After we all made it from the lake to the land, we immediately started running, following frog Shusha's leadership. Above us we heard the scream of Ilvara, this Draw woman who seems to be a psychopath, shouting that she sees prisoners running away and ordering her guards under the command of Jolan (I find this name hilarious. In the Czech Republic we have an esoteric woman called Jolanda and she is a true legend...OMG if she's after us just shoot me please, hahaaa!) to immediatly follow us and get us. We did not wait to hear the rest and rather chose to continue running.
In this moment my boyfriend paused narrating and informed me with very serious face, that from now our faith is completely dependent on my decisions. We can run quickly and be noisy. We can go slowly and be stealthy. We can combine both. But we definitely can be recaptured if we are not careful or if we are unlucky. We also can go crazy if too much distress happens to our characters. For example being captured again could also cause very serious distress. But not only. Crazyness is like an illness in Underdark and it proceeds quickly. I should have that on the mind while deciding. We can also once a day try to get rid of our chains, which are quite noisy and slow us down. We can try to break them, slip out or lockpick. Since I had my lockipicking equipment I went for this option, only to be each day more and more frustrated. My companion Rufus who was also struggling noted, that apparently these are really good ones and I could not agree more. Life is though, when you are convict on the run...
We saw marvelous things. Caves full of mushroom forests. All different types of mushrooms which shined with subtle dreamy light of various colors. In the night we were taking turns on having a guard. In the silence could be heard weird and distant whisper in some strange language. It was magical, but also scary and weird. In other circumstances I would maybe be capable to appreciate strange beauty of environment, but this was certainly not the case now. Ella was missing forest, sky, stars and fresh breeze, she hasn't seen them sice weeks. We have also seen Roctopus - the creature which instead of in the sea lives on the land, but still remains predatorus octopus. Fortunately he did not notice us and we could continue on our way. Otherwise it would probably try to eat us. At least this was what Shusha said. At one moment we were also almost buried alive by falling rocks which cut off the way behind us. Our friend Buppito has eaten some strange mushrooms and started being really weird. Restless, he grew more and more irritated, whispering that he will kill us all, cut as open and slit our throats. We had to catch him and force him a healing portion into the throat. That helped and he regained his sences after the while. So we know that some mushrooms are definitely not for eatintg.
Our way continued undisturbed until we arrived to the place we were looking for -
the Dark Lake. It is not a lake, like I thought. It is more a gigantic labyrinth of small rivers, lakes, islands and other things. It is also way bigger than I expected. Since our way to the Frog city continued across this lake, we made ourselves five boats out from gigantic mushroom heads and left a land behind. Another stage of our adventure begun!
Excited as we were, we were heading west as our dear frog Shusha suggested. Well, we grew optimistic little bit too early. Calmed down by relatively safe journey we almost forgot that Underdark can easily be another word for hell. Soon enough, the tide started to direct our boats to the right side. We tried to fight it and turn the boats back to the right direction, however the tide grew stronger and quicker. After a while we noticed that we are starting to be drag to swim in the circles which were smaller and smaller and the tide quicker and quicker. In the centre of the circle to our horror opened the mouth full of long sharp teeth. This was also were we were inevitably heading.
And this was also the point where my boyfriend ended the session with a smile and sweet 'let's see next time!'
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