We took a moment to organize ourselves in the shelter of the Abbey basement. I slipped on a new pair of Boots of the Elvenkind and pocketed the magical dust of choking and sneezing. Having a spare trick or trap up my sleeve will be nice. Zax took the Decanter of Endless Water. Sai was left in charge of the Necklace of Fireballs and Periapt of Wound Closure. Inrah donned the Robe of Useful Items and the Blood Well. The rest of our haul from the seer's trials would be divided between Shadow, Feefifo, and Lefty.
Upon further inspection, we found a journal in the basement left behind by the Thay Wizard from Inrah's scrying. The journal seemed to fill in a lot of the missing blanks in our mysterious hunt. An entry from three weeks ago noted that the wizard had found a manual of Flesh Golems and locked it with a key for safekeeping. An entry from two weeks ago noted progress on his experiments with constructing golems from corpses of animals from the nearby surroundings. The last entry in the journal caught us up to today. The Thay knows we have his book and has headed to his secondary base . . . the very location Inrah scryed deep in Neverwinter Woods.
Knowing we only had 5 days' time, we quickly headed out toward the edge of Neverwinter Forest. While we walked, Sai was busy with a druidic ritual to find us some friendly horses to make the journey less exhausting. At first, he found some horses already occupied by Lord's Alliance riders, but at the end of the day, he found us a small heard. I've never seen anyone as adept at handling animals than Sai. It was truly a marvel to see him work and before we knew it, we had horses that took us right to the edge of Neverwinter Forest to where we could follow the river to our ultimate destination.
Sai thanked the horses by causing an apple tree to spontaneously bloom and provide them with a couple bushels of apples. As for us, we continued along the path going deeper and deeper into the forest. Old specters of our last visit seemed to arise as Zax heard a cackling and creaking of rocking chair. The forest grew darker and more menacing with each footstep. Even the waters appeared unnatural, dark, and full of an unnatural murkiness.
As nighttime came, it was time to set up camp, and we found a nice plateau with a vantage point that overlooked the river and forest. Zax and Sai took up watches while the rest of us settled down to what was supposed to be an uneventful sleep. Unfortunately, it was not.
From the depths of the river came two enormous, demonic-like giant toads with glowing red eyes. Zax woke us at the first signs of trouble as they moved in for the attack. Despite using magic to blind and reveal the location of the toads, ended up swallowed inside the gaping stomachs of the beasts.
I suddenly felt the pull to manifest something new inside me! Psychic knifes appeared in my hands, and so I did what any newly born Soulknife Rogue would do. I used them, striking true to the unholy toads that had attacked us!
Sai shapeshifted inside one of the toads and turned into a raptor beast that clawed and bit the beast from the inside out. Inrah pulled out a 10-foot pole from her Robe of Useful Items and magically impaled the toad that had swallowed her, but unfortunately the piercing damage it inflicted seemed ineffective. With a final two blows, I threw a psychic knife that landed right between the eyes of the beast that had swallowed Inrah, penetrating its skull with psychic pain that caused it to blow apart and release Inrah, who now was holding a flaming sword, ready to hack her way out from the inside.
Zax ran forward and used her paladin's smite and dealt a holy blast that caused the other toad holding Sai to blow apart as well. Let's just say . . . it was a mess. Thankfully there was a river nearby to wash ourselves . . . except for Sai, who remained transformed as a dinosaur that seemed perfectly at home sleeping in the innards of a giant toad.
The rest of the evening was thankfully uneventful, and we set off for the clearing in the morning. Of strange note! Before we left, I found a small toad that seemed to take an interest in me. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's happily hitching a ride on my shoulder for now. I'm taking this friend of the forest as a good omen.
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