Coldeven 11: Salvation

Lo-Kag made it out! He was apparently wounded enough that he had to hole up for a few days, since he didn't have Asilky with him to restore his health, but after that, he travelled back to where Sper was, and got her to come drive off the hornets!

She has the power (it appears) to turn into a whirlwind, which allowed her to do it. Unfortunately, now that she's saved us twice, I feel like we really owe her. I have to keep reminding myself of Spike's Exchange Axiom, and that I'm not necessarily in any hurry to pay her back.

My curiousity about what happened with Lo-Kag has been more than satisfied, since he tore out a page of his book to leave us a note in the room he holed up in...

Sure.... lets open the door... how bad can they be?... its probably just bees.... If we don't open it I'll always wonder what's behind it... Note to self: NEVER LISTEN TO K OR THE OTHERS EVER AGAIN. If I ever see them alive again I'm going to strangle them.

The swelling is going down somewhat but it is starting to itch. The poltice is helping although it stinks. Thank goodness Aunt Gathnik stuck them in my pack. I've had some time to reflect overnight. Courage be damned, Eaora has it right. I'm staying out of the way from now on. The things down here are too nasty. I like a good game as well as the next guy, but I prefer to win. When playing with my life, I like even more of an edge. From now on, when it starts looking bad, it is time to go.

It sounds like at least some of my friends were still alive. Judging by the sounds they made another attempt at the bees. I still hear the humming, so I don't think they won, but I did hear a door slam so I think that's good news. Anyway yesterday we decided to open a door with a loud humming noise behind it and got attacked by bees. I've never seen anything like them, thousands of them and with stingers that went right through even MY hide. They were crawling all over you so that you couldn't breathe or or even think. I think I stabbed at them but my magic spear did nothing. Anyway I barely got out alive but my idiot friends went out the wrong door. I'm going to rest here another day, then go for help if they don't show up. I just hope the priest was right when he said the shadows can't go through the doors. I've spiked them shut for now. I think I messed up my thumb hammering in the spike though. I seem to be very clumsy with all of the stings.

*  *  *Bored.

*  *  *I think I need some heavier armor. I think I'll see if I can fit up a new set from the armor laying around in the smithy I'm holed up in.

*  *  *Note to self, don't put heavy armor over bee stings: ouch! Since I've still got time to kill, I might as well try something else futile.

*  *  *Success! I've been working for years on some of the spells that old Blighter taught me. He told me they would work because we both had what he called "the blood" and that my evil eye proved it. None of them ever did much. Mostly I'd been trying the laughtodeath spell, but that never worked. I guess I'm just not funny. Anyway given my recent experiences, I've decided to work on the runfast spell and I finally got it right. I'll try out a couple of the others to see if I can make them work too.

*  *  *I'm not going to wait any longer. I should probably leave a note.

Lo-Kag seems glad to have found us, but grumpy. I didn't mention it before, because it seemed unimportant next to the fact of our inevitable death, but the portable hole we found closed up, and we failed to get some of the stuff that was in it out. I rescued much of the important stuff, including the bag of miscellaneous booty. Lo-Kag doesn't seem impressed though, he keeps going on and on about some sort of horrid icepepper sauce he had stored in there. Like I could conceivably pick something that makes food effectively inedible over a bag of gold and gems.

Since our rescue, We've done a little additional exploring, with two interesting results. Firstly, we've found a second Ward Staff. So, we're halfway done with the job we told the wardens of this asylum we'd work on. I guess that's good, since it means I have to worry less about owing them favors.

Secondly, we found a magic door that wouldn't work for anyone. After everyone gave it a shot, I decided to try and "convince" it to work. I guess talking with Eaora was good for something, possibly clarifying my thoughts on the matter, because I was able to make it do its thing.

It took me to a cloak room where many robes and much clothing was stored. Yes, a magic portal to a wardrobe, I've never heard of anything like it. With something like that, you'd think you could protect something more important than a few scraps of mildewed clothing. I grabbed some of the nicer looking clothing in the hopes that it would be good for something, and made the door take me back. I didn't tell the others, but I had a bad moment where I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make the portal work in the opposite direction.

Now that we're free of our prison-within-a-prison and able to move about, I'll rest a little easier tonight, and leave off worrying about the bigger prison until tomorrow.