Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 4430512" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #449] Dark Awakening[/PLAIN]Shamalin ached everywhere she could feel blood slicking her face, taste its metallic tang in her mouth. She pushed herself to her knees with one hand. Her shield arm hung loosely to the side, insensate, which, she was fairly certain wasn't good. Morier was trying to flip himself over off to her right, his teeth gritted in pain. His left shin had developed an extra joint in the fall, and she could see blood soaking through his clothing at that point. She clutched her holy symbol and prayed to Flor, welcoming the warmth of healing magic and the slow return of feeling to her left arm."Shamalin!" Morier hissed through clenched teeth. "Are you-""Hush!" she hissed back and got to her feet. "I'm fine and you will be too.""What about Ahlear?" the albino asked and Shamalin looked over at the druid. His head had burst open on impact and he was clearly dead. She shook her head."He is beyond my help," she told him solemnly. and Morier scowled. How many allies had he lost on this quest? How many more would fall before this was done?Anania landed lightly on the floor and rushed toward Morier. She and Shamalin shared a glance and the elf maid looked away, color rising in her cheeks."It happened so suddenly," she offered. "My reaction was to grab Morier... I am so sorry... I am so sorry!!"Shamalin said nothing but cloaked herself in a Sanctuary spell, not looking at the Scout."Can we heal Morier up?" Anania continued. "I know how important he is to this quest..."Now Shamalin did look up, but she said nothing. She stalked over and, pushing passed the elf, knelt at Morier's side."Shamalin... I am so sorry. That is unlike me," Anania started, then she paused, shivering. "Is it getting colder in here?""Yes," the cleric answered, looking concerned. Her green eyes sparkled apprehensively in the dim light. She'd felt this sensation of unnatural cold before when they'd accidentally breached the Negative Material Plane inside the Tainted Cave. The glow from her Light spell and from Anania's fallen torch seemed to dim as shadows pressed in menacingly from all sides."What is this?" Anania asked, but Shamalin had no answers apart from a startled cry of, "Look!" She pointed at Ahlear's corpse from which tendrils of purest black were leaking. like umbral smoke.What happened next seemed to happen in an instant, but it also seemed to draw out for an age. Ahlear's corpse jerked once on the ground and his armor was wrenched from his body in an eyeblink, leaving him pale and naked on the cold stone floor. Apart from the billowing darkness that seemed first to be caressing him, now tugging him, now battering him. He flopped to his back, turning his ruined face to the ceiling, and ribbons of negative energy whipped up and out of the strange tattoo on his chest. The tendrils writhed about hungrily, something cold and predatory about their movements that instantly filled Shamalin, Morier and Anania with dread.Then there was a wind in the room, expelled from the tunnel mouth that lead to the outside. It smelled cool and fresh and carried with it a verdant mist that moved unerringly toward the writhing tendrils of negative energy. The two energies, seemed to engage in some sort of battle over Ahlear's corpse, the blue-green mist trying to enter his mouth, the black tendrils seeking to prevent the same. Tendrils of darkness snaked down wrapping themselves around the fallen druid's body, sealing it from foot to head in ribbons of negative energy.The clash of energies - divine energies, Shamalin noted without even registering it - roiled in the air above the body, at something of a stalemate although it was clearly the negative forces which had the upper hand, sleight though it was. The wind was howling now and the spectacle reached some sort of violent climax that made the onlookers turn away blinking, water streaming from their dazzled eyes.Morier screamed then, clutching at his chest. He pulled at the neck of his armor, yanking it aside to expose his chalk-white throat and Shamalin could see the fingers of a dark tattoo like the one that marked Ahlear appear strangely there. It continued beneath his armor, but the bit that was visible was the same despite seeming less like a thing of shadow and more like an actual tattoo."Gods!" Anania choked out, springing to her feet. She dropped Windblade and drew her bow and an arrow in one motion. Shamalin looked where she was looking and gasped.Ahlear was sitting up, or rather a thing that might have been Ahlear was sitting where the druid had fallen. It was wrapped head to toe in what looked like ancient gray bandages between which wisps of shadow leaked like smoke."Rhaaaaaah...." the mummified creature groaned, its voice a dry, sepulchral rasp. A harsh parody of Ahlear's living voice. "Ouch. That was not fun."</blockquote>

Verification