It's a Trap

Later, Elanor, cleric of the storm god Talos, averted a disaster of another kind when they came to the gigantic gates at the mouth of the cavern.  Chen had wanted to blast them open with a fireball; his wife Elanor had simply knocked.

This proved a wise decision, because the gates were, in fact, a gigantic gate guardian blocking their path with a pair of massive tower shields.  Elanor appeased it with a knock-knock joke, and it was amused enough to let them pass.

Now, they were taking no chances.  The group was moving through the labyrinth-like cavern together, checking and double-checking for traps.

While the ranger Zulgen and Flicker the Fantastical Fearless Flamethrower were examining an alcove farther back, Chen and Elanor reached the end of the corridor, which turned the corner to the right.  In the middle of the intersection sat a treasure chest.

They both paused, staring at it.

“That’s not suspicious at all,” Chen said.

“What should we do?” Elanor asked.

Chen considered for a moment. “I don’t detect any illusions or enchantments.”

“It could be trapped, though,” Elanor said. Traps were a problem she usually entrusted to other people. “We should get Zulgen.”

Chen glanced back at the ranger, who was still otherwise occupied. “Easy way to find out,” he said. He drew his enchanted sword and gently nudged it toward the chest.

Before the blade came anywhere near the chest, the atmosphere around it seemed to quiver, as if a rock had disturbed the surface of a placid lake. Before either Chen or Elanor could register this, Chen was sucked forward and hung suspended in the air, a look of panic on his face.

Elanor let out a squawk of surprise as a quivering, transparent tentacle of goo lunged toward her and pulled her into its grip.

Looking up at the noise, Flicker and Zulgen saw Chen, Elanor, and the chest all floating helplessly in midair. Now, they could see it: a transparent, gelatinous mass so big it took up the entire height and breadth of the hallway, oozing slowly toward them with their friends encased completely in its gooey circumference.

Flicker began desperately flinging every spell she thought might work toward the giant cube of vile gelatin. Zulgen, with some reservation, nocked his bow and shot carefully at the mass, aiming away from his two companions. He wasn’t honestly very sure that arrows would have any effect on the ooze, but he didn’t have much magic to assist.

Inside the cube, Chen and Elanor struggled desperately to escape, fighting panic, lungs burning. Chen tried to swim towards the edge of the gelatinous mass, but lacked the strength to pull himself free. In a burst of adrenaline, Elanor propelled herself forward out of the cube and landed on the floor, gasping for breath and dripping ooze. She instantly darted well out of the reach of any more protruding, oozy tentacles before she looked back, biting her lip. Chen was still trapped.

Elanor briefly considered diving back in and trying to rescue her husband, but she wasn’t sure she could make it back out with him in tow. Best to rescue him from a distance, she thought, summoning a sacred flame and tossing it toward the mass of ooze.

After a few more rounds of spells, arrows, and sacred flames, the gelatinous form finally melted, seeping into the floor. Chen flopped to the ground, finally able to breathe and, Elanor thought, looking a bit like a drowned raccoon. The chest clattered to the ground next to him.

“Finally,” Chen said, gasping huge gulps of air after his near-suffocation in the ooze. Before he’d even caught his breath, he rolled to his feet and, before anyone could stop him, leaned down to open the treasure chest.

The moment his fingers brushed against the lid, they stuck fast.

Perplexed, Chen tried to yank his arm away, but it was fixed firmly to the chest. On the third or fourth yank, the entire chest lunged forward…and slammed shut on his leg. Chen yelped in pain.

“Mimic!” Zulgen instantly had his bow trained on the chest that was now bouncing around Chen, gnashing its lid. Flicker immediately started casting spells. Elanor grabbed her Sparkly Greataxe and began making carefully aimed swings at the chest (gods forbid she should accidentally sever her husband’s arm), landing a hit near the back hinges that made a satisfying chopping noise.

“You idiot!” She berated her husband as she lined up her next swing at the rapidly moving mimic. “Why didn’t you check it first?”

“I didn’t detect any magic!” Chen retorted. With one hand stuck to the mimic, casting spells was out of the question, so he was reduced to flailing at it ineffectually with his enchanted sword in his non-dominant hand.

“Well, duh. Mimics don’t use a magical illusion,” Flicker said, her voice dripping with exasperation, “they–”

She trailed off as everyone felt a series of powerful, dull vibrations that seemed to be increasing in intensity, like the approaching footfalls of something very, very large.

“Chen?” Zulgen asked as he landed an arrow on the inside of the mimic’s lid.

“…Yeah?” Chen said, through gritted teeth, as the mimic chomped down on his leg.

“Obviously, I don’t know a lot about magic…”

“Obviously,” Chen agreed, swinging his sword wildly at the mimic as it gnawed on his shins.

“…But doesn’t a polymorph spell require some kind of concentration, otherwise it’s not permanent?”

Chen’s eyes widened.

Elanor landed a powerful swing on the mimic, and saw the lid starting to splinter. “Let’s kill this thing, fast!” She said, sparing a glance down the corridor toward the sound of the rapidly approaching massive footsteps.

“Yeah,”Flicker said. “We’re about to have bigger problems.”

Elanor was recovering from her swing, and Zulgen was still in the midst of aiming, when their previously polymorphed giant came looming into view, thundering straight towards Chen like a charging bull.

Zulgen rapidly tried to shift his aim to the giant. Elanor just winced. She’d never be able to either swing the greataxe or cast a spell fast enough to stop it. She hoped there was enough of Chen left for her to revivify once the giant was done flattening him.

The giant barrelled toward Chen, and…

suddenly stopped.

The party watched, stunned, as the massive humanoid made a purring noise like distant thunder and attempted to rub itself against whichever of Chen’s shins was not currently being gnawed on by the mimic. (This was less than successful, as, even stooped over, the giant was still twice Chen’s size.) “Mrowr?” It boomed.

Flicker’s voice came from somewhere near Elanor’s shoulder. “I think Chen broke its brain,” Flicker said. “Let’s kill it before it remembers what it is.”

Elanor nodded, hefted her greataxe, and sucked in a breath. “Zulgen,” she said quietly, “can you finish off that mimic?” The giant was blocking her from reaching it, but Zulgen could probably hit it from his vantage point. Zulgen nodded. The mimic was close to death, anyway. Good thing, because Chen was bleeding pretty profusely from his leg.

Flicker had, fortunately, saved up several of her mind-altering spells thus far (mostly because of a lack of targets with actual brains). She took the opportunity to weave a Hypnotic Pattern in front of the giant’s face. As it fixed its gaze on the pattern, the giant suddenly went slack-jawed. Elanor gave Flicker a nod of approval, as Zulgen took the moment’s pause to shoot the mimic cleanly in the keyhole. The mimic shuddered. They’d nearly finished it off. It would probably only take one more hit…

Chen brought his enchanted sword down on the giant’s kneecap.

The giant snapped out of its stupor, looked around at the group, and made an angry howl of recognition.

Flicker and Elanor both facepalmed.

“It was hypnotized, you douche!” Flicker yelled at Chen. “You could’ve killed the mimic!” She scrambled to find more spell components as Elanor placed herself in the giant’s line of sight and hacked at its legs with her greataxe, trying to keep its focus on her.

It didn’t work. Elanor gasped in horror as the giant brought its fists down on her husband’s head. Chen was thrown to the ground, the mimic’s jaws still clamped tightly around his leg.

Flicker tossed a Crown of Madness spell at the giant, and made a frustrated noise as it was clear the spell didn’t take. Zulgen, ever calm in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds, took one last shot at the mimic, which shattered spectacularly in an explosion of splinters, finally defeated.

Elanor could see Chen slowly getting to his feet as she brandished the greataxe, trying to aim her next attack. Before she could swing, though, Chen skrieked in pain, and began flailing his arm around in anguish. The group looked over to see that the destroyed mimic had dropped a huge diamond, and Chen, in his infinite wisdom, had decided not to wait until the giant was dead before he claimed it for himself, and picked it up. The gem was now stuck fast to his fingers, and Flicker could detect tiny, razor-sharp crystalline teeth sinking into Chen’s flesh.

” ‘Nother mimic,” she said, hardly surprised any more.

Elanor made a desperate slash at the giant’s side, leaving a huge, bleeding gash, but the giant hadn’t fallen yet. It ignored her and pummeled Chen again, knocking him to his knees. It didn’t look like Chen could take much more injury before he would pass out–and the tiny mimic was still ripping into his hand. “Flick, do something!” Elanor called desperately.

“Uhhhhhh…This!” Flicker used the last of her psychic spells, Dissonant Whispers, and hissed a discordant song that only the giant could hear. The giant let out a bellow of pain that shook the tunnel, clutching its head and reeling in pain. A trickle of blood began streaming out of its ear. “Finish it, Zulgen!” Flicker yelled.

Zulgen drove an arrow into the giant’s face, and it toppled over, dead.

Chen let out a cry of pain as the tiny mimic tore into his hand again. His face went white, and he slumped to the side.

“No!” Elanor cried. The giant’s crumpled corpse had landed between her and Chen, blocking the whole corridor. She could either try to clamber over it or…limbo between its legs. Unfortunately, that would take her through the crotch region, and one faltering step would leave her with a face full of giant genitalia.

Muttering a quiet prayer to Talos, reminding her deity that she’d already suffered more than enough indignities for the sake of saving her husband’s sorry hide, Elanor deftly ducked under the giant’s loins, and, by divine providence, masterfully maneuvered herself quickly and carefully around the dangling giant bits. Sliding to a halt next to Chen with a silent prayer of gratitude to Talos, Elanor whispered the words of a Cure Wounds spell, and watched the color return to Chen’s face.

Flicker had drawn her luck blade and was buzzing toward the tiny mimic, which had jumped out of Chen’s palm and was scurrying towards the nearest tall person. With a single stab, she dispatched her pint-sized foe.

As Flicker and Zulgen searched the giant for loot, Elanor helped Chen carefully to his feet. “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” She muttered, trying hard to keep the edge out of her voice. “Just had to claim dibs on that diamond before the battle was even over, didn’t you? Grab it while the rest of us were otherwise occupied?”

“I just wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost in the chaos!” Chen retorted. “How was I supposed to know it was another mimic?”

“Yeah!” Flicker said. “What kind of messed up, twisted omnipotent being puts a tiny mimic inside a bigger mimic inside a gelatinous cube?”

“Hey guys?” Zulgen walked up to Chen and Elanor, who were still coated from head to toe in gelatinous goop. “That stuff stinks. You should probably find some water.”