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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Funeris" data-source="post: 2428418" data-attributes="member: 22792">Chapter 11: The Abbey of Sin ContinuedWell here's what happens next....-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------An unhallowed aura poured from the doorway like the driving currents of a flooded river.  Tobias stood unmoving, waiting.  Magnus shrank back momentarily, the taint slicing into his skin and clawing at his heart.Ahead of him, Tobias allowed his senses to stretch outward his second sight kicking in easily, hungrily almost.  The entrance to the room was shrouded in the diffuse stain of corruption.  A foul breeze assaulted their noses, the faint lingering scent of death.  Tobias was uncertain his companions could feel the suffering he sensed, the evil.The paladin spun, sword waving directly toward Magnus.  The mage’s eyes opened wide and he tumbled backward barely dodging the edge of the greatsword.  Tobias had been too slow.A sickly, slithering shadow pooled out of the ground.  Its intangible claws rent bloody wounds along the mage.  The embrace was full of pain, loss, and death.Tobias easily pivoted the arc of his blade, readjusting for the shade’s new position.  The blade danced in and through the shadow.  A harsh squeal erupted in all of the Heroes’ minds.  Magnus’ hands tightened even more around his ears.  Coldness gripped his limbs.The undead crept away from the mage, flinging its insubstantial form at the paladin.  Tobias stepped toward the doorway avoiding the attack and his companions’ ranged weapons.  The specter ignored the arrows, pursuing its prey relentlessly.The sword darted into the shadow’s heart and the shriek echoed within their consciousness again.  The dark form seeped downward through the earth.  Tobias returned his glare to within the entrance.  A soft grating sound behind the fighter-paladin marked the mage scrabbling to his feet.“What the f*ck?!”  Magnus screamed.  “That was reckless!!  I could’ve been seriously hurt.”  Fitz quietly tended the wizard’s wounds, silently shaking his head.Tobias remained as still and noiseless as a statue, eyes closed and his sixth sense alert.  He had not heard Magnus’ whining.  He did not respond.Motega stalked up beside Tobias.  Quiety, the Rornman hissed, “What do you sense?” Tobias’ sword danced straight out, piercing the re-emerging specter through its center.  Like smoke, the shadow split into billowing wisps of pitch-black air, rising upward and vanishing.“Death,” Tobias remarked as he paced into the room.  The other Heroes followed.  “I need this room searched,” he commanded.  Motega gave a quick glance over the room and shrugged. Magnus leaned cautiously inside, “Are there any more of those beasts in here?”“No mage.  I don’t sense any.  But there is something…else.  I can feel it in my bones.”  Sighing, the paladin twisted to the mage.  “I’m sorry about your wounds.  I was trying to protect you.”“Apology accepted.”  The typical beaming smile returned to the mage’s face.“Look at this.”  Motega’s voice came from a sparsely furnished corner of the storeroom.  He shifted a large, decomposing wooden barrel.  Carved into the floor was a recessed trap door.  The Rorn checked it over for traps as they all gathered nearby.“Looks clear to me.”  Motega lifted the door open.  Twenty feet below the opening, a worked stone floor led away from the passage.  Motega gently pressed on the metal ladder embedded within the stone walls.  “Looks safe to me.”  Then the Rorn descended.“Wait for me, Mo’,” Tobias shouted as he hastened to follow the Rorn down the rabbit hole.</blockquote>

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