Into the belly of the beast | A Thora Silentblade tale

Thora watched as Zearach and Duanne sketched paths in the soft earth of one of the local farm fields near Generra. The wizard and ranger were comparing notes, pointing emphatically, and arguing over how fast they could travel across the rocky terrain. Both were fairly certain their target was upstream, in the mountains, at least an hour’s hike away. It hadn’t taken long for the two to calculate it, but Thora was still anxious about any delay in chasing down the creature that had just left the town. When it seemed an agreement had been reached on their destination, Alandal urged them all forward, with Zearach and Thora taking the rear guard. The hike was long and with darkness upon them the moonlight lent an eeriness to the mountain trail that put Thora on edge. Nearly an hour in, when they felt they must be close, Thora and Zearach slipped off the main trail and kept their distance from the two reptilians, hoping to keep away from notice. Thora could smell a sickly stench in the air that reminded the dwarf of death. Something was not right.

The elf at Thora’s side held a hand up, noticing something ahead. The stream that they had followed from town seemed to be source from a large cave at the base of a mountain, its soft bubbling mixing with the sound of tearing and cracking. The dwarf watched from the shadows as a winged humanoid tore a goat apart with its claws, devouring the flesh raw, snapping bones where they were inconvenient. The incubus was here!

It turned its head, hearing Duanne’s peg leg approaching, blood dripping from its fanged mouth.

“No, too soon!” the incubus shouted, dropping the goat to the ground. “You keep spoiling my plans!”

The fiend leapt up, fleeing into the cave at full speed, the dragonborn and tortle splashing through the stream in its wake. Thora could see Duanne gesturing with his clawed hand to something on their right, just out of the dwarf’s view. When Thora went to mention something to the elf, the soldier discovered that Zearach had already silently taken off with his light step and rushed for an alternate cave entrance that was hidden away to the side. With a shrug, the dwarf nocked an arrow and chased after the elf, hoping to catch up.

The soldier ducked a little upon entering the small access tunnel. The ceiling was not very high, even for a dwarf, and the longbow in the soldier’s hands was nearly scraping against the dripping stone roof of the passage. The rocks around them were damp from moisture and the sound of rushing water could be heard ahead, echoing through the tunnel. The elf was only a few lengths ahead, rounding a corner, urging Thora to catch up. As the two of them came out upon a raised ledge above the rushing stream, Thora spotted the winged fiend fleeing on the opposite side. It was getting away, deeper into the mountain!

Chasing the imp

A sudden blast of water rushed through the room, slowing the incubus down just enough to give them a chance to close the distance. The elf and dwarf leaped over the stream, both bracing as they landed on the slippery wet stone below. The duo broke into a run as they chased down the fiend. Somewhere behind them they could hear the sounds of Alandal and Duanne working their way through the water to catch up, but they couldn’t wait for them, not with their target escaping so quickly!

Down the tunnel the two of them went, hot on the heels of the creature. As it ran, it kept looking back, snarling at its two pursuers. As the passage rounded a corner, Thora pushed off the wall with a booted foot, firing in mid-air in the hopes of slowing the incubus down. Instead of a hard wall, however, it seemed rubbery and soft… not like any stone the dwarf had encountered before.

Something was definitely wrong.

The dwarf suddenly became acutely aware of their surroundings. It felt like eyes were watching them, from everywhere. The stench of death was even stronger, yet Thora saw no corpses. Ahead of them was a rocky cavern, simple, nothing fancy, but the imp was fleeing as if it was a safe haven. Something about this bothered the soldier. There was a warmth in the air that didn’t seem natural, and it was almost like a heartbeat in the stone. Thora had felt the heartbeat of a mountain before and THIS wasn’t it.

The dwarf’s worries were interrupted by a sudden wave of water rushing past them. An enormous elemental creature abruptly formed before Zearach and Thora, crashing down upon the fiend. From behind them, they could hear Duanne shouting instructions in that strange language he used back in the lab. The water seemed to be slamming down upon the incubus, driving it into the ground. Again and again it pressed downward, pinning it in place. Thora stepped forward to finish it off when, suddenly, it disappeared!

Zearach looked around, his keen elven senses trying to locate their quarry. There was nothing? Bow drawn, the elf stepped forward, swiveling his aim left, and then right, ready to loose. Cautiously, Thora slid up next to the elf, slinging the longbow over a shoulder as the soldier drew both blades. They both crossed the threshold into the pitch black of the cavern. The room shifted around them, the rocks and cave walls disappearing, replaced by some sort of living rock-like flesh. Small pools of lava glowed in pockets on the floor. They were surrounded on all sides by corpses, piled high. Several of them were bloated, throbbing slowly, being used as some sort of incubating chamber.

Turning to look behind them, Thora gasped as he noticed a claw ripping out of a corpse not far behind them. Alandal was just stepping past it, unaware of the danger he was in.

“Right behind you!” Thora shouted, then also noticed another corpse beginning to bulge. “And ahead!”

The dragonborn looked confused, swiveling his gaze back and forth, but readied himself and took a more defensive stance. Whatever they were up against, it was not of Rhime. Somehow, Thora felt these creatures were unlikely to take kindly to their presence in this place.

Moving back-to-back with Zearach, Thora held both blades out, ready for whatever might come their way. The room was enormous and even the dwarf’s keen darkvision couldn’t pierce its depths. What was this thing?

As impish creatures began clawing their way out of corpses around them, the incubus suddenly appeared in their midst, claws swinging towards them. Zearach let loose his bow at point blank range, skewering the creature as Thora swung for its legs, slicing hard through a thigh. The fiend cried out in pain but its talons still slashed through Thora’s defenses, drawing blood as a cut formed on the dwarf’s arm.

Thora took a step back, putting the incubus between them, looking for an opening. The fiend was hurt but its grin was unnerving as it stalked forward. Colour flooded the room as the incubus was lit up by a light coming from the tunnel. It had only a moment to turn its head towards the source of the light before an arrow pierced its skull. The dragonborn stood there, confidently, bow raised as he admired his handiwork. The creature crumpled to the cave floor and then began to disintegrate into a pile of ashes, burning away before them.

“Good timing, friend!” shouted Thora, before a look of horror crossed the dwarf’s face. “Look out!”

A small spine-tailed imp clawed its way out of a nearby body, dripping amniotic fluids as it emerged from its incubation. It charged toward Zearach, thorns flying from its tail as it came. Thora turned around and noticed several more emerging from their cocoons and charging forward, demonic eyes and open maws yearning to feast upon them, their forked tongues snaking the air as if to taste them.

Forming up, they pushed back against the horde, Zearach’s bow firing again and again as Alandal and Thora held back the swarm. Thora pushed forward, the slashing at one, then another, trying to keep them away. With a sudden charge, the dwarf lowered a shoulder and eviscerated one, finding a way past the line of advancing creatures. The imps cluster broke, allowing them to push back and take the advantage. They were many, but they were still weak from being newborn, and their combined force was no match for the heroes. Thora chopped a head off with a clean slash of a blade, watching the gruesome visage roll to the ground at their feet. The other imps started to lose their nerve, pausing their rush and considering a next move.

A smile came over Duanne’s face as he spoke in that strange language of his. A massive tide of water suddenly slammed down upon the imps, crushing them out of existence! That wizard always had a few tricks, didn’t he?

The promise

While the rest of them searched the cavern, the tortle was negotiating with the water elemental using strange wet swooshing sounds and clicks that reminded Thora of a babbling brook. For the moment, it seemed Duanne had the situation under control, which allowed Thora to look around.

“Has anyone noticed it seems warmer than usual?” asked Zearach, looking about with a raised eyebrow. Now that the elf mentioned it, Thora recognized that the heat did seem higher than it had been in the tunnels. At first the dwarf had been too distracted by the fiendish creatures, but Zearach was right. It felt almost like working in the forge, though this heat felt different.

All around them, the bodies that littered the chamber were disintegrating, leaving nothing behind. The walls, however, were covered in runes, everywhere. None of them were able to understand what it was, but based on the what they had seen and the placement of the runes, it seemed as if it was some sort of summoning ritual. It had to be the way that this otherworldly thing was being brought to their world.

Pulling out some smithing tools, the dwarf began chipping away at the runes, trying to get them off the stone. Layers of the living rock fragmented off, revealing the true stone beneath. Would they need to remove all the runes to stop this? It was going to take hours at this pace! The others chipped in, using what they could to work at destroying all the rune symbols in the cavern.

Finally, the last rune fell away from the wall. The walls around them began to shift, seeming to lose their tangibility as the living thing that had invaded their world seemed to shift back to wherever it had come from. The heat began to abate, returning to the cooler temperatures one would expect under a mountain. The flesh and lava around them was replaced by the normal rocky structure they had initially seen in the tunnels.

Without the impish army and runes, whatever incursion had been planned seemed to be off the table for now, but that didn’t make Thora feel a whole lot better. They still had no idea why this was happening, let alone who was behind it! Perhaps the team the Professor was sending back would be able to know more about this.

After making a sweep of the cavern with the others, Thora headed for the exit with Alandal and Zearach. Duanne was in the process of bottling up a waterskin that was suddenly bulging at the seams.

“Trouble?” asked Thora, with an eyebrow cocked in interest.

“I promised to return it to its plane, so it may go home” answered the wizard.

“And if we don’t?” stated Zearach, with more of a sarcastic tone than Thora expected.

“We’ll probably all be very dead” came Duanne’s flat response.

Oh good, just what they needed: a debt to a murderous elemental!