Esther led Draya through the halls, hiding in the shadows and sneaking around every corner of the vast fortress. It had been several minutes since they had exited the tunnel into the outer perimeter of Stormhold, following precise directions Jace had given them. The rogue had seen a few people from a distance when they had come to intersections, but no one moved toward them, and they took a direct route to the prisoner’s pit. Their destination was a large, unfinished room with a gaping hole in the center.
“How are we going to get down there?” Draya whispered as she moved beside Esther, who was still hiding in the shadows. They both gazed down the 200-foot-deep hole at the setup below. They couldn’t see the players since their cages had solid stone tops, but two big cats loitered about, constantly snarling at the contents of the cells. The women watched long enough to see a totem zap four lightning bolts through the metal bars. The PCs were so fatigued that they barely responded. Another totem glowed a bright blue, casting a healing spell to undo the damage.
“How awful,” Draya said. “This is even crueler than what my people are subjected to.”
“Your people?” Esther asked, pulling herself from the shadows.
Draya looked at her and shook her head. She had kept her past hidden from her new friend, not wanting to burden her, but Jace had dragged it back to the surface, so it was fresh on her mind. “Another time,” she promised. “For now, how will we get them out of there? Do we need to use that?” She motioned to a suspended wooden platform over the middle of the 50-foot-wide hole. It was secured tight against the room’s low ceiling and out of reach of the women, though Esther was probably athletic enough to jump out and grab it. Further inspection revealed a rope tethering it to the far side of the opening, where a crank in the wall would lower it enough that one could pull it toward the edge and get on the elevator.
“No,” Esther said, not paying attention to the pully system. “We are going to free them from captivity, but we aren’t going to get them out of here. You are going to cast a fireball down at them.”
“I’m going to what?! ” she cried.
Esther rolled her eyes. “You mean Jace didn’t tell you? He left me to do it?”
“I promised I would use my abilities to help him rescue the kidnapped victims,” she said. “He didn’t say I would be killing them.”
“You won’t really kill them,” Esther replied. “They are like Jace. Their real identities exist in another dimension. They only appear like us in ours, but they don’t belong here. Right now, the owners of this stronghold are keeping them alive against their will. Trust me. They want to die so they can wake up in their own world. You saw the totem heal them, right? The kidnappers don’t want them to die.”
Draya understood all of that but still wasn’t sure. “Has anyone asked them that? Once I cast the fireball, I won’t be able to take it back.”
Esther shrugged and got down on her knees and then stomach so she could shout down into the pit without her voice echoing through the fortress halls. “Hello, down there!” she cried. She only saw the cats react and look back up at her with snarls. “We are here to save you. We will cast a fireball and take you out of your misery. It will all be over soon, okay?”
She waited and only heard a haunting chorus of moans and pleas come back. “See,” Esther said, getting up from the floor in response to the indecipherable sounds. “They’re fine with it. Hurry up so we can get out of here.”
Draya shrugged her shoulders and pulled out her staff. She had stopped using her Dragon Sustaining feat, so her Dragon Strength had expired, but she felt her limbs tighten in power again once she held her elongated staff. She hadn’t dispelled her dress and felt the fire surge every few seconds. Her weapon drew mana directly from her dragon core, but she timed the attack with her dress anyway. She pointed the staff down at the middle of the floor far below them and released a powerful fireball.
The churning ball of orange energy surged down a dozen feet before wards flared to life in the room, and the attack fizzled into nothing. Draya stepped back in confusion. As a mage, she would normally feel the mana pulsing from the silent alarm that had just gone off, but she couldn’t distinguish it from the sensation her dress provided.
Esther felt it but misinterpreted it as a spell blocking Draya’s power. “Try again,” she said. “Obviously, they will have protections set up. But they can’t deflect all of your fire. You’re too strong for that.”
Draya hadn’t held anything back in the first attack and released another massive fireball down the center of the pit. It made it just as far and fizzled into nothing. The next round, she did it again with the same result. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said. She had only used the staff once before, and there hadn’t been any issues.
“Maybe they have protection against fire,” Esther said. “Jace said this is dragon country. I can try an acid attack.” The rogue didn’t have one memorized that could go that far and had to go into her inventory to redesign one. Once she was manipulating her own mana, she felt the alarm pulsing more profoundly, distracting her from her efforts.
“Esther,” Draya said, tugging her arm and bringing her out of her inventory before she finished. “Someone is coming.”
Once her attention was back in their room, she heard the sound of voices and hid in the shadows. Draya wasted some mana on an invisibility spell but was yanked out when another fire pulse surged through her. She thought about removing the dress now but cast Mage Armor instead and gripped her staff tightly.
A mountain troll and the keep’s second priest walked out of a passageway into the large room. A mostly level floor at least twenty feet wide encircled the pit on all sides, giving the troll ample space to rush the Draya. The woman didn’t think she could parry the creature's vicious strike but didn’t have to. Esther leaped out of the shadows when the troll passed her, stabbing one of her improved rapiers into the troll’s back. She used Char, knowing that fire was often required to kill trolls. The monster had over 400 HP, but her Sneak Attack did more than half of that, and because of the added fire damage, the troll automatically failed the save and dropped to the floor, dying.
Draya walked up to the creature and started to pummel it with her staff as Esther searched out the priest. His name was Reycon, and he cast a Hold spell on the rogue before she could escape into the shadows. Esther failed, but her cursed ring hit her with five electrical damage the next round, and she was freed. Reycon took the delay to energize the lights in the room with additional mana, so they banished all the shadows. Esther was already tugging on the brim of her hat, but she suddenly had nowhere to Shadow Step, so she stalked out of the pillar of darkness directly at the priest.
Before the woman arrived, the desperate NPC had just enough mana to cast a Slashing protection spell on himself, so Ester sheathed her weapons and grappled the level 14 priest. She didn’t do it successfully enough to kill him, but she did maneuver Reycon to the edge of the pit and kicked him in. She didn’t know if the fall would kill him outright, but once he hit bottom, she heard the lightning totem go crazy with a character outside a cage. Between the fall, the lightning, and the two hungry cats, she didn’t give the man much of a chance.
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Esther turned to Draya, who was beating a dead troll and called her to leave it alone. “Come on. They obviously know we’re here; we need to find Psycho and leave.”
“But the prisoners,” Draya said, moving to the pit’s edge and pointing in. She recoiled in horror at what the cats were doing.
“Do you want to go down there?” Esther asked. The mage shook her head emphatically. “Neither do I. Jace will have another plan.”
Draya ran over to the rogue. “Does that mean this one failed?”
“I guess,” Esther said. “Is that important?”
“He said I can’t criticize one of his plans until it fails,” Draya replied, following Esther out of the room and down the hall.
Esther laughed. “Well, this one certainly isn’t going too well. If this isn’t a failure, I don’t know what-” her voice cut out as her right foot sunk deep into the floor. It was as if the stone was made of swampy mud, and soon she was knee-deep, struggling to take another step. She turned to see Draya trying to use her staff to leverage herself out. Esther also saw a gnome and a storm shaman that had crept up behind them. The gnome was in the middle of a spell, and Esther guessed what was coming next.
The athletic woman couldn’t generate enough momentum to leap out of the quagmire, so she reached under her skirt to retrieve the two seashells that were just small enough to fit in her gem pouch. She turned to the wall next to her, placed two handholds as high as she could reach, and did a successful chin-up, pulling her boots free of the liquid floor just as the crafty gnome finished his spell.
Esther saw the stone harden around Draya’s legs. Had she accepted the restrained condition, the mage would have been able to cast spells, but in her inexperience, she struggled briefly against the unyielding floor, failed critically, and was considered Securely Grappled and Helpless. Esther dropped back to the solid cobblestones and sprinted toward the enemy pair. She stowed the shells and pulled her weapons, but the shaman was faster and unleashed a powerful lightning attack. Esther failed the save and took 200 damage. She had 416 HP, so she didn’t collapse but gritted her teeth against the pain and kept charging, assuming the human wouldn’t have enough mana to do that again.
As she felt the five additional damage surge from her ring in the following round, she heard a subdued whimper from behind. Esther looked over her shoulder and stopped. Half of the lightning damage had jumped into Draya. The mage had slightly better Magic Defense than Esther, but since she was Helpless, she didn’t get a D20 to save against the attack. Esther had needed a lucky 16 to avoid critically failing, but without a roll, Draya failed with two criticals, and the damage doubled back to 200. She only had 320 HP.
The mage fell unconscious, and her upper body slammed against the stone, her legs still secured. She was dying, and Esther had to save her. Gromphy had given them all healing potions that fit in their pockets. Esther pulled one now and raced back to the woman.
“Stop!”
Esther looked up and saw two more fighters coming from the other direction, back toward the outer edge of the fortress. An elf stood in the hallway with a human archer next to him. They were only 50 feet away.
“If you touch her,” Ian said, “my man will drill you with an arrow. He won’t miss.”
Esther knew that if she did try to administer the potion, she would be considered Flat-Footed, and if the archer was only half as good as Psycho, he could kill her with one shot. Her armor made her nearly invincible against slashing damage but didn’t do so hot against piercing, other than the permanent crit protection it gave her.
“We won’t kill you,” Ian said, strolling toward the two women. “You can come with me under your own power at your current health, or Keyan can put an arrow in you, knock you unconscious, and I will get a troll to carry you. Your choice.”
“I won’t let her die,” Esther said. Draya’s descending health was already at 15.
“I don’t want her to die either,” Ian said, getting even closer while Keyan, the archer, stayed at fifty feet. “But if we have to choose between the two of you, we will pick you. Surrender and submit, and Pebbles, the gnome, can heal your friend. Try to save her, and we will put an arrow in your lovely chest. Do nothing, and we can both watch her die and then you get an arrow anyway. The choice is yours.”
The wards in the hallway were pulsing with magical light, and Esther couldn’t hide. Not that she wanted to. These players were more prepared than the fools who had tried to capture her back in the tower defense module. Draya went to 8 HP, and Esther raised her hands in defeat. She got on her knees and faced the wall. Ian closed on her quickly, ensuring he always gave the archer a line of sight on the dangerous woman.
Esther didn’t try anything. With the narrow hallway confining her, enemies on both sides, and Draya with 30 seconds to live, she submitted. Ian grabbed her hands and Grappled them behind her back. He had nowhere close to the necessary skill, but the rogue didn’t resist. Once he had shackles on her, the elf summoned Pebbles over, and Ian hefted Esther to her feet so she could spin around and watch the gnome heal Draya when she was at two health. She jumped up to 50, and Esther breathed a sigh of relief.
The rogue tested her bonds, but they were enchanted mithril, and she didn’t have the skill. With them on her wrists, she was considered Grappled. If someone grabbed her, she was Securely Grappled and couldn’t initiate anything that cost an action, including going into her inventory, casting spells, or trying to attack. While only in the Grappled state, Esther could move where she pleased, but when someone touched her, she could only go where the person directed.
As Pebbles worked to get Draya out of the stone, Ian did more than touch Esther. He slammed her against the wall. Now she was Pinned and Helpless. He could do anything he wanted. “We don’t let visitors enter with magical items,” he said. “I bet you’re loaded.” Keyan remained at a distance with his arrow knocked, so the shaman moved beside Ian to assist as the elf pulled all of Esther’s equipment out of her inventory. He left behind the few items that weren’t magical, such as her dress and some food.
Once her inventory was empty, he eyed up her body. “That is some impressive armor you have.”
Esther wanted to let him know what had happened to the last person who had taken her shadow scale, but in her Helpless condition, she couldn’t talk. So, she could only watch as he unbelted her weapons, reached down to undo her Shadow Step boots, and then reached under her skirt to find the knives she kept strapped to her outer thighs. The game didn’t require Ian to undo buckles or straps to remove the items, but he lingered anyway, enjoying the look of hatred in the woman’s eyes.
He saved the vest for last. With her arms tied behind her, he couldn’t take it off manually and used the Undo option to open and remove the vest. He was upset she wasn’t naked underneath, but the tight halter top was almost as good. Ian knew that as soon as he released her from the wall, she would be able to tear into him verbally. Before he did, he leaned slightly to show her Draya being pulled from the stone and shackled.
More fighters had shown up, and a troll sprinted toward the group. “Where is your partner?” Ian quizzed the lone monster.
The troll looked back the way it had come and shrugged its shoulders. “You always need to travel in pairs,” Ian stressed. He sounded like he was talking to a four-year-old. To Esther, the troll didn’t look even that bright. Under the elf’s instructions, it took the unconscious mage in its arms and moved toward the remaining fighters who had arrived.
The gnome and storm shaman stood by, awaiting orders. They were both spawned NPCs. The mountains produced the shamans, and the gnomes were found in an alcove amidst a dense vein of adamantium. The owner of the stronghold had a choice to either kill the gnomes and mine the metal or recruit them so they could help you mine. Ian would have chosen the first option, but the previous owners had been more diplomatic, and Pebbles’ skill in manipulating stone couldn’t be denied.
Ian told the magical pair to return to the hostages and protect them against further attacks. The small stone enchanter ran alongside the human in the direction the women had initially come, turning down a side passage.
Ian gazed in that direction, looking past the intersection toward where the troll and its partner should have come. Why had it been alone? He shook his head, not having time for distractions. He instead returned to Esther. “When I release you, watch your tongue. You might not care what we can do to you, but we can hurt your friend too. Think about it.” Ian finally pulled her away from the wall and shoved her after the departing group.
Usually as agile as a cat, Esther stumbled from her Grappled condition and fell hard into the stone floor. With her hands tied behind her, she hit face first. Pain surged through her as blood ran down her chin, fueling her rage. As Ian summoned one of the new fighters to help her up, she knew the elf was still behind her, and the archer flanked her from in front. She still couldn’t try anything. She got to her feet and stumbled down the hall. Jace better have another plan.