Here is the continuation of the account of the companions of the Labyrinth
The group marched for several hours, eventually reaching the cave of which the bard had spoken. In the side of the mountain north of Bucklegem they found an ancient-looking archway, ornately carved with symbols of snakes eating rats, fire flaring from bull's nostrils, and lizards with sharp claws and fangs. The passage led down to a long stairway into dimly lit tunnels. Without a word, the party moved down the stairs, their elven vision helping to guide the way.
They followed the tunnel about fifty feet, coming to a split. Each way lead in opposite directions, 90 degrees from their current position. Down the tunnel on their left, they could smell filthy rags and furs and see bones strewn about. The smell on their right was not much better, a musky, heavy stench.
The group turned towards Aust.
"Which way?" asked Lanaer, glancing about.
"I can't remember", replied the bard. "My memories of the time were dim, and Anastriana led the way. I do remember a horrid stench, but that could be either of these."
"How about we go down the one that stinks the most?" suggested Moredhel lightly.
The group seemed repulsed at the idea, but it was decided that the right tunnel did indeed stink more, and Zaxyl pointed out that a medusa wouldn't leave fresh meat and furs lying around, having turned them to stone.
The group headed down the tunnel on their right, coming to another split and turning right again. The walls were carved with symbols of skulls and lizards, and the stench grew stronger. Moredhel took the lead. As he was stepping around another corner leading left, the floor gave way beneath him. Fortunately, he dodged the pit trap in time and jumped to the other side. The bard took a running jump and pounced across the hole, whereas Cakorax, Lanaer, and Zaxyl lightly hopped across.
Ahead of the group was a small door, made of crudely carpentered wood. There was no lock or trap, and the sound of guttural voices, wicked laughs, whips, shouting, and general living in the society of whatever monsters lurked beyond the door.
Zaxyl cautiously peered through the door, opening it only a sliver of a crack. The stench grew stronger. He could see scaly humanoid monsters moving about, a flock of caged chickens, and several humans in a large pen, apparently slaves to the creatures.
Zaxyl turned to Lanaer. "The room is full of thin, tall, lizardlike people with a horrible stench and humanoids slaves. Their hide is yellow-brown, they have large fanglike teeth, and they stand and walk erect."
After a moment of studying Zaxyl's report, Lanaer decided. "Troglodytes. They live in places such as this, raid the surface, and prize metals above all else."
The group considered this revalation..
"Shouldn't free the slaves?" inquired Zaxyl.
"I'd like too, but that isn't our mission here." Replied Lanaer "We kill the medusa before anything else."
"Uh, guys?" interrupted Moredhel, "I don't think they're gonna give us a choice"
He pointed behind them, where five trogs stood, javelins ready. Their javelins were long and crudely carved, with heads of stone carved into cruel barbs. They wore ragged padded and leather armor that hung about them in disrepair, and a savage glint of battle glowed in their eyes.
The javelins flew. Arrows were loosed. Moredhel and Aust dropped a trog, the wood elf's arrow piercing it's eye and the bard's bolt thrusting into it's stomach. Aust was hit by the same trog's javelin and fell back, wounded. The remaining four trogs, missing their targets but driving the small group back towards the door, bounded over the pit and pushed the intruders back with their spears, forcing them through the doorâ. and into a room filled with trogs.
Semaj had been following the group for hours before they had reached the Labyrinth. He had killed the bandits on the road and hid their bodies. He had seen them enter the Labyrinth and be followed by the Troglodytes. He had seen them be pushed back into a cavernous room and even now he watched them fight for their lives against the pressing hoard of trog warriors.
It just looked too fun. The avariel folded his wings behind his back and hid them with a cape, crossing the pit the conventional way, binding his wings so they would not respond to reflexes. There was no need to give more information about himself then he wished to. His cold, white eyes narrowed slightly and he held forth his ebony-wooded staff. His robes shifted slightly as he readied a spell beneath them.
Cakorax was the fist to see him. He side-stepped a trog warrior that had been bearing down on him, spear flashing with an iron tip. The nimble drow quickly drew out his Wakizashi was stabbed the foul creature though the neck, ripping out it's throat and gullet, causing it's vile black blood to spray out over his face. Another trog, this one with a whip in one hand and a curved dagger held tightly in the other, charged from the side. He was caught in the stomach by the Katana, his entrails spilling out as the renegade dark elf spun and caught a third troglodyte across the chest, cutting through the bone of his ribs with his razor-bladed swords and making a tiny cut across the heart. The trog collapsed grasping the bloody spot rapidly growing over his chest as his lifeblood spilled out onto the floor.
Then he saw it. The four trogs that had pushed them into the room had been standing back, not partaking in the fight until more of their own tribe joined in. Now they would never fight again. Burnmarks covered their bodies and the walls. The only thing in the area around them not covered in ash and burn scars was a devious looking drow. He wore an unnaturally long cloak and black robes. His spellbook, covered in runes and inlaid with bone-carved glyphs, hung in a hellhound-fur carrying case. His quarterstaff was ebony wood and inlaid with small runes. His features were sharp and sinister, though somehow oddlyââ almost divine looking. He seemed to exude an aura of death around him and stank of the grave. His most striking feature, though, were his eyes. Never had Cakorax seen such cold, uncaring eyes. His eyes were enlarged almost half again what they should have been, and covered in tiny veinlike white scars. The most undettling thing about those eyes, though, were their color. White. Like a dead man's. Like an icy shadow of darkness itself, an everpresent reminder of some dark sin or forgotten deed. They drew the mind towards them like a snake will do with a mouseâ until, of course, the snake pounces. Cakorax was drawn into that gaze. He felt the world be shed away from him and all there was was the eerie whiteness of those cold orbs.
Then there was pain.
Cakorax snapped out of his reverie as a troglodyte javelin hit his leg, shending shockwaves of pain coursing through his body.
A knife sprang from Zaxyl's boot sheaths as if it had life of it's own, so fast were the nimble drow's hands. He threw the dagger through the air, lodging it in the trog's head, making a sickening cracking sound as the blood from the trog's main cerebral blood vessals soaked the fine, unadorned handle of the throwing knife. Cakorax grunted slightly as he regained proper footing and was about to tell Zaxyl about the newcomer when he was pressed on defense by three more of the Troglodytes. The room was filled with the smelly creatures and the air thick with their musky stench. His vision swam and his movement slowed as the smell wafting into his nostrils nauseated him. Bile rose in his throat and he vomited forth his lunch upon the ground. The troglodytes lunged. One was taken by another of Zaxyl's daggers, and another fell to an arrow from Moredhel's bow.
The third fell to an ebony quarterstaff.
Looking around him, Cakorax could see the flashing black staff and the strange, white-eyed drow that carried it, throwing spells this way and that, driving back the trogs. Moredhel was drawing his blades and heading after their king, a large specimen of their species dressed in mismatched metal armors and chains and covered in iron strinkets, wielding a large morningstar of crude iron. Sylvanfang and Zaxyl fought back to back, blades drawn and stabbing and hacking the flesh away from the foe, while Drynn tore open a trog's throat. Aust chanted encouragement to his comrades as he wielded his rapier against seemingly insurmountable odds, dancing and spinning among the odd creatures that assailed them. Cakorax looked down at his own leg, with a long, deep, filthy cut torn open upon it and the blood oozing and seeping out. The pain and the stench bore down upon his senses.
Cakorax blacked out.