Session 42 -- Fried Calamari

The party knew, or believed they knew, where the relic of the blade of St. Michael lay -- in the iron sarcophagus that bore of St. Aelric, sealed and stubborn to their efforts. Vedica indicated that there seemed to be two ways to open it: a key and an object shaped like a cross and scallop shell (neither of which they had). The lock defied even Vedica’s clever hands, and in the end it was not cunning but a clue that guided them: somewhere back in the drowned passages there had been cells of stone and iron, and a clue hinted that the key to this reliquary lay among them.

So the fellowship, weary but resolute, retraced its steps through the whispering dark, treading carefully along paths already proven treacherous, wary of hidden snares and old, lurking evils. No revenant or lich rose to challenge them this time; no chill hand grasped from coffin or crypt, and soon they came again to the strange chamber with its low stage, red velvet chairs rotting in the damp, and the wide pool of black water before it, where once a tentacled horror had dwelling and grasped at them from the depths. The air was clammy and close, and the water below the stage lay heavy and lightless, as though it remembered hunger.

They had left iron cages standing unsearched on their last journey, and it was to these that they now turned. At a word, Murchad and Vedica slipped into the chill, waist‑deep water, sending up ripples that gleamed faintly in Jack’s lantern‑light. The first cage they found standing empty, its bars slick with age, its floor covered in a silt of ancient decay. The second held a human skeleton, crumpled in upon itself, bones scattered across the cage floor like dice cast and long forgotten. The cage rose two or three feet above the waterline, so that a man might have stood there with his head above the surface, and yet here lay only bones. “Perhaps he was drowned,” Jack said, but the water and the memory of the tentacled thing that once had coiled here in the depths suggested more dreadful causes than simple flooding.

The lantern was lifted high to keep its flame alive.  Slow and encumbered in the water, their steps halved by the dragging weight, they crossed back to the junction of corridors where the northern and southern flooded cell‑blocks waited, each barred and half‑seen beyond iron gates. Tiv remembered well how something had once slammed against the northern bars when they first passed by, a heavy, wet impact liked a sea‑beast testing its cage.

Now, resolved to seek the key, they went north first. Vedica, slender and sure‑fingered, set to work on the barred door, tools glinting in the dim light. The others waited, listening to the distant drip of water and the close echo of their own breaths. At last there came the click of metal yielding, and in the same instant something vast and unseen hurled itself against the other side of the bars, so that they clanged and shuddered under the blow. Tentacles lashed blindly through the iron, seeking flesh. Vedica sprang back, water churning about her legs as the others drew weapons and spells to hand.

Before they could press the fight, a new light bloomed in the passage to the east: a wavering torch‑glow and the sound of cautious footsteps descending. Turning, they saw Vegvisir returning to them, bedraggled from the surface world, his face puzzled and perhaps a little reproachful. He had remained with their ship for some days, he explained, waiting for word, and when none came he had grown uneasy and followed their path into the deep, guided by fading clues and the corpses of slain acolytes that marked the company’s grim trail. Now he stood amid them, still clutching a torch, apologizing for the delay and confessing, with no little frustration, that he had no spell of light to cast, though he bore some torches in reserve.

Tiv, practical and generous, offered the enchanted mace that glowed on command, its head a sun under the earth. It was no weapon for Vegvisir’s hands, but he could wield it as a beacon, and its light would not be snuffed by immersion like common flame. So he took it on loan, and they waded on, the water rising to their bellies, their movements sluggish and halved by the clinging pull of the flood. As they advanced, there came talk of the perils of fighting under water: blades dragged by the weight around them, arrows losing heart as they plunged, sling stones rendered almost useless, and hammers as clumsy as stones in mud. Only thrusting and piercing weapons could serve them well down in these drowned halls.  Spells of fire and air would die in the choking pressure of the deep, while sound and ice would remain potent.

They spoke of tactics, grimly amused to learn that bludgeoning weapons were as useless as clubs in a bog, while daggers and swords retained some virtue. Tiv and Dwårfy considered their prayers and curses, naming the spells that might still avail them: hold person, cause fear, reversals of healing turned to harm, and even the dread spell Quest, which could bind a living creature to a task not of its own choosing. “Why do the work,” Tiv quipped, “when you can command the enemy to do it for you?” The thought of compelling a squid‑thing, by divine writ, to hunt out the very key they sought drew laughter, and the phrase “magical outsourcing” was coined, half jest and half serious stratagem.

The water lay quiet before the northern cells, yet they knew something monstrous stirred behind those bars. There was talk of opening the door and fighting in the cramped, flooded corridor, but wiser voices prevailed: better to draw the beast into the larger stage‑chamber, where footing was more certain and the water shallower. Vegvisir and Ceangal spoke of dimension door, that perilous sorcery that could wrench a creature from one point in space to another within a heartbeat. The plan formed swift and sharp: Murchad would rattle the bars, luring the tentacled horror to lash at him; then Vegvisir, daring and swift, would step within ten feet and cast his spell at the very moment of impact, shifting the beast onto the stage where the others waited in ambush.

Vegvisir, quick as a deer, activated his boots of speed, his enchantment letting him race over the flooded stone, that he might carry light into the battle‑chamber once the beast was displaced. The rest withdrew to the stage room, taking up positions around the velvet chairs and overlooking the pool. Then Murchad, alone at the northern gate, shook the bars with a clanging challenge.

The response came at once. From the dark water surged a mass of sinew and suckers, hurling itself against the newly unlocked door with murderous force. The impact flung the gate inward, and poisoned tentacles whipped through the opening, seeking purchase upon flesh. In that same heartbeat Vegvisir uttered the syllables of power, his mind fixed upon the center of the stage. The creature faltered in mid‑surge, blurred, and vanished from the flooded cell. In the next instant it appeared in the stage‑room, flopping upon the stones among the velvet chairs like some nightmare of the deep cast upon a shore.

Vegvisir, boots blazing with enchantment, sped round to join the others, bringing with him the steady glow of Tiv’s mace so that the whole chamber shone with uneasy light. The squid‑thing twisted in distress, for here the water was shallow and its bulk lay half on timber, half in the pool, and its movements were clumsy. Yet its tentacles still lashed with deadly vigor, and they knew it would try to fling itself back into deeper water if they gave it time.

They did not. Tiv’s slingstone sang first, striking the creature as it writhed, drawing an ugly shudder from its mass. Then Vedica, already upon the stage, raised her bow. The arrow flew true, a perfect shot. It passed cleanly through the monster’s head and out the other side, the brains of the abomination clinging to the shaft as grisly spoils. The squid convulsed and lay still, all its life’s malice spent in a single, sudden silence.

The company lingered but a moment to share a grim jest about the merits of calamari and marinara, then turned their thoughts back to the northern cells, only to find more such creatures awaited in iron pens. There were not enough dimension doors to cast upon them all.

They pressed on into the north flooded block, Vedica testing for traps and finding none, though the water grew uneasy around their legs. By her report, each cell seemed to hold one of the tentacled beasts pressed behind bars, their forms faint shapes in the murky depths, their tentacles ready to slip through the iron to strike. The bars were tight, but Murchad, with a keen military eye, warned that the monsters might slip through under certain conditions, and in any case their limbs were long enough to reach through.

Concerned that they might be overwhelmed if all struck at once, Vegvisir suggested a more subtle craft: a wall of ice, conjured to divide the hall in twain, isolating half the cells. After some talk and measuring of passages in their minds, they contrived a plan: Vegvisir would raise a thin, towering sheet of ice down the western line of cells in both northern and southern corridors, sealing off half the imprisoned beasts and leaving only the eastern side accessible. The others withdrew to the east side while he worked the spell. At his invocation, frost blossomed in the air; then, with a sound like crystal growing, a great pale wall sprang into being, running the length of the passage, its face cold and opaque. For two hours, the magic would hold, securing half the creatures away from them.

Then the slaughter began.

At Jack’s urging they advanced to the first exposed cell in the northern row. The squid within, sensing prey at its bars, hurled three tentacles through the irons at him even before he could raise the horn of blasting he carried. Yet Jack’s armor and skill availed him; all three strikes slid past him in the water. He answered with the horn, and a terrible note thundered in the close space, the sound‑wave visible almost as it rolled through the flooded corridor. The creature convulsed under the blast, and the other imprisoned squids stirred and thrashed behind their bars, agitated by the sonic assault.

Now, the company pressed their advantage. Tiv edged forward through the press of allies, limited by the water’s drag yet ready to fight or to bless. Vedica stepped within ten feet of the bars, bow raised, now forced to shoot at closer range for her arrow to hold its strength under water. Her shaft flew straight and struck deep, harming the squid within. Ceangal, calculating that his more powerful spells might be better saved, chose instead to wield the sure magic of missiles that never miss. He unleashed three such bolts of shimmering force: one streaked into the wounded creature and slew it, and two flitted into the next cell, where the sea beat until then had been untouched.

Dwårfy shouldered forward, half blind in the murk beyond Vegvisir’s radiance, and moved as far as she could, though she could not yet see her foes well enough to fire. Jack, with his uncanny aim, shifted to a vantage where he could just see a sliver of the squid’s bulk through the bars and took his shot, an ball striking home and finishing another of the creatures. Vegvisir advanced with Tiv’s blazing mace held high, the light cutting into the darkness of the cells; he tried to stab one of the beasts through the bars with his dagger, but the squid twisted away from that thrust, slick and quick.

Then the tentacles struck back.

The squid nearest Vegvisir lashed at him three times through the bars and, by fortune or providence, missed each attempt, its barbed suckers scraping uselessly over steel and air. Yet as it flailed there, the creature in the cell above did something worse: it pressed and squeezed and, with horrible persistence, managed to force its boneless mass through the narrow bars to emerge into the corridor itself. There, free and enraged, it coiled around Vegvisir, striking him with three tentacles. Venom burned along each sucker‑laden limb.

Vegvisir, beset and half submerged, fought the poison with all his will, but it took hold: he reeled in pain, suffering both bodily harm and a draining weakness that clutched at his strength, leaving his muscles trembling. For three hours, he would carry that lingering frailty, and his blows would fall the weaker for it. “If I end up in melee as a caster, it is not a good day,” he had warned earlier, and now he found himself in precisely that ill‑omened place.

Tiv considered rushing to cure the poison outright, but seeing that the venom sap would not worsen his wounds, only dim his strength, she resolved instead to conserve her greater miracles for the battles yet to come. Instead, she called upon divine light to suffuse her shield, so that another source of radiance shone in the corridor, easing their sight and freeing her hands from the burden of bearing a torch. It was observed, with a dark sort of humor, that the same spell might have been cast upon a squid’s eyes to blind it outright, a possibility Tiv tucked away for some future foe.

Meanwhile Vedica, Ceangal, Jack, and Dwårfy brought their own arts to bear. Vedica closed to within ten feet again and loosed another arrow, wounding the hallway‑squid grievously. Jack shifted forward between Vedica and Vegvisir so as to place himself in the creature’s path, drawing its wrath away from the mage. Ceangal held back his most dangerous evocations, but he did not hesitate to send more magic missiles streaking into the fray, this time striking at an uninjured squid deeper in the row, adding to the tally of wounded foes.

Seeing Vegvisir in peril, Murchad offered a bold solution to Dwårfy’s difficulty reaching the front: he hoisted the dwarf upon his shoulders, the two of them forming a single battling shape, Dwårfy perched high with crossbow in hand had to duck against the ceiling – a new experience for the dwarf. The others, amused by the spectacle and its echo of stranger tales, nonetheless recognized the wisdom of the maneuver; the dwarf gained height to see over their shoulders and a clearer shot at the squid.

Vegvisir, still in arm’s reach of the beast, slashed at the free squid with his dagger, drawing blood enough to weaken it. Then, at last, he was able to retreat, stumbling back through the crowd to safety before its tentacles could draw him down to the cell floor. Murchad, bearing Dwårfy upon him, took Vegvisir’s place in the corridor and thrust his blades into the nearest squid, stabbing through water and flesh until the creature finally stilled. Dwårfy tried to add her bolt to the kill, and though the blow was not needed, the image of sword and crossbow both striking at once remained fixed in their memory.

In this manner they cleared the accessible northern cells: Vedica picking locks where she could, others straining to force the one door her deft hands could not persuade, then searching each cell in turn while the beasts lay dead in the water. Yet they found nothing resembling the key they sought. There was only silt, old bones, and the remnants of whatever the squids had devoured.

They turned their eyes then toward the southern hall of cells, still half hidden behind Vegvisir’s tall wall of ice. A plan formed to make more efficient use of Ceangal’s might. If they waited, the ice would melt in two hours, and then a single thunderous working, a lightning bolt might be loosed into the water to reach into every cell on the far side, slaying all eight beasts in one stroke. Yet care was needed, for the lightning would race through water in all directions, and they debated at some length how far its lethal reach would extend, and whether they themselves would be swept up in the shock.

At last they judged that if Ceangal stood and blasted the water submerging the southern cell block from a measured distance, the arc of water it filled would stop short of the corridor where the company stood, caught between prudence and the lure of devastating efficiency. They agreed, therefore, to wait: to tend wounds, to let Vegvisir’s venom weaken, and to reclaim whatever poise they could while the ice did its slow vanishing. During this pause Tiv and Vegvisir turned their healing skills upon the latter’s own injuries, and after a careful attempt he succeeded in treating himself, regaining some of the life stolen by the squid’s tentacles.

When at last the two hours had passed and the Wall of Ice had melted into cold water, Ceangal stepped forward, flexing his fingers as if to summon the very storm from the stone. He muttered the magical phrase invoking the lightning bolt and hurled it into the southern flooded chamber. The spell struck the water and expanded at once into a great hemisphere of deadly force, suffusing the length of the cells on the far side of the corridor. For a breath the world was silent; then came the cracking report of thunder in the confined passage, echoing to every corner and back.

When the company dared to look, the southern cells were quiet. Every squid within had been slain, their flesh cooked in an instant by the fury of the storm, and the smell of fried calamari rose from the water. There was laughter and mock‑hunger then, talk of dipping tentacles in sauce and making a feast of their foes, though some remembered soberly that the creatures’ venom made such dishes unwise without further purification by Tiv’s magic. Still, the jest lightened grim hearts, for the danger in those cells, at least, was ended.

Vedica, ever patient, returned to her art of locks, opening cell after cell along the newly quiet southern row. Only one barred door resisted her tools, and Murchad’s strength, called upon once more, persuaded that door to yield with a great metallic protest. Then they searched, thoroughly this time, taking some twenty minutes to sift the filth and detritus of all eight cells. At last, in the muck of one, they found a bronze key: small, slimy but sound, unmistakably wrought for a lock of consequence.

There was no need to linger further in those drowned halls. With the key in hand, they retraced their path through echoing corridors and burial chambers, past old traps and the memories of horrors faced on earlier days, until they came once more to the iron sarcophagus of St. Aelric. The bar‑gate around it stood as they had left it, and the air in that place felt close, full of old incense and a faint, unsettling holiness. Vedica worked the outer lock, and they approached the coffin itself.

The key, when inserted, turned smoothly, as if it had been waiting for this moment since the day it was forged. The sarcophagus of St. Aelric opened with a soft complaint of metal. Within lay the saint’s body, remarkably preserved, his face grave and calm, a faint aura of sanctity about him that even hardened adventurers could feel. Yet something was wrong.

Where they had expected to find the saint’s hands folded upon his chest, clasping the shard of St. Michael’s sword that they had so long sought, they saw instead one hand carelessly cast down to his side, the other resting not over his heart but upon his abdomen. There was no blade. The relic was gone. Moreover, the manner of his hands and the state of the coffin showed that the disturbance was not some ancient rearrangement, but the work of a more recent intruder; someone had opened the sarcophagus after the body had already taken on its current, preserved stillness.

A heavy silence fell upon the company as they gazed upon the empty place where the holy shard should have rested. They spoke in low voices of what might have happened. Perhaps, they thought, someone else had known of the relic and had come ahead of them, perhaps armed with the strange cross‑and‑shell device that Vedica had noted might also unlock the tomb.

They searched for signs: footprints in the dust, subtle shifts in the chamber, anything that might mark the passage of this unknown thief. But the floors had been disturbed already by their own comings and goings, and what traces might have told the story were hopelessly muddled. If a stranger had walked these halls before them, they could not tell where his trail began or ended. The thought arose that someone might have misled them or sought the relic for darker purposes. Ceangal, thinking back, mused that someone versed in both relic and crypt might be responsible, and the name of the inquisitrix they had dealt with before hung unspoken yet heavy in the air.  Perhaps she had taken it to aid in her crusade against the “machine elves.”

Vedica suggested that they press on into unopened crypts and side‑tombs, seeking both treasure and clues. Murchad, mindful of traps and the formidable guardians they had already overcome, counseled caution, noting that while they had gained some useful relics before, not all such forays had been worth the toll. Vegvisir recalled that, above ground, acolytes of the order had already fallen to the party’s hand, and feared that further delay here, or noisy exploration, might draw new enemies down upon them as soon as they emerged.

In the end, weariness and prudence swayed them. Their spells were depleted, their bodies chilled and bruised, and though they held the key, the prize they had come for was gone. They needed time to rest, to recover their powers, and to consider their next move in the puzzle of the missing relic. The idea arose to turn this very crypt into a temporary refuge. The door to the tomb was stout and lockable, and Vedica could secure it again from within.

So, with a mixture of reverence and grim practicality, the party settled themselves in the tomb of St. Aelric. They re‑locked the entrance and did what they could to make the place defensible, placing themselves between the saint’s resting form and whatever perils might seek them in the night. There, amid the stillness of the dead and the faint, numinous presence of the saint, they chose to rest and gather strength, knowing that when they emerged they would have to seek not only the road back to the surface, but also the hidden path of whoever had stolen the holy shard of St. Michael’s sword.