7.16.22 - Once Upon a Dream

We settled in for a good rest and each took our watch which seemed uneventful until the cavern started to shake around us. Rhys woke Cannon and I up just in time to see a sinkhole open up underneath She-Rah and Reaver to swallow them up. The doorway behind us had collapsed, blocking the way out. Looking down the hole, Cannon thought this was an intentional collapse because it seemed like part of the tunnel had been dug out by someone. It was decided that we had to go find our friends, so Rhys became Spider-Rhys while Cannon and I climbed down a rope as stealthily as possible.

At the bottom of the hole, there was no sign of She-Rah or Reaver, but the space opened up into a large cavern supported by natural columns with flowstone steps leading down into it from a separate tunnel off to one side. Cannon immediately noticed that there were undead dwarves and duergar who he seemed to recognize hiding behind the pillars and he sprung into action. The leading duergar shouted “Clan Breaker” at Cannon while charging in to have his head smashed under Cannon’s new weapon. We were swarmed by the dwarves who we easily took out, but not before they could tell Cannon that it was his fault they had become this; they said it was his fault because he had left. Once we were done, Cannon collected the badges of his fallen clan mates. While he went about doing that, I noticed that the pixie in my bottle had come back to life! It was banging on the glass asking to be let out, but now was not the time so I just moved it behind my cloak to try to hide it until I could let it out and talk to it.

I then led us up the flowstone stairs when we found a pit trap full of spikes that I rigged open. We then found ourselves in a new, smaller cavern where there were more dwarves gathered, and there was one who had a thin grey beard and an iron crown. Before I knew what was happening, Ember went charging into the room to start attacking the crowd of dwarves while the king came looking for Cannon down the hallway. Ember managed to take out a bunch of the dwarves with the help of Rhys and her moonbeam while Cannon dealt with the king. This crown wearing dwarf began to say things to Cannon to make him feel guilty for leaving and about how Cannon’s new clan was never going to be as good as the Silver-Cliff Dwarves. However, Cannon stayed strong and even told the dwarf that we were better than he could ever be, and we made up the best clan he had ever been a part of. Cannon pushed his former ruler into the pit-trap and we sealed him in there after taking his crown and emptying his pockets of anything valuable.

We then decided to take a short rest in the new room where the dwarves had been which was filled with bones that appeared to have been gnawed on. Cannon answered some of our questions about who those dwarves had been. He told us that the king had been the ruler of his clan, but he was afraid of losing. This “king” had been so afraid of losing to the duergar in a war that he had sacrificed the entire clan for power which is why Cannon had left.

After his story, I heard a cracking from the pixie bottle behind me which I sneakily tried to pull out to see what was happening; however, Ember spotted the pixie and came running after me. This drew everyone’s attention, so when the little dragon knocked the bottle out of my hands and it shattered, Rhys immediately began lecturing me about having a pixie. Rhys gave the pixie a little bit of food and water before she began asking them questions. My pixie’s name was Fidget and they said they had been sleeping in my bottle for the past 102 years, but they had woken up to warn us of danger that was ahead. Cannon wanted to know what kind of danger was ahead because all he could tell by listening was that there were goats. Fidget told us that one of my seven children was up ahead, but I didn’t remember having seven, I only had Elisande.

Rhys wanted to know why they would have stayed with me so long, and Fidget said that they had stayed because they liked to be entertained by my antics, especially because they said I forget things sometimes, and they had never met anyone like me before. Cannon started to look around us suspiciously before declaring that this was all a mind game of some kind. At that declaration, three red eyes appeared on the wall in front of us and we heard a voice offering us closure, offering us what was here before us as truth, and it would all be ours if we agreed to run a few errands for Seedooloo. We declined and woke up with a start to find ourselves in the treasure room where Reaver and She-Rah were playing a familiar card game I think I learned from my mother. In our pockets, we found that we still had the iron crown, a jade cat figurine, a gold ring, and a ring of protection we had found in our dream. Cannon looked at the crown to see if it really was the same crown his ruler used to wear, and it was close but it had some almost dwarven runes carved into it that he didn’t remember being there.