Empirical Gnollage: Installment 84 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment084.png]
"I wish we could actually ask her questions. I'd like to find out how much more there is to this place and what we might expect to find," Al complained, watching the ghost of Cleodora float towards the largest concentration of dirt and dead leaves on the floor.
"My ability to understand what she is saying is only a temporary gift anyway, so we wouldn't have a great deal longer to get answers," Bote said.
"At least if she's going to obsessively tidy the place up, it'll probably make our employer happier," Al sighed, and went to begin gathering the scattered bones. "Hey, Gruntle turn around and I'll put these in your pack."
Gruntle gave Al a wide-eyed stare, then slowly began to back away.
"All right, all right, I guess that's understandable. I'll carry them."
Al took off his own pack and loaded up the remaining bones as neatly as he could manage, then donned it again. Cleodora's spirit carried on happily cleaning, taking no notice.
"Shall we check the door over there that we haven't looked at yet, and see if there's anything that needs killing behind it?" Al suggested. Gruntle perked up, and grunted. As if nothing important had happened recently, he rose and stalked to the door in question, followed closely by Wikwocket sporting a relieved grin. Gruntle listened to the door, and Wikwocket crouched to try to look underneath.
Al's torch sputtered.
"Hang on, my torch is about to burn out, let me get out another..."
Gruntle readied his shield and unhooked his flail, and Wikwocket put her hand on the door's latch.
"No, really, I won't be able to see..."
The torch sputtered and died. Al heard Wikwocket lift the latch, and the impact of what was presumably Gruntle ramming the door aside to rush into the room. There was a single CRACK! like a heavy piece of wood hitting stone, and then a thud of stone-on-stone as something fell to the floor. A gnollish huff reached Al's ears through the darkness. Al finished taking his pack back off again as quickly as he could, and rummaged blindly for another torch.
"Well, that one isn't going to threaten us anytime soon!" Wikwocket announced from the darkness with some amusement.
"What I can see of the room from here appears very much like the one on the opposite side where we fought and then ate the rats," Bote explained to Al. "I would guess that they have ambushed the decorative statue in there."
Al finally found a torch. He pulled it out and commanded it to light itself. He heard no sounds of distress or violence coming from the room Wikwocket and Gruntle had invaded, so he took the time to put his pack back on before going to look.
As Bote had predicted, the room was a mirror of the other one, though this one's moldy curtains over the alcoves weren't shredded by rats, and the now-headless marble statue had slightly more pronounced hips and chest suggesting that this one represented an elven woman. The statue's head lay on the floor, broken off at the neck. Its nose lay on the floor a few feet away.
Gruntle and Wikwocket were sneaking up on the curtained alcoves and yanking the curtains aside looking for anything dangerous. They found nothing but mildew stains.
"At least the break is clean," observed Bote, stepping up next to Al to inspect the statue. Al sighed and picked up the nose. He fitted it to the face of the head on the floor and made use of another magic trick to make it forget that it had been broken. He lifted the heavy stone head, but then decided he wouldn't have the strength to set it back in place cleanly and hold it by himself while he fixed it.
"Hey, Gruntle, help me put this back before Cleodora notices you broke it," he called out. He ignored the twinge of guilt he felt seeing Gruntle's worried expression as the gnoll rushed over.
It's only been couple of weeks, and that's not at all a human face. Is it weird that I recognize what "worry" looks like for a gnoll already? he wondered to himself. But, then, as they'd done with the statue of Fortuna at Wulfcynn Keep, he had Gruntle steady the head atop the statue's neck so he could magic away the break.
"There, as good as new. Well, as good as when we got here, anyway," Al declared, getting an agreeable grunt back from Gruntle. Al held his torch up and looked around. Mirroring the other room, Al could see a hallway leading away further into the Lavatio. This one seemed to have some sunlight shining into it.
"Did you find anything?" he called out to Wikwocket, who was leaning over to look into the slowly overflowing basin of water against the wall.
"Nope, nothing worthwhile at all. The statue didn't even fight back," she answered. Al pondered where to place a bone, and sighed heavily as he realized he was going to need to take his pack back off again since that's where he'd put them. He wedged his torch into the bent arm of the elven woman's statue and removed his pack. He reached in and selected one of the loose vertebrae from Cleodora's skeleton, and set it at the feet of the statue. Then he took out a selection of vertebrae and fingerbones to put in a pocket of his robe, before going through the whole process of putting his pack back on again and retrieving his torch. Wikwocket and Bote were standing nearby, waiting patiently, while Gruntle scratched with idle curiosity at the magically-repaired neck of the statue where it had been rejoined.
"Well, if you all are done poking around," Al said, "I suppose we can see where the light's coming from in that hallway."
"No, wait a minute," Wikwocket objected. She took BiteySue from her sheathe and used it to jab the marble-toga-clad buttocks of the statue a few times. "Okay, now I'm done poking around."
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After a heavy sigh and melodramatic, silent pleading with the ceiling for mercy, Al shook his head and stepped into the hallway.
It appeared a substantial portion of the walls and ceiling there had collapsed, possibly worn over time by the small trickle of water that dribbled down from the open hole that the sun shone through. The water formed a shallow puddle throughout the jagged stone rubble of the collapsed roof and walls, and green slime-covered mosses grew over everything.
"I wonder if Cleodora can clean that up?" Al wondered aloud. He reached into his pocket for a small bone, selected a relatively flat mossy stone in the center of the rubble and took a step towards it.
The piece of bone went flying as his foot immediately shot out from under him along the slime-slicked floor and he fell forward hard. Crashing down onto the stony rubble hurt, and Al heard his torch hissssss as it dipped for a moment onto the surface of the puddle. His retreat was undignified, but he managed to slide back out of the slimy growth and back onto dry hallway, where he sat to catch his breath for a moment as the others watched.
"Are you badly injured?" Bote asked.
Al rubbed his chest where he had hit the rocks, wincing. "I don't think anything's broken, but that's going to leave an ugly bruise."
"I'm not sure," Wikwocket commented with exaggerated thoughtfulness, "but it may be that this area might be very slippery and dangerous to walk through."
Gruntle grunted in agreement.
"You know, Melissa's disembodied spirit voice was right, you are a smart-ass," Al replied.
"Thank you for noticing, I work very hard!" Wikwocket shot back with a satisfied smile.
"If I am not mistaken," Bote said, "That door at the other end of the hallway, just a few paces ahead there, is probably the other door to the drinking room. Perhaps it would be easier to simply go back around to where we entered the first time, at the stairs."
They made their way back around. The ghost of Cleodora was still quietly reminding herself who she was and what she was doing, seeming calm. She had already swept much of the debris in front of the steps off to a small pile with her spectral hands. She didn't even look up at the party as they retraced the path they'd taken when they originally arrived, placing a bone at the foot of the statue of the elven man, and then one in a corner of the storage room they'd broken into, and yet another in an empty torch-sconce in the hallway.
The refreshment room's lingering smell of spilled ancient brandy and dead goblins wasn't actually refreshing at all, but Al took his pack off again and sat down at the table furthest from any goblin remains. He pulled out his writing supplies and the sketch he'd been making of the Lavatio's layout. At his request, Gruntle yanked the unexplored closed door open and confirmed that it really was at the other side of the slimy broken hallway.
"Is it all right if we take a break for a little while? I want to sketch out what we've seen so far, and it would probably be nice to catch our breath before we deal with whatever horrible spider-thing is in that room."
Gruntle huffed impatiently, but then grunted and crouched at the table with Al, facing down the hallway to watch the closed door that hid the creature they were planning to kill. He rummaged in his pack for another ball of fat and meat to snack on while he waited.
"I suppose we'll be forced to drink a little of what the goblins were into," Wikwocket suggested cheerfully.
"If it's any good, it's probably of value so we shouldn't take any," Al answered without looking up from his drawing.
"Well, maybe, but we won't know if it's any good unless we taste it!" Wikwocket countered, "I mean, goblins were drinking it, maybe it's awful."
"She does raise a valid point," Bote agreed.
"We're still not supposed to take anything, though."
"If we wait around for a little while, we can leave it behind when we're done with it!" Wikwocket suggested brightly. "They've got to have privies in here somewhere."
"That's..."
Al gave up.
"Okay, fine, but I'll trust you not to overdo it. And we will wait around until you... return it, so we're at least upholding the wording of the contract."
Wikwocket went behind the bar and picked up one of the bottles that the goblins had been about to throw at them. The unfortunate goblin's charred body had cushioned the bottle from hitting the floor. It was an almost spherical bottle with a glass stopper. A few beads of wax around it indicated it had originally been sealed, but the heat of the magical fire had melted it away, and the stopper had fallen out. About half of the bottle's contents was yet to be spilled on the floor. Wikwocket sniffed carefully, raised an eyebrow, and tilted the bottle back to take a sip.
"Good brandy!" she declared. She took another sip, then picked the stopper back up off of the floor and closed the bottle with it.
Gruntle fidgeted impatiently, ears twitching as he continued watching the door down the hall. "Moving around in there," he grumbled.
"Hang on, I'm almost done... there. I think that's good enough for now," Al responded. He looked at his sketch of a map. It was no work of professional cartography by any measure, but Al thought it would be good enough to guide the restoration workers. He carefully repacked his writing supplies, and then went to set another of Cleodora's bones underneath the bar.
"Now then," he said, "how do you want to deal with the spider-thing don't just run down there and open the door yet!"
Gruntle huffed again, but crouched back down as they discussed what to do. For once, Al had to agree with Wikwocket that resorting to the use of magic from the start was probably justifiable in this case, since the room was full of webbing and they might not be able to tell exactly where the thing was. Conjuring a wide area of fire to fill the room, hopefully eliminating the webbing and perhaps the spider-thing as well seemed like a smart tactical approach. Gruntle would pull the door open just as Al finished the spell to conjure the fire, then Al would back up far enough to leave room for Gruntle to beat the spider-thing to death if it survived, with Wikwocket assisting by her own insistence.
The plan proceeded smoothly. Gruntle took up his place next to the door and grabbed the latch. Al chanted and made the appropriate gestures, and Gruntle timed the opening of the door perfectly. A bright, searing burst of flame filled the entire room beyond the door, melting the webbing away in an instant and highlighting a spider the size of a large dog withering and crisping in the heat directly across the room. Al took a few steps back, drawing Purgatio as he went.
The only flaw in the plan, Al realized too late, had been in the assumption that there was only one spider-thing. Singed unnaturally-large arachnids launched themselves through the air at Al and Gruntle from all the way in the far corners of the room.