Love's Labors, Part 8
Leaving Nevati's abandoned campsite behind, you and your little group set out for the now-familiar fortress itself. According to Aila, the crypts of the Kovoran Witch Queens that Nevati is seeking lie buried deep beneath the imposing structure. But before you descend into those depths, there is one brief stop you need to make first.
When you find her Khaytala is on one of the towering ramparts, giving orders to some of the orcish guards, tightening up their patrol patters as she oversees the security for the fortress and the surrounding area. There's an extra energy in their step as they obey, and you can tell that her legendary prowess and clear skill in defensive tactics are inspiring the troops. Especially now that the new warchief has sworn complete loyalty to their Queen and her ambitions.
The half-orc woman glances over as you approach, her expression brightening into a warm, open smile. "Hey, Talavar!" she says. "Back already?"
Then she notices Ceriss and the elementals trailing behind you. She gives them a friendly wave, prompting them to give an embarrassed, hesitant wave back to their former (and now, through sex, once again) ally. "Looks like your plan worked even better than expected," she says. "Are you going after Nevati next?"
You nod. "Yes. But there's something I need to ask of you first. Nevati has already entered the crypt, and we'll be following her down, but there's someone I need to find a safe place for while we do it."
Ceriss leads the young orc girl forward, a hand on her shoulder. At Khaytala's curious, inquiring look, you explain further. "We found her at the village, an orphan who'd been lost in the chaos. She was... taught something by her mother before she died. Something that might prove useful for us to investigate. But it's something the Church of Melca doesn't look kindly on, and I'm worried they might try to harm her."
"And a crypt full of undead is no place to take a child," adds Ceriss.
Khaytala nods in agreement, then kneels down as low as she can, so she isn't looming over the girl quite so much. "Of course," she says kindly, reaching out to take the girl's hand. "Let's find you someplace safe to rest from your travels, while Talavar does what he needs to do. I promise, no one's going to get to you while I'm around."
The girl's eyes are wide, as she meets yet another of the fearsome heroines who have stood as an object of such fear for her people. She swallows... but Khaytala's gentle approach helps to ease her worries. With a glance back at you, she goes with Khaytala, her tiny hand held in the fighter's much larger, much stronger one.
Hopefully, you'll have time later to follow up on that most intriguing lead. For right now, however, the best you can do is trust Khaytala to keep her safe. Fortunately, you had her assigned to protect your home front, so you expect that your defenses here should be more than sufficient to counter any hurried attempt that Church might throw together while you're away.
You briefly consider going to see Lily for help with the crypts... but decide that extracting her from her duties would take too long, and put her at too much risk. No, between your own abilities, the power of a heroine, and two elementals you're willing to bet that you have enough to handle both Nevati and anything the ancient burial vault has to throw at you.
Interrogating Aila further on what Nevati's plan was, you're able to track the path that the young gnome most likely took through the fortress. No one you talk to in passing remembers seeing anything out of the ordinary, which doesn't surprise you. With her command of illusion spells, Nevati would have no shortage of options for circumventing the watching eyes of the crowds in the outer areas. It's only as you head deeper, deeper into the bowels of the fortress that the more formidable defenses start to make themselves known.
Tracing Nevati's planned path, you travel further down a long flight of stairs, before eventually finding yourself in front of an immense pair of stone double doors. The air feels clammier down here, while the sounds from the fortress above are muted and indistinct. It's like you're standing at the threshold of a silent, suffocated place, one that the rest of the world forgot about long ago.
The doors are engraved with what you now recognize as religious depictions of Melca, wielding her whip, surrounded by thorns. On closer inspection, you realize that it is also shut with an enchantment of tremendous age and power, one designed to only allow certain people through.
Which might have been a problem... had it not been for the inhuman knowledge of the arcane you've recently acquired. You're pretty sure that Nevati was able to pick this lock, given how the doors are still intact instead of blasted in, and so you take up the challenge of doing the same. It's by far the greatest challenge yet for your newfound abilities... but after about ten minutes of intense study, you think you've got it.
You place your hands at two different points on the door, one pressing with three fingers, the other with all five. Sending demonic power to your fingertips, you gently snare the invisible, ethereal strands of the spell. Then, with aching slowness, you start to rotate each hand counter-clockwise, turning them at slightly different speeds. It has to be just the right amount, without going too far, and you feel yourself sweating more than you expected.
Then, finally, you're confident that you have it right, that the ancient enchantment is temporarily negated. "Tala, now! Push it!" you say, and the earth elemental obliges, pressing her rough hands against the stone and using her powerful frame to push it open. The huge stone doors grind inward along their hinges, and all four of you dart through, just in time. As soon as your fingers stop touching the stone the enchantment takes hold again, slamming the immense door shut once more with a hollow boom.
On this side of the door the air is downright stale and stagnant, like all life has been leeched from it, leaving you slightly queasy. You can discern that this is unholy ground, devoted to the service of Melca through profane ritual. Meaning her ability to observe—and possibly even intervene in a very limited fashion—will be significantly increased here.
Spread out before you are the first level of these catacombs, a twisting maze of long passages, lined with uncountable side recesses in the walls for uncountable skeletal bodies. These aren't the Witch Queens themselves, of course. No, those must be far deeper. These are merely servants, entombed with their mistresses to follow and serve their mistresses even in death.
And that's more than mere metaphor, if the recent destruction spreading out in front of you is any clue. Bone fragments lie scattered all around the passage, along with ancient, discarded weapons and armor, interspersed with large scorch marks and the telltale signs of arcane energies scouring the path ahead. Nevati and her elementals must have had to fight their way through here, tearing through waves of skeletons animated by necromantic rite.
Part of the reason for the fighting was most likely because the unique senses of such skeletal undead are unaffected by most of the usual illusion spells, making stealth a less-feasible proposition. Or at least... that was your first guess. But looking closer, you see that Nevati has also taken particular care to not just smash the skeletons... but also to dispel the sorcery binding the animating spirits to the corporeal shells, laying the old bones to their final rest.
Drawing on your newly acquired well of knowledge, you know that these weren't the original souls of the dead. Those would have long since passed on, beyond the reach of any mortal magic. The spirits animating these bones would have been spirits of negative energy. For undead of this caliber, probably will-o'-the-wisps, or something else on that level. Lured here to the Material Plane from the Plane of Death, then imprisoned for their particular affinity with corpses, forced into endless servitude so long ago.
Most mortal mages (in your experience, being an extra-planar creature yourself) have little concern for the spirits that are bound as a consequence of their rituals, but it seems that Nevati's concern for such beings extends beyond just her own four familiars. Indeed, it was probably growing up with them that helped instill such a perspective. She's making a concerted effort to release as many spirits bound down here as she can, on her way to her destination.
On the face of it that's to your advantage, since it makes the young wizard's path very easy to follow. You can't help but worry, however. This can't be the only layer of opposition against intruders and grave robbers... and protracted fighting up here will almost certainly alert the more serious opposition lower down.
Still, it's too late to do anything about that now. Instead, you focus on catching up as fast as you can, hurrying down the corridors with Ceriss, Aila and Tala right behind you. None of you have difficulty navigating; demons, tieflings and earth elementals are all no strangers to the darkness, and while Aila has a bit more trouble, she's able to read the air currents to similar effect.
Fortunately, while Nevati and her group have to both fight their way through, and puzzle the right path through the maze-like hallways, all you need to do is follow her trail. You're able to gain ground on her quickly, and it isn't long before your enhanced senses can detect their noise from up ahead. Actually catching up with her takes a while longer, though, especially since you slow down toward the end to preserve your own stealth.
Even so, catch up to her you do, and fortunately you manage to pull it off while she's still only descended a few floors into the crypt's depths. Your three targets have currently set up camp in the middle of a large chamber lined with towering pillars carved into the shape of horrified, tortured victims, the images conveying a silent scream even as they hold up the vaulted ceiling. Your prey are currently resting around a bit of conjured magelight, licking their wounds after the non-stop fighting through the undead hordes.
Nevati is worriedly tending to the fire elemental, conjuring a magical flame, one that her familiar is hungrily feeding on in order to regenerate what look like a few cuts from the blades of the skeleton warriors. And while the wizard herself doesn't seem to have taken any direct hits yet, she definitely isn't looking good either. Even from this distance, your senses can pick out just how tired she seems. And it isn't just weariness from this immediate fight. To your eyes, it's clear that she hasn't been sleeping well. At all.
Even once her task is done, and her familiar recovered, the young gnome's anxiety does not abate. She sits back down at the edge of her conjured light, tucking her knees tight to her small body and burying her face into them, like she's trying to curl in on herself. The anxiety you already saw in her back in the capitol has increased to a near-crippling degree. Anxiety for Ceriss. Anxiety for the friends off on their own mission. Anxiety over whether this rash course of action you tempted her into taking was really a good idea.
But even despite all that, she still somehow finds the strength to push herself forward.
Their impromptu camp is surrounded by circles of runes glowing against the stone floor, a defensive barrier that won't be easily penetrated, even as you study it for weaknesses. Most concerning of all, however... is that you're not the only ones doing so.
There is something else watching Nevati's group from the shadows, from behind a different pillar on the opposite side of the chamber.
Even placing your ear against the ground and straining your superhuman senses, you can hear no heartbeat from that direction, no breath of life. But at the same time, this is no mindless skeleton. An intelligent undead, then? You don't have direct line of sight, at least not from your current hiding spot... but that seems by far the most likely identity for the lurking watcher.
This could be more troublesome. Unlike the weaker minions whose wreckage you've been walking over so far, intelligent undead can be far more powerful. Depending on the state of the corpse when it was reanimated and the type of undead it was turned into, the inhabiting spirit can take on many of the old body's memories and skills as well. Sometimes even becoming subsumed—to various degrees—by those appropriated memories, especially depending on how strong the inhabiting death spirit's sense of self originally was. It's very hard to guess exactly what you might be dealing with here.
You also don't know its aims. Presumably it was put here to guard the crypt of the Witch Queens and the secrets stored within. But beyond that it's hard to say anything for sure about its goals or methods. Depending on its stance toward you, Melca, and the current Witch Queen, it might be either a useful ally or a dangerous threat. And even if you could justify your own incursion, it's even less likely to be in favor of Nevati's, meaning this whole situation could get very sticky, very fast.
Whatever its nature and aims, it doesn't seem to be making any immediate moves, though you can't say for certain how long that will last. Either way, you'll need to decide how you're going to play this for now.
One option, given that you outnumber Nevati's group thanks to your ploy with the village, would be to simply try and use the advantage of surprise right now to its fullest. Try to capture as many of Nevati's party as you can, and worry about subverting them once they're safely in your clutches. You're not sure how the watcher would react to that. If they're just here to guard the tomb's secrets they may let you handle things. Though on the other hand, you can't say whether they'd want more revenge than that or not, given how little you know about them.
You could also approach Nevati directly, trying a more conversational approach to winning her over. As much as she hates you right now, you doubt you'd be able to convince her in just one single conversation, but you could plant some seeds of doubt. Of course, in addition to Nevati's reaction, the watcher would be listening to anything you say. And they might have their own reaction depending on which approach you choose, and how they happen to feel about the invading heroine.
Of course... there's nothing that says you have to rush in, either. You could keep your distance much like the undead is doing, looking for an opening where a weaker member of the party is vulnerable, or just gathering as much information as you can about all concerned.
Finally, you could postpone Nevati for the moment, and take action regarding your mysterious watcher specifically. You could try to reason with them, seeing if there's some kind of common ground you can find, where your goals might be aligned. You could also just try and subdue them outright, if you wanted to interrogate them at your leisure after they've been definitively removed as a threat.
Or, for maximum chaos, you could warn Nevati about their presence, and probably start a free-for-all. You doubt that in and of itself would be enough to convince the young gnome of your good intentions, not after what you did to her crush, but it would alert her to the danger she's in, as well as perhaps instill some measure of doubt as well.
