Evasion

Aaron and Lysa react to the sudden reanimation of the monsters in the menagerie

7.

Evasion

 

At first the creatures just looked around in confusion, making all sorts of sounds.    But that confusion did not last long, and then pandemonium broke loose in the large room.

“Yesh have mercy!”  Lysa screamed, “The Staff!  Lord, reactivate them with it!”

Aaron was frantically trying; he pushed the staff against the bottom of the hole in the wall, then removed it and rammed it in again, but there was no change.

All sorts of creatures were running across the floor of the room, some in a panic, and others in a rage.

“The doorway!   We’ve got to get out of here!”   Aaron yelled to Lysa, but before they could move toward it, the huge insectoid form of the Carrion Crawler came rushing down the wall onto the floor between them and the doorway.

“Lord!  Over there!”   Lysa pulled at his shoulder, “The secret doorway!  Quickly, before that one is blocked as well!”

They sprinted for it, and their retreat surprised the giant insect monster.    It finally began moving toward them rapidly, but they had already swung open the heavy stone door.    Into the portal they blindly ran, finding stairs going upward just inside the secret panel.

Thankfully there was a latch to close the door on this side, and Aaron quickly swung it shut, narrowly avoiding the Crawler’s tentacles that were reaching for them.     A reassuring click told them that it was locked.

“Hopefully that thing can’t use one of its tentacles to open the door by that circle in the wall.”   Aaron said as they went up the stairs a few feet.     They stopped and glanced down at the door.     It remained firmly latched, and the muffled sounds of monsters trapped in a strange place could be heard through the stone walls.

“It deactivated their suspended states!”   Aaron groaned as he glared at the staff.   

“How could we have known?   It did remove the barrier into the other room, though.”   Lysa said to try to pull something positive from the whole thing.

“Well, we certainly won’t be able to get to it now.    We could try running for it, but I doubt we’d make it.    Those creatures are going to be very upset.    That won’t be a safe place to be.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Take this stairway, I guess.    Since Helios hid it so well, hopefully it will lead to someplace safe from all that is going on in that big room.”

“What if there is no other exit from wherever this stairway leads?”

Aaron shrugged, “We’ll stay concealed here for a while - I suspect that those creatures will be desperate to get out of there.   Most of them are too large to fit into the two exits, so they’ll probably turn on each other.    If we’re lucky, they’ll end up killing each other.    At least they may lessen the number of beasts that we’ll have to contend with when we do go back out there.”

Lysa sighed, “I just hope these stairs lead to a hidden exit.”

“Me too; let’s go find out.”   

***

As softly as they could while wearing plate armor, they climbed the steps.    Each step was slightly illuminated by a glowing green paint that had been used to outline the edge of each step.

“I wonder how that works?”   Lysa whispered as they first noticed the glowing strips, “Is it magic?”

“No, I don’t think so.     In the Underdark there are plants that give off a natural light, so maybe some pigment was mixed with bits of those plants crushed up into the paint.”

“Well, it is a good idea.”

The stairs went up continually, until the sounds of the monsters almost entirely faded away.   It curved slightly to the left from time to time, and then straightened out for a while, only to curve again to the left.     They both were hoping that they’d reach a door or hatch that would open up into the outside world.    But suddenly the stairs exited out into a small room about fifteen feet long and ten feet wide.    

It was dark within, but by feeling around, they found that there were a series of four cushioned chairs facing one of the long walls of the room.      As they neared, they were surprised to see that the entire far wall was made up of a large piece of glass or some glass-like substance that covered the wall.   But more alarming was that half of the floor was also made of glass and the large chairs rested on the glass.

“This room juts out into the huge room below.”   Aaron announced as he peered through the glass floor, “Look you can see movement below.    The Dragon is breathing fire too!”

“Wonderful.” Lysa groaned, not trusting something transparent to be sturdy enough to support weight.

“This is some sort of viewing box, I’d guess.   It is sitting high up in the side of the huge room below.    I guess Helios wanted to see what happened in the room below when he deactivated his creatures’ magic.    Maybe he did it from time to time as entertainment.   Creatures fighting each other to the death, I would imagine.”

“Half the floor and that wall are made of glass, Lord; I wouldn’t think that was very secure, nor safe to walk on.”   Lysa nervously told him, watching anxiously as he walked across the transparent floor.

“Oh, it’s not glass, Lysa.    I’m quite sure of that.     There’s a spell called ‘Glassteel’ that wizards use if they don’t mind the lengthy casting time and great danger.     A piece of steel is formed and fit into place and then the wizard casts the spell on it, which is a permanent enchantment.     It takes four hours of enchantment and I was told that if he mispronounces a word or stutters any time during the enchantment, the steel would shatter like glass, sending metal shards all over him.   But once it is complete, you have a translucent piece of steel.”

“Four hours of chanting a spell?    That would be difficult to not make a mistake during that time, such as coughing or sneezing.”

“Exactly, this is why Glassteel objects are rather rare.”  He motioned for her to join him, “Come on over here; it’s quite safe, trust me.”

Lysa rather timorously walked over to join him, surprised to find that the floor felt as firm as a metal plate.

“This feels so weird…”   She said as she looked down between her feet to see the large room’s floor below.

The sight was mesmerizing.    Lit from arcane magic high above, the entire room was outlined clearly.    From the viewing box, they could see everything with perfect clarity as if they were God looking down upon the world.

The creatures in the room were crazed with desire to free themselves from the site of their imprisonment and were attacking any of their fellows that got in their way.  

At one end of the room, the Owlbear was wrestling with one of the dinosaurs.    The dinosaur had the Owlbear’s head clenched in his jaws, but the Owlbear was raking the reptile with long, sharp claws.  

Nearby the Beholder was using its eyestalks to shoot rays at the Displacer Beast.    The cat-like creature’s magic displacement caused the Beholder’s shots to miss and it was crouching like a panther preparing to spring up into the air at the flowing orb.

The Basilisk had petrified several smaller, aggressive dinosaurs and was attempting to scurry through the doorway that had been labeled ‘Hominidae’, but the Carrion Crawler was perched on the wall directly above the doorway and threatened to hinder the eight-legged lizard’s progress.

The Ah’ndengin-mat had rather foolishly attacked the dragon, but was having a difficult time piercing the dragon’s scales.   The dragon was trying to throw the Ah’ndengin-mat off his back so he could breathe fire at him.

The huge Purple Worm was struggling to burrow through the stone floor, but the Roc had managed to grab the tail of the creature and was attempting to take flight with it.   The large worm was too heavy for the bird but it could not break free.

But strangest of all was the odd plant creature.    It was shuffling forward, across the room toward the first door they had gone through, oblivious to all the chaos around it.    

“Look at that.”  Lysa pointed it out to Aaron as they sat on the seats and peered down through the clear floor, “That plant monster - its just casually walking toward the entrance and none of the other monsters seem to be paying any attention to it.

But after watching its movement for several minutes, the creature was blocked from progress by the Owlbear, which had just killed the last of the dinosaurs after a terrible fight.   Injured, scared and annoyed, it charged at the plant creature with enough fury to insure that it would tear it into a pile of rotting vegetation.

The plant monster did not slow down its pace, but Aaron and Lysa saw something that looked like smoke puff out of one of the flowers on the vine that entwined it.     The cloud went squarely in the face of the Owlbear and it jerked backwards, clawing at its face for a few moments.   

Then abruptly it stopped, lowered its arms and stood still, almost as if it was standing at attention.     The plant creature passed it without a pause and after it passed, the Owlbear fell in line behind it like a baby duck following its mother.

“Now that is interesting!”   Aaron exclaimed as they watched the two creatures approach the entrance to the room.

“They’re going to get through it!”   Lysa cried, “The barrier is gone, Lord!”

But as they neared the entrance way, the Beholder floated in front, baring their exit.    It had finally targeted its opponent and had killed the Displacer Beast with a ray from one of its eyestalks.

Again the Plant monster didn’t slow down, but it did not attack either.   Instead, the Owlbear following it suddenly rushed ahead of the Plant monster like a bodyguard and charged the Beholder.

The Beholder moved just one of its eyestalks slightly and a grayish beam of light shot forth and struck the charging Owlbear.

Immediately the charging monster was turned into solid rock.

It crashed to the floor, breaking into several pieces which bounced along the floor, partially obscuring the doorway, just past the Beholder.

The plant monster still did not pause and again shot something from one of its yellow flowers, directly at the central eye and mouth of the Beholder.

The floating orb tried to float upward, but the cloud covered it, and after disappearing within it for a few moments, it then drifted downward and to the side of the plant creature, as if deferring to it.

“Did you see that?!”   Lysa exclaimed as if they were watching a joust or sporting contest, “That cloud it shoots out - I’ll bet that it is pollen or some sort of tiny fibers or something that makes its victims into slaves of the plant monster.”

“If it can subdue a Beholder, than it is formidable.”   Aaron agreed, “At least several of the creatures have been killed.     Look!   The Roc has lifted the Purple Worm off the ground!”

Across the room, the giant bird had managed to get its talons around the enormous worm and was using its powerful wings to carry them upward.    The Purple Worm was thrashing about, but could not use its stinger tail or flex enough to reach the Roc with its mouth.

The Roc struggled to carry the huge worm, but went higher and higher in the air until it was just under the observation room.   Lysa and Aaron moved away from the glassteel, standing by the doorway into the room, in case the huge bird should crash into it.   Aaron doubted that even steel could stand before such a large creature.

But the Roc stopped, and then flicked its talons, flinging the Purple Worm against the wall of the room.

Everything shook violently from the impact, and Aaron and Lysa were knocked from their feet.

The Purple Worm crashed to the floor below, narrowly missing the Plant Creature and Beholder.   

“The Worm’s body is covering the exit toward the stairs.”   Lysa said with a groan.     The Roc had killed it after the impact against the wall and the fall to the stone floor, and now the great purple beast completely blocked the doorway leading to the Construct room and the stairs outside beyond that.

The crash had drawn the insectoid Carrion Crawler away from the Basilisk and it scurried across the floor, smelling a meal in the corpse of the huge worm.     But the Roc took flight on massive wings and snatched up the insect monster in its huge talons, crushing the life from the Crawler as it flew upward.

Aaron and Lysa pulled back into the doorway of the viewing room as the huge bird flew past.    It seemed to them that it peered into the room for an instant, and then disappeared above them as it searched for an aerial exit.

The Plant monster now turned its zombie-fied Beholder toward the cautiously approaching Basilisk.     The Beholder rushed forward to engage the large lizard, but when the floating orb’s central eye looked at the creature to target the Basilisk with its eyestalks, it was turned to stone by the creature’s gaze and crashed to the floor, shattering as it fell, in an ironic twist of justice.

 

Now the Plant Creature turned to face the Basilisk,     The eight legged lizard tried to petrify the monster, but something about the Plant Creature kept the effect from working on it in the same way as the animals.

This seemed to surprise the Basilisk and the Plant Monster moved closer, and then shot out a cloud from one of its flowers into the snout of the lizard.   As before, this creature also gasped and jerked around, but then fell under the Plant Creature’s control.

“That plant thing is unstoppable.”   Lysa said as they continued to watch the proceedings from above.

“As long as they keep fighting each other, we’ll stay out of it.    I’d rather worry about one of them than a handful.”

Lysa nodded, “I wholeheartedly agree.   So who will be the last creature standing?”

“Well, there are five left, and the Basilisk is now just a zombie slave of the Plant Creature.”

“I wonder how long we will have to wait up here?   Surely the soldiers in the bunkhouse will have freed themselves by now.”

“Yes, but they won’t know exactly what happened to us.    If the rain has stopped falling and the Rock Monster has reactivated, then they have their hands full with it.”

A loud booming sound came from the room below and they looked down through the transparent floor to find that the Dragon had slammed the Ah’ndengin-mat into the side of a wall in a desperate attempt to free itself from the creature’s jaws.     The room shook from the impact, but the Dragon rammed the Ah’nengin-mat a second, then a third time, into the wall before the creature finally loosened its grip on the great Dragon.

The Ah’nengin-mat fell to the floor, stunned, but the injured and enraged Dragon did not waste any time.    A moment later, half of the room was covered in dragon fire, and the Ah’nengin-mat was engulfed for the duration of the Dragon’s exhale of flames.

But the fire-breathing beast was not done.    Scanning the room, it caught but a glimpse of the Roc flying up into the air.   The great bird sensed the disposition of the Dragon and flew quickly toward the top of the room, out of the range of the creature’s breath.

That left the Plant Creature and the Basilisk.     The Dragon did not care to waste time and risk turning to stone or becoming one of the Plant Monster’s slaves.     With a great intake of air, it released a massive blast of flames.     

The two creatures were caught helplessly in the middle of the blast zone.    The Dragon kept the flames going for as long as he could.     Thick smoke drifted upward, obscuring the scene, but from the amount of smoke, it was clear that both of the monsters were destroyed.

“That leaves only two.”   Aaron told his squire, “Neither one is small enough to fit through an exit.   I would guess that Helios teleported the beasts in here, because he certainly could not get them in here otherwise.”

“Trapped - so what hope do they have?   What will they do?”

“Probably go mad,”   Aaron replied, “as they desperately try to find a way out.”

As they tried to gaze through the smoke, out of the gloom suddenly came the huge black and red form of the Dragon, flying straight upward on its huge bat-like wings.

“It’s trying to get out of the smoke.”  Aaron explained as they backed away from the glassteel while the huge beast soared past. 

 

Whether that was the Dragon’s reason or not, the Roc that was flying above them near the top of the room did not see it that way.

As the Dragon approached, the huge bird turned and dove at the reptile with its huge talons prepared to attack.   

The Dragon saw it at the last moment, too late to swerve or dodge.     The Roc’s talons wrapped around the neck of the Dragon as the great reptile released a blast of fire at the bird.

The Roc screeched in agony but did not let go of its hold of the Dragon.     They tumbled in the air, slamming into the viewing box where Aaron and Lysa stood.     The impact tore the box-like room from the side of the wall.    Aaron yanked Lysa back into the stairway moments before the room fell with the burning Roc and strangled Dragon into the smoke-filled room below.    

The beasts’ impact sent up a cloud of smoke and debris, but the two Paladins were already racing back down the stairs.

“Hopefully we’re not blocked in here.”   Aaron said as they descended the stairs.   Smoke was pouring in all around the door and the air was terribly foul.

Breathing through their cloaks, Aaron cautiously pushed the door open, his sword blade jutting through the opening as soon as the door swung outward.

The air was too full of smoke and settling debris to see very far, but there was no sound of any living thing moving.

Motioning for Lysa to follow, Aaron entered the room and felt along the wall until his hand encountered nothing.  He had found the doorway into the room with the label ‘Homidae’ above it.

Aaron waited for Lysa to join him and with a gesture at the doorway, they both went through.