It's a Trap (Part II)

Flicker the Fantastical Fearless Flamethrower (a fairy) and Elanor, cleric of the storm god Talos (an elf) naturally needed less sleep every night than their more human counterparts. Whenever their adventuring party stopped to rest, therefore, Flicker and Elanor usually each took a turn keeping watch for half the night while the wizard Chen-Lo and the ranger Zulgen got a full night’s sleep.

And gods, did they all need a rest just now.

Getting to the Duskwalker’s labyrinthine cave had been difficult enough in the first place, but once inside, they’d found themselves taking a beating at every turn. As usual, most of the problems could be traced back to Chen-Lo, a wizard of great intellect (as most wizards were) but very little actual common sense, and to whom Elanor had the questionable fortune of being married.

A rest had been necessary, because Elanor had used up most of her healing abilities keeping Chen alive after–through a series of miscalculations that were pretty much Chen’s own fault–the group had simultaneously battled a giant and a tiny mimic inside a bigger mimic inside a gelatinous cube. Chen had redeemed himself by safely getting the group through a mind-boggling hall of mirrors, but not enough that his comrades weren’t still mildly annoyed at him. Even Elanor had laid out her bedroll several feet away.

Flicker had volunteered to take first watch as they were settling in to rest. She’d learned a new spell lately–Leomund’s Tiny Hut–that was a huge help with this: it created a ten-foot magical dome over the party that was opaque and impenetrable from the outside, but translucent from the inside. The magical dome would remain for up to eight hours, and her companions (and their weapons) could come and go as they pleased, but nothing hostile could get inside, and no other spells could get in or out of the dome. In case they were ready to go earlier than expected, the dome would disappear the moment Flicker stepped out of it.

The spell certainly made her job easy, Flicker mused as she sat with a scrap of parchment and a charcoal pencil, sketching the aftermath of the mimic-giant-gelatinous cube battle so that she would never forget the resulting look on Chen’s face. With the force field, keeping watch seemed kind of irrelevant. She could never have gotten away with doodling on the job otherwise.

She glanced up to make sure she was getting Chen’s nose right, and noticed something that gave her pause.

The group had found a small, ten-foot square alcove off to the side in which to place their magical hut and bed down for the night–walls on three sides made for a safer night’s rest.  They’d made a careful examination of the surroundings beforehand, and found nothing unusual. But now, sitting squarely in the center of the alcove’s only open side, as if it had been there all along, was a large, wooden chest.

Flicker made a small, startled noise.

She felt like this was a problem for a more adultier adult, and glanced around at her sleeping companions. Chen was out of the question–he’d just try to lob a fireball that would fizzle out when it hit the force field. Zulgen wasn’t a much better choice, given his standing motto of ‘violence is always the solution’.

Eyeing the suspicious chest warily, Flicker sidled over to Elanor and poked her. Elanor was the only one who would at least try to keep everyone in one piece. Besides, it was nearly time for Elanor to take over the watch, anyway.

“What’s up, Flicker?” Elanor slurred groggily as she stretched and came to a sitting position. Flicker just gestured wordlessly toward the conspicuous chest.

When Elanor’s eyes finally focused on the chest, she just let out a long-suffering groan.

Sluggishly, she pulled herself upright and went over to the edge of the force field, where she stared at the chest for several long moments.

“Well,” she said. “It’s definitely a mimic. As long as nobody touches it, we’ll be fine.”

“It’s not so much the mimic I’m worried about,” Flicker said, “as the gelatinous cube.”

Elanor groaned again. “I forgot all about the gelatinous cube.” She stared at the mimic for another several seconds, clearly not quite functioning at full capacity yet.

“What if it’s surrounding the camp right now?” Flicker asked nervously.

Elanor pinched the bridge of her nose. “There’s got to be some way we could test…”

From his bedroll, Chen stirred a bit. “What’s going on?” He asked sleepily.

Elanor gave him a derisive glance. “Go back to sleep, dear.”

Flicker was staring through the magical force field, trying to detect any trace of the gelatinous cube. “Maybe you could…poke it with your greataxe?” She asked.

Elanor hesitated. She remembered all too clearly how the gelatinous cube had sucked up anything in its path. She wasn’t about to lose her enchanted weapon. “I’d rather not risk my greataxe,” she said to Flicker. “But maybe there’s something else I can…”

She went to her pack and rummaged through it for a few moments until she grabbed hold of a bolt from a seldom-used crossbow. “All right,” she said. “Let’s test it.” She carefully extended the crossbow bolt through the force field.

Immediately, there was a faint slurping noise. Elanor let go of the bolt and backed away hastily as the bolt was drawn out of the tiny magical hut and then hovered, suspended in almost-invisible goo, just outside the force field.

The two women stared at it in trepidation.

“Well,” Elanor said, “that’s definitely a mimic inside a gelatinous cube.”

“What are we gonna do, El?” Flicker whimpered, fighting a rising panic. “It’s got us trapped! As soon as the force field spell wears off, it can suck us all up!”

Elanor twirled her braid in her fingers and blew out a tense breath. “How does this tiny magic hut of yours work, Flick? You’re sure we can’t spellcast through the force field?” She muttered a sacred flame cantrip and tossed it toward the force field wall. The flame fizzled out like a match dropped in a bucket on impact.

“Spells can’t get in or out while the force field’s up,” Flicker assured her. “I checked the spellbook twice.”

“All right,” Elanor said, chewing on her lower lip, “then…we’ll just have to kill this thing really fast when the force field spell wears off. Before it can suck anyone up and suffocate us.”

Chen Lo, who had clearly only been feigning sleep, piped up from his bedroll. “I think we should–”

“Go back to sleep, dear,” Elanor cut him off gently but firmly. “You’re going to need every last second of rest,” she added under her breath.

Flicker was staring at the suspended crossbow bolt, lost in thought. “What if…we could split up the party? Get it so that we’re not all in one place and it can’t get all of us in one swoop?”

“How?” Elanor asked, glancing around the alcove. “If this gelatinous cube is as big as the last one, it’s as tall and wide as the hallway itself. There’ll be no way around it.”

“I could cast Misty Step,” Flicker suggested. “Then I could disappear and reappear on the other side of the cube.”

“And?” Elanor asked. “Then what?”

“And…then it would be flanked. And we wouldn’t all be in one spot. So if it sucks you guys up, I could rescue you.”

“But how, Flick?” Elanor asked, getting a scolding tone in her voice like a teacher whose student just wasn’t getting it. “Did any of your spells even damage the last one? If we get sucked in, would you be able to even make a dent in that thing by yourself?”

“Well, it–I just–” Flicker stammered.

“I just wanna say–” Chen Lo piped up from his bedroll.

“You should be sleeping, dear,” Elanor told him through gritted teeth. Chen made a frustrated noise into his pillow.

“Yeah,” Flicker muttered, “the adults are talking.” Then she turned back to Elanor. “…Well, what do you think we should do, then?”

Elanor let out a frustrated sigh. “I dunno, it just sounds an awfully lot like you’re trying to get out of this fight, Flick.”

Flicker looked offended. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t make sense for all four of us to sit there in a clump. At least one of us should spread out.”

“And I’m just saying,” Elanor said, “that it makes no sense for that person to be you. If we do get sucked up by the gelatinous cube, you wouldn’t be any help.”

“Well,” Flicker said stubbornly, crossing her arms in defiance, “I think it’s a good plan, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“Well then,” Elanor replied, in her snootiest, most arrogant, most elven tone of voice, “I’ll just have to cast Hold Person on you, so you can’t.”

“Well then,” Flicker retorted, mentally paging through her repertoire of spells until she found the right counterattack, “I’ll cast…Hold…Monster…on you.”

Elanor gave an overly dramatic affronted gasp.

“Can I just–” Chen Lo chimed in, lifting an arm off his pillow to signal he had something to say.

“GO TO SLEEP, CHEN!” Both women barked at him.

The ranger Zulgen, who had been snoozing obliviously to this point, stopped mid-snore to roll over. “Shaddup, Elanor,” he mumbled as he did.

As soon as the men had settled in to sleep, or something close enough to it, Elanor looked at the fairy bard with injured dignity. “Hold Monster?”

“I mean, you’re kinda acting like a monster right now, not gonna lie,” Flicker shot back.

“Well,” Elanor grumbled, “you didn’t have to be in the last gelatinous cube.” She flounced back over to her bedroll. “We’ll see what the boys say when they wake up,” she declared.

“I could say it right–”

“CHEN!” Elanor growled at her husband, who was still attempting to participate in the debate despite needing a full eight hours’ rest to replenish his strength and magical power. Chen grumbled some curse words under his breath and put his pillow over his head.

“Yeah,” Flicker said, falling against the alcove wall with a huff, arms crossed. “Let’s ask them.” She picked her charcoal and parchment back up, prepared to finish her shift on watch duty.
*****
“So the plan,” Chen Lo recapped the next morning, when he was finally permitted to stop pretending to sleep and start participating in plan building, “is for Flicker and I to Misty Step out of the force field, which should collapse once Flicker leaves, allowing Elanor to try hitting it with a Guiding Bolt and Zulgen to place a Hunter’s Mark on it. Then, you two–” he pointed to Elanor and Zulgen– “wail on it with your weapons and try not to get sucked up while Flicker and I hit it with fire and thunder from a distance.”

“I hate this plan,” Elanor grumbled. She had assumed her own husband would side with her. “Chen, so help me, if you get me eaten by a gelatinous cube–”

“It’ll be fine,” Chen cut her off. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Flicker and Zulgen replied.

“No! Not ready!” Elanor protested.

“GO!” Chen began his Misty Step incantation, Flicker following suit.

Astonishingly, their battle went exactly according to plan. Within two rounds of attack, the gelatinous cube had been defeated. As the oozing jelly dispersed all over the dungeon floor, the wooden chest that had been encased in the goo clattered to the ground.

The group watched it cautiously for a few moments.

“Well, we know it’s a mimic,” Zulgen said.

“Do we?” Chen asked. “I don’t detect any magic.”

“I told you yesterday,” Flicker said, exasperated, “Detect Magic won’t detect a mimic’s polymorph.”

“Well, there has to be another way to–”

“The stickiness,” Elanor said, remembering the way Chen’s hand had stuck to the last mimic. “Anything that touches it gets stuck.”

“Okay,” Chen said, “Do you have anything that I could–”

Rolling her eyes and heaving a put-upon sigh, Elanor proffered another crossbow bolt. Chen touched it carefully to the wooden chest, and it stuck fast. “Satisfied?” Elanor asked. “Now can we bash it apart?”

“Yes,” Chen sneered at her.

They proceeded to bash apart the chest, and the mimic put up surprisingly little resistance. When it finally shattered to pieces and reverted back to its mimic form, a tiny object went sparkling and skidding across the dungeon floor with a high-pitched dinging noise. It came to rest against Elanor’s boot, and she got a good look at it–it was a large diamond.

“Tiny mimic!” She shouted reflexively, and before the rest of the group could react, she stomped hard with the heel of her boot.

A horrifying crunching noise made everyone wince.

After a moment’s pause, Zulgen said. “I think that was a real diamond, El. Didn’t you need one of those for your Revivify spell?”

“Yes,” Elanor replied weakly, “I did. Flick, help me…sweep this up. Maybe the dust will still work…”