20 Eleint, 1493
❧Covering Our Tracks
Dusk
So, as we were hustled out of the library, my brain got to churning. Sometimes, that’s a recipe for disaster, but this time I was pondering the heap of bodies in the portable hole. It was nearing sundown, and I’d bet my left boot those critters, both the lizardfolk and frogs would be stirring soon. After a bit of jawing with the others, we cottoned on to the fact that lizardfolk and bullywugs ain’t exactly bosom buddies. Matter of fact, they’re more like oil and water, always scrapping like a pack of pissed off badgers in a barrel.
We hoofed it back to the lizardfolk sleeping area, where they met their maker. We decided to stage the room to make it look like the bullywugs crept in while the lizardfolk were sleeping and launched an ambush! We thought about leaving those dragonclaw corpses too, but Lhel swiped ’em back and said that was a bit much. He figured it’d seem too phony or something. There was a set of stairs in that room we hadn’t explored yet, but if we stumbled upon someone up there, we’d have a tough time explaining why we didn’t raise the alarm about the lizardfolk’s bunkhouse massacre.
Next stop was the bullywug barracks, but it was as dull as dishwater in there, except for another set of stairs. Upstairs, we spied two bullywugs loafing about. Kalama took point and breezed past ’em, waving around that scrap of paper from the mess hall. Turns out, she needn’t have bothered, ’cause those little buggers scurried over to the farthest corner, quaking in their boots. I actually felt a twinge of pity for ’em ’cause they looked like they’d not been being treated too well. Anyway, the room was empty except for a door that led to another vacant area that, judging by the stench, was just the lost for the stables.
I’m not sure whose idea it was, but someone realized Demdoo was running low on healing spells. Kalama doled out some healing potions for easy access, ’cause it’d be a real pickle trying to use ’em if they were all stashed in her bag! We each grabbed one healing potion and one greater healing potion, with a couple left over that we left with Kalama for safekeeping.
Before we made another boneheaded move and trotted into the stables, T-Bone pointed out that most war-trained mounts wouldn’t take kindly to our presence. He had a point, so we hoofed it back to the mess hall to ask a few more questions of that dragonclaw.
When we stepped into the room, the first thing we noticed was that the giant mound of loot was nowhere to be seen! In fact, all the workers had vanished, leaving just a pair of cultists sweeping up under the watchful eye of a dragonclaw.
Kalama marched right up to the dragonclaw and accused him of leading us on a wild goose chase, but he swore blind that she’d spoken to JonJon earlier, and he’d already hit the hay. When she demanded to know where the loot had been stashed, he was quick to say that it was in the hold. So, she ordered him to lead us there. He took us through a door and pointed left, telling us to head down the stairs. He couldn’t come with us on account of that he had to keep an eye on the new recruits.
With a steely glint in her eye, Kalama warned him, “If you’re sending me on a fool’s errand, it’ll be your ass!”
❧Down we go
Beyond the door was a dank room with a soggy floor that reeked of mold and swamp. Aside from another set of stairs leading down into the earth, there was nothing else in the room. So, we picked our way down the stairs and found ourselves in an underground cavern.
The area around the stairs was well-lit, and we could make out a pool of water in the middle of the cavern and a couple of tunnels branching off from the main area. We conjured up that light orb thingy from the Greenest villager since not all of us can see in the dark. One tunnel was pitch black and had some stairs leading deeper underground.
“You know, frogs can see in the dark!” I blurted out after Kalama remarked that it seemed only frogs were using these stairs.
“Don’t be daft, of course they can’t see in the dark!” T-Bone corrected me, his brogue thicker than usual. Blast it, I was feeling so smug for knowing something for once!
Anyway, we moved on over to the other side of the cavern, giving the water hole a wide berth. We found a wooden crane that looked like it could haul crates up and down from the cave floor to a ledge higher up. The cave continued past the ledge, but we couldn’t see squat from down below. T-Bone hustled up a ladder we’d found to take a look around all stealthy-like. He reported back that there was a corridor up there, but some kind of mist was obscuring his view.
That wasn’t creepy at all. Kalama sent her owl as a scout to check deeper into the tunnel, and they reckoned the mist was just your run-of-the-mill variety. We figured maybe there was more water nearby causing the mist, so when we reached a fork in the tunnel, we took the southern path ’cause we could see water there. As good a reason as any, I reckon.
We roamed around a bit when someone pointed out there was only evidence of bullywugs here. After watching for a spell and noticing the frogs didn’t always return, we puzzled out our location in relation to the castle. It turned out the bigger frogs were paddling through the water to the outside, probably near the huts we’d saw earlier.
So, back to the fork in the road, and we sent the owl down the next corridor, where it had to descend some stairs into another area that was all lit up. There were about ten bullywugs and one more frog that Kalama said looked fancy. She reeled the owl back in pronto when the bullywugs started pointing at it in amazement! Do owls frequent underground tunnels often?