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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 604784" data-attributes="member: 221">Chapter 26: Elias’ FortThe Dawn came and when it did Niccolo and Alairic woke Kinshag.  They let Tilliana continue to rest.  “Watch for a while, we are going to go back to sleep,” said Niccolo.“On my own?” asked Kinshag, still feeling a bit weak from loss of blood.“Vampires can’t attack during the day and perhaps if Tilliana gets enough rest, she can heal some of our wounds.”Kinshag reluctantly agreed and Niccolo and Alairic returned to sleep.An hour passed and Two-socks returned from his scouting expedition.  Bloodied and torn, the wolf limped back towards the camp, one leg trailing behind him.  Kinshag obtained some food and fed the wretched looking animal.  It was clear that the wolf was barely alive.  Tilliana finally awoke and a couple of hours later Alairic and Niccolo got up as well.  It was about two hours before noon.  Tilliana, with her divine spells, was able to help both Kinshag and Alairic partially recover from the vampire attacks and Alairic tended to Two-socks.  Then they picked up camp and surveyed the area.   The various buildings and remains of buildings dotting the hillside took on a more sinister air than they had the night before when the companions had ridden into the area.  Now each crumpled shell, each abandoned house, stood out as a sort of tomb, a potential home of undead monstrosities.  The spring sun shining on the long grasses gave only slim comfort.“Those vampires fled from us last night,” said Alairic thinking, “to the north, to the west and to the south.  That means some are likely in that fort over there and the others are in these houses.  I say we deal with the ones on this side first.”“How do we kill vampires,” asked Tilliana.“Shove them out into the sun,” said Alairic.Several of the houses were little more than piles of rock and wood.  They had collapsed through the weight of fifteen years of neglect.  The first structure they looked at was like this.  Tilliana, staring thoughtfully at some of the pieces of wood sticking out from between the stones muttered something about, “Stakes.”“What was that,” said Kinshag.“Stakes,” said Tilliana, “We could try killing the vampires with stakes.  We could make some from some of the pieces of wood that are still sturdy enough around here.”Niccolo nodded thoughtfully, “Sure we just need to gather enough wood to do it.”“Should we split up and search the buildings seperately,” asked Tilliana.“No!” was the immediate answer from the others.  Alairic shivered as he remembered ghouls in a basement.They gathered up a few stout pieces of wood that they thought would service as stakes and approached one of the sturdier looking houses.  This one still had four walls and a roof.  The roof was of slate and looked to be in decent repair, with only one corner of the roof exposed.  The door to the house was closes but all the windows were broken out.  The door was not locked.As the others opened the door and peered in, Alairic pulled out a torch from his pack and worked to light it.  The others turned and stared at him.“What are you doing?” asked Niccolo.“A torch.”“Why.  The sun is shining, there are windows, it won’t be dark in there.”Alairic looked up, “I thought that a torch might be a good weapon against vampires.”“They didn’t seem afraid of our campfire last night, walked right up near it,” said Niccolo as Kinshag walked in the house.  There was an odor of rot in the air.  The roof had obviously let in some water.  The floor under Kinshag sagged.  He looked down.  The wood was very rotten.  “Uh guys,” said Kinshag as Tilliana walked into the house.  That was as much as he managed to get out however before the floor under him collapsed from his weight and he plunged through the floor and into the basement.“Ugh,” said Kinshag as he landed a bit awkwardly below, more shaken then hurt.  “Oh, oh, said Niccolo walking in and looking through the hole in the floor.Tilliana was also looking through the hole from the other side.“You okay?” asked Tilliana.“Yeah,” said Kinshag.  And then the floor under Tilliana’s feet cracked and the priestess in her heavy armor fell straight through.“Oouf!” said Tilliana as she hit the dirt floor of the basement hard.Alairic walked up besides Niccolo and looked down.  “Catch,” he called and tossed the torch he had lit down into the hole, “Thought you two could use a light down there.”“Thanks,” said Kinshag picking it up.  The torch light lit up the dirt basement.  There were large webs.  There were also large eyes staring at Kinshag and Tilliana from the walls.  Eyes that glittered multifaceted in the firelight.“Oh no,” groaned Kinshag drawing out his great-ax and dropping the torch to the dirt floor.  Tilliana drew her sword.“What is it,” said Niccolo looking down through the hole Kinshag had made, trying to see what had bothered the half-hobgoblin.  The spiders charged in.  They were nearly five feet across, tow to toe and stood almost a foot off the ground.  One of them bit at Tilliana, scratching her on her leg.  The others crowded in, mandibles clicking.  Tilliana gave a war cry and cleaved into and through one, sliced open a second and managed to hack into a third.  Kinshag fending the spiders off with his axe split one in half and missed a second one.  Their flashing weapons gave the spiders pause.  Tilliana killed a third spider and Kinshag cut his second.  And then Tilliana was besides Kinshag and the last two spiders were cut open by Razor-tongue.  “We got them,” Tilliana hollered up.“Good,” said Niccolo as he straightened up from trying to gingerly look through the hole.  The movement was the last straw for the rotting wood that the half-elf was standing on.  In a shower of rotting splinters Niccolo plunged down through the floor, landing on the ground besides the other two.  “Ouch,” said the half elf as he stood up.Kinshag meanwhile had found the stairs out of the basement.  He examined them.  The wood was in nearly as bad a shape as the floor above.“I’ve got rope,” said Alairic as he shuffled around above them.  “I’m gonna try the stairs,” said Kinshag and he very gingerly started to climb them, testing each foot and trying to distribute his weight as best as possible.  He made it to the top of the stairs.  “Well if he can do it,’ said Tilliana.  And with that she started to climb the stairs.  They caved in when she was about halfway up and collapsed about her as she fell suddenly five feet down.  “What happened,” said Alairic, pulling out his rope and moving closer to the holes.  It was a mistake.  The floor failed to hold him as well and the hole to the first floor grew a little bigger and the paladin joined Niccolo and Tilliana in the basement amid a shower of dirt and wood.  “Ugh!” said Alairic.Meanwhile  Kinshag, more by luck than skill, had managed to make it all the way out of the house.“I have rope in the wagon!” called out Tilliana when Kinshag informed them of his escape from the rotting house.”“Right,” said Kinshag, “I’ll be right back.”A few minutes later and all four were once more on the grass in the sunshine.  They stared at the house.“I say we torch it,” said Alairic.“The torch is in the basement still,” pointed out Tilliana.“I have others,” said Alairic.“Any riches in there will have to stay in there,” said Niccolo.They set fire to the house, the rotting wood going up quickly and hot.  As the fire spread to the second floor and then to the attic the screaming commenced.  Something inside was being burned in the hot inferno.“I hope that wasn’t a bad thing to do,” said Kinshag as the screaming continued.“No living thing could have gone in and out of that house,” said Alairic.“Not without being in the basement,” said Niccolo.The second floor collapsed down and the walls started to cave in and the screaming ceased.  The next house was another pile of rock.  “Should we burn it?” asked Tilliana.  But most of the wood had already rotted away and there did not seem a lot to actually burn so they decided to leave it.  The next two structures were the same way.“Let’s look in the silo,” said Alairic.  They had worked their way from the eastern side of the ruined village to about the middle where the tall walls of a grain silo still stood.  The wooden house next to the stone silo had collapsed and it looked like most of the silo’s ceiling had as well, but the round walls remained.  The door to the silo wa missing, so they walked in through the open gap.Sunlight shone through the hole in the top of the silo, illuminating a small dead body on the dirt floor.  It was a strange almost bat like creature with long legs and a long needle like nose.  Its crumpled wings suggested it was a flying creature.“A stirge,” said Niccolo examining the body, “they suck blood.”“Check this out,” siad Alairic from near the wall, “The ground looks like its been dug here and there is a strange metal tube in the ground.”At the sound of Alairic’s voice something above them stirred.  They looked up.  Four flying creatures, twins to the dead one on the ground, were circling down.  The stirges attacked swiftly, dropping down like bullets.  One flew at Niccolo and plunged straight onto the rapier Niccolo held out at it, dying.  Tilliana’s powerful sword sliced open another, killing it.  Kinshag went to swing his axe at the one diving at him but the creature flew swiftly around the blade and latched onto Kinshag’s shoulder, plunging it’s long needle like snout into Kinshag’s flesh like a giant mosquito.  The fourth one landed on Alairic and started to drink.“Aaah,” shouted Alairic , grasping it and pulling it off of himself.  He tried to throw it at a wall, but it merely flew up and started back towards him.  The stirge on Kinshag, swiftly bloating itself with blood detached and started to lazily fly up and away.  Niccolo pierced it with his rapier and it exploded in a shower of blood.“Argh!” shouted Kinshag in horror and as the last of the beasts flew back at Alairic, Kinshag charged the short distance between it and him and cleaved it in two with his axe.“You must have tasty blood,” said Tilliana to Kinshag with a worried look, “Seems like everything is drinking your blood lately.”Kinshag did not seem too thrilled at the prospect of having his blood drank and simply shivered with horror.  It felt like someone had just walked over his grave.Alairic meanwhile had decided to plug the tube with a finger.  He stuck one finger into the tube, blocking it and held it there.  Then satisfied he pulled it out.“Do we have shovels?” he asked.Tilliana informed them that they did not.“I say we pour dirt down the tube,” said Niccolo.“There’s nothing down there breathing,” said Alairic, “Otherwise they would have suffocated when I held my finger over the hole.”“You didn’t hold your finger there long enough for anything to suffocate!” snapped Niccolo.  This led to a fight about how long it would take to suffocate any creature hiding down the pipe.Finally, “fine,” said Alairic, “I will do it longer!”  And he stuck his finger back in the metal tube.  This time he held it there for several minutes, staring at Niccolo the whole time.“Fine,” said Niccolo finally, “There’s nothing alive down there.”“Let’s dig it up,” said Tilliana.“I am curious as to what is down there,” said Alairic.“Let’s try pulling first,” suggested Niccolo and tried prying it free of the ground.  Nothing happened.“Let me try,” said Kinshag and he bent down to try.  He pulled and the tube came out of the soil.  It was about two feet in length.  “A pipe system?” said Alairic.“It was put in recently,” pointed out Tilliana.“We can get some slate and dig,” said Niccolo.They followed through with this and the slate seemed to move the dirt well enough.  About a foot down into the soil and they struck wood.“A coffin,” said Tilliana.“I bet it’s a chest,” said Niccolo and they continued to dig.It was a coffin.“Good call,” said Niccolo as he pried open the top of the coffin.Inside lay a female.  She had been the one who had attacked Niccolo the previous evening.  “We need a stake,” said Tilliana.“Pull her over into the sunlight,” said Alairic, “Or we could use holy water.”“I’ll do her,” said Niccolo pulling out a stake like piece of wood he had picked up earlier.  He kneeled down beside her.“Little Harlot,” said Niccolo as he plunged the stake into the chest of the creature.  The woman’s eyes flew open and she screamed.  Blood flowed out of her mouth and then she lay still.“Is she dead?” asked Alairic.“Could be,” said Tilliana, “Let’s put her in the light.”They heaved the body over and into the circle of sunlight in the center of the floor.  The body began to smoke and then burst into flame.“Well, we know sunlight works,” said Tilliana when the body was consumed with fire.As Alairic started to search what remained of the body, Tilliana walked out of the silo and looked around.  She purposely scanned the horizon for signs of a white feline.  During the morning her mind had reconstructed memories of a white cat who had roamed these very hills.  A white cat who had been able to talk.She spotted the cat sitting in a small tree just to the southwest.  It was watching them intently.“Angel!” called out Tilliana.  The cat reacted immediately.  Its head had perked up and it had looked alert and then it had jumped out of the tree and ran off towards the east, swiftly disappearing in the long uncut grasses.“We found four gems,” said Alairic as they joined her outside.There was another house a little west of the silo, if one could call three and a half walls a house.  The rest of it was gone, scattered over the ground, the roof and second floors completely collapsed.“Nothing here,” said Niccolo, “The last house is over there and then the mill.”They approached the remaining structure.  Of all the buildings, except perhaps the mill house, it was in the best shape.  “One person should stay out here with a rope,” said Tilliana.That seemed sensible and so Tilliana held onto a rope while the others slowly entered the single story house.  The top floor was completely empty, even of furniture but Niccolo soon found a door that led down into a basement.“Basement!” he called to get the others’ attention.  Alairic came up besides him and looked down and then lit a torch.Alairic led the way down the steps.Tilliana, deciding that there was little reason to stay above, tied the rope off to a small tree and then went in after the others.  Soon all four were in the basement looking around.  It was not hard to find the coffin.  It was in the middle of the floor.“Any more stakes?” asked Niccolo.“I’ll make one,” said Tilliana, pulling out a dagger and hunting for a board to pry a piece of wood off of.Alairic opened the coffin.  Inside was sleeping the huge man who had attacked them with his great-ax.  He wore a chain shirt and also carried several daggers.  “Let’s stake him,” said Alairic and taking the wood that Tilliana offered him he plunged it into the creature’s heart.  They then removed the shirt, ax and daggers and after leaving the basement, they set fire to the house.The mill proved to be empty of all but a large pile of gnawed bones.  Deer, wolf and human bones lay jumbled together in an unwholesome pile.  Despite the gruesome nature of the pile, Niccolo upon seeing a glint of metal in the stack of bones searched through the whole pile, unearthing not only coins, but a few gems and even a glass bottle containing a potion of some sort.As they left the mill house, Tilliana returned to the structure with the three and a half standing walls.  Some sense of intuition told her to look there harder.  Her close scrutiny of the area paid off and she hollered the others over to her.  The dirt, in one place had been recently dug up.They dug down and pulled out a fresh body.  The body of a shepherd with rosy cheeks.  The same man who had first attacked Kinshag in the night.  As they pulled him out into the evening sun he screamed and then burned.  When there was little more than ash, Tilliana pulled a ring out of the charred remains.  It was gold and slightly warped from the intense heat of the supernatural fire.  It looked to be a wedding ring of some sort.They returned to the horses and the wagon.  It was two hours before  dusk.</blockquote>

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