Chapter 34: Finishing the exploration

May 6

Neiia and Ertak stay to rest, while Agnarr and Kieron examine the room. Kieron goes to look at the chain when Neiia tells that each link is magically enchanted separately. There’s really a lot of chain because it was wrapped in three layers around the now vanished undead. Kieron tries to lift the chain by one link, and the chain and Kieron’s hand burst into flames. Kieron quickly releases her grip and says that the chain both burned and felt cold at the same time, and it caused quite bad burns. Kieron refuses to touch the chain anymore. Agnarr goes to examine the shiny black forge hammer. He feels that it weighs a lot, but he can’t get any other information from it.

The group stays to rest. Ten minutes later, Ertak hears some noise from below in the tunnel, while Neiia hears the sound of small feet from outside. Ertak goes to guard the opening, and after a moment, he loses track of the sound he heard from there. Kieron goes to the other side of the room to get outside of others’ light and hides there. Agnarr and Neiia stay near Ertak in ambush.

The group waits for about a minute, but when nothing else is heard or seen, the group stays to rest again. Four minutes later, Ertak hears something again, but this time from outside the room. Ertak says that there are kobolds out there who are probably just about to come in. Agnarr comes beside him and tells him to ask them to come in one by one. Ertak does as told, and surprisingly, one kobold walks in. Ertak starts interrogating him. The kobold answers and tells that one child was with the shaman, the others apparently ran in different directions. The kobold then starts telling his plan; they are apparently staging a coup. A second kobold arrives on the scene. They tell that there are apparently only six of them.

The group counts the children and concludes that Kim was found from the beginning, Savram was also found upstairs. Hollin was with the shaman and died when the altar exploded. Yurin was found here with the undead giant dwarf. Only Mikra is missing.

Ertak starts making a deal with the kobolds; he promises to help the kobolds in killing the king and in the revolution if the kobolds help them. Ertak manages to make a deal with them and orders the kobolds to bring their boss.

Five minutes later, a figure dressed in a robe arrives, and Ertak finalizes the deal. Agnarr complains that he’s in poor condition and asks if this priest can heal him. Ertak asks, and the priest says that of course. The priest performs a ten-minute ritual, and Ertak recognizes that it’s a Powerful Healing spell, meaning it will heal Agnarr to good condition.

Ertak also heals Kieron, and after that, the group rests for about half an hour. After this, the group moves on. Just as they are going out, the priest whistles, and a slightly larger than normal hellhound comes to the scene, and the priest pats the dog, and the group walks past it. The plan is first to retrieve Eogrin Galesong, Kim, and Savram from below and then search for the missing Mikra.

The group moves to the elevator room and pulls up the people and items from below. Eogrin Galesong and the children stay in the elevator room, and the priest guides the group forward. They come to the next room, where they had apparently planned the revolution, and they tell that Mikra had come to this room, screamed, and then ran to the back wall intending to hide, but apparently accidentally hit the secret door opening lever, and after that, Mikra had fled through the secret door. The kobolds don’t know what’s there because no one has gone there for a long time, because this upper floor is such a dangerous place.

They come to a door, and behind it opens a room where there is clearly some wizard’s familiar: a small winged creature with a human head, a bird’s body, and a small devil’s tail. The creature says don’t disturb my master, and after that, the creature attacks Kieron. Ertak tries to lure the creature to attack himself.

Agnarr knocks the creature away with one strike. The group starts examining the room. They find some kind of dwarf skeleton, which is in some kind of torture rack. The dwarf skeleton has some kind of metal glove in its hand and sandals on its feet. Neiia states that dwarves basically never wear sandals, so those are probably quite good. Neiia takes the glove and notices that although it’s small, she could get it on her hand. She tries, and surprisingly, she can put it on her hand. She feels a sharp pain, and after that, the glove snaps into place. She feels that this feels like a pretty good boxing glove, but it can’t be removed. The group examines the rest of the room; Agnarr finds a stone tablet and a small statue on the table, Kieron finds a secret door in the corner. The group goes through the secret door and comes to the next corridor, at the end of which is another secret door.

Behind the secret door opens an octagonal room, in the middle of which is some object and stone benches around it. When Kieron steps in, some creature appears on the scene. The creature is ghostly, but the features are like from some nightmare or something; the lower body of the creature disappears into smoke. The creature speaks completely arbitrary words in sequence, real words, but the words don’t form any sensible message.

Everyone except Ertak stops to listen to the creature; Ertak never listens to anyone, so he instead attacks the creature. The creature attacks Agnarr, but when Ertak hits the ghost reasonably well, he gets the ghost’s attention to himself for a moment before it returns to attack Agnarr again. The creature tries to attack Agnarr but gets scared of it and runs away.

The group examines the room. In the middle of the room is a trumpet-shaped metal tube, on the side of which is a lever with four positions. Ertak notices that if you turn that lever, then down there some flap turns to different positions, as if it would connect this tube to one of those other tubes. Kieron orders to turn the lever toward her and then goes to shout into the tube. Surprisingly, the kobold priest answers from the other end. Apparently, it’s either a speaking tube or an eavesdropping system because the kobolds’ speech can be heard here quite well.

The group goes to take the stone tablet to Eogrin for examination. Eogrin states that this is probably some dwarf’s testament or could be a suicide note, but he can’t figure out what’s actually written on it, as he only knows the very basics of Dwarven language. The group continues on. They come to the next octagonal room. In the middle of the room is a pillar with some patterns on it. There are also four doors in the room. The group steps in, and when Kieron goes within a few feet of the pillar, the pillar starts spinning around at high speed. At the same time, the group feels that all metal objects are pulling them toward the pillar. The door behind the group slams shut right in front of Ertak’s nose, and the two doors on the side fly open because the heavy metal doors open inward. Two tentacle heads appear from behind the doors, screaming.