Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Twenty-Nine

Scorpions in the Night
Sunday, May 13th, 988 AD

During first watch, seven more scorpions start crawling towards our room. Edward's Glyph kills the first one, Jean-Claude Lightning Bolts another four and Ivan and Dorn kill the last two. Another twelve show up near the end of the same watch and Jean-Claude just Lightning Bolts them all dead. The rest of the night passes uneventfully.

Red-Green Girls, Giant Ambush, and Another Crazy Elf
Monday, May 14th, 988 AD

We heal up in the morning and attempt another rest cycle, but two hours into it, a Fireball explodes in our room. Jean-Claude goes out to check it out and sees two 12-foot skeletons with a ball of fire where their hearts should be. He Cone of Colds them and kills one, but the other one sends another Fireball screaming down the corridor. Jean-Claude, assuming his Fire Cloak will protect him, jumps in the way of the blast and saves everyone in the room. Unfortunately, his cloak malfunctions or something because he's fricassied. Ivan and Wong rush out and finish the last skeleton off. Back in the room, we take stock and find that Shara and Moishe both have also been toasted. Everyone is mostly well off. We rest again.

Near the end of our third watch, which is near the end of our rest cycle, two more 12-foot tall skeletons show up and attempt to Fireball the room. Ivan, sans a protective Fire Cloak because Jean-Claude just does not know how to share, jumps in front of that Fireball and takes full damage. Edward, quickly remembering what his chosen profession is, gets up and turns the two skeletons with the power of his God. We heal up and head out.

At the section where the steps lead down and the dungeon becomes slightly water-logged, a green-haired girl wearing a red dress was sticking out of the steps. Ivan, who was at the head of the party, seemed slightly unnerved by the girl, who introduced herself as Zaraka Kadnika.

Zaraka: Who are you guys, and why are you here?
Nicolae: We're a band of adventurers, exploring the mountain.
Zaraka: Oooh, you're cute. <giggle> Do you want to play with us?
Ogre-Rey: Uhh... "us"?
Zaraka: Yeah, me and my sisters. Do you want to meet them?

Before anyone could answer, she disappeared through the steps and four other girls with the same color hair and dresses showed up along with Zaraka. They were introduced as Uksaka, Yuksaka, Valderanaka, and Nedaka Kadnika, and they all hovered over Nicolae. Anna reflexivley grabbed one of his arms, just in case. [Author's Note: All of the following attributions of speech to the red-green sisters is pure speculation as they looked exactly alike.]

Nedaka: Oooh, he is cute!
Zaraka: Told you.
Uksaka: You should totally come play with us.
Nicolae: Play with you where?
Yuksaka: Oh, we live in Cywoh.
Jean-Claude: Cywoh, where's that?
Ogre-Rey: Is it in the Rus?
Valderanaka: The what? No, it's down below, silly.
Nedaka: You should totally come play with us!
Nicolae: Unfortunately, I can't play. I have to help my friends find a guy in this dungeon.
Yuksaka: Oh, poo. That's no fun at all!
Nicolae: I could finish faster if you guys helped us. We think he's on the other side of the mountain.
Uksaka: Oh no, we can't go over there.
Valderanaka: There's hot rocks that we can't pass.
Zaraka: Hey, do you guys know Orm?
Thalia: How do you know Orm? He said he never came in the mountain.
Nedaka: Oh no, we met him outside.
Yuksaka: Along with those swarthy fellows.
Uksaka: He wouldn't play with us, either.
Yuksaka: No, he wouldn't. But he wasn't as cute as this guy.

All the girls giggle. The party all gives sidelong glances at Nicolae, who sighs.

Nicolae: Okay, seriously. I can't play with you guys right now. I have to help my friends in their mission. You know, if you guys helped us, we could be done faster, and then maybe I could play.
Zaraka: But you could be playing with us right now!
Uksaka: Even those big, ugly guys outside are playing some strange game where they pile a lot of wood in the doorway.
Ogre-Rey: Shit, are they trying to smoke us out?
Anna: We really have to go.

Nicolae sighs again and he begins tugging at the ring that King Erik the Victorious gave him.

Nicolae: I didn't want to do this to you guys because you've been so nice to me and all, but I feel I have to tell you the truth.

He takes the ring off and becomes a big, ole fatty.

Kadnika Sisters: Gasp!
Nicolae: Yeah, I'm not really that pretty. Until I put it back on, I'm going to be like this.

Nicolae hands his ring to one of the sisters.

Zaraka: Well, when you guys are done, come back this way and we'll play.

All the sisters disappear into the walls and floor and we continue on our way.

Ogre-Rey: You know, you're going to have to stay this way until we get to the other side of the dungeon.
Nicolae: This did cross my mind, yes.

We trudged through three rooms that looked exactly the same, they were fifty-by-fifty with the corners cut out, and they each had four 12-foot tall columns or cylinders in them that didn't reach the 20-foot tall ceiling (we fought the fungus creatures in the first of these rooms). In the third room, to our west, an ogre and a Winter Wolf stood; to our north, two ogres and a giant stood, and to our east, another giant. We quickly turned around to in an attempt to fight in a more defensible position and saw that there were trolls and ogres coming out of the eight columns-that-did-not-reach-the-ceiling.

And then we panicked.

Ogre-Rey looked at Thorbjorn's map and said there were secret doors on either side of the small corridor in between the first and second rooms so we all tried to get back there in order to get to these secret doors. Ogre-Rey threw up a Wall of Fire to block the creatures from the first room, but an ogre managed to get through anyway. On the other side, Edward read a Wall of Thorns scroll and put one of those in the first room to block those creatures. Now, we were trapped with an ogre from the first room, and the three ogres and one troll from this room. Edward, Ivan, Anna, Wong, and Thalia all started battling the assorted creatures while Ogre-Rey worked the secret doors. Sickeningly, he realized he'd read the map wrong. There are no secret doors here. There is a corridor on either side of this small ten-by-ten corridor, but it went under where he was currently standing. What he thought were markings for secret doors were actually markings for staircases. He didn't have long for self-abnegation, thought, as suddenly a giant and a flying ogre crashed through the Wall of Thorns. Ogre-Rey took a defensible position and fought them.

Once the giant crashed through, Edward told Thalia to shoot a fire arrow into the Wall of Thorns in order to make it another Wall of Fire that would last longer than Ogre-Rey's. She did so, and nothing else came through it. Ogre-Rey Lightning Bolted the giant dead, but the flying ogre escaped. The ogres in the room were all killed, along with Reynaldo's ogre body, but that pesky, regenarative Troll stayed around until the Ogre-Rey's Wall of Fire came down because a giant stuck his magical sword in it. Suddenly, there were two more giants, two more ogres, and a Winter Wolf to worry about.

Jean-Claude: Parley!

The giants stand in the doorway, and the one with the sword looks at Jean-Claude.

Giant: Parley? Fine, lay down your weapons and prepare to die. We'll make it quick.
Jean-Claude: No, I don't think so. You see, we can bring down this entire mountain on all of our heads.
Giant: Why would you do that? You'd die too.
Jean-Claude: As you said, we're going to die anyway.

There is murmuring from the assembled giants and ogres. Anna used this time to cast Hear Heartbeat and get a count on the assembled Jotens to make sure we're dealing with number we think we're dealing with. We are, but she also heard the heartbeat of a human over to the giants' side. Nicolae, Wraithformed and Polymorphed, went to check out who the human was and saw Maka Ripo, kind of trembling. Nicolae returned with the news.

Giant: Which one of you can bring the mountain down?
Jean-Claude: Don't you worry about that. Here are the terms: you let us go past you so we can find the man we came looking for and then we're going to leave.
Giant: What man? There are no men down here... well, except for you guys.
Jean-Claude: There is one other, and we're looking for him.
Giant: What about all the giants you killed?
Jean-Claude: You ambushed us. We merely defended.
Reynaldo (aside): How often do you think we can play that card before somebody just cuts out our tongues?
Giant: Defended!? You attacked us head on! You came to the front of the mountain, tricked most of our forces away, and then attacked us!
Jean-Claude: No, we came to the front door to ask you to let us in to look for a man, and you attacked us.
Giant: ...Which one of you can bring down the mountain?
Jean-Claude: I'm not going to tell you that.
Giant: I think it's you.
Jean-Claude: Well, it's not, but go ahead and believe that.
Giant: Kill him first.

And then we're fighting again. Jean-Claude reads off the Summon Shadows scroll and summons three shadows to fight. Anna, Ivan, and Stepanova fought against the two giants, the troll, and the Winter Wolf, respectively. The Shadows helped out Anna, as did Maka Ripo, who immediately backstabed a giant (he cannot help himself). The two ogres tripped over Shara's Trip spell and knocked themselves out for awhile, thankfully. Edward gave Nicolae the REd Stone and told him to fly to the lava and blow it up, because this was it.

Stepanova was knocked down by the Winter Wolf and Anna killed it in turn. Reynaldo tried to Magic Jar the two giants and failed. He ended the spell and decided to instead cast the Imprisonment scroll. Then the Wall of Thorns-cum-Wall of Fire in the back came down too, and there were two more ogres entering the fray. It took Reynaldo a few tries, but he finally touched the Giant with the sword and he disappeared. The remaining giant as well as two ogres fled when they saw this happen, leaving only the troll and two ogres. The summoned shadows held them off and we all ran off back the way we came, leaving Maka Ripo to explain his actions to his Joten captors. Later, Nicolae joined us and told us that farther down the corridor, there are pits in the floor where large crustaceans dwell, and a Frost Giant even farther down.

We go and hide in the Quartz Room, hiding all of our light stones. We try to rest, but about ten minutes later, something kicks the door in. It's the Troll and the Ifrit. We shine our light stones and blind the Ifrit, who immediately disappears and runs away. Reynaldo Magic Jars the Troll and we all run back to the Scorpion room. Reynaldo stands outside of the door while everyone else sleeps as far back as possible in the room.

About ten minutes later, the Ifrit shows up.

Ifrit: Hey, what happened? I got blinded and couldn't see anything.
Troll-Rey: I got blinded too. They ran past me.
Ifrit: What happened to your light stone?
Troll-Rey: They- uh, they took from off my neck, you know, when they ran past me.
Ifrit: Are you alright?
Troll-Rey: Yeah, yeah, I've just been, you know, stumbling in the dark, and that kind of sucks.
Ifrit: Yeah. Well, what do you want to do? Keep searching, or go back?
Troll-Rey: We should, uh, we should probably go back.
Ifrit: They're gonna be pissed.

The Ifrit led the way and Troll-Rey followed. Nicolae grabbed Reynaldo's gem and flew after him, hiding in his hair. At the point where a staircase goes down and the floor becomes covered in water, an Elven woman appears. She is double-weilding and says, "All right, this is it, then." The Ifrit immediately disappears, and Troll-Rey rushes the woman, but then jumps out of the body so that the Troll is disoriented. After a titanic one-on-one battle, the woman kills the troll with a lightning blast from her long sword, but almost dies in the process. Nicolae steps out of the shadows and introduces himself and his intentions. She says her name is Nenufar.

Nicolae: I've got friends. We can help you.
Nenufar: Wait, he'll just regenerate. We have to burn him.

Nicolae produces a flint and steel and a flask of oil and lights the body on fire. The two of them hobble back to the Scorpion Room.

Nenufar: Do you know the Moors? Raheesh?
Nicolae: Yes, actually. They teamed up with Orm.

Nenufar stops short.

Nenufar: Are they here? Are you harboring them? Nicolae: Oh, we don't like them or anything. We just can't kill them. They left with Orm before we got into this mountain. Why, how do you know them?
Nenufar: I've been following them for a long time. I chased them through Tunisia, Malta, the Black Forest, the Marshan Veldt, the Orkneys, Gotland, and now Kebnegard.
Nicolae: Why? Did they destroy your village too?
Nenufar: "Too?" No, but that doesn't surprise me. They are searching for the Glitter Gates, and I want to know why.

At this point, they'd gotten near enough the Scorpion Room that Reynaldo could shift back to his body. He came out and met them.

Reynaldo: They asked me about the Glitter Gates. They want to know where elves go when they're old. They want to find desperately enough that they'll raze entire villages.
Nenufar: They razed yours?
Reynaldo: Yes.
Nenufar: I need to stop them from reaching the Everbloom.
Reynaldo: They're headed there right now, with Orm.

She tries to get up, but falls back over.

Reynaldo: Woah, there. You're gonna have to wait on that, just like the rest of us.
Nenufar: No, I have to stop them.
Reynaldo: And we'll help you, but first, we all have to rest. Right now, no one is in any condition to go anywhere. We all have to rest up. Hopefully, that will actually happen tonight and we won't all die. Eye on the prize, you know.
Nenufar: My prize is the Moors.
Reynaldo: No, your prize is staying alive. After that, your prize is the Moors. Just like me.
Nenufar: You seem like trustworthy folk after all. Here, take this back.

She hands Nicolae back the Magic Jar gem.

Nenufar: I'm sorry I took that, but I needed some insurance, just in case. It looked important so I took it.

Nicolae gave it back to Reynaldo and Reynaldo muttered under his breath, "Why do always have to take my stuff? Gems, books, my fucking fingers?"

We rest for the night, while Ivan keeps watch.

My God, We Need to Rest Badly
Tuesday, May 15th, 988 AD

After resting, we heal those that can be healed and stone shape the entrance to our little hidey-hole and make it look like an unbroken part of the wall from the outside as best we can. We leave four mouse-sized holes at the bottom so that we don't run out of air and so that Nicolae can go out and scout if need be.

Anna casts Divination and God tells her we're running out of time and should stop dilly-dallying. We decide to try to rest again anyway because God's being kind of a dick.

End Chapter Twenty-Nine