Burningspear said:
Demi lich getting a piggyback?
Interesting how you play the attitudes of the undead npc's, not the mummy i mean...he is just evil
I see the "good guy" undead as being basically all insane. I mean imagine, they were all living individuals, transformed into immortal undead, incapable of feeling the normal inputs of a corporeal body, tasked with spending thousands of years on what is essentially guard duty with a single "inmate" with whom they don't interact directly. Pretty dull stuff, I'd imagine.
As I noted earlier, we're at sort of an unusual cliffhanger today; I'll post more after this update.
* * * * *
Chapter 62
THE CHOICE
The difference was immediately evident.
Allera’s stare traveled upward, to where the top of the pyramid of translucent energy approached the summit of the huge chamber. The barrier, however, was now a solid blue, and seemed almost insubstantial, as though she could push through it with a gentle thrust of her hand. She did no such thing, of course, and withdrew from it as she and Dar, following behind Amurru, entered the prison of the Ravager.
“So only one beam is still working,” Dar was asking. Allera drew her attention back to the moment; she could not afford to let her mind wander, even if she was still suffering from the aftereffects of her clash with Navev and the demilich. Suddenly, she realized that she’d seen no trace of either creature in the room with the pedestal. Had the warlock been destroyed?
But as she caught sight of the others, that thought faded into the back of her mind. The entry of the chamber had been the site of a gruesome and terrible battle. The ravager spawn lay in a bloody heap upon the floor near the doorway, its body riven by deep, penetrating cuts. Its head lay at an improbable angle, nearly severed from its thick neck.
The spawn was not the only casualty. Bodies lay nearby, covered with cloaks that were soaked through with blood. Allera did not have to see their faces; she knew them by their absence in the small group of people who were present. Kiron was pulling Aldos’s body over to join the others where they were arrayed in a neat line by the far wall. Maricela was tending to Selaht; while the monk seemed hale and whole now, Allera instantly recognized the hints that indicated that he’d been nearly dead not long ago. The shredded remains of his robe, lying in a puddle near his feet, followed smears of blood that ran all the way to wall, not far from where the dead beast lay.
Zethas and Tertius, the only other survivors, were guarding a pair of captives that knelt nearby, tightly bound and gagged. With a start, Allera recognized one of them as the wizard that they’d battled in that temple of Orcus where Talen had been brought back to life as a vampire. The wizard sagged against his bonds, and looked as though he might collapse at any moment; he looked as though he was in shock, overcome by some unidentified trauma. The other man, clad only in an undertunic and loincloth, had strong features and an expression that was far too calm for this circumstance; he met Allera’s gaze as though he were not restrained, and they were equals meeting in the street. There was something odd about the way he leaned, and it took a few moments for Allera to realize that his left leg was missing at the knee, and likewise his left arm ended suddenly at the elbow. He wasn’t bleeding, at least not as she could see, but she would have guessed that his amputations were recent nevertheless.
Kiron finished his task and straightened as they approached. “Report!” Dar snapped.
“Qatarn, Aldos, and Secundus are dead, sir,” the knight said. He looked haggard, and Allera could tell that he’d been brought back from death’s door by magical healing as well.
“I thought I told you to follow me, with the healer,” Dar returned, an edge on his voice.
“He was in no condition to follow your order,” Maricela snapped, helping the restored monk to his feet. Selaht wavered, and Allera knew that only the monk’s discipline kept him upright; being suddenly restored after taking a beating took something out of a man. She’d seen Dar do it enough, sometimes multiple times during a single battle, but had also seen him pay the price, after. Sometimes it seems that the normal rules just didn’t apply to her husband. “Once you killed that... thing, only Zethas was still on his feet,” the priestess continued, “and we needed him here.” She glanced meaningfully over to the captives. “That one,” she said, nodding at the crippled man, “We found him crawling over the remains of his severed arm and leg to get to his sword. He almost put his knife into Zethas for all that, before Kiron was able to help subdue him.”
“You can cut his freaking throat for all I care,” Dar said. Allera put her hand on his arm and asked, “What about Letellia? She went for the red tunnel, as Aldos went for the blue.” The presence of the dead knight indicated that he had never reached it, but the blue beam remained intact still.
“We found Aldos lying on the ground under the gantry with his neck broken,” Kiron said, “But he took the bastard that killed him with him. I... I don’t know what happened to the sorceress.”
“She failed,” Amurru said. The simple declaration drew them all around, to where the lich stood facing them, the massive blue wall of the Ravager’s prison rising up behind it. “We have all failed, and the Ravager’s time has come. Soon, it will walk free upon the surface of the world again, and there is naught that can stop it.”
“We killed these,” Dar said, nodding in the direction of the slain spawn. “We’ll kill the big one as well.”
“You do not know of what you speak, warrior,” the lich said, its sonorous voice echoing deep from the cavern of its skull. “The Ravager is to these, as dragon is to a newt.”
“How long?” Allera asked. She leaned against Dar, more for the reassuring presence of him, than for her own physical weakness. She knew that she would need a
restoration spell to fully recover from her own experience, but there would be time for that later. For now, she focused her attention upon the ancient guardian.
The lich raised its mace like a scepter. “Days. Possibly one, no more than six. And the remaining spawn will likely stir themselves before then.”
“And the beams? They cannot be restored?” Dar asked.
The lich’s cold stare seemed to suggest a negative answer, but after a moment, the creature shifted, and it lifted the skull cradled in the elbow of its off arm. A red glow flickered deep within the cavernous sockets of the skull, and Allera could feel her companions tense, ready for battle even in their depleted state. But while the healer could feel the cold presence that indicated undeath, she felt no malevolence there, only an ancient sadness.
And then a voice issued from the skull, startling her. The voice was that of a woman, speaking in an accented but clear common speech. The words came out in a whisper, but despite the distance Allera could hear them as clearly as if they had been whispered in her ear.
“I am Nycristi, one of the Three set to ward this place, to keep the Ravager bound for all time. Long have I slumbered, but now the bindings falter, and the day against which we have struggled has come. Those who set us here, they knew that it might, knew that entropy is a constant, and all things that are can change. A hundred years, a thousand, a million millions, so long as the Ravager existed, then our watch would continue.”
“So how do we beat it?” Dar asked. He clenched and unclenched his fists, and Allera thought he kept them from the hilt of his sword only through an effort.
“Our civilization was old and mature, and commanded great power. The Ravager was our greatest creation, and our biggest mistake. What was done, could not be undone, only kept bound.”
“But the wards have been broken,” Maricela said. “Can they be restored?”
“It is possible,” Nycristi said. “But it will require a fresh sacrifice. Two new guardians must come forward. The third of our original cabal, Obares Sin, long lost from us and from himself, must be found. Then the ritual may be completed, and the beams restored, if it is successful. It will difficult, and dangerous, and there is no guarantee that it will work. Many died, when the prison was originally created, so many aeons before.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Dar said. “Speak plainly. What do you mean by a ‘sacrifice’?”
Amurru lowered the skull. “Artifacts of power maintained the beams,” the lich said. “But they were created through the sacrifice of the life energy of the Three. I was one, Nycristi another, and Obares Sin the third. Two beams have failed, and so two more must give all of themselves to save the many.”
“I will make the sacrifice, for Camar,” Kiron said. Maricela gasped, but she met the young knight’s eyes, and nodded, in understanding if not acceptance. “Whatever must be given, I will give it willingly.”
The lich nodded. “You are brave, dragon knight, but your soul is not strong enough to withstand this burden. There are only two here who can complete the ritual.” Its stare left no doubt as to whom it was referring.
Under that stare, Dar and Allera stood quietly, each holding close to the other. Finally, Dar spat. “To the hells with that,” he said. “I’ll take my chances against the beast.”
“I stand with you, my love,” Allera said, “But can we put our lives, even our souls, against those that will die if we do not do what they say?”
“You trust them?”
“I... I do not believe that they are lying. I’ve communed with Amurru, I’ve sensed what’s in there, beyond the barrier. It’s... I cannot describe it, but it is
immense, in all senses of the word.” She leaned into him, and shuddered.
Dar reached down and lifted her chin with his hand. “I know it’ll be tough, maybe impossible for us to beat. But you heard what the skull said. The prison will fail someday, eventually, and when that thing gets free, somebody’s going to have to stop it. We may as well do it now.” He looked around at the others, but against the enormity of the decision that faced them, none of them could find anything to say. Finally his gaze dropped back down to Allera, lingering for a moment before he looked back up at the lich.
“You must decide,” the lich said. “The fate of the world is in your hands.”