Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ForceUser" data-source="post: 371834" data-attributes="member: 2785">Session Three, Part NineBELOW, VINH tensed as the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Something lurked beyond the torchlight in the vaulted foyer. “Hien,” called the temple warrior, “hold the ladder.” The young shaman stepped forward and grasped it firmly. Sensing Vinh’s posture, Tran drew his sword. Tam took a step back and flexed his fingers. Shadows moved at the edge of the ruddy light. Vinh strode up and confirmed his guess: monkeys again, and aberrant ones at that. He dropped into the ready stance, his kama-do thrust out before him, in time to catch their screeching charge. Feeling the flow of energy around him, he relaxed his vision and extended his other senses. Forms darted around him, and he lashed out. There. There. There. There. The others watched in rapt appreciation as he twirled his polearm as though it weighed no more than a blade of grass. Four strokes, and four monkeys dropped dead. More yet came. Vinh stepped back, cleaving another as it tried to dart through his zone of control. Above, Lei, Woo and Mai heard the combat, and Lei peered over the ledge and spied the action below. Removing his chakram from his belt, he hefted it before letting it fly. The razor-sharp disc whizzed through the air, but the angle was bad and the target was small, so it hit the stone floor in a shower of sparks before rolling out of the circle of the torchlight. Lei grumbled. Woo turned to shimmy down the ladder, but stopped short as he saw a dog-sized rat scurry out of the darkness behind Mai. “Look out!” he shouted, drawing his jiann and dashing in front of the thief. Mai, for her part, reacted quickly, unsheathing her duan jian, twirling, and crouching in a defensive stance in a single fluid motion. Woo swung twice at the creature and missed. Below, Tam cast a spell. A familiar sound pulsed out, low and gruesome, and the incorporeal heart blazed in sickly green fire once again. The dozen or so monkeys now lit by its appalling glow fled in fear, and the wu jen gestured contemptuously, sending the figment blazing around the room in a broad swoop. One level up, Lei drew his scimitar and advanced on the dire rat. Before he could strike, it hissed at Woo and lashed out with yellow fangs, tearing a long gash in his robe. While the monk distracted it, Mai tumbled behind the vermin and jabbed hard, viciously sliding her sword to the hilt between its ribs. The rat convulsed and died. Woo arched an eyebrow at her, then jogged to the ladder and squatted next to the opening. He found Hien looking up at him. “They’re gone,” said the shaman. The monk nodded in return and stood. “There’s another ladder up here,” he called, “Appears to lead to a third floor. Climb up.” In short order the entire party stood on the second-floor landing. Tam concerned himself with maintaining his necromantic illusion, which the others pointedly ignored. Instead, they examined the ladder. It stood vertically between the second and (presumably) third levels. It was sturdy and functional, carved of solid pine, and secured to both the ceiling and floor with rugged iron bolts. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary about it after a cursory inspection, Mai began to climb. When she grabbed the last rung at the top, however, disaster struck. Instead of pulling herself up by the rung, the rung released and collapsed downward. The trigger mechanism sprung, Mai felt a horrible sinking in her gut as the false floor beneath the ladder gave way and girl, ladder, and flotsam plunged forty feet to the cold stone floor below. Devoid of conscious thought, Woo sprung forward in a desperate bid to save the hapless rogue, and cried out in frustration as her ao dai slipped through his fingers like silk. He watched as she impacted below with a clatter of wood and a sickening wet crunch. As the others stood frozen in shock, he ran to the opening and slid down the ladder. Landing with a grimace, the monk rushed to her side, slipping in the already-spreading pool of blood. Mai lay in a crumpled heap as her life oozed out in a puddle onto the temple flagstones. Woo cradled her, and felt a warm, soft stickiness on the back of her head. Moving swiftly, sweat rained from his brow as he violently tore a strip of cloth from his tattered robe and wrapped it around her head. He moved on to her leg, pushing a white bone fragment back under her skin, and pressed both palms on the awful injury, applying pressure. You will not die. You will not die. You will not die, ran the mantra through his head. So focused was he on his task, he did not hear the clamber of steps behind him. But he felt a rush of…wind...energy...something in his soul, as Hien called down the spirits’ healing upon Mai’s broken form. Bones knitted, wounds closed, and the pallor of death faded from her skin. Hien patted the monk on the shoulder. “Good work,” he said, “She may have died before I arrived had it not been for you.” Woo nodded, suddenly weary, and stood to distance himself from Mai, who was waking up. The others were looking at him, but he refused to meet their gazes. Mai opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying in her own blood. Panicking, she sat up and hugged herself. Hien knelt beside her, with the others arrayed behind him, guarding their backs. “You’re okay now,” he said, “the spirits have healed you.” Relief came with understanding, and she stood. Something wrapped around her head, and she took it off to examine it. A strip of blue cloth. She noticed a jagged tear in Woo’s robe. “You should be more careful,” huffed the monk as he walked back toward the ladder. As he left the circle of light, he railed against the darkness, “Who would build such a thing?!” Echoes were his only reply.Vinh watched his friend walk away, then turned to Mai, “In the future, take all the time you need to search for booby traps. We’re in no hurry. We don’t need to fall victim to these devices anymore.” He squeezed her shoulder warmly – a jarringly familiar gesture from her troubled dreams – and walked over to join Woo. Despite her miraculous recovery, Mai felt dizzy and ill. Her head swam with her recent near-sojourn into the afterlife. Hien, solicitous as ever, stayed with her as they made their way back upstairs. Lei paused to retrieve his chakram, and so was the last person back up the ladder. Twenty minutes later, after having pored obsessively over the trapdoor, Mai nervously declared it free of any further devices, and Woo, propping up the forty-foot ladder they used to climb to this level, scaled it like a squirrel and wriggled into the chamber above the door.It turned out to be a small storeroom. After rifling through it for several minutes, Woo discovered a magnificent crossbow of archaic and alien design, as well as seven loose bolts. He climbed back down and showed it to the others before handing it to Mai. “Here,” he said gruffly, “you’ve earned it.”</blockquote>

Verification