Zad
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The Crypt of the ShadowTaker - Chapter 7
The Crypt of the ShadowTaker - Chapter 7
OOC Notes:
Exp is 7,835. Yikes.
Loot:
2 +3 huge greataxes
1 +5 psychokinetic burst greataxe
3 +3 mithril chain shirts
10 wands of magic missile, 25 charges, 7th level caster
2 wands of fireball, 25 charges, 6th level caster
2 wands of silence, 20 charges, min caster
1 wand of mirror image, 20 charges, min caster
1 wand of ice storm, 45 charges, min caster
1 wand of blink, 20 charges, min caster
2 wands of ghoul touch, 50 charges
1 wand of levitate, 10 charges, min caster
2 +4 tower shields
+3 large steel shield
ring of invisibility
ring of protection +2
gems worth 29,000gp
This Week’s Adventure:
As the delver cleared up through the rock, I saw the haze of an invisible rider on it’s back. It was a strange creature with angular features and wearing nothing but a simple cloak. I realized then it was a gensai. As I sent this over the mental link, Dravot replied that he could make out a small shadowy bat flitting around the ceiling as well. This ambush just got more worrisome.
One minotaur bellowed and charged, a dull yellow light surrounding him. He smashed his axe in to Berylden and the shadow was immediately driven back to the shadow plane. Following that, one of the goblins fired four magic missiles from a wand at Aethramyr, but the missiles wilted as they got near the paladin. (As Aethramyr’s power has grown, so too has Shatterspike’s. It was now a full holy avenger, and the protection it gave was sufficient to defeat the wand.) Another minotaur charged, this time at Aethramyr. The eyes of the mind flayer skull grew bright and the axe wielded by the minotaur grafted onto it’s arm.
Psionic minotaurs. Feh.
Zera and Thorkeld engaged the delver, and struck some solid blows. Meanwhile the goblins tried to loose more magic missiles – this time they targeted Dravot, but he was close enough to Aethramyr that the protection covered him as well, and the missiles died out.
I was the only one who could see the gensai rider, so I opened fire on the unknown threat. The arrows struck solid, but then suddenly all fell out, leaving no mark. At the same time on the delver, deep puncture wounds opened up and the creature howled in pain so violently that the walls shook and Zera lost her footing. Clearly some kind of spell was redirecting wounds to the delver. The rider incanted a Recitation, becoming visible in the process.
Dravot tried an opening gambit, and intoned ancient words that caused him to begin releasing waves of light that played over the entire scene. Many of the goblins were stunned by the light, which at least bought us some time. Or so we thought. At that point, revealed in the light, was one of the shadow bat creatures. In fact it turned out to be more like a bird, with a beak that seemed crafted from onyx vitaesis. It dove at Dravot and pierced his neck. Dravot blanched sheet-white as you could see the creature suck the very essence from him. Then it hit me – it was some kind of stirge from hell. Dravot may be a priest but he is neither slight nor frail, and this creature weakened him so much as to nearly kill him in one strike. This thing was now the most threatening creature on the scene. Worse yet, a second one was revealed in the light. I was suddenly very afraid.
Aethramyr decided that rather than go around the tower shield, he would go through it, and brought Shatterspike down hard enough to shatter the mind flayer skull and the shield beneath it into a dozen pieces. As the skull shattered, a wispy spirit of a mind flayer rose up and disappeared, released from its prison. The minotaur looked none too pleased. Thanks to the mass haste delivered by Scorch earlier, Bolo dropped a pair of flame strikes on the goblins, crisping them.
But the goblins were not what scared me at the time. It was the stirges. One of them had hasted itself – don’t ask me how stirges cast spells. Then it stripped some ofmy spells away, causing me to land on the ground with a jolt. They had to die and quickly before they killed Dravot or anyone else. The one still perched on Dravot’s neck was an easier target, so I fired three arrows into it. They may be viscious, but at least they were fragile. The arrows sent it spinning across the cave, and the last one pinned it to the wall, limp. I fired one more shot at the other stirge, but where I would have sworn I had fired true, I only found shadow. Dravot however was as worried as I was, and laid a destruction spell on the remaining stirge, which wilted in the holy light.
While Zera and Thorkeld were continuing to heap abuse on the delver, a sad excuse for a fireball suddenly detonated in the middle of us – from a wand-toting goblin I’m sure. Then a silence spell fell on the area from a rock thrown by a goblin. These goblins were becoming a nuisance. The gensai then took Dravot’s example, and threw a destruction spell at Aethramyr. Scorch had enough out of him, and successfully dominated him, which was a great relief. Valanthe and Aethramyr then killed the remaining minotaurs while Bolo’s creeping doom crawled over the goblin hoard, leaving no flesh in their wake.
With a roar and tremble, the deliver finally succumbed to the two paladins of Pelor, and sank to the cavern floor and that ended the ambush. Dravot was barely able to stand, but other than that we had come through in fair shape.
I had commented to Dravot earlier that day that we were sorely lacking information, since we seemed to be unable to question any creature that would know enough to be useful. And now Scorch had seen fit to remedy this problem – the gensai cleric surely would know something of his master and this wretched place. But before we could even put a question to him, his demeanor changed, and the voice that came when he spoke was clearly not his own. The ShadowTaker had taken control of him.
“So, what is it you want? I’d like to bargain. You’ve killed a number of my guardians already, and I find that to be… inconvenient. So what can I offer you?”
Well, I had to at least give him credit for directness. But the whole thing seemed wrong. We suspected so much, and knew so little. But if this was the spider at the middle of this tangled web, then surely he knew exactly what we wanted. And just as surely he wouldn’t want to give it. So why have the discussion? He was up to some devious purpose, surely. The same concerns were clearly in the mind of the rest of the group as well.
Aethramyr fixed a cold stare on the creature. Dravot on the other hand seemed to be seething beneath the surface. Understandable given how the lich has desecrated this temple.
“So out with it! Perhaps we can come to terms rather than you continuing to disrupt things before your inevitable death.”
Aethramyr said quietly “What we seek, you would not care to part with.”
The creature sighed in a way that I’m sure is nothing like a gensai. He looked slightly disappointed, as if talking to a child. “But how can you know until it’s offered? Surely you could find better things to be doing with yourselves than this. You for instance,” he pointed casually at Bolo. “Shouldn’t you be defending your grove? Iuz is marching on it even now, you know.”
Bolo of course did not know. He managed to check his reaction but not by much. The ShadowTaker picked up on it. “Oh well, what could I expect. After all you didn’t even bother to protect the poor delver here,” and he gestured absently at the oozing beast. “It was after all just a poor dumb beast, dominated by magic. And you killed it rather than try to help it.”
The lich struck a nerve. Bolo said only “Your death is inevitable,” but clearly he wanted to say more and was avoiding the issue. He then added over the mental link “I think he’s just trying to rile me.” I couldn’t help but think he was succeeding admirably.
For my part, I kept silent. There was nothing to be gained for us this way, and any word said would surely be used against us.
Dravot, his temper quieted, said “Your doom will come, evil one. And on that day the reconing will come for all the sins you have committed over your long years. You must be scared, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Your time comes, and soon.”
The ShadowTaker just waved dismissively at that, and seemed genuinely frustrated that we were not more talkative. He sighed heavily and said “I suppose we have to do things the hard way then.” As he withdrew his presence from the gensai, the creature’s head rolled to the side. Its eyes were vacant, and it was now hardly more than a breathing vegetable. So much for useful information.
As we gathered ourselves to proceed, Bolo noticed some tracks. Something creature had been watching during the fight and left. We followed the tracks for a ways to a split in the passage. The tracks then became more deceptive, attempting to lead us in one direction while proceeding in the other. But after some close examination, I suddenly realized that the tracks were entirely fake. It was a decoy set to distract us, or lure us, or perhaps even just to see if we would catch it. When I pointed it out, Valanthe and Bolo saw it too – just a ruse.
Knowing the tracks were fake, I was disinclined to take either passageway. I suggested we search the area – since the tracks were leading us away, perhaps there was something here that we were being drawn away from. We spread out and it wasn’t long before we found a door hidden behind an illusion. The door was a spiral of coral and it opened to reveal a long tube of a corridor made of a pearlescent shell-like material. It was like being thrust into a seashell. The corridor split into two directions and each spiraled downward.
It occurred to me that perhaps this was the trap the tracks were trying to drive us into through another layer of deception, but I did my best to just put it out of my mind. We formed up and started entering one of the branches of the pearly tube. Before we could even all file in, two things happened. One was bad – the door suddenly shut, leaving Thorkeld outside. The other was worse – a part of the wall detatched between Valanthe and me. It was like a ring separated and moved to just inside the tube. Then the ring became filled with inky blackness, as if a dye of pure darkness was shot into water. The blackness quickly filled the ring. Valanthe was scouting up ahead of me, as was our usual practice, and must have tripped the device and fortunately she was the only one cut off by it. The ring began to slowly move down the spiral hallway towards Valanthe. And then Scorch said three words.
Sphere of annihilation.
Either this was a very deadly trap, or the most vicious cleaning system ever devised. Valanthe wasted no time shadow stepping back to the group, and the ring silently slid down the tube, gaining speed as it went. Valanthe then re-opened the door, and set to disarming this deadly mechanism. She managed to jam it so that it woudn’t deploy again. We had to wait for the ring to reach the bottom and return, but once it did her handiwork held, and we moved down the tube cautiously.
At the bottom, things began heating up. We suspected that we had crossed into another demi-plane, and this oen was quite warm. There was the heat and glow of molten rock from down the corridor and the sounds of flowing rock could be heard. We began making our way through the area, but soon saw that at least one thing hadn’t changed.
More mirrors.
We had to pass though the area, and debated the same methods as before. The mirrors this time did not break when we tried it, so that seemed to exclude one disaster. Bolo volunteered to step in and see what happened. Lacking any other ideas, we nodded and he stepped into the room. Now of course any adventurer who has ever set foot in a tavern has heard stories about mirrors where the reflection became real and attacked. I never really gave much thought to whether it happened or not, but it seemed I no longer need to. The reflection of Bolo stepped out from the mirror, and cursed at his counterpart. It seemed to take Bolo a minute to realize it was him – I don’t think he’s quite used to his new reflection yet. The fortunate part is that we were not fighting our entire party – only Bolo (or as we called it, Olob.) Before Olob could move too far and I lost track of who was who, I fired several arrows into him. While he didn’t drop immediately, he was badly wounded from the volley. Having tipped the odds, I had little doubt that Bolo could deal with his double now without any confusion.
As it turns out, it wasn’t necessary. In his outrage at his own image, Olob dealt with himself. He let loose a thuderswarm, and while it did scorched Bolo badly, Olob was caught in the conflagration as well, and it was enough to kill him. The spell also took out the mirrors, and so we simply healed poor Bolo and moved on.
As we worked our way through the passages, I became more concerned as a nagging doubt ate away at me. We had pushed deep into this twisted place, but there was no telling how much more lie ahead. For all we have faced so far, I can’t say that we’ve made any real progress. We seem to be no closer to the Light of Reason or the Pyre than when we first set foot in the cistern. Indeed the entire place seems to be a giant rats maze, designed to sap our energy and direction as we run in circles. I begin to wonder if we can even find the ancient artifacts this way, or the ShadowTaker. After setting such an elaborate maze, can we really expect to find him at the end of it? I wonder. I keep searching for a way to bypass these defenses or go around them in some creative manner, but I can think of none. But I’m sure that we cannot keep going as we are. We are playing into the ShadowTaker’s hands this way, and this dungeon could go on forever. If we are to succeed, we need to change our approach somehow. Now if only I knew how. My only comfort is that Pelor told Dravot that the Light of Reason was indeed here. But are we even “here” any more? Until we can come up with another idea, we must go forward. But forward into what?
Some of the hallways came to dead ends, ending in mirrors. It’s possible that they were more transportation mirrors, or they were traps. In any case Valanthe avoided looking at herself in them and we went in other directions. As we came down one hallway, we heard a scuttling noise. The hall lead to a large foundry and smithy workroom. To the left was a demon – a bebbilith – with which we were all too familiar. But ahead was a bigger surprise.
It was Rackhir.
Normally I would figure this for a ruse, but knowing Rackhir was in the Bestiary as we did, it seemed all too likely that this was truly him. However his eyes glowed with a wicked power, and certainly he was not of his own mind. I also noted that while he was armed, he did not carry the bow that Scorch and Dravot had made for him. I’m sure the djinn contained would not have obeyed him while he was so possessed.
Rackhir reached for something I couldn’t make out, and mumbled something about the sleepers. As he did so, Zera’s eyes began to glow with the same evil power. Dravot had warned us that the ShadowTaker might have some hold over her, and it seemed it was so. In a moment all hell would break loose as we had to contend with her and Rackhir and the bebbilith.
But there was one more sleeper who awoke. One more person who’s eyes glowed with an evil aura. One more person who would turn against us.
Behind me, I could hear a cackle that could only have one source – Scorch.
The Crypt of the ShadowTaker - Chapter 7
OOC Notes:
Exp is 7,835. Yikes.
Loot:
2 +3 huge greataxes
1 +5 psychokinetic burst greataxe
3 +3 mithril chain shirts
10 wands of magic missile, 25 charges, 7th level caster
2 wands of fireball, 25 charges, 6th level caster
2 wands of silence, 20 charges, min caster
1 wand of mirror image, 20 charges, min caster
1 wand of ice storm, 45 charges, min caster
1 wand of blink, 20 charges, min caster
2 wands of ghoul touch, 50 charges
1 wand of levitate, 10 charges, min caster
2 +4 tower shields
+3 large steel shield
ring of invisibility
ring of protection +2
gems worth 29,000gp
This Week’s Adventure:
As the delver cleared up through the rock, I saw the haze of an invisible rider on it’s back. It was a strange creature with angular features and wearing nothing but a simple cloak. I realized then it was a gensai. As I sent this over the mental link, Dravot replied that he could make out a small shadowy bat flitting around the ceiling as well. This ambush just got more worrisome.
One minotaur bellowed and charged, a dull yellow light surrounding him. He smashed his axe in to Berylden and the shadow was immediately driven back to the shadow plane. Following that, one of the goblins fired four magic missiles from a wand at Aethramyr, but the missiles wilted as they got near the paladin. (As Aethramyr’s power has grown, so too has Shatterspike’s. It was now a full holy avenger, and the protection it gave was sufficient to defeat the wand.) Another minotaur charged, this time at Aethramyr. The eyes of the mind flayer skull grew bright and the axe wielded by the minotaur grafted onto it’s arm.
Psionic minotaurs. Feh.
Zera and Thorkeld engaged the delver, and struck some solid blows. Meanwhile the goblins tried to loose more magic missiles – this time they targeted Dravot, but he was close enough to Aethramyr that the protection covered him as well, and the missiles died out.
I was the only one who could see the gensai rider, so I opened fire on the unknown threat. The arrows struck solid, but then suddenly all fell out, leaving no mark. At the same time on the delver, deep puncture wounds opened up and the creature howled in pain so violently that the walls shook and Zera lost her footing. Clearly some kind of spell was redirecting wounds to the delver. The rider incanted a Recitation, becoming visible in the process.
Dravot tried an opening gambit, and intoned ancient words that caused him to begin releasing waves of light that played over the entire scene. Many of the goblins were stunned by the light, which at least bought us some time. Or so we thought. At that point, revealed in the light, was one of the shadow bat creatures. In fact it turned out to be more like a bird, with a beak that seemed crafted from onyx vitaesis. It dove at Dravot and pierced his neck. Dravot blanched sheet-white as you could see the creature suck the very essence from him. Then it hit me – it was some kind of stirge from hell. Dravot may be a priest but he is neither slight nor frail, and this creature weakened him so much as to nearly kill him in one strike. This thing was now the most threatening creature on the scene. Worse yet, a second one was revealed in the light. I was suddenly very afraid.
Aethramyr decided that rather than go around the tower shield, he would go through it, and brought Shatterspike down hard enough to shatter the mind flayer skull and the shield beneath it into a dozen pieces. As the skull shattered, a wispy spirit of a mind flayer rose up and disappeared, released from its prison. The minotaur looked none too pleased. Thanks to the mass haste delivered by Scorch earlier, Bolo dropped a pair of flame strikes on the goblins, crisping them.
But the goblins were not what scared me at the time. It was the stirges. One of them had hasted itself – don’t ask me how stirges cast spells. Then it stripped some ofmy spells away, causing me to land on the ground with a jolt. They had to die and quickly before they killed Dravot or anyone else. The one still perched on Dravot’s neck was an easier target, so I fired three arrows into it. They may be viscious, but at least they were fragile. The arrows sent it spinning across the cave, and the last one pinned it to the wall, limp. I fired one more shot at the other stirge, but where I would have sworn I had fired true, I only found shadow. Dravot however was as worried as I was, and laid a destruction spell on the remaining stirge, which wilted in the holy light.
While Zera and Thorkeld were continuing to heap abuse on the delver, a sad excuse for a fireball suddenly detonated in the middle of us – from a wand-toting goblin I’m sure. Then a silence spell fell on the area from a rock thrown by a goblin. These goblins were becoming a nuisance. The gensai then took Dravot’s example, and threw a destruction spell at Aethramyr. Scorch had enough out of him, and successfully dominated him, which was a great relief. Valanthe and Aethramyr then killed the remaining minotaurs while Bolo’s creeping doom crawled over the goblin hoard, leaving no flesh in their wake.
With a roar and tremble, the deliver finally succumbed to the two paladins of Pelor, and sank to the cavern floor and that ended the ambush. Dravot was barely able to stand, but other than that we had come through in fair shape.
I had commented to Dravot earlier that day that we were sorely lacking information, since we seemed to be unable to question any creature that would know enough to be useful. And now Scorch had seen fit to remedy this problem – the gensai cleric surely would know something of his master and this wretched place. But before we could even put a question to him, his demeanor changed, and the voice that came when he spoke was clearly not his own. The ShadowTaker had taken control of him.
“So, what is it you want? I’d like to bargain. You’ve killed a number of my guardians already, and I find that to be… inconvenient. So what can I offer you?”
Well, I had to at least give him credit for directness. But the whole thing seemed wrong. We suspected so much, and knew so little. But if this was the spider at the middle of this tangled web, then surely he knew exactly what we wanted. And just as surely he wouldn’t want to give it. So why have the discussion? He was up to some devious purpose, surely. The same concerns were clearly in the mind of the rest of the group as well.
Aethramyr fixed a cold stare on the creature. Dravot on the other hand seemed to be seething beneath the surface. Understandable given how the lich has desecrated this temple.
“So out with it! Perhaps we can come to terms rather than you continuing to disrupt things before your inevitable death.”
Aethramyr said quietly “What we seek, you would not care to part with.”
The creature sighed in a way that I’m sure is nothing like a gensai. He looked slightly disappointed, as if talking to a child. “But how can you know until it’s offered? Surely you could find better things to be doing with yourselves than this. You for instance,” he pointed casually at Bolo. “Shouldn’t you be defending your grove? Iuz is marching on it even now, you know.”
Bolo of course did not know. He managed to check his reaction but not by much. The ShadowTaker picked up on it. “Oh well, what could I expect. After all you didn’t even bother to protect the poor delver here,” and he gestured absently at the oozing beast. “It was after all just a poor dumb beast, dominated by magic. And you killed it rather than try to help it.”
The lich struck a nerve. Bolo said only “Your death is inevitable,” but clearly he wanted to say more and was avoiding the issue. He then added over the mental link “I think he’s just trying to rile me.” I couldn’t help but think he was succeeding admirably.
For my part, I kept silent. There was nothing to be gained for us this way, and any word said would surely be used against us.
Dravot, his temper quieted, said “Your doom will come, evil one. And on that day the reconing will come for all the sins you have committed over your long years. You must be scared, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Your time comes, and soon.”
The ShadowTaker just waved dismissively at that, and seemed genuinely frustrated that we were not more talkative. He sighed heavily and said “I suppose we have to do things the hard way then.” As he withdrew his presence from the gensai, the creature’s head rolled to the side. Its eyes were vacant, and it was now hardly more than a breathing vegetable. So much for useful information.
As we gathered ourselves to proceed, Bolo noticed some tracks. Something creature had been watching during the fight and left. We followed the tracks for a ways to a split in the passage. The tracks then became more deceptive, attempting to lead us in one direction while proceeding in the other. But after some close examination, I suddenly realized that the tracks were entirely fake. It was a decoy set to distract us, or lure us, or perhaps even just to see if we would catch it. When I pointed it out, Valanthe and Bolo saw it too – just a ruse.
Knowing the tracks were fake, I was disinclined to take either passageway. I suggested we search the area – since the tracks were leading us away, perhaps there was something here that we were being drawn away from. We spread out and it wasn’t long before we found a door hidden behind an illusion. The door was a spiral of coral and it opened to reveal a long tube of a corridor made of a pearlescent shell-like material. It was like being thrust into a seashell. The corridor split into two directions and each spiraled downward.
It occurred to me that perhaps this was the trap the tracks were trying to drive us into through another layer of deception, but I did my best to just put it out of my mind. We formed up and started entering one of the branches of the pearly tube. Before we could even all file in, two things happened. One was bad – the door suddenly shut, leaving Thorkeld outside. The other was worse – a part of the wall detatched between Valanthe and me. It was like a ring separated and moved to just inside the tube. Then the ring became filled with inky blackness, as if a dye of pure darkness was shot into water. The blackness quickly filled the ring. Valanthe was scouting up ahead of me, as was our usual practice, and must have tripped the device and fortunately she was the only one cut off by it. The ring began to slowly move down the spiral hallway towards Valanthe. And then Scorch said three words.
Sphere of annihilation.
Either this was a very deadly trap, or the most vicious cleaning system ever devised. Valanthe wasted no time shadow stepping back to the group, and the ring silently slid down the tube, gaining speed as it went. Valanthe then re-opened the door, and set to disarming this deadly mechanism. She managed to jam it so that it woudn’t deploy again. We had to wait for the ring to reach the bottom and return, but once it did her handiwork held, and we moved down the tube cautiously.
At the bottom, things began heating up. We suspected that we had crossed into another demi-plane, and this oen was quite warm. There was the heat and glow of molten rock from down the corridor and the sounds of flowing rock could be heard. We began making our way through the area, but soon saw that at least one thing hadn’t changed.
More mirrors.
We had to pass though the area, and debated the same methods as before. The mirrors this time did not break when we tried it, so that seemed to exclude one disaster. Bolo volunteered to step in and see what happened. Lacking any other ideas, we nodded and he stepped into the room. Now of course any adventurer who has ever set foot in a tavern has heard stories about mirrors where the reflection became real and attacked. I never really gave much thought to whether it happened or not, but it seemed I no longer need to. The reflection of Bolo stepped out from the mirror, and cursed at his counterpart. It seemed to take Bolo a minute to realize it was him – I don’t think he’s quite used to his new reflection yet. The fortunate part is that we were not fighting our entire party – only Bolo (or as we called it, Olob.) Before Olob could move too far and I lost track of who was who, I fired several arrows into him. While he didn’t drop immediately, he was badly wounded from the volley. Having tipped the odds, I had little doubt that Bolo could deal with his double now without any confusion.
As it turns out, it wasn’t necessary. In his outrage at his own image, Olob dealt with himself. He let loose a thuderswarm, and while it did scorched Bolo badly, Olob was caught in the conflagration as well, and it was enough to kill him. The spell also took out the mirrors, and so we simply healed poor Bolo and moved on.
As we worked our way through the passages, I became more concerned as a nagging doubt ate away at me. We had pushed deep into this twisted place, but there was no telling how much more lie ahead. For all we have faced so far, I can’t say that we’ve made any real progress. We seem to be no closer to the Light of Reason or the Pyre than when we first set foot in the cistern. Indeed the entire place seems to be a giant rats maze, designed to sap our energy and direction as we run in circles. I begin to wonder if we can even find the ancient artifacts this way, or the ShadowTaker. After setting such an elaborate maze, can we really expect to find him at the end of it? I wonder. I keep searching for a way to bypass these defenses or go around them in some creative manner, but I can think of none. But I’m sure that we cannot keep going as we are. We are playing into the ShadowTaker’s hands this way, and this dungeon could go on forever. If we are to succeed, we need to change our approach somehow. Now if only I knew how. My only comfort is that Pelor told Dravot that the Light of Reason was indeed here. But are we even “here” any more? Until we can come up with another idea, we must go forward. But forward into what?
Some of the hallways came to dead ends, ending in mirrors. It’s possible that they were more transportation mirrors, or they were traps. In any case Valanthe avoided looking at herself in them and we went in other directions. As we came down one hallway, we heard a scuttling noise. The hall lead to a large foundry and smithy workroom. To the left was a demon – a bebbilith – with which we were all too familiar. But ahead was a bigger surprise.
It was Rackhir.
Normally I would figure this for a ruse, but knowing Rackhir was in the Bestiary as we did, it seemed all too likely that this was truly him. However his eyes glowed with a wicked power, and certainly he was not of his own mind. I also noted that while he was armed, he did not carry the bow that Scorch and Dravot had made for him. I’m sure the djinn contained would not have obeyed him while he was so possessed.
Rackhir reached for something I couldn’t make out, and mumbled something about the sleepers. As he did so, Zera’s eyes began to glow with the same evil power. Dravot had warned us that the ShadowTaker might have some hold over her, and it seemed it was so. In a moment all hell would break loose as we had to contend with her and Rackhir and the bebbilith.
But there was one more sleeper who awoke. One more person who’s eyes glowed with an evil aura. One more person who would turn against us.
Behind me, I could hear a cackle that could only have one source – Scorch.
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