The four creatures had the figures of short, squat men but with huge heads and wide eyes. Great whiskers extended off of their faces and out past their shoulders. Their skin was sleek and shiny, and rippled with scales. One of the four towered over the others, but was still no taller than Helesys. Each seemed to hold a spear and a shield, save for the large one which held only a curved staff.
“Fishmen,” Taunauk whispered. “Not good.”
The creatures took turns tearing at a carcass that lay on its side and part of the side and a large fin stuck out of the water. One at a time they would duck down and viscous sounds would echo over the water. Then they would come back up, gnashing great chunks of red meat between spiked teeth, the white of which glinted in the torchlight.
The large fishman did not eat, but seemed to be gnashing its teeth incessantly, punctuating with a gesture of the curved staff. The manner looked vaguely ceremonial to Helesys.
The elf looked over the room: The opposite side, past the fishmen, looked to be nothing more than blank stone.
To the left, the room rose up a slope of jumbled stone and rubble as if the entire side had partially collapsed. The slope rose all the way up three or four stories to the stone ceiling of the room. It was completely exposed and offered no path forward through the dungeon.
To the right, a jumbled mass of twisted, rusted metal that spanned the entire side of the room. Though the structure had long-since been compromised, grid-like spacing was still intact behind the twisted mass of bars. It looked to Helesys like the mass had once been part of a prison, long since ruined and abandoned. The rusted prison could be laden with passages, but it was impossible to say from afar and they would need to pass the fishmen to get there. Swimming in the shallow water was out of the question.
The two scanned the slope and the rusted prison until they were satisfied that no movement came from either side.
The only way across was past the fishmen to the rusted prison and Helesys shared her ally’s instinctual sentiments about the creatures.
“I’ll follow your lead,” she whispered.
The water rippled only once and Taunauk stalked forward with eerie silence, Helesys to the right and behind him. Tension overcame her as the pair descended upon the oblivious fishmen, like some great boulder at the start of an avalanche. Helesys’s heart beat faster and she forced herself to breath steady and slow in spite of it. The arcane gears and pistons in her arm hummed with menacing purpose.
Across the way, the fishmen continued ravaging the shark corpse, naive to the danger approaching just past the reach of their torch-light.
Fifty paces away in the gloom… Then forty…
The pair were thirty paces away when the largest of the fishmen ceased its incoherent chanting and turned their direction, torch-light glinting in its large eyes. Its mouth opened in a hiss that echoed through the flooded room. The three other fishmen raised shields and spears.
But Taunauk was already upon them.
He met the hiss of the fishman with a growl of his own. The barbarian pounced like a jungle cat—from standing still to his entire body soaring out over the water. He flew with axe raised overhead and came crashing down upon the closest fishman. In a splash of water and a screech of metal he brought the head of the battleaxe down through the creature and cleaved it in two.
It was an incredible display of athleticism, except that now Taunauk’s massive frame and splashing was blocking any hope Helesys had of a ranged attack. She felt the magic spinning up in her arm like a windmill in a stormgust. She knew that all she had to do was level her hand at the creatures and a torrent of horrible violence would spring forth—yet she also had the feeling in her gut that Taunauk might get caught in the blast.
“You thundering oaf,” Helesys mumbled. She waded further out to the right, hoping that she could get a better angle.
Meanwhile, the barbarian swung in massive arcs, the axehead screeching as it deflected off the shields. The big fishman had stepped back from the fray and was hissing rhythmically and gesturing with its staff. Helesys recognized the casting of a spell, though she couldn’t understand nor fathom which one it might be. In spite of that, there was one reliable way to break a weaver’s spell.
Helesys raised her arm, palm out and fingers spread—trusting that she would know what to do in spite of her amnesia. Purple electricity crackled between her fingertips and she felt the machinations within the arm align, channeling the magic of the wand. Something akin to purple lightning erupted from her palm in a thunderclap that overshadowed all other violence.
The sound and the force surprised her, made her wince and spin. Helesys saw just enough as she lost balance and fell back into the water—enough to see the big fishman’s torso split in two.
The elf gasped and tasted brine as she sprawled into the cold water. She struggled, slipping on the stone bottom and finally got her arms under her. She felt ridges—rope—and as Helesys finally broke the surface to breathe, something pulled at her feet. A rope net, concealed below, sprung up and over her head. Gears whirred and clanked off to the right where the rusted prison lay, and the rope net yanked her off her feet, down into the water again as she was pulled through the water.
Helesys twisted in the shallow water as she was dragged. She managed to rise above the surface for only a moment—enough to grab a half breath—before plunging under and tumbling along the bottom again.
Then there was a metallic snap
