Glubyal 5

Thoobel catches at Velendo's arm and gestures at a stone building nearby. "This is where the Kept are imprisoned." His eyes are alight with insane purpose. "I will free them to join our cause! You can do without me for a few minutes?"

More crazy monks? thinks Velendo. That means more allies, and more potential targets. Sure, can't hurt. "Of course. Go!"

Thoobel slips silently away, and the others continue to move farther into the Plaza of the Sea Mother. Galthia uses his superior speed to scout far ahead of the rest of the adventurers.

* * *

A servitor rushes in through pearlescent arches and bangs its head submissively on the floor. "Mighty Sea King, I am the bearer of tidings!"

Blel-Plibbit swivels his ponderous head to gaze at the minion. He pops another squealing tidbit into his wide mouth, and his favorite monitor steps forward to bang a pincher staff on the smooth floor. "The mighty Sea King commands you to speak! You have the upworlders captured, as you have been commanded?" Blel-Plibbit smiles in anticipation.

"Err.. in a way, O Commander of Tides! Knowing how eager you would be to deal with them yourself, for no other kuo-toa could possibly exact judgment for their many and unknowable crimes, we are delighted to say that they have come to YOU. Even now they are in the plaza outside, being punished for their sins against the Sea Mother! Is it not just that you will be able to punish them personally for their sins, fearful majesty?"

Blel-Plibbit's smile fades, and he gestures at the musicians to stop playing their soft horns. Quiet settles on the throne room, and over the panicked gill-flapping of the groveling messenger the King's ears can make out the faint sound of alarm horns in the plaza outside. Blel-Plibbit's face contorts in anger, and the terrified messenger buries its face even farther into the tiles.

"Idiot! They are outside, free and armed? They have evaded the armies and have come here themselves? And that traitor Thoobel with them?" The Sea King's croaking voice rises to a near-shriek.

"We knew your majesty would wish the.. urrkgl.. klapplgl.. gaak." Blel-Plibbit gestures, and the messenger's twitching body beats out a rapid tattoo on the tiled floor, fins kicking the polished stone for just a brief moment. Eventually, at a nod from the Sea King, two of his faithful bodyguards remove their weapons from the sack of dead flesh.

Blel-Plibbit's voice rumbles. "Gather the Whips, children, and the Monitors. Let the casting of Miracles begin. I am the Sea Mother's mate, and I shall have to deal with them myself." But the Sea King's voice cracks slightly as he says it, and deep in his belly he knows the sharp bite of fear. In self-denial he crushes the messenger's cooling head with one massive foot, and then spreads his arms in preparation for prayer.

* * *

At first glance, the Royal Plaza isn't much to look at. No decorations, no tiles, just polished stone and coral jutting at odd angles from the plaza's floor. The odor is revolting, but Galthia has been exposed to both githyanki and mindflayers before, so it's relatively easy for him to stomach. Ahead he can see the silhouette of a huge stone building, and far to his left he can see something that looks like odd sculpture. In the flickering gray-green light cast by algae and luminescent slugs, vision is difficult. Not so difficult that he can't see the enemies scuttling forwards ahead of him, though.

"Interesting."

"We're closing now... see them! Stand clear, Galthia. I suggest we open with a bang. Hey, someone get out some drawn butter." Nolin calls to the phoenix inside of him, and Rides the Sun eagerly answers with a sacred pillar of fire that lights up the darkness. Three of the four lobster mounts are killed instantly by the flame strike, cooked in their own shells by the holy fire. Their riders tumble from the back of the dying creatures, hitting the ground and bracing their weapons.

"I'm charging!" Mara spurs Luminor forward. The horse's powerful hooves strike sparks from the stone, and Mara's holy mace glows brightly in one gauntleted hand.

"Mara, wait! No!" Velendo shouts. But he's too late. Before Mara can close with her mace, six of the kuo-toa jam their long spears into the charging war horse. Luminor screams in mortal pain as his own momentum carries him deeply onto the barbed weapons. Mara screams as well, and the noble war horse topples to the side. Blood gouts out of him, and tears of rage streak Mara's face.

"I didn't..." She crouches beside the dying horse, mace out. Around her, slime-coated kuo-toa close in for the kill. She flips back her hair, and her face is a mask of fury.

Then the rest of the Defenders arrive to stand beside her. Galthia strikes Luminor with a healing blow from his hand to stabilize the mount, even as Tao and Malachite distract the kuo-toa soldiers from the front and Stone Bear circles in from the side. One kuo-toa manages to stab the downed war horse once again, and it twitches convulsively; Mara feels every wound as if it were she herself getting hit. Then she places a hand on Luminor's withers before he can die, and she shuts out the world as she focuses the healing warmth of Aeos into the horse's body. "Come back to me." Beside her Luminor's wounds begin to close, and it snorts feebly as it tries to clear the blood from its healing lungs.

Mara looks over at the kuo-toa beside her and smiles a terrible grin. "You're going to die for that." And within a few seconds, it does. So do the kuo-toa on either side of it, cut down by powerful blows from all of the Defenders working together. Dark blood flies in the gray half-light, but the kuo-toa don't scream for long.

Farther back, the one remaining war lobster has charged Nolin, claws snapping. One claw crunches around his body, but Nolin's celestial battlecloak stiffens into rigid armor in order to protect him. "Huh," says Nolin as he draws his rapier. "I haven't used this since the Beastlands. But you aren't undead, so let's see if Galanna is watching." Taking a lackadaisical fencing stance, Nolin smiles at the two kuo-toa soldiers on the lobster as he thrusts with the rapier. It's a perfect hit, penetrating the chitinous shell and thrusting deep into the war lobster's head.

"Buh-bye," waves Nolin with a friendly little gesture. And to the surprise of both kuo-toa, their lobster begins to change. Claws become branches, legs become roots, a tail becomes a trunk, and suddenly there's a 30' tall lignified lobster-tree standing before Nolin. The bard whistles softly and examines his rapier. "Damn, this thing is great," he says to himself, and runs forward. "I wonder why I don't use it more often?" Thirty feet in the air, two near-helpless kuo-toa soldiers watch him go.

With Luminor healed and the soldiers mostly beaten down, Galthia runs forward again to scout. He is running along the back of the palace looking for doors when he hears a clattering behind him. Turning, he sees a cloud of mist spreading from the side of the building. His first instinct is to discover what is causing it, so he reverses his path and runs back.

The mist is impenetrable to sight, so Galthia edges into it, staying right at the edge where escape should be simple. He's caught off guard by the terrible pain and the sound of running water. "What?" he begins to ask, and holds a hand up before him as his legs begin to buckle. At first he thinks it's his blurring vision, but then he realizes that his vision is fine; his hand really is running, the flesh sloughing off and changing into seawater as he watches. Internal organs liquefy, and the monk staggers as more than forty percent of his flesh turns instantly to sea water and splatters to the ground. It's only by pure will power that he's able to keep his feet. The mist swirls around him, and he hears a croaking hymn rise from somewhere. Webbed feet slap the stone from somewhere in the cloud of mist, and Galthia realizes that his life is at stake.

"Don't go into the mist!" he thinks urgently to the others. "It's...."

"We're coming!" says Velendo urgently. "Hang on!"

Not fast enough.

With his watery flesh cupped in one hand, Galthia feels a sudden presence at his back. He turns suddenly, and there's a kuo-toa monitor looming over him. A rock-hard fin is raised back, and the weakened githzerai can't do a thing to dodge it. It slaps him, splashing away remnants of his face. Another fin hits, and another, each tearing through once-strong defenses to shatter the weakened body beneath.

For Galthia, everything goes black.