I wake up and immediately head up the stairs to sokoban. I take some time sorting through everything I own, and leave large piles of books, food, potions, scrolls and food. It doesn’t help much, I’m still weighed down. With a sigh I head back downstairs.
I see a large dog at the bottom, and against my better judgment I feed him a tripe ration. I decide Fritz is a good name for a dog, even though it hasn’t helped the other poor things I’ve tried to keep with me. It’s still nice having a companion though.
Together we head for the stairs when I teleport away. I aim for the stairs, thinking Fritz will catch up with me.
While I’m waiting for him, a giant wanders by. He’s so tall that his head is scraping the ceiling. He turns his massive head to look at me. He’s almost entirely naked, a skirt of leather hangs around his waist like a kilt. He lets out a deep growl, and throws a fucking boulder at me. I run up and start stabbing his leg with Magicbane. The first strike makes him stagger to his knees. Now I can reach his chest, and I swing with all my might. I land a solid hit, and he collapses to the ground.
I go back into the room, to continue waiting for Fritz. I fight off a few more monsters than wander in the room before I decide to go looking for Fritz. I find him stuck in a corridor behind a lichen. For some reason, he’s not attacking it, so I kill it for him and he bounds over to me. Together we go back to the stairs and head down yet again.
I stop at the fountain here for a quick drink. I feel refreshed, and we move on.
We arrive at the area with the altars, and I decide to take some time here to sacrifice, and pray. I step up to the altar and raise my voice to Anhur. I feel that he is well pleased. His voice booms in through the room.
“Hark, mortal! To enter the castle, thou must play the right tune!”
I don’t quite know what that means, but it’s the voice of God, so it must mean something. I file it away, just in case. I cast the spell for detecting monsters, and don’t see anything promising, so we head downstairs instead. I stop at the fountains, to try them out. I attract a water nymph, who steals my weapon. I search her out, and blast her with missiles. We head down to the next area.
We head down the stairs, and find ourselves in a giant open room. There’s a trench of lava around parts of it. I take a close look at the array of creatures that fill the room. None of them look like too much of a threat. I mean, there’s a nasty looking troll, and a cockatrice, and a large group of mordor orcs, but it’s nothing I can’t handle, especially if I keep close to the stairs for a quick escape.
I grind my teeth, and prepare for battle. I’m quickly surrounded by monsters. I run upstairs, leaving Fritz eating the corpse of a fallen creature. The troll follows me up, and I kill it with a solid blast of magic missiles. I walk off to the corner of the room to heal when the troll rises from the dead. Not as a zombie or anything, he’s alive again. What the fuck?! I kill him with magic again and decide that the only way to keep him down is to eat his remains. I’m partway through when the corpse I’m eating stands up, reanimated and covered in bites.
I don’t know how to deal with this. I kill it again and run from the room. Maybe if I’m not near it, it won’t come back to life. I don’t know if I was right, or just lucky, but when I came back to the room I was just in time to see it rot away to nothing.
Back downstairs I go. I forgot how bad things were, and it’s all I can do to keep the creatures from overwhelming me. I manage to kill a few of them before I’m forced to crawl back upstairs to nurse my wounds.
It takes a few trips up and down the stairs, and a lot of spells before the room is clear. I go through the stuff left behind. I identify a pair of fumble gloves and leave them behind. There’s a basic cloak of displacement, which I put in my bag of holding. I get a few more scrolls and potions. Nothing especially helpful at the moment, so I put them in my bag of holding to deal with later.
I feel lucky to have survived. Things turned ugly pretty fast, and if it wasn’t for those stairs I don’t know if I would have made it. One thing is clear to me, I will need more powerful spells soon.
Together, Fritz and I walk down the stairs. We’re greeted by a barrow wight. It hits Fritz, who looks weaker. Crap. I need him at the top of his game. The wight is no problem for us, and I’m about to open the door to walk out. The door is actually a mimic. I turn to strike at it when I see a large snake come through another door. It’s roughly my height, with wings. It doesn’t slither around on the floor, it’s tail lays on the ground and it uses it’s wings to fly. A goddamn couatl. An angel, well, angelic anyway. And that means it hates chaotic people like me. Why couldn’t I have been a good little elf girl?
I fire off a stream of magic missiles. They hit the creature, bounce off the wall and hit it again. This doesn’t halt it’s progress, and it comes closer. I let loose another barrage, and this time it goes down. I’m just about to celebrate my good fortune, and chuckle at the ease I had in killing it when I see another one come through the door.
I repeat the process for this one as well, still ignoring the small mimic that’s doing it’s best to try and hurt me. It takes another two spells to kill this one, and I’m about drained. I hope that was the last of them. I decide to use the last of my magic to cast detect monster, and I see a third one coming close. I grab Fritz and run up the stairs. I’ll come back when I have some of my energy back.
While upstairs we’re ambushed by a hoard of hill orcs. We easily dispatch them, and fill our bellies. I run around wildly, wasting time while my energy builds back up. When I’m ready, we head back down to kill the last couatl. I decide to see how it holds up against Magicbane, with the knowledge that I can kill it with magic missiles if I need to.
It comes into the room soon after we arrive, and I strike at it, leaving a large gash in it’s serpentine body. It rubs up against me, and I strike at it again. This will be easy if it doesn’t even hit back. I quickly revise my opinion when it swings itself around me, and starts to squeeze. I fire off a string of missiles and destroy it. I don’t like being crushed.
I find some stairs heading down, and pop down them, for reference sake. When I get down there I receive a faint telepathic message asking for help. I decide to ignore it for now, and head back upstairs.
I continue looking around, and find a spellbook of dig inside a locked box, and further along a book of stone to flesh. I feel a moment of sadness, and silently curse. I mentally say goodbye to Fritz the third.
I hear somebody counting gold, so once I finish exploring I cast my spell for mapping. I find a vault, and try to teleoprt in. Something happens, and I end up in a random place. That’s odd, so I try again, aiming for a different area of the vault. This time it works, and I gather up the gold.
All of a sudden I’m teleported somewhere else. I’m surrounded by hill orcs, and an alarm sounds. I feel like I’ve found my way into a high security area. Where the hell am I?
I cast a spell of detect monster, and immediately wish I was somewhere else. There’s more soldiers than I can count, a room of evil looking monsters including giants and elementals. And wandering around the dark area are a squad of dragons. I am not even close to prepared for this shit. I step back on the magic portal, and find myself back at the vault. The portal is still there, if I want to go back later. I feel like I can breath again. That was crazy.
I teleport over to the stairs, and try to prepare myself to go down again. Maybe a nap would help. Especially since there’s somebody down there who needs my help. I might not have another chance to rest for a long time.
Yes, a nap is just what I need right now.
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