Ad Infinitum

Meanwhile…

Mira would not sit still. Despite his best efforts, Eldrith could not get the young girl to cease her panicked fidgeting as she sat atop his shoulders. It was clearly a bad choice to bring her back to the summer home, where her siblings had been murdered by opportunistic poachers, though certainly the Kobold Manor where they had met only days before wasn’t much of an alternative. Still, the elf would rather spend time with her alone here than amongst the crowded confines of the cabin, and up ahead there was at least something to do besides lay low and wait for the city to burn to the ground.

Rounding the bend that led to the former keep, Eldrith could smell the acidic fumes from the days before, though he expected it to be long gone after assaulting the kobolds prior to this investigation. Ducking behind a fallen crenelation, he slowly peered out towards the trapdoor where an aromatic plume of green darkness belched forth from the underground entrance, its meager trapdoor left open and allowing the current to speed forth uninhibited. It was almost as if the pools below had been left untended, and something had gone wrong, but whatever the explanation behind the smoke, it was a foul thing and seemed to dull the land nearby. Eldrith nodded to his charge and crept slowly closer, peering about the scorched landscape for any sign of hostile enemy; there were none, and soon he lay before the smoking entrance. Invisible vapor stung his nostrils as he wade through the thick smoke, carefully descending into the halls once more.

The entrance room was a mess. Alchemical instruments lay strewn all over the floors, and the bodies of the kobolds he had killed earlier lay right where Eldrith had slain them, though nearly all had been severely burnt; the rooms central fixture, a bubbling green pool in prior visits, was now a violent, burning cauldron whose contents were the cause of the thick smoke and acrid smell. Every so often, it would bubble up and splatter incendiary liquid across the room, causing small fires and pitched stone. He wasn’t sure of the source of its power, but Eldrith thought best not to trouble himself with putting it out, straining his eyes to hear anything else in the seemingly abandoned undermanor. From somewhere deeper within the stronghold, there came a chanting noise, and his curiosity was piqued.

The last time he had been here, his efforts of exploring deeper had been hampered by the presence of the Tiefling female and her shadow hound entourage. Yet now, Eldrith found the next chamber a much different place: where the caskets had been, crude cages had been affixed to the ground, though several lay rent and torn, and the altar in the northwestern corner was crumbled. A baying of some large animal wavered through the air, and the sound coincided with the flickering of the magical torches that dotted the walls therein. While he lay in waiting, Eldrith heard a sudden crash from behind him, where soon Mira came clamoring through the empty hall in bored or worried pursuit of her new friend. The noise was enough to alarm the creatures in this room, who had been clinging to the farthest shadows. Their forms were unmistakeably reptilian, though the texture of their scales was insubstantial and a red light seeped out from within their gelatin frames with every move. Nocking his bow, Eldrith wasn’t sure what these monsters were but their thrashing behavior soon evolved into a coordinated effort to turn him into a meal. Mira instinctively fled to the back of the room, while Eldrith sprung into position, side-stepping the creatures as he left loose a barrage of arrows; the beasts, while showing no harm at first, eventually slowed with each recurring shot and soon stirred no longer. Moving to the closest fallen, Eldirth noted the rapid deterioration of their forms: in no more than fifteen seconds time, the entire clutch of reptiles were little more than puddles of liquid on the floor, the ranger’s arrows sticking out from the pools of ichor as a log would in a swamp.

The fighting did little to stop the low droning of the next room. Scooping Mira up in his arms, Eldrith stepped lightly across the gooey stones and pressed forward. Coming upon the next room, he discovered another alien sight: what Eldirth initially mistook for an animal’s snoring was actually the constant breathing of a large device, constantly fanning flames into a pit set in the middle of the room. Welling up from the pit was the same substance that constituted the reptiles in the previous room, and the flames served to stoke it in a shimmering pattern, unlike the bubbling concoction in the entry hall. The room was otherwise bereft, the large wooden doorway leading to the north still in shambles from the Vanguard initial foray. Leaving the device to its duties, the elf sought one more room before leaving to alert his allies. In what was the kobold chieftain’s lair, now several crates and barrels were kept, and all of them a menagerie of alchemical reagents if their labels were to be taken as truth. The secret door to the white dragon’s lair was kept propped open by one of said crates, and the uncanny presence of the Tiefling woman could be felt from somewhere below. Placing Mira down amongst the array of goods, the elf crept down at a snail’s pace.

The cavern was damp, and the air cool, but Eldrith could not shake the beads of sweat forming on his brow. The room below was that of dead silence, and unnaturally so: as he peered from the final bend, he beheld a terrific portal, sparkling in red, purple, and green hues. Before it were several of the reptilian creatures, and they lined up to step through the rift at a fixed interval. From the far reach of the cavern, the Tiefling woman stood before a large cauldron from which more of the aberrations were birthed. He sat in watch for more than an hour, outlasting Mira’s patience on more than one occasion, though her unassuming approach made no sound, as if an invisible door kept it from the layers above. Eventually,  one of the creatures returned from the portal, a small shard of wood embedded within. No sooner had it appeared then the portal began to die out, though it allowed a handful of other beings to cross from the other side before collapsing upon itself. They were winged things, imp-like and with macabre markings. Wherever they came from, it immediately became apparent that they wanted the shard back, and the cavern was quickly consumed in a fierce battle. Well into the fight, the Tiefling woman teleported away, an event soon proceeded by the arrival of more creatures from above. Eldrith found himself in a pincer situation, opting for the escape route he had dug for himself during captivity. It took several hours, and he wasn’t sure of the outcome of the fight, but Eldrith had more than enough to share with the rest of the Vanguard about the status of Kobold Manor.

Fleet of foot and with Mira in tow, Eldrith raced to the Redding’s summer home, midday sun hanging high in the sky above. Fear overtook him when he arrived to find the blasted remains of the cabin, a sure sign that his allies hadn’t remained undiscovered. A short message written on a metal plate and signed by Gorn alerted him to their decision to return home, where Gruk had succeeded in taking over a portion of the riotous city. Sparing Mira from an extensive investigation into the tattered ruins of her second home, the elf resumed a quick pace to the King’s Road in a bid to reach the city before nightfall. Along the way he passed half a dozen wagon caravans fleeing the city to Winterhaven in the west, and was coming to the city limits when his keen senses alerted him to something suspicious by the riverside. In a clearing near the banks, a filthy dwarf dressed in similarly kept leather armor was arguing loudly with a looming skeletal figure, three skulls where there should have been one, its demeanor telling of a patience worn thin.

Winding back to approach from the south, Eldrith crouched low behind a large stone and attempted to listen. The two were discussing, or rather, the dwarf was yelling angrily, about a deal gone sour. From what he could discern, Eldrith learned that the dwarf had ties to the Agency while the skeletal creature served a queen of some sort. The dwarf ended his tirade with a sharp whistle, soon followed by the footfalls of many armored figures; the meeting had just turned ugly. Now surrounded and flanked on all sides, the skeletal creature managed a laugh before proceeding to annihilate every single newcomer. The dwarf stumbled in retreat, and Eldrith quickly cast lot with the vivacious underdog. The battle was short, but intense, with the undead commanding several strange magical powers that left the elvish ranger glad there was cover nearby. The dwarf managed to help bring it down, yet he rewarded Eldrith by fleeing into the nearby river, only to find himself unable to swim far due to his injuries. Catching up with him downstream, Eldrith demanded an explanation, and the dwarf introduced himself as Zark, one of the main contacts in Fallcrest for the Agency. What had transpired was none of his business, coughed the dwarf, but he was grateful all the same. Zark invited Eldrith back to their hideout, as the city was currently in turmoil and the dwarf had a business proposal. The sour-faced agent then produced a strange wand from a leather pocket on his vest and shot a glowing ball of flame into the air. Within minutes, a band of men approached from the north to escort the two to town; it took him awhile to notice, but Eldrith eventually realized they were the Larson Brigade, a similar adventuring group to the Vanguard in the city.

Fallcrest had definitely seen better times. Crossing the ferry, Eldrith remarked on how not even the forest fires he’d seen had produced so much smoke, patting Mira on the side as she assumed her human form once more. Making their way through the chaotic streets, the group found themselves in an unmarked building, whose interior belied the secrets below. Standing in a nondescript room with nary but a table and a few chairs, Eldrith awkwardly peered around for a door of some kind. Zark turned the candlestick on aforementioned table, and the entire floor began to sink into the floor! They traveled downward several yards until finally the floor stopped and the group now stood in an entirely new room. Zark motioned for Eldrith to sit, before taking up an exceedingly relaxed position himself; the dwarfish rogue knew who Eldrith was, and who he ran with, and had a job lined up for him. Slavers had always been a part of Fallcrest, for as long as the original King reigned several generations before the coming of Prasiolaire. For the Agency, it had never been a compelling business, but for Zark it was merely another way to fill the coffers. Since the assassination of Lord Markelhay, several new slaver groups had been trafficking in and around the city limits, which put a huge damper on business for people like Zark; often enough, these upstarts ignored the unwritten code of etiquette and the grizzled dwarf was done with it. Because he was a “nice” guy, the crime lord figured Eldrith would enjoy freeing some slaves and bashing in a few rival slavers on begalf of the Agency in exchange for a few gold and a sense of a good deed done. Eldrith wasn’t so sure about he latter, but negotiated a fair price per head brought in as proof of their demise. Zark laughed and started from his leaned-back position against the wall, drawing up a crude map of the outlaying territory, on which he scribbled several known trafficking points for Eldrith to emancipate.

The tenets of their business arrangement complete, Eldrith returned topside, wondering what his friends had gotten themselves into.