The Window in the Mountain

Darius woke first. That was its own insult. He remembered killing one Githyanki, remembered the return blow, remembered going down when he should not have gone down. The memory sat behind his eyes like a hooked blade. From that moment on, the Githyanki were no longer only enemies. They were a mark his body wanted paid back. The others came to themselves around him, alive but barely. No one had their gear. Weapons, bags, and Victor's removable prosthetics were gone. The fortress had been careful enough to strip them of the obvious tools but not careful enough to understand everything they were. They were in a locked room with beds, stone walls, and more dragon imagery worked into the space around them. The same theme from the corridors had followed them into captivity. Wherever this fortress was, it had not been built without dragons in mind. The party tried to put the situation together through pain. Maine explained, again, that he had not chosen the hole. He had picked up a rock and fallen through. Victor explained the thing that now mattered most: the Githyanki wanted his dragon, or perhaps any dragon, and Walter had made the party useful enough to imprison instead of execute. Jonah called for a moment to breathe and heal. Before he could settle fully into that work, a rat sprawled itself in front of him like it wanted attention. It was too strange to ignore and too harmless-looking to prioritize over the people who had just been beaten unconscious. Jonah healed the party. The rat received no blessing, but it did receive notice. Victor, looking for any way out that was not the locked door, spotted something high above them: a blocked opening near the top of the room, about ten feet up, with loose stone packed where a window or vent might have been. Mage Hand could inspect it, but not move enough of it. The party shifted into improvised prison engineering. Ash lifted Victor. Darius lifted whoever needed lifting. Jonah supplied guidance. Hands pushed at stone until the blockage finally gave way. Snow came in. That changed the room. The prison was not buried deep in some abstract void chamber. It opened onto a mountain. Outside, the fortress continued into cold air, torchlight, stone walkways, crossbows, and the shape of a structure built directly into the rock. It was not an easy escape route, but it was a route. Maybe the party could climb out. Maybe they could follow the exterior walkway. Maybe they could steal crossbows. Maybe they could run. Or maybe, as Victor kept insisting, they could stop making the next decision worse. They had no gear. They were wounded. Victor was missing important prosthetics. The fortress had guards, weapons, and the advantage of knowing where they were. Escaping into snow without knowing the mountain might only trade imprisonment for falling, freezing, or being recaptured under less forgiving terms. The group hovered between instincts: flee now, arm themselves with anything they could find, or wait and try diplomacy again. Then came a knock at the door. Everyone who had looked outside suddenly needed to be back inside. The window had shown them the first possible way out. The knock reminded them that the fortress had not forgotten they were there.