Hello, Everyone!
Our underwater adventure is coming to an end! Last time our heroes managed to defeat a sea monster and now they're going to see what treasures its cavern holds.
Also, if you read until the very end, there's a big revelation waiting for you! I've been dying to get to it for as long as this arc has been going on!
It turned out that, now that the sea monster was dead, Bruno's ascend from its cave to the reef wasn't going to be such a big problem.
"I can actually take you along via a Dimension Door," Aurum said.
"Why didn't you mention it before?!" Mary grumbled.
"Because I didn't think of it?" The bard shrugged.
Mary let out a disgruntled sigh.
They made sure to help Bruno down towards the monster's cave and push him towards the wall of the abyss when he'd float away from it. He fell and fell, and, finally, he was able to grab a hold onto the ledge of the entrance and pull himself up.
They all entered the cave.
Immediately, Mary felt her breathing get heavier. It wasn't exactly a smell--because they weren't breathing air--it was instead taste, and feel, and touch, and everything.
The water was slimy. Small particles danced on the current and entered the throat through both her mouth and nose. Particles of dead and decaying bodies.
They were in her mouth, in her throat, in her eyes…
Overwhelmed and repulsed by the sensation, Mary doubled over and started retching, spewing up the content of her stomach in the slimy water. It joined the other particles and dispersed all around her. She heard Aurum heaving next to her but couldn't say anything, she couldn't even look at him.
Mary swam out and away, and didn't stop until she no longer could taste the decay. She closed her eyes and leaned on the hard wall of the abyss.
She never, ever, ever wanted to feel like that again.
Bruno and Aurum stayed in the cave and spent almost half an hour there, looking for Pyron's body. Mary felt faint every time she thought about them swimming among the decaying corpses.
At one point Bruno showed his head out of the entrance and suggested that Mary put a scarf over her mouth and nose and tried entering anyway. She refused.
Later, a few Sahuagin showed up from their cave on the trench wall. They stared at Mary cautiously and floated towards her. She looked back at them and snarled. They could have helped! Eldritch energy crackled around her clenched fists.
The Sahuagin yelped and hid in their cave.
Mary looked up. She thought about the sailors. They would probably be dead now, if it weren't for her and her friends.
No, that wasn't right. They would be dead if it was up only to her. She was ready to leave them to the monster and use the opportunity to swim down and look for the bells.
She shook her head. When had she become so callous? Was it Ekoba's fault, or was it… just her? Was she turning into a bad person?
"Mary?" sounded Aurum's voice. "We're ready to go up. Meet you there?"
"All right," she said.
She saw a flash of light from the monster's cave and then another one right at the top of the trench. She sighed and swam up to her friends.
They went back to the shallows without any more stops or encounters. Before they got out of the water, however, they had to make sure that nobody was waiting for them at the shore. After all, they’d left Rory’s tavern in secret, after he’d disappeared--or was probably murdered. And people saw them go into the water, they were really overt about that.
They sat on the seafloor, just under the surface, and Aurum cast his Clairvoyance spell. He was silent for a long time, before blinking out into his own senses. There was a puzzled wrinkle between his eyebrows.
“What is it?” Mary asked. “What did you see?”
“Nnnothing?” he said, sounding a bit uncertain at first, but then it was as if he’d shaken off whatever was worrying him and continued in his usual cheerful manner. “There is nothing on the shore to worry about.”
“Are you sure?” Bruno said. “You look confused.”
“Nah, it’s nothing. I think the fight just took more out of me than I thought.”
They ascended to the surface. The moment they left the comfortable silence of the water, it was as if Ekoba’s atmosphere crashed and pressed on them again, filling them with tension and dread.
Mary dried and cleaned everyone up with the newly found magic in her wand, then conjured her familiars and sent them out to spy. A few of them went to Rory’s to check what’d happened after they’d left this morning. The tavern was completely deserted. All the shutters were closed, the front door was locked and there was a notice posted on it.
‘Confiscated in the name of the President’, it said. There was a seal with a lion’s head underneath the writing.
So, the guards hadn’t been able to find him. Or they hadn’t looked. Maybe his disappearance was their doing after all? Both seemed like equally plausible explanations.
The rest of her familiars, Mary sent ahead of her and her friends to Trim’s tavern, to check if they wouldn't be ambushed there. Just in case. They couldn’t be too careful in Ekoba.
The rat Paolo was the one who gathered the most curious information.
For a start, nobody seemed to be looking for them. There were no guards posted in front of their door or something, their horses and room seemed undisturbed. That was a relief.
Having Paolo in the tavern, Mary made sure to let him wander among people’s feet and listen for any kind of interesting information.
At one point, she heard the name 'Rory' be mentioned. She turned Paolo towards the conversation and listened while some people talked about how Rory had finally moved out and how it was about time. They didn’t know there’d been something fishy during the night. They didn't know about the break-in and the blood.
The second thing Mary heard and made her frown with confusion, was at another table where several people were drinking. One of them sounded really freaked out. He was going on about someone breaking into his home through a window and Mary pricked up her ears.
“I’m telling you!” he said. “Either someone is fucking with me or they’re trying to jinx me! Otherwise, why would they not take anything of value and just leave some women’s clothing in my wardrobe?!”
Mary thought that was strange but there were other things that were even stranger. She wanted to check on them ever since she'd read the cryptic 'Why do you ignore it?' on the shore.
She declined her friends’ invitation to sit down and drink with them in the tavern. Bruno insisted she at least ate something and she had to promise him to take from their road rations. She went to the second floor where she could be alone.
She spread her journals and books on every flat surface she could find, and started sifting through them. The sentence on the shore was written with her own handwriting, and she wondered whether she’d written something else she didn’t remember.
When Aurum charged in the room about twenty minutes later, his face pale and his eyes wide, he must have found a very similar expression on her face.
“I found a mark on my arm!” he said, at the same time when she said:
“We knew her! We knew Lanurey Trost!”
Dun-dun-dunnnnn!
What could that mean? What's with this place?! Why is everything so bizzarre?!
I hope we'll find out more in the next chapter.
Until then, take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossary and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: These are my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum and Bruno) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.