The Basement | A Thora Silentblade tale

It was peculiar what people held onto. Thora watched the wizard hiding things in every nook and cranny of the room while the others rested and strategized. Thinking back to one of those first rooms they found, the dwarf wondered about that small teddy bear. Who had it belonged to? What had become of its owner? What horrible experiment had been performed on them? When everything was ending, had they thought of this bear?

Thora mentally went through the list of things that seemed so important, tucked away in the dwarf’s pack. The books, a bedroll, the swords made beneath the mountain, some rope. What would be left behind by Thora? What would somebody else hold onto and try to stash into a dresser drawer underneath a blanket?

“Should we explore that shaft you found?” asked Thora, trying to distract from the intrusive thoughts. “I think you mentioned it went all the way down to a basement or something of the sort?”

“Yes, it was dark, but that could be to our advantage” replied Zearach, filling Alandal and Thora in on what he’d seen. “It’s not too far to rappel, but we can’t be sure what lies at the bottom. I’ll need to give you a signal if I need you to pull me back up.”

The elf was brave, Thora had to give him that. As the lightest of them, the elf was the obvious choice to lower down and scout out the room below. With his keen elven eyesight, he would be able to approach in the dark without needing any light that might give his approach away to any lurkers below. It seemed as if they had a plan and it was almost time to put it into action!

Opening the door to the hallway and peering out, Zearach gave a signal to indicate that the path was clear. So far, no one had come to their room looking for them and there had been no sign of anyone following up on any of the poking around they had been doing. Thora had been sure that the explosion upstairs would have triggered some sort of alarmed reaction or response, but perhaps that sort of thing just happened here? The soldier’s face fell somber at a follow-on thought – perhaps something worse was happening elsewhere.

At the top of the shaft, they tied the elf into a makeshift harness and then slowly lowered him down the shaft, careful not to bash Zearach too hard against the walls. As he got further down, the others lost sight of him in the darkness but Thora’s eyes could see the elf clearly, the ranger’s handaxe in one hand as his lithe frame descended into an unknown darkness. When Zearach’s feet touched bottom, Thora saw the elf’s head turning back and forth, scanning the darkness below as he crouched down. The elf walked out of sight for a moment, the rope starting to reach its end, but then Zearach returned to wave them down.

Thora climbed down awkwardly, nearly losing the grip on the rope several times. Below, Zearach had untied himself and had cleared a way for the others to land, which was probably a good idea in case Thora fell. The elf would not appreciate the dwarf’s stocky frame on his shoulders! Touching down on the hard floor, the dwarf could finally take in what the ranger had already seen.

All around them was death. Or undeath. Bodies lay in heaps in the darkness, still and unmoving. Corpses hung, stirring and moaning if someone neared them. Behind a glass case, there was some sort of glowing slime casting a greenish glow around the room, providing a little light to see more details by. The basement seemed enormous, full of what Thora could only describe as test subjects.

While Thora and Zearach examined the surroundings, the others descended the rope until the four of them were once more together. They slowly fanned out, trying to find any clue as to who was behind all of this. It was Zearach who noticed it first, on the other side of the glass wall, near the glowing ooze. Two forms, lying still on the ground, but still breathing. The figures were an older woman and a younger man that the elf didn’t recognize, but Thora had. Duanne and Thora had met these two not long ago in the upstairs halls. They had been on their way down for a meal after the Duanne’s voice had disturbed them in their room. These two guests had obviously not quite made it to dinner, at least, not to their own.

Suddenly, a strange gem-shaped arcane projection appeared in the air above them, some sort of scrying eye that seemed to be watching the glass case and its inhabitants. Before anyone could react, the green ooze began to move, its liquid stretching out towards the pair of prone victims!

A shattering discovery

Leaping into action, Zearach raced to the strangers’ rescue, hoping to reach them before the ooze could. The large glass case stood in their way, a transparent wall keeping them from reaching the pair of guests who lay, unsuspecting, on the other side. Backing up, the elf loosed an arrow, blasting a decent-sized hole in the glass wall, large enough for Thora to widen with a blade and pass through. The dwarf knew they didn’t have much time, as the ooze slowly spread across the floor. Something seemed wrong about it, moving with too much purpose, and there seemed to be shapes moving in the ooze itself!

Adrenaline pumping, the soldier charged forward as quickly as possible, reaching the side of the young man and kicking him with a boot. The young man grunted, stirring a little and holding a hand to his temple.

“Get up, NOW!” shouted Thora, voice filled with urgency. Something was rising out of the ooze, an almost humanoid shape. At first, it was just a hand, followed by the rest of what looked like an arm, pulling itself up out of the green glowing goo. A sense of horror filled the dwarf, causing Thora to once again send a leathered boot into the young man’s backside.

The glass next to Thora’s head cracked and buckled as the others attempted to make an escape route for them. The glass wall was holding, however, and the ooze was getting closer. Turning to face the oncoming danger, Thora held up a blade in defense, a free hand reaching to help the young man up. The urgency in Thora’s voice was now tinged with fear.

“It’s time to MOOOOVE!”

The old woman began to come around as well, both of them were disoriented but appropriately panicked. Two shapes were reaching for them from the ooze, arms reaching forward, open holes like mouths gaping wide and hurling some sort of acidic substance at them. The dwarf tried to take a position between the oncoming shapes and the old woman, but it was a tight squeeze to get them all out. Somewhere, Thora could hear the others moving to help them, sending blasts and arrows at the creatures chasing them. The glass at Thora’s back crackled, barely holding itself together, but still blocking the way.

When a stream of acid filled the air, Thora pushed the old lady out of the way, sending her toppling toward the exit. Pain coursed through the soldier’s body as skin began to feel like it was melting away. Gritting through the pain, the dwarf kept backing up, trying to shield the old lady. The ooze kept reaching forward, the lurching creatures only steps away, somehow a part of the spreading pool of acid. Preservation instinct was starting to take over, but Thora held on to the training, trying to stay in the way as the horror scene before them unfolded. Knocking an arrow, Thora joined the others in firing at the creatures, hoping they could be slowed down.

It stung so much. The armor helped keep most of the acid off of the skin, but Thora could still feel the horrible sensation of the liquid where there were gaps. When the next blast came, the dwarf and the others blocked off the civilians they had rescued, bearing the brunt of it for them. One of the creatures was gone, taken out by Duanne’s magics, but the other kept advancing, seemingly unable to feel the pain of their attacks.

Relentless. Craving. But not indestructible. Not with four desperate heroes laying down a concentrated barrage on it. Thora breathed a huge sigh of relief as the creature crumpled back into the ooze and began to recede away from them. This hotel seemed to be one terrible horror after another, but at least the two guests were safe. For now.

Some horrors come in small packages

The old woman clung to Thora’s arm like a desperate child, neither she nor her nephew willing to be far from their protectors. As the others fanned out and explored the basement, Thora brought them along, keeping back from the others but staying in the light so they would not feel as afraid of the groaning and creaking creatures that bumped around in the dark, beyond the light’s reach. Ghouls, skeletons, fire zombies… so many variations of the undead were positioned at various stations across the dark expanse of the hotel cellar. For the most part, contained.

As they passed a set of stairs, a set of shelves came into view, littered with a variety of documents and books. Usually, the welcoming sight of leather spines on a shelf would raise Thora’s spirits, but right now the dwarf wasn’t in the mood. At the top of the stairs, Thora noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling, the only other entrance they had found so far. Not wanting to be surprised by the owners of this establishment, the dwarf pulled out some tools and went to work on the mechanism, trying to find a way to jam it shut enough to give them a warning of someone’s approach. The last thing they needed was some necromancer or warlock sneaking up on them!

Thora watched the others exploring the edges of the room, Duanne almost cackling in delight as he found a collection of someone’s belongings. While Thora kept an eye, the dwarf’s two protégés tried to explain what happened.

“We went to dinner,” the young man began, the tremor in his voice crackling some of the words. “There was a man behind the bar, just like the one who checked us in. But he moved so strangely. I tried to talk to him, but he ignored us, and when I went to grab for his arm to get his attention my hand went right through him!”

“It’s all right, dearie” comforted his elderly aunt. “You couldn’t have known!”

Thora was only half-listening to their conversation, the soldier’s eyes and ears were otherwise occupied as they scanned for possible danger. A sudden slam against an observation window startled the dwarf as Thora noticed Zearach investigating some sort of fire or lava monster. There was something else, though. Coming from behind them in the dark. A scraping noise from above?

The dwarf slowly moved towards the stairs, one arm raised as a signal to the others that something was approaching. Leaving the old woman and her nephew in the light, the dwarf moved into the darkness, eyes adjusting to the shadows quickly. Sure enough, somebody was banging and shouting, trying to get through the quick lockjam work that Thora had done on the trapdoor. Kneeling down to stabilize, Thora drew back the string on the longbow and set aim, waiting for whomever might come through. The others were approaching quietly, starting to setup the trap. Could it be the evil mastermind behind all this horror?

With a sudden loud slam, the lock broke open and the trapdoor swung free, a small figure scrambling through the hole into the dark.

“What is going… AUGH!” the new arrival began, before being interrupted by multiple arrows pinning him to the stairs. The man behind all of this horror was not some larger-than-life villain, or a warlock with some devil pact, or a necromancer lich of great power. Just a pitiful little crazed halfling with too much real estate.

“This is MY place!” the halfling protested, as they dragged him away. “Can’t you just let a man have some fun? This is my house, I bought it, I built it! IT’S ALL MINE!”

The halfling was still shouting things as Zearach and Alandal took him away. They had tried to get some information out of the insane little owner of the hotel, but he claimed innocence, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Somehow, he thought he was fixing these people?

“If you break something, fix it! If you steal something, replace it! If you kill somebody, bring it back to life! THAT’S WHAT DADDY ALWAYS USED TO SAY!”

Thora was fairly certain that this little halfling’s father had not said any of those things. The dwarf had seen this sort of thing before. Not the horror itself, mind you, but that look in the eyes. The specific tone in the voice, the edge that cut the wrong way. Sometimes, it was dwarves that had gone too deep in the mines for too long. Others had been friends of Thora’s in the infantry who had seen the wrong type of things in combat. It changed some people and it was rare that they could be pulled back. This little halfling was gone, if he had ever been there to begin with.

Closed for exorcism

The wagon came around, Duanne driving it over so that he could load up all the various things that had been stashed in different parts of the hotel. Thora briefly wondered if the tortle was going to be willing to part with any of it? The teddy bear, for instance, would probably be appreciated by whichever parent had lost their child. How would they find the original owners, though? The postcards could be delivered, a final message from a loved one.

Thora helped the crew with a final sweep of the hotel, looking for any survivors that had been staying at the hotel. The handful of guests they discovered were quite surprised at the armed adventurers escorting them off the premises in the early evening, but once Alandal had explained about the state of some of the other guests there was a bit more listening and a lot less pushback. On the boardwalk outside the Happy Magic Hotel, the dwarf stood with arms crossed, watching the tourists as they looked about aimlessly. They hadn’t processed it yet, even as the guards finally arrived and began asking questions. This was something Thora knew how to deal with, unlike the unspeakable horrors of the hotel. Soldiers, regulations. Simplicity.

The dwarf stayed with the city guards, making sure they did what was needed. It was going to take several days and probably more than a few priests to rid the hotel of all the terrors hidden inside those walls, but the city could deal with that now. Taking a moment to recover, Thora’s head tilted back, eyes closed, a sigh escaping as the soldier took in the evening air. It was so loud in all directions as the fair was still very active at this time. Thora was tired, but knew it would be several hours yet before Alandal and Zearach would return from reporting to the professor with their prisoner. The rumble in the soldier’s belly made it clear that food would have to come before sleep, if they could find a decent place nearby.

All thought of food or sleep left Thora’s mind as the guards began carting out the victims, one at a time. In the darkness of the basement, they had been piles of gray shapes in the shadows. Here, in the light of the fair grounds, the horror of their final moments etched on their faces, it was a parade of nightmares passing the soldier by. As the face of a dwarf passed by, red beard bloodied and eyes wide open, terrible memories flooded to the surface, causing Thora to look away. The dwarf knew that the nightmares would return this night.