We could see the hydra, now with 12 heads, sitting in its lair, waiting for prey to come close, and when we lit the surrounding area we could see that indeed the tunnel had been walled of. Furthermore, the chains that held the hydra had been destroyed, giving the creature a change to roam, if it had been smart enough to realize.<\/p>\n
Our exits were blocked, a giant door, and a wall of stone, with the hydra standing in the way of either exits. Leaving us not many options, we would try to go through the beast. We would stay at a distance shooting it down while staying out it its range. However as soon as we decided this, a wall began forming all the across the cavern we were in, blocking us from our potential exits. We had no choice but to run towards the beast in order to not get locked in any further.<\/p>\n
We got in just in time before the area was complete closed off, we might have been fine here if we had stayed away from the giant beast. However Redemption, quickest to act, succumbed to her sword. Yeah her sword, we survived this battle, sort of, and I got a change to examine the bloody thing. It is cursed to bring her bloodlust. She tried to go for her bow, but instead she drew her sword and charged the gigantic creature head on, yelling something about revenge and vengeance. Garritas, slightly taking a slightly wiser course of action, cast illusion of himself around him and followed her. \u00a0The creature approached and attacked, heads coming down again and again, luckily Redemption took most on her armour and the illusions saved garritas from the most, but it was an onslaught. Redemption attacked, swinging her sword like crazy, \u00a0hacking heads of left an right, Garritas struck on of the heads down with his rapier, Ricardo bashed two of the heads to pulp and Romero\u2019s fire took down another one. I put all my effort in transforming the beast, so we could get past, delving deep in my magical reserves, but every time as soon as the magic took hold, it shook itself shaking the magic off.<\/p>\n
We had severely wounded the creature, but not for long. For every head we had taken down, more heads sprung up, and, expectantly most of its wounds closed again, like what we had done had almost no effect. No we were facing a 20 headed monstrosity chomping down on us. It must still have been slightly disoriented from growing all these heads as it did not kill us all outright but we were heavily damaged. And to make matters worse the Dao appeared from one of the walls smashing both Romero and me.<\/p>\n
Ricardo saw this was a losing battle and urged us to try and break the wall covering the tunnel out. Seeing\u00a0 that the Dao had not fled I remembered that one of their powers was to create walls of stone, and also remembered that these things were indeed breakable.\u00a0 Another couple of tense seconds went by as we dug deep in ourselves, redemption attacking and bringing herself back from the brink of death, Ricardo hitting and retreating as did Garritas, Thorn reading for the Dao to return, while I tried to polymorph the hydra again, and after failing again, my magic reserves exhausted tried to distract it with an illusion of an ice elemental.<\/p>\n
The Dao appeared again, Thorns attack missed, but so did the genie, saving us some time.<\/p>\n
However the hydra, after 2 heads attacked my illusion went full for Redemption, bringing her down and chasing down however had fled from it.<\/p>\n
The party was scattering throughout the room, making sure the hydra could not take us all down, Ricardo and Garritas approached the stoned of exit. Romero disappeared with a teleport, leaving us behind. And I was able to get Redemption back to her feet with a quick prayer. This was when I remembered that my spell, my simple necrotic touch, would stop whomever it touched from healing..
\nI was a fool to remember so late, I was a damn fool costing us so much.<\/p>\n
Redemption got up, and, still in a bloodrage charged the hydra again, dodging it first attacks, getting some hits in, which did not regenerate anymore, but got taken down afterwards. The hydra was badly wounded at that time however. The room also had increased in temperature, the ground getting hot to the touch, and standing still was proving painful.<\/p>\n
That was when the Dao appeared behind me again, hitting me in the skull with its maul.<\/p>\n
I remember laying on the floor, the blood running through my hair sizzling on the ground, on the brink of consciousness, when I saw the maul coming down on me again from the corner of my eye. My chest caved in.
\nribs cracking, flattening me by inches, organs pierced with bone fragments. My body was pain, the feeling of my skin burning was nothing in comparison, but the smell of burning flesh will haunt me forever.<\/p>\n
The Dao moved away from me, happy to let me die slowly. Moments later a shape appeared over me.
\n\u201coh shit oh shit\u00a0 shit\u201d the voice came. I don\u2019t know if I had ever heard the assassin turned student so panicked. \u201cA potion, you got to be carrying a potion\u201d.
\nI felt a vial to my lips and a liquid enter my mouth.<\/p>\n
It burned. Not like my skin, far hotter, searing my throat and my insides as it entered. Then there was cold, cold all around me. Freezing my heart.<\/p>\n
There was the sound of cracking, as my ribs reasserted their natural position, and I a drew a breath again. And I regained consciousness. Thorn looked into my wide open eyes, and his expression changed from concern to panic as I looked at him. He turned and ran.
\nI stood up, and observed the situation, I asked boccob to heal. Rememption regained consciousness, many of my wounds healed, and I drew Deep on the experience of almost death, and threw it at the hydra, stopping it from healing and withering a head to a useless lump in the process. I ran from the Dao towards Remdeption and Thorn for protection. From the corner of my eye I saw Ricardo and Garritas, in the opening of the our entrance, they must have been able to brake open the stone wall.<\/p>\n
The party combined their power once more for one last push on the hydra, bringing all we had to bear on it and finally with a dagger to its heart it went down. The ones of us in the chamber ran for all we were worth, ran towards the exit, away from the Dao, away from the searing heat of the room.<\/p>\n
And we made it. Just in time, some of us hanging on for our dear lives and running away. Half of the loot had been lost as I lost consciousness. But we got out, halfway through the tunnels we found Romero, who had brought the Azer for help, and we headed back to the Azer village. As agreed we gave them the gems and half of the items. We were left with the manual of constitution golem making, and the scroll of true resurrection, the rest all lost or given away.<\/p>\n
They celebrated, the party celebrated their joy for finding the pearl while escaping with their lives apperant. I however could not join their fun. My skin was cold, sensation was lost, colour had lost its vibrancy, I could not even drink my pain away as the alcohol can not pierce the cold logic of my brain anymore. My eyes not only black anymore now have white blue veins spread across them. And my heart, has not started beating again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Next morning after recovering, and buying some health potions we headed out once, more, we had but a day before the lord of this realm returned and there was not better time than now \u00a0to try to end the undead menace, and recover the cube that might be powering much of this.
\nMost of the day was spend walking upstairs, until eventually we got to the highest point. Here peeking past a tapestry we could see the top of all the stairs ending in a depression. Over the depression even more stairs were made, skeletons walked up those stairs and jumped in, carrying all the other bones, \u00a0with each electric pulse. Around this structure we could see 2 clay golems standing guard, with presumably 2 standing right next to us.
\nIn the depression we could see a mass of something moving, and the purple light of one of the cubes.<\/p>\n
Thorn could not resist, jumped forwards, cast grease on the stairs in the hope some of the skeletons would slip, and jumped back behind the tapestry, hopefully staying hidden from the guardians\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We could see the hydra, now with 12 heads, sitting in its lair, waiting for prey to come close, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelostcontinent.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}