25th Day of Goodmonth, 565 CY

The Dungeons of the Slave Lords

The Aerie, The Pomarj

"Not again!" Elrohir cried out.

Unfortunately, the ranger's worst suspicion was realized. The exclamation had hardly left his lips when a when a thick filament burst out of a tiny hole in the stalagmite and wrapped itself securely around the party leader, pinning his arms to his sides.

Sitdale turned and hollered at the others.

"Roper!"

So that's what these damn things are called, Argo Bigfellow thought to himself as he darted forward past the half-elf, skirted around the stalagmite and then lunged at it from the rear, swinging his thigh bone club.

It felt just like striking solid rock, and it had about the same effect.

The monster wheeled around unexpectedly quickly, lifting its body off the cave floor an inch or so to do so and unspooling more filament. The creature's gaping, circular mouth opened and closed, and its lone eye glared at the big ranger.

Argo glared back.

"What are you looking at?"

With a yell, Elrohir broke his arms free, snapping the filament around him, and then ran forward and stabbed with his rusty dagger into the roper's stony flesh.

The blade snapped in half.

Tojo and Lady Cynewine stepped aside as Sir Menn retreated past them and laid Hengist's body down on the cavern floor. "Watch their tentacles," the knight warned them. "They can quickly drain your vitality."

Nesco nodded. "We know. We fought one earlier. It-"

A blur blew by her. Tojo was rushing forward towards the front.

As he was hurling his ruined weapon away in disgust, Elrohir saw Tojo come up and quickly move into position alongside him. The samurai's eyes studied the roper; looking for weaknesses.

"Be careful!" the ranger warned. "Remember what happened last time- you're the last person we want turning against us right now, Tojo!"

"Most comprimentary, Errorhir-sama," was the samurai's only reply as his fist connected with the roper's body- without effect.

Unru looked uncharacteristically dour.

"I'm sorry, Talass," the illusionist gestured helplessly to his marching-order partner. "I don't see how even invisibility would help here. I've got nothing of value left to bring to this party."

"But I might."

Cygnus was standing just in front of the pair, but he wasn't looking at them. The tall mage seemed enraptured at the wall of rock he was standing by, or at least the upper reaches of it. He was holding his glow-fungus as high above his head as he could and peering up.

Talass couldn't see what he was looking at. Or for.

"Unru!" Cygnus barked; his eyes still fastened upwards. "Get everyone past the roper and into the far right corridor; there's no way we're going to be able to kill that monster, so I'm going to keep it from following us!"

"With what?" Zantac couldn't help but cry out. "Your charm won't work on that thing!"

"Unru, Talass; get going!" the tall wizard shot back, ignoring the question and whirling now to regard his fellow mage. "Zantac! Bend over!"

A slight pause.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Bend over!" Cygnus repeated. "I need to climb onto your back to reach it!"

"Reach what?" Zantac cried out again, but Cygnus had already grabbed the shorter wizard's shoulder and was pushing him down, bending Zantac forward at the waist.

Unru looked at Talass, shrugged, then turned to his rear and clasped Thorimund by the shoulders.

"You feel strong enough for a sprint, Thorimund?"

"Um, not really, no."

"Good! Let's go!"

The chamber rang with shouts, yells, orders and exhortations. Sitdale, Aslan and Arwald came up and assumed flanking positions around the roper from Elrohir, Argo and Tojo. Despite all their best efforts however, none of the six fighters could so much as make a dent in the creature's rocky hide.

Sir Menn, hearing the shouts for everyone to head towards the far corridor, groaned and again bent down to pick up Hengist's body.

A hand on his shoulder made the knight look up.

"You've done more than enough, Sir Menn," Nesco Cynewine told him quietly. "I'll take him."

Having attained the far corridor, Talass and Sir Menn turned around and viewed the scene with worry. The sextet of warriors continued to hammer away at the roper, inflicting no damage but certainly keeping the monster's attention away from the rest of them.

"Careful!" Zantac shouted as Lady Cynewine, carrying her burden, eased her way past him in the narrow tunnel. The ranger gave him a sympathetic glance as she passed but didn't seem to have the strength for a comment.

Zantac's legs were wobbling. Any moment now, he knew his knees were going to give out.

"I take back every single comment I ever made about you being skinny!" the Willip wizard shouted to the floor beneath him. "How'd you get so damned heavy; you been eating rocks on the sly back there?"

"Hold still!" Cygnus snapped down at him. "I can almost reach it!"

"Reach what?" Zantac screamed, as much in pain now as frustration.

With one last push into Zantac's tortured back, Cygnus launched himself upward.

"Got it!" Zantac heard.

That was all the older mage needed to hear. He slipped sideways, leaving Cygnus to fall the few extra feet to the ground on his own.

"Ow!" Cygnus exclaimed as he touched down, the unexpected shock doubling the magic-user over for a few seconds. "My feet!"

"Tell me about it! Hope you can make a healing potion out of whatever you got," Zantac groaned right back, trying to relax his screaming back muscles as he straightened out. "What was so important that-"

But Cygnus was already limping towards the far right corridor.

"Salvation, my trusty stepladder!" he called over his shoulder, a faint but undeniable note of optimism in his voice now. "Salvation!"

With only a glance between them, Elrohir, Argo and Tojo knew what to do.

The two rangers timed their punches between those of Tojo, so the stalagmite's eye was off the samurai for just an instant.

The same instant Yanigasawa's fist slammed right into it.

The roper roared. It sounded like an avalanche was occurring somewhere from deep within the beast, and its echoes flew from its open maw and filled the chamber.

"That's the way, Tojo!" Argo grinned at the samurai, and then turned his jibes towards their enemy. "What are you going to do now, Stony? You can't grab all of us at once!"

A half-dozen orifices on the creature's body flew open. A filament shot out from each one. They unerringly wrapped themselves around all six of the roper's opponents.

Or maybe you can, Bigfellow conceded to himself as a terrible weakness flooded through his body.

The tentacle around him tightened, drawing the big ranger towards the thing's gaping maw.

But the next instant, Yanigasawa Tojo, having already burst his own bond, grabbed the filament around Argo and ripped it off. The others were likewise extricating themselves, but it was clear they'd been seriously weakened as well.

"The corridor! Get back to the corridor!"

Argo couldn't see Cygnus, but he decided to give the unseen mage the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he'd rendered himself invisible for some cunning plan-

No. There he was, shouting and cajoling Zantac and the others to retreat while the tall mage moved to interpose himself between them and the roper.

"Do it! Just do it!" he shouted, and the others reluctantly obeyed.

The roper swiveled to face Cygnus.

Yet another filament shot out and wrapped itself around the magic-user.

Argo and Zantac, closest to him, could see the mage's face grimace as the debilitating drain of the roper swept through his frame.

But he managed to keep one arm free.

Zantac caught a glimpse of something white clinging to the fingertips of Cygnus' right hand.

The one he was casting with.

And seconds later, a giant white wall of sticky spider webbing appeared between the far walls of the cavern, entangling the roper and cutting the creature off from them.

Argo and Zantac rushed forward, grabbed Cygnus and pulled him backwards until the filament was torn from the roper's body.

Ignoring the monster's bellows of rage, the group fled down the corridor.

"I'd forgotten you still had that web in your head," Zantac grunted as the group, slowed by fatigue, now picked their way carefully down the twisting and winding passageway.

"So did I, until I spotted that spider web on the wall near the ceiling," admitted Cygnus. "Just what I needed."

"So often do we get what we need, it seems," Sitdale said quietly.

The others were silent for a few moments. Cygnus had forgotten the half-elf, in addition to being a ranger and a mage, was a cleric as well.

"How is everyone feeling?" Elrohir asked at length.

The responses the team leader received were not encouraging. Argo, Aslan, Sitdale, Arwald, Cygnus and even Tojo had been affected by whatever method- poison or magic- the roper used to drain the strength from its foes. Only he had somehow managed to resist the effect.

"How long will this take to heal on its own, Talass?" Aslan asked.

The priestess couldn't even feign an optimistic response. "Days. Up to a week, possibly."

Silence settled back in.

Zantac absently felt the roper's filament that the ranger had tossed to him after ripping it off Cygnus. The strand was moist, perhaps an inch thick, and very much organic- strong but flexible.

"This roper seemed quite different from the last one," the mage mused, his academic curiosity aroused now. These tentacles aren't nearly as rocklike- or as strong- as the one we fought earlier."

"More important, it never tried to turn you and Cygnus into spell-slinging adversaries," Aslan pointed out wryly.

"Yes, I heard you talking about that earlier," Sitdale interjected, frowning. "I've fought ropers twice before in my lifetime, and never encountered anything like that."

"Don't forget," Sir Menn reminded the half-elf, "those ropers were nearly twice the size of that one."

Cygnus stopped. "Really?" he asked, then grimaced. "I suppose that could have been far worse than it was, after all."

"That might have been a young one," Thorimund speculated. "I've never encountered a roper before, but I've also heard they grow to be quite large."

"That might explain why the strands of this one were much easier to break," admitted Elrohir, "but it still doesn't quite match up."

Zantac snapped his fingers. "A new subspecies! Oh, how I wish we had the time to get samples of each one! That'd bring a smile even to 'ol Zelhile's face."

"Feel free to go back," Cygnus muttered. "As for me, I'll be lucky if I can keep going forward for much longer. I kind of feel like my body is made of stone, too."

There were murmurs of commiseration, and then more silence.

"So, how did you know this was the right tunnel to take, Cygnus?" Argo eventually asked. "The smell of guano you seem to love so much is getting stronger."

"I didn't know," Cygnus shrugged. The shape of that cave and the placement of the passageways made this tunnel the only practical choice for us to take if I was going to throw the web, unless we wanted to seal ourselves back where we had come from."

"Hey, that reminds me!" Unru suddenly spoke up. "Cygnus, you still had a fireball in your head, didn't you? Material component! Take some of this-"

"I don't have the fireball anymore, Unru," Cygnus said wearily, "and right now I don't think you'd want to trust me with one."

"Hold up," Elrohir announced, stopping suddenly.

Behind him, the shorter Aslan tried to peer between the two individuals in the front rank. "What is it, Elrohir? Do you see something?"

"No," replied the ranger. "That's the point. There's more empty space in front of us than light."

"Then you'd definitely want to stop, Elrohir," came the voice of Sitdale behind him. "There's a chasm in front of us, and I can't see the other side."

Five minutes later, the group had ascertained their general situation.

The passageway they had been travelling down opened out into what was the largest cavern they'd yet encountered. It was roughly circular, and Sitdale's keen eyes had estimated it at about sixty feet from one side to the other.

There were bats here. The flying mammals couldn't be seen, but they could be heard nesting in the niches of the roof, which ascended in a dome shape to higher than even the half-elf could determine.

Even the existence of the bats; and the implied hope of a nearby exit, was dampened by the chasm.

The pit stretched out in front of them about twenty feet from the entrance to the chamber, and it went clear from one side of the cave to the other.

Elrohir, kneeling down, held out a glow-fungus over the edge.

He felt a momentary twinge of regret; this little moss had been one of the greatest treasures he'd ever encountered in all his years.

But it had one more important function to perform. He mouthed a silent prayer of thanks, and then opened his fingers and let it fall.

He watched the green light grow smaller and smaller and smaller.

Then it stopped.

Elrohir looked up to meet Argo's eyes.

"How deep, you figure?" Bigfellow asked.

His fellow ranger sighed. "Hundred fifty, maybe two hundred feet."

Argo nodded in agreement and then straightened back up, wincing at the pain that involved. "Over, then- not down."

Bigfellow looked around, apparently deep in thought. Then he strode over to Nesco, who was currently holding the other glow-fungus while staring at Hengist's corpse, which she had propped up against the cavern wall as gently as possible.

Lady Cynewine looked on in bewilderment as Argo held out his hand, palm up, to her.

Then she started and handed him the fungus.

Argo turned and hurled it over the pit.

It landed perhaps ten feet on the other side. There was a small stalagmite, perhaps two feet high, next to it, but no other features were visible. Slowly, the moss began crawling away from the pit.

The dim outline of an exit tunnel became visible in the greenish glow. Every so often, the dark silhouette of a bat flashed by.

"I'd say that chasm averages about thirty feet, wouldn't you?"

Elrohir tried to regain his concentration- he felt so weak he wanted to drop to the floor and sleep right here and now- but the party leader turned his attention back to Argo Bigfellow Junior.

"Yes," he admitted. "Too far to jump."

"Not with that spell our friend left us," Bigfellow pointed out.

Elrohir was silent for a moment as he thought. "Only for one of us, Argo; and it wouldn't even be a sure thing at that, especially in your weakened state," he finished, glaring at his fellow ranger. "I suppose I could use it to send scout ahead and-"

"Cygnus," Argo suddenly spoke up. "May I have the light you've loaned to Sitdale, please? I need to go somewhere with it."

Elrohir scowled. "You're not doing anything Bigfellow, until you explain-"

But Argo had already taken the glowing piece of flint from a bewildered Sitdale. Elrohir had a sudden surge of horror, imagining Bigfellow leaping down into the pit, but the big ranger was now heading back into the corridor they had come from.

There was some murmurs of consternation as their light faded. It was only the group's overwhelming exhaustion that prevented anyone from making a serious attempt to stop Argo. Zantac quickly cast another light cantrip on a nearby rock and stood there, looking as confused as any of them.

Elrohir was now moving directly towards Argo, but his fellow ranger stopped and turned around to face him.

"Elrohir," Bigfellow said quietly, "I'm not going to do anything foolish or dangerous, and I'll only be gone a few minutes. You'll understand as soon as I get back, and I don't want to waste the time, or my breath, explaining if I don't have to."

He turned and left. His light was quickly lost in the winding tunnel.

A dozen people sat quietly, rested and waited.

Zantac had set his glowing rock down next to a small stalagmite near the edge of the chasm that seemed to be a match for its twin on the far side. The Willip wizard played idly with the roper filament in his hand.

The sound of thousands of bats intruded on everyone's thoughts. While initially a welcoming sound, it had quickly grown to become an irritant.

Aslan looked around.

The paladin was trying, and failing yet again, to think of something inspiring to say when he noticed Tojo, on his knees, bend down and place his ear to the ground.

Then the samurai looked up at him.

"Asran-sama," Tojo announced. "There is storm in rock."

While it was no secret that Yanigasawa Tojo often had trouble expressing himself in Common, the samurai's words accurately described what everyone heard when they listened as he had done.

A sound like thunder was filtering up to them through the stone. It wasn't the obvious rumbling that preceded a tremor- although Aslan was depressingly aware that another one was just about due- but the sound conveyed a feeling of turbulence such as they had never imagined could exist within solid rock before.

There was even, below the thundering, a faint sound of some kind of liquid.

As if were raining.

Everyone looked at one another, but before the shared thought could be put into words, a white light heralded the return of Argo Bigfellow Junior.

The big ranger strode confidently back into the cavern. In his right hand he still clutched the femur bone club.

In his left was every filament from the roper he had been able to gather from the near side of the web. Bigfellow tossed the pile of tentacles onto the floor and gestured to Zantac, who still held one in his hands.

"A gift from the roper," Argo announced, an actual smile on his face now. "Tie all of those together. They should form a rope long enough to bridge that chasm."

His face turned towards the darkness of the pit.

"We can tie this end around this stalagmite. Now all that remains is to decide who is going to receive the jump spell and leap across with the rope."

Argo's smile faded as he looked at his companions.

The silence that ensued, no one wanted to break.