The Severed Hand

Ignoring those around him, Ug renters the room and lumbers over to the group. A longing feeling outweighs his frustration and a ray of hope seems to warm the cold building up inside him.
Mama?
Without a word Ug reaches out to touch the gem.

Alalla thumps her glaive with a groan. "We are stronger than I ever thought we could be, but we can't take on the devil in his lair."

"No! You are not trained in its use!"

The Heartstone Gem flares to a burning white under Ug's hand, and the goliath's vision is thrown across the miles of forbidding mountain range to the depths of the ruined dwarf city. There, he sees her. Mama.

Her face is lined with far more wrinkles than Ug remembers and her hair is gray, but he would know this gnomish woman anywhere. But her clothes, and her surroundings... She leans over the small form of another gnome, washing his face with a cloth, and Ug notices with shock that heavy iron chains hang from her wrists.

Mama looks about suddenly, and Ug sees an expression in her eyes that he has never before seen there - fear. It lasts only a moment, and then she sets her jaw in a familiar way that reminds Ug of when she would scold the local priests. A large shadow falls over her, and the gnome she was tending to squeals -

Ug's perception is torn back to the Hand as the Gem rejects him (Ug takes 24 psychic damage, and Ras and Larrel each take 11).

"You fool, you mess with things you do not understand!" Larrel tears the Gem away from both Ras and Ug.

Then the floor rumbles. Whether through Ug's intervention, or perhaps simply because so much magical energy has been used in this place, the corrupted web of the mythal has taken notice of the group. The stones beneath heir feet writhe, and greasy pits open to reveal milky eyes and jaws with too many teeth.

Nearby, Gelarith whimpers, desperately turning knob after knob.

The air around the party tears with booming cracks as rifts appear, the space beyond them filled with... nothing and everything, too maddening to understand.

A figure drops from the nearest rift. Vincent, long trapped between worlds for mistakes made a lifetime ago, finds himself home at last. Of the people gathered here, he recognizes only Gelarith - though the elf does not seem pleased to see him.

"Y-you!" The elf wizard points a finger at Vincent. "B-b-but how..."

As bad as the Hand looks now, Vincent knows that something much, much worse is only moments behind him through the rift.

"Oh dear...I'm sorry, but what exactly is going on...?" Zenithral says, confused at the turn of events within the past few seconds.

A tall slender man wreathed in black shadows, Vincent lands nimbly and calmly. Stretching briefly he gives Gelarith the briefest of glances and speaks in a voice that is used to hardship. "Hey Old Man. Time hasn't been kind to you I see. Prepare yourselves if the rest of you wish to keep breathing. Coming back to this realm has consequences, and one of them is about to follow me out, I'll do what I can to help, but I am not powerful enough to take it all by myself. Hopefully if you made it this deep into the Hand, you're not completely worthless."

"Like...prepare now?" Zenithral asks, reaching for his quiver.

(Zenithral takes the Ready action to use Radiant Soul if a hostile creature appears)

"Okay, I've hit my crazy threshold," Al cries, skirting a mouth-pit as she takes in the new arrival and the chaos around them. "I don't care what's going on, it's time to go."

Vincent grabs hold of a tendril of shadow floating around him and snaps it off. Running his hand along the length of it, it forms into an impossibly long and slender sword with hardly any guard.

Vincent casts blink.
"Yes, any moment now it will come through, can you not feel it?"

Vincent then fades from view.

Zenithral raises an eyebrow at the weapon. No crossguard? Flashy, but that form seems hardly functional. Let's hope he knows how to use it...

"Aaaand, he's gone..." Zenithral says, glowering. "What a moop."

Zen hears a voice in his head.

"Don't be so quick to judge friend. I am watching over you even now. My many magics may be frightening at first, but fear not, you are not my prey this day."

Zen feels like he could respond telepathically and be heard by Vincent.

Ras is aware of the distraction and the pain, but his eyes remain fixed on the gem. He speaks quickly to Larrel. "We must leave now. Thank you for the information you've shared. I promise we will put this to good use." He holds out his hands for the gem.

The air crackles all about the group as the fabric of reality is torn asunder.

Larrel moves to return the Gem to Ras, but then the undead creature hesitates. "I... I cannot. I must know more of my daughter's fate! How she died... And if the dwarves are not responsible for what happened here, who is? I must learn who provided the orc hordes with magic weapons!" His withered hand closes around the Heartstone Gem, and its crimson light shines once more.

Even as the chaos swirls around them and despite the pain caused by the vision, Ugs mind only registers one thing, his mama needed him. He needed to know more, no matter the cost to himself. Ug reaches once more for the gem.

athletics check in case the elf tries to keep it from him

Erevain draws his sword in a smooth motion, though his white-knuckled grip shows he is as on edge as the others. He eyes Vincent with mistrust, but then glances at Gelarith, and then at the machine. "Alalla, I think I know what that is. It is a device for looking at things beyond this realm, to the stars and more." He shudders. "Some things are not meant to be seen by mortal eyes!"

The elven warrior falls into a stance, whirling blade sparking with fire.

Erevain readies a fire bolt to toss at any enemy that appears.

"NO!!" Larrel shrieks as Ug easily tears the Heartstone Gem away from his grasp...

Trembling, Gelarith abandons the machinery and crawls under a table, sobbing incoherently.

"LARREL!" Zenithral shouts. "More foolery and we'll ALL be dead and no one will find out what happened to us either! Help us defeat what is coming and we shall return in time, but now is not that time!"

In the confusion that follows, many events happen at once.

Druidic artifact in hand, Ug does his best to harness its power, but with so little magical training he has little hope of doing so unscathed (Ug takes 29 psychic damage). Still, as the magic fries his brain he catches one more image of his mother....

Never has Ug seen her look so defeated. Back bowed under the weight of a large bucket filled with stones, she steps past a red stain on the ground. She doesn't look at the blood, but tears fall freely from her eyes. Beyond her, Ug sees a gigantic black boot, above which he can see dark red skin. Fire giant...

Larrel rises up to his full height. "Look around you! There will be no other time! This is my only chance to know, before oblivion takes us all!" Hands glowing with arcane might, he begins chanting a spell.

One more sizzling *CRACK* breaks the air as the fabric of reality shatters. Three more forms appear from the rifts in the room.

The first looks like a slimy whale (Slimy Whale) with writhing tentacles that slap wetly against the floor.

The second is the most normal-looking. Dressed in a black robe and carrying a staff, it almost appears human - until the heroes notice that the creature is not formed of flesh and bone, but twitching maggots (Larva Mage).

The third is the largest, looking much like an enormous ball of snot, bile, and bloat (Forgotten One). It floats in the air beneath the room's glass dome, and its bulk immediately crumples the machinery nearby. It gazes around with crooked, sagging eyes and a slack mouth that takes up most of its face.

Then they attack.