Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Thirty

What Didn't Happen Today?*
Tuesday, May 15th, 988 AD

As we got ready to rest, Nicolae and Reynaldo had an epiphany. They came up with a plan that could get everybody past the giants to the other side of the dungeon with no battle. The plan is for Reynaldo and Nicolae to polymorph into a troll and a mage ogre, respectively, and infiltrate the giants. Using a Friend spell, they will try to convince the giants that the party waylaid them and is about to destroy the mountain. When the mountain clears of giants, they will contact the rest of us using the Message Boxes and we all can rush across and go to the lava room.

Reynaldo and Nicolae polymorph into mice and leave the room. The rest of us play with Ivan's 49-card deck for a little while. Then we swap stories about our past ridiculous plans that totally worked like "Remember that time when we killed the Bronze Giant in the Greek Islands?" or "Remember that time we got that Giant Swan out of that Ring of Fire?" or our personal favorite "Remember that time we got into Novgorod even though there were tons of giants and zombies in our way?" There's something about recounting past brushes with Death that just bolsters an adventurer's spirit like nothing else in the world.

After Ivan's seventh retelling of how he got his Toe Helmet (I swear, that tale gets taller everytime he tells it), a stink goes up in the room. We all blame Jean-Claude until we realize that it's coming from Edward. He checks his pockets and finds the Message Box. He opens it and sees a message in Reynaldo's scrawl which reads, "Now! Fucking now!"

Ivan and Edward quickly get up and start smashing through the inch thick stone-shaped wall. When they burst through, something moves to block them. It's an Umber Hulk and it's eyes immediately begin to work their mojo. Ivan turns and attacks Edward, taking him down. Anna casts Recitation and Jean-Claude lets fly with his Christian-powered Magic Missiles. Ivan, momentarily regaining his senses, shoves his spear deep into the creature. Thalia comes up and kills the creature dead. Ivan picks up Edward, apologizing profusely, and we all rush towards the Killing Rooms (the three rooms in which we were previously ambushed by the giants).

While were telling stories and fighting Umber Hulks, Reynaldo and Nicolae were talking to Jotens. With the help of his Friend spell, he was able to convince the Jotens in the Killing Rooms that we had indeed thrashed them thoroughly and had enacted our plan to blow up the mountain. The giant in charge of that detachment informed our allies that they were planning to blow up the mountain in six hours time. Regardless, he said, Reynaldo and Nicolae should go upstairs and inform those higher on the chain of command. So they climbed up and walked over into a room full of Joten and Nicolae cast another Friend spell and told them the same lie. They dropped names like Amamon, Bolthar, Euginius, and Jansaxo, and then they said they'd go send Logi to check it out, as he could travel through flame. Nicolae and Reynaldo went back to the Killing Rooms and told those assembled there, including the Frost Giant, that the higher-ups had decided they were all to evacuate. Except for the Giant Skeletons, all the Joten climbed up into the other room and confusion began to set it. Reynaldo sent the message off, and Nicolae removed the ladder so they couldn't come back down as quickly.

Once order was restored, the Joten were told to resume their posts down below. An ogre mage flew down to retrieve the ladder and Reynaldo cast a Wall of Fire to bar their pursuit. That's when the rest of us showed up. Edward weakly produced his crucifix and shouted "Repent!" and the Skeletons ran off. Nicolae, still in ogre mage form, went ahead when he saw that the giants had started coming around the other side to head us off. He started screaming about some attack we were about to unleash down the corridor, again, while his Friend spell was active. Anna's reading of the Rainbow scroll certainly helped sell his story, and we had a bridge to cross over the giant crustaceans' pits. We ran down the corridor and headed towards the Lava Room and Cain beyond.

Using Thorbjorn's map, found our way to a room with two of those half-columns in it. Fearing a similar response as from the ones in the Killing Rooms, we carefully checked inside of them and saw only human skeletons. On the outside, in Hebrew, the words Adah and Zillah were carved. Moishe said they were Lamech's wives, and Lamech was Cain's great-great-great grandson. Farther in, there is another room with two more columns, an apparation of some sort shows up, but Edward quickly turns it away. We continue towards where the map says the Lava Room is. In the corridor before the room, we are accosted by about a dozen dwarf-sized men with flaming beards. They tell us to state our business in the name of Amamon and Jean-Claude Lightning Bolts them instead. Ivan and Anna move in for close combat and take heat damage just by standing near them. Nicolae blinds a few and Reynaldo and Jean-Claude Magic Missile a bunch of them. After we reduce their numbers by over half, a small, winged lava monster shows up and breathes fire at us. Nicolae blinds him and he takes off, hitting walls along the way.

As Ivan and Anna are about to kill the last of the fire men, Nicolae flies past them and sees the Lava Room. It's a large cavern, filled with, of course, lava. There is a little cliff that is actually in the room and there are large metal discs in the middle of the room hanging from the ceiling. The discs have some kind of purple fungus on them and there are three chains leading from the cliff to the lava down below. Nicolae sees more fire men climbing up the chains. She tells the rest of the party and Jean-Claude Lightning Bolts the chains, electrocuting most of them and knocking them off the chains. Nicolae Acid Arrows the chains in order to make them fall, and does so, but four more fire men make it onto the cliff. Jean-Claude Lightning Bolts them and Anna and Ivan make short work of them.

We decide that crossing on the hanging discs is too dangerous as their are lava spurts which keep shooting from below and knocking the discs in all kinds of crazy directions. Also, we don't know what that purple fungus does. And, most important of all, most of the party is either at negative, or only has few hit points left. We decide that Reynaldo and Nicolae should fly Anna, Shara, and Jean-Claude across the room and the five of them would form a strike team codenamed: Candy-Striping Cain!

Reynaldo and Nicolae grabbed Jean-Claude under the armpits and flew him across the cavern. While doing so, they noticed an annex of the cavern that jutted west. There was another couple of chains coming off another cliff and Reynaldo noticed a fire man scrambling up the chain and into a south corridor. They proceeded with the plan anyway. Next, they got Anna, and finally Shara across the cavern. The five of them carefully wound their way around some corridors, and Reynaldo suddenly felt something tugging at his magical, water-breathing tooth. His tooth was beckoning him in a south-westerly direction. Jean-Claude reminded Reynaldo that his tooth was mostly likely a Christian relic and that it was probably reacting to Cain. Reynaldo reminded Jean-Claude that this particular tooth was found in the skull of an ancient Elf King who was buried under an underground city which hadn't seen the sky in so long, the elven inhabitants of the city had forgotten what the sky even was.

They decided to let Nicolae scout ahead, and he found a detachment of Fire Men in a room, waiting for us, presumably. We decided to throw a darkness stone in the room and then, using Thorbjorn's map, go around them using a different route. We tossed the stone and hurried away. We went around and got to a door marked with a blood sigil and quickly made a pact never to wash it off. We opened the door and closed it behind us, and then opened the next door. Reynaldo's tooth continued pulling him south so they trundled into the next room. In it stood one of the ugliest females any of us had ever seen. She held a dagger in one hand and a rope in the other.

Succubus: Oh, look. We have company.

Reynaldo and Anna immediately took off running, gripped by an unnatural fear that told them only to flee as far and as fast as they could.

to be continued...

End of Chapter Thirty