CHAPTER XIII: THE BEST OF INTENTIONS
Emily rolled her eyes as she forcefully pushed past the silly gnome – he upturned his hands as she extended her fingers in a tight formation, aiming for the mangled creature's head…
"What? It was a JOKE…lighten up, people!" Sic shouted hoarsely.
The undead creature decided not to take his advice as his head promptly exploded, due in great part to Emily's successful magic missile attack.
As the body of the undead menace slumped toward the ground, two more happily took its place as they rushed into the room, looking just as hideous as their fallen brother. The first came too close, too soon – Barakus and Sic both raised their weapons and sank them deep into the creature's shoulders – the barbaric greataxe took a sizable chunk out of the monstrosity, spilling a black, sludgy ooze out onto the ground…on the other shoulder, Sic's new Morningstar was certainly pulling its weight – the second creature was killed much faster than the first.
Furrius examined the bloody ooze as it pooled and gathered, moving around the room as if…alive? No – undead. It slipped around the room, seeking some dark corner to hide in as the battle raged on around it.
The final charging beast was disintegrated by almost forty tiny pink shards, compliments of the powerful female wizard in the back of the room. She smiled meekly as Celathiel woke up, started dressing and headed toward the hallway.
At the far end, Krougu, Barakus and Illonel had already gone into the newly opened door – sure, the dark room was dingy, moist and decrepit…but at least it had three more rabid, soulless creatures, ready to rip out the traveler's throats inside… One stood in the blind spot of the doorway, slashing at Illonel with its massive claws jutting out from its furry arms – dodging nimbly, Illonel thrust his magic rapier into the monster's chest. As he pulled it free, the creature's eyes grew dim as it turned to run, incredibly scared of either Illonel's power or the magical enchantment…of course, the enchantment was performed by a man of god…
Illonel smiled. "Do it, guy. Use the power Wee Jas has granted you; rebuke these undead fucks…"
Furrius stood cautiously in the doorway, behind Emily and in front of Sic. "I…" he started, but in the few seconds of hesitation, one of the beasts lunged at Krougu and bit into his shoulder, spurting blood out of his thin, decaying jaw.
"Flee, foul beasts!" Furrius shouted, raising his hands to Wee Jas. Finally summoning the courage to attempt the skill, Furrius was a bit disappointed with the results – the creatures hadn't turned tail and ran like he had dreamed, but instead stood cowering, warily eying up the clergyman…
Growing more and more irritated with these creatures, Barakus swung his greataxe from behind Krougu – with a mighty crack, the flat edge of the axe slammed into the attacking creature's head, exploding it in a shower of blood and brain particles.
Sic and Furrius turned green momentarily, shaking off the brutishly gory display. Now freed from the grip of the monster, Krougu drew his short sword and plunged it deep into the throat of the third creature, ripping the spine of the beast out with it. The sack of jelly fell to the floor, a quivering, bloody pile. More of the black blood spilled, nearly a gallon of it…it swirled around, infusing itself with the other smaller pools around the room…as Illonel stepped near it, he slipped in the sludge and fell with a deafening thud on the dirt floor.
"What'd I miss?" Celathiel asked, rubbing his eyes from halfway down the hall.
"Everything! There's undead all over this place…there's one more right around this corner, five feet – can you nail it?" Furrius said quickly, trying to rid the dungeon of the undead menace before it could call upon reinforcements.
"Usually I need line of sight for a magic missile…" Celathiel thought out loud, steadying his hand.
"Well, I'm telling you exactly where it is, so just try!"
With a mighty spark of dark energy, Celathiel's fingertips glowed pitch black – two frosty looking shards shot out, zooming past Furrius' face in the doorway; over Illonel's prone body; past the right ear of the undead creature…
"Shit!" everyone in the room cried at once.
The magic missiles made fools of them by doubling back and slamming the beast right between the eyes, causing it to slump to the ground, lifeless once again.
"One more," Barakus said, pointing off at the far side of the large room – they took a second to examine the room – the walls and floor were the same as the rest of the rooms, but it was slightly more polished. The wall which the monster stood next was covered in looping trenches that were dug only a centimeter thick up to the ceiling – on the ceiling were even more trenches, looping around the entire ceiling until they all ended in the center of the ceiling at a hole as wide as a fist.
Disrupting the undead pool of sludge in the center of the room, Illonel bought them a bit of time – it shrieked wildly and shot off in several different directions. The final undead didn't have a chance to do more than heave a javelin at the feet of the heroes – two arrows, two crossbow bolts and two magic missiles scrambled him beyond all recognition. Unfortunately, more black sludge spewed out, leaping at the trenches on the wall…
Swirling through the trenches like a reverse bathtub drain, it headed up the wall, splitting out across the thoroughly decorated ceiling. Illonel tried freezing it against the wall with a ray of frost – a small section was stopped from climbing the wall, but the rest continued on, a good amount already past the frozen point. Celathiel took some time to focus on the fist sized hole above their heads, the nexus of the looping designs. Inside was a perfectly circular ring, with a small, black bar directly across it. Each half of the ring was hollow, making it look like a bracer or bracelet…
"Do we want to let it get where it's heading?" Sic asked, pointing up at the sludge, the only remaining 'foe' in the room. As he sat on Krougu's shoulders, he got a much better look at the ceiling – all the sludge was heading straight for the center hole at a full clip.
"I don't think we want to let it live, period," Furrius said, concentrating hard as he rebuked the undead from the center hole – he held his arms outright, forcing the spell to continue as it drained him terribly…he couldn't let it escape…even if he had no idea what it was…
Barakus and Emily lit their torches, swinging them at the ceiling – it bothered the sludge, but didn't stop it…across the room, the trapped ooze tripped Krougu, sending him and Sic to the ground. A puddle of it jumped on Krougu, hoping to claim its first victim…
"Bullshit…" Illonel whispered, disrupting the undead once more near Krougu's entangled feet. Unfortunately, the frost spell shattered as nearly a gallon of ooze joined the fight as it enveloped Krougu slowly…Sic cast a light cure spell on the darkness…all it did was jostle around, miffed but not deterred from its goal…
A ghostly hand wafted upwards into the center circle that Furrius so valiantly protected, sweat dripping off of his brow. Celathiel bit his lip, his right arm quivering as he manipulated his mage hand to turn the handle inside the tube...
"I hope you know…" Furrius began to warn, but Celathiel cut him off.
"Well I don't, so get over it."
The ring released from the hole, clanging down to the ground below. The cleric glanced back and forth between the hole above, which was now positively swamped with ooze, and his new friend Krougu, who was twitching on the ground as the darkness covered him like a blanket…screaming every Elven curse word in his head (and a few Draconic ones he had picked up from the entertaina-scrolls published in his home village) he let the spell stop, focusing instead on Krougu – with a forceful blast, the sludge released its captor and scurried up the wall, through the trenches and into the unprotected hole.
"I hope you appreciate that…" Furrius said, helping Krougu to stand.
"I do!" he said, coughing as he breathed deeply for the first time in minutes. "Honestly, I do!"
The celebration was short lived, however, as a single drop of the slime formed at the mouth of the hole – it slinked downward, growing like a jiggling icicle…as it touched the golden ring on the floor, it promptly slurped itself and the ring upward, sinking back into the hole. The room was so silent, they could hear a chain break a mile away – but what happened instead was far worse – a single beam of dark energy shot out of the hole in the ceiling, slamming into the ground with a force that rocked the very foundation of the obelisk.
"Move," Barakus grunted, running for the ladder, two rooms away.
"Yeah, I think we fucked up…" Celathiel said, trailing the pack as they rushed from the shaking obelisk. At the stone dais above, everyone grabbed a symbol and prepared to revert it to the original state it was in.
"Guys, what if…" Sic started.
"No!" everyone shouted back at him, their foreheads slimy with sweat.
"You don't get to have moral quandaries right now, okay? The fucking obelisk is crumbling around us!" Illonel said, completing the sequence. The doors pried themselves open and the seven of them rushed from the obelisk as it crumbled in huge chunks behind them…
The grass around the site had turned brown and dead and even the four miniature obelisks were crumbling. The dirt turned a rich black as the obelisks cracked and faded, huge piles of rubble where the obelisks formerly were…
From each of the five former obelisks, a beam of darkness issued forth, similar to the one back in the dungeon – but each of these beams were enormous…as they shot into the sky, the only term that could describe it was 'complete darkness'…though they dared not stay too close, they stared on at the swath of destruction left in their wake – almost the complete antithesis of lightening, each pulse of the dark beams that shot into the sky eliminated all sound from their ears, like a massive, dark vacuum…all they could do was stare on in wonderment as their carriage driver took off toward town, not worried at all about the measly six gold he had left behind…