NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1774419" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 229“I knew all along he could not be trusted,” Morgan spat.  “He gave us ample reason to mistrust him.  We should have destroyed him when we had the chance.”“Now that’s a bit far,” Dannel began.  “We all agreed—“ “I dinna agree wit’ nothin’!” Hodge said.  “I told yer all that yer were crazy, when yer first talked o’ comin’ to this place!”“Enough,” Arun said, the single word cutting through the argument.  “What’s done is done.  It is time to finish this.”“Good,” Morgan said.  “But mark my words, the next time I see that sorcerer, he’s going to feel the touch of my blade.”  His gaze was fixed on Zenna as he spoke, but the tiefling ignored him, as she’d ignored the rest of the argument; her attention was on the small motionless form wrapped in a blanket at her feet.  She knelt, drawing upon the tendrils of power that she accessed through her mental deliberations.  She felt that same momentary surge of awe that she always did, in that moment where she reached outside herself, and drew upon that deep well of power that thrummed just below the surface of reality, linking all worlds with its currents of energy.Mole stirred, her groan drawing everyone’s attention to her. “How do you feel?” Dannel asked. “Weak,” she managed.  “Anybody got something to eat?”It took the better part of an hour to get ready.  Zenna and Arun prepared spells to purge the remaining poisons from their bloodstream, and they treated the lingering injuries that they’d had left over from the prior day’s battle.  Zenna altered her spell selection subtly, suspecting that a confrontation with their former ally might be close at hand.  The others checked weapons and armor, spoke quietly of meaningless things, or in the case of Morgan, paced impatiently before the twisting stair that marked their path forward.Finally they were prepared.  The staircase ascended in a tight spiral much like the one they had traversed to get to the nexus room; this second stair, however, was much longer.  Onward they trudged, forming a long string that moved slowly but steadily upward, step by step.  By the time that they neared the top, with another large chamber visible above, Zenna’s impression was that there was no way that they could still be inside the skull, but that could have just been an illusion fostered by her tired muscles.  “Careful now,” Dannel’s voice came back down to them, softly, as he led them out from the stair into the chamber beyond.  Zenna paused at the landing to cast a few spells, but a few moments later joined her companions.  She was invisible, her soft boots making barely a whisper on the stone floor. The room was a vast circle, easily fifty feet across, a huge bubble in the stone.  A large round opening was visible in the ceiling above them, and Zenna realized that they had to be behind the eye socket of the skull.  A thick, raging pillar of burning plasma rose from a point a few feet above the ground on the far side of the room, ascending to the opening.  From that geyser, the familiar plasms took form and rose out from the eye, beginning their journey to the eternally burning sky above.  Someone was here, standing in the center of the room, and for a moment Zenna thought it was Kaurophon.  Her companions apparently agreed, by the way they readied their weapons.  But then the creature shifted and faced them, and they could see that it was another mummy, its gilded armor glimmering with a bright red glow reflected from the plasma geyser.  “Spread out,” Arun cautioned, as they moved slowly forward, alert for an ambush. The mummy lifted a hand in greeting.  “Adimarchus, Most Potent Ruler of Occiptus, bids you welcome to the Final Test of the Smoking Eye.” he intoned.  “A worthy successor to the throne of Adimarchus must complete only one more task.  To rule Occipitus—to grasp its power and use it for good or ill—means to sacrifice everything you hold dear.  The final test is this: sacrifice an ally to the plasma, and Occipitus is yours!”“Simple, isn’t it?” came a voice from elsewhere in the room.  Over the noise of the roaring geyser, and the cavernous acoustics of the chamber, it was difficult to place its source with any precision.  The identity of the speaker, however, was completely evident. Kaurophon.  “You always intended to betray us,” Dannel said, scanning the shadows, Zenna’s crossbow loaded in his hands, Alakast slung across his back by a leather cord.  “All your fine words... just empty lies.”“I honestly did not know what to expect, nor do I wish you any particular ill,” came the sorcerer’s distorted voice.  Zenna continued scanning the room, using her just-cast detect magic to try and locate sorcerer by the various spells he no doubt had folded upon himself.  As she swept the room, she detected various auras, but upon closer examination none of them seemed to reflect the potencies she’d expected to find, given what she knew of Kaurophon’s magic.  “We can still settle this without violence,” Arun said, although the way Morgan, standing ten feet to the right of him, carried himself, it was clear that the knight was only waiting for a clear target before unleashing a storm of death with his shining sword. “Unfortunately that is not possible.  You heard the proctor; one of you, at least, must be sacrificed, for me to ascend to Adimarchus’s place.”Morgan suddenly lunged and swept his sword out at empty air; his sword cutting through nothing.  But even as he recovered, Zenna realized what she had missed.  She turned her attention back to the aura that she’d detected and skipped over, the glow surrounding the one obvious figure before them...“The mummy!” she yelled.  “He’s standing by the mummy!” They all turned toward the silent guardian, but before Zenna could do anything else a wave of utter cold blasted over her, transforming her world to white pain.</blockquote>

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