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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2705837" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 486Dannel only had an instant to react.  Calling upon his magic, he summoned a feather fall.  His descent slowed, although he was only a few strides from the huge opening of the tendriculos’s “mouth”.  The undead plant’s maw snapped shut prematurely, sending a gust of air sick with the stench of rot up at the elf.  But his respite was momentary, as the creature reared up, lifting the upper half of its body to meet the descending elf, intent on engulfing this prey, one way or another. There wasn’t anywhere for him to go; the spell did not give him control over the direction of his fall.   The tendriculos’s maw opened wide again, four, six, eight feet across, leaving no option but the dark hole deep within the creature. Dannel saw the jagged-edged opening clench, and as it started to snap shut, he set Alakast in its path. The tendriculos’s powerful jaws closed on the staff, and Dannel’s descent abruptly stopped as the creature impaled itself on both ends of the weapon.  One side of the staff sank two feet into its body, while the other caught on a dense ridge of muscular fiber that rimmed the interior of the maw, tearing half of the creature’s jaw construction from its moorings.  The creature quivered and plunged forward, and Dannel, already gagging from the stench of the monster’s insides, could only hang on as it pitched around on its axis, falling for a full second before it came to a sudden and abrupt stop.  Dannel was slammed against the insides of its mouth opening, a spongy mass of fibers that oozed greenish sludge.  The stuff burned his hands, but the tendriculos had stopped moving, and he was able to get up.  Alakast was still wedged into place in its jaws, supporting a narrow opening that he was able to crawl through.  Ellene was there to help him extract himself.  It would take more work to recover his weapon, but for the moment, verifying that the creature was indeed dead—well, more dead—seemed more prudent.  “We need to cut into it, get Eldren and Lyson,” he began, but Ellene pointed to the side of the creature, where a long gash was visible in its bulbous body.  Aymie was helping Eldren, who was covered in the acidic green goo, drag Lyson’s limp form through the gap.  “Eldren went at it from the inside while you were slamming at it from without,” Ellene said.  Her words were barely understandable, her jaw a swollen red mess, but Dannel found her presence a welcome sight.  The tendriculos did not appear to be regenerating further, so he glanced back at the ruin, and the empty arch.  “It did not attack us,” Ellene said.  “Do you think it’s waiting in there for us?”Dannel nodded.  He wiped his face, pulling away some of the sticky green muck.  Ellene handed him a clean rag, and he nodded in thanks.  He felt spent, and for a moment he could not speak. Eldren came over to him.  If he was a mess, the ranger looked like death personified.  The flesh of his face, neck, and hands bled freely where the acidic ooze inside the tendriculos had burned it.  It was a miracle that he’d been able to resist its paralysis, Dannel thought, but then he saw the fire that burned in the elf’s eyes, the determination that had taken on an almost frightening intensity.  He walked under his own power, Aymie having gone to help Jannae.  Lyson remained where they’d laid him; that he was dead was obvious even before Dannel got a good look at his face. “Once the paralysis wears off, we will proceed inside,” Eldren said.  Dannel found a sudden and irrational anger rise up inside him.  “Nice of you to show such concern,” he snapped, glancing meaningfully at Jannae.Eldren’s gaze looked like it could have frozen water.  “Do not speak of what you know nothing.  We are here to complete a task, and that gets first priority—above anything.  Everyone here knows that.  Lyson knew it, and Caylen, and Jovran, and Oloran, and Dalan, and Yaela.  Think of the elves at Korul Ulgor, and think of the same at Aldair Kelalei, and throughout the wood.”Dannel thought of the ranger leaping down to aid his companions against the shamblers, and the way he’d rushed to Jannae’s defense against the wraiths.  “I spoke hastily,” he said.  “I think we’re all near the limits of endurance.”Eldren took a breath.  “We will have to push that limit a little, cousin,” he said quietly.  Turning, pain evident in every movement, he turned and walked back over to Aymie and Jannae, limping slightly. They distributed the last of their healing—a few potions, a few cure light wounds from Jannae, once she’d recovered from the tendriculos’s paralysis.  It was not enough to fully restore the injuries suffered in the battle, but it would have to be enough.  During their preparations nothing stirred from within the ruin.  The five elves gathered before the arch.  “Let’s finish this,” Eldren said, stepping forward into the ruin. The transition through the arch was mostly symbolic; the walls of the ruin were irregular and rose barely to chest height at their tallest, so they did not feel that separated from the world outside.  The stones that made up the floor near the entry were cracked and seeded with intrusive vegetation, but as they penetrated further inside their condition improved, though still worn by time and exposure.  Runes and other designs had once been carved into the floor, it appeared, but now only faint outlines were left.They continued through other remnants of rooms.  At several points they had to detour around massive piles of fallen rubble, including columns up to five feet thick and thirty feet long, now reduced to broken slabs of white marble.  Dannel began to think that through some trick of perception the interior of the place had to be bigger than its outward appearance; by his judgment they should have already exited out the rear.  And then they saw the portal up ahead. It was another arch, but it made the one outside seem feeble by comparison.  It was not unduly high, reaching an apex perhaps eight feet above the smooth stones of the floor, but it stretched at least fifteen feet across.  The arch was formed of white stone, as pure as new-fallen snow, fashioned into a weave of twisting vines interwoven into a strand about two feet across.  The arch stood unsupported, and architecturally should have collapsed under its own weight.  They could see the chamber beyond it, yet another unremarkable ruined hall, but there was an odd haze between them, like a bit of heat-mirage rising off of sun-baked pavement.  Jannae reached down and unfastened the clasps on her pouch.  Eldren glanced at her, and she nodded. The elves stepped forward, through the arch.  Dannel felt a tingle pass across his skin, followed by a sudden wave of nausea. He looked around.  They were through, and behind them there was the portal, filled with a haze through which he could see the ruins outside.  But their immediate surroundings had changed. The walls were still cracked and uneven, of the same white marble and gray granite of the ruin outside.  But the sky, the sun, the soft breeze of the day… all of that was gone, replaced by a neutral gray haze that surrounded the chamber like a translucent dome.  Ahead of them broad stone steps led down into a sunken hall, its floor maybe seven or eight feet below their current level, and that was new too. They walked forward slowly, silently, as if in a dream.  Dannel felt a lurching twist that passed through his body… not like a wave of sickness per se, but more like a fundamental wrongness against which his body rebelled.  The others felt it too, he could see. The floor of the hall was covered by smashed pieces of stone of varying shapes and colors.  It was as if a frieze on the ceiling had come collapsing down at some point… but above, there was only the gray dome.  Amorphous forms on stunted pillars surrounded the hall at even intervals.  Perhaps statues once, now all that was left was shattered remnants that might have been feet; it was impossible to tell.  Eldren lifted his sword, indicating a wide doorway that lay between two of those figures, through which an odd light emanated. They pressed on, trying to avoid the loose rock that crunched loudly beneath their boots, elven magic notwithstanding. The doorway opened quickly onto a long chamber, maybe twenty feet across and twice that in depth.  Enough remained of the intricate carvings on the walls to indicate that this room had once been beautiful.  But they only noticed that in passing, for their attention was immediately drawn to the center of the room. The mythal was a dagger-shaped wedge of crystal, about six feet long and a foot thick.  It rested on a pair of white marble pillars about four feet off the ground, perpendicular to the doorway, which appeared to be the only way into or out of the chamber.  The glow came from it, a yellowish light tainted by the ugly black smear that suffused the center of the crystal, at the top.  That taint was projected by the light out upon the ceiling and upper half of the walls, shifting slightly to make it look like creeping black vines were crawling forward across the cracked ancient stone.  “It’s… beautiful… and horrible…” Eldren breathed.  For a moment, they were overcome, and could only stand there, watching it.Something buzzed in the back of Dannel’s mind.  He tried to shake it, as it was distracting him from the awesome power of the artifact, but it kept at him, until he suddenly realized what was wrong.  The lich… where is the lich!He felt rather than heard Jannae coming forward, her hands digging into her pouch.  She moved slowly, as if she was underwater, pushing through a flooded grotto.  He and Eldren turned at the same moment, looking at her, and so both saw the lich materialize behind her, its bony claw outstretched, rimed in a black aura that echoed the corruptive stain upon the mythal.  “Jannae!” Eldren yelled, willing his body forward, his sword coming up.  Too slowly, too late. The elf priestess turned and saw the lich.  The baelnorn laid its hand upon her face, its long fingers clasping hard upon her temples.  Jannae screamed as the lich poured a harm spell into her, and her body contorted in obvious agony before it broke the connection, and she collapsed like child’s doll tossed casually away.</blockquote>

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