Yeah, no, it's time to be Somewhere Else. Even though death is not very permanent on this plane he'd much rather avoid it.
He grabs Qhor's shoulder, who nods and grabs the other two.
Reed concentrates on "240 meters north from here" - it should give them enough space to at least regroup and strategize - then Dimension Doors everyone away.
If you arrive in a place that is already occupied by a solid body, you and each creature traveling with you take 1d6 points of damage and are shunted to a random open space on a suitable surface within 30 meters of the intended location.
Ouch.
Well, unfortunate, but that's just how the dice fall sometimes when you teleport blindly. It's not a lot of damage, probably not even worth Qhor channeling at it.
He holds his breath as the magic intuitively searches for the closest open space.
When he regains consciousness he quickly realizes that he is:
That's not great.
He uses his flames to heal himself a bit, and burn away some of the mounting exhaustion.
Well, let's see, what's around him? Can he see any traces of the others?
This facility looks like a short concrete mastaba, surrounded by rusting and ruined defenses and a large field of bare dirt and concrete. Some towers, trenches, piles of dry dirt, and other obstacles lie in ruin. Rust weeps from every surface where the rebar is exposed to air. The great steel vault door has settled slightly open, damaged in the cataclysm and the hinges rusted out long since. Just open enough to squeeze through.
Nothing overtly dangerous, nothing moving, but the place feels subtly Wrong. Like something terrible happened here, and might do so again. The tang of rust is on the air. A hint of green is visible on the horizon off in the distance in one direction, but mostly it's brown, grey, and more brown.
The weather is cloudless sun and quite warm.
Oh wow, that's a lot of metal, whoever built that must have been rich and good at metalworking! Probably one of those short peoples, dwarves or halflings... he still mixes them up.
The door slightly ajar is very tempting... and his friends could be inside! It would explain why he can't see them, really.
He'll juuuust take a peak. Quickly.
As he slowly walks to the door, keeping his eyes peeled, he Lights a rock he grabs from the floor, and then tosses it through the opening, rather than poking his own head in.
Despite what Qhor says he can be cautious!
Clang, clang, clang.
The rock settles onto an old freight elevator platform. The light reveals the rusty gantry, looming overhead and holding huge fused blocks of metal and large cables, and also a side-passage with a degraded sign painted on it that has some words and a pictogram of a stick figure walking down stairs.
Well, they're not here. But they totally could be down those stairs. He takes his time to make sure that there are no monsters lurking around, then cautiously squeezes between the doors and enters the room. It's fine, even if something unexpected happens he can still Dimdoor out, and now what he has a precise point in mind he won't get thrown around randomly.
He tries to read the words on the sign, is it in a language he knows? As in - Common or Mordentish?
He will belatedly remember to check his surroundings with Detect Magic, is there any visible magic?
No monsters are visible, either within the concrete chamber or in the dirt lot outside. The words are not in Common or Mordentish. They look like a short list. Maybe with some numbers. But it's hard to tell. Detect Magic shows-
-A weak aura of something over the entire area. Though it seems to be thickening up slowly, especially where his Light rock sits on the freight platform?
He will keep concentrating and try to see if he can discern the magic school. It's not very informative, but it's better than not having a clue.
An aura of abjuration would be significantly less worrisome than a necromancy one.
He picks up the rock, to use as a light when he'll go down the stairs that the sign is promising are somewhere in that side passage.
There is a concrete stairwell down that way, yep. The stairs go both up and down, but the 'up' side has a rusty, locked chain steel door over it.
It... Might be Necromancy? But not quite.
It has a hint of the divine in it.
Well, he might be able to break that chain, but it's unlikely. And anyway, he's definitely going to hear it if the others get on the other side of the door and try to punch it down.
Down the stairs he goes!
There's another landing, one flight of stairs down. More signs painted point directions to facilities with arrows, if only he could read them. The hallway goes off in three directions. There are what looks like Eternal Flame sconces in the ceiling, but they're all dark.
A slight shudder goes through the omnipresent aura, spreading like a wave and originating somewhere above him.
He's even less worried now. Absolutely not worried at all.
He's going to start shouting for his friends names. It could attract the wrong kind of attention, but he doesn't plan to stay in this dungeon for long anyway.
Does he see any traces? Things being more or less dusty? Otherwise he'll try going down another flight of stairs, it's more likely to meet the others on stairs rather than Random Hallway #238.
The place seems pretty equally ruined.
The second landing has a locked door.
The third landing has a locked door.
The fourth landing opens up into a fairly cavernous space filled with looming metal shapes.
Shouting excites the aura a lot more.
Oh look. A monster, coalescing out of the aura with a sharp snap! It's almost like a zombie, but black and ashy. It lunches towards him, showing sharp teeth and claws.
How does the monster feel about Lots Of Fire? Inquiring Scorching Rays would like to know!
Two rays of fiery death emerge from his hand, towards the monster.
The first scorching ray burns deep into it, and the second only confirms its expiration.
The monster dissolves into smoke. If he can determine anything else about what just happened depends on how much focus he is giving Detect Magic compared to the sound of at least one more monster snapping into existence off to the left.
Awwww man, there's more of them popping out of nothing? Rude!
So.
On the one hand he has half his Scorching Rays and Fireballs left. On the other hand, he can feel his Shoulder Cleric looking disapprovingly.
Ok, let's do this the smart way. He walks up the stairs while keeping the new monster in his field of view, then lobs a Ray of Frost at it. It doesn't do much damage, but it's basically free. His aim is pretty spot on.
A Ray of Frost will pop these zombies in one hit about 25% of the time, and in two hits about 75% of the time.
In this case, it doesn't go down to the first Ray, but is visibly impaired by it.
It runs directly towards him. It's not any faster than an ordinary human man sprinting.
The act of combat makes the icky feeling of this place shiver. A deep, low vibration from somewhere is starting.
Ok, they're easy to pop but not completely useless. Good to know.
If the zombie thing doesn't gain on him Reed will just run towards the exit, no sense in wasting time and attracting even more attention in a closed space, he'd much rather handle combat outside, where it's easy to...
He's being dumb again. He didn't Dimdoor out immediately because he's treating his fourth level spells as precious, but Fly is third level and he will want it anyway if he has to fight those things out in the open, so he can just pelter them from above.
Fly, and up the staircase, way more quickly now.
Oh, and Detect Magic to try and get advance notice of more bad-vibes-zombies popping up.
The aura here is disturbed, ripping, and growing more and more agitated by the second. There are multiple little ripple-snaps that indicate forming monsters. Three, five, seven...
As he passes the third landing - one more with a sealed door, one more with hallways, and then the exit left - There's one - two, actually - coming down the stairs towards him. Along the ceiling. They're spider shaped.
Noooooooooooooope. Dimdoor-right-the-fuck-now. To the place where he first appeared, but 10 meters up.
Now he is on the surface again. Nothing looks different here. Yet. He has a few moments before that changes.
Invisibility, never hurts, then Detect Magic again, it proved useful to notice those creatures as they appeared.
If he burns a good chunk of his available magic, he can be one kilometer away in half a minute, and while he has Fly up he can just keep targeting open air, so it's not even dangerous to target it blindly.
But that should be plan B, or even C. If the others are around he's super not leaving them here.
All the malign energy is... Being gathered towards a single point, it looks like. Like a supercooled liquid reacting as soon as something disturbs it.
Zombies, oozes, spiders, wolves, birds, and tentacle-y things, but mostly zombies, all made of blackness, begin pouring out of the steel door entrance to the underground at a steady pace. From a spot well above the ground he can see a bit more of this facility, including a number of decrepit defenses and walls, and two long rows of giant circles on the ground over that way.
Well, he really hopes that his friends were not in there. If they are... they'll probably be fine, right? The zombies get hurt by channeling, and Qhor's channels are pretty great.
Should he try and attract more attention, hoping to see if his friends can her the ruckus?
On the one hand, the best plan is to find them and get out of here before they get overwhelmed.
On the other hand, it seems like the more noise he makes, the more mildly concerning things show up.
On the mage hand, with this many relatively-weak enemies all clumped together he's really itching to...
Wait, are those birds? Fuck, he can't wait it out if they can fly!
Ok, it's time for plan F.
He grabs his Rod, then flies up a bit and waits until there is a good mass of creatures, but before the birds have a chance to get too close to him.
Aaaaany moment now.
Wait, why are the bird not flying to him?
Because he's invisible. And if he Fireballs then he won't be invisible anymore.
So throwing the best fireball of his life, with the most amount of packed, weak enemies would be a bad idea.
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Well, he has about nine more minutes before he needs to make a decision either way. Make that eight so he has margin to get Out Of Here.
Ok, plans. Plan A is to - somehow - find his party. Plan B is to wait here for eight minutes and see how the situation evolves, then dimdoor as far out as possible. Plan F is tragically not a good idea.
He gives a longing look to his rod, then puts it away.
Looks like a big concentration of curse waking up, yep.
I can try to send someone to check it out~?
The facility is rather in the middle of nowhere, though. The number of kitsunes who are interested and in a convenient place, even by Spirit World highway, is limited. And monsters can form in the Spirit World around cursed places too. So it'll be a while.
Monsters continue pouring out of the iron doors. Eventually they shove them open more fully. Bigger ones start appearing among all the little guys. The oppressive magic aura thins and thins, bound up into whatever these are.
He wants to Fireball them so badly. And yet he must resist.
He flies in a wide circle, while keeping the doors in sight as much as possible, and looking for signs of anything, especially if magic, which is not a Bad Vibes monster.
He's impatient but he knows he still has almost half his Fly duration available, and he's going to make the best use of it.
There's an Abjuration signature shaped like a disassembled suit of armor, over here. In one of the ??fort towers??. They have thick walls and firing slits and hunks of rust positioned as if they once pointed out of said firing slits, at least.
He's very curious but he can always come back later, when the place is not looking like someone spilled tar all over the place, and then the tar got angry.
He tries to call out his friends' names, then makes sure to move as much as possible to avoid attacks toward where he was standing. Well, flying. Same difference.
This is fiiiiiiiine, he's still invisible and flying. He will just... get Over There Quickly.
Is that enough to throw off the swarm?
Good good. Still a couple minutes before he needs to make a tactical retreat. Let's try a slightly wider circle, still looking for his party (but silently this time).
All the monsters begin scrambling into neat rows, all at once.
When they're mostly done, an eight foot tall humanoid figure with a smooth dome for a head, black wings, and glowing red eyes walks calmly out of the broken doors and looks out at the grid of monsters, like a noble inspecting his troops.
And then gives a speech, pacing in front of them all and voice echoing widely. Of course, Reed doesn't speak this language.
Ok, that thing flies, is smart, and there's a good chance it will be able to pinpoint him somehow.
The smart thing to do would be to just dimdoor out right now.
The thing he will actually do is...
Fireball. (Empowered with his Rod).
... eh, that's a reasonable amount of fire but he knows he can do better.
Oh, and most of the shadowy things should now be on fire.
There is a thunderous explosion on an old military facility.
All of the lesser Curses caught in the blast stop existing.
A couple of the larger variants, those mimicking bears or giant scorpions or the like, manage to hold on, engulfed in flame.
The big guy... Ignores being on fire, turns to stare directly at him, draws and points a wand(?), and fires.
A tightly focused ray of searing cyan light attempts to burn a hole through his torso.
Of course he would ignore being on fire. Monsters ignoring fire, the bane of his existence.
He tries and fails to dodge the light. The ray burns a hole clean through his robe, and then splashes harmlessly against his skin.
"Hey, I just bought this! Well. It's been a couple months now, but it's still almost new! And it was expensive!"
And Mend will fix it anyway, it's not the first time he gets hit, but it's annoyingly long to cast.
Well, you have aaaall been lovely, but he's wanted... 240 meters north-east of here. Still in the air.
Dimension Door.
240 meters puts him right at the edge of the massive ruined military compound. He can see quite a few of the bird-like monsters taking to the air.
And Dimension Door again, in the same direction.
Reed lands and casts Invisibility on himself again, then grabs the silver mirror from his backpack and is about to start Scrying his party, when he realizes his invisibility will run out way sooner than one hour, and he should not risk having to stop it before it's ready.
Well, time to wait and see if the birds keep chasing him.
The birds are scattering in a search pattern right now. About a dozen of them not fireball'd. He can't see what all the groundbound foes are up to.
Should he get further? He doesn't want to go too far, makes finding his friends harder. On the other hand, he can Scry and Message them with coordinates, and he can't do that if the monsters get to him. He would probably revive, but he doesn't want to bet against them having poisons.
The issue is that Scry and Dimdoor trade off against each other, and he would much rather not burn all his magic on just getting away, especially if he needs to get back.
He's going to wait a bit. He can deal with a few birds. He's running a bit low on spells, but he can always overpower a Dimdoor and cast it like a 5th circle, even though that's even more expensive.
Hey, hey, are you there yet~? I think whatever set off some big nasty is going to be interesting. Also, we need to deal with it.
(Give me the power to teleport if you really want me there faster, Grandma. I'm already running. Sheesh.)
When it doesn't seem there's an immediate danger, he starts Mending his robe, while keeping his eyes open to possible attacks. If something happens in the ten minutes, he can just catch it again and try again when things are quieter.
He still has some magic available, but it's not a whole lot, he should try to find shelter for the night soon. He's going to miss the Rope Trick soooo much.
The black-ashy monsters seem to be sticking to their compound. The birds take up roost on the old walls.
(The kitsune who has been dispatched to investigate is still perhaps a couple of hours away even at a dead run, even with the shortcut effect of the Spirit World. This is deep wilderness.)
Nothing interrupts him.
Ok, everything's fine, time to Scry. Hopefully he doesn't get interrupted.
It's going to take an hour, unfortunately.
It failed? But he has the lock of hair and he know Qhor and the only way it could realistically fail if he's...
On another plane.
Ooooooh crap.
He is still in a jungle. Occasionally, he hears something moving in the underbrush or the trees. Nothing attacks him except ordinary insects, though, at this time.
Well, as much as he hates to he'll have to skip the Scry to his wife, he's running really low on his reserves today.
He'll get to Mend his robe and rest for a bit.
So. He's on another plane, separated from his friends, who he just failed to contact. He could do the Scry again, but he's running really low and should probably keep his reserves for emergencies.
He'll need to rest, but he has no party to sleep in turns and this place is clearly unsafe.
He needs a good plan. Therefore: what would Qhor do?
First thing: he can walk while he thinks, so he should do that, to get further away from the Big Baddie Bad of Badness. If he can find a safe place, or at least a safe-ish one he could rest and regain his magic. It's only halfway through the day, but he's used to his sleep schedule being just... weird, from all the adventuring.
He has plenty of food, but he's pants at hunting and foraging. Well, unless he can see some game, but he's not counting on that.
The ideal thing would be to find a village, but he has no clue where he is, for all he knows he could be on the Plane Of Jungles And Shadow Baddies, and be the only human there.
Qhor could ask for a Plane Shift, but he doesn't have a tuning fork to wherever "here" is. He could... probably ask Sir Misroi to Raise him and then kill him again but he would rather Not That, if possible. The less he interacts with that dude the better. Plus there's no guarantee on where he'd land, he would probably need to make the way to the forest on his own and... uuuuugh, this suuucks.
Realistically he's going to be stuck here for a while, and what's probably going to happen is that his friends are going to find Misroi's wife, the Darklord is going to Raise them all and then they'll finally be able to travel home, the Mist willing.
After about half an hour of walking through untracked jungle, something that looks sort of alarmingly monster-like, if less... Gooey? Flaky? Yips at him from a tree branch. Then it says something. In yet another bit of incomprehensible language.
"What the heck is that?"
Reed is trying to be intimidating, but he's not going to attack first. Just because something looks like a monster doesn't mean it is a monster.
Also, he's really low on magic.
She leaps and turns mid fall.
"Tamamo, help me out here. I don't have the patience to play charades. And I smell curse on him."
Boop!
Reed feels a sensation not unlike a dog licking his hand. Also, he understands what she just said, now.
"Oh hello there you... foxy lady."
That's the weeeeirdest spell he's ever felt cast on him. He didn't even know you could cast Share Language from a distance, and it has never felt like someone licking him.
"I don't think I've been cursed? I feel fine! I've been hit with a ray of fire, but I'm kinda blasé about flames. I should tell you about that time I set myself on fire. Intentionally."
"But I'm forgetting my manners here. My name is Reed, Reed de Book. A pleasure to meet you."
He bows to her.
She smirks. "You can call me Vee. If I could be pleased as a result of meeting you, that would be delightful. And, no, curse is what we call the whole... Category of baddies, Otherworlder. The goddess of foxes says you woke up a big one. What was it like? Shot fire?"
"Is it that evident that I come from another plane?"
"Yupp, shot something that resembled a Scorching Ray but was less powerful and also looked violet? It burned like fire nonetheless. I found it less than a klick away, in that direction." He points, quite precisely, at where he came from.
"It had quite an impressive array of shadowy friends, less powerful, that he could command in some language I don't speak. I think I shook them off, haven't seen one in a while."
"Nope, it's not, but you just confirmed it for me~" she singsongs. "Okay, yeah, that sounds like a Cryptid. Intelligent curse. Worst sort of enemy, smart ones. Hmm... What was the place like? Curses form at sites of great resentment or tragedy."
"There was this building, apparently made completely of metal. It wasn't magical at all, so not a wizard's tower. I took a look to check whether my friends were inside - they're not, by the way, they're probably back where I came from - and almost got overrun by the less intelligent ones, shadow spiders, shadow zombies. I can easily dispatch each of them, but not all of them. I Flew up to look around, and saw the big one emerge from the compound. They seemed to be attracted by both magic and noise. Oh, and the big one didn't catch on fire despite not looking particularly nimble, so it can probably resist it or might even be immune, knowing my luck."
"Metal building sounds like an old Tirran Empire garrison of some sort. A Cryptid that can corral lesser curses more effectively than usual, and that talks, and fired a beam of light, and might be immune to fire. That's definitely not everything it can do, they always have, like, half a dozen things. Okay, the big guy is going to be exceedingly nasty, alright? I don't want to fight it alone or with you. Unless you're some sort of mythic hero one step down from a demigod, we'd die, and leave it free to roam around causing havoc until someone else takes up the quest to defeat it."
"I will have it known, miss, that I am in fact a mythic hero only a couple steps down from a demigod!"
"But only for a couple minutes per day, and my reserves for today are almost out. I'll need eight hours of rest to get my magic back. I don't want to die, and I very much prefer you don't either. That said, if the big guy's main damage is of the fire persuasion, I can usually take it easily - but you're the local here, and I won't gainsay you."
"Which reminds me, I still need to fill my ring, do you happen to have some magic of first or second circle I could store in it?"
"It definitely hasn't shown off all its tricks. We'll need to observe, figure it out, gather more people and prepare... And, what? Uh... I have a wand of fly. It's more a stick than a circle though."
"Flight is third circle though, and I already have it. Oh - I should have clarified, I'm a sorcerer specialized in fire magic. If you have a wand of Flight, I have a couple more Invisibilities for the day - the 'curses' didn't seem to detect me when I was invisible and making no noise. I should also have enough energy for four more Dimdoors if things go south, almost a klick in total. Oh, and a couple Fireballs and the usual upcasting us sorcerers can do."
He won't mention the first circle spells, they're unlikely to be relevant for scouting and he has a relatively boring set of them.
"Oh, fire sorcerer, okay. I mostly fight with tooth and claw. The fodder is no real threat to me, probably... Big S or some other nerd will have to recharge it after nine more uses. But yeah, I can tap you with fly. Curses have mostly normal senses... Are you thinking to go observe a bit more, invisibly, then run?"
A... wand you can recharge? Well, if she fights physically, it's probably just a staff and she doesn't know the correct nomenclature.
"How long does the Flight lasts? My Invisibility lasts ten minutes, so I will wait until we're much closer before tapping you. We can definitely observe a bit then run. If things get dicey just grab my hand and I'll teleport us out. I'd prefer not to, to keep it for emergencies, but if we need it - well, that's an emergency, isn't it?"
"...Hmm. The version of Sinnah's Fly in the wand lasts thirty two minutes and puts you down gentle at the end. But it's tricky to learn at first and won't stop you from slamming yourself into a wall by accident."
Thirty two minutes... that's... a very powerful caster, and Extended. Impressive.
"Oh, that's a very good duration! You won't need to worry about my flying skills, I had a lot of practice!"
...Okay, sure. She'll enjoy laughing at him.
"Yeah, Sinnah is great at that stuff. I don't super know her but its Sinnah's Fly because she invented it. Hmm. I can follow your scent pretty easy, probably, and we can talk quietly or whisper to communicate? Priority would be... Figuring out what the big one can do, maybe figuring out what the place used to be. Sometimes that's informative."
"Oh dear, do I smell so badly? I thought I had Prestidigitated myself properly this morning! I have Message for communication, it allows you to reply by just whispering and lasts more than an hour and a half at my power, so I can cast it before we become invisible. If you want to poke the big guy with a stick I can give you the good invisibility, the one that allows you to attack and stay invisible, but it only lasts a minute and it trades off against the teleports."
He will recount what little he has seen of the inside of the building, maybe Vee can have a better guess at what it was used for.
"Nah, you don't stink, fox nose is real good. Huh, how's that message work exactly?"
...Yeah, definitely sounds like some kind of warehouse or military base.
"Like this!"
Reed points and casts Message on her, then takes a few steps back.
"You should be able to hear this, even though I'm whispering."
