backed up, still reeling from Elgoth's words, and convincing herself she hadn't heard what she thought she heard, as Triton charged forward with his deadly jaws stretched wide. Rev's heart pounded nearly out of her chest and she felt cold, then hot, then light on her feet as Merantha blasted the drider back and Rueanea immediately followed her blast with a fiery one of her own.
Elgoth ran forward into the fire, his torn leather coat flying behind him as he cut at one of the monster's legs.
"You puny humans come into my lair, only to be eaten," the drider said, then laughed, even as his dark blood rained down from the spider's belly.
Triton, Elgoth, and Ruanea suddenly start glowing with a strange purple light as the drider retreated through another cavern tunnel. He whistled, and two more slobbering quaggoth's come running toward them from the far side of the lair.
Rev ran to meet them, stabbing one while turing out of the way of his swinging claws, then she ducked back. Merantha followed her and blasted the creature, knocking it back as it collapsed dead, but they didn't slow the second quaggoth that galloped forward and leapt on Triton's back. Ruanea was quick, shooting the one on Triton with her ice, while Borassos turned and smacked it with his hammer.
Fitzmina flew by, forcing the quaggoth to rear up just at the moment where Rev could pierce it through its ribs.
With adrenaline still rushing through her, Rev pulled her sword from the dead creature and moved deeper into the room. A chest stood by the fire on the far side of the chamber.
She glanced down the passage where the drider had disappeared. The edges of the rock were coated in webs.
Ruanea moved closer to the chest and flicked her hand, producing her magical purple one. She used it to open the chest, and a poof of green smoke emerged. Thankfully everyone was on the far side of the chamber, so Ruanea ignored the poison and pulled out some healing potions and a sack of gold.
The oil lamps flickered as Rev took the loot from the magical hand and stashed them in her bag. If someone had to get close to heal someone, she'd rather it be her than Ruanea, who had no way to protect herself if she got too close to danger.
Triton transformed back into an elf, though he couldn't stand upright. Rev ran to him to help hold him up. His back started bleeding again. "Here, this will fix things," he said, and a golden light formed a column, like an angelic cave formation. He pulled away from Rev and walked through it, coming out clean and healed on the other side.
Merantha and the others stepped through it as well, but Rev didn't have a scratch on her. She had either gotten very lucky, or her skill at evasion, along with her willingness to use the cloak she had purchased from Xendros, had done wonders. Perhaps it was a battle strategy she should hone in the future. She had no pride or qualms about cutting things, then running.
Rev looked into the drider's lair. "What do you think we are in for now?"
"Go see what is in there, witch," Elgoth commanded, and Fitzmina flew into the dark tunnel. Elgoth went still. "It's a maze and covered in webs. Grab your torches, everyone." His eyes returned to normal. "We're going to have to burn our way through."
"Woosh," Triton said, standing tall once more.
Elgoth gave him a puzzled look. "What was that?"
"What?" Triton returned his bafflement.
"That noise you made. Is it some sort of spell?" Elgoth drew his sword and walked to the entrance to the drider's maze.
"No, I was just making the sound…" Borassos placed a hand on Triton's shoulder and gently shook his head. "Right, so, off we go."
In spite of Elgoth's enthusiasm for burning things, they depended on the light of Borassos's shield to illuminate the webbed passages around them. Burning the webs would only smoke them out of the cave, and they still needed to find the baby kraken to secure Callie's shard, though Rev was losing heart for finishing the task. At the moment, she only wanted to be done with all of it. Her anger seethed under her skin, and she wasn't feeling particularly merciful as she wound through the twists and turns of the spider maze.
While the cavern tunnels felt natural, passages formed by the earth or underground tides, or perhaps the burrowing habits of the umber hulk, these passages felt like an evil hedge maze, deliberate and disorienting. The walls around them had been formed by solid webs, and Rev had no desire to test them, for fear of getting trapped in one and becoming the drider's next meal.
So it left them no choice but to wind through the maze staying close to Borassos's shield, and making decisions to turn right, left, or continue on, as they came to each intersection.
Ruanea stepped through the sticky webs like a cat walking through mud. She picked up each foot with a deliberate yank and hesitated just slightly before placing it down again. Merantha had her hands out, ready to blast anything that came near. She kept looking up, watching for the drider to come crawling over the ceiling again.
The maze opened up into a large chamber full of webs. On the far side a boulder rose up out of the webs, which was odd. The webbing covered everything else in milky-white threads.
"Um." Merantha pointed. "Is that rock moving?"
"Don't be ridiculous, rocks don't move," Elgoth dismissed.
"You said that about the tree," Merantha argued.
"Well the tree, yes, it was actually walking, but this rock…" Elgoth turned toward it, then took a step back and drew his sword. "This rock is walking as well."
The rock slowly rose as the ground beneath them quaked. It shuddered and two heavy arms broke off the side of the boulder.
"What do you want?" Elgoth shouted at the creature.
"It's a rock!" Rev shouted back at him. "You can't reason with a rock!"
He bent down and picked up a pair of small stones, then clacked them together in a syncopated pattern.
"Now what are you doing?" Rev sheathed her swords. They would be no use to her now.
"I'm talking to it, now leave me be," Elgoth snapped back, clacking the rocks louder.
"We have got to get you off this island," Rev braced herself for the attack.
Merantha pushed between them. "Enough of this nonsense." She let out a blast. Ruanea too followed up with a spell, and cracks formed in the rock's surface. The rock thrashed as Triton used one of his spells to make the rock glow a bright yellow-green. It illuminated the webbing around them in a strange way, and cast moving shadows around them.
The elemental rumbled like the sound of a landslide, then shook as it slowly sank into the ground. The floor shook so violently Rev had to fight the instinct to lean against one of the webbed walls. Suddenly the elemental rose up from the ground directly in front of them. Elgoth let out a war cry and foolishly ran forward with his scimitar, striking at the rock. Rev hoped he hit at an angle that would at least sharpen his blade, because she didn't think that anything else would do any good. Then again, the scimitar was imbued with ice, and ice could crack boulders if it reached the right crevice, so maybe he wasn't completely out of his wits.
The rest of the party moved forward and fought. Rev had a chance to watch them. Ruanea with her ice, Merantha and her blasts of magical force, Borassos swinging his hammer. In the darkness, facing a monster, they looked like the heroes they were.
"Hey rock!" Rev shouted. It was all she could think to do. Maybe she could distract it. "Are you dense?"
The rock paused for a moment. Rev's heart pounded. So, it could hear her. She wondered how that worked without ears. The rock brought its arms out to the sides, and attempted to smash Elgoth, and Borassos's heads together. Instead it missed and ended up crashing its arms together and sending bits of rock flying through the chamber. They caught in the webs, shaking the filaments around them. Elgoth and Borassos smiled at each other, then attacked at once.
Merantha blasted the creature back. Rev smiled as she stepped forward and shouted. "You are weak, we could defeat you with nothing but a piece of paper."
Triton's whip cracked past her to hit the monster. The monster disappeared back into the ground. they all looked down, and attempted to stay on their feet as the ground shook again. This time the monster rose behind Borassos and Merantha.
"Look out!" Rev screamed.
Borassos ducked out of the way, but the creature struck Merantha and she fell to the floor. Elgoth slashed the creature so hard with his scimitar that sparks ignited off the blade like a flint. "I don't think I have the right weapon for this job," Elgoth called, but ice filled into the cracks that Ruanea had created in the creatures chest, and piece by piece, chunks of rock fell away from the elemental until it lay as a pile of rubble at their feet.
Suddenly they heard a wounded cry from somewhere above them. "No you fools!" The drider was watching.
Ruanea helped Merantha up. "Are you injured."
She cradled one arm. "I'll be fine. Let's go."
The continued on through the maze until Rev felt like they were going in circles. Every so often she swore she could hear a deep voice laughing quietly. "Come at us, we'll finish what we started," Rev warned the voice. Triton heard her again, but this time he gave her an approving nod.
Once again, the maze opened up into a chamber, and they spotted three giant iguana-like lizards lounging in the webbing. The reptiles all raised their heads and frills, staring at them intently. They looked just like the creatures the lizardfolk had in their stables.
Elgoth shouted and let out a blast of ice. One of the lizards hissed and climbed up the wall. Ruanea and Borassos made to fight. Merantha blasted one off the ceiling.
"Get out of here while you can," Rev shouted. To her surprise, the lizard obeyed. It scrambled toward the nearest opening and disappeared into the darkness. The one that had fallen from the ceiling on its back whipped its tail, helping it to flip over, and it followed the other one out. Elgoth sent another blast of ice at the last, but it too ran away.
"You know," Rev said. "They might not have meant us harm."
"I'm not waiting around to figure out what does and does not want to eat us in this cave," Elgoth declared.
Rev nodded. "Fair."
The next room they came to contained a carrion crawler. Elgoth and Borassos attacked it, and it slurped away into the darkness.
Exhausted and on edge, they were cautious as they came to the next large room. Nothing jumped out at them, but it looked like the remains of an old encampment. Elgoth perked up, then shook his head as he realized this was not the encampment of his mythical adversary elf that never existed outside of his own skin.
But the robes on the two skeletons they found matched the ones Fitzmina had been wearing. "Elgoth?" Ruanea showed him the dusty remains.
"Yes, these were members of the Twisted Rune. I did not know they had delved this deep into the island." Elgoth contemplated the skeletons.
"What were they doing here?" Merantha asked.
"Don't know, don't care," Rev stated as she searched the camp. She found some useful odds and ends. A hammer, tinderbox, pitons and the like. "Fools should have known better than to sleep in a cave."
"I slept in this cave." Elgoth bristled.
"Exactly." Rev slapped her hands together to dust them off.
"Hey, come look over here." Borassos waved them over. In the center of the encampment, a strange hole coated with webs led straight down.
"We're going to have to go down that, aren't we?" Ruanea looked both exhausted and resigned.
Elgoth paled. "What does a baby kraken eat. Maybe we can distract it while we collect its blood."
Rev turned to him. "You should know! You were the one tasked with caring for it."
"I don't remember that," he snapped back.
Rev shook her head, pulled her swords, and dropped down into the hole. The webs caught her like a fishing net and she tumbled down until she landed with a thud on something soft. She braced on her hands, and the fine grains of sand coated her palms.
The sound of lapping water reached her ears and she both recoiled and rejoiced. They were out of the cave. Nearly so, anyway. Her eyes adjusted to the light coming in from a sea cave entrance, forming a small cove, much like the smuggler's hole below the Halborn estate back in Saltmarsh, only larger.
She rose to her feet, collecting her swords. There didn't seem to be a baby kraken to greet her. She felt strangely disappointed by this fact. "Come on down," she shouted. "It's safe."
The rest of her compatriots tumbled down the web and landed in the soft sand.
Triton immediately headed toward the water to wet his skin. As they turned, they all noticed a strange box sitting in the sand. It glowed with a golden light.
Ruanea and Elgoth moved forward to inspect it. Ruanea flicked out her magical hand, but it was Fitzmina who gently nudged the box.
A strange energy filled the air, and the box shook, then unfolded. Then unfolded again, and again. Planks magically formed, layering out like tiles and coming together until a small boat with oars and a short sail formed in front of them.
They all stood around in shock, but Fitzmina was delighted. She zoomed around the sea cave, then returned to the small ship. She looked over expectantly at Elgoth.
"I do not obey you, witch," Elgoth grumbled.
"What is she saying?" Rev asked.
"She told me to say…" and he spoke a word none of them could understand. As soon as he uttered it, the small ship before them unfolded and unfolded, just as the box had done until it transformed into a large ship, about the size of the Northwind they had once sailed on with Milo and Callie.
On the side in glittering gold letters shone the word, Salvation.
"Salvation comes in the end," Merantha whispered with her eyes wide and her expression filled with awe. "That's what he said in my dream."
They all stood dumbstruck for a moment.
That's when Elgoth screamed. "YOU MEAN THIS SHIP WAS HERE THE WHOLE TIME!"