CYOA: The Orc and the Tower Part 20

Your ears prick up at the faint and distant sound of heavy stones grinding together.

The faint hairs on your body stand on end as the very mists around you seems to be suddenly filled with danger. 

The gravelly scraping is punctuated first by one deep thud, then another and you realize that the sound is coming not from above but below. You all apprehensively  gaze down into the misty shadows below.

“Surely the enchantment has worn off by now…” Carab murmurs uncertainly.

In a whirl of tentacles Carab slips fluidly into the recess of a tunnel entrance in the wall of the chamber, narrowly avoiding a large shape that hurtling up from the darkness below. 

You barely have time to recognize it as a bookshelf before it turns into a cloud of splinters, dust and paper and masonry. Some of the volumes and scrolls emit thin screams as they fall, tattered and limp down into the mists.

“No ordinary enchantment could last so long, it could be another like us, Paier!” Carab shouts.

A moment later, mouth of their tunnel is crushed by another projectile, closing them off behind an immense pile of rubble. 

“Like usss? But what is it?” asks Paier.

The goblin confirms frantically that it does indeed appear to be a lot like Paier, in fact. You follow her pointing finger downward into the parting mists.

Parting the misty air like an enormous ship’s figurehead, the statue of Paier steadily climbs the wall of the chamber, seemingly heedless of gravity's snares. Its movement is only slightly encumbered by its shattered and crumbling arm. The three of you turn and flee up the stairs.

The chamber above contains large cauldrons, workbenches and instruments of enchanting scattered around an ironwork floor through which you can hear the lumbering progress of the statue.

Chains hang from the domed ceiling like menacing iron vines, bearing fruit in the form of shackles, evil looking hooks, and in a few cases, large crystals.

 A pale light shining down from an opening in the ceiling draws a chaotic web of shadows on the floor as it passes through the ironwork of a twisting staircase leading upward. 

“Thisss is the wizard’sss enchantment room, we are near the top of the tower,” says Paier, upon entering the room, interrupted by the sudden din of agonized metal floor beams being wrenched apart.

The statue forces its head and shoulders through the flooring, heedless of the cracks and chips appearing all over its carved surface. It gazes across at you with its undamaged eye, glowing with the rune of Mesmera.

The goblin makes a snarl and tightens her grip on her staff and spits a foreign sounding curse about the hideousness of the statue.

“Mind your mouth, goblin! That’sss me!” hisses Paier, indignantly.

Thinking quickly, you decide to: