Bugged Out, Fo Sho (Continued…)
The bugs were dead. The barracks chamber was quiet.
You turned to the cocoons.
Moist worked his Good Peppers — Lesser Restoration with a dash of pepper juice — on dwarf after dwarf. Some came back. Some didn't. The ones who didn't, Ubys Decomposed, so nothing got up after them.
You moved the living out. Up, into the air. Into Leilon's hands.
Then you went deeper.
AC and KeYs knew the way to the corridor that had collapsed on Thaldrin Silvervein. You headed for it.
You passed through an ore-processing chamber.
Something was up in the rafters.
It didn't move. It didn't speak. It didn't come down.
You counted your blessings and kept walking.
Past the ore chamber, you came to a battle scene. Mixed dead — dwarves and beetles. Ubys surveyed the bodies before Decomposing them. Two coin purses. A hammer. An axe.
Further in, more of the same. More bodies. More dust.
Among them: a cobbler. Among them: the apothecary.
The apothecary's apron caught Ubys's eye.
It was unblemished.
Acid had eaten into stone everywhere around her. The apron was untouched. Gilded. Duck-pattern. Ubys took it off the body and tested it — beetle-acid would not stain it.
He passed it to AC.
You went further.
A voice — thin, broken — "The- The- The light… Help!"
You found him under a fallen support beam.
Donnic Wryvale. A dwarf of Thaldrin's rescue party. Pinned. Bisected at the waist. Alive. Lucid.
Donnic was a gambler. That, somehow, was what had kept him conscious.
Dhuxtyn cast an illusion over the wreckage of his lower half — as if his legs were still there, which Dhuxtyn meant as a kindness, or perhaps as a magic trick, or perhaps as the truest thing he could think to give.
Donnic told you what had happened.
The bugs had come for the rescue party. He and a few others had fallen back to slow them down — trail-block. They had bought minutes. Thaldrin and the others had run on. Then the corridor had given out behind them.
Donnic had held the line.
AC looked at Donnic and told him the truth.
You couldn't free him without killing him.
Ubys left his waterskin beside him.
Dhuxtyn left his dagger beside him.
You walked away.
Next session: deeper. Toxic gas in the shafts. The hive chamber. Whatever Thaldrin found at the end.