Captain's Log Three; Watery graveyard mistakes.

Day 28 - 29? Been putting off this one.
 
Our course was south east. The same as in my first log. Only now we meant to go beneath the cliffs, and the waves. My favourite Rogue, Grunk of the Grunge was with me again, and he'd met this warforged cleric, L4Yl4. The three of us were... uniquely qualified for this mission, as none of us would have any difficulties breathing beneath the water. So we walked into the sea. The beach land far too rocky to over go and the cliff too high to descend down, without vessel, this was the only course.
 
Actually before that the grocery shop had burned down. Apparently. All I know is it was there when I went to sleep, and when I awoke a ruin of fire and ash lay behind my tent. I looked at my mirror and questioned if I'd had an ...active night. I doubt it. There's a five hundred gold bounty out for the arsonist. I'd like to find them, and question them...harshly, as to their motives. What possible benefit could they have gained? Treachery for treacheries sake is a pitiful life . . .
 
No. I've stalled long enough.
 
We walked straight into the sea. The Cleric walked heavily along the ocean floor, the Rogue flippered and I swam like it was home. Marched on down into the wet plains. A bump was found some ways away from shore. Scraping it away, a row boat was unearthed. On its side was inscribed in Elvish a name that identified itself as the attachment of a royal vessel from back across the sea. The Rogue creeped in under it and air bubbles began to pop out.. It creeped under and just as quickly it creeped out, speechless. I and The Cleric crept under as well and found an air bubble there, with a skeleton clutching a chest in its withered arms. We three all entered and wrenched the chest from its arms, noticing its fangs, a vampire thrall, dead once again. Within the chest was found six scrolls of Life-Link. Most useful for allowing others to traverse under the waves. The air bubble was found to created by a bladder of buoyancy, creating a constant flow of air. It would allow The Cleric to move beyond a statues' pace. So it took it, the scrolls were split three ways. The sun had receded beyond the reach of the nets of the veils of the waters, and so we rested under wooden hall, with boney friend. Swapping watch periodically.
 
Morning came, and with it the overturning of the boat, its filing with rocks and a continued march with it behind. For its colour and miraculous air, it was baptised anew "The Brown Gas." Its postmortal inhabitant now named "Gassy Brown." I shall take him for my First-Mate. The voyage went on and I and the rest came into a forest of kelp, swaying like long, green nooses with the tide. Some wreckage could be identified, wood and nails and ruined red iron. Whatever vessel had come hither, was long smashed by tide and time.
 
Passing over this graveyard, the cliff walls came up for greetings and soon enough the cave could clearly be seen from the floor of the depths. The angle from on high was miraculous to so much as glance it. From down there it was a banner of clutching invitation. I and the rest ascended.
 
The walls of the cave...
 
It was... covered in carvings. Carvings of slime blobs, crowns, revolutions, worship, dominion and domination. Chains, radiance, fallen stars, exile and entrapment. The beach where we landed here and from whence this voyage had set off. Great blobs and small blobs, a cage, birds, beasts, boars and faceless humanoids. Growth. Knowledge. Power. Impaled upon tendrils. Bent, bowing, prostrated, praying. A circle, a disc, a place of ...
 
The Cleric fell into a fugue state. I . . . I felt . . . fear. Fear and loathing and hate and desire. For some minutes. Till . . . roused to go on. Ever upwards did the path go and soon it led out of the water. And the watery walls that ever clutch at a man gave way to a chamber of smothering and swallowing darkness. Beyond it, a pale blue light.
 
A heaving mass lay there. The Rogue slithered up and it poisoned it. It was then roused and rose up to its full height. Towering over twice my stature. Upon its chest a symbol of two horns? Tusks? Trunks? Ribbons like that on a royal standard of crest beneath a shell? Eye? Portal? Abyss? With two crowns, thrice embedded with jewels. It had an elephantine trunk as long and winding as a road. Some seal of dreadful size.
 
Rousing my strength, I awaited its coming. Once it came upon me I smote it deep in its blubber. Its charge diverted, it slithered past me. The Cleric cast Inflict Wounds and the wound once blinded with radiance, rotted with decay and blackened and chipped deeper and deeper. The Rogue's poison further diminished the creature. I finished it with a final bite of my axe into the festering wound, the snapping of bones and a gust of air from its torn open lungs heralded a final wheezing whimper from its maw before it crashed into the water. Blackening with blood.
 
Its trunk popped off. Shrinking and hardening into a winding, leathery horn. The magic of it echoing out of the pool and off of the rocks. A horn of blaring.
 
The lair proceeded some way back and ended at a passage that was black against the night of stone, yet was wrought in silver casing. The cave floor and walls dripped and bubbled and oozed with a slime. The air itself suffused with a reek beyond the mucus of any mortal sea. The Cleric was curios. It lit a torch. The shine did not glisten off the slime, rather it died. It threw the torch into the veil. There it vanished it a storm of blue and red and purple. Then I and The Rogue tied a rope around it as it went in itself. Passing beyond the viscus curtain, mildly coated, it came into a vast hall with four iron doors in the walls. A ring of runes lay in the centre with a mad mage within. It had hair red and flaming. I and The Rogue followed it in. Inside, I knew what it was at once.
 
On the far end of the hall, An Aboleth.
 
An ancient eldritch beast from beyond the memories of men and elves.
 
Laying in a pool of filth. With its tendrils pulled back trying to cast some spell. It spoke directly into our minds. What words it gave and got from The Cleric and The Rogue I felt somehow. To me it spoke of slavery. What a wonderful idea I replied, throwing my javelin into its side, drinking first blood, it returned to my hand. Then its thoughts spoke again, probing knowingly, asking questions that I was powerless to refuse an answer to.
"What is your greatest desire."
"Knowledge."
"For what?"
"Power."
"Over others, I see. Reasonable. I can grant you all that you seek and more. Knowledge and power beyond your reckonings. Look at all these pitiful adventurers that have come to these shores. They burn down each others supplies, squabble against petty creatures, they have nothing to offer you. I have everything. Everything to give and more, if you serve me."
 
I was tempted by the offer, I cannot lie. Then I felt a chain, a cold embrace around my mind, slither around and pull my will towards its purpose. My head bent, and glimpsed my reflection in my mirror around my neck. In an instant the chain shattered and my purpose was my own.
 
"Prove it." I challenged. "You promise the world and yet you rot in this damp pit. Even Grunk here has shown greater power than you to me. Prove it, and perhaps you can be of use to me. Prove it."
 
It did not take kindly to defiance. "Then die." So as The Rogue vanished into the shadows and The Cleric ventured to battle the mage, it rose out of its dotage and came to face me. I looked into my mirror once again and my duplicate came forth, confounding the creature and giving an opening. I smote it hard in its slimy flesh. It was smaller than the tales say. It rose to strike me with its tendrils, they failed against my iron the first time, but the second they struck hard, and ever was its mind attempting to overthrow my own. Arrows came out of the hidden places of the chamber, striking both master and mage. The Cleric practically skinned the mage, blowing the horn of blaring, booming against master and slave, deafening the latter, by some wicked whipping of its master, while its blood pooled onto the floor, the mage stayed standing, casting a great fireball, even as I reacted to shield myself, I was still singed. The circle where he had stood was one of teleportation.
 
In wrathful throes I and The Aboleth did strike each other again and again, its slime coating my arms, but its disease failing before might of race and holy power, till clear it was that master and mage could not be brought down in this configuration of combat. The Cleric and The Rogue focused all might on brining the mage down, but he refused. As we spread out to avoid another fire ball, I disengaged from the blob and approached the door, leaving my duplicate behind. A great commotion could be heard from beyond an iron door. The Cleric fled the other way and with a fiery bolt that was almost directed at me, till my gaze passed over to The Cleric and it remembered who had skinned it, was brought down by the slave. Then The Aboleth came down upon me, passing straight through the duplicate and as a a tendril came down to greet me, so did the floor come up to greet me and the darkness of death embraced me.
 
In the throes of death, I felt like I was walking. I sensed, in a clouded, twisted, mirrored visage of the world, the conversing of an Aboleth a mage and Grunk. The hinges of an iron door grinding open, an orc entering. A Sea-Elf, adorned in armour and a patch over one eye lay at their feet. A circle of spell runes at the centre of the room. A Warforged Cleric of Schmiede, The Almighty lay unconscious upon the ground. L4YL4. I felt a radiance, and the twitching of fingers, her eyes were rekindled in a blazing blue. Then a withering. Darkness fell again.
 
But I heard her. Crying out in a word of health and healing. I felt air in my lungs again. Thoughts in my mind again. Life in my Soul again. . . . Something . . . in my heart again.
 
I awoke, and found Grunk trying to put me in a sack. I glimpsed his eyes. His will was now not wholly his own. New life bred quick thoughts in me. I rose.
"Well Abbey, you've certainly proved yourself to me, without a shred of doubt my good Aberration, without a shred of doubt you've proved yourself to me. I think I might consider your offer now that I can see you're a serious bidder." Quickly rising and shuffling away, whatever honest intrigue I had in his offer had died with me. "Isn't that right Grunk." I slapped him on the back, hard enough to hurt, enough to rouse his mind to further defiance, it failed. He returned the strike, I fought off his poison. He advised the destruction of the mage. The mage was aghast. The Aboleth was dumbfounded at my rising. "Ironic, so insulting and yet so slippery yourself. I'll just have to remove you annoyances."
 
"Come now Abbey, a partnership would be mutually beneficial. You need people on the surface to report back to you. Think of all the knowledge and the power we could gather for you. Think about it Abbey, we could work something out." All the while L4YL4 and I were slithering towards the centre spell circle, she began praying for salvation, and I stamped very hard with every point I made to add to my oratory and rouse its magic. The Aboleth and The Mage and The Orc and Grunk approached.
 
"Come now Abbey! Think! Of! The! Great! Opportunity! You! Have! Here!" And beyond hope, the praying and the kicking of the runes, and practical verbal and physical hopscotch activated the spell. Delivering L4YL4 and I from their grasp. Dropping us just outside the cave. We were alive, barely.
 
I laid my hands upon L4YL4 and restored what health in her I could before we went to retrieve The Brown Gas and Gassy Brown from the sea floor and then we made our way home. We rose out of the depths and onto the beach. A Grung less than when we had departed . . .
 
What is on my mind now! That I sit here, looking at you my reflection . . . I shall tell you.
 
Revenge! Against this Aboleth who has so spurned me and my might, presuming the ability and right to rule over me as master. I shall break it. Break it like a poorly made galley upon a spiked wall of rocks. Eat its innards and interrogate whatever stores of knowledge it has in that mind of its out of it. And. . . and free Grunk . . . he . . . has his uses.