The Forgotten City XXIII
General Summary
With a might swing, Kegho split a guard in twain. Delight danced across his freshly healed face at the sucking sound of Wraithcleaver creating a sucking exit wound in his enemy's body. Alex rolled his eyes and waved to Khufu to free the captives, calm them, and find out where Herk might be. The doors were poorly constructed and bound with sinew, which Alex began to deftly cut apart with his sickle. Another guard rounded a corner and saw Kegho standing astride a sundered companion. He charged at the barbarian, just as Theo joined Kegho to fight. Teleptyon traveled in the other direction and found a closed door and a hallway. Another Yafwadi turned the corner and loosed an arrow at Teleptyon, but missed him narrowly. Riven saw him and aimed her bow, but Teleptyon loosed gouts of flame and turned the Yafwadi to ash. A third guard saw Theo and Kegho and ran north along a hallway.
With a final snip, the door fell apart and Khufu silenced the prisoners with imperious, but not unkind words: a gaunt skeleton of a man, and a brone-black skinned woman. Alex and Khufu led them back to the main hall.
The guard fighting with Kegho and Theo snapped his spear in a failed attack, which left him open to Theo crushing his skull with his mace. Free from battle, Kegho chased recklessly after the fleeing guard, but found a t-junction with no sign of his quarry. He noted a solid wood door to the north, made with much more care than the doors holding the captives, and another ramshackle door with slaves behind it to the south.
Riven ran back down the hallway to close the hidden doorway by which the party had entered by and conceal the din within the cave. Teleptyon struck and caved in the skull of a guard who had engaged him before fleeing at the sight of his companion turning to ash. Khufu and Alex split up to each take down another slave door with the first pair of slaves trailing behind Khufu.
Teleptyon opened a door to his left and heard alarmed voice before an arrow sailed past him striking a wall. The leader of the camp appeared from the shadows grinning "So you decided our deal was not good enough?" he snarled in accented Rexan and began to stride toward the wizard.
Khufu struggled to open the second slave door, but found the sandstone where the hinge was anchored was crumbling and the door came away from the wall easily.
As the leader reached the mouth of the hallway Teleptyon raised his staff and muttered words of power and the door slammed shut before the leader could cross it and a web of arcane energy held it fast. "You don't think that will stop us?" the leader roared with laughter as the secret door Riven had just closed sprung open and Yafwadi pushed their way in.
Riven backed to where the hallway curved and took careful aim that she might kill whoever rounded the way first, and Theo found his way beside her, mace readied.
One of the slaves Khufu freed was rambling in the throes of madness and spoke of the first ones, the original ones of the Second Age, the People of Slime. He spoke in a dialect old, even to the Keb and Khufu became irritated trying to parse it and the man's madness. In his ramblings he mentions that the other Keb had been taken.
A Yafwadi and Theo began to swing and parry each other's blows, but Riven's arrow sank deeply into his skull. A woman with a black-tipped spear sliced at Theo and wounded him, but Riven took two steps backward and sank another arrow into her, ending the threat.
Alex finished the third slave door and ushered the prisoners toward Khufu, whose clerical garb gave him considerable clout. Alex moved toward the curious heavy wooden door as Kegho left to join the battle once more.
Kegho stepped in front of Riven after she loosed her arrow, grinned and hefted his axe and grunted "Help Alex with door, me am got this" and pointed at the passageway where Alex was moving to look at the heavy wooden door. She slipped silently back into the warren.
As Kegho arrived the leader appeared in the doorway taunting "I told you you couldn't stop us, and now I'll feed you to Reshpu myself! You think you can defeat a third of a god!?" Kegho glanced at Theo and yelled back "We stop WHOLE god, Vargus, third god not so bad," as blood rushed in his ears like the roaring waves of a stormy sea. Before battle could be joined Teleptyon wormed his way between Theo and Kegho, muttered his words and the another door slammed in the leader's face and was bound tight. Kegho was disappointed.
Alex studied the door and saw script both elegant and alien and was unable to make heads nor tails of it. He pressed his ear against the door and hears guttural, rhythmic chanting "Guys! This ke-keya benison is fixin' a pop-off" The words were lost on the party, but the urgency was not. Alex suggested Khufu have the slaves check the fallen guards for keys as Riven appeared by his side.
With the main and secret door now closed and the slaves tasked with finding keys, the party convened outside the heavy wooden door. Teleptyon gathered Riven and Kegho close and with arcane speech and a bead of sweat on his brow called forth arcane fire on their arrows.
