99. Eater of Magic

* On their eighth day riding through the swamps of Minauros, with the Plagueman's diseases having bloomed in Wilfred, Pyt, and Clwyd, and having not eaten yet, the party have been in the saddle for 10 hours already as they push their mounts hard to try and make it to the other side of one of the Third Hell's dread forests. Wilfred and the nightmares pick up a level of exhaustion from their hard riding and the group opt to look for a place to rest. Ingvild quickly gets a feeling that a good place to rest is nearby. They all drop below the canopy and come across an illusion of the perfect resting place for them - exactly the sort of thing they were looking for. Wilfred quickly sees through the deceptive illusion and alerts the rest of the group, but it's already a little too late for them to just ride away! Inexplicably, Molly is missing from her spot in the saddle just in front of Wilfred.
* Panic starts to settle in. As the group start riding about, looking for Molly, more things go wrong. Pyt falls victim to illusions targeting his mind, making him move to places other than those he intends, which keeps separating the group further. While they're calling out for Molly, hoping she'll answer, Clwyd and Ilphas disappear. Ingvild goes soon after, leaving Wilfred, Pyt, and Zadimus alone in the forest on their nightmares. They dismount, bringing Ingvild's fiendish horse with them, and travel back to the place where the original illusion was. Wilfred starts trying to abjure the area, but then he too disappears.
* Clwyd was sat in the saddle in front of Pyt one second and then found herself in a dark tunnel the next. The walls and ceiling are tight, and along with the floor, the whole tunnel is smooth. She starts looking around cautiously and finds herself to be in a complex network of tunnels. As she spills into an open chamber, a massive ooze -- a black pudding -- drops down from the ceiling and accosts her. The thing is capable of squeezing through all the narrow passageways without even slowing, fully blocking the way as it does so. When she comes in contact with it, Clwyd finds it to be caustic in the extreme. She gets to the other side of the thing with a *Thunderstep* spell that also damages it a little, the runs on, quickly coming to a fork in her path. She goes right, the pudding is close behind her, and, heartbreakingly, she comes to a dead end. Witchy fox skull in hand, Clwyd casts *Fear* on the approaching ooze, hoping to send it fleeing. But the strange hunter is unperturbed. It presses right up against Clwyd, squashing her into the far wall, setting her body and clothes sizzling from its acid, threatening to swallow her entirely. Clwyd screams and uses her last spell slot to cast a *Dimension* *Door* spell to take herself to the left-hand path of the fork, as far as she'd seen down it. Free from the oppressive pudding, she gulps in a few breaths, and rushes around a hairpin turn in the tunnel before her, only to see *another* approaching black pudding further along! With no other choice, the goblin pours a lot of her life essence into the fox skull, pulling out a large chunk of Phigalia's power in turn, activating her witch mode. This gives her a tremorsense that maps the spaghetti-ing tunnels in her mind and lets her drop down into the stone floor and earthglide away from her pursuers on both sides.
* Ingvild similarly found herself transported from her saddle to these cramped, confusing, dark tunnels. She starts feeling her way around, struggling in the dark more than Clwyd did. She cuts a path through the tunnels, Wilfred's fiend slayer shortsword in hand rather than her hammer to combat the close quarters. As she passes an opening to her right, Ingvild hears a whispering voice - Molly's! The gnomish lass had been hiding in an alcove, unsure what else to do. Through sheer chance, Ingvild had happened across her in her near-blind exploration. Molly tells the giant that she has no idea what's going on in the tunnels, but that there was a massive explosion earlier. Ingvild tells the gnome to stay close and then together they press on. Soon after, they're accosted by a black pudding. The giant puts herself between the thing and Molly, but with each touch, it eats away at the integrity of her armour (Clwyd's fancy liquid bronze that Ingvild was borrowing while Clwyd couldn't wear it because of one of her diseases!) and Wilfred's fancy shortsword.
* Soon after, Clwyd pops up from the ground by Ingvild and Molly as if it were water, her skin stretched taught, her hair stark white, and little pebbles on the floor around her vibrating as a result of her witch mode. The goblin quickly tells them that she can sense there are three puddings total in these tunnels, then leads the way as they flee -- sensing the route to the exit. But the last of the puddings, closer to the exit than the others that had been accosting them, was able to cut them off as they ran. They force their way through it with some swift violence, with Molly landing the final blow! The gnome screamed out all her panic and rage, conjuring little fey spirits in the shape of bees all around the pudding that stung it and did just enough -- after the heavy work Clwyd and Ingvild had put in -- to leave it as little more than a melted puddle on the ground. The trio of women rushed on, out the cave, and back into the gloomy half-light of the dread forest once more. Ingvild let out a mighty shout to try and gather the attention of the others, wherever they might be.
* Wilfred found himself in another section of this forest, his back to a tree trunk. He couldn't see the others anywhere nearby. Couldn't see anything of note, in fact. But then a thick, chord-like tentacle wound its way around his body, and a large pad at its tip with needle-like spines all over slapped into his chest and neck. Wilfred saw then as its invisibility faltered, a horrible creature with a large, sack-like body and no face beyond a cavernous mouth filled with sharp curling fangs, clinging to the tree trunk 15 feet above with two more tentacles, and a further three beyond the one he was bound in dancing about in the air: a balhannoth. Wilfred made to teleport away and then, to his utter horror, found himself unable to access his magic - as if it were just out his reach. The balhannoth tightened its grip on him as it raised Wilfred up to sink its fangs in him. As it punctured his flesh, the gnome felt it *leeching* his magic from him, and a moment later, the air around the eldritch creature shimmered in a manner reminiscent to Wilfred's own abjurer's ward. Wilfred fought to get something useful from his pockets out as the thing kept attacking him. He got a potion of mighty strength to his mouth and chugged the thing, immediately causing his little body to hulk out with bulging muscles as he was imbued with the strength of a giant. Still, he couldn't break the beast's hold on him. Panicking, Wilfred cried out, 'it's killing me and I can't use magic!', desperately hoping someone else was nearby and could help him. The balhannoth sunk its fangs into him again.
* Pyt and Zadimus couldn't make much progress after Wilfred disappeared because Pyt's mind kept being addled by the phantasmal-force-like illusion that kept leading him in directions other than the one he intended. Desperate, Pyt agrees to be put under the vampire's charm and to follow his instructions thereafter. Soon after that, they hear Ingvild calling from them several hundred feet further into the forest. But by this point their horses have disappeared! As they make to set off, they hear Wilfred's desperate plea for aid and decide to head to him instead. Pyt grabs Zadimus and *Dimension* *Doors* over to where he thinks Wilfred was based on the shout.
* But Wilfred, very nearly dead, has already managed to fish one of the Keysmith's keys out his pocket, and though the balhannoth was draining his own magic, it didn't prevent him using something external like that. The gnome thrust the key to the side, feeling it chunk significantly in the air in response to his intent, as if it had been placed in a lock. He turned the key, breaking it as he did so, and was teleported away in an instant, over to where he'd heard Ingvild shout.
* Pyt and Zadimus step through the *Dimension* *Door* and find nothing of note. They call out a few times but can't see or hear Wilfred anywhere. They fear the worst. Then the balhannoth, now repositioned and invisible once more, strikes out at Pyt. It wraps him up and denies him his magic, just as it had done with Wilfred, but the bard is spry enough to wriggle out its hold on him. He hits the ground hard as he falls from its grip and then runs away. The balhannoth disappears soon after -- either teleporting or going invisible again. Pyt shouts for his horse, Johnny, hoping its near enough to hear him.
* Wilfred quickly fills the women in on what he knows of the creature hunting them. Then, when their progress through the forest feels too slow, he takes Clwyd in hand and Dimension Doors them both back to where he'd last seen the creature -- trusting Ingvild to be able to find her own way through. Left alone to find their way through the forest, Ingvild starts to fall victim to the balhannoth's mind manipulations, just as Pyt had earlier. It leads her astray, but she's able to realise what's happening quick enough to minimise the damage. The giant gets Molly to keep close but look around for the way they're supposed to go, while Ingvild tries to shake off the effect.
* Wilfred and Clwyd meet up with Pyt and Zadimus. The group barely have a moment together to plan what to do next before Clwyd disappears again. Wilfred starts clearing a patch of forest by levelling trees with his *Pliable* *Summons* spell. Pyt gets a *Polymorph* ready to hit the thing with if it shows up again. . . but it doesn't. Eventually he uses the *Polymorph* on himself, taking the form of a giant ape, and helps Wilfred rip trees out the ground too.
* Clwyd is alone, her back to a tree, the rocky outcropping containing the pudding-infested caves nearby in front of her. The balhannoth strikes from above, just as it had done with Wilfred, locking her off from her magic when its needle-like spines find purchase in her flesh. She thrashes in its grip, wedging her shield in the things mouth enough to stop it biting her. The she wriggles free and runs for it. As it lashes out at her again, she uses her fey magic to teleport 60 feet away and turn invisible. But the things on her in an instant, not for a second hindered by her invisibility. She pops the cork on the beetles she'd purchased in the Umbral Market, using them as a meat shield more than anything else. But the balhannoth chews through them in no time, and soon had Clwyd unconscious, fighting for her life.
* The balhannoth carries Clwyd back to its nest, depositing her inside a hollowed out tree, atop a mountain of bones and rotten viscera, next to the unconscious but stable form of Ilphas. Then the balhannoth returned to its hunt, eager to stock up on these magically rich prey. Wilfred notices the doll-like witch totem Clwyd had given him loses its shape, falling to the ground as loose locks of goblin hair. He knows what it means in an instant: Clwyd was dead.
* Ingvild and Molly had slowly been making their way towards the sound of the other felling trees, with the gnome on the shrunken giant's back so they could pick up the pace a little. Pyt's nightmare galloped past them at one point, but they failed to catch the speeding thing and it ran on to answer its master's call. They were the next group the balhannoth turned its attention on. Again invisible and from up high, the creature attacked Ingvild, wrapping her up before biting her. But then it dropped her immediately afterwards, finding her to be a poor source of magic, instead turning its attention on Molly. It snaked around in the treetops to get to the gnomish woman, rippling in the air before turning invisible again, and then struck out. Ingvild managed to leap up at the thing and land a good, full swing with her hammer, shattering its arcane ward in an instant and splashing thick, black blood about the forest. The balhannoth screamed with three voices laid over the top of one another, a horrible, piercing sound. It seemed the ambusher did *not* like it when the fight was taken to it.
* In response to the horrible scream, Wilfred and Pyt stop their tree felling project, with Pyt dropping his giant ape form too. Zadimus jumps on Pyt's horse, wrestling it into doing as he wants, then nods to the other two to go, saying he'll be but a moment. Pyt *Dimension* *Doors* them to the source of the scream, and Wilfred unleashes his powerful *Mental* *Prison* spell on the creature. It defended itself against the worst of the spell's effects, but was still rocked by the wave of psychic damage. In response, it teleported away with Molly.
* The gnomish woman was screaming loud enough for the group to easily follow. The balhannoth hadn't been able to teleport too far it seemed. Again, Pyt and Wilfred *Dimension* *Doored* and again Wilfred tried to hit the thing with a powerful spell to incapacitate it, this time *Hypnotic* *Pattern*. But the eyeless creature appeared immune to the spell's effect. It dropped Molly, who it had been attacking constantly since it captured her -- but thanks to the scapegoats she'd purchased back in the Umbral Market, she appeared unscathed despite this -- and then the balhannoth fled again, both teleporting and slinking through the treetops.
* Ingvild could hear the thing well enough and she shouted directions to the group. Zadimus charged in astride Pyt's nightmare, pulled Wilfred into the saddle at full gallop, and went thundering after it. When it came into view, Wilfred nailed it with a Flame Arrow and Zadimus leapt from the saddle to skewer it with his rapier from above. The vampire drove the thing to the ground with his preternatural strength, then ran it through with his steel a few more times. The balhannoth thrashed its six tentacles with each stab, but eventually lay still.