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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3792841" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 261DESCENTThe stairs seemed to go on for longer this time, perhaps because each step drew them closer to a confrontation that they were not looking forward to. Not for most of them, at least. “I am going to cut that freaking wizard’s head off,” Dar muttered, his fist tight around the hilt of Valor.  “When I get done with him, there’s no freaking way he’s coming back again.”The darkness of the shaft remained close around them, despite the multiple magical lights that they carried.  Nelan had not had the opportunity to recover his daylight spell, so they had to accept the gloom, which seemed to intensify as they penetrated deeper under the ground.  They passed the warding galleries near the bottom of the shaft.  There was no sign of the goblin defenders, but that did not mean that they were not there, watching. When they reached the bottom, however, they quickly found the reason for the quiet in the shaft.  “Damn... it looks like the gobbos have given up on the outside world altogether,” Dar said. The eight of them stood facing a wall of rubble, a complete collapse of the tunnel that led in the direction of Grezneck.  It was impossible to know how far the collapse extended, but from what they’d encountered of the mining talents of the goblins of Rappan Athuk, it was likely that they’d been as thorough with this as with all of their endeavors. “This way,” Nelan said, drawing their attention to the tunnel that was still intact, heading in the opposite direction of the collapse. “Did the goblins ever say what lay down this way?” Allera asked. “No,” Shay said, moving ahead to the lead.  She drew Beatus Incendia, the light of the holy sword flaring out around her.  The tunnel ahead was a rough but straight passage that extended without break or interruption as far as they could see ahead.  “Let’s go.”“It would appear that the scout has decided to eschew stealth, at least for the moment,” Selanthas observed quietly. “She knows that they know that we are coming,” Alderis said, feeling something tug at him as he witnessed the passion of the woman, all of her loss and fear and anger poured into a single-minded intensity to recover her lover.  Honoratius leaned against the wall of the passage.  “Are you all right, archmage?” Allera asked. “Yes.  Yes, I am fine.  It is just... the strain... it is not easy.”“Just hold on a little bit longer, magus,” Dar said, his voice almost gentle.  Adjusting the straps of his pack, he started down the tunnel after Shay.  They walked onward for a goodly time, the minutes blending together without count in the dark eternity of the tunnel.  Other than slight variations in the walls of the passage, their route remained unchanged.  With each step they took their lights revealed more corridor ahead, and the darkness behind swallowed up an equal amount behind them.  They were focused not on counting steps, but on the ambush that could come at any moment.  The walls were sufficiently uneven that secret doors could have been concealed almost anywhere, and their pace did not leave even the elves time to give even a cursory search along their route.  So they watched, and they waited. Finally, a pair of doors materialized out of the darkness ahead.  They were of plain, unadorned stone, their hinges recessed into the thick lintels.  As they drew closer, they could see markings upon the door, sigils marked in what looked like dried blood.  “It looks like this is the place,” Nelan said.  “The spell indicates that the way is forward.”Shay moved forward and bent her ear to the narrow crack where the two doors met.  After a few long seconds, she drew back.  “I hear creaking metal, like chains,” she said.  “We need a minute to ready spells,” Allera said.  “Go ahead,” Dar said.  The healer began moving among the companions, laying death wards upon each of them.  Nelan had not had the opportunity to recover his spells, and without his reservoir to draw upon, she could not protect all of them.  Selanthas had his amulet, which offered similar protection, and they had agreed earlier that Honoratius and Alderis would rely on their own arcane magic to protect them.  The two mages quietly completed their protections, and waited for Allera to finish.  “It is done,” she said finally.  Dar nodded, and took up position opposite Shay at one of the doors.  “Be ready,” he told them.  There was no need to give further instructions; they had already made their plans on how best to strike.  As the pair thrust the doors open, their light spilled into a long hallway, maybe sixty feet long and twenty feet wide.  The sound of clanking chains greeted them, accompanied by a low moaning sound that drew their attention upward.  The ceiling of the hall was a good twenty feet above them.  Dangling from dozens of hooks set into the stone were lengths of barbed chain, some just long enough to brush the head of a man making his way forward.  Linked and interlinked, sometimes tangled together in a jumbled mess, the chains formed a thick web that stretched down the entire length of the hall.  And hanging from those chains was the source of the noise. They were recognizable as goblins by their size, although all of the bodies had experienced decay.  There were at least a dozen of them.  The creatures, clearly zombies of some sort, had been snared on the chains, which in some cases passed through their bodies, holding them pinned.  As Dar and Shay pushed the doors wide open, the goblin zombies intensified their struggles.  One, hanging almost directly above the door, yanked out a length of chain and swung it down at Shay.  The scout shifted slightly, and the hooked end clanged off the wall.  Several of the other zombies began dragging themselves down, their bodies tearing as the hook on the chains bit away pieces of their rotten flesh.  Nelan stepped forward, and presented his divine focus.  “Perish before the light of the Father!” he cried.  White light flared from the device, but it flickered, flaring out against the dread power of this place.  Even so, three of the zombies came apart, their bodies crumbling into ash as holy fire consumed them.Ten feet down the passage, a zombie landed on the ground.  It started toward the companions, armed with an six-foot length of chain that had come free with it.  Behind it, two more tore free and fell to the ground, rapidly rising to join their companion in attacking. Dar didn’t wait; he lifted Valor and stepped forward to meet them.  “Careful, Dar!” Nelan warned.  “They are not normal zombies!” That much was obvious, as the creatures that shambled forward to attack the fighter were neither slow nor hesitant.  The one with the chain lashed out at Dar, but the improvised weapon merely glanced off the greave covering the fighter’s left arm.  The blow did not slow him in the least as he slashed down with Valor, cutting the zombie in two from shoulder to hip.But the zombie’s companions were quick to press their attack.  One smashed a length of chain across Dar’s gut, but again it failed to inflict damage through the fighter’s armor.  Dar lifted his sword to strike again, but a length of chain slashed down from above, twirling around his right wrist.  Dar looked up to see a zombie, its body pinioned by at least three chains, dangling above him, pulling on the chain hooked around his arm.  Another zombie leapt at Dar’s leg, intent on exploiting the fighter’s distraction.  But Shay sprang forward and cut down with Beatus Incendia, dashing the creature’s head from its shoulders.  Even as the goblin fell, two more dropped down from the chains near her, and quickly leapt to the attack. A fireball shot past the pair and exploded further down the corridor, immolating several more zombies before they could work free from the chains and attack.  Dar and Shay’s cloaks were blown back by the force of the blast, but Alderis had placed the spell precisely, and neither were actually harmed.  Nelan and Mehlaraine rushed forward to join Dar and Shay, but the battle was already winding down.  Dar had yanked the chain holding him hard enough to rip the zombie off its chains.  The creature’s weapon now became a hindrance to it, as Dar snapped it up into a cut from Valor that took its entire arm off its body.  Shay destroyed the other one that had been attacking Dar, and Selanthas finished off one last straggler still stuck on the chains with a volley of arrows. Dar tore off a hook that had dug into one of the straps of his bracer, tossing the chain aside.  “That wasn’t much of a welcoming committee,” he said.  “I expect these guards were placed here simply to delay us, and provide warning to the defenders of the Talon,” Honoratius said.  The archmage had withheld his spell power during the brief battle, recognizing that the goblin zombies, even enhanced as they were, offered little threat to the group’s fighters.  None of them had suffered any injuries during the encounter. “We should press on, while our enchantments are still effective,” Nelan said. “Fine with me,” Dar said.  He nodded to Shay, and the pair continued to the end of the passage, where another pair of doors waited.  These, unlike the first set, were decorated, graven with unwholesome images of the sort that the Doomed Bastards were all too acquainted with from their time in Rappan Athuk. “So much evil,” Allera said, growing pale as her eyes fell on a particularly disquieting scene carved into the doors.  “Where the Light penetrates, the Dark cannot abide,” Nelan said, his hand clutched tightly around his divine focus.  “Let’s get this over with,” Dar said, taking up position at one of the doors.  They opened outward, so he and Shay took hold of them, and with a shared nod pulled hard.  The stone doors swung open with surprising ease.  The companions had just enough time to register a large chamber, the presence of enemies.  And then a column of fire came crashing down upon them.</blockquote>

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