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Turn 12 |
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There is a tension in the air. The main entrance doors, behind the party groan and swing shut as Gwen wards against sorcerous attacks from without. Ari's lantern paints frightening shadows up the wall of the tunnel. Kaceubel blinks as his vison adjusts to the lurching shadows. Gwen lifts her bow warily. Balron feels the vibrations from the heavy door slamming through his boots. Nadia senses a gathering storm. Nadia is starting to shape forces and extend her protection from evil/hostile and awareness. The clerics free hand starts shaping power. Panicked, Ari stares at the closed door, whilst subconsciously fondling his bracelet. Gwen shifts slightly, her back to a wall, and awaits whatever is coming with white-faced vigilance. Balron stops instantly, balanced on the balls of his feet, knees flexing. He cocks his head, listening. The air is potent with fear Gwen hurriedly prays to the Earth Mother for protection from magic, waving her bow at the shadows. They almost seem to devour her arrow - but it is a trick of the light. The shadow reach out, swallowing the fire of Ari's lantern. The torch in Nadia's hand dies as if in ain, rejected by the power here. The cleric drops the torch, murmuring quietly, keeping the doggerel under her breath and draws her hands apart revealing a pale wyrdlight which balances on the one hand while the other draws her sword. "What the hell is going on?", whispers Ari. "&#%*$!" says Gwen, and stares with spooked eyes at the shadows licking about them all. Kaceubel brings his hands together, crouching slightly and chanting urgently. His cupped hands glow redly for a moment and then the glow leaps outward and away from the mage. As the wavefront passes over the walls and floor they start to glow. The dwarf stills. Looking deeper into the tunnel, he makes his decision. He takes four rapid strides past Ari before stopping stock still again, his weapons drawn tight to his body, head bowed. An unearthly moan echoes from the door ahead and frantic scratching noises sound from below, as if something were trying to break up through the floor. Gwen's eyes widen and she looks at Nadia with bleak fear. There is an earthy smell in the air. The glow of the walls flickers. From Kaceubel's cupped hands outward, the spells power dies. Darkness passes as a second wavefront on the walls and floors as the glow sickens and fades, leaving only Nadia's dimly glowing light. Deep within the rock a series of 'spanging' noises can be heard, very muffled. There is the faint sound of many chains jangling above. In the dim twilight, everyone gasps as their ears pop from changing pressure. In a helpless, horrified whisper, Gwen says. "No." "Goddess." A breathless expostulation, the cleric's face raising as if seeking something in the darkness, her head cocked, listening. Blindly, her sword blade drops across the left hand, the wyrd-light adhering to the metal, duplicating itself as she begins slowly and ritually drawing the length of the weapon across her palm. Kaceubel grins delighted with the challenge, kneeling he places his hands on the floor and starts humming a deep complicated rhythm. Ari stares upward. Well aware of what is happening and quite shocked. Frantically he turns to the wall by the door, searching. Gwen abruptly chokes. Her face turns to chalk and as if seeing Darkness made form - she abruptly levels her bow and releases an arrow in one smooth instant. Kaceubel is struck square in the centre of his back with such force that he is punched to the floor. Blood explodes up his trachea. His spell scatters hopelessly from his mind. Agony envelops him. With an unbearable increase in pressure, the ceiling comes rushing down. Adrenaline causing it to appear a slow movement of its tremendous weight. But not slow enough. As the rock begins to fall Balron drives his axe upward in a mighty blow, twisting at the last. There is a deafening retort swallowed by the bass rumble as the rock descends to waist height before locking fast in place. Nadia is knocked unconscious, sprawled on the floor - her helmet having been jarred abruptly into her skull. Her light blinks out as the spell stops. Kaceubel writhes in agony on the floor. Ari is sprawled by the door. The tunnel is once more plunged into darkness, the only sound is the settling of rock and ragged breathing of the unconscious and near-dead. Ari opens the door and scrambles through. You can hear noises on the other side - movement of some sort. Nadia is still unconscious, There is a very small amount of light bleeding into the tunnel from the next room through the now open doors. Enough to illuminate the receding roof as it magically ascends. Returning to it's original position before welding into the walls. Kaceubel's body grows colder as his blood seeps out in a pool around his body. Gwen sends an arrow winging it way into the Mage. Kaceubel skull now sports a feathered shaft. There's a hideous wet sound. Satisfied, Gwen sniffs and turns her eyes in the darkness towards Balron. Walking over to Nadia, she frowns as if something should have happened, but didn't. Gwen gets quite close to her before Nadia's polearm leaps between them - almost as if it had a mind of it's own. Dark tendrils seem to rise from the floor in the gloom - touching the Ranger on her legs. Gwen jerks back with a snarl. Gwen stamps a foot and the ground shudders. The tendrils disintegrate. It's odd, but the magic you used in the tunnel - it seemed to be sucked away. The spells you used actually drained you partially. Casting them again is now more difficult, but you now know roughly which direction the Dungeon Heart must lie - it's sapping your magic, every time you use it. Nadia's polearm is unwavering in it's position. Even though Nadia has apparently reached vertical from the prone without passing through any of the intervening spaces. "What the..." Almost a panicked yell. But she stops herself, crouching slightly, ready to run, jump or flee in any direction while she starts, again, mumbling, extending her senses. Balron looks around himself confused. Ari can't be seen. In the next room are the sounds of motion, but it doesn't sound human. "Oh, by all the small gods. My head." The cleric groans, trying to stand. She grasps this weapon odd blade most of those present have not previously seen with complete composure, disregarding its independent behaviour. She looks up at the ranger, her eyes widening as if suddenly recalling what it was she probably just saw. Gwen stares the the blade in Nadia's hand, her lovely face white with barely contained passion. Her strangely vacant eyes fill with tears. The black bow with ivory vines wending their beautiful dance along its length, hangs slackly in her sculpted hand. "I could never hurt you," murmurs the half elf in a broken voice, then turns slowly towards the bleeding form of the mage, a troubled look questing across her features. A flick of Gwen's fingers summons a fresh green forest light which seeps like mist along the corridor, lapping over Kaceubel's blood and painting a sickly glaze across his marble-pale skin. Straddling the fallen mage, Gwen places a boot upon his skull and yanks free the arrow shaft inbedded in his cranium with a few messy, slurping jerks. She re-nocks the blood -oaked shaft and faces the scrabbling noises beyond the recently opened door. "Go" she murmurs, and the green mist-light spreads further, reaching into the darkness ahead, splitting it asunder. At the ranger's pained words, Nadia also flinches, freeing one hand from its grasp around Rusalka as Gwen turns away. She almost, almost reaches out towards the woman she has just so horribly injured. The hand pauses, at least a foot short of the comforting touch and hangs a moment in mid-air, as if uncertain whether to continue forward or to retreat. The sight of the boot shifting to the mage's skull is too much for the badly-shaken cleric, and the hand retreats as the young woman turns her head, unable to watch her lover treat so casually the death so quickly and pointlessly delivered. The movements of her throat as she swallows repeatedly at the sounds of the extraction are visible even over the metal edge that protects the vulnerable spot. She stands a moment, the one hand still hanging uselessly, the other holding the impossible polearm where it almost floats in the air as she watches the definite movements of the half-elf and dwarf, her eyes betraying the longing to be away from this. |