The group stared at the young man for a minute. He was covered in coal dust, but shivering in the cold damp of the basement. “Othdan?” Gwen asked finally. “What are you doing here?” He was too young for wall duty, often spending his time doing odd jobs for merchants to make money for himself and his family.
The shivering young man sniffled. “I was looking for goods of my own to sell when I was attacked from behind by a half orc.”
Valbrand grinned. “Attacked from behind in the dead of the night? That could be an epic tale! Come friend, sit with me. I will feed you and you will tell me all about your adventure!”
Othdan took the dried meat the warrior offered. “Well, it’s not much of a story. I was upstairs and he came up behind me. I noticed him at the last second, so his hit wasn’t a clean knockout like he wanted, so we struggled for a bit. He was bigger than me, so he ended up pushing me down the hole above.” He pointed up to where there was a hole in the ceiling. “The fall knocked me out. When I came to, I was still trapped in here, with no way out. I thought he was going to kill me!” His eyes grew wide. “I hear voices! He’s come to finish me off!” He began twitching, dropping the cheese the big man was trying to hand him.
“It will be okay,” Qumeel said soothingly. “We are here, and we will get you out of this place.”
Kermit and Lucky Days were trying at the door. It was locked. “Can we not just go back the way we came?” Jazier asked, indicating the formerly secret passage.
“There could be treasure, or even a good fight beyond the door,” Valbrand suggested as he began helping. Between the three of them, they managed to open the door. Lucky Days immediately took off running. “Wait!” Valbrand called after her. “It’s not proper to try to get a share of the loot before we get there!”
“I hear rasping gurgling!” she called back as she continued rushing to investigate.
That changed everything. “A fight?!” Valbrand asked, drawing his axe and running after her. Somewhere behind him, the shoulders of a man in a pelican suit slumped as he sighed.
Lucky Days was running so quickly that the bear trap she triggered managed to miss grabbing her leg, and she sped into a room where she found a strange pair chatting. “I thought you only had one prisoner,” the troll accused. “Are you holding out on me?”
“I have no idea who that is,” the burly half orc answered as Valbrand and Kermit arrived behind Lucky Days.
“Then I can eat them,” the troll said, licking her lips as she charged.
Gwen rounded the corner and spotted the trio fighting the troll. “That’s a flood troll!” she called out. “Their skin hardens when it dries out. If you can douse her with water, she should be easier to hit!” Not sure what else to do, she conjured a magical snowball and hurled it. Once more, she found it difficult to hit the enemy since she was not used to aiming at foes that were too close to allies, and once more she over-corrected, missing. She would have to do something about that, and soon.
Kermit shredded the troll with his claws. She reacted to her grievous wounds by glaring at the half orc. “I knew Skreed shouldn’t have trusted you!” she screeched accusingly.
“It wasn’t me!” the half orc wailed as he began to flee.
“He’s getting away!” Valbrand said, bashing the troll with his shield.
“No he’s not!” Lucky Days answered. She sped off back into the room where Othdan had been trapped, then through the secret passage – hurdling over the still bubbling corpse of the gelatinous cube – and easily made it to the stairs ahead of the fleeing half orc. All this despite her path being more than twice as long as his. She was moving so quickly that her passing caused Glenn to spin in place three times.
He narrowly avoided vomiting in his pelican beak due to the dizziness.
“Stop!” the girl commanded, brandishing Sakura-chan.
“I’m just the messenger!” the troll wailed, backing into a corner to try to escape Kermit’s onslaught. He answered her by glaring. She could see her death in his glowing eyes.
Jazier walked past the fight and spotted something on the floor. It was another one of those white sword marks. Without even thinking about it, he began grumbling about the demons and started cleaning the mark. It took him several moments to notice that Qumeel – who had given chase after the fleeing – was standing just down the hall, his leg caught in a bear trap.
The wizard ducked reflexively as a bullet ricocheted past him. Gwen was still having trouble firing at enemies near her allies. Kermit didn’t even notice, tearing the troll in half and sending her entrails spraying around the room. Jazier sighed at the mess and went to go help Qumeel.
“Catch the other one alive!” Gwen told the others. “I’m sure Halgra will want to interrogate him.”
Kermit dashed past the trapped Qumeel and Valbrand charged through another passage, narrowly avoiding another bear trap. Meanwhile, the half orc desperately tried to get past Lucky Days, first poking her in the eyes then drinking a magic potion and becoming invisible just in time for Kermit and Valbrand to witness him fading from sight.
He had nowhere to go, so Valbrand activated his armband, covering the ground with ice to make it harder for the man to get past him and Lucky Days while Kermit struggled to locate and subdue him. Back in the hallway, Gwen and Jazier tried to free Qumeel. But the jaws of the trap were too strong, and Jazier ended up with nothing but cuts to his hands for their effort.
Qumeel took Jazier’s quarterstaff and tried to use it as a lever to pry open the trap, but it cracked and splintered at the effort. Jazier gave him a sympathetic look. “You better get used to living here, man,” he said, defeated.
Too stubborn to give up, Gwen pulled out some oil and began oiling the cleric’s leg while Jazier tried thinking as he contemplated the half-cleaned graffiti. “Don’t just stand there!” Gwen said to the wizard.
“I’m thinking!” He considered for a moment. “I’ve got it!” he said, turning. “I’ll use magic to create repeated sparks to heat the metal. It will expand and he’ll be better able to free himself.
“That would kill Qumeel.”
“Why?” he asked, before noticing the smell of the lantern oil. “Oh, right. Flammable.”
“Just take what’s left of the staff and pry while Qumeel and I try to pull his leg free.”
It took several moments of struggling, but eventually they managed to get the cleric free. His leg was pretty mangled by the jaws, but healing was his specialty and he was quickly able to deal with that. “I thank you,” he said. “Both of you.”
Othdan, who had watched the entire struggle, was not sure whether he should applaud their victory or console them for how long it had taken them to complete such a simple task. He could tell Gwen was pretty annoyed by it, and was already adding it to the list of inadequacies in her training that would need to be soon rectified.
From down the hall, they heard Valbrand roar in triumph. “That’s what I thought!” he shouted.
“What happened?” Gwen called out.
“We managed to knock out the bad guy,” Lucky Days called back cheerfully as Valbrand tied up the unconscious foe.
Kermit returned to where Qumeel and the others were. “Oh,” he said. “I see you’ve managed to get it. Sorry I left you here.”
“It’s fine,” Qumeel said. “I did not give up hope, though I cannot say the same for others.” He looked at Jazier as he said that, but the wizard didn’t notice, as he was once more engrossed in cleaning up graffiti.
Valbrand and Lucky Days returned, the large man holding a hog-tied unconscious half orc by his trussed up limbs. He would be waking up sore. That was for certain. “Now what?” he asked.
“There’s a door over there,” Lucky Days suggested. “Maybe there are more prisoners?”
“Or treasure,” Valbrand agreed.
They didn’t find prisoners, instead finding a small swarm of angry, shadowy rats. But Kermit tore them apart easily. They also found a rotten, sickly smell, which turned out to be emanating from the corpse of a dead half-orc dressed in strange robes.
“Those appear to be the robes of a priest of the orc blood god,” Qumeel noted.
“We should take the robes to Halgra,” Gwen said.
“And the body for burial,” Qumeel agreed.
“I’ll get a sack,” Kermit said, leaving the room to go find Glenn.
As they searched the body, they found a pouch full of gems. “That’s a lot of onyx,” Jazier noted.
“Does it mean anything?” Gwen asked.
The wizard shrugged. “Onyx is used as a component in animating corpses,” he answered.
“Perhaps they were planning on raising some corpses to do some digging for them,” Valbrand suggested. “It looks like they were doing a lot of digging in here.”
“I’m not sure if that was their plan, but you’re right about the digging, at least,” Gwen agreed. “Halgra will want to know about this.”
“Should we go back to Chief Chief then?” Lucky Days asked.
“Let’s do a quick sweep of the building to make sure no one else is hiding around here,” Gwen said. “Then we’ll go tell Halgra what we’ve found. I don’t like this. Something is going on.”
Kermit set the now full burlap sack on the ground. “Glenn, grab the sack. We’re heading out.”
The pelican suited man wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that they were leaving or disgusted that he would have to carry the decidedly rancid and squishy bag. But he made no sound, silently picking up the bag with a grimace as he followed after the others. At least Valbrand was carrying the prisoner, so his task was just gross, not ridiculously heavy this time.