NEW UPDATE
It was a time of change.
I think I lost track of how long I sat in my sanguine light gently rocking Merideth, hoping that her wounds would spontaneously close, she would sit up and hit me for being silly. But she didn't get up.
Eventually I began to pull myself together. I lost people before to the machinations of the Gods. It'll probably keep on happening. Retrieving Belial's feather, I ignited it and watched it burn fitfully, but he didn't appear.
"Belial!" I yelled, anger simmering, "Belial!"
"I'm here," a disembodied voice returned.
I looked around, "Where? We need to get us back to Theralis."
"I'm outside at the mouth of the Nekromanteia," he supplied.
"Why can't you just come down?"
"You are in Hethas' realm. I cannot travel there," He said.
Oh that's just bloody great, I thought.
"Merideth's...not alive. Can you do something to help her?" I asked.
There was silence for several moments, "There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry." Then he was gone.
I pulled the spears out of her body and started looking for a way out. Above me, from the darkness, Akeros emerged. "Hethas be praised!" he exclaimed. "I've searched far and wide, but I did not think that I would find you here."
Akeros was knelt next to me by Merideth's body, "I was supposed to do this to you, but since you had to go and survive. I'll give it to her." He touched her lightly and stood. "I have fulfilled my purpose!" He called to the ceiling. He glanced in my direction, smirked and vanished into the darkness.
Merideth sat up, fully healed. I rushed to the floor beside her. Her eyes were clear.
"Was I dead?" She asked.
I nodded, "Yeah."
Her eyes hardened, "Athan is so dead."
I just hugged her.
***
Since, being on another plane denies me the use of the balance of my spells, I armed my self with one of the spears Athan put through Merideth. She took the other and we began to trek upward. We traveled in silence.
I wanted to ask her about what it was like being dead. Allas apparently came to claim Athan. Did someone come for her? Was she...happy? Now that she was back, I wasn't sure if she should be...resurrections happen only when the Gods are involved and altruism isn't one of their strong points. However, I was glad she was back and if she wasn't up to talking I wasn't going to force her.
Near a gap in the roof of a cave several hours walk from where we entered, we came upon clumps of mostly whole skeletons. In this area, I found a bronze short sword. Sparing the effort, I took a glance at with with Detect Magic. While the spell was active I also looked at the skeletons and something caught my attention. In the left eye socket, was a tiger's eye opal that shown with esper magics. The sword also emanated magic. I scooped up the sword and reached for the opal.
"Hay," Merideth said. "Do you think you should be doing that?"
I stopped, "Doing what?"
She looked meaningfully at the skeleton, "That."
I jabbed my fingers into the space, fracturing the bone and pulled out the opal, "What good is it doing him?"
Merideth rolled her eyes and continued onward. She led because with her esper abilities functional, she was the functional protector of the group. We eventually came to a wall. Merideth's eyes glazed as she sent her mind to explore the rock.
"It's a dead end," she said finally. We doubled back and stopped at the large crack in the ceiling. A quick check later she said, "This is the way, lets go."
We emerged in a spacious cavern. The ceiling was vast and vaulted and along one if the walls, the skeleton of a giant cat sat embedded in the walls. Merideth and I sat down to rest, but soon afterward, she sent her mind out to scout. I went about the room looking things over, pausing by the skeleton. It wasn't any sort of animal I recognized. I thought it looked rather pathetic all imprisoned in stone like that.
Merideth joined me at the wall, "This section is only 8 feet thick" we can get out through here. I nodded and turned to put some distance between myself and the wall. Blasting away at the wall was bound to get messy. "Um, Greppa," Merideth asked.
I turned, "Mmmm?"
She was backing away cautiously, "I think it moved."
I looked past her and indeed, the skeleton was moving slowly grinding out a shower of stones and dust as it worked its way loose. It looked like we weren't going to have to blow our way through 8 feet of stone. All we had to do was wait until it pulled enough of itself out for us to crawl through and we can destroy it while it was still encased in stone.
We watched its head tear free, empty sockets glowing a dim red. It was a sight. The bone flowed and moved like flesh. It pulled its head free and roared. The sound was deafening forcing Merideth and I to cover our ears. Through our fingers, a sibilant voice whispered the secrets of life beyond Akeros, and death's meaning of life. The roaring sibilance held us, smothering any impulse to run away, draining our strength, squashing our will. It tore itself away from the rest of the wall, turning slowly to advance in our direction. That snapped us out of our stupor.
"What do we do?" Merideth asked.
"Run for the bloody hole!" I yelled dashing for the hole we used to enter the cave.
We dropped about 10 feet before getting wedged in a crook in the shaft.
"What's it doing?" I asked Merideth.
"It's pawing around the hole. It'd be cute if he wasn't so scary. So what are we going to do?"
"You're the one with all of your skills intact. It's your turn to be the hero, go up and kill it Miss Warrior Healer."
"Nuh unh!"
Some "hero" she was. I was thinking of a suitable retort when I felt something grasp my ankle. "Merideth....?" I whispered
"What?" She snapped.
"We have more playmates,"
She looked down, following my finger. A line of skeletons snaked back along the passage, at the front and currently in possession of my ankle was the very corpse from whom I relieved the tiger's eye eyeball.
"Do something!"
She did something all right and engulfed me and the closet skeletons in a shower of telekinetic knives. They HURT, but the skeletons shattered under the assault.
"What?" She said responding to the withering glare I sent in her direction.
Rolling my eyes, I began to cast, I don't know if it was the pain or the irritation, but I remembered that Hethas was also the goddess of elemental Earth. I took a chance and cast Wall of Shale across the base of the tunnel sealing it off.
"Why didn't you do that before?"
"You be quiet." I started casting again, Small Favors this time. I needed an Earth Elemental and the only one I know was in the remnants of the Kithian highway. Unfortunately, I didn't understand its language. I used Allas' lantern Archons to communicate with it. I already had Luccas' light, I wonder what else I had access to. I summoned a lantern Archon, noticing the subtle changes in the spell that indicated that my memory of the spell had been altered.
A small translucent raven appeared in the small space.
"How may I help you?" It asked.
I was expecting a little red puff ball but I wasn't going to look a gift bird in the mouth, "I need you to talk with an earth elemental for me."
"What do you want from it?" It asked.
That was a switch, "Um, I need it's ability to meld with stone."
It nodded and then began to talk. It wasn't the kind of exchange by exchange translation I was used to. The little bird actually seemed to be negotiating for me. After several minutes, it turned to me, "It says that things are afoot in the world. You have not been sending Archons like you did before. It is willing to grant your request, but in return, you must find a way to free it or move it so that it can be more involved with the affairs of the 'children of Kithios."
The skeleton kitty roared.
The spell needed to summon an elemental of that power was beyond me, but maybe Kyriotes could come up with something so I told it to tell the elemental "yes."
There was a final exchange and then the portal winked out. My skin began to harden, taking on a rocky texture. Stone Skin and Earth's Strength only caused the most cosmetic changes, but this, this was something else.
"Do you need anything else?" The raven asked.
"No, thank you," I replied.
It smiled and then vanished.
I pulled Merideth to me and encased her in a cocoon of stone. I didn't know how I did it, it just came naturally, I flowed over Merideth and then we both sank into the walls of the cave and into the depths of Hethas' realm. I had a general direction in mind...up. However I had a definite path, so I flowed up to the floor of the cave and spared a peek. The big bone kitty sniffed and pawed at the spot in the rock we occupied. It couldn't get through the rock but it knew where we were. I didn't tarry, although a healer could hold her breath for a long time, I didn't want to push things. I pushed into the hallway beyond the ruined wall where the cat was entombed. The damn thing followed us for a ways, and then I felt it. We were through the dimensional barrier. I kept moving, keeping an eye on the cat. I don't think I'd even seen anything that big, outside of Uripedas, act so cute. Scary, but cute.
About 100 feet beyond the transition point, the cat stopped sniffing the air. If it had ears, they would have perked up. Then it bolted down the hall. A minute or so later, I heard screams. Merideth started squirming around, wanting to be let out. I surfaced and watched her stretch to her feet and then she bolted down the hall, brandishing her spear. I followed her into a charnel scene of body parts clothed in the remnants of black robes.
I felt stabbing pains of guilt as we pushed into a run. Merideth, her earlier recitence for battle gone, led. I raised shields and defenses and started to fret. I didn't know that many attack spells that weren't area effects. Not that I had much experience fighting giant skeletons (actually I'd never fought any of the living impaired) but it looked very tough. We arrived in a large cavern in time to see the tiger swipe its huge claws across the abdomen of some poor schmuck, clad in the robes of a priest of Hethas.
Merideth sprinted forward to engage it, I moved to flank firing a seldom used force spell called "Greater Thrust." I thought it up a long time ago for use in close in combat and after my loss at the last Olympiad in the ray competition, I worked on quickening it to fire it at a moment's thought. I had no intention of using it in combat because, compared to fireball, it wasn't as effective against orcs.
In this case it was surprisingly effective. I fired two bolts into the side of the creature. It screamed and wheeled towards me. Emboldened, I hit it again while Merideth sprayed its vulnerable side with kinetic knives. The bones crumbled to a heap. Merideth went to heal the priest while I went to see if any more skeletons were coming. A few had been making their way down the hall from the chamber, but they had crumbled to small piles of bones. Satisfied I went back to Merideth.
The Priest was very pale, but the gashes in his abdomen were gone. Merideth was already gone administering to those who were still alive.
"Sorry about that thing," I said kneeling by him, "It followed us out."
His eyes were still a bit shocky, "You came from below."
I nodded, "Yeah."
"Hethas said you would come," He stopped and looked at the carnage in the area. "Why is this happening to us. Things, omens have been happening so much death, so much. Why does Hethas test us?"
Oooo boy, this was a bit of a sticky situation so I considered my words carefully, "The gods are preparing for war," I began. "Xeras and Allas have already began making preparations. Xeras controls the Bukenahk orc tribe which has be gaining power and driving the weaker tribes in our direction. I do not know what Hethas' stake is, but I trust it will be for the best."
The priest nodded, "Thank you for this information. We must prepare ourselves."
I nodded, clasped his hand and headed for the opening of the cave. Merideth was already there admiring the architecture. The opening of the Nekromanteia was carved into a an ornate bas relief like a temple had been swallowed into the earth and only it's face remained visible.
When I joined her, Belial shimmered into view, "Ready to go?"
We almost said yes, but we realized that we were still wearing the cloaks we had found in the Temple of Allas so long ago. Instead of their usual snowy white, they were now black. Apparently Allas felt that she was making some sort of statement with the color change. Personally, attempting to murder us was statement enough.
Merideth had taken off her cloak and tossed it to the ground. I did the same, but I also kicked dirt on it for verisimilitude.
I turned to Belial, "Let's go."
