Through the Looking Glass

Earthday, Wealsun 6, 592 CY, continued

Apparently, Pockets got caught in another trap and went down a water slide as I was banishing the water elemental. Fafnir cast a spell to see what was where Pockets was last seen— he saw a latch on the other side of a trapdoor with a wet chute. No Pockets. We got Watch to use mage hand to prop the trapdoor open; Aramil then used his rapier to prevent it from closing. Of course, he now has a much shorter rapier. I used a sending spell to see if Pockets was even still conscious, as it was taking us way too much time to get the trapdoor to stay open. His only reply was to drop down 500’ of rope. We didn’t have that much rope, so we took Fafnir’s lead and all hopped on the chute ourselves.

After a plunge downward for a space of several seconds, we came out in a cavern with 3’ of water in it. Fafnir (who must have been treading water) saw two sets of “holes” 18” apart going up the far wall. Pockets and I went over and checked the wall— the holes went up to the ceiling. We couldn’t see a door, but we pushed on the ceiling where the holes led and opened a trapdoor. We found a 15’ ladder resting in a corridor and lowered it down for our companions. Our collective guessing determined that we were about 385’ below where we had started out.

We walked down the corridor about 50’ and came to a large chamber containing four doors and a portcullis. And then, ouch! another door, right where I had been standing. I jumped into the chamber with Pockets, while the rest of the party was stuck on the other side of the trap. Fortunately, my friends were able to cast spells through the bars of the door, for a basilisk came out from behind the portcullis, intent, no doubt, on petrifying the lot of us. Fafnir summoned some dire bears (which had some decidedly unnaturalness about them— I think I saw tentacles). The bears fought the basilisk until it died, and then the bears just went back to wherever Fafnir summoned them from. Pockets set to work opening the various doors in the room. In turn, we fought off a fire elemental, an earth elemental, a water elemental and an air elemental. Investigating the area behind where the basilisk had appeared revealed two short corridors ending in steel mirrors. Each elemental’s door also provided us with a short corridor ending in three steel mirrors each— fourteen mirrors in all.

We tried various things to smash the mirrors— suddenly Fafnir stuck his head through one and reported seeing a silvery corridor beyond it. Pockets decided to walk through one of the mirrors beyond the fire elemental’s passageway. After letting Fafnir and Ghelt know what we were up to, Aramil and I followed Pockets, both of us worried that he was getting into trouble where we couldn’t see (and help) him.

We followed the trail of items Pockets had purposely dropped in the silvery hallway. We walked through an area that looked like a tomb, and another that looked like a finely decorated hallway with a desert landscape theme. I intended to go back a ways and find Fafnir and Ghelt, when suddenly I saw Pockets in front of me! I had just left him, so I turned to look behind me and I could see Pockets and Aramil down the hall. Suddenly the Pockets beside me took a shot at the pair behind me. As I attempted to grapple the Pockets impersonator, I felt the sting of Aramil’s arrow hit me from behind. I turned back to yell at him in time to see a second Aramil begin to attack him! Pockets II got away from me, so I used my favorite elf-fu maneuver on him and brought him down. As I was trying to subdue him without causing harm (after all, we needed to know what was going on!), my own doppelganger arrived and used a flame strike on us. Pockets II took the brunt of the spell and died. Dru II continued to attack, while the forms of Fafnir and Ghelt (the real ones?) arrived in the hallway....