Dael’s Adventure Part 8
While we recovered there was a short discussion of which of the remaining options to investigate, and while a few of us thought it might be worthwhile to check in with Cilla, the majority felt that pressing forward and heading straight to the park was the best option. We made it there without incident, well aside from the fact that the beautiful park had been transformed, likely by the nightmares of the city residents, into a calamity of metal, spikes and fire. Rusty steel spires pierced the the sky, which was obscured by exhaust from the multitude of oily fires gushing blood red smoke which provided an eerie flickering light.
Vyrez and Honch climbed up one of the towers to scout ahead and then they quickly climbed back down, warning us nearly too late of the return of the Manticore. This time he brought a giant animated shrubbery, apparently the official name of which was the TREE MAN FIGHTER OF THE GROUND MAN. Mortia launched a warning shot into it before it could surprise us, but it still managed to get the drop on Solei, engulfing her and pulling her inside it’s writhing mass. Whilst trying to knock it senseless, or pull her out she managed to stab me. I’m sure it was an accident though and eventually Honch managed to pull her out and finish it off with his hammer. All the while Hubert was running around providing healing droughts and Mortia and Vyrez were shooting at both monsters. Once the fighting tree was still I tried to entice the Manticore to come fight again so I could bop it on the head but instead it fled.
Solei lead us deeper into the nightmare park, though not where she intended we found ourselves in a vast, towering building full of machinery, metal walkways, and a confusing profusion of interconnected devices beyond my ken. Hubert (I think it was Hubert, I may have been a bit distracted) told me I was standing in an “elevator shaft” and once I moved out they called down a terrifyingly rickety platform which then took us up. And up. And up. After several minutes of ascending, hundreds of feet up in the tower, shadowy hands sprang from the floor, though as only Mortia was wearing a dress she was the only one caught by them. Three shadows took form, and Vyrez made short work of them with a little help from the rest of us, but before they were finished they managed to touch bare skin on both Hubert and Mortia, sapping their vitality and leaving them particularly weakened. Thus enervated they decided to stay at the elevator to see if Hubert could concoct some sort of remedy while the other four of us proceeded onwards.
A bit more search and Honch again found a room he didn’t want to go into, which is of course were we needed to go. Inside the Diviner Dredd, most desirous of making us live up to his namesake tried to convince us that he was only the second scariest thing in the tower, we were all doomed, everything was terrible, and each time we defeated one of them the remaining ones would become even more powerful. Yet he himself dreaded facing us and fled, warning us that the true threat was menacing our erstwhile companions.
We returned to the lift only to find Mortia and Hubert absent, and as we set out to search for them we heard an arrhythmic thumping that sounded different from the machines within the structure. Seeking the source was for not until a terrifying metal monstrosity emerged from a corridor behind us. Apparently this was the Dinosaur, or some nightmare dream version of Teawrecks at least. The beast everyone keeps telling me we aren’t supposed to fight. So we’ll have to devise some other way to best it… maybe we can lure it off a cliff or something? A weak catwalk? We’ll have to think fast!