By Beth Griese

Date:   March 29, 1997

Quote of the Day:
"Of course, I also feel piss-in-the-soup stupid." -- Stu Collins

To Garen Thundersson, cleric of Mielikki. From your faithful servant, Jade.

We had no choice, master, but to continue through the dungeon that we had mysteriously been placed in. We had no way to go back, so we went forward. And everywhere we traveled, we found creatures unlike any we had seen before. Our first greeting came from an insect-like monster who couldn't be harmed by our blades, which I found out to my serious detriment when it snatched me up with its pincers. We resorted to our fists, our staffs, and fire to finally subdue it. We met a jailer in a torture chamber whose blood burned like fire when it fell on us. In the next room, a creature with a crab's claw and a fearsome helmet attacked us. Its forked tongue shot out at us and hit Telaran squarely in the eye, which sent the man into such a rage I think pudding was about all that was left of the monster when our half-elf was finally pulled away. He was blinded in that eye now, and I gave the man my scarf to cover the wound. He was shaken badly by the experience, I could tell, but no one questioned for a moment whether he could continue to fight with us. Even were we to forget how well he had stood by us all this time, his dispatch of the monster that blinded him served as proof of his abilities even with only one eye.

We rested for a few hours after this and began to piece together what was going on. Verence was the one who connected the strange magical abilities and items each of these monsters we had seen with the enchanted animals - and that poor giant bear - that we had fought many months ago. We again faced creatures that had been transformed by magical items. The magician responsible for the earlier creatures we met had managed to escape us. Was he now exacting his idea of revenge on us?

When we moved on, our breath caught and our magicians rested, we found more of the same. We met a troll who could shoot flames from his eyes, which our newcomer, Lorivar, brought down with a blinding series of punches. Now, finally, we found a room a bit different from the others we had seen. This one had a fountain in the middle of it, with trenches along the floor that were fed by its waters. The fountain was inscribed with the words “Drink from this fountain to restore wounds, but risk if not wounded.” Before we could even discuss it, Telaran dunked his head in the pool and began to scream in pain as the water around his head bubbled as if it was boiling. I pulled the half-elf out and we both ended up sprawled on the floor, Telaran still screeching. When I pulled my scarf off his head, a mass of flesh fell off with it - his old, wounded eye, as I was to piece together in the next minutes. In its place, a new, perfectly healed eye had grown, and his screams subsided to gasps as he realized he could see through both eyes again. His new eye is a different color than the old - he now has one blue eye, one green, which gives the close-shaven half-elf an even stranger look than before. But he's whole again, and didn't stop smiling for the next hour.

The rest of us drank, too, to heal, and only Nory (no surprise) was reckless enough to try drinking from the fountain without wounds to heal. He reported feeling strange, a little off, but none of us could find anything different. We watched the little gnome closely for the rest of the day, but we can't tell what, if anything, happened to him.

The final room we found in this dungeon held a fiery chasm, and across the flames stood a minotaur and three orcs. We battled across the chasm and flew arrows back and forth in hailstorms. Verence was wounded the worst of us all; he was lying face down at the end of the battle, but we finally managed to defeat all four creatures. And when we did, a statue at the far side of the room of a gold dragon spoke to us. It told us we had completed the first part of the task set for us by Grynmuth the mutator - surely, now, the same man who we had met in the bear cave. It gave us directions to the stairs that would lead us out of the dungeon. We took followed the stairs as they became steeper and steeper, eventually turning into a slide that we all tumbled down, ending up in a pile at the exit of the same fun house we had entered. It seemed to us that at least a full day had passed, but we found out that only minutes had gone by from the time we had entered the house of illusions. This mutator has powerful magic, indeed.

We're resting again in the Adventurer's Club, all of us subdued from the fun of the carnival that changed so drastically to threaten our lives. To be honest, master, the sudden attack left me feeling sad; were we never to know a day of peace and enjoyment again? I don't think Borreau understands why this left me so quiet, although he's tried his best. But I count the shortening days until Midsummer, master, and have faith that those days, at least, will bring us peace as we meet again in your home. I remain, as always,

Your faithful servant,

—Jade

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