43: Unfinished Entry

The ship is finally empty. Normally, I avoid spending so much time writing in a single day, but many days' worth of activity has happened since my last entry six or eight hours ago.

It was the cover of the floral art book that was the secret to the riddle, though I'm still not sure how the answer fits the question. The cover depicted a rose. While we pondered what the rose could mean, the servant returned invisibly to the house where we'd recently hidden, and asked whether the rose was used as a symbol anywhere in town. It was indeed, for a building where a large number of women lived and worked in small but well-furnished bedrooms. After a brief encounter with guards, which the Healer helped us conclude without violence, we split up and headed for the building. The Swordsman, the servant and I arrived first, and found out about a special room that the woman in the front hall would not let us enter. By the time the others arrived, the Swordsman had knocked the woman out, and we'd gained access to the room.

What followed were a couple of hours that are little more than a blur in my memory. A trap door under the desk led us to a tunnel where we had to destroy some sort of man-made creature, and then into someone's house. Realizing that the tunnel made no sense, I suggested we return to the room with the creature and look for a hidden exit. This we found, and spent a long time navigating labyrinthine passages while the temperature kept increasing. We found creatures of many descriptions, who seemed to have been placed expressly for the purpose of fighting off intruders. These included fire-breathing dogs, an invisible minotaur, a floor with tentacles, and some giant translucent cubes of slime, among others. Some of the creatures were so foreign to the nature of life that even the Healer would fight them with intent to kill. We fought through an enormous cave with an underground lake, and finally arrived at a pair of double-doors.

The first set of doors we tried revealed one of the most spectacular creations I have ever seen. The increasing heat we'd been feeling until that point was all do to the magical, gnome-operated machinery in the enormous room. We later deduced that it was drawing heat from the volcano and using it to power various magical devices such as the scrying-orbs. It was also keeping the volcano from erupting by ensuring that it never got too hot. Unfortunately, we did not guess either of these things at the time.

For a reason I do not recall, we avoided the machine and opened the other set of double-doors. What we saw took us completely by surprise. Five of the nine Lords were sitting in their thrones discussing the mysterious deaths of their guards and triggering of their traps, and watching what we later learned were a series of scrying devices directed at every glowing blue ball in the town. When they saw the Swordsman peek his head in the room, they were immediately ready for a battle.

I remember nervously fingering my teleportation scroll for several seconds, thinking about grabbing the others and escaping in some random direction. The servant would be left behind, of course, but he was not important. Then I collected my thoughts, and signed an idea to the Swordsman. When he agreed, I transformed him into an exact copy of the gigantic, grotesque creature that was killed outside the vampire's mansion while we killed the vampire, a behir. Then he used some of his own strange magic to enlarge his new body until he filled nearly half of the eighty-foot chamber.

Most of the battle is a blur in my mind. First the Swordsman's colossal body obscured my vision, and then a spinning wall of swords created by the cleric lord. I know that my spell on the Swordsman was soon disrupted, though not before he was able to do some damage. The invisible head of the assassins' guild was killed by a spell of the Brute's. At one point, I was sure the Swordsman was lost, but a few well-placed spells by myself and a disrupting bolt of lightning by the samurai's servant saved him, and all of us. The cleric escaped without an arm, but the rest we killed. The wizard escaped unscathed and made himself invisible, but such frivolous magic could not save him. There is always a way to see through an illusion, not matter how complex it may be, and this was a simple one. We chased him into the gnomes' machine room, where we were deafened by the noise. The Brute searched for him with the magic lenses, while the Swordsman tried to put an end to the noise by forcing a gnome to throw his wrench into the works.

This turned out to be the most foolish thing I have ever known the Swordsman to do. Interfering with such a complex device was bound to have consequences. Rather than quiet down, the noise in the room redoubled as spinning gears ground against each other and sprung out into the air. The Brute spotted the wizard, and we quickly dispatched him, but that was no longer the greatest of our problems.

I took the wizard's staff, and put on his amulet, mask and robe. The amulet burned my chest, but I knew I would need it to escape. The Brute also put one on, and I immediately noticed a change in him. He looked more powerful, more frightening, and I imagine the same effect was apparent in myself. The servant wore the mask and a torn cloak, but would not put on the amulet.

We ran from the room and commanded the guards to lead us out. This they did without question. To them, we were the lords now. Outside, the sky was black and the ground was shaking. The volcano was erupting. People were running every which way, trying to gather together what possessions they could before sprinting for the docks. Again, I remember reaching for my scroll of teleportation, but we had to make some effort to do what we'd come to do. The Brute ordered the guards to start freeing the slaves. We entered the prison behind them.

Not everyone in the prison was as easy to manipulate as the guards. After years of living in fear of the lords, it is strange that a member of the town guard would attack someone wearing the amulet and mask, but this happened more than once. However, none of these minor conflicts were of any consequence. We freed the slaves and headed for the docks, leaving a few dead soldiers behind us. We also freed the special prisoner we'd heard about. He was a dwarf who claimed not to be a wizard, though he wore some strange rune-inscribed armor reminiscent of a spellbook. I asked him what this armor was, which the wizard lord had thought powerful enough to make him lord of the lords. The dwarf was evasive, pretending not to know anything about the runes.

There was no time to discuss that, however.

Once the dwarf put on his armor, which took several minutes, we hurried outside. I had assumed we'd be able to commandeer a ship and sail to safety leaving this town behind, but I came to understand that there was no way out for the people of the town except through the water. Apparently, the entrances through the caves had already collapsed. This gave us no end of trouble, since now we had a responsibility to help everyone escape. To make things worse, we knew the five remaining lords were leaving on a ship of their own, and that they could be waiting for the wizard, of whose death they had not yet learned.

But all of this was nothing compared to what happened as we were leaving the building. The dwarf asked us of our purpose, and the servant, himself mislead, helpfully claimed we were vampire hunters. I agreed, and the matter was settled. But then the Healer, for a reason I cannot fathom, shouted out that we were on a quest to destroy a terrible dragon! How he could forget our need for secrecy so suddenly and completely is beyond me. I can only hope our mission hasn't been endangered. It will be a shame if we're forced to kill this dwarf for what he's heard, when we just rescued him from his imprisonment.

The only thing to do was leave as quickly as possible. The Swordsman and the dwarf took to disassembling buildings to make rafts, and the Healer, the Brute, the servant and I headed for the docks. The Brute, who had decided he was the true lord of this town, and I used the commanding power of the amulets to get more people to break down houses, search for exits and find the gnome.

The amulets turned out to be a disadvantage when we neared the docks. A mob of people, angry at their former lords, turned on us. Fortunately, the Healer was able to turn them aside, with the help of the Brute and the servant, who identified themselves as not being the former lords. For myself, I thought it wiser to keep the mask, amulet and staff. They could still be useful.

The mob calmed, we still had to deal with the ships. Most had already departed, and there was quite a lot of fighting over the few that remained. By the time we were able to deal with the situation, only one ship was left, and its owner and his hired goons were requiring that a sack of gold be given in payment for passage. Besides slowing things down and ensuring that a good many people would die, this activity was preventing us from escaping, so we took control of the ship. Doing so required me driving them all insane with magic, anchoring the ship with a magical trinket I had picked up after we left that town of thieves, and ferrying the Brute over in dragon form. The direct attack failed and nearly killed me, so at his request, I brought the Healer over, who dissipated the anger and allowed us to take the ship.

We got as many people out as we could, filling the ship and then disconnecting the docks and towing them behind us. We dropped everyone off on a convenient shore a few hours away. There was almost a fight between the Swordsman and the former captain of the ship about some issue with money. In the end, the slaves and the guardsmen got equal shares of the gold they'd taken as a fee for passage. We spent the rest of the day going back and forth and picking up whoever we could find. In all, I suppose we saved two to two-and-a-half thousand people. Some were naturally left behind.

The ship was quite a find. It is magically propelled, so it requires minimal crew, and it is faster than the few other ships of its size that I've seen. The Healer keeps glancing nervously in my direction as I write, even though I've removed the amulet for identification. I don't understand why this amulet upsets him. We must take every advantage in our fight against the Enemy.