End of the MInd Flayer
With a tired nudge from its knees, the mind flayer directed its mount into the station. Ozrik was looking forward to the end of the journey and the brain of the kobold that it had been saving (The hint of dragon blood would give the meal an intriguing after-taste). The trio of lizards it was leading were slow but sure-footed, as able on the horizontal as the vertical and it rechecked the harness buckles for the thousandth time.
Telepathically, Ozrik alerted its creations to its presence and started the lizards obediently moving down the shaft, passing the unnoticed trip-wire as they did. The lead gecko moved down the wall using its sticky feet to keep from falling to the water 40 yards below. Slowly it moved off down one of the spokes of the middle level and was soon replaced by Ozrik and his mount. had the mind flayer had been a little more awake it would have noticed the three Glyphs of Warning that guarded the upper half of the shaft from aberrations and their complete failure to bypass his spell resistance.
Once on the middle level, Ozrik steered its mount towards its living quarters but immediately noticed a monk and a hobbit watching it intently from a side spoke. Quelling its surprise, the mind flayer quickly psionically blasted the intruders and caused the rogue, paladin and psion (ironically) to clutch their heads in pain and confusion.
From a third spoke, the scout fired off a quick arrow and drew first blood, soon to be followed by the kobold's summoned bat swarm. The mind flayer, surrounded by a cloud of flying creatures, became disoriented and threw up a thin grey mess to the water below.
The monk, preparing to attack, found instead that all his comrades were actually possessed by evil (or good) demons (or angels) and that he should prepare to defend himself and Ozrik from their evil (or good) onslaught. The dwarf, not one to stand back from confrontation, charged passed the monk and into the swarm to deal axe death to the illithid.
Realising that a nasty ambush had been set, Ozrik commanded its mount to retreat up the shaft so it could blast its opponents from a distance. After a few yards it plucked a golden ball from its necklace and hurled the object into the passageway where it expanded into a scorching fireball. The monk quickly realised after he patted out the flames on his clothes that the mind flayer was not really his best friend and so quickly leapt for the lizard and its rider. Being an adept grappler, the monk soon had the illithid in his grip and started pummelling away.
Ozrik quickly grasped the seriousness of the situation - the gecko, a worthy pack-horse of the lizard world, would have trouble carrying both itself and the monk. As the mount's feet seemed to peel off the wall, one by one, in slow motion the illithid simultaneously mind blasted the monk and hammered away at the harness buckles in a desperate attempt to get free.
The dwarf, realising that the stunned monk would not be able to survive the fall onto the spikes they had all carefully placed at the bottom of the shaft, bravely leapt for the falling lizard, Moradin's name on his lips. As he desperately pumping healing into the monk, the dwarf watched the walls whiz by and thought "oh no, not again".
The lizard/mind flayer/monk/dwarf bundle fell down the shaft, passing the Glyphs of Warding that guarded the lower half and this time Ozrik was not so fortunate. Mere feet from the surface of the water and just as the illithid was getting free from the harness, the final Glyph erupted and stripped the remaining life from its body. The spikes waiting at the shaft's bottom penetrated into the bodies of the four - the lizard died instantly, the mind flyer was already dead and the monk started to drown in the tadpool- rich liquid. Nursing his bruises and cuts, the dwarf dragged his comrade's body off the spikes and quickly staunched the bleeding, all the while thanking all the gods in the heavens that the party had never managed to finish the final bucket-of-bricks trap that was intended to empty itself onto anything unfortunate enough to land on the spikes....
posted by John Breakwell @ 23:27
0 Comments
