Session Seventy-One - January 9, 2010

[Matt]

Ilvin 21, 731

They had seen him do it a dozen times before. Stout, recalcitrant doors, locked securely from within, were seldom a match for his stalwart frame applied with simple, brutal force. He had even crashed through an inconvenient wall on one occasion. So when Sir Baris Tyrestal shakes his head dismissively at Cekiya's collection of slender, jingling lockpicks, applies his shoulder to test the ironbound wooden door there in the sloping subterranean corridor at the entrance to the old dwarven mine, and then takes a few steps backward to the opposite stone wall, they all get out of his way. Sir Ewen of Ravinargh, handfire upraised in his left hand to illuminate the proceedings, stations himself to one side of the door while Cekiya slips back alongside Kaelyn of Aletta, shrugging indifferently.

The door smashes in with a resounding crash, Sir Baris arresting his headlong plunge perfectly, feet planted wide just beyond the threshold of the room. Necks crane to see around him into the space within: a glimpse of two large chests illuminated by the cold glow of handfire. A brief pause, as Sir Baris glances over his shoulder in smug triumph, and then his eyes grow wide. A splintering implosion detonates beneath his boots. The bottom drops out. Sir Baris plunges from view, arms pinwheeling vainly. An abrupt, crunching, metallic sound is punctuated by oaths and muffled groans.

Aghast, the group gathers at the edge of the gaping pit. They behold their friend sprawled eight feet below, impaled upon cruel metal spikes projecting upward. Sir Baris, cursing foully, reviling dwarves, thrashes spastically about as his friends call down advice. After some struggle, he manages to extricate himself painfully from the spikes. He reaches upward to Sir Ewen and Imarë, who lean over the edge of the pit to haul him upward. Sir Ewen grunts and buckles under the tremendous weight, however, his back strained, leaving Sir Baris to swing one-armed in the erratically plunging handfire until Imarë, grimacing, succeeds improbably in hauling him up and over the splintered ledge. Sir Ewen straightens painfully, scowling censoriously at the other knight as he regains his feet. Sir Baris, still spouting invective, gingerly inspects himself. An efficient Imarë, tut-tutting and shaking her head at the foolhardiness of humankind and the moral turpitude of dwarves, insists upon his unstrapping his armor so that she might inspect his injuries more directly. Sir Baris gasps as the elf works implacably, uncovering a cruel, seeping puncture to the belly, as well as a livid furrow between two ribs plowed by the second spike. The third, the brunt of its blow taken by the armor covering his hip, has left an already-purpling contusion.

Appalled at the damage, the elf curtly scolds the large knight, ordering him to lie down and hold still and to pray stop groaning. She closes her eyes briefly, holding her hands lightly over the worst of his wounds. This effort goes poorly, however, perhaps due to the malign influence of the ghastly dwarven environs, and the form of Imarë’s spell is inadequate to hold the principle, forcing her to struggle in brief panic to prevent a total release of energy into Sir Baris’ mangled abdomen. In this she succeeds, barely, and her companions are none the wiser save for her evident failure to alleviate Sir Baris’ rather vocal suffering. She resigns in fatigue to the mundane task of cleaning and dressing the knight’s wounds to the best of her ability, another attempt at elven healing only to be undertaken after sufficient rest.

In the midst of all this, Cekiya has leapt nimbly across the four-foot pit, which had formerly been concealed by jury-rigged wooden flooring, and lands on the stone surface covering the remainder of the triangular-shaped room. Sir Ewen’s handfire picks put an empty sconce upon the wall, one of the iron-bound wooden chests next to the pit, and the other one against the far wall. Beginning with the latter, Cekiya fiddles with her implements for a time, finding the lock slightly rusted, but she jiggers at it and is rewarded eventually with an audible click. Stepping to one side, Cekiya slowly raises the lid, uncovering to her gratification heaped bags within, all made of cloth save for one leather bag on top. Cekiya hears a satisfying jingling when first she picks this up, judges it to be the happy sound of gold, peeks inside to confirm her guess, and ascertains that the cloth bags are each full of silver. Cekiya then attempts to pick the lock on the second chest, which is located at the very edge of the pit, necessitating her crawling atop the lid of the chest to reach the lock. Suspended there, head depending downward, legs straddled athwart the chest, she works for a time in increasing frustration, unable to get the stubborn lock open in spite of, to her mind, flawless technique. Becoming petulant, giving up, she nimbly spins atop the chest, kicking the lock and pirouetting to the floor in one liquid movement, evoking an involuntary gasp from Kaelyn who disbelieves how the small girl avoided sharing Sir Baris’ fate for her audacity. Extending senses into the lock, Sir Ewen pronounces it rusted solid. They replace the lid on the first chest and, finding Sir Baris well taped up by Imarë, Cekiya takes point and they return up the corridor to the long, oval-shaped dwarven hall.

At the head of this hall, immediately to their right as they enter, the spiral staircase Cekiya had explored winds upward. Forgoing this option in favor of canvassing the present floor, they cross the narrow span of the hall and select the first wooden door to the left of the staircase, deciding to work their way downward along that wall to the foot of the hall, where a corridor can be dimly seen stretching into blackness. This first door is made of wood, adorned with a handle and integral lock, which they all contemplate for a silent moment until Kaelyn, eyes rolling heavenward, reaches for the handle and opens the door, it being in point of fact unlocked. They all file cautiously into the room, a small irregularly shaped semi-round chamber with a brazier set about six feet in from the door, the rear wall being a couple of feet beyond that. Two curtains or faded tapestries are suspended to either side of the room, and a grate is inset into the floor just in front of the brazier. Sir Ewen strides past Kaelyn, draws aside one of the curtains with his sword, and finds an empty bathtub, dwarvenly proportioned, concealed by the tapestry. Beyond the other curtain, they find a similar tub.

Proceeding to the next door along the wall, Kaelyn does the honors and Sir Ewen provides illumination. Four small dwarven bunk beds line the walls of a chamber about twenty feet long by eight feet deep . A chest can be discerned in the upper right-hand corner of the room, with a second chest located between two of the bunks. Cekiya examines each of these, but is unable to open either with her hooked picks. Kaelyn, in a moment of dilatory inspiration, recalls the prybar the group had troubled to obtain prior to commencing exploration of the mine. Sir Ewen, chagrined, applies the crowbar to one chest and the lid pops open after minimal effort. Clothing, personal items, beard combs, a pewter flute, and a purse are found. The last item is full of Khuzan pennies. Sir Ewen tosses the purse to Kaelyn, who is startled but nimbly catches it. Sir Ewen easily pries opens the other chest, uncovering a silver icon of a humanoid individual of some sort, another purse, and a dwarven hand axe. Sir Ewen hands the axe to Sir Baris, while Kaelyn peers closely at the icon, which she identifies as a depiction of Sereniel, the semi-divine servant of Siem to whom the Khuzan pray. Sir Ewen looks in the purse, finding more dwarven silver pennies.

They exit this room and proceed to the door further along the left-hand wall, this one adjacent to the corridor at the foot of the hall. Again, this wooden door is outfitted with a lockable handle. Cekiya tries the door and finds it unlocked. She gently opens the door, Sir Ewen's handfire shining upon a barrel on the far side of the room, and then upon a second barrel, an anvil, and then all the way on the right-hand side a set of bellows. The group files cautiously in and inspects these sundry items, finding the bellows dry-rotted and some tools along the left-hand wall rusted. The barrels are empty. Incongruously, the iron anvil appears to be in pristine condition, gleaming like it is brand new. “That's strange,” Cekiya announces in her abstracted, singsong manner, tilting her head as she stares at the offending anvil. Sir Ewen, concurring, fails in his attempt to object read the anvil, and Imarë tries to sense it in her own fashion but is stymied as well.

Bypassing the corridor at the foot of the hall for the time being, the group continues working its way methodically along the wall, opening the next door over from the corridor. Sir Ewen peers in, looking to the right where nine or ten crates stand in various states of decay amongst the shadows cast by his handfire. A staircase leads upward from the far wall. Sir Ewen checks the floor to ensure that it is solid stone and steps inward. Little is found of interest in here, and the group decides to forego the staircase for the time bring and returns to the hall, moving past a stout winch of some sort set into the wall and on to the remaining door on this side, located immediately to the right of the corridor from which they had entered. This wooden door has no lock on its handle, and leads to a room roughly six by eight feet in dimension which is completely empty.

Returning to the corridor at the foot of the hall, then, they find that it slopes downward about twenty feet and then turns right. The lone wall sconce at the turn beckons their attention, and Kaelyn pulls upon it experimentally but nothing happens. Imarë editorializes about dwarven notions of floor plans, indulging in a denigration of the Khuzan by referring to them as rats. This prompts Sir Baris to furrow his brow. He, having impersonated an urban ratcatcher on more than one occasion, forgets his injuries for a moment and muses aloud that they have not encountered a single rat in the entirety of the dwarven warren thus far. Kaelyn, seizing upon this theme, concurs that they have not seen rats, nor mice, nor moles, nor voles. Cekiya chuckles bizarrely. This gives them all pause, but does little to dampen their adventuresome ardor, and they continue down the corridor another five feet until it turns to the left again. At that point it begins to slope slightly upward, running another twenty feet until a final left-hand turn brings them further along an upward incline to where the corridor opens up ahead into a large chamber cloaked in shadows. Just prior to this chamber, off the corridor to their left, a staircase ascends into the darkness. They confer briefly, and decide to forego the staircase for the chamber beckoning ahead of them.

The darkness reluctantly retreats as Sir Ewen's handfire picks out some details at the entrance to this apparently larger chamber: rough stone floor, a glimpse of barrels to the left, stacked along a dimly perceived wall, receding into the gloom. Cekiya slips ahead of Sir Ewen, peering around the corner to the right, where she makes out a small, shod foot of someone lying prone immediately to the right of the entrance. Cekiya steps inward, gesturing Sir Ewen forward. As the light from the handfire blossoms behind her, driving back the darkness, Cekiya makes out a slender ankle, a bare calf, the lower part of a nearby barrel, and then a second foot comes into view, its shoe kicked to the side. Raking gashes crusted with dried blood run up both legs. A young teenage girl lies face down on the stone, her peasant smock rucked awkwardly around her thighs from her collapse. Beyond the body, the chamber extends to mounds of indistinct rubble cloaked in shadows. Cekiya turns the girl over as they gather around behind her, considering the corpse while casting wary glances around them. The body is indeed one of the twin girls, her eyes gouged out, bloody tears streaking her contorted face. Livid gouges along her forearms suggest a vain attempt to fend something off. Turning, they locate the other twin as well amongst the barrels to the left of the entrance, propped in a seated position, her empty eye sockets gazing in the general direction of her mutilated sister.

Beyond the first corpse, better illuminated now, a fissure in the stone floor can be seen cutting across the length of the chamber. Beyond, half of the large room slopes downward into massive ruin, piles of rubble and broken stone everywhere. Vats and braziers, as well as the numerous barrels, suggest to their minds a dwarven distillery. Imarë, calling softly to the others, points out a collection of smallish, triangular prints on the blood-splattered stones. Sir Ewen raises his hand for silence, handfire held aloft. Everyone listens as hands move silently for weapons. Nobody hears anything, but Imarë briefly glimpses a pair of feral eyes in the mountain of debris. She draws an arrow and covers the rubble, whispering directions to the others, who scan the lower part of the ruined chamber for movement. Kaelyn steps to the fore after catching Sir Ewen's eye. She raises her hands and begins to intone a spell in a soft, strange cadence. Sir Ewen and Imarë hover just behind, scanning the rubble for movement, while Sir Baris and Cekiya, further back and just within the entrance, step away from the corpse of the second sister and bring axe and dagger respectively to hand.

After a moment, a dark icy fog emanates in an expanding cone from Kaelyn's mouth toward the pile of rubble. The others take an involuntary step backward, deeply impressed. After a moment, Imarë spies a swift creature the size of a small dog, lizardlike, with a large segmented tail, darting away from the area of the fog to the left. She looses her shaft but the arrow goes astray, the bounding creature lost amongst the shifting shadows cast by the handfire. Behind her, Sir Baris cries out.

A second creature of similar appearance has leapt upon Sir Baris from behind, scrambling with powerful legs over his armored shoulder. Its forelegs and powerful, beaked jaws slash at the knight in a frenzied blur. The startled knight spins frantically in place, arms flailing as he swats and grabs futilely at the ravening creature, attempting to fling off the slippery frenzy of knotted limbs and bobbing, crested head. Claws like hooked scalpels scramble for purchase as the beast’s craning neck and snapping beak attempt to gouge their way toward Sir Baris’s face, its carrion breath filling his nostrils. The wounded knight screams, unable to get a hold of the creature. Cekiya, gliding swiftly in, times Sir Baris’s spin with a brief hesitation, then lashes upward with her foot, a snapping impact to the creature’s head barely missing Sir Baris’s windpipe. The creature flies off toward the barrels, an audible crack sounding as it hits the ground, broken, a deep concavity visible on the side of its head.

Several more, however, are rushing in toward Sir Ewen and Imarë from the right of Kaelyn’s fog, skittering claws scrambling across the rubble, tails thrashing in agitation. The lead creature launches itself, hind legs propelling it airborne at them with shocking speed. Sir Ewen steps forward and extends his right hand, a visible concussive wave of energy catching the leaping creature at its apogee. It explodes while incoming, bits of bone and gristle and ropes of shining blood twisting for an instant in the handfire’s light. The second gets through, however, jumping straight for Imarë, who twists and sidesteps out of its way as it crashes into the stone wall behind her. It thrashes in a snake-like convulsion to its haunches, coils, and leaps again.

Behind them, near the entrance, another creature is scrambling in from the shadows behind Sir Baris, dashing toward Cekiya. It springs right at her, but she ducks and rolls and regains her feet with her own lizard-like agility, grinning madly as the creature wheels and squares off opposite her, its small dragon-head twisting and snapping and hissing. Cekiya, crouching, hisses back at it. Sir Baris, horrified, doubled over from painful exacerbation of his previous injuries, backpedals, casting wildly about for more of the creatures, arms raised defensively to shield his face, hand axe brandished in a white-knuckle grip. Across the room, where the handfire glows brightly, he catches a brief glimpse of another of the monsters flanking Kaelyn, skirting the cone of eldritch fog still emanating from her mouth. He cries a warning in her direction. In the gyrating light he can see Sir Ewen pivot and blast at the creature beyond Imarë, but it dodges with lightning speed and the stone wall behind it ejects a small cloud of dust and rock shards. Imarë, backpedalling toward Sir Ewen, draws her longknife, its glittering point tracing arabesques in the cold air before her.

But then Baris’s attention returns to Cekiya, who has flicked her throwing knife with deadly accuracy at the creature crouching opposite her. The cruel blade has imbedded itself in the creature’s face, haft quivering, causing the beast to thrash its long skull irritably. It coughs with a barking snarl, then charges them, shrieking. Recalled briefly to his knightly duty by a closing foe, Sir Baris steps forward and cleaves downward with his hand axe. The creature leaps sinuously past this blow, however, suddenly inside his axe’s reach, and a savage blur of lizard limbs and splayed razor claws again attaches itself to his chest and upper arms, teeth gnashing wildly. Sir Baris convulsing, brings his hands up. The deep-set lizard eyes widen, the narrow head bobbing uncomfortably close to his face, the haft of Cekiya’s knife protruding grotesquely from its skull. The beaked jaws stretch wide, snapping viciously against his mailed shoulder, its hind legs pumping to drive it upward from below. Sir Baris tries to grapple at it, his bellow rising an octave in panic, but getting a grip on the wriggling, slashing limbs proves impossible. In a flash the ravening jaws are closing upon his neck, sinking viselike through leather into tender flesh and tendon, and the creature thrashes its head back and forth as it tastes the sudden pulse of his warm blood. Sir Baris’s world becomes a nightmare of raking claws and foul stinking breath as the beast’s jaws lock deeper upon his throat. He loses his balance and topples backwards.

Meanwhile, the creature hesitating around Kaelyn’s cone of icy fog scrambles abruptly inward toward Imarë, who slashes at it with a fluid counterstroke. The creature lunges past like a demonic projectile, claws and yawning jaw affixing itself to her shoulder and working in a savage blur against the elven mail as it clings to her. Imarë stabs with her longknife but the beast seems impervious, slashing at her as its enraged screeching cuts the air. The other beast, which had dodged Sir Ewen’s second blast, leaps powerfully past him and lands on the spot from where the one now affixed to Imarë had launched itself. Kaelyn, responding rapidly to this development, moves her head to sweep the fog to her right, enveloping the creature in her icy pall where it crouches a few feet before her, its haunches contracting for another propulsive leap. The creature no longer visible, swallowed up by the black fog, Sir Ewen nevertheless extends his right arm toward where it had crouched an instant before and lets loose, the crumpling ripple of his Deryni blast inflecting through the Kaelyn’s cone of icy darkness.

Cekiya, poised above Sir Baris with another dagger in her hand, considers how she might stab the thrashing creature without inadvertently plunging her blade into the hapless knight’s jugular. She wishes, frankly, that he would just pass out, or at least stop moving or something, because with his big arms flailing about and his clumsy feet hammering against the stone floor and his ungainly armored torso rolling and bucking so that she has to dance to and froe to prevent herself from tripping, he is just making things much too difficult. But Sir Ewen wouldn’t want her to stab Sir Baris, she supposes, so she hops again to one side and tries to ignore all of the loud bellowing coming from the fallen knight. She studies the knotted, muscular lizard with its thick thrashing tail. It remains clamped by its jaws to the knight and is worrying its head back and forth at Sir Baris’s leather-clad neck like some rabid terrier. Its clutching, clawed forelegs are trying to grip the sides of Sir Baris’s skull, all the better to haul itself upward toward his eyes, which she notes happen to be as wide as saucers now in the struggle. She sighs in irritation. Then, like a raptor falling upon its prey, her dagger slashes downward and pinions the creature’s skull, the blade driven clean through one side and out the other, her dagger a mate now to the previously thrown knife, which has remained imbedded in the beast’s face the whole time. Triumphant, she steps back and rips the whole squirming mess upward and away from Sir Baris, holding it out at arm’s length to consider the creature as it convulses and subsides. The dipping handfire from across the chamber dimly catches the crested, impaled skull, the deep-set lizard eyes rolling and glittering, the serrated razor teeth behind the cruelly hooked beak amply flecked with Sir Baris’s bright blood, mixing now with its own darker, draining ichor. Cekiya wrinkles her nose in distaste and flings it away, daggers and all, toward the stacked barrels. Down below, at her feet, Sir Baris still writhes, gasping for breath and beating at the air feebly. Cekiya wheels and steps lightly away from him, unconcerned now at his plight, keen for further sources of entertainment.

Imarë, halfway across the chamber toward the ruined side, is struggling with a vicious creature of her own, avid for its taste of elven eyes. Imarë tries vainly like Sir Baris to get a hold on the creature, its slashing claws and teeth assailing her mailed bosom, the curving beak clamping through the byrnie to draw blood. It continues with its slashing fangs, working at the mail until Imarë does manage to get a hold of it, throwing it off her by the tail. Kaelyn, aware of Imarë’s struggle, reacts swiftly. She swivels again, arms outstretched, her mouth still vomiting the thick black blizzard before her, sweeping it sideways to swallow up the creature before it can recover from the elf’s throw. As Kaelyn turns her pall upon this last creature, the shattered corpse from Sir Ewen’s previous blast is uncovered upon the stone, lizard parts and gore glittering with an icy rime. Sir Ewen projects a concussion of power one last time into the midst of Kaelyn’s spell, then steps back and nods to her. Kaelyn slumps slightly, closing her mouth as the spell dissipates. The shattered remnants of the final creature are revealed: a mass of still-pulsating organs, broken joints and splintered bones, ropes of intestine, the remains of an exploded ribcage.

They scan the chamber for further movement, but all has fallen silent save for their labored breathing. Sir Baris attempts to climb to his feet but staggers and collapses. The others gather around and assist him. Imarë and Kaelyn both identify the creatures as “vlasta,” the eaters of eyes. They are one of the Ivashu, Ilvir’s fatherless multitude. They suspect that perhaps a dozen or two of the creatures are more usual in a group. Cekiya finds an extinguished torch behind the barrels where the one twin is propped. “Curiosity,” she pronounces, “killed the kittens.” Kaelyn shudders and takes the torch. Cekiya retrieves her daggers from the skewered vlasta.

Imarë binds Sir Baris’s wounds and attempts to heal him again, managing this time to completely heal the least of his three injuries. Sir Baris, still visibly shaken, hefts his axe, throws it overhand at the barrels in a weak display of bravado. He looks, to the others, rather pale and unsteady.

Taking stock, and considering the large distillery chamber more carefully, they avoid the fractured far end of the room with its chaos of rubble and attend to a corridor on the left-hand wall beyond the barrels which had previously gone unnoticed. They follow this corridor about fifty feet as it slopes upward until it ends, intersecting with a second corridor running perpendicular to it. A short distance to the left, the corridor terminates in carved double doors. Turning right, the group follows the new corridor about one hundred feet, where bronze double doors stand with three bars securing them. Sir Ewen tries to extend senses but fails, so Kaelyn hauls on one door after the bars have been lifted. A slight puff of stale air escapes as it swings open, but they are confronted with a featureless wall of stone. Studying this closely for a moment, Imarë declares it to be the stone plug above the lake, viewed from the other side. Nobody argues with her. They double back to the other set of double doors, which refuse to budge in spite of their efforts. Sir Ewen extends senses and perceives three stout bars across the door on the other side, with a corridor continuing beyond a little further, as best as he can tell.

So they double back through the vlasta chamber and turn their attention to the staircase leading upward just outside the entrance to the distillery. They proceed up the stairs to a thirty foot long corridor which leads into the foot of the upper hall which Cekiya had glimpsed during her initial scouting. They see the long table surrounded with chairs that she had described, and dimly perceive the spiral staircase leading downward at the head of the hall. On the wall to their right, moth-eaten tapestries with happy scenes of dwarven life still hang, with a door-shaped opening nearer at hand. They enter a large storage area, featuring a well on the left-most wall and stairs ahead leading downward. A fireplace, a table, and two ovens line one wall; along another wall a table, and at the final wall an empty barrel. They return to the large dining hall, finding that the next opening toward the head of the hall leads down a corridor to a set of large bronze doors with triple bars. Kaelyn and Cekiya raise the triple bars, finding a long corridor, and themselves back where Sir Ewen had extended senses moments before from the other side. Back to the dining hall, with a locked door further up the wall adjacent to the spiral stairs. Cekiya fails to pick the lock, Sir Ewen extends senses into the lock but fails to succeed in manipulating the mechanism, which seems a little too rusted to move. Imarë, losing patience, kicks in the door, Sir Baris no longer up to the task. She peers at the stone floor before advancing into room, eager to avoid the knight’s earlier fate. A large, double four-poster bed stands against the right-hand wall, a dwarven–sized cradle nearby, and an iron-bound chest. Cekiya examines the padlocked chest, and almost succeeds in getting it opened. Sir Ewen resorts to the prybar, which finishes the job. Within they find a small book bound in pigskin with two clasps, a pleased Kaelyn pronouncing the interior script to be runic. A small bag underneath the book contains two gold crowns and thirty-one Khuzan pence – Sir Ewen hands the money to Sir Baris to hold, the knight being adjudged too weak to serve any more active purpose. Sir Baris solemnly announces, “I’ll secrete this,” and puts it under his armor. They all stare at him, and Kaelyn laughs aloud. They find nothing within the cradle.

They cross the dining hall to the first door on the left-hand wall, finding it unlocked. Inside, they find a four-poster Khuzan bed, two cradles, but no chests. Sir Baris, indignant, searches under the bed's mattress.

The next door, located at the middle of the left-hand wall, has no lock, and when opened reveals a rectangular room outfitted with four bunk beds and one chest with a lock. A vindicated Sir Baris finds the chest unlocked, full of dwarven clothing and a small bag. Kaelyn sarcastically asks Baris, "Do you want to secrete these too?" Sir Baris begins to laugh good-naturedly but then winces from his injuries.

Back in the dining hall, the next door before the corridor at the foot of the hall has a lock but is open. Within they find a room of similar proportions to the forge. Here, however, are two chairs in front of a fireplace, a small chest, a large four-poster bed, a larger chest, and a slightly moth-eaten tapestry on the wall depicting a battle of some sort. On the bed, arranged as if for a funeral, the remains of a human warrior in mail hauberk and helm lies in state, bastard sword clutched in its hands, scabbards for sword and dagger at its sides, boots, plate greaves above, and a large knight shield propped beside. Strands of black hair and skeletal remains suggest a considerable passage of time. Sir Ewen attempts to object read the corpse but fails. Cekiya, clearly more comfortable with rifling a corpse than her more reverent companions, finds on it's right-hand ring finger a gold signet ring incised with a stag's head. Sir Ewen object reads the signet ring but detects no dweomer. Cekiya next produces a gold necklace, with a gold-winged lion pendant of the Laranian demigod Mendiz, fished from beneath the armor covering the dead knight's breast. They examine the handsome pendant and consider the state of the corpse's strangely unblemished armor, pristine in spite of the evident span of time elapsed since this knight was lain to rest by his companions. In the midst of this conversation, Sir Ewen is distracted by the sight of the little Navehan priestess hauling with creepy, Cekiyan single-mindedness upon the deceased knight's leather boots, attempting to yank them free. This being too much, Sir Ewen goggles sternly at the unseemly desecration and clears his throat until she desists, shrugging indifferently and declaring the boots dry-rotted anyway. Sir Ewen shakes his head. The unlocked chest they find empty, while the padlock on other chest presents an impediment prompting Sir Ewen to ask Cekiya to open it up. She jimmies the lock for few moments with her picks until it yields a satisfying click. The others gather to peer inside, while Cekiya goes back to the boots. They find various items of Khuzan clothing of a finer grade than before, a small purse containing four gold crowns and twenty-six dwarven pennies, and a silver necklace. Also within is a small wooden box with a sloping lid containing within it numerous sheets of deteriorated vellum, several lumps of brittle red sealing wax, a gold seal adorned with a runic letter M, and a crystal bottle with a hinged silver cap containing the crusted remains of dried ink. A gold stylus with an engraved gold nib appears to be fabulously valuable. They collect the items which can be easily portaged away. Sir Baris briefly examines the knight shield, glancing uncertainly at the doorway, but then lays it back down self-consciously. Cekiya abandons the boots, the sole of one having come loose in her hands, scattering foot bones all over the stone floor.

Back down to the lower hall, they head through the corridor at the foot of the hall and down the long staircase to the left. Cekiya peers for vlasta tracks. When they reach the eventual bottom of the stairs, some twenty-five to thirty feet down, the group emerges into a short, eight foot long corridor opening into a large chamber. To the left is a large bin, to the right rusted tools are strewn: mattocks, pickaxes, and shovels. Ahead, running perpendicular to the corridor they just emerged from, a rail track runs off into a large tunnel drilled through the face of the rock to their left. One laden ore car sits upon the track. Sir Baris limps over to the cart, and looks off to the right where the track comes to an abrupt end a short distance down, the tunnel completely choked with rubble. Leftward, the tunnel continues into the distance as far as Sir Ewen’s handfire extends. Well, Sir Baris says hopefully, peering down the tunnel, I guess that does it. Sir Ewen just glances at him.

The rocks within the ore cart are veined throughout with a greenish color, which Kaelyn calls verdigris. When they all look rather blankly at her, she explains that this hue indicates oxidized copper, at which they all murmur to each with wise satisfaction and knowing looks. In the interest of scholarly experimentation, she impishly attempts to push the ancient cart a short distance along the track, but it immediately collapses after creaking only a few meager inches, its axels complaining and buckling from advanced age. Kaelyn, hands on hips, looks chagrined. Imarë, meantime, scans the ground for vlasta tracks, and after suitable examination reports none to be found. Sir Ewen then announces firmly that they will explore the tunnel. Sir Baris looks dubious, peering anxiously into the ragged hole extending into the blackness, suggesting with concern that he will likely be of little use to the group in his injured state. Sir Ewen insists nonetheless. Then Sir Baris seizes upon a notion, and suggests that he wishes to go back for the knight shield, the better to protect himself in the tunnel should things go awry. He remembers just where it is, and it will take him only a moment to nip back up and get it. Sir Ewen waves his hand impatiently. Kaelyn doubtfully proffers the used torch found near the barrels in the distillery, and Sir Ewen lights it with a slight gesture of his hand. The torch ignites with an impressive whoosh, and Sir Baris takes it and hurries back up the corridor while his friends await him by the rail.

The torch, in strange contrast to the eerie hardfire to which he had become accustomed in the previous hour, flickers and gutters and smokes annoyingly as Sir Baris climbs the long, cold, stone staircase. The sound of his friends’ voices fades, smothered by the encroaching gloom. The dancing flame casts shifting, occult shadows over his shoulder as he climbs, so Sir Baris has to glance back several times when he thinks he catches some alien movement out of the corner of his eye. He gulps, considers turning back, but steels himself, pressing onward. His boots echo hollowly on the stone as he backtracks, rehearsing the proper route over and over in his mind, and he carefully slides the hand axe free from his belt for good measure. He has begun to regret having left his friends below, but he calls to his mind the fine knight shield, and how much better he will feel with it on his arm. His belly and ribs aching, the lacerations on his neck a painful reminder of the nightmarish vlasta attack, he breathes deeply and settles his skittish nerves as he turns right at the head of the stairs and steps back into the main hall, with it's dark, domed vaults above, and spooky pillars and abandoned winch, its numerous doors and passages. He hurries doggedly to the head of the hall and climbs the spiral staircase, puffing and blowing noisily now as his energy flags. What in Sarajin’s name was he thinking, he asks himself, as his coughing torch sends long wicked shadows down the length of the upper dining hall, the endless table and countless abandoned chairs cloaked in darkness and sepulchral torchlight. Unbidden, his fickle mind briefly conjures an ethereal court of dead dwarven lords seated in their chairs, brittle iron beards down to their cold buckles, gnarled hands clutching their chair-arms, empty plundered eye sockets turning in unison to gaze reproachfully upon him, the interloper. He shudders, muttering to himself, blaspheming under his breath, and hurries past the empty chairs and the two closed doors down to the room near the foot of the hall where the old knight rests. Pushing the door creakingly inward, he breathes a vast sigh of relief as he finds everything within just as they had left it. Ignoring the reposeful knight, he transfers his dwarven axe to the hand already clutching the torch, picks up the knight shield, running his left arm through the strap, and turns back to the doorway.

The vlasta hits him chest-high, full on the shield, driving him powerfully backward. Sir Baris shrieks, his feet leaving the ground in fright before he ducks and crouches defensively, his heart thundering in his chest. He darts a quick glance around the shield at the horrible creature twisting and gathering itself in the doorway. Crying aloud, he thrusts his torch at it, but its rear legs uncoil and it whipsaws around the shield, smashing into his right shoulder. He drops the torch, attempting to grapple the creature while encumbered with the knight shield, his face straining and pulling away as the vlasta rears back again and again in the near-darkness, stabbing remorselessly downward with its hooked snout. He feels razor teeth sink into his right cheek, gnawing down on the flesh of his face. He stumbles heavily backward against the chest, swatting frantically with the dwarven axe. A part of his mind thinks to use the flat of the blade, but in his panic he cares not what the axe does, so long as it hurts the vlasta, gets it somehow away from him. He begins to topple backward over the lid of the chest, unbalancing, the macabre lizard face rearing above him in the meager light of the discarded, guttering torch, his own muffled voice babbling desperately for help, his vision going blurry and blackish-red. Then somehow, unbelievably, in the midst of all of the thrashing, he manages to solidly connect, and the vlasta flies away from him to the left, landing with a heavy thud somewhere on the floor. Shouting hoarsely in triumph, arms windmilling as he scrambles spastically to his feet, Sir Baris leaps forward and viciously stomps the creature on the head. He is rewarded with a satisfying crunch as his boot crushes it's skull. He stomps it again, and then again. Then he leaps backward, shuddering uncontrollably, looking wildly about him. He fumbles around, snatching up the torch, and waves it in the air a bit to get it to flare up again.

Sir Baris presses his back against the wall next to the door, gulping in ragged breaths. The dead knight still lies upon the bed, undisturbed. Blood from Sir Baris’s lacerated cheek runs trickling down the side of his neck and into his armor, mixing with the clammy sweat which coats his entire body. He wipes his face with his tunic’s sleeve, wincing at the stinging of his shredded face, and peeks around the doorway, forcing himself to decelerate his breathing. He listens for a long moment, and hears nothing but his own galloping heartbeat. The long table and chairs are barely visible in spite of the torch, the high vaulted ceiling unseen somewhere above. Holding the knight shield up, cringing beneath its cover, he slips out into the dwarven hall. Hugging close to the stone wall, hiding beneath the safety of the shield, he begins to tiptoe as fast as he can toward the spiral stairs, some fifty feet away.

As he draws abreast of the middle door, somewhere out of the darkness ahead, claws skitter across the stonework. Up near the head of the long table, a rapid scratching sound like hooks scraping across slate causes him to halt and peer from behind the shield. A dim figure, limned in flickering red, crouches upon the table like a gargoyle, moving, pawing, unlimbering. Somewhere behind him, perhaps from beneath the table, a second vlasta hisses and spits, hidden by the shifting shadows. Someone starts to scream shrilly in the chamber, a high skirling sound which echoes insanely up into the dome above, and Sir Baris Tyrestal, reversing direction in mindless panic, cowering beneath the shield, crabwalks as fast as he can for the sanctuary of the knight’s room. Almost home free, the door only a few precious strides ahead, he realizes abstractly that the person screaming is himself, and wonders at the strangeness of it all.

Then the knight shield explodes.

Down below, loitering by the rail tracks, Imarë Taërsi furrows her brow and gestures for silence. They all pause, ears straining, having in these past moments begun to lightly debate as to whether they should bestir themselves to see about Sir Baris, grown dilatory in his self-imposed errand. But only the elf can hear the distant screams. “It is He,” Imarë announces finally, turning to the others, drolly paraphrasing their companion. “Sir Baris.” Sir Ewen, his sword ringing from his scabbard, orders all to rush posthaste to Sir Baris’s aid. Leading the way, handfire held high and Cekiya easily keeping pace at his side, Sir Ewen charges athletically up the long stairway. Imarë, protective of a more slow-footed Kaelyn, stays abreast of the little mage while urging her ever onward, Sir Ewen’s precious light dwindling above them on the steep staircase. The handfire disappears for a moment as Imarë and Kaelyn labor up the final steps, scramble down the short corridor, and cut to the right into the lower hall. Beyond the two stout pillars, at the other end, they can see Sir Ewen and Cekiya attain the spiral stairs, the knight calling behind for them to hurry. They dash across the hall, clamber up the dizzying steps, and emerge into the dining hall in time to see Sir Ewen and Cekiya advancing implacably on two retreating vlasta. The beasts disappear, fleeing down the corridor at the foot of the hall which leads downward to the entrance to the distillery.

Sir Baris, his voice having dropped by about two octaves now, emerges tentatively from the old knight’s room, peering weakly about, and wonders in a forced conversational tone why it has taken them so long to arrive. He sadly displays the splintered remains of the knight shield, points out the vlasta with the crushed skull, and explains how only the grimmest resolve has seen him through the ordeal. He wonders, stretching his luck, if Imarë might have a moment to attend to his fresh injuries.

Back downstairs then to the rail track, incredibly, with Sir Ewen driving them all forward down the tunnel. He causes his handfire to levitate off his left palm and precede them about ten feet down the track. They walk for a time, the tunnel becoming more natural and roughhewn, sturdy posts at regular intervals supporting the coarse, lowering roof. The tunnel curves to the right, then back to the left, sloping gently downwards; as they come out of the curve the rail track continues on straight ahead. To the right, sloping away at an angle behind them, a second tunnel joins the main one. Choosing to explore this, they enter this side tunnel but immediately find that, ten feet down, illuminated by the handfire, the path is blocked by a mass of large, greenish mushrooms with yellow spots. Cekiya recalls aloud, with a strange smile, the mushrooms that ate Imarë’s boots near Bejist. Agreeing to avoid these, they return to the main track, following it further down. But soon they come upon more mushrooms to either side further up the track, so Sir Ewen calls a retreat and they all return to the dwarven complex.

Taking stock, they confer for a time and decide to bring out of the mine the most valuable of the treasures they have found, and to seal the complex if possible until Sir Baris should be sufficiently recovered for them to return in force. This involves returning to the room of the old knight, as his unblemished armor clearly exceeds in value the other less cumbrous items that might otherwise be conveyed hence. Convincing Sir Baris that the vlasta appeared distinctly ill-disposed to confront the group in force, at least outside their probable lair in the distillery, they troop back upstairs and collect the armor from the indifferent knightly skeleton lying upon the bed. Mail hauberk, mail leggings, plate kneecops and greaves, a plate three-quarter helm, and a bastard sword are all duly collected. Considering for a moment with beetled brow the smaller of the knight’s two scabbards, now conspicuously empty, Sir Ewen snaps his fingers impatiently at Cekiya and she produces, from within the folds of her clothing, the dagger, which is added to the group’s booty. The bulk of the items are loaded into the small chest, which can be managed by two people, and Sir Ewen carries the bastard sword.

Back down they all trundle, negotiating the spiral staircase awkwardly with their plunder, to the entry corridor and the room with Sir Baris’s spiked pit. Everything is as they left it, and Sir Ewen pries the chest near the pit open with the crowbar. Within they find neatly stacked, greenish ingots of copper, perhaps eighty bars. Copper, Kaelyn points out pedantically, is worth about one-sixteenth the value of silver. They therefore leave the ingots, drop twenty bags of silver pennies they can not carry carefully down the pit, where some burst asunder, lay the broken door over the pit, and carry their burdens down the corridor to the bronze double doors.

Sir Ewen calls upon Kaelyn and Imarë to assist him with an energy pool, and then attempts to raise Wards upon the doors. He fails in his initial attempt to call upon the four corners, explaining to the others that “they didn’t balance,” and he takes about fifteen minutes to rest. At his command, they again join in an energy pool, Sir Ewen traces and balances the fours corners, and successfully sets the Wards, invoking that all members of the party may pass, and no one else. As Sir Ewen stands before the doors, arms wide, head erect, a shimmering glow of energy encompasses the doorway, settles, and then fades from their vision. He turns to them, nodding, satisfied, and they hurry away into the dark winter’s night.