Cuetzpalli is too stupid to withdraw from the fight, filled with rage as he is. He lashes out furiously at Kardic with four massive strokes of Kelmarchen.
37 for 57
47 for 50
38 for 55
30 for 60
"Sorry, am I distracting you?" Marka asks, as Astraden loses her spell. "You really need a better attention spWHAT WHAT IS IT?" She turns and studies the wall behind her. "I DON'T SEE ANYTHING IS IT BEHIND THE COUCH"
Meanwhile, as Astraden releases her mildly annoying channel, Cuetzpali ignores the distraction she's offered and cleaves into Kardic, Kelmarchen ablaze with holy fire. Kardic just looks oddly mournful as his arm is nearly hacked clean from his shoulder. "The end will come whether you fight or not. Why bother fighting? Accept decay. It is the inevitable future. Gods cannot stop it. They know what is coming." But it is clear that Kardic is only barely hanging on.
Seeing how badly hurt his companions are, Barnos steps out of Cuetzpalli's reach and fires on Farrukh. Another wisp of shadow flies out, this one targeting Astraden.
Two soldiers clad in plate armor rush through a dark, dense jungle, approaching what looks like a city wall. A mass of light seems to pursue them. One wields a bow, and carries a pulsating mass of darkness that seems to be masked by the vision. The other bears a mace, and carries a plainly dead woman. The archer—Barnos, Astraden realizes, but not skeletal yet—looks strangely gaunt, and his eyes glimmer with a bright red glow. "You should drop the body," he says to the man who must be Kardic. "Her reward will come only if this mission is not in vain. She is slowing us down."
Kardic obeys, discarding Marka, and he and Barnos switch to sharing the shadowy object—whatever it is, it is clearly very heavy. They continue to run towards the wall, but Astraden can see streaks of shadow climbing up Kardic's arms. As they draw near the city wall, he lets out a scream. His eyes are turning black. "It's—what is this? I see..."
"The phylactery is damaged," Barnos Indarna says calmly, not slowing his pace. "Its existence is toxic to you. Kyuss will reward you in death."
Kardic grimaces, but continues to run. Astraden's vision does not follow them, but simply watches them vanish into the distance. The light draws nearer. After a moment, Astraden sees a group of dark-skinned ghaeles like Celeste run into view. They stop, take position, and raise bows.
Then a six-armed shadow rises above them. They look up, eyes filling with despair. The vision cuts off.
Farrukh picks up his weapons and adopts a defensive stance.
"Dammit, Cuetzpalli! I can't just bring you back from this!" Astraden pauses as the vision flashes through her mind. She shakes it aside, too concerned for her very good friend, and her eyes widen as she realizes something. "Cuetzpalli - can you even understand me?"
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHERA!"
Hearing/seeing how deadly the undead guardians' worm-eye-bites are, Tanith steps forward to join the melee and help his friends.
After shouting a Kordite prayer he cleaves into Marka with his poleaxe.
The conjured archon fires rays of burning light from up above.
Tanith leaps forward and raises his axe. Marka looks up at him and lets out a little laugh. "Can I just axe y—"
With a single swing, he cleaves straight through Marka's neck, sending her skull flying. With his second swing, just to be sure, he hacks her torso in twain. The Kyuss Knight falls to the ground.
The lantern fires a volley of blasts of light at the enemy, and hits Kardic twice in the back.
"--no. No, you may not." Carina finishes Marka's dying quip for her as she pulls out more bombs.
"Also, it'd be easier for the lot of YOU to just give up, Worm-Knights." She throws more bombs at the crippled Kardic...
"...er..." Carina's follow-up gets cut off as the bomb slips from her grip and flies out of her hand. "...uh-oh."
Greater Mutagen: Still Active
Shield: 75/120 Rounds
Death Ward: 76/120 Rounds
Displacement: 10/12 Rounds
AC is currently 33/19/23!
The first bomb slips from her hands and lands behind Kardic, catching both the animalistic Cuetzpalli and Kardic in its blast. The other two, however, catch Kardic dead-on. Kardic looks at Carina with dull, pitying eyes as his torso is blasted to smithereens, sending bits of bone, metal and worm everywhere.
"Well, axe and you shall receive, I guess..." Eben says (a touch of regret in his voice) to the fallen remains of Marka. Stepping around Astraden, he regards Barnos Indarna standing alone. "Has to suck being the last of your kind. I guess we could say that you got... shafted."
Four more arrows go at the undead archer, barely zinging around Cuetzpalli and Astraden as they do so.
Astraden causes a violet storm of chaotic energy to surround one fist, then moves up past Cuetzpalli in attempt to shield him. She's finally sorted through the vision she saw. "You're the one who got your friends killed, so that they could be re-destroyed here before they ever escaped the ring again. Do you feel bad about that?" she asks the Kyuss archer as she lunges forward, trying to discharge the violet energy into his plate armor.
"No." Barnos Indarna shudders as arrows sink into his chest, but their impact seems lessened—perhaps because they aren't silver anymore. Meanwhile, Astraden's chaotic energies suffuse him from a touch. "I do not feel anything."
Ragetzpalli roars wordlessly as he turns his fury on the last undead.
48 crit for 55 (36 to confirm for 56 more)
33 for 55
37 crit for 54 (34 to confirm for 57 more)
35 crit for 54 (30 to confirm for 53 more)
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Despite being brutally hampered by Carina's bomb, Cuetzpalli somehow struggles through and hacks Barnos Indarna, last of its kind, to pieces.
"Good job guys."
"So what are we going to do now that Cuetz has lost it?"
Carina cringes as she looks at Cuetzpalli. "...sorry about that."
"Let me look him over first, just to see if those worm-knights put any worms into him." She warily approaches the impaired warrior to examine the extent of his injuries.
As the last Kyuss Knight falls, a strange silence falls over th room. For a moment, the entire group is deafened.
Then the pressure releases. A loud hissing sound comes from the eastern room, and Cuetzpalli feels the fog around his mind become less oppressive, though no less opaque.
"Huh, what was that?" Astraden says as she goes to the doorway of the east room and looks in.
Eben approaches the severed head of the late Marka. "Hey, Marka. Marka, you still in there?" He kneels down to get a closer look, though he doesn't pick up or otherwise touch the undoubtedly worm-ridden thing. "If you are, the offer still stands. I think if we can overcome our differeing opinions on how good a thing the apocalypse would be, you and I could be a great comedy team!"
Alas, Marka's skull lies there, inert and lifeless. Her days of joketelling have at last come to a head.
"...could be..." rasps his dragon head. "...or not...could be..."
"Aggghhhck...." Cuetzpalli mutters. When he is healed by Astraden, he shakes he head like a wet dog trying to get dry. "That was unpleasant..." he manages, after a moment of fuddling with his tongue.
"Well, that went better than I expected it to be." Carina straightens herself up. "Now, what was that... weird s~!+ coming from the east?"
Farrukh looks around for the source of the hissing.
Seeing Cuetzpalli himself again, Tanith claps him on the shoulder proudly.
"We need to be prepared for whatever those things did to Cuetz. Astraden, do you have a spell that could protect us from them? Red?"
"Sounds almost like steam coming from that room. If this room fills up with poison I'm going to be mad."
Farrukh goes to check out the room, holding his breath.
"I'm still not exactly sure what they did to him. I can pray for more spells to protect us from melee attacks, and to heal us when we get hurt, but . . . no idea how to stop worms from befuddling people when they do get a lucky hit," Astraden tells Tanith.
"Well... I *do* have a formula recipe that'll improve mental acuity for a few minutes. It's more of a bandage than anything, but it'll suffice until we can put a proper restoration spell together." Carina says after a few moments of thinking.
"And speaking of restorations... Astraden, do you have any spare restoration scrolls that I can copy into my book?"
"No, I was upset because I'd used them all up on people we might not even see again." Astraden grimaces. "I'll see if I can scrounge together some scroll ingredients in our off time."
Astraden looks to Cuetzpalli. "You up to keep going? What else is there even down here . . ."
In a lull in the conversation, she converts a spell to healing energy and cures Farrukh of some of his damage.
“I think I’m okay for now...that was more disturbing than anything else. I almost lost control there. I felt like an enraged animal fighting for its life.” The things we face for the people out there...do they even know it? Do they even care?
"Yikes. You - you didn't seem to understand me at all. Thank Olidammara that they didn't manage to bite you another time." Astraden cups Cuetzpalli's jaw in her hand, staring into his eyes perhaps to check for residual damage. "You need to be able to retreat. Not in situations like that - you weren't yourself. But if we get in another place where you're wounded and near death, I don't want the bloodrage to overwhelm you. Be careful with it."
Astraden heals Cuetzpalli of all but the cursed wound, which seems to resist her magic.
In the eastern room Farrukh finds a bed, washbasin and small table. None appear to have been used in millennia, which isn't exactly surprising.
The hissing is coming from beneath the bed. Looking under that, Farrukh sees a curious disk roughly the diameter of a cat's skull. It is crafted out of glassy gray stone, but a large crack runs down the middle, releasing pulses of black energy.
"Hey, Astraden, come look at this thing. It's shooting out dark magic or something."
"Wait--what'd you find now, Farrukh?" Carina peeks into the room.
Astraden takes a look at the disk, muttering, "Ilmestys."
While everyone else is staring at Astraden staring at the disk, Eben checks out the north and south rooms.
Eben finds the other two rooms to bear identical furnishings, equally untouched.
Astraden doesn't touch the disk until she's scanned it for auras. She does, however, take a moment to evaluate the worth of this room's furnishings.
"Oh, Rudd. Yeah, don't touch touch that," Astraden tells Farrukh. "It's a lich phylactery, the thing that keeps them regenerating back to unlife, and it's heavily warded. Even touching it could send you into some extradimensional hell maze." She looks to the others. "Think it could be the Harbingers?"
"By the way, I think these beds and stuff are completely useless. They really could've stood clean them once a century or so."
"Any way you can dispel the wards? Any chance to kill a lich seems like a good chance to take."