Chapter 13, Part 2: "The Tentacle-Faced Sphinx"

Part I Here.

In the cold, thick, white nmouldy fog of the Forbidden Mist Valley the party searches for a tomb with a lintel carved with a tentacle-faced sphinx. In the rolling, almost featureless green moss slopes of the valley ahead they see a small structure build from the same white stone as the occasional rocks and boulders seen in the dismal valley.

They cautiously approach and slithering, tenticular shapes are seen carved into the pale, squat building. Jhooghovahr is prodded to the front of the group and is provided with a ten-foot pole while the others prepare pistols and fighting irons before again tentatively proceeding.

As they get close a loathsome form graven into the lintel above an orifice-like descending tunnel is discerned; a bloated, scaly toad-sphinx with a writhing mass of long, slender tentacles bursting forth from where it's face should be, the carved tentacles continuing along the visible surface of the crypt.

Jhooghovahr is instructed to approach the aperture, the way is littered with chunks of white stone graven with serpentine forms. He cautiously prods the ground ahead and gets up next to the tunnel mouth before a pale-gray tentacle whips up from the camouflaging stones and wraps itself about first the pole and than the starlted Jhooghovahr while a second tentacle, with a long bone needle at its end, rises like a cobra before driving its sting deep into the struggling Vhaashti Man.

Several members of the party rush up while others blast at the tentacles with their guns. The serpentine gray appendages are joined at a leathery, pulsating, sack-like body located within the tunnel. They drop the broken, lifeless Jhooghovahr and one wraps around and constricts Buzz Brazelhatch while the others whips about Dickie Dee and drives its long bone needle deep into the Bone Man's transparent flesh.

As the Australian brawler writhes in the tentacles clutches, attempting to wrestle his way out of the muscular coils, the bone needle seems to be pumping some sort of fluid into Dickie Dee and his flesh around the stinger is turning waxy and gray.

Soon the tentacled sack-thing is dispatched, but Buzz is gasping and sorely strained and bruised while Dickie Dee lies on the mossy stones, the flesh about the stinger wound turning gray and pulpy while he complains of burning pain in his veins and heart. His ordinarily invisible circulatory system does seem to be slightly visible as well as grayish.

The reeking, incoherent Mutant, Mookla bursts through the party and begins pawing through the bloody possessions of Jhooghovahr with his tiny fingers. He pulls out the medical device; some of it's appendages are slighly bent but when placed upon Dickie Dee's chest it chirps; its lights begin blinking; and it multiple articulated arms begin unfolding and probing Dickie's flesh.

Soon Dickie's flesh resumes its normal, transparent state and the Bone Man proclaims that he feels recovered from the poison of the tentacle-thing. The party loots the Vhaashti Nobleman's twisted remains and split his meager purse of gold; Mookla claims a cubical black device, the disintegration bomb.

The party takes stoke of their new situation and decide to return to the flying saucer and attempt an entry, perhaps using the disintegration bomb to crack its shell and access the artifacts within.