Rhia groans as Naught helps her down, the pain from her numerous wounds, a sharp reminder of the mimic's danger. "Th..thank you."
Her hands shaking she carefully removes a potion from her gear with quite deliberate action, and consumes it.
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"Anytime... actually no, not anytime, stop getting eaten by monsters. It's bad for you." Naught rambles to the Oracle. Seeing her going for her own curative the Storyteller quickly turns on her heels and scampers back over to the Dancer. "Hey, Ali, I'm here. How are you doing?' she calmly says as she inspects her.
Distracted and unsettled, there's little Christoph is able to glean. Seeing Rhia healing herself, he ashamedly asks, "Are you still injured? I can also ask Pharasma's blessing to heal your wounds."
Damn fool, you should have simply asked if she was hurt. Don't let her magic nettle you so. You've a job to do.
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Though primarily concealed from Christoph's inspection by the mimic's splintered and gooey body parts, his examination of Rhia reveals that in spite of her considerable bruising and bloodiness, the young woman survives, and does not appear to have been fatally wounded.
For several seconds, Naught finds it impossible to even put a dent in the extraordinarily hardened slime of the mimic. As the next half a minute passes however, it appears the substance cannot retain its strength on the creature's death. Slowly, Rhia and the splintered remains of the mimic begin to slide down the wall as Naught at last cleaves away some of the larger pieces. The pace quickens: by the time the remains gather to the floor and the substance loses all adhesion and reverts to a rather gross gray sludge, the battered and tattered ghost whisperer is on her feet and healing from her potion.
Her health is now improved, though some bruising remains. Her outfit is somewhat tattered, frayed, and stained with her blood. And her entire figure remains coated in a dripping gray slime.
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Still catching her breath, Aliseya responds to her love's concern.
"I'm... fine. I think..."
She looks up at Naught from the floor, smiling reassuringly. Perhaps more for the storyteller's benefit than a reflection of the dancer's mood, though.
"How's Rhia?" She looks over with concern at the sliding mass of splintered sarcophagus, tentacles, slime, and ghost whisperer.
"Oh, let me," she continues after Rhia is standing up again. Standing back up herself, she draws a white wooden wand from her satchel.
"Stelele și lumina te învie."
Approaching Rhia, she speaks a brief Varisian prayer. A green effervescence lightly emanates from her wand as she touches Rhia on her shoulder. The divine effervescence tingles Rhia as she feels her remaining wounds close up and her bruises heal further.
Looking down with some embarrassment, she adds, "Sorry... about that."
”She got some owwies.” Naight says down to the dancer with a smile.
”Had some owwies,”
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After Rhia's wounds close up and her bruising is greatly reduced, the poshly dressed healer looks the poor slimed girl's tattered and torn filmy robe up and down.
"Well, there's revealing, and then there's... revealing. I'm all for showing a little something something, but... well that won't do..."
She holds out her hands, hovering over the bottom of Rhia's outfit, and raising them up to the top, while singing a brief but catchy tune in Varisian.
"Trageți și reparați, coaseți și coaseți. Nu a fost momentul, Desna vă rog să o rezolvați."
As she raises her hands, a faint effervescence emanates from Aliseya's palms. Rhia's tattered robe seems to move and mend itself at the behest of the tingling effervescent energy as it infuses the outfit.
"There we go. Now that's... better."
Rhia's outfit is now fully repaired. She remains lightly coated in grey slime, though...
"Oh!"
Her eyes open very wide as she remembers something.
"Before we were interrupted by those... things, I was saying about the door in that room." She points north to the room where you were first attacked by the mummy and the mimic. "When Zel and I were here last, we found that it opens to a narrow pathway in the bare rock face over the falls. It's a treacherous climb that leads up to some creepy drowned towers..." She gazes at Naught here, remembering where the group found the story teller, after she'd been missing for a while. "And up further ahead is the Count's main tower, where he does his creepiest work."
"Do we, like, want to go there? Or should we check out more of this... creep-o-rama..."
Sassy hands now resting on her hips, her disdain for this private museum, and for the prospect of staying a moment longer in it, is obvious. Although the prospect of heading up a treacherous narrow path, to drowned towers, and the main tower likely will not assuage her disdain.
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"If you left the dress in tatters we would have had an excuse to go shopping," Naught teases the Dancer.
As Aliseya goes over what she remembers of the layout Naught crooks her head to side. "I don't remember it being any less creepy up there."
Furrowing out of Naught's coat Roland marches over to the still dazed Oracle and begins to delicately dab and wipe her face with a rag in his talons.
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"If I left it in tatters," she smiles at Naught, and also now glances a smile at the Speaker, "then you and Christoph would be too distracted to safely carry on in this place. And I think Sookie, too." She gives the paladin a teasing wink.
"Besides," she adds matter-of-factly, "one never needs a reason to go shopping..."
And then she realizes it. Trekking through the Shudderwood to find a hunting lodge will likely present no shopping opportunities. Her facial expression and even her body language quite suddenly shift, as if the wind were taken right out of her sails.
"Shopping..." she repeats, now with a forlorn look in her eyes.
Brought out of her waking nightmare of no shopping, she answers Naught's next comment.
"Yes... it was not."
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"Lies!" Naught hisses as Aliseya teases her back. "And fair enough," she adds, wondering what all places she would want to visit after this... hitting the same realization the Dancer does only right after, being in the middle of nowhere affords very little opportunity to spend coin on luxuries.
Naught on the other hand isn't quite as debilitated by this revelation however.
While relieved that his companion wasn't badly injured, he can only look on to the back and forth between the Varisian dancer and her paramour with befuddlement. "Since we're all seemingly alright, should we continue? Clear the rest of this cabinet of curiosities so we dont' have any surprises. Down maybe?"
Regardless of the direction chosen, Christoph takes a moment to chant a prayer to Pharasma.
"Sounds like a plan."
Recovering from their traumatic experience, the companions return to the northern room. There they see the sight of the fallen mummy that had just a moment ago assaulted them. In the northeastern corner of the room, Sookie lifts the trapdoor in the floor as they watch on with baited breath.
Beneath it, a spiral iron stair literally hangs above the valley beneath the museum, connecting to a small stone terrace and a wooden door. Although the view is dizzying, the stair and terrace appear stable and safe.
Taking the lead, Sookie partially descends the hanging stair to have a look around the basement. The stone terrace is carved into the rock beneath the curio. Three large crates appear to have been left opened. Three large, sealed, opaque black glass jars sit inside the room. The first contains what appears to be an alchemically preserved head of some monstrous creature. The second contains a yellow substance. The last jar appears to contain some kind of translucent substance, either that or it's just empty with a trace of opaque mold lining it. A closer inspection is needed to make out the contents of the jars more clearly...
...before she gets a chance to, Sookie is alarmed to see and hear a large humanoid creature and several tiny creatures in the corner suddenly move from apparent slumber. Prodded up by six tiny winged monstrosities, a faceless fleshy humanoid creature arises. The winged devilish-looking creatures are chained to the creature's collar and flit about its head, nudging it towards Sookie. The creature's flesh appears to have had its skin loosely wrapped and sewn around its muscle and sinew. Portions of skin are missing entirely, revealing raw musculature. The golem must be blind: nothing but skin covers where its eyes ought to be. It lets out a vicious moan as its skinless, toothy jaw opens while stepping forward.
The six tiny creatures you recognize as homunculi: a miniature servant created by a spellcaster from his own blood. They are weak combatants but make effective spies, messengers, and scouts. A homunculus’s creator determines its precise features; some are more refined looking, but most creators don’t bother to improve the creature’s appearance beyond the minimum necessary for functioning.
A flesh golem typically cannot speak, although it can emit a hoarse roar of sorts. It walks and moves with a stiff-jointed gait, as if not in complete control of its body.
Although most flesh golems are mindless, there are persistent rumors of unusual golems who somehow retain the memories of a previous life. The head (and thus brain) of such flesh golems must be just the right combination of fresh and (in its previous life) strong-willed, and even then luck and chance during the golem’s creation seem just as important in retaining the creature’s mind. Certainly most who construct flesh golems prefer mindless slaves over free-willed creations, and as a result intelligent flesh golems are rare indeed.
"I'd say the only better direction would be out, but this Count has much to answer for." Christoph observes bitterly in reply to Zelda. Taking up his position in the party, he watches the shadows of the room's they pass for alertly. Everything that can wrong in this infernal heap does. No reason to expect that to change
The horrifying appearance of the eerily fleshing creature and its attendance don't appear to shock the Voice. In a calm voice as he invokes the Spiral, "A flesh golem and homunculi. I should have expected the Count to be this foul. The thing is mindless, but don't try magic except perhaps cold. It will ignore it or, at worst, empower it. As for the little winged things, I know the process of creation renders them poisonous but little else."
Shaking his head as he nocks his bow, Christoph Metzger, Voice of the Spire, invokes his goddess, "The souls who made up this creature will be put to rest. So sayeth the Voice."
Rhia breathes a sigh of relief as Aliseya heals the vast majority of her wounds, standing up a bit straighter (an involuntarily offering quite a view in her shredded clothing). As the Varisian beauty bemoans the ruined state of her clothing, the Ghost Whisperer, looks down at the tattered shreds, her eyes widening in surprise as her garment begins reknitting itself to the flow of effervescent energy rising up along her body.
”Thank you, Ali! That’s definitely a very useful trick!” she says gratefully, smiling at the banter between the pair, while the stoic inquisitor and quiet noblewoman warrior look on. "I'd never say no to shopping"
As the Speaker refocuses them all to the task at hand, she makes her way with the others, following Sookie down the suspended staircase. The motion, and the vile monstrosities the awaken to greet them bring a gasp of surprise, even as accustomed to the terrors of the world she works in as she is.
As Christoph’s voice rings out with the authority of the Dark Lady’s power, she reaches out for a fraction of that power herself, speaking a supplication to imbue their weapons with the power to deal death to those that might be more resistant. Her hands glow for a brief moment, before the same pale light envelops the weapons of her companions, each illuminating their immediate area and pulsing softly.
"Bloody hells, what now," Sookie remarks with complete nonchalance at the nightmarish sight before her. Taking a step back up a couple of stairs, she thrusts her longspear right into the big creature's gut.
"Oh you're very welcome," the divine seamstress smiles back at Rhia. "And yes, we must all go shopping after all this!"
...
At the sight of the atrocity down below, the troubled Varisian's face goes agape...
"... this place ain't right." Naught mumbles as she moves up to intercept the golem.
Before the creature takes another step, the artful blonde vanishes down the stairs in an acrobatic flash. The others make their divine preparations, as Naught strides up and slashes at it with a fiery claw. The faceless creature merely grunts open-mouthed as it "looks" down at the mere graze, as if wondering whether it just felt something or not.
Then, from over her shoulder, Sookie's longspear makes a bigger impression, slightly penetrating its gut.
The others make their divine preparations as the faceless creature lets out a hideous cry of anger more than pain. It reacts with a powerful pair of swipes of its massive fleshy arms at the paladin. The first goes wide; it pummels the archway instead, causing the precarious hanging stair to shudder beneath Sookie's feet.
Its second swipe smacks her dead in the chest, however, knocking the wind out of her.
All the while, the six flying homunculi, though chained to the golem, fly about above. Their beady devilish eyes sharpen and dart around at Zelda, at Naught, and at Sookie, perhaps strategizing which of these threats should be taken down first.
Golem: 1
Homunculi: 0
"Not right at all." Christoph aims and looses with the benefit of long years of practice and very quickly two arrows are in flight to the creature.
"Stupid. Rotten. Worthless. Golem," Naught growls through gritted teeth as she sees it focus, or rather the homunculi focus it, on Sookie.
"Simply dreadful indeed," Sookie agrees.
Grunting from the force of the golem's blow, she takes a moment to study the creature.
"Surprisingly not evil," she remarks, "though a threat nonetheless."
Redoubling her efforts now, she eyeballs for a potentially more vulnerable area this time. With a sudden push forward, she puts her back into it this time for a more forceful thrust.
Aliseya's eyes go fuzzy for a moment. And... they refocus again quickly. Closing her opened mouth, her brows furrow, and her gaze narrows in on the fight below.
Raising a palm upwards, she begins to speak in... a different language. Not the bone-chilling speech of the witch, but rather, her voice bears a calming cadence to it.
"Gráa kona, megum við hafa hugrekki og staðfestu til að mæta og sigrast á óumflýjanlegum erfiðleikum sem eru á undan okkur.
Her eyes glow violet as she speaks, as does the air where she draws an invisible spiral before her heart...
...and all of her friends suddenly feel inspired.
As she moves town the floating stairway, Rhiacalls to her ancestors, the ornate spear materializing in her hands.
The Speaker's arrows strike true. Yet they sink dully into the creature's thick flesh; it seems to not even notice them.
What it does notice is Zelda's rapier piercing several inches into where a kidney should be. It hollers loudly, its faceless "face" turning to "see" the annoying bee that just stung it deeply.
Naught curses and claws at the creature. Though its reaction to the artful blonde's blade was more notable, the storyteller is satisfied to have scraped through some flesh at least.
The tweed-clad paladin's spear strikes true again. Over Naught's shoulder, it pierces the creature's rib cage this time, and by a few inches. Letting out another loud bellow, it swats the spear aside.
Curiously, perhaps not so much to those who know of golems, there is no notable blood from the wounds, save for bits of dark coagulated clumps and a bit of clear fluid...
Meanwhile, Aliseya's strange blessing inspires her friends, while an ancient spear manifests in Rhia's hands.
Though more displeased with Zelda, the winged creatures manage to manipulate the golem to turn back round and focus its brutality on the spear warrior. The creature tries to smack Sookie twice again with its great arms. Both blows are mighty, but the veteran of battle manages to reposition herself so its great fists merely glance off of her armor.
Golem: 24
Homunculi: 0
Standing behind Zelda, Rhia gestures with her spear, as a faint ghostly image of a woman in archaic armor, bearing a familial resemblance to the oracle, manifesting directly above the massive creature, a more elaborate, shimmering version of Rhia's weapon in her hands as she strikes at their opponent.
Shaking his head grimly, Christoph casts yet another divine blessing on his bow as he aims and looses again, undeterred by his lack of success and bolstered by Aliseya's unusual blessing.
Sookie gives her longspear another powerful thrust. While the creature deflects it, she twirls around and strikes it with a quick jab.
The strange violet-eyed persona of Aliseya steps forward confidently. Raising her arms as she does so, a bluish-white effervescence emanates from her free palm. She calmly calls out in her earthy speech once again, placing that palm on Sookie's shoulder.
The bluish-white energy crackles and tingles across the paladin's tweed armor, coalescing into a barely invisible barrier.
Rhia's ancestral spirit descends upon the golem. Her ethereal and soundless movement is an eerie wonder to behold. She thrusts her ethereal spear at the golem. Yet the homunculi, watching wide-eyed at the manifestation, manage to direct the creature to dodge it.
Two more swift arrows from the Speaker make their mark. The first seems to graze the creature's thick shoulder. Before he can despair, the second lands with more impact into its chest. The creature eyelessly looks upwards at the source of that arrow, grunting and grinding its jaw.
The Storyteller ferociously slices her fiery claws into the golem's flesh again, ripping some more bloodless flesh loose.
Sookie then lands a glancing blow on the golem's thick thigh, piercing its cold flesh about an inch or two deep.
After Aliseya's effervescent protection shields the paladin, the homunculi direct their chained companion to continue focusing on striking at Sookie again, and again. Its first fist smacks her right in the chest once again with a loud thud. But this time, perhaps due the enigmatic Varisian's protective barrier, the force of impact is not as bad as it looks, and she does not slide back so much. She is readily able to recover and dodge its second blow, which leaves a large depression in the stony wall.
Golem: 48
Homunculi: 0
"Leave her alone!" Naught growls as she continues finding purchase with her claws on the creature.
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Christoph, shaken by the day, silently admonishes himself as his shot goes wide. [i] Taking more careful aim, he looses again.
Rhia's ancestor once again strikes downward at the construct.
Sookie grunts from the golem's painful blow. But her sheer determination to take down her enemy is what's most evident in her expression.
Twice more the warrior strikes forcefully with her longspear. The first thrust glances off. But the second strikes true. She plants her spear deeply into its abdomen, right where Naught sliced an opening.
The enigmatic persona of Aliseya continues to stand behind Sookie. She stares calmly ahead at the battle before them. In her violet eyes rests the maturity of a woman more advanced in years than her youthful appearance would belie.
Again, she speaks calmly in her soothing language. This time, a golden-white effervescence emanates from her palm. The transfixing energy slowly drips from her fingertips as she reaches forward to touch Sookie once again, this time on her chest.
As the effervescence transfers to the wounded warrior, Sookie realizes that one or two of her ribs must have been broken. For she now feels them mend, and the pain she was ignoring now wanes.
The raging Storyteller continues to mince the dead flesh of the creature's abdomen. She rips away more dead abdominal musculature, enough to begin revealing the creature's bowels.
Two more arrows strike the creature from the Speaker. One of the homunculi manages to deflect the first with its chain. But the second, cleared by Naught, penetrates deeply into the creature's guts all the way to its fletching.
And then, the blonde duelist lands a devastating pair of blows from behind. Christoph's arrow pops back out again, its cutting head ripping more dead flesh and guts along with it. The silver-gray mithril point of a rapier pops through the abdomen in its place. The wet sound of ripping flesh is audible to all as that same blade twists as it is pulled back.
Not half a second later, the creature's body immediately contorts as its legs gives out from under it. The tiny homunculi cannot hold it upright, for its spine has been severed by an adamantine blade. With one final groan, it collapses to the ground where the spears of Rhia's ancestor and Sookie put it out of its misery.
The six homunculi remain chained to the creature. All of them react as if in terrible pain themselves as the creature is slain. Their bodies contort in flight, causing them to fall next to the dead golem. Writhing, they call out in pain.
Damage taken:
Golem: 105 (dead)
Homunculi: 0
Rhia hangs back as her warrior ancestor, floats down to strik at one of the writhing homunculi
The companions, aided by ancestors and otherwise, put the homunculi out of their misery. The great carcass lies as motionless in the middle of the room as the small winged bodies now, still chained together in some sort of twisted dependence.
With the threat abated, they catch their breath. Looking around, they find themselves in a rather small and odd choice of room for such a hulking creature to be in. The basement is barely fifteen by fifteen feet. Three different large crates sit along one wall of the room, all of which have been opened. Three large, sealed, opaque black glass jars sit inside the room as well along another wall.