SniptheShadow
09-25-2011, 09:13 PM
A Tale of DDO
by
SniptheShadow
Part Four: The Necrotic Device
Had it been five minutes or five hours that he fought the waves of Undead – Nalinor could no longer keep time. Lightning from a dark place across the room shot out and struck the central tower device. Who did that?! When it struck, the multitude of Undead briefly paused in place and movement like a hiccup to their reality had occured. On the throne Lord Rot’s dry eyelids cracked, trickled dust and powdery rot, and he did what he had not for a thousand years – he blinked.
The Lich lifted an arm and sent tendrils of snaking electricity off in the shadowy place where the other Lightning Bolt had erupted from. Nalinor heard stones shatter and crash to the floor. He heard shouts and battle cries and bellowed spells. Lightning hit the tower device again and again and again.
“I WILL DRINK FROM YOUR SKULLS!” hissed the Lich.
Nalinor looked into the shadowy heights and saw people in the air. They flittered here and there like wisps of cotton in the gloom. Flaming arrows shot from one floating figure. Magic Missiles the color of glowing lilac flowers blasted out from another.
A woman plopped down next to Nalinor within the protection of Momakar’s moving Blade Barrier.
“Hello Nalinor,” said the Elven female.
Dressed in gold full plate soiled in crimson gore, the bright and happy face was a beacon of positive memories for him. Her eyes twinkled like the two were simply having a chat in Stormreach Harbor and not locked away in darkness.
“Erelei?”
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
“Fancy and wonderful!” Nalinor exclaimed.
A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder and caused him to wince in pain. He turned around and faced a massive chest. The figure loomed a foot taller. He looked up. “Mythaniel! You’re here too?”
“Hugs and kisses later, Nal. Now we fight.”
Nalinor nodded.
“Your band looks a bit frazzled and war torn,” said Erelei. The Elven Cleric uttered a spell, the words sounded like Shin-Sahh! Golden light appeared and rippled in the air all around her. Like blurry butterflies made of living light, the sheen rippled around her, Nalinor and all the Sand Shadows.
He peered down at his wounded hands and arms and watched the cuts seal, the blood cease flowing. He could feel strength flowing back into his arms and legs. He felt filled with much more than healing.
Mythaniel shouted a battle cry, leaped next to Jet and both Barbarians waded in.
Erelei tried to catch Nalinor up to things in bits of choppy sentences as they fought.
“We need to destroy the device. The Wizards in our party say it is hooked to Mabar, the plane of the dead. The Lich, in tandem with his phylactery, is using the device’s power to milk the Arcanes below and continue to do so forever. We destroy the device, we can get to the phylactery. We take that out—“
“We destroy him,” finished Nalinor.
Erelei nodded.
“Elaan,” called Nalinor.
“I heard,” said the Wizard.
“We’re on it,” said Edaam.
The two brothers greeted the two new Wizards that landed among them with clasped forearms and manly back patting. They spoke with their heads together and pointed at the tower. They moved off and began to prepare, but just before doing so, Edaam grabbed Nalinor by the arm and said, “I like your friends.” Before Nalinor could reply, Lord Rot stood up from his throne.
Slippery black tentacles broke through the floor and grabbed Nalinor around the legs and squeezed. The tentacles were everywhere, and they wiggled maddeningly and wrapped around everyone within the Blade Barrier. Nalinor shouted, more from frustration than pain, and he heard the Lich laughing. The sound came at him from every direction in the room.
A popping sound, so loud it made Nalinor bite his tongue in surprise, came from behind him, and then the tentacles let him go and melted into an oily slime at his feet. He slipped on the mess and then ducked in alarm at a spell cast by a Wizard in Erelei’s band of six. A riot of rainbow color sprayed out from the Wizard, and then Ghouls and their Necromancer masters were torn apart. Next he cast spiraling ghostly skulls and shrieking heads. A lone Necromancer spun at the center of them, clutched his heart and died with a rictus of fear locked on his face.
“Nalinor, behind you!”
He could not tell who had shouted the warning, but turn his did, in time to duck the swing of a rotten hand. He thrust his Rapier into the throat of the Wight and leaped clear.
The Arcanes of both groups were huddled in a group and chanting something in the midst of the chaos. Lord Rot laughed again.
It said, “I HAVE AN ENDLESS SOURCE AT MY COMMAND.”
The colored smoke atop the Undead Arcanes began to swirl and race again. They writhed and moaned as more of their essence was siphoned off.
“NOW!” shouted a Wizard in Erelei’s band. He had a shaved head with jagged tattoos in red and black across his scalp.
The chamber lit up with light.
The four Wizards aimed the onslaught of their joined power at the central tower. The Lich yelled a spell and the mass of his Undead stopped what they were doing and moved at the new threat. Nalinor shielded his eyes from the bright light. It was like an erupting fountain of white, and it singed the tower causing the sigils carved into its stone surface to glow a hot indigo.
“CEASE THIS AND I WILL ONLY KILL YOU ONCE!” boomed the voice of Lord Rot.
The Arcanes uttered more words of power. The light intensified.
The Lich growled and grabbed his staff from its place by his throne. Three dozen Magic Missiles whizzed toward the Wizards . The orbs of light crashed into an invisible barrier and sent purple sparks and flashes about the room like drops of burning nightmare rain.
“ARRGGH!” said the Lich.
Suddenly the beam of white light took form.
Nalinor stared.
Erelei and Momakar stared.
Juti, still perched on Jet’s shoulders, stopped and stared slack-jawed at what she saw.
Even the gibbering, slavering Undead took pause.
The immense bar of white light widened and widened. It roared out of one space and into our reality. The sound was deafening. And it changed. The wide pillar widened further still, its light growing as wide as an ancient Elder Tree. It rattled the stones of the chamber, shook the floor and walls. The Wizards moved it, shifted it, aimed it. It quaked and churned from floor to towering ceiling. The Arcanes moved it from verticle to horizontal. It looked like the arrow shaft of a God pointed at the Lich and his device, and as it shot out it changed into the form of a screaming Dragon. It growled and twisted in the air as it blasted across the massive chamber and struck the central tower device.
KA-TOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The tower shattered.
Mortar and rubble rained down. Nalinor, still shielding his eyes, ran for cover as the room rained bits of tower. Undead took the brunt of most of the debris. A group of seven Ghasts were smashed to smears as a room-sized block of tower landed on them. A fleeing Ice Flenser ran right into the path of boulder-sized blocks and vanished beneath. Nalinor ran forward and back and sideways, leaped companions and foes alike as he tried to dodge the raining chaos. Finally debris ceased falling and the room was left to the sounds of groans and the soft landing of small stones and pebbles, soft coughing by those made of living flesh.
“It is there! It is there!” shouted a Wizard in Erelei’s band of companions.
Stone dust floated in the air like a thick fog. Nalinor could hear Undead mumbling and moaning in the murk, but he could not see them. Something was happening to his left. Was left where Sorrow was or had he run the other way? He spun in place trying to see. Erelei and Mythaniel stepped out of the dust fog.
“I can see nothing in this,” said Mythaniel.
Firewalls erupted to the left and right. The dust quickly burned away. The Wizards in the group, still huddled together, were nearing the blasted place where the tower mechanism once stood. Lord Rot was nowhere in sight. His ancient throne was broken in two. Nalinor turned, seeking out Sorrow. He inhaled in surprise at what he saw.
All the trapped Undead Arcanes were getting up. He counted one dozen, two dozen, three – where was Sorrow? The rotting Arcanes turned towards the approaching Wizards.
“Don’t attack them!” warned Erelei. “We came here for them.”
“But if they attack us,” said the Arcane Archer in her group.
“I said no! Now move back, move back slowly.” She gestured with her hand.
Suddenly ash and smoke and sparks of flame rushed by them along the floor and through the air. Nalinor felt a hot wind pulling at him, buffeting him and making it hard to stand. He shielded his eyes from the onrush of blowing dust.
“A portal,” shouted Edaam.
Where the tower device had once stood, a portal to another place spiraled and churned. He could see beyond the rim to the other plane it revealed. Thousands of glowing red eyes stared back. The place was made of shadow. He saw jagged towers and architectural nightmares in blacks, purples and wet reds. So much glistening red! It seeped from mortar, flowed as sap from onyx-colored trees and bubbled in fetid pools of rot. Something large shrieked from the other side.
“COME TO ME, MY PET. COME TO MY AID,” boomed the Lich.
“Get down!” shouted Elaan.
“Find the phylactery,” yelled someone else.
Another chilling screech poured from the portal. The Lich laughed. The formally trapped Arcanes shambled forward en masse. Where was Sorrow?
Everyone in the room moved like one would in a cyclone storm. The portal pulled in everything: stone, rock, destroyed remnants of furniture, and body parts.
“There, there!”
Four ran toward Lord Rot’s throne. Nalinor could not make out whom.
The Lich growled.
Nalinor grabbed a stone railing, held on and saw a Wizard in Erelei’s group lifting a jeweled necklace.
“Now! Break it now!”
Lord Rot cast spell after spell. The living Wizards countered each. Thunder shook the room.
Edaam brought a simple chunk of stone down on the Lich’s phylactery necklace with a crunch.
“NOOOOOO!”
Jet ran up to Lord Rot on one side and the Barbarian, Mythaniel, on the other. A heavy Maul on each side struck the Lich simultaneously.
It shattered.
Ptolemesh Ghalaan’s bones cracked into ten thousand pieces. As he broke apart, his skeleton flashed a searing green light and a shockwave of necrotic energy slammed out of the thing in all directions.
TOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Nalinor lost his grip. He slammed to the floor. His wind left him in a painful whoosh, and he slid thirty feet across the floor toward the sucking portal. His fingers clawed and he slapped at the floor and grabbed for any broken tiles he could snag in panicked desperation. At the last instant before going into the portal, his fingers locked onto a broken tile. “Gods!” he swore, and rolled over on his back from the rushing torrent of the portal’s pull.
Jet went tumbling past. Nalinor looked up in time to see the Warforged rolling toward the portal. As he rolled, he struck a clinging Edaam and then he hit two others in Erelei’s party – a Fighter and one of her Wizards. The four of them fell into the spiraling portal and disappeared deep within, flying back through the air on the other side high into the nightmare distance, red eyes eagerly glowing in the darkness everywhere around their falling forms.
The portal closed.
ZFFFFT! POP!
The power and intensity of the pull from the other plane abruptly ceased and everyone in the chamber fell to the floor.
“Brother!” screamed Elaan.
Bodies dropped behind the prone and wheezing adventurers.
Thump. Thump.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.
All the Arcanes that had been used for the source of their magic were now no longer under the spell of the Lich or his infernal device. They were falling down dead once again. Like a room filled with life-sized macabre dominoes, they collapsed in place, fell forward, fell against their neighbor and ceased to live for a second time. And so did all the other Undead in the chamber. No longer under the control of the powerful Lich, summoned creatures vanished with a pop. The massive room was finally quiet. The only sound remaining was Elaan’s soft sobs.
Mythaniel squeezed the man’s shoulder in solace. Juti did the same and kneeled down to speak with him. Nalinor’s heart went out to the Sand Shadow.
Erelei said, “Brother Momakar, will you aid me in healing and with a resurrection ritual?”
“It would warm my heart to do so, Erelei.”
The two Clerics went from person to person and healed each of any wounds. When it was Nalinor’s turn for healing, he brushed away the hands and walked forward and stepped amidst the corpse covered floor. He had to find Sorrow.
So many bodies; so many dead taken! He stepped through them peering about. Many of the corpses were only dried skin on bones, naked because clothes had long ago rotted away. The yawning maws of skulls peered up at him, clawing skeletal fingers rested across dried hearts made of clay, shriveled husks all. Beyond the circle of corpses Erelei and Momakar chanted and prayed. He moved deeper into the crowd.
He spied a green robe. As he walked closer he could tell it was her. Even dead he knew the shape of her. Her face was turned away. It looked like nothing more than her sleeping from his angle. Her strawberry blonde hair looked the same from where he stood. He froze, unsure what to do. He knew her beauty was long rotted away. He knew the acid from the trap so long ago had removed her face, but turned away like this, it was like she was merely napping.
A golden light snaked its way between Nalinor’s legs. It looked like the spirit of a great and pure serpent. It shot and slithered around the room at floor level. Sparks spilled off it as it moved. Like a trapped comet, the golden spell kissed body after body with its resurrecting light. It slithered around faster and faster. It raced. Soon it became hard to discern any shape to it, and it lit up Lord Rot’s chamber. Nalinor shielded his eyes from the glare.
He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, blinked again. He laughed at what he saw. The Arcanes were standing up again. Pushing off the littered floor, grasping broken debris for balance, and helping neighbors to their feet; the floor was suddenly alive with movement. It was alive. They were alive! Over seventy resurrected Arcanes were looking around in confusion. Voices started talking all at once, many in languages long forgotten and unknown to Nalinor. The room was suddenly loud and full of chaos again, but this noise was a type Nalinor loved. It was the sound of life!
He walked through them all, patting an arm here, smiling and nodding and squeezing a shoulder in welcome there. He spied a beautiful woman across the way. She looked small and a little frightened and very alone in the crowd. He stepped closer.
“Welcome back, Sorrow.”
She turned.
Nalinor couldn’t breathe. It was like the last two years had not happened, she looked exactly the same. She had the same lustrous hair, the same emerald eyes, and that playful smirk to her half-smile like she had a secret. And she had the same nose now twitching in disgust at the smell in the room around her.
“Nalinor?”
“It’s me.”
“Where am I? What happened? I remember a tomb but it was much smaller than this.”
Nalinor laughed and embraced her. “Do you remember nothing?”
“I was going toward an altar, I think. I remember that. I remember hopes for treasure.” She creased her forehead in remembering or maybe it was something else. “By the Mockery, why does my robe smell so vile?!”
Nalinor laughed until tears flowed. He hugged Sorrow tight as the crowd of resurrected milled all around them.
____
It took the better part of three hours just to prepare to leave the Onyx Palace. Food and water were shared, and blankets were handed out to those with no clothes. Several pilfered robes from dead Necromancers littering the room while others found clothes in those same Necromancers living quarters. Once equipped, they began the hike back to Zawabi’s.
The trip back took two days, but they certainly had nothing to fear as they moved among the red rock formations and over the hot sands. Nalinor’s band was down to four members and so was Erelei’s. That made eight seasoned adventurers, and now nine counting Sorrow the Sorceress. And along with them walked a total of seventy-two additional Sorcerers and Wizards combined. If even a shadow looked wrong it became dust with a word. Nothing lived that dared stand in their way. A contingent of yapping Gnolls tried once. So much fire lit up the area that they had entered from that the stones melted and ran like candlewax.
The laughter of magic users echoed across the desert.
THE END
_____
AFTERWARD
Nalinor was surrounded by friends.
He sat at a table alone, carving on a chunk of hickory wood. The carving looked like it might be a bird of prey, maybe an eagle or hawk. He dug into the hard surface and chipped away at what would probably be the feathers.
Nuadia came up to the table holding a bottle of wine. He gestured with his chin at the chair across from him and she sat. She was one of the few people he had met in the two years since Sorrow’s death that he felt completely at ease with. A Cleric in service of the Host, she had been there through his worst times while he had searched for his love. In all his ups and downs dealing with his grief, she had been an ally. Her friendship meant everything to him.
“You look so different now. It is like a shroud has been yanked away,” she said.
“I suppose it has.”
“Where is Sorrow tonight?”
Nalinor looked around the crowded Phoenix Tavern. “She is out with my little sister and running around town. They said they were going to go on ‘female business’ and it didn’t concern me. I’m having them followed anyway.”
“Sorrow would love that,” said Nuadia.
“Sorrow doesn’t need to know that.”
They both laughed.
“So what’s next?” asked Nuadia.
Nalinor took a drink of the offered wine. “For now I’ll keep at this carving.” He dug into his pocket and took out a letter. “Tomorrow it's back to the desert.”
“Why?”
He offered her the letter.
“Juti and her band have found a way through. We have to go get them.”
Nuadia, her big blue eyes wet and glistening with worry, said, “Do you? Do you have to go? Haven’t you been through so much already? And Sorrow is returned to you. She’s safe.”
Nalinor nodded. She is but she feels as I do. We have to go get them, Jet and Edaam, and all the rest.”
“Well, whatever you're about to do, count me in,” said Nuadia.
“We have to go to Mabar…”
((And so ends Nalinor's long tale. It has been two years in the making -- in fits and starts -- and I'm glad to have it complete. Will I take him to Mabar? Perhaps. But not today. I hope those that have stuck with me in the telling enjoyed my story. It was fun to write it. And I'm always happy to attempt to tell a good tale. So thank you all so very much for reading!!! You are the best community of gamers a wannabe writer could ask for.))
Snip
by
SniptheShadow
Part Four: The Necrotic Device
Had it been five minutes or five hours that he fought the waves of Undead – Nalinor could no longer keep time. Lightning from a dark place across the room shot out and struck the central tower device. Who did that?! When it struck, the multitude of Undead briefly paused in place and movement like a hiccup to their reality had occured. On the throne Lord Rot’s dry eyelids cracked, trickled dust and powdery rot, and he did what he had not for a thousand years – he blinked.
The Lich lifted an arm and sent tendrils of snaking electricity off in the shadowy place where the other Lightning Bolt had erupted from. Nalinor heard stones shatter and crash to the floor. He heard shouts and battle cries and bellowed spells. Lightning hit the tower device again and again and again.
“I WILL DRINK FROM YOUR SKULLS!” hissed the Lich.
Nalinor looked into the shadowy heights and saw people in the air. They flittered here and there like wisps of cotton in the gloom. Flaming arrows shot from one floating figure. Magic Missiles the color of glowing lilac flowers blasted out from another.
A woman plopped down next to Nalinor within the protection of Momakar’s moving Blade Barrier.
“Hello Nalinor,” said the Elven female.
Dressed in gold full plate soiled in crimson gore, the bright and happy face was a beacon of positive memories for him. Her eyes twinkled like the two were simply having a chat in Stormreach Harbor and not locked away in darkness.
“Erelei?”
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
“Fancy and wonderful!” Nalinor exclaimed.
A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder and caused him to wince in pain. He turned around and faced a massive chest. The figure loomed a foot taller. He looked up. “Mythaniel! You’re here too?”
“Hugs and kisses later, Nal. Now we fight.”
Nalinor nodded.
“Your band looks a bit frazzled and war torn,” said Erelei. The Elven Cleric uttered a spell, the words sounded like Shin-Sahh! Golden light appeared and rippled in the air all around her. Like blurry butterflies made of living light, the sheen rippled around her, Nalinor and all the Sand Shadows.
He peered down at his wounded hands and arms and watched the cuts seal, the blood cease flowing. He could feel strength flowing back into his arms and legs. He felt filled with much more than healing.
Mythaniel shouted a battle cry, leaped next to Jet and both Barbarians waded in.
Erelei tried to catch Nalinor up to things in bits of choppy sentences as they fought.
“We need to destroy the device. The Wizards in our party say it is hooked to Mabar, the plane of the dead. The Lich, in tandem with his phylactery, is using the device’s power to milk the Arcanes below and continue to do so forever. We destroy the device, we can get to the phylactery. We take that out—“
“We destroy him,” finished Nalinor.
Erelei nodded.
“Elaan,” called Nalinor.
“I heard,” said the Wizard.
“We’re on it,” said Edaam.
The two brothers greeted the two new Wizards that landed among them with clasped forearms and manly back patting. They spoke with their heads together and pointed at the tower. They moved off and began to prepare, but just before doing so, Edaam grabbed Nalinor by the arm and said, “I like your friends.” Before Nalinor could reply, Lord Rot stood up from his throne.
Slippery black tentacles broke through the floor and grabbed Nalinor around the legs and squeezed. The tentacles were everywhere, and they wiggled maddeningly and wrapped around everyone within the Blade Barrier. Nalinor shouted, more from frustration than pain, and he heard the Lich laughing. The sound came at him from every direction in the room.
A popping sound, so loud it made Nalinor bite his tongue in surprise, came from behind him, and then the tentacles let him go and melted into an oily slime at his feet. He slipped on the mess and then ducked in alarm at a spell cast by a Wizard in Erelei’s band of six. A riot of rainbow color sprayed out from the Wizard, and then Ghouls and their Necromancer masters were torn apart. Next he cast spiraling ghostly skulls and shrieking heads. A lone Necromancer spun at the center of them, clutched his heart and died with a rictus of fear locked on his face.
“Nalinor, behind you!”
He could not tell who had shouted the warning, but turn his did, in time to duck the swing of a rotten hand. He thrust his Rapier into the throat of the Wight and leaped clear.
The Arcanes of both groups were huddled in a group and chanting something in the midst of the chaos. Lord Rot laughed again.
It said, “I HAVE AN ENDLESS SOURCE AT MY COMMAND.”
The colored smoke atop the Undead Arcanes began to swirl and race again. They writhed and moaned as more of their essence was siphoned off.
“NOW!” shouted a Wizard in Erelei’s band. He had a shaved head with jagged tattoos in red and black across his scalp.
The chamber lit up with light.
The four Wizards aimed the onslaught of their joined power at the central tower. The Lich yelled a spell and the mass of his Undead stopped what they were doing and moved at the new threat. Nalinor shielded his eyes from the bright light. It was like an erupting fountain of white, and it singed the tower causing the sigils carved into its stone surface to glow a hot indigo.
“CEASE THIS AND I WILL ONLY KILL YOU ONCE!” boomed the voice of Lord Rot.
The Arcanes uttered more words of power. The light intensified.
The Lich growled and grabbed his staff from its place by his throne. Three dozen Magic Missiles whizzed toward the Wizards . The orbs of light crashed into an invisible barrier and sent purple sparks and flashes about the room like drops of burning nightmare rain.
“ARRGGH!” said the Lich.
Suddenly the beam of white light took form.
Nalinor stared.
Erelei and Momakar stared.
Juti, still perched on Jet’s shoulders, stopped and stared slack-jawed at what she saw.
Even the gibbering, slavering Undead took pause.
The immense bar of white light widened and widened. It roared out of one space and into our reality. The sound was deafening. And it changed. The wide pillar widened further still, its light growing as wide as an ancient Elder Tree. It rattled the stones of the chamber, shook the floor and walls. The Wizards moved it, shifted it, aimed it. It quaked and churned from floor to towering ceiling. The Arcanes moved it from verticle to horizontal. It looked like the arrow shaft of a God pointed at the Lich and his device, and as it shot out it changed into the form of a screaming Dragon. It growled and twisted in the air as it blasted across the massive chamber and struck the central tower device.
KA-TOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The tower shattered.
Mortar and rubble rained down. Nalinor, still shielding his eyes, ran for cover as the room rained bits of tower. Undead took the brunt of most of the debris. A group of seven Ghasts were smashed to smears as a room-sized block of tower landed on them. A fleeing Ice Flenser ran right into the path of boulder-sized blocks and vanished beneath. Nalinor ran forward and back and sideways, leaped companions and foes alike as he tried to dodge the raining chaos. Finally debris ceased falling and the room was left to the sounds of groans and the soft landing of small stones and pebbles, soft coughing by those made of living flesh.
“It is there! It is there!” shouted a Wizard in Erelei’s band of companions.
Stone dust floated in the air like a thick fog. Nalinor could hear Undead mumbling and moaning in the murk, but he could not see them. Something was happening to his left. Was left where Sorrow was or had he run the other way? He spun in place trying to see. Erelei and Mythaniel stepped out of the dust fog.
“I can see nothing in this,” said Mythaniel.
Firewalls erupted to the left and right. The dust quickly burned away. The Wizards in the group, still huddled together, were nearing the blasted place where the tower mechanism once stood. Lord Rot was nowhere in sight. His ancient throne was broken in two. Nalinor turned, seeking out Sorrow. He inhaled in surprise at what he saw.
All the trapped Undead Arcanes were getting up. He counted one dozen, two dozen, three – where was Sorrow? The rotting Arcanes turned towards the approaching Wizards.
“Don’t attack them!” warned Erelei. “We came here for them.”
“But if they attack us,” said the Arcane Archer in her group.
“I said no! Now move back, move back slowly.” She gestured with her hand.
Suddenly ash and smoke and sparks of flame rushed by them along the floor and through the air. Nalinor felt a hot wind pulling at him, buffeting him and making it hard to stand. He shielded his eyes from the onrush of blowing dust.
“A portal,” shouted Edaam.
Where the tower device had once stood, a portal to another place spiraled and churned. He could see beyond the rim to the other plane it revealed. Thousands of glowing red eyes stared back. The place was made of shadow. He saw jagged towers and architectural nightmares in blacks, purples and wet reds. So much glistening red! It seeped from mortar, flowed as sap from onyx-colored trees and bubbled in fetid pools of rot. Something large shrieked from the other side.
“COME TO ME, MY PET. COME TO MY AID,” boomed the Lich.
“Get down!” shouted Elaan.
“Find the phylactery,” yelled someone else.
Another chilling screech poured from the portal. The Lich laughed. The formally trapped Arcanes shambled forward en masse. Where was Sorrow?
Everyone in the room moved like one would in a cyclone storm. The portal pulled in everything: stone, rock, destroyed remnants of furniture, and body parts.
“There, there!”
Four ran toward Lord Rot’s throne. Nalinor could not make out whom.
The Lich growled.
Nalinor grabbed a stone railing, held on and saw a Wizard in Erelei’s group lifting a jeweled necklace.
“Now! Break it now!”
Lord Rot cast spell after spell. The living Wizards countered each. Thunder shook the room.
Edaam brought a simple chunk of stone down on the Lich’s phylactery necklace with a crunch.
“NOOOOOO!”
Jet ran up to Lord Rot on one side and the Barbarian, Mythaniel, on the other. A heavy Maul on each side struck the Lich simultaneously.
It shattered.
Ptolemesh Ghalaan’s bones cracked into ten thousand pieces. As he broke apart, his skeleton flashed a searing green light and a shockwave of necrotic energy slammed out of the thing in all directions.
TOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Nalinor lost his grip. He slammed to the floor. His wind left him in a painful whoosh, and he slid thirty feet across the floor toward the sucking portal. His fingers clawed and he slapped at the floor and grabbed for any broken tiles he could snag in panicked desperation. At the last instant before going into the portal, his fingers locked onto a broken tile. “Gods!” he swore, and rolled over on his back from the rushing torrent of the portal’s pull.
Jet went tumbling past. Nalinor looked up in time to see the Warforged rolling toward the portal. As he rolled, he struck a clinging Edaam and then he hit two others in Erelei’s party – a Fighter and one of her Wizards. The four of them fell into the spiraling portal and disappeared deep within, flying back through the air on the other side high into the nightmare distance, red eyes eagerly glowing in the darkness everywhere around their falling forms.
The portal closed.
ZFFFFT! POP!
The power and intensity of the pull from the other plane abruptly ceased and everyone in the chamber fell to the floor.
“Brother!” screamed Elaan.
Bodies dropped behind the prone and wheezing adventurers.
Thump. Thump.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.
All the Arcanes that had been used for the source of their magic were now no longer under the spell of the Lich or his infernal device. They were falling down dead once again. Like a room filled with life-sized macabre dominoes, they collapsed in place, fell forward, fell against their neighbor and ceased to live for a second time. And so did all the other Undead in the chamber. No longer under the control of the powerful Lich, summoned creatures vanished with a pop. The massive room was finally quiet. The only sound remaining was Elaan’s soft sobs.
Mythaniel squeezed the man’s shoulder in solace. Juti did the same and kneeled down to speak with him. Nalinor’s heart went out to the Sand Shadow.
Erelei said, “Brother Momakar, will you aid me in healing and with a resurrection ritual?”
“It would warm my heart to do so, Erelei.”
The two Clerics went from person to person and healed each of any wounds. When it was Nalinor’s turn for healing, he brushed away the hands and walked forward and stepped amidst the corpse covered floor. He had to find Sorrow.
So many bodies; so many dead taken! He stepped through them peering about. Many of the corpses were only dried skin on bones, naked because clothes had long ago rotted away. The yawning maws of skulls peered up at him, clawing skeletal fingers rested across dried hearts made of clay, shriveled husks all. Beyond the circle of corpses Erelei and Momakar chanted and prayed. He moved deeper into the crowd.
He spied a green robe. As he walked closer he could tell it was her. Even dead he knew the shape of her. Her face was turned away. It looked like nothing more than her sleeping from his angle. Her strawberry blonde hair looked the same from where he stood. He froze, unsure what to do. He knew her beauty was long rotted away. He knew the acid from the trap so long ago had removed her face, but turned away like this, it was like she was merely napping.
A golden light snaked its way between Nalinor’s legs. It looked like the spirit of a great and pure serpent. It shot and slithered around the room at floor level. Sparks spilled off it as it moved. Like a trapped comet, the golden spell kissed body after body with its resurrecting light. It slithered around faster and faster. It raced. Soon it became hard to discern any shape to it, and it lit up Lord Rot’s chamber. Nalinor shielded his eyes from the glare.
He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, blinked again. He laughed at what he saw. The Arcanes were standing up again. Pushing off the littered floor, grasping broken debris for balance, and helping neighbors to their feet; the floor was suddenly alive with movement. It was alive. They were alive! Over seventy resurrected Arcanes were looking around in confusion. Voices started talking all at once, many in languages long forgotten and unknown to Nalinor. The room was suddenly loud and full of chaos again, but this noise was a type Nalinor loved. It was the sound of life!
He walked through them all, patting an arm here, smiling and nodding and squeezing a shoulder in welcome there. He spied a beautiful woman across the way. She looked small and a little frightened and very alone in the crowd. He stepped closer.
“Welcome back, Sorrow.”
She turned.
Nalinor couldn’t breathe. It was like the last two years had not happened, she looked exactly the same. She had the same lustrous hair, the same emerald eyes, and that playful smirk to her half-smile like she had a secret. And she had the same nose now twitching in disgust at the smell in the room around her.
“Nalinor?”
“It’s me.”
“Where am I? What happened? I remember a tomb but it was much smaller than this.”
Nalinor laughed and embraced her. “Do you remember nothing?”
“I was going toward an altar, I think. I remember that. I remember hopes for treasure.” She creased her forehead in remembering or maybe it was something else. “By the Mockery, why does my robe smell so vile?!”
Nalinor laughed until tears flowed. He hugged Sorrow tight as the crowd of resurrected milled all around them.
____
It took the better part of three hours just to prepare to leave the Onyx Palace. Food and water were shared, and blankets were handed out to those with no clothes. Several pilfered robes from dead Necromancers littering the room while others found clothes in those same Necromancers living quarters. Once equipped, they began the hike back to Zawabi’s.
The trip back took two days, but they certainly had nothing to fear as they moved among the red rock formations and over the hot sands. Nalinor’s band was down to four members and so was Erelei’s. That made eight seasoned adventurers, and now nine counting Sorrow the Sorceress. And along with them walked a total of seventy-two additional Sorcerers and Wizards combined. If even a shadow looked wrong it became dust with a word. Nothing lived that dared stand in their way. A contingent of yapping Gnolls tried once. So much fire lit up the area that they had entered from that the stones melted and ran like candlewax.
The laughter of magic users echoed across the desert.
THE END
_____
AFTERWARD
Nalinor was surrounded by friends.
He sat at a table alone, carving on a chunk of hickory wood. The carving looked like it might be a bird of prey, maybe an eagle or hawk. He dug into the hard surface and chipped away at what would probably be the feathers.
Nuadia came up to the table holding a bottle of wine. He gestured with his chin at the chair across from him and she sat. She was one of the few people he had met in the two years since Sorrow’s death that he felt completely at ease with. A Cleric in service of the Host, she had been there through his worst times while he had searched for his love. In all his ups and downs dealing with his grief, she had been an ally. Her friendship meant everything to him.
“You look so different now. It is like a shroud has been yanked away,” she said.
“I suppose it has.”
“Where is Sorrow tonight?”
Nalinor looked around the crowded Phoenix Tavern. “She is out with my little sister and running around town. They said they were going to go on ‘female business’ and it didn’t concern me. I’m having them followed anyway.”
“Sorrow would love that,” said Nuadia.
“Sorrow doesn’t need to know that.”
They both laughed.
“So what’s next?” asked Nuadia.
Nalinor took a drink of the offered wine. “For now I’ll keep at this carving.” He dug into his pocket and took out a letter. “Tomorrow it's back to the desert.”
“Why?”
He offered her the letter.
“Juti and her band have found a way through. We have to go get them.”
Nuadia, her big blue eyes wet and glistening with worry, said, “Do you? Do you have to go? Haven’t you been through so much already? And Sorrow is returned to you. She’s safe.”
Nalinor nodded. She is but she feels as I do. We have to go get them, Jet and Edaam, and all the rest.”
“Well, whatever you're about to do, count me in,” said Nuadia.
“We have to go to Mabar…”
((And so ends Nalinor's long tale. It has been two years in the making -- in fits and starts -- and I'm glad to have it complete. Will I take him to Mabar? Perhaps. But not today. I hope those that have stuck with me in the telling enjoyed my story. It was fun to write it. And I'm always happy to attempt to tell a good tale. So thank you all so very much for reading!!! You are the best community of gamers a wannabe writer could ask for.))
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