Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 18 (Day 6)
Following is Chapter 18 of the sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis!
Herein our heroes recover from their most recent rigors but then, after assuming they have taken control of the situation, discover just what sort of horrors dwell in the porous earth beneath the island of Kos ...
Join alchemical rogue Paros, Elven barbarian Parthenia, transmuting wizard Pumayo, and moon priestess Selene in their Return to the Necropolis!
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 17"
The party ate a full meal together and then all curled up in garments and other cloth items from the pillaged caskets. They did not designate a watch, something they knew was kind of sloppy, but felt fairly secure in this room and were all by this time thoroughly exhausted. When he arose many hours later, Paros boiled some water using a small stove that used long-burning pellets he had produced in his alchemy shop back in Kos City and made a pot of mildly-stimulating herbal tea for everyone.
"I'm going to go refill my waterskin," Paros said, shaking his nearly-empty container. "Anyone need me to fill theirs?"
"You mean from the water at the bottom of the stairs?" Parthenia asked. "Don't bother! Didn't you notice it was brackish?"
"Yeah, sure, now that you mention it," he replied. "Why would that be the case?"
"Likely because we are below sea level," Pumayo said. "It is probably water that has seeped through sea caves and subterranean caverns from the coast. There might be whole lakes laying unseen beneath the island of Kos. There certainly are in other lands I have visited."
Once they finished eating breakfast, the party packed up their gear, cleaned up the chamber as well as they could, and re-stowed in caskets any of the things they had removed that they were not taking. They had found a number of waterproof bags amongst the nautical gear, and each took one or more and used them to protect items they did not want getting wet again.
In the course of these preparations, Paros donned not his own leather armor but the special set of waterproof protective gear they had found. He and Pumayo had been discussing this panoply and experimented with it during their bivouac and discovered that water would not enter through the brass valve from without but that air blown from within would vent from it. They also found that by using some of the materials and adhesives in Paros's alchemical field kit that they could create a seal between the bottle of everflowing air and the tube affixed to the back of the armor's helmet, and were then able to mount it in a pouch attached to the hood so that it would not flop around or come loose. His own armor he collected into a bundle and stuffed it into one of the oilskin bags; Parthenia had agreed to haul it through the passageway for him so that he could re-pick the lock to the door at the far end, and he would be pretty well burdened after that, but they were on their way out of the catacombs and back to Kos City so it would not likely matter.
Paros pulled the helmet over his head and then Pumayo sealed the hood onto the suit of armor; he could hear the rogue breathing within it and could see the little brass propeller in the valve spinning as air was driven through it. He stepped around in front of the armored rogue and made eye contact with him through the glass lenses set into the helmet. Paros said something that was muffled by the hood and which the wizard could not understand, prompting him to shake his head, to which the rogue responded simply by giving a thumbs-up sign to indicate everything was alright. He then led the way through the door to the elaborate tomb and down the stairs toward the submerged passageway, his companions following behind.
As he headed past the second landing and then stepped into the water and negotiated the stairs with the weighted boots, Paros did have some sense of apprehension. But, as the water slopped up over first his knees, then his chest, and then the helmet itself and he felt pressure but no dampness and was able to continue breathing unimpeded, he confidently immersed himself fully in the briny liquid. Behind him, the other three each took a measured sip of the potion from the jug they had found in the chamber behind them and then followed him into the water in turn, finding that once submerged they were also able to breathe comfortably.
Paros pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and then, by the light of the sunrod tied off to his armor, moved into the submerged passageway, a steady stream of tiny bubbles billowing out from the back of his helmet. Some forty feet ahead of him he could see the other door and began to slowly move toward it, the heavy boots slowing him substantially. He also realized that the gloves built into the suit of armor would make picking the lock considerably more difficult, but they would not be rushed this time and so it would ultimately not likely make much of a difference.
When he reached the door, Paros fished through his tool pouch for the picks he would need; he kept fumbling with the bulky gloves but did not rush and took his time, pleased to discover that he could not hear much within the hood and would thus be oblivious to the women's sighs of boredom (which, under the influence of the potion, they were perfectly capable of making even while underwater). He even chuckled a little mean-spiritedly when he considered that they would not be able to alleviate that boredom by rolling their dice in the water-filled passageway.
Suddenly, just as he touched the door and was about to begin working on the lock, Paros felt a series of clicks as the mechanism disengaged, and then the portal opened and swung inward slightly! Afraid that something was about to come through the door, he looked around to alert his friends and was confronted by a nightmare scene in the passageway behind him.
Suspended above the floor just a few feet from the hole in the ceiling that the water had flowed through was Selene, something huge wrapped around her and pinning her arms helplessly to her side. This seemed to be some massive, misshapen tentacle, blood red on its outer surface and sickly gray on the inner part that was holding the priestess. Paros could see that the masterwork trident she had taken from the tomb above had been embedded in this grotesque member just above where it was coiled around the priestess, preventing it from dragging her through the hole.
Parthenia, clad in her heavy bronze armor, drew the greatsword from her back and attacked the meaty tentacle with it. She tried hacking at the mass of flesh with the long weapon but the intervening water blunted the attack, and so she held the blade against the tentacle and began to saw at it. Pumayo had realized that Paros was oblivious to this drama and, concerned that the party might be ready to escape through the door before the rogue had managed to reopen it, had cast the spell to knock it open.
Dark blood began to ooze out of the tentacle from where the barbarian was cutting into it with her two-handed sword, and it violently began trying to withdraw, slamming the trident and the priestess alike into the ceiling as it did. Selene's breath was knocked out of her and, had she been trying to hold it and not under the influence of the potion, she would have drowned right then; she could not, in any event, fit sideways through hole, and it was clear that the monstrous limb was simply going to smash her up until she did. Parthenia kept trying to carve through the bulky tentacle but with its violent thrashing she kept making new, shallow cuts rather than cleaving straight through it, and the ichor that seeped out of the wounds was discoloring the water and making it hard for her to keep finding the same spot.
"Selene, do not resist me!" Pumayo said in a gurgly, underwater voice. "I can free you if you allow me to!" He took it on faith that she had not been knocked unconscious from being battered against the ceiling or crushed to death yet by the huge tentacle; held up his hand and uttered a cantrip that caused a flash of fire to erupt and be immediately reduced by the surrounding water to a wisp of smoke; and then reached up through the floating smoke particles to touch the priestess's ankle and utter the words of a more complex spell. There was a disruption in the murky water and just like that Selene was gone, the great tentacle thrashing and closing on nothing.
"Go!" yelled Pumayo in a watery tone, struggling through the water toward the just-opened door. "She is delivered but we may yet fall prey to this monstrosity!" Paros went through the portal and the other two followed him directly, whatever warped intelligence controlled the maimed tentacle causing it to thrash around ferociously in search of another victim. Parthenia was the last one through the door and, as she passed through, turned to shut it, visions of the tentacle snaking after them and then dragging one of them off to their doom causing her to shudder. As she did, a strangely familiar ghostlike form slid through the closing door and past her face, causing her to gasp in surprise. Was it Paros's phantom girlfriend, making one of her typical unwanted appearances? She pushed the door the rest of the way shut, and then headed through the flooded passageway to the stairs and up them until she reached the landing at the top, where Paros and Pumayo waited for her.
"Where is Selene?" the Elf asked excitedly.
"Behind you," Pumayo answered placidly. Parthenia wheeled to looked back down and her jaw dropped in surprise. Coming slowly up the stairs, wispy and insubstantial, was a misty simulacra of the priestess, a look of anguish on her face.
"Is ... is she dead?" Parthenia asked in a low voice. "A shade?"
"No!" Pumayo said, laughing. "No, not if she could swim out of there on her own. I was afraid she might be unconscious and not able to. And she is not a shade — I have just transformed her and her possessions from solid forms to those of vapor.
"But why does she look so anguished?" Parthenia asked as the ghostlike priestess came up onto the landing amidst the other three.
"Because," Paros chimed in, "she was crushed by a big damn tentacle before Pumayo cast his spell on her." Parthenia responded to this by pulling one of the precious healing potions from her pouch and stepping toward her friend.
"Wait," Pumayo said. "She can't drink yet ... " He made a gesture and, when he did, Selene returned to solid form and then collapsed into Parthenia's arms. The barbarian lowered Selene to the floor and then poured the healing liquid into her friend's mouth, uttering soothing words and pulling off the injured woman's helmet so that she could rest her head in her lap and stroke her hair. The magical draught restored her faculties completely and soon after she sat up and cast one of her own most potent spells, leaving her still somewhat beat up but more than able to continue; she could have cast a lesser spell on herself but, as she was now unimpeded by her injuries, wanted to hold it in reserve.
Paros and the wizard were in the meantime discussing the nature of whatever abomination had attacked them in the flooded passageway and were agreed that it had nothing to do with the design of the trap. They suspected, rather, that it was something that had come up from the endless depths of some midnight sea and, driven by hunger and attracted by their light and activity, had sought to prey upon them. They also supposed with a sense of horror that what they had seen of the monster represented just a small portion of it and that they would not want to encounter the abhorrent thing in its totality.
Their business in the Eptaeinai family tomb completed, the party headed back into the communal passageway, closed the blue laminated door behind them, and headed back toward the stream of the Styx and the exit from the place.
