Chapter 82: 5.6 – What Lies Beneath

Robin struggled, the tendrils binding him wrapped fast around his waist and wrist. He bucked in mid-air, the ground well over a dozen feet below him, hard and sharp and hungry to crack him if he fell. Robin had no thought for that, however; all of his focus was on the thing that held him bound, a flesh spike of fake stalactite with one large, slitted eye and a gaping maw of shard-sharp teeth ready to tear into his flesh.

His wrists were caught by the tendrils. Casting anything requiring intricate gestures would be difficult. He mouth was still free, however, and he had a cantrip that didn’t require any somatic components: [Cutting Words].

‘As cave formations go, you really put the “lack” in stalactite,’ Robin shouted.

When in doubt—or in mortal peril and unable to think of anything better—use puns. After all, what can be more insulting than that?

That was literally painful. The mysterious voice spoke again, though Robin wasn’t really in a position to ponder the implications.

The tentacite agreed with the voice. It winced at the words and hissed in pain (at least some of it magically induced). The tendrils holding Robin loosened, just a bit.

A surge of fury and fear blazed across his empathic link with Rerebos. Robin sent a calming pulse back. The last thing he needed was for his familiar to get caught as well.

‘Ro—Marq!’ Drev shouted.

A series of blue-white missiles of force sailed around him, unerringly finding the flesh of the monster that held him. The duo of daggers that followed were less successful. One found its mark in the tentacite but the other grazed Robin’s forearm and bounced off the stone ceiling rather than embedding itself into the monster.

Robin caught a glance at the party as the tentacite shifted him in its tendrils, bringing more of him in front of more of it—a living shield. Great. Just what he’d always wanted to be when he grew up.

Better than an appetiser, though.

Not by much, but better.

It meant he wasn’t face-to-face with the tentacite’s gaping maw, but it also meant he couldn’t see the bulk of the monster or what it was doing. It would be harder to effectively blind the thing, for one. More importantly, knowing it was there but being unable to see it somehow made the horror of his situation all the worse. The spot between his shoulder blades itched as an icy finger trailed its way down his spine.

Please don’t let that be the creature’s tongue, sneaking out for an early taste.

The rest of his party wasn’t much better off than he was, even though none of them were currently within spitting distance—literally—of the maw of a monstrous wannabe stalactite. There were more tentacites in this cavern; at least four that Robin could see if he counted the one that was holding him up. Drev had deployed his shield spell again and effectively blocked two of the tentacites from reaching the party, though it had clearly taken a toll on the mage’s reserves.

Robin also had an excellent view of the cavern they were in. The tunnel had spilled them out into a moderately-sized chamber. It was clearly designed to look natural but there was an aesthetic regularity to the stalactites and stalagmites here that told the bard this was anything but a naturally-occurring cave. He couldn’t spot an exit from where he was, though the too-smooth wall that had fallen to cut off their escape was visible as a faint outline on the wall nearby.

But escaping the cavern was a problem for later. First he needed to escape the grasp of the thing that held him suspended in mid-air.

He needed to break free. There were too many limitations on what he could do whilst in this position. It was like he was the heroine in a bad D&D hentai.

Robin ran through his options. The best he could probably manage was convincing the thing to let him go. Robin eyed the drop beneath him. It wasn’t ideal, especially without Grathilde and her air spells to make the drop a lot less damaging, but his choices were limited.

So here went nothing.

The bard reached into the inky depths of his mind and conjured forth [Whispers from Beyond], bending the effect with his will toward the creature that held him. He was in physical contact with the thing, he could see the tentacles…it was good enough for targeting purposes.

His gambit was immediately rewarded with a shriek of horror. The tendrils holding him went slack for a moment, then tensed. The tentacite, unable to quickly flee the source of this new horror—Robin himself—opted to instead fling it as far from itself as possible.

Robin sailed across the cavern, suddenly far too unrestricted. Those tendrils were stronger than they had any right to be!

That was the only thought he had time for before he slammed into the wall of the cavern on the far side of Drev’s shield. The impact drove the breath from his lungs, and he knew he was going to be one large bruise when he woke up tomorrow.

If he woke up tomorrow.

Robin was now on the far side of a magical shield from his party, flanked by two frustrated tentacites, neither of which in any way feared him. Only his quick reflexes and weeks of ingrained habit saved him.

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He conjured the illusion of mist around himself with [Visual Phantasm], took a few staggering steps to one side, and then wrapped himself in the image of stone with [Lesser Phantasm].

The tentacites wailed in outrage. Robin transformed the mist into an illusory double of himself and sent it dashing around the cavern to draw their attention away from himself. Fortunately the ruse worked and he was able to free up enough of his attention to cast insult after insult at the two tentacites his party was fighting on the other side of Drev’s shield.

The sooner they felled those two, the sooner they could move on to the two that were dangerously close to Robin himself.

Jhess and Savra had managed to detach one of the monsters from the ceiling and Khavren was happily carving it into small chunks. The other tentacite—the one that had initially grappled Robin—was still in decent shape but showed the signs of several small magical attacks.

Huh. Drev must have kept hitting it. Robin hadn’t noticed. Of course, he was a bit preoccupied with being bound and possibly dinner at the time.

Robin flung a [Lesser Witchbolt] across the cavern at it. He’d insulted it, made it quake in fear before him, and now he felt like burninating the thing. The card sailed through the air trailing blue flames and exploded right in the thing’s massive eye.

It shrieked and lost its grip on the ceiling, falling to the ground where Khavren and—surprisingly—Wulfram made very short work of it.

‘Over here!’ Robin had his illusion call to the rest of the party.

The pause there was enough for the tentacites to zero in on the illusion and whip their tentacles at—and unfortunately through—it. Robin had it disappear in a puff of smoke. He wasn’t sure it fooled the monsters, but hopefully it would fool Khavren in the heat of battle.

Khavren launched a javelin at one of the tentacites and Drev peppered the other with small motes of burning light. It was enough to distract the monsters, and Robin fled along the wall, keeping to the shadows, to rejoin his party.

The rest of the battle was a slow, drawn-out process of whittling the tentacites down with low-damage ranged attacks. Drev and Robin could pepper the things with ranged cantrips while staying out of reach of the grasping tendrils. Khavren and Jhess had to get slightly closer for their ranged attacks, javelin and dagger respectively, to be effective. Both took several sharp knocks from the tentacites in the process, but they gave better than they got, Savra’s guiding spells ensuring that the weapons hit home with greater accuracy and damage than they would have otherwise.

Eventually one, then the other, of the tentacites fell from the ceiling and were summarily dispatched. Robin cleansed the party of the dust and blood and ichor with [Legerdemain] while Wulfram went through the bodies, carefully harvesting some organs.

Robin’s [Bardic Lore] suggested they would be useful to certain alchemists and mages.

Unfortunately, there was no other treasure to be found.

‘I don’t think many people can have made it this far,’ Drev observed. ‘If they had there would be more…remains.’

In fact, the cavern was surprisingly clean. There was no evidence of former meals or the product of those former meals. Did the living dungeon sustain its creatures with magic when prey was scarce? Was that one reason the monsters within were so willing to defend it and do its bidding?

‘No obvious entrances or exits,’ Jhess said sourly, looking around the cavern. ‘We might as well sweep the place for any remaining surprises and set up camp here. None of us are in top condition after that.’

‘Yes,’ Khavren said. ‘Way to anticipate, Jhess! That was exactly what I was about to say.’

Sure. Not that there were many other options. So far as any of them could see, there were no other entrances or exits to this place. Robin caught Jhess’s gaze behind Khavren’s back. She rolled her eyes.

‘You look for threats, I’ll look for ways in and out,’ Robin said to her, ‘starting with the way we came in. There’s a mechanism to make the thing come down. There might be one to make it rise again.’

‘We’ll see to camp,’ Savra said. Drev and Wulfram nodded. ‘Shout if you find anything. Or if anything finds you.’

Robin nodded and set off toward the relevant wall, stepping carefully around the eviscerated remains of the monster that had attacked him. He didn’t say it aloud but Robin thought it was still suspicious the way they had been almost herded out of that stretch of tunnel and into this trap. Yes, it was a trap, but they’d been rushed through just a bit too quickly. Something was off.

This place was tricky. It was messing with them and there was no way Robin was going to let a sentient bit of stone upstage him. Trickery and misdirection were his schtick!

No. He was going to figure out what was going on, get them to the centre of this maze, and find that treasure.

He was going to crack this place like a code.

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