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"Umm, maybe I'll keep watch down here" he calls up to those above.
Listening to the scratching, Christoph follows the sound as it gets louder to the end of the hall. We searched here. Trusting that he'd have seen anything unusual with the wall, he instead leans out slightly into open air (having taken a firm grip of a crack in the stone) and looks at the wall of the tower itself to see if anything unusual is out there.
Seeing the unusual patch of wall, he asks Rhia, "This... uh... help from your ancestors-" he grimaces slightly, "how much longer will it keep me in the air?"
The Speaker nods and moves quickly to the end of the hall, he takes a good grasp on the corner of the stone wall and steps into open air. He studies, quickly, the smooth patch of stone as he looks for some evidence that it leads to the source of the scratching sounds.
Christoph finds the smooth stonework patch once more, easily enough after previously identifying it amidst the more textured brickwork throughout the rest of the four chambers. Rather than a different material overlaid onto the brick, such as plaster, it looks more like the brick itself was somehow melted, smoothed flat, then solidified again. Pressing upon it is no less solid than the rest of the brickwork.
It is clear enough to Christoph as well that the scratching sounds are coming most clearly through the wall at this point. He even can hear what sounds like a very low groan once, maybe twice, also from behind this smooth patch of wall. The groans sound... feeble. The thought occurs to him: is someone gasping for air and buried alive inside this wall?!
What he fails to find is any sort of opening to get inside: no keyhole, no hinges, not even the slightest crack to indicate a doorway of some kind. If the companions are to get in and investigate the source of these sounds, Christoph realizes they will need to simply break into this wall somehow.
Christoph grunts sourly and pulls himself back to safety."I could try, but I don't think this spell will last long enough. I hear groaning -weak- from the other side of the wall. we best hurry about it. Your rapier sounds helpful, but I think we might want something with heft to start." He fetches the heavy metal-headed weapon from its straps as he says this.
Christoph looks for somewhere he can tie off a rope or otherwise secure whoever will be bashing the wall.
Alas, Christoph finds no handholds or footholds along the roughly finished stone wall. Unlike the other three chambers, nothing remains of the collapsed iron walkway that once connected across to the main hall. Spotting the remains of the black blob creature at the base of the chamber, he recalls to mind the sight and sound of arrows and armor sizzling on contact with it. Coupled by the fact that this chamber alone has solid stone doors (instead of the reinforced wooden doors in the rest of this tower complex), it occurs to the Speaker that perhaps the blob sizzled away the entire iron walkway that once was.
With what remains of Rhia's ancestral lift, he takes a smack at it with his heavy morningstar. He manages to chip off a bit of surface brickwork. This will take some time... more time than Rhia believes her magic will last.
Though with elbow grease and a lot of luck, it's possible he could break through it in time.
"It's very likely, given the lack of any opening, that whatever is sealed within the walls was done with powerful magic." Rhia notes.
"I've heard of magic that can move and reshape stone, alas such expertise is outside of my grasp. Also unfortunate that the magic tends to be in reshaping the stone, the stone itself is quite mundane, thus it can not be dispelled."
Pulling himself back into the hallway, Christoph is silently pensive. No way to secure yourself why you break the wall, that won't do. He looks again at the wall and, as he does, he starts as inspiration strikes. "I think we best break through in here. There's no foothold or other way to secure ourselves out there. We'd have to hold a rope at best. Not the best condition to swing a hammer or mace."
Motioning to the others, he says, "Let me try this wall, unless we'd rather get Sookie up here." Once he has room to swing (without hitting one of his companions), he begins to batter the wall with his morning star.
Christoph, having battered furiously at the wall, frowns at the few chips and holes he'd made so far. Breathing heavily, he shakes his head and calls to Sookie, "I think you're going to have a better chance of breaking through then I am. Care to give it a try?"
He'll offer his morningstar to her if she agrees.
Sookie looks up at the sound of Christoph's voice. With Naught still in her arms, she looks nervously at the rope. Calling up to the hall,
"Uhm... sure, Metz. Be up in a jiff."
She looks at Istivan, who also lingers behind in the waist-high water.
"Care to hold her while I, eh... give it a go?"
Sookie then attempts the arduous climb, so simple for most of the others. She is slow going, but manages to make it above the water level, and continues going...
"I'm telling you, this place needs a proper safety inspection. Unsafe icy bridges with no railing, you have to climb ropes to get between chambers..."
As she talks out loud to no one in particular, Sookie continues to climb slowly but surely... 10 feet... 15 feet, she's halfway there.
"Whoopsie!"
Suddenly, the tweed-clad knightly lass slips, and try as she might, she cannot get a grip on the rope again. She falls!
* SPLASH! *
Landing on her back in the frigid water below, poor Istivan and Naught get a good chilly splash of brine in their faces. That'll wake you up! With some troubling splashing about, Sookie manages to right herself and stand back up in the waist high brine.
"All's well, Did that on purpose. All part of the plan, it is... Sorry Metz, I... don't think I can."
fail, no progress
success, 5 ft. up
success, 10 ft. up
fail, no progress
success, 15 ft. up
fail miserably, fall!
fail, she falls to the ground!
Istivan shakes the water from his eyes, "Perhaps if you use the preternaturally hard rapier to scratch the mortar out it will go easier?"
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"We can do it! Look at the chips fly off the wall. Doing a great job there!" Istivan says, trying to keep spirits raised.
"Yeah, you got this!" Naught calls out to the gremlins above.
With the tweed-clad Sookie splashing to the frigid brine below, Christoph knows it's up to him now. And up to nearby Zelda, who steps up beside him in the short hall.
The Speaker continues to whack away at the concrete brick wall with his heavy spiked mace. Zelda, holding her rapier like a spear (her offhand grasping near the tip), picks away at it with quick forceful thrusts. Tiny fragments break off with each of Christoph's strikes, while smaller chips spatter all across the hall from Zelda's rapier.
Both they and even Aliseya at the farthest end of the hall are showered in dust and concrete chips for the next several minutes. Slowly but surely, the holes in the wall get wider and deeper. Until, at long last, one of Christoph's strikes smashes clear through and an end to their dusty toil is in sight. After digging a few feet through the wall, his strike leaves a gaping hole about a foot in diameter, for a solid brick broke loose and fell into the gap beyond.
Suddenly, everything begins to shudder!
The walls and the floor begin to rumble... dust pours down from the ceiling above Christoph and Zelda, covering them in gritty gray sand and gravel. Aliseya nearly falls from the western doorway with a shout. Even down below in the western chamber, Sookie, Istivan, and Naught get a trickling of dust from above, with a few concerning plops in the brine as tiny rock fragments drop from the 30 foot ceiling above.
Thankfully, the rumbling subsides. After coughing the dust out of their lungs for a long moment, Zelda and Christoph look at one another, coated in gray dust from head to toe. They look back at the gaping hole in the wall...
The hole widened in the shuddering, leaving about a 3 foot radius gap about a couple of feet from the floor. A few inches or so of gravel and small fragments of ceiling rocks now covers the floor in the hall now.
Peering into the gap in the wall, it is very dark. The two humans can barely see within without a nearby light source. Noticing the quiet, Christoph and Zelda do realize the scratching sounds have stopped.
Suddenly, they spot a pair of small red lights within. Then a second pair...
And as the hairs raise on the backs of their necks, a skeletal clawlike hand swiftly bursts forth from the gap in the wall, reaching for Zelda's neck!
”Whats going on up there? Is there good silence or bad silence after that?” Naught calls out to those above.
"Good job, you guys did it!" Istivan calls up to the group above, then after a pause, "What'd you find?
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Aliseya coughs as the dust settles. She answers both questions from below with a shrill scream on spotting the clawed rancid hand reach for Zelda.
As her eyes begin to glaze over, she fights off her inner witch with a shudder.
'NO!' she inwardly chastises her alter ego. 'Not now! ESPECIALLY not if that's what I think it is! Just what the Speaker needs to see me do...'
Aliseya defiantly traces the spiral sigil of Pharasma in the air before her heart. She mutters in an ancient language that sends chills up the spines of all... except Naught, with whom she experiences it quite differently as the language of dreams.
"C' ph'nglui bugnah shugnahh ng mgshugnahh ot r'luhhor. Mgsyha'h c' ah mgah'n'ghft uh'enyth ngnah ah'n'ghaorr ot shuggothh. Uh'enyth mgah'n'ghft mg agl llll h' l' ngahnah ah'bthnk. Mgehyenah mgah'n'ghft mg agl l' ah driven ph'nglui. Ahh ah fahf? Iiahe c' mgep mg agl ot n'gha ph'nglui c'."
As a violet effervescent trail is left in the wake of her spiraling fingertips, she reaches out to touch Christoph on the shoulder. An invisible force manifests as she does so, encircling Zelda, Christoph, and herself.
A frustrated Sookie looks up from where she heard Aliseya's scream.
"Confounded ropes!" she curses under her breath, wondering what else she can do to help from down in the brine.
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"So... I take it a timely rescue of trapped workers was not what just happened." Istivan observes dryly.
Coughing to clear his lungs of the dust from the wall's partial collapse, Christoph peers into the darkness that he and Zelda had cleared. His eyes widen and he starts to shout a warning but before he can the skeletal hands erupt from the darkness.
"! If these are the workers, they're undead. Damn that Caromarc!"
With his reserves of magic depleted and the threat unknown, Christoph wastes no time in using the most powerful of what he has available. "Blessed Pharasma, my Lady of Graves, grant me strength and insight to confound these abominations."
[ooc]Not sure if I have cover and therefore am not threatened; DC is 21[/dice]
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"Can you throw it down here?" Naught calls up as everything goes to s~@!.
Rhia begins casting a spell, a shimmering silvery glow spreading over her companions' weapons, granting Pharasma's blessing.
As the rotting hand swiftly thrusts for Zelda's neck, the artful blonde's blade is swifter. By the time her rapier pierces the hand straight through, her off hand blade is in hand and thrusts upwards, piercing through the creature's wrist, her blades forming a cross. And with one fell over-the-shoulder toss, she uses its forward momentum against it, tossing the creature onto its back into the hall with a thud.
Christoph, Zel and Ali now get a better glimpse of the putrid creature in better lighting. Malevolent red eyes glow with malice as it gurgles in discontent from the floor. Its rotting flesh, partly skeletal in a few areas, is visible through the holes in its tattered garments.
Floating up by the grace of her ethereal ancestors, Rhia recites an old chant as a silvery glow fades in to Christoph's mace, Zelda's blades, and Aliseya's staff.
As the tossled creature regains its bearings, it reaches out to grab Zelda's nearby ankle with its remaining good claw-like hand. But Aliseya is already muttering the nightmarish speech while staring it down. As her violet spiraling effervescence imbues Christoph, a faint violet aura radiates around him, spreads to Zelda, and to herself in rapid succession. The three feel a sense of protection.
The floored creature winces from the manifesting effervescent barrier. Zelda has no trouble jumping as its claw swings through the air where her ankles were. It then rolls onto its side, bending its disheveled legs to get up.
Meanwhile, two more claws from two more rotting creatures with red glowing eyes reach through the hole in the wall!
One tries to smack into Christoph... but it swings wide as the Speaker dodges.
The other tries to pummel Zelda... but the agile jeweler evades its rotting fist.
|
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As the creature stands Zelda takes the opportunity to swing atvthe creature once more hoping that thing never touches her
and gives the creature a close shave but misses.
Spotting a new set of eyes Zelda shouts, "We have four creatures up here with rotting flesh! So gross"
She strikes again hoping to remove at least one opponent.
Christoph's training overrules his first surge of fear as he swings mechanically at the creature that Zelda has manhandled so adeptly.
"These are wights! Don't let them touch if you can as it's unnaturally draining. If any are so unlucky as to fall to them, they'll become a wight themselves so be wary." The grim recitation by the Speaker doesn't stop him from swinging with divinely gifted speed at first the creature between him and Zelda and then at the next to come in reach.
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"Nog yogor..." Hearing Naught's request, Aliseya looks over her shoulder back down to her love as she responds with a wicked smirk and a wink.
Turning her attention back to the creatures, she begins muttering a disturbing mantra and outstretches an arm towards one of the wights. Her eyes flash red as her fingers writhe, as if puppeteering an invisible puppet...
The prone wight deftly evades Zelda's rapier... only to place its skull right into Christoph's swinging morningstar. With a loud crack, skull fragments scatter with bits of rotting brain as the undead body falls back to the ground. The putrid stench is revolting.
As another pair of wights lurches towards the broken wall, they are greeted with a barrage of thrusts and swings. Zelda's rapier pierces one's shoulder through, though her offhand blade goes wide. With preternatural speed, Christoph concusses the other with two rapid swings, leaving its broken jaw hanging loose.
Still standing, they both lunge forward now. But before the one Zelda pierced can claw at her, it freezes mid-swing: Aliseya's dark chant seems to have frozen it dead in its tracks. Turning to face the witchy young woman, it lowers its good hand to the wall and begins to climb over it. Paying no heed to Zelda and Christoph now, it hustles over towards Aliseya, leaping into the air... right past her, over the edge, falling towards Sookie, Naught, and Istivan below!
Though confused by the dark powers just exhibited over its ally, the other wight carries on in an assault on the Speaker. It swings wildly for his head... and misses.
Meanwhile, from deeper in the wall, a fourth wight rapidly comes forth. It gropes for Zelda's throat, but she's too fast for it.
As the rotting creature fell to the floor from above, Istivan was forced to concure with Zelda, "That is gross!" before drawing his scimitar and striking at it, before taking a prudent step back.
Rhia points at the fallen wight, directing as storm of righteous sols to put the undead back to rest.
"Thanks, love!" Naught calls up to Aliseya as she sees the Wight flail down towards, prompting her to pounce onto it with her claws reflexively. Her brain only registering what Christoph warned after...
Christoph, with further undead encroaching, can spare no more time for the wight descending the wall then a preternaturally quick swipe of his mace.
Recovering swiftly, he turns to the others and wordlessly bashes at the emerging wights. The gibbering voice, always lurking when he fought the undead, is tamped down ruthlessly as he focuses on what he's been trained to.
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The swayed wight is bashed and pierced by both Christoph and Zelda as it takes its flying leap. Still hanging on to unlife, Rhia's ghostly ancestral barrage batters and slices it up as it falls to the brine below.
As it impacts the frigid brine, Naught leaps from Sookie's bosom to pounce it like a panther. Istivan deftly moves in to decapitate it, as Naught's claws further slice and dice the rotting flesh bag open. With a splash, several larger chunks of wight now float in the wavy brine, its desiccated innards and blackish clots of blood fanning out from the site of impact in a sickening spread.
...
Meanwhile back up in the short hallway, Christoph takes out a chunk of wall with his first swing. But his heavy mace bashes the next wight in the chest on his second swing, cracking its rib cage and causing it to collapse motionless after one final gurgle. Zelda's rapier just misses, but her short blade slices the other wight's arm.
The last wight standing seeks revenge on Zelda. Carefully taking aim for her face, it swings open-fisted to slap her senseless... or it would have, if she weren't so agile: especially motivated not to be touched by a gross creature, the artful blonde easily dodges out of the way.
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Sookie takes an involuntary step back in the brine as Naught leaps off of her towards the falling abomination. Spear at the ready, she merely observes the impressive display of savage raking and beheading following the barrage of mid-air ghostly assault.
Tracking the rotted head as it floats past her, she wryly remarks, "I think you got it."
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Breathing hevily she cranes her head and gives Sookie a wide grin before calling out to those above. "Again! Again!"
"Huh? I think it had something," she remarks as her head drops for a moment to look at the gory flotsam before turning her attention back above, hopping a little bit in intensity.
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"Yes, it looks like it does." Rhia says, looking at the same thing that Naught spots. A ghostly image appears over shoulder, before floating over and picking up the small leather pack, bringing over to hold up before Rhia.
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It takes Rhia's ghostly ancestor a short while, but the small leather pack eventually breaks loose from the dead wight's belt...
Christoph, his hands still numb from his misplaced swing into the wall, moves with preternatural speed to bash the remaining wight attacking Zelda.
Back in the hall, Zelda and Christoph have at it with the last standing wight. Zelda's blades pierce the creature's chest, left and right; their tips exit through opposite shoulder blades. Barely getting a chance to start its death rattle, Christoph's morning star clubs the creature's head twice, taking it clean off its body with the second swing.
As Zelda's blades escape and the dead undead body falls, Christoph grimly wiggles head remnants from his spiked weapon. Slowly, the crushed head slips loose, dropping to the floor with a wide-eyed, slack-jawed splosh.
There does not appear to be any further signs of unlife in the hole in the wall.
Meanwhile, down in the cold wight-gut-infested brine below, Rhia's ancestral spirit finally breaks the small pack loose from the belt of the shattered wight's remains.
As the pack is brought to levitate before her, those below observe the leather pack has one strapped pouch and several open pockets. The pockets seem empty now, but the pack seems designed to hold several small tools for easy and quick access. Something a professional craftsman of some kind would possess...
An engineer, for instance.
"So, are we finally done with this place, and can go shower now?" Naught calls up to her friends who were still engaged with combat.
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"Abso-friggin-lutely," Sookie's eyes light up as she answers.
She sinks a bit, however, as her eyes are drawn to the rope leading out...
Up in the hall, Aliseya's eyes glaze over momentarily. Her attention is drawn to the desiccated body parts strewn about the floor before her.
"Ew!" she shudders, her face wrinkling with obvious disgust. Retrieving a lacey handkerchief from her satchel, she spritzes perfume on it before placing it over her nostrils and breathing again.
She takes notice of the floating pack before Rhia down below. Blinking twice, her brows furrow as she focuses at it from above. Lost in thought for a moment, she then turns and tries to count the bodies...
"Four?" she speaks, sounding nasal with her hand holding the handkerchief over her nose. "Didn't we count three cots in the engineers' bedroom...?"
Looking at the wall, her brows furrow even more.
"How did they get inside the wall?"
"So these were the builders or designers of this place?" Rhia calls up, puzzled. "A gruesome, and thoroughly unacceptable fate for them up until this moment." she says solemnly.
Looking over at Sookie, and her concerned expression looking at the rope, she smiles. "I've got you!" she says warmly, gesturing as a pair of her spectral ancestors, support the well dressed warrior, and begin to lift her up to the exit.
"I'm not sure. I think the Count mentioned they were going to repair the bridge?" Ali nasally replies, still perplexed about why four wights were buried behind a wall.
"Guess that's not happening..." she morbidly remarks, looking down at the dead wights again.
Suddenly and literally shaking off all further thoughts about them, she looks over Zelda and Christoph. Though she smiles at them, it's hard to tell with the perfumed hankie over her nose.
"Not a scratch on either of you. Nice job!"
She looks around at the floor, wondering where to step where there isn't either debris from the collapse or wight goo...