Chapter 10: The City of Spiders

Seftan merely smiles and waves to the massive fungus and waits about for the others to be ready.

I wonder what I will title the book i write about all this?

Though he had always wanted to pen a novel about his life and times, most of his days had been spent thus far in study and contemplation. Now it seemed, his autobiography might actually end up a real page turner!

Elayna nods and says, "Let's be off, then." She shoulders her pack and is ready to leave.

"Like stopping a fungal, oozing wedding wasn't hard enough," Ælfric mumbled, then added louder, "Thank you for helping us get back, Araumycos. We will do our best with whatever trials await us as we have done with the trials with lie behind."

"There's no place like home... and this isn't home," Ælfric said. "You don't think he's died in there from all the stress, do you?"

Hunter says, "He said it was going to take some time to go through Gromph Baenre's notes. It strikes me as typical wizardry that he neglected to mention whether he was to signal us of his completed task, leaving it to us to figure out."

She approaches the tower, and knocks upon the door. "I've learned it's usually best to ask politely, then feign stupidity against whatever backlash his tongue can imagine."

"I usually answer backlash with backlash but I've learned to back off when the backlash can be backed up with a fireball."

"That's a good point; experiencing one disintegration ray is enough," admits Hunter. "Still, that is why I knocked."

"Let's peek through a window perhaps?"

Seftan reaches into his cloak and from the seemingly vacuous depths retrieves his owl companion, Archie.

"Fly up and have a look, won't you Archie?"

The owl pushes off and flies higher and higher until he is near the top of the tower where he attempts to locate a window upon which to perch...

"Looks like we'll be having burnt owl for dinner."

"Bite your tongue!" Seftan hisses at Ælfric.

"No meat on those bones anyway."

Elayna watches the owl soar, as much as she can until Archie flies beyond the range of her light.

"No fried owl. Haven't had that in months," Ælfric said disappointedly as he followed the wizard.

"Menzoberranzan again, boss? I know it's Gromph and all but do we have to go back into their stronghold?"

Hunter falls into the marching order, letting Vizeran and Ælfric take the lead. "By the way," she whispers to Elayna, "what happened to our riding lizards?"

Elayna blinks. "Uh. Wow. I think we sorta forgot about them after the fight with the beholder."

"You all had riding lizards and didn't have to walk everywhere? I arrived at this party too late."

Seftan recalls Archie to his cloak and laments the loss of riding mounts with the others.

"Now fried lizard, THAT would be a treat!"