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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1909057" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 284The 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.</blockquote>

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