“You sicken me.” Bruq bleats with a disgusted face and he spits in front of his feet. “To do such a thing is beyond cruel. It’s inhumane, but you are no man, of course. You are a beast, a spawn of an evil dragon that ran away from his master.”
Not impressed by the words of the satyr, Dargothoth looks back with an uninterested gaze, infuriating him even more.
“I don’t talk about how the smell of your fur sickens me, satyr, so why should you talk about what sickens you?”
Lyssa presses her hand firm on Bruq’s chest to stop him from dashing into combat. His eyes always betray his intentions.
“This is not what I had in mind when I asked you to tell us who signed that letter. Maybe you should refrain from sharing other information before I don’t want to hold him back anymore.”
The priest looks at her and somewhere deep down in his heart he thinks he feels something resembling sadness. Is it because she expresses her distaste as well? But when that thought crosses his mind, he reminds himself that he shouldn’t care about what these worms think of him.
“You should be the speaker”, he says to Lyssa, fully ignoring all the things they said to him. “If we need to draw a map of the place, I would rather have a pirate captain be the cartographer than anybody else from this gathering of oddities. Wouldn’t you agree?”
As easily as she became upset with him, her mood changes quickly, being rather flattered by his remark.
“Well, I guess that’s true”, she says and she holds her head up high. “Can you give me the rest of the stuff, Oslando?”
The half-elf hands it over and looks at her and the cleric. “By your logic it would mean Bruq, Mero and I will be the explorers. I guess two of us are good at tracking.”
He turns and looks at Mero. The puppet tilts his head to make eye contact with Oslando.
“I guess that means you don’t think I’m good at exploring and I won’t disagree. I did find my way out of a forest during a blizzard and navigated myself all the way to Crimson Gulch after that descendant of Thrones came to visit me, but I see where you’re coming from. If you go in there first, I’ll go in next after you think you’ve sprung too many traps.”
They both seem to agree with the plan and look at each other.
“Who wants to go first?” Lyssa smiles and she holds the quill in an elegant manner.
“So, before you start moving, you’ve got to tell me everything you see and feel, okay?” She repeats the instructions for the second time and Bruq nods understandingly. “Tell me when you turn, so I know which way you’re walking. If you don’t have any questions, we can start.”
He shakes his head and walks up to the door.
“Just stand on the tile in front of the door, right?”
Before he receives an answer, he is already teleported away. The last things he sees are the cyan blue sparkles that titillate his skin before everything turns completely black.
“Can you hear me, Bruq? Say something.” Most of them wait anxiously, not knowing if the letter they read spoke the truth or that Bruq is gone forever. Dargothoth doesn’t wonder. He just stands there and observes his surroundings, but he sees nothing special.
“Yes, loud and clear and with a lot of echoes. You want me to start telling what I see already?”
Her shoulders loosen a bit as she hears his voice and she looks at her hands.
“Give me a moment”, her words ring throughout the maze and she walks over to the chest. She kicks the lid, closing the chest, and lays down the map. She needs one hand to draw and the other to keep the paper from moving, so she puts the speaking stone on the chest, next to the map.
“Okay, I’m all set, Bruq. Tell me what you see.”
(Arcana 18)
“It is unnaturally dark in here. I recognize the chilling feeling of a spell that does this. Usually I can see pretty well in the dark, but now I can only see the tiles on the floor. Every square is outlined with a thin and bright red glow and in the distance I can see the crystal, I think. What do you want me to do now?”
She hovers with the quill above the paper, thinking quickly what strategy would prove most useful.
“I think the tiles are outlined so I know on which tile you are in the maze. So, walls should be right on top of the red light. Can you feel around to see if there are any walls?”
Her speech is very loud to Bruq, accompanied with a slight static noise in the background.
With his arms stretched out he feels around to prevent himself from running into walls. “I can feel the door behind me. Do you hear me knock on it?”
Lyssa looks at Oslando, who’s standing closest to the door closes his eyes for a second and holds up his index finger, bidding silence from his companions. He nods.
“Yes, we hear the knocking, so I can place you on the map.” She takes a piece of gold from her bag and places it on the map to represent the current explorer.
“In front of me is a wall and to my left there is one as well. I don’t feel anything to my right.”
She draws thin lines with the blue feather, not really requiring any cartographing skills at all.
“I’m going to move one tile to the right”, he says and a short silence follows. Lyssa holds her breath.
“So, the tile I was standing on is to my left now. I can feel the wall of the maze behind me, but there are no others walls around me. Where do you want me to go?”
She ponders the options. Although it looks like a simple board game from her perspective, she doesn’t want to play like Bruq is just a pawn, risking he’ll get hurt if she’s careless.
“I think it’s safer to walk close to the wall than to just enter the maze… I guess. So, walk to your right again.”
The same silence.
“Same wall behind me and a wall in front of me. You got that? Should I go right again?”
She moves the golden coin and continues drawing lines. “Yes, go ahead. You’re getting near the corner of the maze, just two tiles left. Look out that you don’t run into the wall.”
As he moves over to the next outlined square, his hand touches the smooth surface of an invisible barrier. If that would be the only thing, he would be safe. The light around the tile beam up towards the ceiling, trapping him as magic walls around him start to vibrate.
(DC 14 versus constitution 5)
“I think I have found one the the traps, guys”, Bruq says in panic as he punches his fists in vain against the redness around him. As the pointlessness of it all gets through to him, something else also goes through him: dozens of pale red needles pierce him and Bruq produces an agonizing scream. The needles pull back into the red barriers, their colour changed to the shade of Bruq’s blood. The barriers vanish together with the satyr.
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