So wait… where were we? Oh yeah, trolls trying to stab me in the face.

I quickly made everyone aware that there was a threat present, as I’m sure they saw me jump suddenly anyway. Seoni rushed to my aid and was rewarded with a spear to the face as well, from behind the skin on the other side of the hallway. The holes in the wall were big enough for the spears to fit through, but other than that, maybe only Ziqo could. This was going to present a problem, so Ziqo took it upon himself to fix that problem.

He opened up a nice doorway right next to one of the “murder holes”. Pile immediately rushed in and started wailing on the troll there, as he called out for his friend. By the way, I don’t remember what exactly was said, but these two trolls kept up quite the amusing dialog all through this fight. It was fairly obvious that the skins on the wall had more brain power than the two of them combined. Thankfully, the skins weren’t the things attacking us.

Pile rushed into the hole, and the other troll (at a cry for help from his friend) came at us through the doorway on the other side. Silvir put up a pool of grease on the floor causing the attempted rescuer to fall. Unfortunately, Ziqo was still close enough for him to grab, so he did that, and tried to eat him.

Initially I was helping Pile with the one behind the newly made doorway, but after hearing Ziqo’s yell, I ran out to help him. Imagine my happy surprise to find the troll sprawled out on the floor (although by this time, Ziqo managed to escape), that makes hitting their vital spots SO much easier.

At this point, it didn’t take long for us to get them unconscious, keep them that way, and burn their bodies. We searched the area, and found nothing of interest. Before continuing down the hallway, we thought it best to at least check out the chanting from the smoke-filled corridor.

After taking a peek at what was down there, I quickly returned to my companions, and emphatically suggested that we continue in the direction we were going. When asked why, I simply said, “Two lamia’s, two dragons.” At that point, everyone agreed.

As we went along the hallway, our surroundings gradually turned from “cave” to “stone-worked”. Eventually we came to another fork in the proverbial road, and I scouted to our right first. This room was easily one of the weirdest rooms that I had ever seen. I couldn’t really get a good feel for it, as the size seemed to constantly be changing, there was one stone giant in there, and he seemed to grow larger right before my eyes. The constant wall moving motion caused me to lose whatever it was that I had eaten most recently.

When I relayed that to the rest of the team, they suggested we at least see what was down the other hallway first before taking that one on. Oh, apparently there was some spell on that other room, as when I returned to them, I was more Ziqo’s size than anything else. Silver cast a spell on me to reverse that.

The other hallway consisted of a cave-in, and a small off shoot room that was empty. Or at least it was at first. As I was standing there looking around this large… what I can only describe as an animated furnace emerged from a wall and took a swipe at me. I of course ran back to the rest of the group. It did not follow. Pile went to investigate, and whatever it was appeared to have vanished. Great. Now we have some weird thing that can walk through walls out there somewhere and it knows we’re here. This was not going to be good.

As one, we entered the room, and everyone basically shrunk like me, a few threw up as well. The stone giant in there however did not stand a chance, and he was quickly dispatched. There were a few caved-in doorways here, but only one other exit, so we went that way and were relieved to be out of the shifting room experience.

A short hallway led us to another decent-sized room that housed a HUGE cauldron, and a stone golem that was guarding it. This battle went a little longer than the other, which was expected since anything that was magical seemed to not be hurting it. It was not, however, immune to my blades, and after a minute or so of me poking it in just the right places while Pile distracted him, with Seoni hailing arrows upon it as well, it fell.

As it collapsed to the ground, and Pile came out of his angry stance, the furnace reappeared behind us all. He said something about wanting to hurt the pretty mage, but didn’t stay around long once Pile charged him. His running away every time was going to be seriously annoying.

From there, we took some time to inspect the cauldron, which seemed to radiate evil.

To be continued….