Lugs, who was sitting nearby, rolled over onto one butt-cheek and released a tremendous fart in Brick’s direction. “I got yer cut loose right here!”
“Bah! Agh! Ye giant stink-bomber! What the hell ‘ave ye been eatin’?” the dwarf blustered as he tried to roll away from the pollution. Lugs just chuckled and patted his belly. Most of the orcs began to roll around on the floor, finding much humor in the exchange. Followed up quickly by several ‘pull my finger’ mimes around the group.
Jules moved to stand behind Alexander, as if he could somehow protect her from the cloud of smell that was surely headed their way.
After a ten minute rest, during which Beatrix, Max, and the others looted the monster corpses, Sasha called everyone back to their feet. “They know we’re here. They know this place, and we don’t. They outnumber us by a lot. The smart thing would be to stop now and regroup. Maybe come back with a larger group.”
Her comment was greeted with silence. Until Max said, “We hardly ever do the smart thing.” When he got some nods and grunts of agreement, he shouted, “Are we gonna be smart!?”
“NO!!!” came the resounding answer. Lainey snorted.
Sasha couldn’t help but grin a bit herself. “Okay, idiots. We’ll keep going. The doors behind us are sealed. I see three exits from this room. Anybody notice any more as our enemies fled?”
There was a general round of head-shaking. Del spoke up. “There are just the three exits.”
Sasha took the dragon’s word for it. “Okay, so we have door number one…”
Max moved toward the left-hand door and stuck his head through. “Long straight hallway. Can’t see the other end.”
Lainey was already moving to the second door. When she’d peered inside, she said, “Another room. Much smaller. Door on the other side leads out to a hall, but all I can see is the wall on the other side.”
Jules took the third door. “Stairs. Going down. I hear… something. Thumping.”
“Ooh! I vote for the thumping!” Lugs leaned toward the right hand door without quite taking a step.
Shaking her head again, Sasha said, “Alright, thumping it is. Alexander? Can you seal off the other two?”
Alexander began to seal off the left-hand door and Fitz took care of the middle one. In just a few seconds, both doors were blocked by a thick stone wall. Sasha pointed to the right-hand door and Lugs very nearly skipped in that direction, his enormous ogre belly wobbling as he moved. Fibble, with a very similarly-shaped pot belly on a much smaller scale, jogged after him.
As the group moved toward the stairs, several of the orcs lifted hobgoblin bodies and carried them along. Sasha and several of the players looked askance at their comrades, whispering queries to each other. Finally, Fibble stopped and looked behind him. When he saw the orcs carrying the bodies, he nodded his head once in approval.
“Good idea. Bring food. Could be long, long way down.”
Jules’ eyes grew wide as she whispered to Alexander, “They’re not really going to…”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
One of the orcs in front laughed at Fibble. “Har! Not food. We go down stairs. Old trick our masters teach us when fighting inside. Need to go down? Already know enemies down there? Throw bodies down first. Surprise them, maybe hurt them. Then you follow!”
“That’s friggin’ genius!” Max grinned at the orcs. Molgo agreed and, with a grunt, lifted a body of his own. Each of the minotaurs did the same. Max laughed. “Awww yeah. We’re gonna make it rain!”
Sasha motioned for them to proceed to the stairway, where Lugs was already sticking his head through the door and looking down the stairs. “It’s getting louder. The thumping!” He sounded like a kid shaking a gift to guess what was inside.
Alexander, inspired by the orcs, had an idea. “Hang on, guys. Is it a curved stair? Or straight?”
Jules answered first. “Straight.”
Alexander grinned. “Let’s give them more than bodies to worry about.” Using his Earth Mover, he pulled up a block of stone from the ground. It stood about five feet high and wide. “Brick, if you don’t mind?” He looked at the stone, then at the stair, and waggled his eyebrows at the dwarf.
“Bwahaha! I get what yer layin’ down!” The dwarf laid hands on the block and began to smooth the corners. In two minutes, he had turned the block into a five-foot high, nearly-round boulder.
One of the dragons said, “Allow me,” and placed his hands on it. He gave what looked like a gentle shove and the stone ball began to roll toward the stair.
Lugs moved out of the way, a smile on his face. “I remember this movie!”
The others stood by and listened as the stone rolled across the landing and down onto the stairs. It rolled gently at first. Then it bounced once. Then again, higher. It hit the ceiling of the stairwell and crashed back down. Off-center now, it began to bounce off the walls as it picked up speed. They could no longer hear the thumping as the crashing stone drowned it out.
As the stone continued down and the crashing sounds became quieter, screams were mixed in. A loud roar was cut short, presumably as the stone projectile silenced whatever beast was challenging it. A second later, Alexander and nearly everyone else in the room leveled up.
Fibble was the lowest-level among them. He received several new levels at once, moaning and holding his tummy, falling on his butt as his eyes rolled up in his head. Alexander was reminded that he needed to work with the tiny goblin so that he could choose what attributes to raise with all the points he was accumulating.
Sasha gave them all a few moments to work with their character sheets, then prodded them along. They began to descend the stairs. Brick took the lead, with Lugs and Grumpy right behind. The others followed in roughly their same formation. The stairs were wide enough for two people, or one Lugs, to stand next to each other. As they moved downward, they came across several broken steps, as well as chips in the walls and ceilings where the boulder had impacted.
Nearing the end of the stairs, they began to find crushed and broken bodies. Orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, were-beasts, all of them smashed by the juggernaut of a boulder.
“This might not be sportin’,” Brick said, “but it be damned effective!” He stepped over the corpses as he picked his path down the steps, leaving it to Max or Beatrix to loot them. At the bottom of the stairs was a bloodbath. Marks on the walls smeared with blood and flesh told the tale. The boulder had reached the bottom at a high rate of speed and crushed everything in its path. Then bounced off walls at three more points, effectively pulping everything in the room.
Including the source of the short-lived roar they had all heard.
The boulder was lodged in the body of a much larger beast. It was hard to tell exactly what the monster had looked like before the stone projectile had crushed most of it. But Alexander’s best guess was a massive dog. It most closely compared to Cerberus, the three-headed dog from Greek legends. It would have stood eight feet high on all fours, with a thickly-muscled body and legs. Its claws were each six inches long and razor sharp. Two of its heads had been pulped by the impact of the boulder, along with its right front leg, shoulder, and most of its ribs on that side. The third head hung limply, blood dripping from its maw. Its corpse blocked most of the double doorway that led out of the stairwell. Alexander tried to Identify it, but since it was dead, nothing came up. Max provided better information when he looted it.
“This thing was called a Mongrel Sentinel. I just got its heart, which is a purple crafting item! Along with claws, teeth, and hide.” Max held up the heart, which wasn’t the bloody pulsating organ Alexander expected. It was in the form of a large crimson gem about the size of a softball.
Brick stepped up and held out his hands. Max obligingly handed him the heart. “This be… purple items be used in Legendary crafting recipes. The kind o’ thing Masters make usin’ resources o’ the crown or an entire guild.” He voice was reverent as he brought it closer to his face. “We
could sell this fer… well, it could pay off me new house.”
He handed the heart back to Max, who stowed it in his bag with the rest of the loot.
Alexander looked over the corpse to the chamber beyond. “We can talk about the loot later. Let’s get through this place and get back. I don’t like leaving our home so lightly defended.”
They quickly finished looting the rest of the bodies, then two at a time climbed over the corpse of the sentinel. The room beyond was circular, with a hole in the center about twenty feet in diameter. There was a vibration in the room, barely felt but definitely there. As if someone had struck a giant tuning fork and touched it to the floor.
As they group began to make their way across toward the center, the vibration became audible. An almost mechanical humming tickled at Alexander’s auditory limits. The dragons heard it even before he did and were warily scanning the chamber.
Alexander’s elven hearing allowed him to pinpoint the direction of the sound. “Get ready. Something’s coming up through that hole.”
Every member of the raid party took weapons in hand and moved back into their battle formation. The tanks formed their line about ten feet from the hole. Brick used raid chat to instruct his comrades.
“Whatever it is, as soon as it steps forward, we Shield Rush it and knock it back into its hole.”
The others grunted in agreement. Shields up and legs braced, they awaited the arrival of their next foe.
Which turned out to be an empty disc. What could only be described as an elevator platform rose up from the hole and stopped just as its surface became flush with the rest of the floor. Had they not seen it arrive, none of them would have been able to distinguish it from the surrounding floor.
“It’s a trap!” Pollock cried in mock horror, getting laughs from several of the players.
Sasha quieted them down. “It might well be. Or just an invitation. The drow want us dead. And vice versa. My guess is that they’re down there.” She pointed to the floor. “And that thing goes down.” She looked up at the flat ceiling above the platform. “At least, I hope it does. If we get on and it goes up…”
Fibble finished her thought for her. “Squish!”
Alexander looked to Del. “I don’t see any obvious exits, other than the platform. Any hidden doors?”
The dragons all simultaneously shook their heads no.
Sasha offered, “Seems we have two choices. We can go back up and choose one of the other doors. Or we can keep going down. I vote down.” When nobody spoke up to disagree, she continued. “Right! Down it is. Next question… do we all get on at once? Or send some poor sucker out there as a guinea pig?”
Jules shoved Alexander toward the platform. “One of us here can levitate if the thing is a trap.”
He turned to see her smiling innocently at him, as if she’d just suggested he have another helping of pancakes. Giving her a ‘quit trying to kill me’ glare, he was about to agree that he should be the one to go. But as he turned back toward the lift, it dropped out of sight.
“Err…” Brick began. “Anybody think ta count how long it were up here? Like mebbe it just goes up ‘n down every minute?”
“Or somebody at the bottom called it down and plans to come up here and say hello!” Max offered.
Alexander was counting seconds this time. The time it took for the platform to drop and then return might give him some idea of the depth of the shaft. He used his Earth Sense to look downward into the stone as he continued to count out loud. He could see the shaft clearly, stretching deep into the stone below. It continued beyond the range of his spell.
“That thing’s deep. I can’t see the bottom.”
Del nodded his head. “More than a mile down. It makes sense. The drow are creatures of the underground. Masters of the dark and the creatures that dwell in it. When they lost the last war, they would have retreated deep into the earth to avoid detection while they rebuilt their armies.”
Alexander, still counting and using his Earth Sense, caught the platform returning. His ability didn’t allow him to detect whether there were any life forms on it. “It’s coming back. Maybe twenty seconds.”
Grips tightened on weapons and shields were raised. This time, another sound accompanied the hum of the rising lift. A low growl grew louder as the platform drew closer. When it reached the top, everyone took an involuntary step back.
Purebred Sentinel
Level 120
Health: 110,000/110,000
If they’d thought the doggy in the stairwell was imposing, this one was simply terrifying. While the mongrel had stood less than ten feet high at the shoulder, this purebred was double that. It nearly filled the platform as it stopped flush with the floor. Not even Lugs, the tallest of the raid party at nine feet, could have reached the monster’s shoulders. And its head rose up another several feet at the end of a thick neck.
The sentinel had only one head, but that head was plenty imposing. Its canines stretched at least two feet long from the bloody gums to their needle sharp points. Spikes rose up from the back of its head and stretched in a line down its spine to a long tail that bristled with thick, sharp hairs like stilettos.
When it growled at the assembled intruders, the floor trembled. It took a short hop off the platform when it began to descend again like clockwork. Alexander had, unfortunately, lost count upon seeing the giant bulldog from hell appear.
Tilting its head from side to side, the giant sentinel studied its prey. Its jaw hung open, and a tongue large enough to cover Alexander’s bed lolled to one side, dripping saliva that hissed when it hit the floor.
“Looks like it has poison, or acid,” Sasha warned needlessly. Nobody had failed to notice.
A deep growl resonated from the thing’s gut, erupting from its maw as a sharp bark that had a physical force behind it. The tanks all staggered slightly as the sound passed over them. The melee behind them leaned into it but still, most were forced to take a step back. Several of the healers and casters were knocked off their feet.
The entire party received a debuff called ‘Sentinel’s Crawl’ that slowed their movement speed by ten percent for thirty seconds. Not wasting any time, the monster bounded toward the tanks. Even with their shields already raised, the slowed reaction time left a few of them vulnerable as the massive body slammed into them. It didn’t strike the center of the line, where the obviously-strong ogre anchored it. It crashed into the left side, crushing Wayne and one of Pollock’s guys as well as an orc. The other tanks quickly pivoted left and rushed to put themselves in between the monster and their people.
Sasha’s eyes went to her UI instantly. None of the tanks had been killed, though the orc was down to under ten percent health. The two human tanks had been somewhat protected by their plate gear and shields. She cast an AOE heal over all the tanks, then cast her biggest heal spell on the orc first, quickly hitting the other two as well. Martin, who was just returning to his feet after being knocked down, did the same.
Lugs bellowed a challenge at the dog, raising a spear he’d lifted from the bodies above. The moment the dog turned its head in his direction, he hurled the spear. He’d aimed for an eye, but the head movement caused the fast-moving spear to strike its snout, just above the nose. It gouged a long line along the snout before sinking deep into the flesh between its eyes. The sentinel snorted in pain and shook its head, one paw rising to swipe away the spear, which looked more like a toothpick next to the monster.
“Archers! Casters! Focus on its face! Blind it if you can! Melee, get behind it and work on its legs! Tanks, don’t forget about the acid!”
A swipe of its front paw tore rents in the shields of the remaining tanks, deep gouges forming in the steel as the metal screeched in complaint. Grumpy and Brick were pushed back a step from the impact, while Lugs managed to hold in place. Benny stepped forward with his shield, casting Holy Smite into the monster’s face as he took a place in the line. The creature howled in pain and shook its head in resp
onse.
Helga and the melee dashed around to their right side, the sentinel’s left. Orcs with spears and minotaurs with massive axes began to stab and hack at the two left legs as Lugs produced another spear and hurled it up at the thing’s face to keep it distracted.
Brick used his Serpent’s Screech, scraping his hammer across the surface of his Legendary shield. The high-pitched sound was particularly irritating to the dog, which lunged down and seized Brick, shield and all, in its maw. The sound of metal creaking under the pressure of the massive hound’s bite was accompanied by Brick’s ‘love poetry.’
“Yer mama’s a chihuahua and yer daddy’s a rock troll!” he shouted as the thing shook him like a ragdoll. “Put me down! I ain’t no chew toy!” He managed to smash his hammer against one of the sentinel’s canines, causing the tooth to crack and the dog to whine in pain. It opened its mouth and dropped the dwarf tank nearly twenty feet to the stone floor. Brick’s health, already reduced by the biting and whipping about, plunged to zero on impact.
Sasha shouted, “Benny! Get Brick back, now!”
The young paladin was already moving, holding his shield high as he dashed for his friend’s corpse. Lugs shouted at the sentinel to get its attention while Benny dropped to his knees as he slid to a stop next to Brick and laid his hands on him. A golden glow surrounded the dwarf and he coughed. His armor was punctured in several places and crushed in to squeeze him uncomfortably in others. Three healers hit Brick at once and he was quickly back to full health. He and Benny hopped up and rejoined the fight.
Purebred Sentinel
Level 120
Health: 92,000/110,000
Alexander looked at the health bar of what had to be a mini-boss monster. They were making a dent, but it was too slow. He cast Wizard’s Fire on the sentinel’s face. The flames leapt from hair to hair, engulfing the thing’s head in fire. The DPS poured on the damage, banking on the distraction to keep them safe for a moment or two.
Panicked by the flame, the sentinel spun around in a circle, as if chasing its own tail. The movement of its feet knocked several of the orcs and minotaurs off of theirs. Several took significant blunt force damage from being knocked back. Two were injured badly when an orc got kicked into one of Pollock’s guys, both of them knocked senseless at the feet of the rampaging mutt.
World At War Page 29
