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Turn 13 |
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The minimal light from the room casts a deeply shadowed light on the scene. Nadia is standing with polearm drawn. "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. Gwen is a statue, staring, her eyes full of hatred at the body of Kaceubel, sprawled, arrow-pierced on the ground. Her bow drawn but idle in her hands. Balron grunts some gutteral sounds, his hands waving at the body. Fire wells from the rock. Light increases in the tunnel. A reddish hue. The ranger takes a step back, a shocked expression crossing her face. She looks at the bloody body of the mage and the gestures of the dwarf and begins to shake her head. It illuminates the many moving forms of skeletons in the next room. Balron looks at his hands, somewhat confused. Gwen, arms trembling slightly, features hardened in a mask of self-loathing and fear, raises her bow and targeting a skeleton's skull in an eerie echo of her attack upon Kaceubel, and releases ... A white light expands at the centre of the fire to fill the tunnel, to contract to nothing. Leaving an empty stone floor where the mage's body was. All goes dark again. The stomping of bone on stone becoming louder. "Oh sweet Mother," cries the half-elf in a voice taught with distress. "I can't see a blimmin' thing. But I'm not about to be wasted by a bunch of undead abominations." There's a rasp of a sword being drawn. "For my soul," she says in a voice which barely carries above the clicking footfalls of the skeletons and with a reckless clansmen's' whoop, charges into the next room. Hefting his axe, Balron turns and strides towards the oncoming threat. At the last, two quick steps send him into his opponents at speed, the stomping forced into the background by the cry of his axe through the air. The braziers illumine the temple in shades of flickering red. Briefly mixed with the greens and whites of the dying magical fires from one of the three tunnels that connects the room to the outside. More detail is difficult to see for the masses of walking bones in the room. Balron charges deep into the midst of a large group of them. If they hadn't been armoured and armed, they would have had not nearly enough mass to stop him. As it is, 3 come apart from the impact of his armoured body and shield. Balron briefly glances to one side to see Ari defending himself from four more of the skeletons. His back pressed against the wall near the open tunnel's mouth. Nadia pauses, caught in uncertainty on the threshold as Gwen steps past the warm stones, heated with an infernal flame that was the last resting place of the Mage. Bloody marks on her legs the only remains of dying tentacles. There are shapes moving in the depths of the shadows. [Gwen's light died out as she suggested. After Balron's fire died out. Light was mentioned as leaking into the tunnel before from this room - hence you can see adequately with the braziers. Those with IR eyes cannot makeout the skeletons unless they get between you and a brazier (they are floor temperature)] Gwen crosses the threshold without hesitation, lifts hand, pauses and grimaces, an angry glint entering her eyes again, she then curses, flexes her arm and nudging the bow slung across her body into a more comfortable position, sweeps into the combat with bold grace, smashing at Skeltons with the flat of her elven longsword as she attempts to keep them from closing about Balron's rear. "Where's the next door?" she shouts over the sound of smashing steel and bone, "We need to get out of here and bar it behind us!" [Ari is now being played by Dianna and is no longer an NPC] Ari's small, vulnerable form is almost hidden behind a moving wall of bone. He thrusts wildly with his dagger, the blade rattling between the bleached bone of an empty rib cage. "The altar!" he shouts. "There is... a passage... arghh!" Ari ducks a particularly viscious blow, but not fast enough. He reels back against the stone wall. "Hurry!" he gasps. "Many more... are sure to descend upon us if we linger here!" Balron takes in the scene quickly. A sudden upswing smashes the metal arms of the crossbow under a breastplate, propelling its victim back into the crowd with stunning force, before being smoothly slung across his back. Stepping into the gap, he reaches out and sinks his mailed fist into anothers chainmail, lifting it easily from the floor. His axe sweeps across behind the legs of those besetting Ari, scything them to the ground, as he spins before hurling the struggling figure in his hand towards the altar, clearing a path. "Pick up the theif and go," he shouts above the clangor of the frey. "I'll hold them back until you're clear." "Goddess!" The cleric looks around, still somewhat in shock from the actions of the last few minutes, the revelations shaking her to the core. The earlier call of Gwen's pierces through to her consciousness, that voice the one most capable of waking her, or of reaching her. She raises Rusalka, both hands on the weapons shaft, each at a third's distance, the polearm held horizontally at shoulder height. She drops her head a touch, still glaring forward, the pale eyes glinting in hatred of the unnatural forms capering before her from beneath the helm's edge. She mutters a little something under her breath, then pauses, just a moment, gathering her strength, drawing up her faith and the vital life that is so inimical to beings such as these. A deep-drawn breath. "By the Goddess, I abjure you to return to your graves, and stir no more." The words are formal and controlled, the voice almost inhumanly deep, but there is an anger, a pain underlying them that scales through the words, the volume increasing until even the living in the room begin flinching, the power of the goddess evident. A clear light accompanies the voice, and a perfect note that comes from elsewhere. A sheet of light that spreads rapidly outward from the space between the cleric's hands, the rays forming shadows as they are blocked by the presence of the living in their path. As the sheet strikes a skeleton, a new pitch begins, a note scaling rapidly beyond human, and elven, hearing, shattering the very substance of the undead horrors, the bones turning to dust and fragments. After some moments, the sheer intensity holding, the light stops spreading outwards, holding the remaining undead at bay, allowing the party time to take the passage Ari has indicated. Bathed by the pristine light, seeing her foes drop like shattered baubles, Gwen lets he sword arm lower. Shoulders heaving, she looks back at Nadia, cheeks powdered with bone dust and smiles. Slowly at first, then with such warmth and amazed admiration that Nadia feels another pulse of reassurance flare beside that generated by the Goddess' power. The ranger turns then, quickly, gracefully and resheathes her sword with a smooth snap, her hands seeking out and checking the precious length of her slung bow. Having seen her murder with it only moments ago, a cold tingle moves down the spines of the other party members, but the half-elf seems like a different person. Her steps are light, her eyes like polished jewels. She beckons Ari with a crooked smile as she comes to the base of the alter's dais and gestures at the ugly lump of rock. "Traps? Doorways? Where does this go anyway, my friend?" Ari steps away from the wall, and runs questing fingers over his temples. He winces and shakes his head. The nod of thanks he sends Balron is heatfelt, as is the look of awe as he regards the carnage wrought by Nadia. "Such power! I have never seen..." he seems to recall his surroundings, and sends a fearful glance towards the shadows. Beyond the altar is a statue of a man-- the Necromancer I suppose, although it is too roughly hewn to be considered a likeness. It partially obscures a passageway, and a room. For the rest of this place," he shrugs helplessly. "We ran through so fast, I do not know what the shadowed corners of this room may hold." Ari climbs the dias' steps, treading cautiously. "We must be careful," he says. "They are alerted to our presence, and the way shall not be easy." |