Part IV

            The hallway floor was not the most comfortable place to sleep. It was a little better than actually sleeping on the caltrops. I only had ten hours of sleep.

            After waking up, I took the time to Identify the red liquid that I got from the dragon fountain. It was a Potion of Dragon Breath. I am becoming more potent with fire with each step we take in this place. Lyrie handed me some more food and I ate.

            “Where do we go next?” Lyrie asked.

            “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said between bites. “I think we jump down into the well with the vines. I’ll use Feather Fall and we’ll drift down into the lower level.”

            “I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Zylena said.

            “Sounds kind of dangerous,” Erky said.

            “I think it sounds exciting,” Lyrie said.

            “We still haven’t found Lyrie’s cousins and where else could they be?” I asked.

            Erky and Zylena looked at each other. They both shrugged but said nothing.

            After collecting the caltrops, we moved into the hobgoblin room and stood on the edge of the hole.

            “Let’s turn our backs to each other,” I said. “We’ll be able to see what’s at the bottom while we have each other’s backs.”

            “I’m still not sure about this,” Erky said.

            “Jump on three,” I said ignoring the gnome’s doubt. “One, two, three.”

            We all jumped and I cast Feather Fall. We drifted down into the bowels of the well. A strange violet light grew stronger the farther we fell. We landed in a large room on soft dirt. The violet light came from strange bioluminescent mushrooms that filled the chamber. Two skeletons were tending to a creepy garden. Which makes sense, if you’re going to have a creepy garden then you hire the creepy gardeners to tend it.

            I wasted no time and threw a Firebolt that nicked the closest skeleton. It turned toward me with a shovel in its hands. Lyrie flew past me and destroyed the skeleton before it took a step toward me. Two of the plant people jumped out of hiding, but Lyrie killed them. I was a bit disappointed since I’m an expert at killing those plant things. Zylena took care of the other skeleton and everything went quiet.

            I looked at a nearby clump of mushrooms suspiciously, waiting for it to try and jump me.

            “What’s next?” Lyrie asked.

            I looked around the room and noticed two doors and an opening.

            “I’ll check the opening,” I said.

            I got a bad feeling when I poked my nose into the large natural cavern on the other side of the opening. There was the smell of blood and two nests that I didn’t want to know anything about.

            “Not that way,” I said and immediately went to the door on the opposite side of the room and opened it. A dark hallway that lacked the violet light appeared before me. I opened the hood to my lantern and shed some light on the situation. The hallway led to an opening that we walked toward. A rift opened up before us. We could see the hallway continued on the other side.

            We walked across the natural rift to the continuation of the hallway. The zig-zag hallway led to a door. I gave the floor in front of the door a tap to make sure Lyrie would not fall through it. It seemed solid enough.

            The door opened into a room bathed in a soft red glow. The light was coming from the eyes of a red dragon statue. I could see a circle of black tiles in front of the dragon with draconic runes that said, “Let the sorcerous power illuminate my spirit.”

            “What does it say?” Lyrie asked.

            “I don’t want to say,” I replied.

            “Whatever it says, I bet if you stand on that circle and said them, something would happen,” she said.

            “I’m sure it would,” I said as I looked up at the gaping maw of the red dragon. “Not sure I want to know what that is.”

            We poked around the room and I gave the black circle a wide berth. I found a wiggly stone and as I tried to remove it an inky black creature attack me. Zylena killed it before I had a chance to react.

            “What was that?” I asked.

            “I think your shadow doesn’t like you much,” Zylena replied in elven.

            “It must be a love-hate relationship because it follows me wherever I go,” I replied.

            Behind the stone were some gold and two flasks full of liquid.

            There didn’t appear to be anything else in the room

             “Let’s head back to the big room and try the last door,” Lyrie said from the entrance.

            “Sure,” I said as I stuffed the loot into my backpack.

            When we backtracked to the natural cave, I asked, “Why not check this rift?”

            “No evidence that anyone went this way,” Lyrie said. “That last door is the most likely way.”

            The door opened into a wide hall with six doors off of it and an archway at the opposite end. As we moved through the wide hall, we checked each door and heard movement and talking behind each of the doors and decided to leave them closed.

            We looked around the opening and saw a narrower hallway with a couple of doors. Lyrie listened at one of the doors and did not hear anything. I carefully opened the door and looked inside.

            Inside was an octagonal room full of fungus and tended by more skeleton gardeners. I closed the door and stepped back.

            “Should we go in?” Lyrie asked.

            “No cousins inside unless they lost a lot of weight,” I said.

            Lyrie cocked her head.

I clarified by saying, “Just more creepy gardeners.”

            “Next door then?” Lyrie asked.

            “It kind of looks similar to this one.”

            “Then let’s go the other way.”

            At the end of the hallway were two doors. The closest door was locked and Lyrie could not pick it. We check the next and did the usual checking before opening it to find a rectangle room with a partially open garden gate. We peeked around the gate into a large cavern full of strange plants with a path snaking through it. It had a sinister vibe, but I wanted to explore further into it.

            “I’ll go take a look," I said. “You three stay here.”

I snuck out along the path and just as I caught a glimpse of three people standing near a tree that looked like a dead hand reaching out of the ground, one of those plant things jumped out at me. I was lucky and it missed. I cast Firebolt and it died instantly. I got down real still and tried not to move. One of the people was human and he looked my way but then shook his head and went back to what he was doing.

            There was also a female elf and another guy that looked familiar to me. I don’t recall where I met him but then again, all humans kind of look alike to me. They lack the distinctive ears of my people. The elf and human had a strange grayish hue to their skin.

            I wanted to get a better view of those three, so I snuck farther down the path. I was keeping an eye out for more of those plant things, which was good because another one tried to get a jump on me. I took care of it quickly, but not quickly enough.

            They saw me.

I was trying to decide which spell to throw their way when the plants around me came alive. Not alive like those plant things, but all grabby and grasp-y. Soon, I was pinned in place and unable to move.