Out of the Dark

Covered by the mushroom forest, we circled the underground city to both sides as far as possible. It was built on the shore of another huge, black lake, to which Daril said it might be a branch from the Darklake. This fabled water system allegedly spans vast reaches of the underdark, consisting of lakes, rivers but also more artificial elements like canals made by Duergar. It stretches over several layers of elevation, connected both by waterfalls and locks. Judging by the visible size of the city and its inhabitants, it was large enough to home between one and two hundred individuals.
Still, we were unsure how to continue. Despite their lack of animosity upon discovering my spying on the weapon transaction, walking into a city of alien people seemed like suicide. Still, we were keen to learn a little more about these creatures, whilst dodging fights as much as possible. I wondered aloud whether Grum was able to use his animal kinship to transform into anything that might be able to fly over the city. Whilst he was explaining that this technique had eluded him thus far although he constantly seemed on the verge of a breakthrough, following a sudden thought I began humming a little song I remembered vaguely from my childhood about the ruler of the night by one Johan Cornstream. I allowed Mystra’s weave to encompass the soft melody. Then Grum began to shrink. Feathers sprouted all over his body, his face contorted into a beak and large, dark eyes. I held out my arm which the owl readily accepted as a landing space before spreading its huge wings and heading off into the darkness of the cave.
Upon his return both to us and to his dwarven form, he explained that unsurprisingly, much of the city had marine influences, from the quays stabbing out into the lake to the general smell of slightly rotten fish. Close to the gate facing us he had made out a large statue of a two-legged creature with a fish head, mighty pincers for hands and a spined ridge along the back. Multiple kuo-toa were gathered there, he presumed both for prayer and guard duty. Closer to the waterfront was an altar of sorts, perched upon with he had seen the limp bodies of several octopodes. Close to said altar was a large black hole in the ground.
Whilst granting some insight into their culture, we were no closer to discovering the intention of the kuo-toa. Walking into the city of an utterly foreign and allegedly mad people still seemed not like a great idea, thus we decided to use the huge Zurkhwood mushrooms of the forest to our advantage as a vantage point. Although there were some fungal stubs and other signs of activity of the fish people at the outskirts of the forest, no clear paths would tell of regular larger excursions. After some consideration, Nysqwen managed to anchor a grappling hook in the lamellae of a particularly large mushroom. Teynos successfully climbed the attached rope and around the hat on top of the fungus. The hook dislodged when Nysqwen tried to follow him, but Grum transformed into a spider and joined our friend with a second rope. Together, they helped the rest of us with our ascend. We found ourselves perhaps six feet above the palisades, but with the distance to the wall, it still was hard to make out anything of what was going on beyond. We could all now see what looked like fluorescent lines that were spanned between buildings and the occasional person walking on what we presumed were elevated platforms.
We gathered some distance from the brim, settled down and I weaved the protective dome around our small camp. Just before we all would bed down for the night on the wooden hat, a small patrol went past just below our mushroom. They passed by without noticing us, and not wanting to draw any attention from the town, we stayed put on our platform.
During my watch, I took out the sending stone I had received from Nissa to inform her of what we had found thus far in the underdark. She responded to enact special caution around these strange kuo-toa, beings that could bring their own gods into existence if only they prayed hard enough. Additionally, she informed me that it was the second of Eleint, meaning we had lost two more days along the way than what I had accounted for in these notes, at four am. Next time I see her, I must remember to apologise for waking her at such an uncalled for hour. Once my shift drew to a close, I woke Nysqwen and tried to get some more sleep on the surprisingly rough surface of the Zurkhwood mushroom.
 
Teynos woke all of us on the next morning. The night had gone by without any major incidents, although Nysqwen reported she had heard what might have been a loud and heated argument coming from the town during her watch. Upon hearing what I had to share from my messaging with Nissa, Kyla sent another message to the Lords’ Alliance, asking how they would have us proceed. Master Zashier Khalid told us that in his eyes at least we had fulfilled our obligation to figure out what was happening to the weapons in the underdark and that it was to our own judgement, whether we wanted to risk looking for further information in the town.
Not long after that conversation had finished, Teynos called our attention to the lake, where two monstrous forms emerged. Each taller than the watch towers of Neverwinter’s city wall, the two behemoths fell onto each other with a deafening roar that echoed far through the cave system. The smaller one appeared blue in the fluorescent light and was a close resemblance of the statue that Grum had seen in the city the day before. The other, taller one was clad in slick, green scales with four arms, two of which likewise ended in pincers, the other two in huge fists. Enthralled and appalled at the same time, none of us could take their eyes off the fight of the giants. They pummelled each other with brutal force, pincers and jaws snapping so loud that we still could hear it as if a blacksmith was pounding away on a plate right next to our heads. It did not take long for the blue creature to win the upper hand. The four-armed monstrosity drew back deeper into the lake and then vanished in a frantic flight. The blue creature uttered one final thundering victorious roar before also submerging again in the dark water.
None of us spoke for a good minute or two. Had there been any question as to what we would be doing next, this seemed to be the deciding factor – none of us wanted to get any closer to a village revering such a brutal and very much real creature. Teynos and Kyla said that the green creature weirdly resembled a Glabrezu and the blue one a Hezrou, two different types of abyssal demons, just with fish heads. If these were indeed manifested gods of the kuo-toa, shaped by their will and maddened minds, who knew where they had encountered such creatures before and then made them part of their cults.
With the decision now more or less made for us, we started our way back to the surface within the hour. During our walk, I heard Grum quietly mutter something about owls and that he kept losing concentration again and again, much to my amusement, he seemed not fully aware of what had caused him to succeed into veering into a flying form the day before. Teynos picked up his old hobby of collecting mushrooms and we all discussed our next steps. We agreed that we would keep a lookout for any traces of the bandits that had stolen the weapons and perhaps deal with this issue before returning to Neverwinter.
 
Two days we continued on our path without interruptions to the monotonous darkness. During the second night, we all were woken abruptly by Grum who with a pressed voice informed us that we were not alone. In the darkness beyond the thin veil of the little magical hut we all cowered in stood a figure. Tall, upright and unwavering, clad in flowing cloth that seemed to slightly shift even in the total absence of wind. Long, squirming tendrils were in the place where one would expect a mouth and even in the grey scales of the dark, we all could guess that the skin this creature was of a purplish hue, not from this world. I cannot speak for the others, but I collected most stories I now tell after I left home. Yet one of the earliest ones I remember hearing before going to sleep was that of a creature that was nourished by the thoughts of others, with total apathy to all creatures but itself. The mindflayer did not distinguish between young and old, poor or rich, if you had a brain to pick he would be interested in you. As prey and not for long, mind you, but a relentless interest it would be.
It's focus clearly on all of us, the mindflayer spoke. A hushed voice, as if rarely used yet as unwavering as his form. Kyla immediately clasped her necklace and spoke a brief phrase and then translated what the creature spoke in undercommon. He asked for all of us to emerge from our dome to converse on equal terms if we had business with one another. Kyla responded we meant no harm if he did not mean any either but refused his request of our reveal. Whilst she was still speaking, all of us gripped or weapons (and instruments) a little tighter in anticipation what must follow. Much to our surprise, the mindflayer almost seemed to shrug, took a brief bow and with a quiet pop vanished into nothingness. Only then we realised that for the last few heartbeats, all of us had held their breath when collectively we broke into a loud sigh of relief. It was rather difficult to find sleep after this encounter, but the rest of the night went by without further incidents.
 
During the next days we passed through the cave in which we had witnessed the weapon trade and eventually through the ruins of the old village. Along the way, Teynos had started tasting his way through the mushrooms he had collected, occasionally stopped mid-motion by Daril to prevent him from chewing the most toxic ones. On the other hand, the dwarf encouraged him to a dark red one that looked oddly like a tongue. Upon ingestion, nothing changed briefly. Then, every now and again, Teynos started throwing in weird and sudden comments into the silence, some of which were clearly utterly unrelated to the situation we were in. With a sly grin, Daril explained that this fungus caused one to speak whatever one’s thoughts were and added with an even broader grin that Teynos was saying astoundingly little. He also remarked though, that something like this mushroom might indeed come in handy if we ever needed someone to talk.
At the end of the fourth day after our nightly visit by the mindflayer, upon some encouragement from Daril to push further we finally stepped out of the earth. A light, brighter than any we had seen in what felt like an eternity engulfed us as we left the mouth of the tunnel. Millions of stars were sprinkled over a cloudless sky, each too bright to directly look at. A slight breeze carried the smell of wood and leaves, a living forest all around us. The sounds of birds, rodents and other nocturnal creatures painted a soundscape so sweet that it brought a small tear to my eye. We all stopped for a moment just to deeply inhale the fresh smells and almost childish joy lit up each of our faces. A path led from the tunnel further into the forest, upon which Grum indeed found the hints of cart tracks, not but five days old. This first night under an open sky was probably the best sleep we had in almost three weeks.
 
We started our way down the path more refreshed and in the best mood since our descend into the underdark. It windingly led westward away from the foot of mount Hotenow towards the High Road. Grum followed the tracks of carts that we others hardly could see in the dry dust; the last rain must have been several days ago. Every now and then, we saw obvious traces of maintenance work. Filled potholes, fallen branches moved to the side or trees uprooted to allow for a wider path. Given the state of the wood, none of these works were older than a few weeks which might coincide with the time the raids on the trading caravans had picked up their pace.
Around midday, Grum signalled us to stop. There was a set of smaller tracks now breaking away from the main path into the underbrush of the forest. He found a piece of cloth on one of the lower-hanging branches, ripped off with some force. The track could be no more than two or three days of age. We did not have to follow this new track for long before we found the body. A human man laid face down on the forest floor in a patch of red-stained earth and moss. A palm-sized hole in his back made the cause of death very obvious. However, nothing on the ground or the surrounding forest gave any clue as to what had caused such a hole. The edge of the wound was not clean enough to be cut by something with sharp edges and there was nothing around that might have served as a large projectile. The track we had followed definitely made it look as if the man had been running from something but what would be large enough to cause such devastating wounds without leaving any tracks?
Kyla said, we might give speaking to the corpse a shot. When she turned him around, I recognised his face as being amongst those we had seen in the underdark. Similar to what she had done to Kyorlin after his demise, she began propping up the body against a nearby tree and spoke an incantation to the Raven Queen. A silent wind picked up as the now in dull-grey light engulfed body drew air into shredded lungs. I could not help but shiver slightly at this sight. I trust Kyla a great deal and with her divine powers she has saved all of us from death multiple times. But this type of magic just felt… wrong. Foreign. Necromancy surely had a time and a place but that does not mean one has to feel good about encountering it. Unperturbed, Kyla began her questioning. From a rasping voice we learned that he and his companions were heading home, presumably somewhere along the sword coast. They were indeed responsible for the repairs on the street, but the corpse did not know or did not want to tell us what the kuo-toa were planning with the weapons they delivered. According to him, they also merely found a buyer in the fish people, rather than being approached for targeted highway robbery and weapon supply. When Kyla asked what had taken his life, the man’s dead eyes jerkily darted around the surrounding foliage as he rattled that it was the trees, and he only remembered a terrible weight.
When Kyla let the body slump to the ground again, we indeed found some blood-soaked wood chips in the wound, the same colour as the surrounding trees. Nervously, we inspected the flora but could not see any stained branches or traces of movement caused by something other than wind. Grum mentioned the awakened shrubs we had come across in Thundertree and concluded there might be larger variants in existence, depending on the skill and ambition of the magic user that likely would be responsible for the awakening. Kyla’s eyes shimmered over at these words, but she said she could see no remaining traces of magic in the vicinity.
 
We returned to the main path and followed it a while longer. Soon after, we found the remains of a hastily abandoned camp site. Clutter was left scattered everywhere, one of the carts we had seen under ground was reduced to a pile of broken planks and bent splashguards. One of the oxen laid motionless on its side, a large hole punched all the way through its body with the same type of method that must have been used on the man we left behind. Again, there were no traces of whatever had attacked the camp, only tracks that very hastily left the site in a westerly direction further along the path.
Following these tracks, we eventually got to a stretch where the path became more narrow before taking a left turn and then vanishing from sight beyond more trees. Daril brought up that if there was an ambush somewhere, this would be the ideal spot to have one and offered to scout ahead. He vanished into the underbrush and few moments later appeared at the other side of the narrow stretch calling us to him and saying that the path on the other side was clear. Just as the last of us – Teynos – had entered the stretch, he called out that the trees were oddly moving in the absence of a strong wind. Just as we all looked around, six trees suddenly jerked forward, heavy branches swinging wildly among us. One of them crashed square into my chest, plunging all air from my lungs and pummelling me back a few steps. Two more of the living trees came up behind us and attacked Teynos, before he in retaliation began lashing out against the trunks in our north while Nysqwen was hacking into those to our south. Daril also began firing arrows into the trees, seemingly hitting vital parts to one creature that upon being hit with a comparatively tiny metal spike creaked in agony. Grum took out his trusted hipflask and took a hearty swig. Black tendrils crept from the flask to one of the trees, engulfing it and seemingly drawing out its lifeforce. The tree instantly withered and crashed to the ground, unmoving dead wood once again. Encouraged by Grum’s success, I conjured up the image of an identical flask, waved it to the remaining trees and tried to convince them to let off if they wanted to avoid that same fate. I still don't fully know what I hoped was going to happen, but the trees seemed not to be too impressed by that. I then felt a warmth washing over me and when turning saw Kyla winking in my direction before scorching one of the nearby trees with a flaming sphere. This seemed to be rather effective against our wooden foes.
Multiple smaller shrubs now joined their larger tree brothers in the fight, these quite similar to those we had seen in Thundertree. With only minor bruises, Teynos managed to take out two of these immediately. Nysqwen uttered an enraged huff, opened her surprisingly large jaws and a stream of searing red flames engulfed two of the trees, burning away several branches and leaves on their exterior. Grum put his flask away and spoke something intelligible with his head cocked back into the sky. Dark clouds began condensing above our heads and from the previously clear sky, a bolt of crackling electric energy smote into one of the trees next to Nysqwen. Seeing us outnumbered, I chose to change my tactics. After the madness of the depths the hatred of the language that came over my lips was accompanied by hints of a strangely calming feeling of familiarity and superiority. One hand held high, my fingers now appearing in their natural, more claw-like shape, described the shape of three triangles in the air. The same burning symbol I knew was now visible to three of the trees and one of the smaller shrubs. All of them stopped mid-swing and stood completely still with their attention captivated by the mark of Asmodeus. And somewhere within me, a quiet voice, silenced by nightmares of eternal darkness and horrid abominations woke, thrilled by this display of control.
With steel, fists, lightning, fire and other magics we managed to fend off the remaining trees and brushes. Quickly, we hurried down the path away from the still hypnotised trees and after our original quarry. I am all too happy to have left that place of strife and the hungry voice in my head for now keeps quiet. I cannot deny the effectiveness of what has happened. But if I will ever grow accustomed to the means with which I achieved this, only time will tell. We have stopped for a quick breather. But between the tracks we found at the entrance to the underdark and those we now were following, we definitely gained some time on the bandits. Perhaps there will be some justice we can bring to this world after all.