NPF Avatars IV, Chapter VIII: At the Fountains of Madness

[Bailey]

Syttulg picked up Phil and stuck him on his shoulder.

"How about hobbits on lookout with their heads higher than everybody else because everyone knows they have good eyesight?"

[Arhra]

Hobbits in the middle? Arhra pondered. That didn't sound very typical. She could have been sure they were meant to be sent off on their own, preferably in pairs, and possibly with something critical to the success of the quest. Shrugging it off, she went to find Hydra.

Hydra, it appeared, had mainly fought the fish. Arhra's keen, deductive mind deduced this by the subtle clue that she was sitting with a large pile of fish in fron of her, eating them. The clue of her actually asked Hydra what she'd been doing also helped. Arhra didn't care for the taste of raw fish herself, but to each their own.

"You're a real glutton you know." Arhra said jokingly, sauntering over.

Some of Hydra's heads looked up from her meal. "Well, I do have a lot of mouths to feed." she quipped.

Arhra gave her a long, quiet look. Hydra shivered from the inexplicable menace there. "...Never use that joke again!" Arhra shouted at the cowering girl.

"I'm sorry!"

* * *

Moving deeper into the Temple, the NPFers came across what looked like a dried up pool. Craning their necks, they could see the pond covered what would have been an underwater tunnel that extended under the wall of the room, deeper into the temple complex.

"Hmmm, looks like you were meant to swim through here to get further in. Well, that makes this a lot easier." Arhra jumped down onto the sandy bottom of the pond. The traces of water were definately there, including dried clumps of seaweed carpeting the place and the occaisional, pathetic pile of fish bones. It was as dry as a bone.

"I wonder where the water went?" Hydra said, voicing her thoughts as she walked down stone steps carved into the pool's edge to join Arhra on the lake bottom.

"Probably a giant toad drank it or something. Wouldn't be the first time that kind of thing has happened." Arhra said offhandedly. "The important thing is it not here and probably will not come rushing through while we're down here, drowning us all."

And so it was the NPFers headed into this water starved labyrinth. Twelve steps in, they ran into trouble. The ambient light seemed to dim, flickering lights ahead like a swarm of fireflies, moving at them purposefully. It was a school of little fish, pale and spectral, a flickering light like a candle's glow in their bellies.

"Look out! Ghost fish! Defend yourselves everyone!" Arhra cried.

The fish didn't do anything.

Arhra untensed slightly and cautiously approached them. Simply flitting around aimlessly, the shoals split up to avoid her when she came too near, just like regular fish. It was quite anticlimatic. The NPFers walked through the spectral schools with nothing worse happening than an disturbing burst of coldness when ghostly fish accidentally darted though them.

After a little more wandering, only running into one dead end (although there had been a treasure chest there), they reached the end of this should-be-underwater maze.

"Ah, so that's where the water went." Arhra said thoughtfully, looking up. "I don't suppose anyone knows some sort of spell that lets you breathe water?"

Above them, at what should have been this dried-up pool's surface, began a mirror-smooth expanse of water, ignoring gravity with calm dignity. The halls ahead were flooded.

[mammothtank]

Staring upward at the hovering water, MT pondered what best to say about the situation. Presently, it came to him:

"Oh no, not again."

He then began thinking out loud. "I remember water was a problem in the last one I was in, but what did we do about it? It wasn't my tank, it wasn't a sub, it wasn't a giant air bubble... Oh yeah, it was that weird slimy stuff that exuded oxygen gas!" He looked around hopefully, but didn't find anything that might have been the miracle slime from before. "Damn."

A somewhat more practical solution came to him. "Hmm... my tank might actually work, if we could somehow fit everyone inside, and make it transparent so I could drive with the hatch closed..." He waited for the others to either agree with the plan or offer alternatives.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

"Hmm, giant air bubble you say? Now that gives me an idea!"

Micro-vacumns formed around Hawk again as the air began to condense into a sphere, only this time the sphere didn't form in front of him, but all around him instead. Those closest to him could feel the air being ripped away from them as Hawk attempted to compact as much air as was physically possible to fit into so small a space without compromising the integrity of the orb that he would soon be depending on to survive.

When he figured it was enough he turned to the others and said, "See you on the surface".

And with that, he ascended throught the gravity defying barrier and headed off as fast as he could (his wings somehow controlling the bubble and allowing it to move miraculously forwards), lest he run out of air before finding the surface.

[PhoenixFlame]

"Well, I assume we shou*ack! choke*" Phoenix began to ponder, shortly before Hawk sucked the air out from around her. Soon however, the ambient pressure equalised, and she was able to continue talking without being overtly choked. Two pairs of red eyes glared up at Hawk in response to this, however.

"As I was saying..." She continued in a slightly more flustered voice, "We should simply drain the water with a gravity spell. Much like opening the hatch on a submarine in port to escape, if we drain the water into this hallway, we can ride the ascending air much like Hawk is doing now." and gently took a moment to poke the water-ceiling with the tip of her staff.

"Anyone got a gravity spell?"

[phil_]

"Don't you have some super gravity element monster-beast summon, Phoenix?" Phil asked from Syttulg's shoulder. "I mean, I could summon a black hole, but that'd probably be too much. Oh! I could summon one of those hovering robots from Dynamite Heady that flip the level upside down! That might work, if I could remember their name." Phil wondered for a moment if he could get a wireless signal down in the cave so he could check gamefaqs.

"Or," he eventually said, "I could summon a small sub to get us through, or at least those of us who don't want to ride in Mammoth's tank. I could even tether the tank to the back of the sub so he wouldn't have to somehow make its armor transparent. Seems easier than tampering with space time and sub atomic particles." Quickly, he added, "Not that it wasn't a good idea, Phoenix. Great even!"

Maybe she won't kill me now.

[Tarrin]

Gills formed just under Tarrins ears, thile underwater these gills would extract the needed oxygen from the liquid suroundings.

Grabing paart of the wall Tarrin lifted himself part way into the water floating above the NPF heads, after a few seconds he lowered himself again.
"I can't see how far it goes, it's fairly dark up there" then with a quick flick of his head a small stick like protrusion with a glowing bulb on the end grew from his forehead, "Got this idea from an Angler fish" Smiling Tarrin popped his head back into the watery nether.

[mauve]

"Well that's... interesting," Mauve said for lack of a better adjective. She scratched her head as she regarded the hovering water. "Don't see that every day, now do you?"

If Pyros was here, he probably would've summoned the Hellspawn Yellow Submarine again. The thought was highly amusing, if still incredibly disturbing. Phil's proposed NON-DEMONIC submarine idea was less funny, but much more appealing to ride in. So was Mammothtank's non-demonic-non-submarine scuba-tank.

"I might be able to cast float on a submarine or tank in order to get it from down here to up there," Mauve supplied, trying to be helpful. "Status effects don't always work though, and I'm not sure if it'll be useful on a non-living thing. But still, if we end up going that route, it might help."

She stared back up at the tranquil surface of the water, and at her own reflection staring down at her.

"Of course, there's always the chance that we'll do what we ALWAYS do to solve our problems and find some violent and/or psychotic way to reach our goals, which works for me too."

[Bailey]

"Does spamming lightning spells count as violent and/or psychotic? If so, I may just have the solution."

[Lumaes]

"Of course, there's always the chance that we'll do what we ALWAYS do to solve our problems and find some violent and/or psychotic way to reach our goals, which works for me too."
A skeletal hand clattered slightly as it settled itself down on Mauve's shoulders. Lumaes' grimacing skull loomed into view behind Mauve in the reflection, at least he wasn't a vampire as well.
Cold breath washes over her neck as the spectre speaks,
"That would be, my dear, because you are violent, psychotic idiots" he smiles benevolently, explaining in very precise, indulgent tones.
He casts a disparaging glance at Newb, he indicates the plant-thing with his free hand, "Exhibit I"
He leans in close, his voice whispering playfully into Mauve's ear,
"The I stands for idiot"
He chuckles, shaking his head as he slinks into the shadows quietly.