Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 280

“Fall back, into the room!” Dannel cried, darting back out of the reach of the black tentacles, before seeing that a pair of the long tendrils had caught Zenna around the waist, and were even now beginning to tighten their grip painfully. The elf turned around to help, but hesitated; at least a dozen tentacles filled the space between them, and he knew that he would be of little help to her if he managed to get himself entangled as well.

Mole and Shensen were also ensnared, but both were able to slip free and dart back out of the radius of the spell. The three dwarves made up in strength what they lacked in nimbleness, but as the tentacles converged on them they had to fight for each step. Hodge was caught by a tentacle that snaked around his ankle, threatening to trip him up, but Beorna, who was nearby, grabbed him by the arm and helped him pull himself free. The dwarven woman, still infused with power from her buffing spells, shrugged off the tentacles that tried to ensnare her, snarling with frustration as she joined the others in retreat.

Arun was also able to fight free, and he moved to help Zenna. She was well and truly caught, the tentacles lifting her a pace into the air as they crushed the breath from her body. The paladin had already learned that his sword was of little use against the tentacles, so he sheathed the weapon, slung his shield, and simply grasped onto the pair holding her, drawing them apart just enough for the tiefling to slip free. With Arun protecting her retreat from the tentacles trying to snare her anew, the pair fell back until the last of the tentacles were left behind them.

But even as the companions withdrew to relative safety, their strength suddenly seemed to drain from their bodies. Their armor and weapons suddenly felt several times heavier, their limbs leaden and unresponsive. Zenna, already staggered from her clash with the tentacles, sagged and nearly fell, her strength barely enough to keep her upright.

“What be happenin’?” Hodge exclaimed, slumping to one knee as the weight of his armor, weapons, and gear threatened to overbear him. Some of the others unshouldered their packs, trying to lighten their loads.

“It’s another spell,” Zenna gasped out.

“Well, do somepin’ about it!” the dwarf replied, staggering back from the danger zone near the tentacles.

Zenna was about to reply that she could not, when the tentacles suddenly vanished, evaporating into air as if they had never been. The companions turned back toward the door, readying themselves for whatever threat might approach with the cessation of the spell. Zenna spoke the words of a spell, and became invisible, while the others readied weapons or spells in anticipation of battle.

A skittering sound accompanied by a sibilant hiss became audible through the open door, followed a moment later by the familiar clank of heavy armor. A man stepped through the portal, a heavily armed and armored figure equipped with a massive greataxe. His unnatural origin was instantly visible, for his armor had been designed to allow for the vestigal wings that jutted from his back, and the foot-long ebon horns that jutted from his temples.

The fiendish warrior was imposing enough, but on his heels came another entity, a grim monstrosity that Zenna knew instinctively was responsible for the black tentacles and the waves of exhaustion. It had the look of a giant serpent, but without skin, muscles, or organs; it was a creature of bones alone, a skeleton. Their gazes were drawn upward, to the head that reared up above as soon as it had cleared the threshold of the door. That head had belonged to no snake; it was vaguely humanoid, but with great flanges of bone on the sides of the skull, framing deep eye sockets in which bright points of blue flame burned with evil malevolence. Somehow in its presence the deep cold of Karran-Kural grew even deeper, as the undead thing radiated an aura of frozen death.

“More lackeys of the wizard, eh?” Arun said, unsheathing his sword, letting its bright radiance play over them, drawing the attention of their foes.

The bone naga reared, lifting its evil skull even higher above them, until it nearly brushed the ceiling fifteen feet above. It released a foul keening, a bitter noise that assaulted their senses, an unnatural sound that seemed to coalesce into ripples in the air that took on substance, solidity. Those waves of energy formed into an impermeable barrier of force, bisecting the chamber in two.

With Arun, Beorna, and Zenna on one side with the two enemies, and the other adventurers trapped on the far side, unable to help them.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 281

Separated by a wall of force, the divided companions confronted a pair of terrible foes.

The fiendish warrior rushed forward, bringing his axe around in a wide arc designed to take Beorna’s head from her shoulders. The templar stood her ground and shifted her body to take the hit on her armor. The adamantine plate held even against the magical sharpness of the evil fighter’s blade, but she felt the force of the impact nonetheless, a hard wedge of pain driving through her body. The man—an orc, Beorna realized, as she saw the sinister features through the slit of his helm—was incredibly strong, and unlike her, not affected by magical exhaustion. What was worse, the blow had landed a foot from where she’d expected it; that and the faint shimmering around the warrior’s body spoke of a magical ward about him, a displacement that would make it difficult to score a telling hit in return.

Arun’s muscles seemed intent on defying him as he started to the templar’s aid, but a reassuring warmth suddenly flowed through him, dispelling his weariness. Zenna’s whispered voice sounded close to his ear, “I will assist her... you must defeat the naga! Its magic is the greater threat!”

Arun nodded, and reluctantly turned away from Beorna to charge the undead creature. It too was clearly protected by magical defenses; a glowing translucent shield hovered in the air before it, and its position also seemed to shift slightly as it moved, betraying the presence of another displacement spell. None of that stopped Arun, of course, and he rushed boldly at the bone naga. His sword clove the air in a wide arc, tearing through the shield, and although it struck empty air as it hit the apparent location of the creature, an instant later it slammed into hard bone. The naga keened, a terrible, high-pitched sound that seemed loud enough to shatter glass. Arun tried to follow-up his advantage with another assault, but the naga spoke the words of a spell, and a glowing hand of force, five feet across, appeared between them. The forceful hand immediately thrust the dwarf backward, driving him back ten feet despite his efforts to brace himself against its pressure.

Dannel grimaced in frustration as he could only watch his friends engage the naga and the fiendish warrior. “We have to find a way through, to help them!” he said.

Hodge grunted as a full-strength blow from his axe glanced harmlessly off of the wall of force. “If yer have any ideas, I’d love to ‘ear ‘em!” he shouted.

Mole had run along the entire length of the wall, looking for the slightest gap anywhere, from the floor to the ceiling. “There’s no way through!” she said.

Dannel turned to Shensen, but the druid seemed to have withdrawn from them, lost in the casting-trance of a spell. Finally the vacant, distant look in her eyes faded, and she gestured to the ground at her feet, which seemed to rumble ominously.

A figure rose up out of the hard stone, a roughly humanoid form that continued to grow until its head touched the ceiling fifteen feet above. As the others looked on in amazement, Shensen spoke to it in a harsh, gravelly language, pointing toward the far end of the room and the battle there.

The elemental turned, and sank back into the floor at the base of the wall of force.

“Shensen...” Dannel began.

“I know,” she said, rushing to the point where her summoned ally had disappeared. “Be ready...” She knelt and touched the stone, running her hand along it in a long swath that paralleled the perfect smoothness of the wall of force. She touched her necklace, and spoke words in a tongue similar to that she’d used with the elemental, Dannel thought.

Once more the stone obeyed her call. The floor where she had touched buckled, twisting outward on both sides of the wall. Dannel saw what she was doing, and even as the opening appeared beneath the wall he was running toward it, his bow at the ready.

Mole, naturally, beat him to it, and darted through to the other side.

Beorna grunted in frustration as her blows glanced harmlessly of off the heavy black plates of her foe’s armor. Her divine power had left her, the blessings of Helm but temporary in their duration, and with her strength drained, her attacks felt feeble and ineffective. The warrior, on the other hand, seemed possessed of an inexhaustible fortitude, and as he lifted his axe for another assault, Beorna braced herself for some more pain.

But before he could strike, the warrior hesitated.

“We are not your enemy, brave warrior,” Beorna heard from behind him, a familiar voice from over his shoulder. “The wizard and the naga have both betrayed you... they are your true foes.”

The warrior turned as Zenna became visible. The templar acknowledged the gutsiness of the ploy; if the spell failed, there was nothing stopping him from chopping her into two with that cleaver of his. But even though she could not see his face, Beorna saw the axe come down, and knew that the charm had been successful.

Zenna reached up and drew back her cowl, revealing her own features twisted into a ferocious, demonic leer, her flesh a bright red, her horns and teeth ebon mirrors to the features of the fiendish warrior. “I am one of you!” she hissed. “Use your strength to destroy your true foes!”

The warrior turned to his ally, and with a terrible roar rushed at the naga, his axe raised in challenge. The naga turned from Arun to face the charge, and as its first stroke passed through air, fooled by its displacement, the undead creature cast another spell. The warrior’s axe came down again, and he looked around, confused, as the naga’s dispel returned him to his senses.

“Well, at least he lost his wards,” Zenna began, reaching out to restore Beorna. But before she could touch the templar, a green flash filled her vision, and her body exploded into a haze of pain. She felt as though every part of her body was trying to come apart, and as the green glow brightened, she could feel her death clasp down tightly around her.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 282

Beorna saw the green beam stab from the doorway, past the naga and the warrior, and impact Zenna squarely in the back. She knew the source, and shouted a warning to the others. “The wizard!” But she was helpless to assist Zenna as the green glow pulsed over her, too quickly for her to stop it with a dispel.

It lasted all of a second, and in that time Zenna fought for her life. Her own innate fortitude, reinforced by her wards and resistances, warred against the pulse of Fetor Abradius’s disintegrate spell. A scream was dragged from her body as the ray tore through her, but when it faded, after that long second, she was still there.

Still there, but weakened and damaged. She staggered back, half-caught by Beorna, who steadied her. “Are you all right?”

Zenna nodded, and tore herself free, nearly falling to the ground. “GO!” she yelled.

Arun fought against the forceful hand, but though he was able to stand his ground, and avoid being pushed back further, he could not draw any nearer to the naga. The undead monstrosity reared up, no doubt preparing to cast yet another terrible spell, when suddenly the ground below it buckled. Slabs of stone rose up out of the ground, resolving into the powerful arms of Shensen’s elemental. The naga twisted and tried to break free, blasting a spell into it. But Shensen’s magic held, and the naga screeched its terrible cry again as a massive stone fist crushed into its skeletal form. The elemental grappled it, and for a moment the two titanic creatures struggled in a raging melee. The fiendish warrior swung at the elemental with his axe, knocking several head-sized chunks of rock free from its leg, but then Beorna laid into his back with a vicious two-handed stroke of her sword, driving him down to his knees with a single mighty blow.

A sinuous ray of black energy appeared from the shadows of the doorway, stabbing into the naga, filling it with dark energies that healed its injuries and redoubled its strength. But Abradius’s aid came at a price, as Dannel leapt up from the breach in the base of the wall of force with his bow fully drawn. Despite his lingering exhaustion his accuracy was still true, and a cry of pain rewarded his first shot as it knifed into the narrow opening, finding its target.

Mole was already moving toward the melee, looking for a spot where she could make a contribution without being squashed. Shensen came out through the gap below the wall of force on Dannel’s heels, already beginning a new spell, while Hodge, the last to squeeze through, promptly got stuck in the narrow opening.

The naga, still twisting in the elemental’s grasp, bent its head around on its long neck and fired a series of scorching rays point-blank into its tormenter. The elemental began to crumble as the fiery blasts played across its body, but it tenaciously maintained its grasp until a series of energy bolts appeared through the doorway, blasting into its already battered body. The elemental crumbled, falling into a heap of scattered stones.

Unable to get around the forceful hand, Arun finally just let out a dwarvish battle cry and hurled himself with his full strength against it. Step by step he pushed forward until the elemental’s demise dropped the naga, and its gyrations brought it within reach. Calling upon the power of Moradin to guide his hand, he brought up his blade, and with a resounding roar smote the creature.

The naga screamed as the holy blade blasted into it once more, blasting fragments of bone from the interlocked segments of vertebrae that comprised its body. Still deadly dangerous, bolstered by Abradius’s enervation ray of moments ago, it unleashed a powerful cone of cold directly into the paladin’s face.

But the dwarf, protected by wards, and beyond that a stamina beyond the ken of most men, simply shook off the terrible, numbing frost, and struck again.

Behind the naga, meanwhile, Beorna stepped over the twitching body of the fiendish warrior—his head lay a few paces further distant—and joined in the assault, laying into the undead creature from behind. Her first swing was foiled by its still-potent displacement, but she stood her ground, and adjusted for a second strike.

A shaft of white lightning darted down from the ceiling, slamming into the naga. Shensen held her hand aloft, drawing upon her power to call lightning once more, watching the doorway for another sign of the wizard. Beside her, Dannel was doing the same, but when Abradius did not present himself for another attack, he unleashed his shot at the naga. The shot glanced off its head, doing little damage, but sending a small surge of electrical energy through it that added to its tally of injuries.

The naga tried one last gambit, rising into the air above its foes, out of the reach of the dwarves with their holy blades. It conjured its favorite black tentacles again to confound its foes, the long tendrils rising out of the floor grabbing and snaring the adventurers. Zenna was caught up instantly once more, and the dwarves had to dedicate their efforts to fighting off their grasp, unable to reach the naga ten feet above their heads.

Dannel and Shensen were caught as well. The elf dropped his bow as one tentacle wrapped around and crushed his arm, but the druid ignored the pain of their constricting grasp, all of her attention fixed upon the naga above.

Another bright line of electricity flashed from the ceiling, striking the naga directly below the base of its skull. Again Shensen was able to penetrate its resistance, the bolt of lightning running up and down the length of its body, driving up into its skull. The spell would have barely discomfited it when whole, but the naga had already taken a pounding. Blue flashes of light stabbed through its skull, exploding out from the gaping openings, and then the creature fell, a lifeless hulk that was quickly ensnared by the mindless, grabbing black tentacles.

Beorna and Arun helped the others free themselves from the tentacles, and the companions withdrew to the very edge of the wall of force, the only corner of the room not covered with the twisting black filaments. Hodge continued spitting curses until Shensen and Arun helped pull him free from the narrow opening under the wall, and they cowered back just out of reach of the tentacles, which continued to gyrate and twist probingly in their direction.

“Well, now that was a fight!” Beorna said, casting a healing spell to restore some of the color to Arun’s frost-blasted skin. “That warrior was nothing special, but that demon-snake put up a struggle!”

Zenna suddenly sat up. “Where’s Mole?”

Indeed, there was no sign of the gnome, or of the wizard Fetor Abradius.

 

[Lazybones]

I just observed that the story thread's gone over thirty thousand views. Thanks to my readers for making this one of the more popular ongoing story hours here at ENWorld!

* * * * *

Chapter 283

The raging cadence of the battle in the large chamber behind her grew strangely quiet as Mole somersaulted across the threshold, landing in an easy crouch in the lee of the half-open door in the corridor beyond.

She’d half-expected to find the wizard there waiting for her, but the loremaster had retreated to the intersection of the three corridors. He was surrounded by a shifting dance of mirror images, and although he was half-turned away from her, some sixth sense must have warned him of her presence, for he turned toward her as she appeared.

“Ah, the little rogue has come to chase me down again. What, no little animal helper, this time?”

“You’re not the first to underestimate me, Abradius. And my friends will be along in a few moments, once they’ve finished mopping up your ugly pals back there.”

The wizard sneered. “Come then, little one. Shall we dance?”

Abradius launched some sort of spell, but she must have resisted it, for nothing happened. She was already moving toward him, leaping in a slashing cartwheel that culminated in a springing leap, her dagger flashing out toward his throat. The loremaster had seen that move before, but he didn’t move, and too late Mole realized her mistake as she passed through an image, which popped as she impacted it.

“Nice try, little fool!” he said, reaching out and grabbing her on the shoulder. Mole cried out and staggered back, breaking the contact too late to escape the draw on her life force as the wizard’s vampiric touch worked its deadly effect upon her again.

She tumbled back out of reach, her side feeling like it was on fire. The wizard regarded her with a confident smile. “The taste of your life... quite satisfying. Perhaps I will keep you alive once I have dealt with the others, penned in a little cage in my laboratory, where I may... sample... you at my whim...”

“Save the pep talk, wizard. Time is running out for you...”

“Yes, yes, your friends, I know.” Without taking his eyes off her, he gestured vaguely toward the door. “Have you considered, perhaps, that they may have their hands quite full? You see, I’ve known Xail far longer than you have, my little sweet... and he has quite a few surprises in store...”

A loud crash and a chittering roar, accompanied by inarticulate cries from her friends, sounded from beyond the door. Mole took advantage of the momentary distraction to reach again into her bag of tricks, but before she could take out the animal-ball, a sea of black tentacles erupted from the floor and walls. Abradius, in the middle of a spell, was taken by surprise, and four of the tentacles lashed around him, tangling his arms and body and lifting him a foot into the air. The wizard cursed, but he was clearly not strong enough to break free on his own from the ensnaring spell.

A tentacle tried to grasp Mole’s body, but she easily slipped free and darted back out of their range. “Well, well,” she said with a nasty grin, as she unloaded her crossbow and calmly loaded a bolt into the mechanism.

Abradius twisted enough to face her. “Enjoy your temporary victory,” he snarled. “You have made an enemy today...”

“For a few seconds, anyway,” Mole interjected, as she lifted her loaded weapon and took aim.

“The guardian will destroy you! The pillars will not reveal their secrets to you!” Mole tightened her grip on the trigger of her bow, but even as the bowstring snapped taut, the wizard spoke a word of power, and vanished from the grasp of the tentacles. Mole looked for her bolt, but did not see it in the obscuring tangle of writhing tendrils.

“Well, maybe I gave him something to think about, anyway,” she said, looking unsuccessfully for a viable route through the tentacles. There didn’t seem to be one, but on the other hand, the sounds of the battle in the far room seemed to have eased off some. That could have meant one of two things, and as curiosity and concern overcame caution she was about to brave the spell when a voice came to her through the doorway.

“Mole? Are you all right?”

“Just fine, Dannel!” she yelled back. Belatedly, she looked around, in case the loud noise drew anything yucky to investigate, but the corridor behind her was quiet, as was the rest of the place other than the squishy sound made by the tentacles. Even so, the wizard’s final words made the place suddenly seem even more spooky, so she summoned another creature—a wolverine, this time, she observed with delight—to keep her company.

“Just wait until the spell runs its course!” Zenna yelled to her.

“Okay!” Mole yelled back. She looked around. In the odd blue light, everything looked... bad.

For once absent of curiosity to do some exploring, she sat down against the wall, and rubbed the wolverine under its chin.

“So, know any good stories?”

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 284

The black tentacles faded away in about a minute, so the companions quickly rejoined Mole and exchanged the usual barrage of healing magic. Zenna found that her new wand was already nearly half-depleted, but she didn’t begrudge its use, not here, with the series of deadly threats that they’d already confronted. Mole shared Abradius’s final words about another guardian, presumably something deadlier than what they’d faced thus far. Their resources were already considerably depleted, and most of them were still suffering from exhaustion as a result of the naga’s spell. But they were also wary of the wizard returning again with reinforcements, so they elected to press on cautiously, ready to withdraw if they encountered something beyond their abilities.

Zenna marveled at that; for all that their percentage of dwarven crazy-bravery was increasing, their tactics were almost approaching something resembling common sense.

The corridors were silent as they moved cautiously forward, deeper into the complex.

They entered a room that was mostly a huge, deep pit, its bottom beyond the range of their sight. A catwalk ran around the perimeter, and in the center of the pit a pair of pale pillars rose out of the darkness up to the ceiling high above them. The pillars were carved with the faint outlines of faces, each different, twisted into expressions of torment. That alone was disturbing enough, but when they stared at the pillars, the faces seemed to... move, writhing in frozen agony.

“Foul witchery!” Arun said, holding his sword up as if its light could banish the terrible sight.

“I take it these are the ‘soul pillars’,” Mole suggested.

“I don’t know,” Dannel said, casting wary glances both up at the ceiling and down into the pit. “I don’t see a guardian...”

Zenna stared at the pillars with a fixed gaze, so intent that she jumped slightly when Arun grasped her arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let us complete our search.”

They passed through a long, narrow tunnel lined with iron doors. The doors warded empty cells with deep holes in the floors, approximately the size of the glass coffins they’d seen up on the upper level. These gaps were all empty, although in a few of the small rooms they found some frozen supplies, carefully packed containers of food and water most likely left by the loremaster and his allies earlier.

Pressing on, they found a pair of rooms that clearly showed the mark of the wizard. One room was empty save for an intricate summoning diagram etched on the floor. Zenna confirmed that it was probably used for conjuring extra-planar creatures; each of them had their own ideas about the exact sort of outsider that one such as Fetor Abradius would summon. They left that room and investigated the other, a small room outfitted as a bedchamber. The most interesting thing there was a cache of papers they found in one of the drawers in Abradius’s desk. Zenna had hoped to uncover the mage’s spellbook, but apparently Abradius kept that essential artifact with him. But the papers nonetheless contained a number of interesting secrets.

They were written in the same hand as the note they’d found earlier, and outlined the searches by Abradius and his allies—a brief scrawl referred to “Cagewrights”—for information here in Karran-Kural. Zenna remembered the evil cage that now rested in the vault of the Temple of Helm, and shuddered. There were other references to the “guardian” that Abradius had mentioned to Aloustinai in his missive, but no details that she could find about the nature of the creature. Apparently Abradius had established a relationship with it, whatever it was, and in exchange for information about the outside world—gathered from the scrying crystal, presumably—it had granted him access to the soul pillars. Zenna felt as though there was something just beneath her perceptions here, something about the purpose and intent of these “Cagewrights” that she just couldn’t quite discern from the admittedly rambling and disjoined notes of Abradius.

Her frustration must have been evident in her face. “We’ll take them with us,” Dannel said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe Jenya can help us decipher their meaning.”

“The Striders include someone who may be of use as well,” Shensen said. “Meerthan is very knowledgeable about such things.”

Zenna saw that the others had already secured the room, with the door wedged slightly open to release the smoke from the little fire that Mole and Dannel had built. She must have spent longer than she thought reading through the notes. She rubbed her temples, where the genesis of a headache was just beginning to take hold.

“I’ll keep looking for more information,” she began, but Dannel forestalled her, taking the papers and putting them down on the desk.

“Later,” he told her. “For now, you need rest—we all do. Look at you; you can barely stand. We’re all worn out, exhausted from that spell.”

“I call dibs on the bed!” Mole said, jumping onto Abradius’s cot.

Their rest passed uneventfully, although Zenna felt uneasy when she woke from a deep sleep. She did not detect any magical auras, in particular a scrying sensor, so she tried to put her fears into the back of her mind. The next “morning” they gathered again for a meal provided out of the stores in Mole’s magical bag. Shensen and Zenna restored their protections against the dire cold of Karran-Kural, and they prepared their usual array of wards to be cast as soon as they were ready to move out and continue their explorations.

They had passed one more long corridor adjacent to the wizard’s rooms, and after reading his notes, they had a strong suspicion that its terminus was their final destination. Moving cautiously forward in single file, they finally came to another door ahead.

They were all on edge. A heady sense of anticipation hung in the air. This time, it was Beorna who first turned to Zenna, who nodded and slipped to the fore, kneeling before the doors as she cleared her mind to cast her clairvoyance spell.

The others watched as Zenna went through the complicated and lengthy ritual of casting the spell, the only sound her soft incantation and the occasional creak of armor as one of the dwarves shifted slightly.

Finally, she looked up, her eyes closed, facing the door. Again she lifted her hands to her forehead, turning slowly in a broad arc. And sucked in a startled gasp.

“What is it?” Beorna asked, her hands tightening on the hilt of her sword.

“The Pillars,” she breathed, continuing her scan. “Five of them... much larger than the others... I can feel the power from out here...”

“What about the guardian?” Arun asked.

“I do not see anything... Wait...” she said, turning in a broader arc.

She was nearly facing them when her eyes suddenly burst open, and she fell back, trembling, her hands clawing the air.

“Zenna!” Dannel exclaimed. “What is it?”

She landed against the iron door, and rebounded from it as if scalded. “Retreat! Back to the main corridor!”

“What is it?” Beorna repeated, facing the door as if it would grow fangs and attack them.

“Back, now!” Zenna said, all but pushing the dwarves ahead of her.

Her terror was contagious as they withdrew, although Arun and Beorna remained calm as they warded their retreat from behind. Zenna did not let them stop until they had returned to Abradius’s quarters, and shut the door behind them. She leaned against it, shaking. Dannel put his arms around her, and she accepted the solace, leaning back into him.

“Well?” Hodge finally said.

Zenna sucked in a deep breath. “Dragon,” she said.

“Bah! That it? You had me goin’, girl,” Hodge replied. “Why, how many o’ those ha’ we killed now, Arun? Three? Four?”

But none of the others responded, their eyes on Zenna’s grim face. “No,” she said. “It’s not like any of the others...”

“I don’t think I’m going to like this...” Mole said, but there was something eager in her fear, as she sat on the very edge of the wizard’s desk chair.

“It was clinging to the wall, above the door. Waiting for us. It detected my sensor...” Again, she shuddered, collecting herself with another deep breath before continuing.

“It’s undead. A skeleton, but intelligent. It had spells... I saw a shield up before it, and in its eyes... power...”

“A dracolich,” Beorna said. The word sounded through the room with the finality of the last nail being driven into a coffin.

 

[Elemental]

“A dracolich,” Beorna said. The word sounded through the room with the finality of the last nail being driven into a coffin.

Some days, it's not worth getting out of bed...

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 285

“A draco-what?” Hodge said.

“A dracolich,” Zenna said. “Undead. Immortal. Virtually invincible; even if you kill it, their spirits live on in a magical phylactery, and can take over another body, and rise again.”

“Uncle Cal’s tales, the Reaching Wood,” Mole said, and Zenna glanced at her and nodded.

“I have heard of such things,” Shensen said, her face troubled. “They are abominations, raised through eldritch magic, or through the activities of mad groups such as the Cult of the Dragon.”

“Okay, I get the idea. So why ain’t we dead?” Hodge asked.

“Abradius said it was a guardian,” Dannel said. “It may be trapped here, compelled to remain as a guardian of the Soul Pillars.”

“How big?” Beorna asked.

“I don’t know...” Zenna said. “Big. Huge. It was difficult to see.”

“Well, physically it wouldn’t be able to fit through that tiny corridor,” Beorna said.

“So then,” Hodge said. “It can’t get out. So what’s the problem? We got the wizzerd, we kin just leave.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Hodge,” Dannel said.

The dwarf shook his head. “Nay. It never be.” Tossing his axe onto the desk, he stepped over to the cot and settled heavily onto it, drawing out a flask from his pouch.

Beorna stepped in front of the door, drawing their attention to her. “This thing is a horror beyond imagining,” she said. “If it were to be released, it could destroy Cauldron, and wreak havoc on the surrounding region. Here, with it confined, and with forewarning, we may have a chance.”

Hodge muttered something that wasn’t quite audible. Beorna glanced over at him, and then shifted her gaze to Shensen.

“I fear that this enemy is beyond anything any of us have faced before. Together, we may defeat it. But I understand if... if you feel that you cannot continue.”

Shensen nodded. “I stand with you.”

Hodge looked up. “Hey, I dinna say nothin’ about backin’ down!”

“My uncle and his friends killed one, once,” Mole said. “And I bet we’re at least as tough now as they were, then.” Her grin betrayed her own eagerness, although Zenna thought that her legs would buckle under her, if Dannel loosened his arms around her body.

Beorna turned back to Zenna. “Could you tell what manner of dragon it had been, in life? If we know its type, we can prepare wards against its breath attack.”

Zenna’s brow furrowed in concentration, but she finally shook her head. “I... I’m not sure,” she said. “I only got a brief look; it seemed like it was mostly a skeleton.”

The templar frowned. “The more we know, the better our chances against it.”

Zenna nodded. Drawing upon a reserve of strength, she squeezed Dannel in thanks and then stepped away from him. She crossed over to the desk, leaning against it as she turned to face them.

“There may be an answer,” she said. “Abradius’s notes... I believe that they held enough information for me to delve into the lesser pillars, the ones we encountered earlier in the pit chamber. Abradius mentioned secrets, of mysteries and lore possessed by the spirits trapped inside them. I may be able to use them to get the information we need about the guardian.”

“Those pillars were suffused with taint,” Arun said. “An evil like that is not easily tamed, even for a good purpose.”

“And that taint may spread to those who seek to touch it,” Beorna echoed.

“I can ward myself,” Zenna said. “If you have a better idea...”

“I do,” Beorna said. “I may implore Helm for guidance, seek a divination that may help us.”

Zenna nodded; she herself had access to the same spell. “That may work,” she said, “Although as you know, even such revelations are usually murky.”

“Better to risk that, than blindly risk your very soul.”

“Very well.”

So once more they rested, ate, and kept a vigilant watch. Karran-Kural was silent, although each of the companions thought they could feel the malevolent presence of the guardian even through dozens of yards of stone separating them from the dracolich. Could it sense them, here? It knew that someone was there, that much was certain from Zenna’s viewing. How many centuries had the creature lived... no, “existed” might be a better word, for the grim unlife of such a thing was wholly unlike their mortal lives. How many foes had it faced and overcome? How much life-knowledge existed in the spark of its brain?

Later, Beorna knelt on the hard stones of the floor, lost in prayer. She invoked the power of Helm, and finally lifted her head, and spoke words in a deep voice not entirely her own.

In the depths, the guardian of the pillars waits
The drake eternal, yet bound by ancient lore
He brings the storm, stealing breath, stealing life
Yet the secrets he guards may mean life for many

“Cryptic, as always,” Arun commented.

“You’d think that as a god, Helm could be a little more plain-spoken,” Mole said.

“Well, it reinforces the importance of beating the creature, if we didn’t already have enough reason,” Dannel said. “But it doesn’t tell us what we wanted to know.”

“Yet I think the clue we need is there,” Zenna said. “Stealing breath, stealing life... That suggests poison gas.”

“A green, then,” Shensen said.

“The same kind Uncle Cal and the others fought,” Mole said.

Zenna nodded. She remembered the tale. Remembered also that some of their allies didn’t survive that fight.

“Let us make our preparations,” she said.

 

[Broccli_Head]

hmm...i thought it would be a blue (brings the storm) or a shadow (stealing life).
where did Zenna get green...

 

[Dungannon]

I dunno, Broccli. The first thing I thought of when I saw "storm" and "stealing breath" was a white.

 

[Lazybones]

hmm...i thought it would be a blue (brings the storm) or a shadow (stealing life).
where did Zenna get green...

Well, remember Zenna has an INT score of 18. If mine was that high, I could probably come up with better clues.

When I was an undergrad, I read a book entitled A Higher Form of Killing, by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxton. It's a history of chemical and biological warfare, and some of the stuff it has about the effects of chlorine gas... and that was only one of the first chem agents developed for use in modern warfare. Needless to say, that book has shaped my perception of a green dragon's breath weapon. Thus the "stealing breath, stealing life" refers to what happens when you get a lungful of that stuff. And the "storm" part of the clue refers to a particular feat that the dragon has (IIRC "Tempest Breath", I don't have the mod right in front of me here), which gives its breath weapon the force of strong wind.

Which we'll see shortly...

* * * * *

Chapter 286

The door opened slowly, the frost-rimed iron resisting before finally swinging fully open with a loud creak.

The chamber of the Soul Pillars was exactly as Zenna had described it to the others. The place was huge, maybe a hundred feet across, a circular chamber bored deep down into the depths of Toril. A broad, ten-foot catwalk spread out along the near wall, while a bridge fashioned apparently of solid ice led out over the chasm, toward the five massive pillars that stood in an irregular collection in the center of the chamber. Frozen air whistled up from someplace deep below, and the ceiling above was lost in shadow. The faint glow from the ceiling panels behind them was the only illumination; this place seemed somehow more suited to darkness.

The companions had prepared for an immediate attack upon opening the door, but when the cavern appeared empty, they were quick to put their plans into action. Zenna spoke a word of command, and a small winged imp, a four-foot creature wreathed in wisps of flames, flew out into the chamber. It went reluctantly, it seemed, sputtering curses in its own language, but that was fine from Zenna’s perspective; the creature’s role was primarily to serve as bait.

The mephit was followed a few moments later by a pair of sleek dire bats, each with a copious fifteen-foot wingspan, that materialized in the air above. The bats glided out across the room; one started to dive toward the mephit, but a spoken command from Shensen, who’d prepared the ability to speak with animals, sent it back out on its gliding course around the perimeter of the room.

The companions filed through the doorway, spreading out into a broad half-circle centered on the door. Dannel tossed his stick bearing the continual flame forward, out onto the ice bridge, its flickering light casting deep shadows around the perimeter of the room. For good measure, he’d cast a light spell on the peak of the steel skullcap he customarily wore, to ensure enough light for him and Mole to fight by.

Zenna and Arun were at the center of the circle, the dwarf protecting the tiefling with his body. They were the anchor, important for the paladin’s ability to protect the others from fear, and the positive influence of Zenna’s magic circle against evil. The others were heavily warded as well, and as Shensen stepped through the threshold, already casting another spell, Beorna clashed her sword against the hard stone floor, sounding a ringing note of their arrival.

“Well, come on, drake! We haven’t got all day!”

Even as her words sounded throughout the chamber, the templar invoked the power of Helm, and began to grow in size. This had been one of the disputes in their plan, for while being enlarge enhanced her strength and reach, it would make it difficult for her to retreat, if things turned out poorly.

Mole had fearlessly darted forward to the edge of the platform, and thus was the first to detect the danger. “From below!” she shouted, dropping back as a rush of air arose from the chasm. “Incoming!”

The mephit chittered and flapped its wings madly, gaining altitude. The bats swept around the far side of the room, giving the Soul Pillars a wide berth, and headed back toward the entrance where the companions stood in a soft bubble of light against the dark.

And then, Vittris Bale arrived.

The dracolich surged out of the chasm, spreading wings that no longer bore flesh to bear it aloft, the sheer force of its hatred of life, the undying power that animated it, now powering its flight. It rose up over them, a huge monstrosity, its wingspan nearly thirty feet across, a skeletal horror whose eyes burned with a cold blue flame.

The dracolich’s huge jaws opened, and it unleashed a fury of poison upon them with the force of a driving gale.