I do not own Dungeons and Dragons or any of the characters.
Monstrous
Jasper narrowed his eyes as he surveyed Bloodmire Manor, home of Luvia Bloodmire. The map he'd found had been the location of a Red Fang hideout where the goblins had been holding hostages the Hands of Glory had captured. While Jasper, Mia, and Aranea headed to Bloodmire Manor, Edgin and the others had joined the escorts from Randalla's caravan in rescuing the hostages.
"How are we getting in?" Mia asked.
"The front door," Jasper said, drawing his rapier. "Expect ghouls."
Mia and Aranea nodded, but Aranea caught both of their hands, stopping them.
"We'll find her," Aranea promised. "We'll save her."
Mia and Jasper both nodded, smiling gratefully, and they all headed for the front door together. As they reached it, Mia slipped a set of lockpicks out of her pocket and into the door. A moment later, the door clicked open and they all entered silently, only to stop, looking around. The manor was silent and completely deserted. Jasper narrowed his eyes, walking toward the stairs leading up to the second floor.
"We're starting with the second floor?" Aranea asked in a whisper that echoed through the entrance hall.
"If I was in a wealthy family and was creating ghouls, I'd do it in the basement," Jasper whispered back. "But I'd keep the future victims and any hostages on the second floor, so that any potential heroes couldn't reach them in time to save them. So we'll start there and work our way down."
Aranea and Mia nodded.
"That makes sense," Aranea agreed.
They climbed the stairs in silence, then split up, silently searching the rooms. Except, almost as soon as they each began to search the floor, they realized two things. Firstly, the layout of the manor made no sense. The hallways wound and wove through the building with no rhyme or reason, with rooms scattered almost randomly along them, and half of the rooms had secret doors to hidden passages and rooms. Within five minutes, all three had met up again due to the hallways being a maze. The second thing they realized was that the manor was far from deserted. Ghouls, both humanoid and a canine variation, roamed the hallways and attacked anyone foolish enough to break in relentlessly. By the time Jasper met up with Mia and Aranea, the corridors he'd passed through were littered with corpses, as were the paths behind both of the others, and all three's weapons were dripping blood, Mia wielding her Ironwood sword.
"I hate this place already," Mia growled.
"Agreed," Jasper nodded, just as a pair of ghouls burst through a door concealed as a bookshelf.
One was canine and immediately flicked its tail, sending a barrage of spikes speeding at Jasper while the other, a humanoid one with its right hand replaced by a large, broken, jagged bone blade, lunged at Aranea. Jasper dodged aside from the spikes as Aranea speared the humanoid ghoul through the chest, allowing Mia to decapitate it. As the canine creature leapt at Jasper, he dodged past it, his rapier splitting its head in half before carving a deep gash through its left side. Both crashed lifelessly to the ground, and the three of them continued through the concealed door. The hallway was devoid of side passages or other room, but it wound and wove through the building dizzyingly, Ghouls of both varieties lining the entire length of it, only to be rapidly slaughtered by the trio. Finally, they reached a door at the end and stopped, Jasper shifting into a Tabaxi and pressing his ear to the door.
"Three," Jasper whispered. "No, four."
"It's so much easier with just us three," Aranea noted. "It's less...coordination."
"Agreed," Mia nodded. "But it's nice having friends."
Aranea nodded, smiling, even as they swept into the room, almost instantly slaughtering the last of the ghouls on the floor. "That's true. How long were you guys alone?"
Jasper considered. "I was on my own off and on for...I don't know, twenty or so years in total?"
"Twenty?" Aranea frowned. "How old are you?"
"Seventy," Jasper said casually.
"Fifty five," Mia said, equally casually.
Aranea blinked in surprise. "I didn't think either of you were a day over twenty five. I suppose it makes sense, though, as Changelings."
"I age slower as a Druid," Jasper explained as they made their way back toward the first floor.
"And we both realized that we age at the rate of our current physical form, so when we're elves we age at the speed of an elf," Mia explained. "If we spent all our time as humans, or in our true form, we'd be old by now. Or, at least, I would."
Aranea shook her head, eyes wide with surprise. "That's amazing! You have no idea how relieved I am about that. I was worried..."
Jasper and Mia both stopped, smiling and resting their free hands on her shoulders. "We'll still be around by the end of your two hundred year lifespan. Assuming our bad luck doesn't get us killed by a Pride Sinspawn by then."
Aranea laughed. "That does seem frighteningly likely, unfortunately."
They continued on, reaching the first floor again in a few minutes, and this time, began to explore together. This time, despite there being no one living on the upper floor, here they found servants struggling to work while being policed by ghouls. As they slaughtered the ghouls, the servants fled the manor. Finally, as they reached the last room on the ground floor, the servant handed them a key, shouting something about the cellar as he ran out of the room.
"I guess we head downstairs?" Aranea shrugged.
"Sounds like it," Mia said, picking a locked door opposite the one they'd entered in seconds, revealing the stairs down to the cellar. "Shall we?"
Jasper led the way, only to groan miserably as they reached the bottom, a couple dozen giant spiders scrambling toward them. Aranea and Mia swept past him, only for him to follow them a half-step later. Together, they slaughtered the spiders, clearing the entire cellar of both the spiders and a handful of ghouls within a few minutes. As they began to walk around the cellar, searching the walls for hidden doors, Aranea spoke up again.
"So, Jasper, I have another question," Aranea began. "How can you use Flame Arrows so easily? You use it like a Wizard uses Firebolt. Almost like a Cantrip."
"He does use it for a Cantrip," Mia said proudly. "It's actually not really Flame Arrow. It's something like a combination of the two that works on the level of Cantrip but that's more deadly than Firebolt."
"You're incredible," Aranea smiled. "Is it because your magic is so strong?"
"Yes," Jasper nodded, stopping as he found a keyhole in the wall. "Being Sylvanus' Chosen has some benefits. The door's here."
Aranea and Mia walked over to join him, only to stop, sighing and swapping the lockpick set for her dagger and sliding the tip of the blade into the lock. "I can't pick it. I'll have to break the lock."
"Is that hard?" Aranea asked.
"Terribly," Mia said, seriously, then smacked the heel of her hand against the pommel of the dagger.
There was a loud metallic "PING" and a muted "thunk" before she sheathed her dagger and pushed on the wall. With a groan, the door swung inward, the latch falling out and clattering to the floor, Jasper and Aranea both grinning widely. Then, the three of them walked into the spiraling, metal stairway that led deep down below the manor. After a few minutes of walking, they stopped as they reached a long, steel corridor lined with cells, or pens. As they walked forward, however, the doors all rattled open, a dozen of the canine ghouls bursting out and charging, several firing barrages of spikes. This time, however, as they all dove out of the way of the spikes, Shadow shot forward, shredding his way way down the hallway in a flurry of claws and fangs and stingers, slaughtering everything. Jasper and the others all jogged after him, and as the hidden corridor turned left, several ghouls lunged around the corner at Shadow, only to pass through him harmlessly, Jasper and the others slaughtering them instantly.
They continued following the hidden lab past more and more pens, slaughtering more and more ghouls. Then, finally, they stopped as they found a table splattered with blood and bits of gore, but with a clean, freshly written letter lying on it.
"Dear Lady F, I do hope this letter finds you well," Jasper read aloud. "Your last shipment of supplies and fold has been most generous. I have sent a special gift to your warehouse. His name is Argesh, the pinnacle of my creations. He will serve you without question. I hope he is to your satisfaction, as the others will be based off this new design. Please inform the Hands of Glory that fresh supplies will be needed...preferably live. Faithfully yours, Luvia Bloodmire."
"Wonder who this Lady F is," Mia hummed thoughtfully.
"We should go and ask," Aranea suggested.
"I agree," Jasper nodded. "We can't have much further to go."
Mia and Aranea both nodded in agreement and they all continued along the winding passageways of the mansion's hidden laboratory. They came to a large open area where more than a dozen ghouls waited. The path ahead of them led along a raised walkway, but to either side, there were a pair of sets of stairs leading down into a lower section of the room that ran alongside the raised walkway and then around behind the end of the raised walkway. Jasper and Mia both headed down into the pit on opposite sides instantly, and Aranea charged onto the walkway. As Aranea slaughtered the ghouls ahead of herself, she used her webbing to aid the other two when she could. Within a few minutes, they'd carved their way to the far end of the room, Jasper and Mia reaching a pair of sealed gates, but both swung open once Aranea pulled a lever at the end of the raised section. She dropped down the fifteen foot ledge ahead of her and joined Jasper and Mia at the gates, following them through. In the large, open, square chamber ahead of them were more canine ghouls, except that the largest of them bore two heads, one a pale red and another swollen and bluish-purple, as was the foreleg on that side. Jasper and Mia charged instantly, carving through the smaller canine ghouls as they circled the massive fire pit occupying the center of the chamber. The two-headed ghoul moved to meet Jasper, but when it leapt at him, Shadow suddenly flashed up from below, catching the ghoul as a Girallon and casting it into the flames before dropping back into Jasper's own shadow. The two-headed ghoul shrieked in agony as it writhed and thrashed at the bottom of the fifteen-foot-deep pit, but by the time Jasper, Mia, and Aranea had finished with the rest of the ghouls, it had fallen silent at last.
Jasper narrowed his eyes as he stared across the massive, deep pit filled with blood taking up the center of the room, glaring at the woman standing opposite them. She had long, dark brown hair, an attractive face with dried blood on her cheek and forehead, a tight, black shirt with the collar cut low on her generous chest, and her legs hidden within a white dress, the bottom half of which had been long ago stained red and pink with blood, many of the stains being streaks from her wiping her hands on the dress. Obviously, this was Luvia Bloodmire. A Necromancer. Flanking her on either side were a pair of enormous ghouls similar at base to the one from whose corpse they'd found the note leading to Luvia. Both of them had swollen upper bodies, their heads hunched forward with black leather head harness with a strap over the top and a strap covering their eyes, their right hands swollen into enormous, three-fingered hands with huge claws and bone spikes justin out of their right forearms, and their enormous bodies were covered by black, leather, outfits consisting of a pair of glorified underwear and a band around their torsos with straps over their shoulders.
"Ah, you've finally arrived," Luvia greeted them smoothly. "I do hope my creations haven't given you too much trouble." She hummed pleasantly. "Lovely, aren't they? It took me years to perfect the technique to successfully transfer limbs and organs from one creature to the next."
"Your creations are abominations," Jasper growled. "You're a monster."
"How many died for your research?" Mia asked accusingly.
"What does it matter?" Luvia asked. "Perhaps hundreds died for me to learn this, but it was a small price to pay in the name of science! But you shouldn't concern yourself over the welfare of others. Your thoughts should lie in the here and now."
"That prototype you sent to the assassins is dead," Aranea informed her.
"Impressive that you should defeat my lovely Argesh," Luvia commended. "But he was created to handle those Hands of Glory cretins. Now, these I made just for you. I'm sure I will see you again. Mayhap a piece here or a piece there. Farewell."
She turned to walk away and Jasper moved to intercept her, only for one of the massive creations to launch itself over the blood pit at him. Aranea yanked him out of the way with her webbing, and Jasper flipped, landing on his feet and thanking her before lunging back into combat. The massive thing swiped at him with its right arm, and Jasper ducked under the arm, slashing the creature across the side. It roared, swiping at him with its other arm, but he spun, ducking under the creature's arm and slashing it across that side as well. It roared, stumbling away from him, and he turned, stabbing it through the torso four times before leaping backward as it spun, swiping a backhand at him that nearly connected. He huffed, sheathing his rapier, and drew his Ironwood Sword instead. This time, when the creature moved to attack him, he ducked under its arm and slashed overhead with both hands, severing its right arm at the elbow. Then, as the creature was roaring in pain and staggering backward, he lunged, getting uncomfortably close to it, enough to gag on the putrid smell of its half-rotten flesh, and slashed overhead again, decapitating it. Its body crashed to the ground and Jasper turned just as Mia likewise literally disarmed her and Mia's opponent before Mia leapt into the air and thrust her spear through its face and out its back.
As it crashed to the ground, Mia ripping her spear back out, Lucia shrieked in rage. "What have you done!? My beautiful creations destroyed, and by the likes of someone as insignificant as you! HERETICS! NON-BELIEVERS! You stand in my path to god'dom."
"It's 'godhood,'" Jasper corrected her. "And you're nowhere near."
Luvia scoffed. "Soon, nothing but the dead shall remain in this place. I will take my leave now. I suggest you do the same before it's too late." She turned, beginning to walk away from the gate separating her from them. "Hurry...hurry...hurry."
Suddenly, massive vents in the walls began to release thick, green mist.
"Poison!" Jasper hissed. "Move!"
They all turned to run, finding more ghouls blocking their path. Jasper took the lead, swapping his Ironwood Sword for his rapier and shredding anything in their way as soon as he reached it. More and more ghouls moved to impede their escape, and after a while, several pipes began to spit out thick sprays of thick, green, poisonous fluid. But finally, they reached the stairs back up to Luvia's manor, finding the ground floor blessedly free of poison.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," Jasper grumbled, sending a barrage of Flame Arrows out to ignite the manor.
The other two nodded in agreement, and they quickly left the mansion, going to rendezvous with the others at the Purple Wyrm Inn.
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