Chapter Sixteen: Darkness

*Flashback to our first ever boat ride over water:*

*Xa'oc was scared and nervous, his whole body was tense, he tried to stay in the middle of the boat.*

*Aruna is less taken aback but still curious, chilling by side of the boat, looking at the water, poking the water with a finger.*

*Vex gets angry from the water, knowing that there is enough water here to take the power away from the sorcerer-kings.*

                  We huck the bodies of the guards we murdered off the cliff.

                  Kriv and Tenneth appear to be in a daze.  Perhaps from staring into the inky blackness of the water or some other effect of the Grey.

                  Our destination is the dungeon next to the arena.  Aruna does pass without trace so that we can sneak there. Amara leads us through the city and eventually they ask us if we want to fight through the guards to save time or take longer to go around the back.  For the sake of avoiding a lot of fighting we try to take the sneaky route.  Amara leads us to the mouth of a cave and tells us that they don't know where we are going.

                  None of us can see in the dark except Amara so we need them to lead us through the darkness.  If we run into any opposition Aruna will light a torch.

                  There is a nearby guard and a locked door that Amara thinks leads to the dungeon.  Vex scries on the other side of the door to see what's there.  She sees two guards and some supplies and three more guards.

                  We argue about how to proceed and eventually decide to ignore the lone guard and fight the two on the other side of the door.

                  Aruna kicks down the door and we fight the two guards.  One of them runs for reinforcements, and two more guards show up.  Our shadows help us fight the guards for some reason.

                  We follow Amara through a doorway towards the dungeon.  Amara looks terrified and says they see a "big guy."

                  A dark knight charges into the room with two more guards.  The dark knight points their banner at us and blasts us with lightning, including one of the guards.

                  Amara, Vex, and Xa'oc drop.

                  Kriv suddenly wakes up from his fugue just in time to get blasted unconscious.

                  Aruna heroically runs away.

                  The dark knight stabilizes Vex and then chases after Aruna, and Xa'oc starts dying.  One of the guards stabilizes Xa'oc, Amara, and Kriv.

                  Aruna encounters three more guards further into the cave.  Aruna sneaks past the dark knight to return to where her fallen comrades were being stabilized.  Aruna surrenders to this one guard and she allows the guard to bind her hands and then they knock her out.

                  We wake up in a cell without any of our weapons.  Another cell on the opposite side of the room contains people who have received grafts: a half giant with scales, an elf with horns, a pterran, an arakocra, and a beetle thri-kreen.

                  Notably Amara is not with us (because they died), and there are no gnomes in the cell.  We get interrogated by Thakok-An who is carrying Mistsong:

                  Thakok-An: "How did you get to my city?"

                  Kriv: "We were hired by a gnome to rescue someone from the dungeon, but the gnome is dead, and we now don't know who we were supposed to rescue"

                  Thakok-An: "How did you get Mistsong?"

                  Kriv: "Quite by accident, we found it in a hole in the ground in a camp full of elves on Athas, next to a messed up gith."

                  Thakok-An: "How did you get here from Athas?"

                  Kriv: "A strange pit that the sword tried to drag one of us through"

                  Thakok-An: "Can you get back to it?"

                  Kriv: "We could try to retrace our steps, but only one of us had been here before, and they were dropped back out"

                  Thakok-An: "You came in here without a plan to get out? why were you here in the first place?"

                  Kriv: "A man named Ramas on Athas wanted us to find the Book of Kemalok"

                  Thakok-An: "What do you know about that book?"

                  Kriv: "Apparently it's powerful magic of some kind, and we need it before Nibenay gets a hold of it"

                  Thakok-An: "Tell me more about Ramas"

                  Kriv: "He's very smug, and he's not very easy to kill, he double-crossed us, so we tried to kill him"

                  Thakok-An: "Why does Nibenay want to book?"

                  Kriv: "To destroy the world or something terrible like that"

                  Thakok-An: "I don't know that I believe all of that, but it doesn't matter very much. You will have time to think about what other information you want to share, and how you will be treated will be based on that. I'm looking forward to seeing you perform tomorrow."

                  The cell's bars are wooden slabs.  We take a short rest.  The guards can tell when we try to use psionics.

                  Vex tries to talk telepathically with the other prisoners. He tries the Thri-kreen first. The Thri-kreen hisses in kreen, “Leave me alone!”  The guards take notice of the reaction.

                  Vex convinces the half giant that we have room on the boat for everyone. She also convinces the half giant that we have a way back to Athas once we escape.

                  The deal is they help us escape and we give them room on the boat. The plan is for us to take a long rest, then Vex will cast Hunger of Hadar on the guards in between the two cells forcing them out of the room long enough for us to break out of our cells or both groups try to smash out of the cells and take out the guards as quickly as possible.