Round 117

The spell worked—barely. Merrin shot up like a stone from a catapult, her body arcing through the air as water cascaded off her in sheets. For one brief moment, she hung suspended above the chaos below, the orb clutched tight in her fist, her face set in concentration. Then gravity reasserted itself, and she plummeted towards the opening we'd chiseled into the ceiling moments before. Her boots hit stone with a jarring thud that sent cracks spiderwebbing through the already precarious structure. The hole groaned ominously as she scrambled to find purchase on the slick surface, water streaming from her clothes and equipment in rivulets. Behind her, the chamber roared its displeasure—water surged upwards, filling the space where she'd just been standing with a frothing torrent that crashed against the ceiling like ocean waves against a cliff face. The entire cavern shuddered, stone grinding against stone as the weight of the collapsing tower pressed down from above. Merrin didn't hesitate. She slammed her mace into the weakened rock around the hole, chipping away at it with desperate swings until the whole section gave way in a shower of debris and dust. She threw herself forward through the gap just as the water below found another exit route—a crack in the floor that hadn't been visible before—and began pouring out with renewed fury towards some lower level. The sound was like nothing she'd ever heard—water falling, stone breaking, the groan of a mountain shifting its weight. And beneath it all, the faint but unmistakable sound of something large moving through the depths below.

She landed hard on her shoulder, rolling across rough stone until she came to a stop against a wall that felt alarmingly warm and moist. Her vision swam as she pushed herself upright, every muscle screaming protest. The orb in her hand pulsed with residual magical energy, casting flickering shadows across the chamber she now found herself in—another cavern, smaller than the last but no less dangerous-looking. The walls here were covered in some kind of bioluminescent fungus that cast everything in an eerie greenish glow, revealing more skeletal remains scattered across the floor and... something moving in the shadows near the far wall. A large shape, low to the ground, with too many limbs to count in the poor light. Merrin's heart hammered in her chest as she slowly backed away from the opening she'd just fallen through—no longer an escape route now that it was collapsing in on itself—as the creature in the darkness stirred, its movements deliberate and purposeful. She raised her mace, water still dripping from her armor onto the stone floor with each tiny movement. The thing didn't charge immediately. Instead, it let out a low hiss that seemed to vibrate through the very rock around them, and then spoke in a voice like stones grinding together: "You have disturbed my rest long enough, mortal."