Finding Things by Falling Down

After taking the night to clean up and rest, we continued to the castle. Even from the edge of the clearing, we could tell that the castle was the site of a long, ongoing siege. Fresh and decaying bodies littered the ground from the trees’ edge all the way to the castle walls, along with broken tree trunks and scattered boulders. Some of the carcasses had been crushed by the boulders or falling trees; others were lying in scorched patches of earth. Fortunately for us, none of the cultists that remained were alive at this point.

We climbed over the field of debris carefully, figuring that we looked different enough from the cultists we had encountered earlier to not be immediately attacked. The paladins in the castle, however, didn’t seem to get the message. Walking a few more yards forward, I heard the ominous sound of a ballista being cocked. I looked up just in time to see a boulder fly over the battlements. “Scatter!” cried Kyri. I sure wasn’t going to argue with the elf’s assessment of the situation, and leapt over a trunk and huddled behind it. The boulder threw up plenty of earth and debris when it landed, but no body parts. I wiped the dirt from my face and looked up. On the battlements, a golden dragonborn give a signal to the others behind him and ducked back down. “Another one incoming!” I shouted to my companions as I zigzagged to another trunk. “Getting out of here would be a very good idea,” said Kalena from somewhere over my left shoulder.

However, Markas wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Let’s try to signal them again. Maybe because we didn’t signal properly they thought we were cultists.” He pulled the holy symbol of the Raven Queen from his cloak and held it high above his head as he marched toward the battlements. “We come in peace. We are adventures acting as agents of Perinor and guided here by an angel of Corellon.” Once again, the dragonborn either didn’t notice him or didn’t care. The next ballista fired a shot that landed less than a meter from the paladin. “Get your ass back here and stop being a target!” screamed Yvala from behind her trunk.

I looked back over the 300 yards of broken bodies and ballista craters that I had traveled over to get to this point with more than a little bit of despair. A slight thud to my right grabbed my attention, as did Kyri when she grabbed my shoulder. “Tavia!” she practically shouted at me as another ballista round landed. “Use the boots Aelerion gave you and get yourself to the woods!” I looked from elf to the woods and back. “Shouldn’t I stay in case someone gets hit?” She shook her head. “We can drag anyone out to you. Dragging you out unconscious is worse.” Another rock crashed into the ground. “Go! I’ll get the others out.”

I nodded dumbly at Kyri’s back as she headed back toward the others. Thank you for sending me to Caling and Cora who both thought I would need to be able to cross a ballista field at a dead run. Kord swiften my feet as you do the winds before a storm. I kissed a token on a string about my neck for luck and took off for the woods. I could hear a crashing just behind me that I assumed was one of my teammates.

One last vault over a cultist’s body and I was inside the boundary of the woods. Panting, I turned back to the battlefield. Vixi picked herself up and stood next to me. Together, we could see Kyri helping Markas from a position close to the castle. Yvala had made her way over to Kalena and was helping the wizard navigate the debris field. The latter two were knocked down by a rock that landed way too close for my liking. Worried, I started to move toward them, but Vixi held me back. “Let Kyri help them if necessary. They might need your help when you get here.” Luckily they soon picked themselves up, and all six of the members of the Order of the Rampant Dragon were reunited at the edge of the woods.

Everyone sat down to catch their breath. I went around healing the scrapes and bruises we had all acquired in our dash out of the ballista field. Markas boiled with anger. “Why were they shooting at us? Could they not see we were allies?” Kalena attempted to comfort the half-elf with reason. “Perhaps the cultists have a tried to trick the paladins before. If they had enough casters an illus-“ Markas brushed her off. “I refuse to believe they will not recognize us. I’m going to find something to make a signal with.” He stomped off angrily into the woods, leaving the rest of us in the clearing.

“I think being the only guy might be rankling his feathers,” said Yvala with a smirk as we watched his retreating form. I rolled my eyes and turned to Kalena. “So you think the cultists could be using illusions on a field this size?” I asked. She shrugged. “Its very possible. I mean look at what they were summoning at us- and an illusion wouldn’t even involve killing themselves.” Vixi nodded. “It makes sense. Paladins don’t attack anyone without prior provocation unless they have a really good reason for doing so.” Yvala snickered. “Well I think it’s pretty clear that the gold bastards on the wall are going to keep shooting at us before talking to us.” “I agree,” said Kyri, “Good chances are that the castle has another entrance somewhere. I suggest we fan out and look for signs of it. Maybe if we catch one of the dragonborn face to face, we can reason with them.”

Ironically, it was Markas who found the entrance. He’d been stomping around in some brush when the ground gave way underneath him. The hole opened up into a series of honeycombed passages, some of which led toward the castle. Agreeing it was our best chance to get anywhere, we climbed down.

Up the corridor we heard chattering voices. Yvala crept forward, hiding in the shadows, to see what waited for us. A few minutes later, she returned. “There’s six of them. Humanoids, about halfling size, but really strange looking. Their skin has a weird purple and blue mottling to it, and their limbs are misshapen. Whatever they are, they aren’t friendly.”

Kyri and Yvala crept forward and opened the battle with several quick shots from a safe distance. Markas and I charged into the front under covering fire from Vixi and Kalena. The fight was easy enough, but there were some strange things that kept happening. For some reason, space would distort around two of the soldiers in the front. More than once I took a swing at one of them with my mace only to have it bounce off Markas’s shoulder plate. At one point one of the smaller beings would disappear and reappear between us, peppering our bodies with knife cuts.

We searched the bodies afterwards, looking for clue to where they had come from. Kyri found a beautiful bow on one of the creatures from the back ranks, which she swept up to keep for herself. Kalena stood apart from us, looking over one with a worried look on her face. “Something bothering you about these guys?” I asked. “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Everything about these guys matches what I’ve read about foulspawn. She looked up with me, eyes sparkling with curiosity and worry. “But foulspawn aren’t supposed to be able to get out of the Far Realm and into this world.” I shook my head, thinking about what we had encountered so far. “There are a lot of things that aren’t supposed to be on this island.” We’ll worry about it later,” said Markas nodding his head down the corridor. “We’re moving out.”

Several turns of the passageways later we came across more chattering. This time Yvala reported that two of the foulspawn were directed by grey-skinned ghouls to dig up corpses from the dirt floor. Disgustingly, some of the ghouls were snacking on the bones as they worked. When we were able to move in close, I called upon the power to turn the undead and felt the familiar hot wind of the spell flow out from my holy symbol. The ghouls hissed in pain and threw their meal of human bones at me. Luckily, ghouls have bad aim. The move left me open to a brutal attack from one of the foulspawn, but Vixi returned fire with an equally brutal spell. The ghouls were weak, like all undead, and easy to take down. One of the foulspawn had a nice cloak, which we took with us.

More gibbering came from up the next corridor. Vixi cursed under her breath in Primordial, and Yvala and Kyri snuck forward again to find another foulspawn leading a crew of the berserker soldiers. They let off shots and Markas charged forward. Kalena cast a fireball into the middle of the group and Vixi let the curses fly freely. We tried questioning one before he died. Apparently Kyri had noticed that they were sniffing the air and examining the ground as if they were tracking. But it was no use. He snarled in some unintelligible language before succumbing to his wounds. The leader had a set of leather repulsion armor, which Kyri exchanged eagerly for her own.

We stood around for a while after the last fight, deciding which way to go. Kyri finally took the lead for the time being. “There is something wrong with this whole situation.” Kalena said beside me. “Even if we do find the castle, there’s no guarantee that the paladins won’t just slash at us first, especially with all the foulspawn wandering around down here. “Maybe they won’t expect us to come from underground. Or maybe we just won’t find a door and we’ll have to leave.” “Let’s hope for that.” Kalena said.