Flash Flood

End over end, they are slammed into the tunnel floor before being picked up like rag dolls and flung forwards. Each of the Defenders of Daybreak is spun and flipped and crushed by the onrushing wall of water, borne down the tunnel by a juggernaut that no one can resist.

Agar manages to grab a breath of air before the water hits him, and it isn't all knocked out of him by the time he gets his bearings. Blinded and scared, he begins, "I wish that thiblubll gribthubbl!" The vicissitudes of the water choose that instant to smash him against a helpless dwarf's spiky armor, and the powerful spell is lost. You know, I've got a spell that could have helped me concentrate, thinks Agar disconsolately as the water picks him back up and whips him downstream. Guess I should have cast that first.

Tao's first instinct is to fight back the pain and cast gate. She tries to decide whether to cast it downstream, carrying them all safely to the Beastlands, or to cast it upstream and carry away the vast flow of the water. I guess it doesn't really matter, she reasons. At the moment I have no idea which end is up. She makes her best guess and reaches out her spirit to form the portal. The spell requires perfect concentration, though, and hers is disrupted when an undertow scrapes her face along the rough tunnel wall for fifteen feet. Tao's blood mixes with the energy of the spell as its essence is lost. Galthia spins past her too fast to grab, and then she's swept back into the heart of the water's current.

Meanwhile, Stone Bear feels the vibration in the stone from where he has melded with the earth. He is safe, but has no idea how to escape without drowning. Worse, the other members of the group have been swept away, and there is far too much chaos on the mindlink to get anyone's attention.

Nolin realizes that there is no way he can fight the water, so he grasps the wrist of a passing dwarf and hangs on for the ride. I bet this is really going to hurt when it stops, he thinks grimly to himself. I might as well try to save anyone that I can. Malachite and Mara are thinking the same, but their heavy armor effectively cripples them in the water, and they tumble helplessly downstream. Mara rolls her eyes and silently activates her armor's magical power of etherealness. She first found the armor years ago outside the time-frozen tower of Congenio Ioun, and has only used the etherealness power a handful of times. Nevertheless, she's surprised when the furious water is replaced by howling storm winds.

"Darn it!" Mara has to shout to hear herself. "Imbindarla's death has messed up the planes, and I forgot!" She feels herself picked up by the ethereal tempest and blown to the side, droplets of water spinning off into nothingness. "I can't lose sight of the tunnel," she says to herself in horror. "Don't panic. Just make your way back. Slow and steady." The mist howls and she feels spirits spiraling past her, shrieking. She ignores them and keeps moving, crouching down and putting one foot in front of the other. She tries to reach the others mentally, but the planar boundary has cut her off from the mindlink.

Velendo notices her absence, and wonders if she's dead, but there's little he can do about it if she is. First he uses his remaining air to activate his necklace of waterbreathing. It only works for an hour per day, but that's more than enough time. With breathing no longer a problem, he focuses his faith and pumps a burst of divine energy into his magical shield. It locks in place as he does so, just like an immovable rod, and a cry of pain emerges from him as his shoulder dislocates. Cruciel emerges from his shadow and steadies him, blocking the current with her body in order to give him a chance to cast.

"Velendo?" thinks Tao, as she wracks her brain for some way to save herself. "Are you all right?"

"Well enough," he thinks grimly, and steadied by Cruciel and his shield he casts a flexible wall with a 2' tall gap along the bottom. The inexorable crush of the flood ceases, and for hundreds of feet down the tunnel dwarves and humans lay strewn about like discarded pearls from a broken necklace. They gasp for air, the conscious helping the unconscious, and soon they've gathered once more about fifty feet downstream from the magical wall. Velendo casts a mass heal, and they do a head count.

"We've got all the dwarves, the bullywug, both lizards, the horse... but we're still missing Mara," worries the elderly cleric. "At least Stone Bear is all right. I've told him that when his spell expires, he should ride the current out through the bottom of my wall. He'll be able to catch up with us. I don't know about Mara, though. She might be dead." He looks around, as if expecting her water-swollen corpse to pop up out of nowhere.

"She's not dead." Malachite shakes his dark hair out of his eyes and replaces his helm. "I'd know." And in fact, they all feel her snap back into the mindlink as Mara finds the tunnel and phases back into the real world.

"Is everyone okay?" Mara's mental voice is worried. "I made a bad mistake, but I'm no worse for wear."

"We're fine. We'll join you in a few minutes." Out loud, Velendo adds, "This wall is only going to last for about an hour. We better get going. That's a lot of water back there, and I want to be somewhere safe when this goes."

"I'll meet you soon," thinks Stone Bear from his safe haven beneath the tunnel floor, and the rest of the heroes hurry downstream. They are wading through knee-high water, which makes balancing difficult, and they're forced to move more slowly than they'd like. Worse, something alive was carried by the flood.

"Ouch!" Blue electricity crackles around Malachite as something connects with his foot.

"Electric eels? I'm starting to think that I don't especially like kuo-toa," remarks Nolin sardonically. Galthia pauses, snakes his hand downwards faster than the eye can follow, and comes up with an oversized bluish lobster. It emits, and electricity sparks through Galthia's body. His hair stands on end.

"No," the githzerai monk says, shaking his smarting hand. "Some sort of magical shellfish." He crushes it effortlessly. Behind him, the dwarven troops suddenly start some sort of elaborate dance, with two dwarves spotting and two dwarves spearing in every four person assault group. An occasional "BZZZP!" can be heard, accompanied by rich dwarven oaths that sizzle the air.

"You know something?" comments Nolin to no one in particular. "I really, really hate this place."

Tao spares Nolin a grunt of assent, but concentrates on the problem at hand. "Splinder, you have things under control?" she asks, worried. Her slippers of water walking, looted years ago from the dead arch-mage Mirata du'Chemith, allow her to stand atop the water without even dimpling it.

"Never better," bellows Splinder from the nearby darkness. "The boys are just working off a bit of frustration. I think they're looking forward to something they can hit."

"Well, there'll be plenty of those," predicts Tao. Meanwhile, Agar examines the dead lobster-thing.

"This isn't very interesting," he says with a sniff. "Needs more tentacles. Like... this!" Casting a powerful summoning spell, he whispers unspeakable words into the depths, and the oceans gladly answer. A hideously tentacular water elemental rises from beneath the shallow water and awaits the diminuitive halfling's bidding. "Hi there!" says Agar cheerfully. "Will you please kill anything that looks like this?" He holds out the dead creature, and the elemental bows before him. It abruptly splashes down and disappears.

"Err. Is it gone?" asks Priggle. Forty feet behind him, a sudden watery pseudopod launches one of the lobster-things into the ceiling, smashing it before dropping it back into the stream.

"Nope." Agar shakes out some dry tobacco into his pipe, lights it, and whistles as he strolls through the watery tunnel. On his shoulder, Proty keeps time with a tentacle.

* * *

Stone Bear swims upwards through the stone, emerging from the familiar rock into the icy cold water. He swims as quickly as possible downstream. Soon the current grabs him and carries him along, scraping him along the bottom of the cave as it sweeps him forward. About the same time as his vision is going red and his lungs are bursting, he feels a burst of speed and is spit forth past the magical wall. The shaman pulls himself to his feet. Better catch up with the others.

* * *

"So, do you think Shaw betrayed us?" Tao dances along on top of the water, letting Agar ride atop her riding lizard. Mara shakes her head.

"No, I hope not. Maybe they tortured something out of him, or perhaps those kuo-toa back in Glig sent some sort of message along. We shouldn't blame him until we know." Malachite looks at her darkly, but says nothing.

"Hang on," announces Velendo. "That other magical wall is going to fall any minute. I better put up a more permanent barrier. This one should last for almost a day; if the water hasn't drained out by then, we have bigger troubles."

"Leave room for Stone Bear," reminds Mara. "He's almost caught up."

* * *

The shaman lopes along the watery tunnel. He doesn't mind the dark, because his eyes were sacrificed long ago, and he doesn't mind being alone, because he always has his spirits with him. Even now, they whisper to him.

The dead live here, hisses Elder. This is my land. The others will fade, but I will always be with you. I am eternal.

"Then why do you talk in riddles?" asks Stone Bear. He feels a vibration somewhere behind him, a quickening of the air. Uh oh. The first wall must have fallen.

I'm not used to speaking to your kind while they're still alive, admits the spirit. Why do you even bother with life? Death is the natural state of things. Life is a mistake, one easily remedied. Stone Bear ignores him and quickens his pace, legs pistoning through the water as he sprints forward. There's definitely a rumble from behind, and he breaths a silent thanks to his ancestors when Velendo's second wall comes within range of his preternatural senses.

Stone Bear thinks that his nature spirit guide, Bear, may also be trying to talk, but he's too faint to be made out over the blood pounding in his temples. Elder continues whispering loudly, drowning Bear out as it keens in anticipation. For instance, why do you run? I have learned patience over eons. And yet you hurry, hurry, like the maggot afraid that the meat will disappear. You shouldn't fear what is behind you. You should fear what is yet to come. The rumbling increases and Stone Bear suddenly knows that there is a solid wall of water just behind him, rushing forward with crushing force. He ignores the spirit and leaps forward, twisting his body in mid air and rolling sideways under the narrow gap left between the wall and the cavern floor. Just behind him, the wall of water slams impotently against the magical barrier, spending its fury on something other than his own soft flesh.

Stone Bear sits up, breath ragged, and shakes the water from his clothing. "I run because I'm not an idiot," he says, and forces the death spirit away from him. Wading through the renewed stream of water, he hurries to join the others.