Spider Scout
The queen knows your shadow, gargoyle. My blood will not be the last to stain these stones for her glory.
Nogandar
She reeks of frantic devotion. It is pathetic how they throw their lives away for a mere arachnid.
The Spider Scout’s mandibles twitch, clicking in a desperate, rapid rhythm against the rock wall. Violet arcs of energy ripple through the air, vibrating like taut harp strings as they keep the creature pinned.
Nogandar
Tell me where she hides her true brood, or I will ensure your end is far slower than the collapse of this tunnel.
Spider Scout
His malice is an ancient poison. I must hold his focus here, just a moment longer, until the tremors reach the hive.
Nogandar takes a heavy, calculated step forward. The Archive Keeper remains slumped in the dust nearby, oblivious to the lethal tension hanging in the cavern.
+ Scene Quest Added
Survive the collapsing cavern
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Nogandar
The air thickens with the scent of ozone and rot. Something shifts beneath the floorboards of the world, not just a tremor from my own strength.
Spider Scout
You hunt for the queen, yet you do not realize you are already inside her stomach, Nogandar.
The stone ceiling of the cavern splits with a sound like shattering glass. A massive, translucent strand of web, shimmering with a sickly caustic sheen, erupts downward and wraps tight around the Spider Scout, yanking the cultist violently into the dark cracks above.
Nogandar
They are cannibalizing their own to prevent me from learning the truth. Eulstria is not just hiding, she is purging the evidence.
Before Nogandar can lunge, the cavern begins to buckle. A heavy, rhythmic pulsing sound emerges from the walls, deep and resonant, as if the mountain itself has begun to beat like a giant, chitinous heart.
“I cast levitation and leave through the opening in the ceiling”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +2)
Nogandar
They want to silence this scout. If the mountain is her stomach, then this ceiling fracture is my only way to reach the throat.
Nogandar focuses his inner fire, the ancient arcane ley lines of the earth responding to his command.
Nogandar
You cannot hide behind stone, Eulstria. I have pulled down kingdoms taller than this peak.
Gravity loses its hold. Nogandar pushes off the cavern floor, his heavy, muscular form ascending with unnatural grace.
He drifts through the jagged wound in the rock, rising past the dangling, caustic webs that begin to shrivel and smoke in his proximity.
Nogandar
The pulsing of the walls is rhythmic, precise. I am not entering a cave anymore. I am entering a trap.
Quest Complete
Survive the collapsing cavern