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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3699912" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 231TRAPPEDDar felt as though he’d been worked over by one of the back-alley gangs that frequented the dark corners of the Pike in Camar.  He groaned, and with an effort managed to roll over.  Where the hell was he?He blinked and looked around.  He was in a cavern, lit only by the tenuous flickers of one of their everburning torches.  There was a stale, sterile odor in the air, and a persistent bubbling noise, like a cauldron left too long over the flame.He felt a momentary pang of panic, then his hand closed on the hilt of Valor, in its scabbard once more.  He pulled himself up to a seated position, and saw that he wasn’t alone.  The others were there, lying unconscious around him... wait.  Honoratius was missing, and Alderis. And Allera. Something cold and hard clamped down inside his chest, and he dragged himself to his feet.  They were on the edge of a small island in the middle of the cavern.  They were surrounded by a pool of boiling water, the bubbles rising through it the source of the sound he’d detected earlier.  He frowned... something wasn’t quite right about that, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.  He moved over to Talen.  “Commander!” he hissed.  There was no response.  “Damn it, get up, you bastard!” he said, poking the prone knight hard with his boot.  Talen groaned; at least he wasn’t dead. Dar took another look around.  There were two other figures lying on the far side of the island.  At first he thought it might be the mages, but then he saw that they were quite obviously dead.  One was a skeleton, still clad in the remains of armor, while the other... well, it wasn’t alive, that much was obvious.  “What... what happened?”  It was Shay, just coming to, clutching her head.  “Talen?”  “He’s alive,” Dar said.  “See if you can bring the cleric around.”  The fighter’s gaze remained on the second dead guy.  Dar recognized its tattered garb; he’d certainly seen enough priests of Orcus to know the livery.  Again, there was something not quite right there, and his fingers itched on the hilt of his sword. As a result he wasn’t quite surprised when the creature stirred, and started getting to its feet.  The smell came on in a wave; Dar was surprised that he hadn’t detected it before.  “We got trouble,” he told Shay, putting himself between the creature and the others.  Talen groaned again, but Nelan and the two elves had not even stirred as of yet. The monster came to its feet, and Dar could clearly identify it now, a ghoul, or perhaps a ghast by the stench that rose from its body like a cloud.  It was slow at first, like a man rising from a deep sleep; Dar wondered how long it had been here.  But it recovered quickly in the presence of living flesh, and after a few tenuous steps it lowered its head and charged, extending claws caked in old dirt.  Dar held his ground, and at the last instant swept Valor around in a glittering arc.  The axiomatic blade bit deep, and the ghast was flung to the ground.  At least most of it; its left arm landed on the edge of the island, and the upper part of its head rolled into the bubbling water, bounced for a moment on the flow, and then dropped out of sight. Dar went over to check on the other body.  No, the skeleton was actually dead.  Its clothes had been reduced to scraps, but the other gear was actually in pretty decent shape.  There was a longspear, its head dipped slightly into the pool, and a sword in a leather scabbard that had gone to pieces.  The skeleton’s breastplate was in better shape than it had first appeared, but looked to be fashioned of large scales of faded red hide, rather than metal.  When Dar prodded it, he found a steel buckler under the man’s body, its straps rotted away but otherwise intact.  There was also the remains of a pack, now just a rotted heap.  “Where... where are we?” Talen asked.  Shay was helping him to his feet, but the knight was still pretty unsteady.  “We’re in a cell,” Dar growled, looking around the cavern.  And indeed, there were no exits as far as they could see.  The cavern wasn’t very big, and even their weak lights fully illuminated its extent. “Where’s Honoratius?” Talen asked, as he shrugged off Shay’s assistance.  He didn’t see the scout’s hurt expression, but Dar did, before she turned to help the others.  Nelan and the elves were starting to move, but it was clear that the aftereffects of their run-in with the evil skulls were lingering. “Gone.  Along with Allera, and the mad elf,” Dar said.  Talen looked down at the dismembered ghast.  “What was that?”“Undead.  Lucky for us it was napping when we arrived.”“Yeah, lucky,” Talen said, looking around.  The knight was still getting his bearings, and he removed his helm, running a grimy hand through his hair.“Headache?”“Yeah,” Talen said, but he didn’t elaborate as he replaced the heavy helmet and secured the strap.“Looks like we might miss our deadline,” Dar said. “At the moment, we need to focus on getting out of here, and finding the others,” Talen said.  “Shay, how are the others?”“They’ll live,” the scout replied.  Nelan was on his feet, but Mehlaraine and Selanthas were still having difficulty.  Shay offered a hand to the elven duelist; after a moment’s hesitation, Mehlaraine took it.  But as she got to her feet, she hissed a warning, and pushed away from Shay, drawing her rapier from its scabbard in a still-unsteady motion. The companions turned as one, weapons at the ready, to see a ghost floating above the skeletal remains of the dead warrior.</blockquote>

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