Before two watches passed, Lydia rejoined us from her bookish seclusion, and Ezekiel roused us to take the fight to our enemy. When we approached the amber pillar, it rose up as before (the illusory spider atop it still leering and gesturing at us), but we could walk through it, and when we emerged, with none of the stuff seeming to have stuck to us, Ezekiel and Aliana led the way through the wall.
The first thing that really hit me was the smell. It’s almost like a spice – like cinnamon, Lydia thought – but it’s also almost like…burned hair. I’ve never sniffed a spider after squashing it, so I’m not sure what else it’s like. Maybe it’s incense, a long way off…but intense enough that it fills the whole place.
It’s dark, of course…except for our shields. The light reveals giant “tubes” – some ten feet across, some thirty, some everything in between – that stretch off into the vast blackness in every direction. Their surface is basically white, with a gently yielding texture. They’re the only thing to walk on here, aside from circular platforms that they connect, and while they don’t bounce exactly, so I’m not afraid of being flung off the edge by accident, it is tiring to walk on them – like deep sand on a beach. And they’re definitely not sticky enough to allow even Raven to climb along the edge or underside of the beam. At least they give enough purchase to let us climb up or down onto another strand when two or more of them cross each other.
The other thing that’s striking is the noise. Not a clamorous noise, but a…a hissing, or a howling if that could be musical, like the sound of the wind playing fitfully over 1000 harps, all tuned slightly differently. It gives the feeling that something unnatural is always breathing just behind you, and to watch Heiron and Clatrial, that’s how it feels to them, too.
Almost the first moment we stepped through the portal, something went “snap” inside Ezekiel’s backpack, but we couldn’t investigate right away because two female drow were standing guard on the platform with us. They seemed a little surprised that we were “surfacers,” but not alarmed…which is good so far.
Ez told them he had a message for Lolth. They told him the “nest” is at the base of the web, and pointed us down one of the four strands that radiate from that place.
I know the way back, but I’m not sure I could figure out how to make the portal reverse us back to reality, if I had to. The platform where we appeared has a circle of eight pillars surrounding it, but nothing that looks like the muraled wall in the temple.
As we moved away from the platform along the strand, mists hove out of the darkness, blocking our vision after a certain distance. Once we felt we were out of range of the guards, we stopped – both to examine Ezekiel’s backpack, and because the paladins were looking a little pale. Even Mikael looked a little green and fidgety, and he kept touching the cluster of mistletoe he wears around his neck.
Aliana and Clatrial insist they’re fine (of course they would), and besides there’s no way out of this place except through. Tressarian mumbled something about hating this place and wanted to puke even though he doesn’t have a stomach.
I think I understand. I never thought I would reach a place beyond the hand of Ehlonna…Even on the slave ship, I knew her goodness could not be undone completely. But this place is not like the Underdark. The very air (are we breathing air?) tastes like…like it hates being air. The darkness doesn’t just feel like it hates light, but like it hates everything else, too. Hates and also wants to eat it. I asked Heiron if my imagination was running away with me, and he said I was sitting right there beside him, so that made me feel better.
Inside Ezekiel’s backpack, the platinum egg had cracked to reveal four things I dare not even describe here. Like the Astral Plane, we have entered a space where laws we took for granted no longer function as expected. Who knows who or what might be spying on us at any time.
We left the first platform, and soon passed a squad of male drow led by a demon of some kind. They let us by when Ezekiel said we were just delivering a message, though Aliana might have made a different call.
We passed a platform with huge spiders – bigger than Nori – hanging above our heads in vast webs that also clung to their backs. I can only imagine they were chittering down at us with evil, spidery thoughts, but they too let us pass.
Things got serious when we came to a wall of darkness. It was like light literally stopped at a certain point, and not even Ezekiel’s mace could get any light into that bubble. We thought about using the ebony flies to move around it, but when Mikael tried to scout for us, he barely made it fifteen feet from the strand before a powerful wind hit him, and he had to struggle back to us. That at least explains some of the whistling and hissing noises around here…like it’s a place so vast the winds buffet it like a mountainside, and yet it’s enclosed so the air has no place to go to…so it just keeps circling and piling over itself. That’s not how real air works, of course, but the point is it kept Mikael from even telling us how far ahead the darkness might lie.
Ez tried one more trick with his prayer beads, but it didn’t seem to do anything…which left us with essentially one option. We tied ourselves together like climbing a mountain, and headed into the unknown – paladins first, of course.
The end of the line hadn’t even followed the front of the line into the blackness when we heard snarls and chomping. Aliana’s grumpy that whatever it was ignored her and Ezekiel, but it gave Mikael some bad teeth marks before he and Raven beat it back. We’re still not sure exactly what it was, except that it hates paladins – and Mikael.
We emerged from the darkness without falling off the strand or encountering anything else deadly. Ez patched Mikael up while we untied ourselves, and not too far a distance beyond that, our strand crossed another that seemed to lead down at an angle. Down being our direction, we followed it.
The downward strand ended at another level one. Here, we ran into more serious trouble. It started with a great bundle of webbing, twenty or thirty feet high, that blocked the path forward. We could climb over it, of course – with some difficulty. Or we could try cutting through it. But the mass was shifting and pulsing in disturbing ways, and none of us were eager to face down a swarm of huge spiders (Mikael said he didn’t have that much poison neutralization).
We did a little looking for a way around it, but Ezekiel soon pulled out a scroll he said would help determine if whatever was inside was dangerous. At first, he seemed to take a long time reading the scroll…then it dropped out of his hands, and we realized he was just slumped there, staring at nothing. Fortunately, he’s not dead, but it means Heiron and Mikael have been carrying him ever since.
Turns out the other direction along the strand brought us more progress. We killed some stone creatures that I believe were called “ropers” when we fought them under the Slaver city. More importantly, we came on a platform with a strange little stand on it: a stone pedestal if some kind, with three feet supporting it, and some kind of pattern etched on top, with three gems set at particular points. It looks dangerously significant.
We also met a female warrior who looks human, guarding a platform alongside two monsters that look like horrible goat/lion hybrids with dragon heads and wings. Ez was still unconscious, so I asked Aliana to use her winning ways to ask could we pretty please pass by…and wouldn’t you know, it worked, and we didn’t have to fight the lady and her pets.
At last, however, we came on another strand leading down – but it’s at such a sharp incline, I definitely don’t want to carry Ezekiel down it. Master Oaklock suggested waiting until he revives, and Heiron pointed out we’re all pretty tired (especially Lydia, who stayed up late cramming spell knowledge, and then came on this long walk in this oppressive darkness). I hate spending any more time in this place than necessary, but I agree to proceed at full strength we need Ezekiel to wake up.
This strand we’re sitting on isn’t wide enough to fit the fortress, so we simply keep watch over our sleeping companions, and watch dark shapes flit in and out of the mist…close? or far? It’s impossible to tell exactly. There’s something just so comforting about paladins…even Aliana, who’s so perfect as to be untouchable, and Clatrial, who’s chasing perfection so intently you think she might frighten it.
Find the previous entry here.