Ren - Thief

The smell of the the wizard's exposed entrails reminds me of the farm. I can almost feel the grass under my feet and I swear there is a hint of hay, hidden under the meaty, shit filled stench. Malik's hands scramble, but its like he's trying to hold slippery fish to his stomach and the pink eels keep getting free. His face is shock, his flesh is pale and as he reaches toward me I step back. 

(A blade trap has sprung within the hallway. Set at chest level. The figure at the front of the line, Malik the Wizard, fails their Reflex check by 5. 4d6 damage is expressed across his stomach and chest with 14 slashing damage)

"Ren, this isn't good" His voice is breathy, and sweat glistens across his face. Adrenaline pumping uselessly to save him. I shake my head slowly.

"Yeah, Malik, it's not good" I sneak a glance behind me but Torl and Lila aren't there, no one is. Just me, a dying wizard, and a path forward that will do to me what it's done to Malik. 

"Maybe, maybe I have some...spell...something. Ren, it's getting cold in here?" Malik stumbles back and his guts slip through his fingers. He hits the wall and slides down it slow, his bright blue eyes locked on me like I could give him some hope. I step past him, lightly. I'll need to focus if I'm getting out of this and his fading babbling is making it difficult to concentrate. 

"Why did I spend so much time..." Malik's lips continue to move, but the regret is given no air. Quietly, in a chamber deep under the ground, Malik the Red Wizard dies.

(Malik has rolled three death saves against his saving checks. He's failed two and passed one, which means he expires)

The hallway becomes quiet once again and I breathe out, then set to work checking the wizard's corpse before re-orienting to the task at hand: getting out of this damn trap.

(Ren searches Malik's body. It's full of wizardly odds and ends, feathers, nails, bits of cloth in various gaudy colors. Most of the spell components are immediately overlooked, but 3 tiny gems disappear into Ren's inventory, along with Malik's Spell Book. The words inside the book are meaningless to Ren, but they might be worth something to someone else)

I stand up from hunching over the wizard's corpse. The fresh scent of his exposed bowels keeping me from digging deeper into his robes and so I step back again and re-asses the way forward. A hall, seventeen to twenty feet long. A wooden door at the other end with a brass handle. Along the hall's walls there is a thin slit that's only really visible now that the trap has sprung. 

I concentrate and I begin to see what will happen next if I approach the door.

(Ren uses his Thief Ability: Trap Sense to gain an edge on making it through the death trap he's found himself in)

I see the ghostly image of the blade that swung out to kill Malik. A razor disk had poked out of the wall and shredded the wizard, a mistake I wasn't eager on repeating. With my eyes I trace the line on the wall and discover that there are more of these thin slots along the wall at different heights. If one blade doesn't disembowel you, the others will slow you down and sever other important pieces. 

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"You should have moved slower, old man" I say exhaling and then feeling my body begin to tighten like a spring. I bend down to make sure I leap with enough strength. If I miscalculate, I'll be as dead as the wizard. Maybe I'll get lucky, and the rest of the party won't see my dead, embarrassed body. 

I look behind again, in the vain chance that someone is there but still nothing but the empty hall and the surprise wall that cut Malik and I off from the rest of the group. Good, no one will see it if I screw up. In one fluid motion I launch myself up and out, down the hall, to the door. 

(Ren's Trap Sense allows him to make his Reflex checks against the traps with advantage, which means he checks twice against the traps and takes the best result. There are three traps and he needs at least a 15 on a 20-sided die roll, or higher. Ren's Dex bonus is +3, this bonus is applied to the rolls so he only needs a 12 or higher on the roll. Three rolls, two successes, one failure)

Light steps and a somersault, I move fast and it feels incredible. Within the walls I can hear the sounds of gears and mechanisms awakening, ready to taste the blood of intruders, but I know how it's going to move. Malik's killer fires free, but I'm already outside of its range.

A pair of smaller blades swing out after the first, low and meant to disable the legs. I've seen this, I know how to stand, how to breathe to avoid getting cut. The blades pass close, I can feel the air disturbance as they swing by and then back into the wall. I let myself smile a bit as I spin and corkscrew leap ahead, the door getting closer.

I get too cocky.

My hand lands on the door knob, I think I can twist and push it before the blades emerge but I'm wrong. The blades are almost like polearms, sharp axe heads on a pole. They emerge and retreat before I have a chance to change my actions. The door opens and I'm free, but as I step out carefully into the room beyond I shout out in pain.

(The third trap springs, and despite rolling his saving throw twice, he still fails. 4d6 of damage, but unlike Malik, Ren gets lucky by only taking 6 damage, that's half Ren's health!)

Red. Ragged and sticky. Both of my arms are bleeding, sidelong along my forearms. Any slower, any deeper, and those blades would've hacked them off clean. I instinctively reach to touch the cuts, but even the arm movements hurt, and I make a low sound involuntarily. 

Useless. I'm useless now. I don't know how deep the wounds are, but as I examine them I can tell that they are dangerously extensive. Fitfully, slowly, I wrap what spare cloth I have around each wound, wincing as the flesh prickles anew with fresh pain. Slow, methodical, the wounds are bandaged as best as I can. Making a fist hurts.

The sound around me starts to get louder.

I heard it when I pushed the door open. It was soft, and in the background and I had these wounds-

"Excuses"

The voice is clear in my head, and the anger helps pull my focus back to the present. I could have just entered another trap.

The sound, continues to get louder, from ahead of me. At first it was a soft tinkling, like bells in the distance, but as I wrapped my arms it started getting louder, impossible to ignore. 

The door had led into a new room, split by three hallways to my left, right and ahead. 

I concentrate and listen. More sounds. Feet. Equipment. Grunts. The other eleven must be ahead, but where?!

"Lila? Torl? Nikoli, please. Anyone?" My voice cracks as I shout and hear it echo down all the possible passages. 

The sounds are getting closer, they are getting louder, but I still don't know which direction to go. My arms burn beneath the makeshift bandages. 

"Ren?" it's soft, to my right, and its all I need. I keep low, and begin to move down the rightmost stone hallway when the hairs on my back standup. My stomach sinks as a deep low voice calls out from behind, what was the leftmost hall.

"Oh little man-thing. I am so sorry you're hurt. And I am very sorry that I'll have continue that pain"