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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4155842" data-attributes="member: 143">Check chapter 262; I'm not sure which page of the thread it's on.* * * * * Chapter 17THE LAIR OF THE BLOODWRAITH Their entrance was dramatic.  The massive slab door exploded in a barrage of fragments, dust, and black energy.  Falah stormed through the gap, his khopesh bare in his hands, a faint haze of magical protection shimmering around the outline of his body. The minions of the Bloodwraith were waiting for him. The chamber was larger than it looked, but the crowded interior and the density of the red mists gave it a cramped, close feeling.  There were four doors, situated in the center of each wall, each flanked by a pair of upstanding stone sarcophagi.  More of the large stone tombs were situated in the middle of the room, six of them surrounding and facing a larger one atop a raised platform in the center.  The lids of the stone boxes had been carved into the shapes of armored warriors, stained by the red mists to look as though they were covered in blood.  But the lids were ajar, the occupants of the tombs disgorged to meet the intruders into Duke Aerim’s sanctum. Eight armored skeletons stood around the perimeter of the room, flanking the doors.  The warriors bore long swords and battered shields that carried a faint but just discernable sigil, the design depicting a griffon clutching a burning sphere in its talons.  The two guardians nearest the shattered door lunged forward at Falah as the dust from the explosion began to settle.  The fighter pivoted and blocked the swing of the first, but the second, striking from his unprotected flank, carved its blade into his armored side.  The fighter’s mail held, but he grunted as the force of the impact staggered him.  The skeletons were stronger than they looked, and grim red points of fire glowed within their hollow eye sockets.  The skeletons lifted their swords to strike again, but behind the fighter dark energies flared, and the two creatures fell back, rebuked by a power greater than their own.  But more were coming, moving around the perimeter of the room from the other doorways.    In the center of the room, six tall, lean creatures stepped forward to face the intruders.  These figures still bore flesh upon their gaunt forms, but one look at the faces deep within the half-helms they wore was enough to reveal that they too were undead, augmented wights sustained by the dark power of the Bloodwraith.  Each of these bore a greatsword in an archaic style, with thick quillons carved into the shape of hands that grasped globes of stylized fire.  They moved ponderously, the crimson-encrusted chainmail covering their bodies swishing with their movements, but they formed into a line with the precision of the veteran warriors that they had been in life, and started forward as one toward the embattled Razhuri fighter.    But before they could close the distance enough to engage, the sword wights were caught up in a swarm of twisting, sinuous black tendrils that sprang up from the floor.  Navev’s chilling tentacles filled the chamber, and while the undead guardians were not especially perturbed by the plummeting temperature within the invocation’s area of effect, they were inconvenienced as the tentacles wrapped around their legs and arms, holding them in place.Ghazaran stood in the doorway, sheltered by Falah as the fighter laid into the nearer of the two bone warriors rebuked by the cleric.  Scanning the mists, he pointed into the air above the great tomb in the center of the chamber.  “There!”A figure materialized out of the mists where the priest indicated.  Descending from above, the insubstantial form of the Bloodwraith seemed to be as one with the surrounding mists, the tendrils of red fog drifting in and around its body.  As it drew closer, they could begin to make out some of the details of its form.  The wraith’s body was a vague outline, but it appeared to wear both armor and a shrouding robe, both in an archaic style that had faded from human knowledge hundreds of years ago.  Duke Aerim made a gesture, an imperious sweep of its hand that tore a swath through the surrounding mists.  Ghazaran scanned the chamber for threats, but too late realized that the Bloodwraith had other surprises in store.  The cleric looked up in time to see the two huge devouring mists descending from above.  He lifted his divine focus, but was too late to act before one of the things enveloped him.  A chill pressed against his skin, and bright red points—real blood, this time—erupted all along his arms, neck, and face as the creature drew life from his body.  He could not see, but Falah’s cry indicated that the second creature had found its target as well.  The mists around him flashed bright red, and he realized that the monster was swelling as it absorbed his blood.  Over it all he could just make out a distant, sepulchral laughter, a hollow sound as devoid of life as the monsters that surrounded them.</blockquote>

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