Journey's End

 
 

A dark departure

So, with some rest under out belts, we made for Koboldhome. While we were home though, we mulled over whatever the creature in the mountain of Koboldhome could be. Cassandra guessed either a beholder or a cyclops -- and reasoned bringing a mirror with us to that end.
 
The trip was quietly uneventful, unfortunately like Forcalish. But we were at sea, and no action is good then. Halfway through the five-day trip Cassandra gathered us once more, to ask the cards for the future. It was to no avail. Hard to read, these cards are.
 

Lizard beaches, jungles, and mountains

Koboldhome was lively last time we came. Just as in Forcalish the atmosphere was sober and calm. As we rounded one of the white sandy beaches, we spotted a thick column of black smoke -- a funeral pyre, with bodies.
 
We wondered if we might need fire for him.
 
We beached near the fire, rowing in safely. The kobolds greeted us, marked with the different colors of their clans. Rohrouk, the "high predator" lizard of us, spoke with them.
 
They call the cave we are looking for the Death-Cave. Located in the honeycombed chambers of Koboldhome's highest peak. No kobolds return from Death-Cave, so they clans have no idea what's inside.
 
Two kobolds of the Blackbone Clan led us through town into the jungle, on the way to the Death-Cave. We hiked until the forest became very quiet.
 
Suddenly our two guides dove to the ground and started to burrow. "Hide! Hide!" Uncertain we followed suit, and not a moment too soon. The ground around us began to shake and rumble. The two kobolds changed tactics, jumping up to scrabble up trees and escape the ground. A large beast tunneled up from beneath the earth, throwing dirt and stones all about its gigantic form.
 
We learned later that the monster was a bulette, a terrifying beast that churns the earth like water to ambush prey. Prey of course being anything smaller than itself. Three of the creatures ambushed us in the jungles of Koboldhome. One crushed Eragon under its immense weight. The wizard barely climbed out of the way of the first only to nearly crushed again by a second bulette. Brom barely managed to throw himself in front of the wizard, taking the blunt of the blow -- before teleporting the pair out of danger. The blast of arcane energy from the spell threw one creature to its death, dashing it against sharp boulders. Brom called too the Hollow Spirit, spectral branches grasping at the surviving bulette to hold it back.
 
But he failed, and it just barely belly-flopped on top of Cassandra. With Brom's help, Eragon directly a magic missile to save her.
 
Though the two casters were out of danger, the rest were not. From the dead carcass of the bulette three undead kobolds clawed their way out of the body to attack the living.
 
As the fight came to a close Eragon turned to Brom. "I need you to fall off this cliff with me." Brom's eyes went wide, but he quickly calmed down. "I saved you, now you save me. I swear it." Each mage grasped the other's shoulders in the ultimate trust fall, turning to the ground and letting gravity to the work. Brom screwed his eyes closed, the words of Eragon's spell lost to the air rushing around them. Just as it seemed too late the warm burst of arcane energies coalesced before them. A dimension door, gobbling up the two brothers-in-arms and spitting them out near Cassandra across the ravine. Brom and Eragon tumbled several feet before they came to a halt, rubbing bruises but otherwise all right for wear.
 
"We need to get out of here," Brom closed, finishing off the last of the undead kobolds (with Rohrouk's help).
 
 

The cave

It was thankfully a short trek to the mountain of Koboldhome from the fight in the forest. Its base was wide, and we passed many frantic warnings in draconic that Rohrouk translated to little more than helpless cries of kobolds.
 
But we found a safe-ish spot near the base and took a breather. Rohrouk sent our two guides home with his dagger as payment. We all agreed to take a short rest before entering the cave. In the meanwhile, Cassandra used her owl familiar to scout out the mountain.
 

Dark rattling

 
With Margarine's help Cassandra surveyed the area. Near the entrance of the cave (inside) a medium-ish pile of tattered clothes and crude weaponry -- but no bodies -- collected in a pile. As the owl flew through the inside of the mountain Cassandra realized the tunnels continued sharply upwards, up the mountainside. Turn after turn yielded more piles of scrap, leftovers from humanoids that had perished here. One larger room Margarine entered at last seemed to move on its own. There was something strange about it.
 
One wall of the cave was nothing but bone. The skeletal remnants shifted like ripples in a lake, moving unnaturally on their own. Here and there rings of stone held larger bones in their place, as if chained to the mountain itself. It took a few moments for the seer to understand what her familiar took in. The bones were not individual but a mass, one whole that connected in an unknown way to form a vaguely humanoid shape.
 
A large blow engulfed Margerine, and her connection to this plane of existence was shattered.
 
"That's not the creature Brom saw."

"And it doesn't have blood."
 
Contemplating, Cassandra decided to cast clairvoyance for a better view.
 
 
The bone wall was "still" inside the chamber. But Cassandra's arcane eye saw more: a large, pink, fleshy ball larger than any person we had seen, with many tendrils coming off of its body to end in smaller eyes. And one large eye in the center that right now was examining the bone wall and poking it with the eye stalks.
 
A beholder.
 
A nightmare, intelligent and completely insane.
 
 

We're going to Death-Cave mountain, Rohrouk

Brom stood after an hour's rest. "We don't have a better plan, and sometimes you have to face your nightmares.
"Well dying would be an eternity of misery," Rohrouk chimed in.
"Dying isn't that bad," the warlock answered. "It's the coming back that sucks."
 
And so Fathom led us onwards, with Brom and Fathom grasping the shoulder in front of them, and Eragon and Cassandra taking up the rear.
 
It was a hike, up steep inclines and around winding turns. All too soon we approached the cave of the beholder.


 
The bone creature writhed on the back wall of the cave still. But more menacingly the gigantic eyeball creature floated 10 feet off of the floor, drooling from its enormous mouth and speaking words that assailed our ears and minds.
 
Fathom wasted no time, clicking his legwarmers of speed and dashing straight up to the beholder... to kick it square in the face. Eye. He spun mid-air, landing both sides of a windmill kick. Rohrouk ran after him, landing blows of his own, but it was too late: the beholder already zapped our fighting monk with several of its eye-beams. Now Fathom was suspended in midair, frightened of his attacker and too far to get any punches in.
 
Then slime began to seep up from the ground and make everything all the more treacherous.
 
 

The end?

This was terrible indeed.
 
Something from the creature cancelled magic. Eragon's spell failed as he cast it. Cassandra fell back to her sling, getting off a good shot (albeit with no strength behind it). She and Brom split up to flank the creature from all sides.
 
Fathom was knocked unconscious. Rohrouk woke him but, but the beholder knocked our tabaxi out again.
 
Cassandra was terrifyingly restrained against one of the cave walls by tentacles summoned by the beholder.
 
Brom was (perma-)*slowed*, and slowly his flesh began to turn to stone.
It was only Cassandra, weaving his fate as she wanted, that saved Brom from petrification.
 
Fathom was still afraid of the beholder but held on. Rohrouk ran about the battlefield, trying to get hits in where he could.
Then he fell unconscious.
 
Cassandra was grabbed once more by tentacles from the cave walls. And her skin began to harden, as if transmuting to stone.
 
 

Finale

Eragon was disintegrated.
 
Fathom and Cassandra were unconscious and bleeding out.
 
Rohrouk ran back and forth, taking shots to the back as he tried to help party members up.
 
Brom was forever stuck in his temporal loop.



 
Cassandra cast blight to end the fight. Reducing the creature to bubbling flesh, as it did Eragon to dust. She screamed, black tendrils spiderwebbing her form. The beholder's eyes all popped, one by one.
And then she turned to stone.