Robin dropped the illusion of a cloud of shadows over himself. It was instinct at this point. Usually, it served him in good stead.

This time, however, he was not so lucky. While those tentacles that ended in eyes flailed about a bit, looking for where he had gone, others seemed to have no trouble questing for him by feel.

The way this thing had reacted to the rock, maybe it had some sort of ability to sense tremors or movement in the stone around it?

No way out of it, Robin was going to have to expend some magical energies. First, however, a distraction. Robin pulled several small rocks from his storage and threw them around the cavern. Where they hit tentacles lashed out, confirming his suspicions that some kind of tremor sense was at play.

Not enough tentacles were distracted though. Mostly only the ones that went for the rocks that fell within the perimeter of his shrouding illusion.

Still, Robin took advantage of the illusion, shifting his body and making use of [Assume Quality] to get himself a set of wings, take the form of a winged elf.

He launched himself into the air, pulling the illusion up around him as he did so. Unfortunately he was not really a master of flight and there were tentacles writhing all through the space, grasping blindly for whatever they could get. Most of them were currently concentrated on searching the floor near where he had been and where he had cast his stones, but others were questing further, higher. Three had even found the rope strung across the cavern and were coiled around it. Robin could see it straining under their force. Any moment now it was going to snap.

Missiles of force and several daggers flashed through the cavern. Drev and Jhess were attempting to provide covering fire so he could get away. A few tentacles were hit, including one eye-stalk that got severed by a particularly sharp throw from Jhess.

The whole cavern went wild with their trashing. A keening that scraped at the edges of Robin’s sanity wailed up from beneath the cavern’s floor. Whatever was down there was mad.

Robin fired off a couple [Lesser Witchbolt]s in opposite directions, to keep the thing’s attention from focusing on any one space. It didn’t seem to be trying to feel out where Drev and Jhess were crouched with the rest of the party atop the ledge, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t.

He needed to find a way to fly to safety through the forest of waving tentacles, distract the fucking thing, and get out of the cavern with the rest of his party.

Robin’s wings strained, gaining him a few more feet in height. There were no thermals to ride, and while he was lighter, he wasn’t so accustomed to this form that he could fly with ease. Still, he was glad to be a bit above the roiling mass of tentacles questing along the floor. Most prey must simply walk past. That they’d made it this far without provoking the thing argued for that as well.

Step one. Rejoin his party on the ledge without getting caught and without drawing any attention to their location.

Step two. Figure out a way to clear the tentacles that were blocking the exit and make a speedy getaway.

Robin was under no illusions that they’d be able to easily slay whatever this was. the bulk of the thing was protected by that shield of rock that was the whole fucking cavern floor. His [Bardic Lore] wasn’t offering him any hints as to what it might be, and the party was low on massive firepower.

Some temporary magical items would be really handy right now. Scrolls, or wands stuffed full of [Lightning Bolt]s and [Fireball] spells. Or just an emergency [Teleport] or [Move Through Stone]. Short range would do it.

Ugh. No point worrying about what he didn’t have. He needed to come up with a solution using what he did have. Starting with what he knew.

The thing used both sight and vibrational senses. Both of those could be fooled, but the overlap was a bad pairing for a lot of his illusory tricks. The tentacles could be severed and they didn’t seem to have any kind of fast-regeneration that he had seen. Also, based on the reaction to his earlier attacks, they didn’t really like fire (not that many creatures did. mind you).

And another thing, while there were a lot of them, their range was limited. Some of them, anyway. Most of the tentacles strained around the edges of the holes in the floor, reaching around ten feet into the air and no further. A few rose higher but it was a minority. That meant the party could focus on clearing an area of tentacles and not have to worry about the whole cavern taking opportunity attacks at them as they did so.

One of the lashing tentacles waving near to him brushed against his left wing and immediately constricted, tearing two feathers from him. Robin saw red stars. It was like having a lock of his hair ripped out by the roots but somehow even spikier.

He forced himself to ignore the pain and to claw desperately for some more altitude in the cave, moving away form the tentacle as fast as he could as now others were concentrating their attention in the same area.

Robin managed to evade the grasping tentacles, but then one with an eye on the tip suddenly fired a beam of flaming red light and nearly singed off his right wing.

He ducked into an instinctive spiral, dodging, but nearly slammed into a tentacle lined with nasty-looking barbs and weeping green fluid.

They needed to get out of here now.

Robin fired off three more witchbolts, then, with a grimace at the expenditure of energies, conjured an [Invisible Servant] onto the ledge opposite where the rest of his party was standing, instructing it to throw any random pebbles it could find around the cavern, so long as they were away form where he was flying or where his party was hiding.

He sent a quick illusion to convey a message to Jhess. The rogue wouldn’t like him breaking into her stores, but in light of how it might help them escape, well. Maybe she’d make an exception.

He had to dodge a few more tentacles before he was able to send the rest of his plan to his party. Bruises and lacerations and even a few scorches from near-misses with fire rays from the increasingly irate eye stalks were adding up. His shoulders were beginning to scream form the extended use. He needed to train his flying more. A lot more.

Eventually, however, at the cost of several more small wounds, he managed to arrange everything.

Robin was tiring fast and he was very conscious that if it were not for his shapeshifting and ability to use [Visual Phantasm] at will, he would long ago have fallen prey to the questing tentacles below.

Power. he needed more power. Always more. This was a dangerous world.

Wondrous. But dangerous.

Robin bent his attention to queuing up some distractions via [Lesser Phantasm]. He was ready to pump pure sonic hell through his illusions. When they went off they would signal several things, provided his team got all of the instructions and went along with them.

The first illusion began to wail, having run down the ‘timer’ of silence that Robin had programmed into it. A horrendous screeching began, echoing from all corners of the cavern as Robin had spread the spells equidistant around the perimeter.

The tentacles went mad, lashing about, searching for the source of the noise.

Bolts of pure force and several daggers flashed out, drawing attention away from the exit, while Vance, powered up and ready, leapt to the ground and began chopping through tentacles like farmer sowing wheat. When a semicircular area had been sufficiently cleared, Drev dropped a few discs of force down, blocking much of the tentacles reach as the nearby uncropped ones writhed madly, trying to stop the invaders that were causing so much pain and havoc.

Robin took the opportunity to fly up and over the tentacles that were all now writhing toward the exit, dropping down on the inside of Drev’s force barrier as the rest of his part slipped down from the ledge and sprinted for the exit.

It was not a noble end to a battle, nor was it a victory as such. Robin didn’t much care, however, so long as they all made it out alive.

Sometimes you didn’t go for the kill. Sometimes you went for the quick escape, if it meant you could live to see another day.

***

Robin moved slowly down the tunnel, wincing. After the confrontation in the cavern, crossing the rest of Silinir’s territory had passed without event. He’d used [Healing Word] to take care of the worst of his wounds, but his left shoulder still stung, the feeling of those lost feathers itching in a way he’d never be able to scratch.

His eyes flicked over his character sheet and he grimaced. He’d gained some experience from that conflict, but not as much as he’d hoped. It looked like though he’d used some illusion spells, the fact that most of the plan came down to brute force and simple distraction had somewhat limited his gains.

Sighing, he distributed the points, bumping his proficiencies as much as he could. If they managed to succeed in Nilsiir’s quest he had a feeling the resultant surge of experience would likely tip him right over into Tier 3, while, yeah, he would welcome, but he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t letting too many of his skills fall behind. There were several numbers noticeably lower than the others that he should shore up.

So he did.

‘This is it,’ Jhess called.

Robin looked up, converting the last spare experience points and dismissing the illusory interface before his eyes.

Jhess was pointing at a blank stretch of wall. Robin mentally checked the map Nilsiir had shown them and thought the rogue was probably correct. It was an otherwise unassuming stretch of passageway, about two-thirds of the way between one decorative sconce and the next.

‘Now we just need to find the way in, find the trigger mechanism that opens the hidden door,’ the rogue said, carefully running her fingers along the stonework.

‘Well it’s unlikely to be hidden by illusion,’ Robin said, carefully examining the area. ‘In a city of illusionists, that would be too much risk of drawing attention. So there’ll be a physical element to it, most likely. That would fit with Urkhan’s mindset and that of his followers as well.’

‘I wish we had Ruprecht,’ Jhess complained. ‘He could just absorb the area and then find the door for us that way.’

It would be nice. And Ruprecht had certainly had a way with hidden passages! Weighting them in such away that they worked like traps and even large sections of stone could be moved with relatively little force…

Robin blinked. Force. Brute force. Could it really be that simple? But it would fit with what he knew of Urkhan and Melusk and Tarin-Tiran.

‘Vance,’ he called, ‘can you boost your strength as high as you can and then just start pressing, hard, against this wall and see if anything shifts? You’ll need to be incredibly strong, stronger than any two or three of the brawnier peoples of Tarin-Tiran might be, I think.’

‘For a short period I could probably manage it,’ Vance said. Power flared and the librarian seemed denser.

And his hair was suddenly very long and very shiny.

Then he pressed against he wall. Once, twice, there!

On his third attempt a section of the wall simply slid back. There should have been the scraping sound of stone on stone but the soundlessness that cut off all noise around them spoke of a simple [Silence] enchantment of some kind.

Vance stepped back, revealing the entryway to a hidden room.

They’d found the first potential hiding spot!