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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 9840434" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks! But the ogre zombie was just a warm up...* * *Chapter 41“They certainly would have heard that,” Ravani said, edging forward again to scout. The hallway bent sharply to the right a short distance beyond where the ogre zombie had been waiting, and the elf warily approached that corner as if expecting a horde of undead to appear at any instant.Greghan placed Leana down carefully. “Are you hurt?” he asked her.“No,” she said, summoning another healing spell, which eased some of the pain caused by the zombie’s pounding. “I’m sorry that you have to always be the one on the front line,” she said.“That’s why you hired me,” he said. “And besides, I saw you charge that zombie and do a number on its knee.”“To little effect, I fear,” she said.“We’d all be dead several times over now if it wasn’t for you,” Greghan insisted, but he turned as Ravani returned to them in a hurry.“I hear chanting,” the elf reported.“Chanting like in the forest, or ‘something bad is about to happen’ chanting?” Greghan asked.“How am I supposed to know?” Ravani said. “But I’d put my money on ‘something bad.’”“All right, let’s go,” Leana said. “But be careful.”They advanced around the corner, careful of traps or any other threats. A large chamber was visible ahead, its walls shrouded in violet drapes that seemed almost black in the ruddy lamplight. The chanting was coming from this room, and as they drew close they could finally see its source.The chamber was obviously some kind of fell temple; three stone altars stood before a dais as the far end upon which stood four chairs made of bones that flanked a high-backed throne. Closer to them, in the center of the room, an ominous black iron bell hung from a stand. Behind it stood a man clad in red robes. His face was covered by a hood, and a mace with a head made from a large humanoid skull hung at his side. He was the one chanting, and with each verse he was flecking blood from a bronze bowl onto heaps of bones that had been gathered along the north wall. As the cultist continued his chant, errant giggles crept in, suggesting that his mental state was perhaps not entirely sound.Ravani didn’t pause for comment; he raised his bow and shot the man in the back. The arrow plunged deep; the man was wearing only the scraps of a mail shirt under his robe, which didn’t do much to stop the shot from penetrating into his body. The wound was terrible, but the man only spun and laughed, the sound confirming that there was something quite wrong with him. As he hefted his mace, the skull began to radiate a flickering black nimbus.“Ware his weapon!” Leana warned. She raised her sigil, but the man was faster, even was wounded as he was. He darted forward and swung the mace, not at any of them, but at the iron bell. The impact filled the room with a loud clamor that seemed to build until it was almost deafening. In response, the heaps of blood-spattered bones began to knit together and rise, forming into four animated undead skeletons.The hooded man smiled, blood flecking his lips. He lifted his hand, and unleashed a pulse of dark energy that struck Ravani solidly in the chest. The elf staggered, clutching his heart. The cultist’s grin only deepened as he launched a second bolt that struck Ravani in the center of his brow. Instantly all of the elf’s muscles went limp, and he collapsed in a motionless heap.“Ravani!” Leana cried, rushing to his aid.The cultist raised his mace and pointed with it, but before he could issue a command to his undead legion, Folgar cast a new spell.A pulse of thunderous sound filled the chamber, making the earlier tolling of the evil bell seem quiet by comparison. It enveloped the cultist, whose eyes went vacant as blood erupted from his nostrils, ears, and the corners of his eyes. The iron bell was knocked over, and two of the skeletons staggered, damaged but not destroyed by the shatter spell. The cultist collapsed, still laughing, one arm outstretched toward the far end of the room. “Mistress…” he gasped out before he died.Greghan rushed forward to confront the skeletons and prevent them from attacking Leana and Ravani. He delivered a solid blow to the first, but even damaged as it was from Folgar’s spell the unnatural force animating it kept it intact despite the bone fragments that pattered against the dangling violet drape like hailstones. Missing one arm and half its ribs, it still managed to swing a rusty old shortsword hard enough to clang loudly off of Greghan’s breastplate. That one didn’t get through his armor, but as two more of them came at him from behind he felt a sharp pain in his leg as one jabbed the top of its weapon into his thigh.The warrior held his ground, but the last skeleton was still able to skitter around him and lunge at the fallen elf. Ravani’s eyes shot open as Leana channeled another powerful healing spell into him, but he could not react in time to stop the skeleton from poking him in the side, opening a fresh and deep wound. He rolled to his feet, grabbing his bow and firing as soon as he got clear, but the hasty shot missed the skeleton.As if that wasn’t bad enough, the curtains to the right began to move, eventually parting to reveal several groaning forms that emerged from a concealed alcove. These zombies, thankfully, were only human-sized, but they still marked a fresh and dangerous threat.“I think we’re in trouble here!” Ravani warned.In response, Leana held up her sigil and called upon the power of her god. Bright light exploded from the disk, filling the room with a holy radiance that felt pure and clean in contrast to the corrupted red glow of the temple lamps. It only lasted for a few seconds, but two of the skeletons and three of the zombies recoiled from that surge, staggering back as they were turned by the cleric.Folgar stepped to the side to give himself a better angle, his hands moving in arcane gestures. “Don’t hit any of the turned ones!” Leana warned, but the wizard had already picked his target, one of the damaged skeletons still hazarding Greghan. His ray of frost scored a critical hit that froze its joints from hips to shoulders, and it toppled over, it spine shattering as it struck the ground.The warrior attacked the last skeleton still in the fray, but his wild swing only grazed it. Overbalanced, he couldn’t do anything to stop the skeleton from jabbing its sword under his shoulder plate and into his arm, opening a fresh gash that quickly began trailing blood down the limb and onto the floor in bright red spatters. Greghan was starting to feel a bit woozy, and had lost track of how many times he’d been wounded since entering this damned cave. But he didn’t run, didn’t turn away from the danger as he faced off against this persistent, unnatural foe. He glanced over at his friends, who were being hazarded by the last zombie, the sole one to have resisted Leana’s power. He recognized it, and was so startled that the skeleton almost skewered him before he managed to parry with his sword.His friends had recognized their adversary as well, as it shuffled forward to attack. “Well, I guess we know what happened to Pral,” Ravani said as he reached for another arrow. He shot the dead bandit in the chest, but none of them were surprised when the arrow didn’t stop it. The zombie lurched forward, slowly covering the distance between them. Its three companions disappeared back behind the curtain, while the two skeletons that Leana had turned retreated behind the dais on the other side of the room.Busy as they were, none of them spotted the figure that slid out behind the curtain extending along the left side of the temple. The new arrival was a human woman clad in bright red robes and an elaborate headdress-helmet that covered the upper half of her face. She held a sigil emblazoned with a leering demon’s head. Upon entering the room, she quickly scanned the various combatants—sparing barely a glance for the bloody, hacked form of the masked man lying on the floor—before settling her attention upon Leana.“Darkness commands you!” she cried, presenting the sigil toward the cleric and drawing every eye in the room to her. Leana stiffened for a moment, but with a sharp cry she tore free of whatever malevolent magic the evil priestess had tried to hex her with. “The Light protects me!” the halfling said.The red-robed woman only smiled. “Embrace Chaos, then,” she said. She raised her hands, one of which burst into flame, while the other pulsed with an ugly green radiance. She swung both at Leana, and a bolt of fire smashed into her chest, followed a moment later by a globule of acid that splashed down her arm and seared one side of her face, drawing a scream of agony from the halfling as she dropped to one knee, the glow surrounding her sigil starting to flicker.Game Notes:Leana rolled a natural 20 against Ivlis’s Sinister Command, which was fortunate, as her turning would have ended if she’d failed. But the two Chaos Blasts almost took her down, knocking her from 18 to 2 hit points.Next time: Boss Fight!</blockquote>

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