"We've got you," responds Damian, reaching out to touch Coral on the shoulder as he calls upon his goddess to heal his companion.
Lola shakes her head, "Lo siento hermanita, as the others have said - I must deal with that miserable wight first." She touches the brim of her hat and quickly moves towards the caster.
Lola moves up, her feet light, and then points at the woman, and with a voice that is both gentle and commanding, says "may this ease your transition into the afterlife." A ray of positive energy emerges from her fingertips.
Marya moves and strikes the last cultist just before Vlad walks up and ends him once and for all with a brutal slice from his scythe.
Coral steps back towards Damain who reaches out and heals some of her wounds, bringing some much needed relief to the constant onslaught of abuse she's been taking from the undead caster on the other side of the room.
Lola launches her own magical assault at the undead woman.
She calls out from afar "I give you my thanks for taking out Gerdish, he was an ungrateful bastard. I tell you what, I'll refrain from using my more powerful spells and call a truce and let you and your allies pass without further harm. I have no interest in meeting my demise this day."
Marya tilts her head and scrunches up her face in mock confusion. ”Who says I have any interest in letting you go?” She glances back to the others. ”Unless the rest of you have objections, I say we finish this now.”
Coral nods to Marya.
"You know, it doesn't feel to me like she was holding anything back. I think she's bluffing about more powerful spells."
Lola looks like she’s going to angrily denounce the woman with a string of invective, but holds her tongue. She brushes hair out of her face, and speaks directly to the wight ”I do not know you well, but… you have other options. You may still regain your soul in the afterlife - all you must do is - let go whatever is keeping you here. I am I servant of the psychopomps- an usher to guide all from this life to the next.” She puts her spear away, holding out her hands, ” déjame ayudarte a encontrar la paz, there is no reason to be afraid.”
Still realing from the betrayal and death of Gerdish, Feena wasn't sure if they should end things or not. That this person was willing to let them pass told her they were afraid and that their group could take her down. She wasn't sure she believed the other about having more powerful spells, if she had Feena was sure she would have used them. Still, Lola's desire to try and redeem the woman made Feena pause, at least until she knew if it worked.
Coral looks both hopeful and sad at Lola's words. The halfling thinks of her friend from Three Pines Ford, a noble and idealistic paladin slain and turned into an undead monstrosity on his first mission.
Maybe I should have given up on ever restoring him to life. Maybe I need to let go. Just destroy the thing that he became and let his soul move on. Resurrection cannot be for everyone, not even for the best of us.
Damian shakes his head at Lola's attempt. "I don't know if she deserves our mercy. Her magic turned Gerdish against us, and he died for it. Who knows how many more innocent lives her and her followers have claimed?"
Coral turns to face Damian. She will only mouth these words - there is no need for the undead caster to hear.
The only mercy Lola speaks of is ending this undead's existence. Persuading her to willingly embrace what comes next.
The undead woman seems to ponder Lola's words for a moment, looking between the duskwalker and her companions lined behind her. "I don't think we have the same outcomes in mind here, my dear. I have no intention of returning to the grave anytime soon. I'm offering you a chance to proceed whatever it is you are doing here without further interference, however."
Looking to the front doors from which Lola entered, she declares "I'm going outside. I will not attack you on my way out, I request you do the same."
Coral will draw her sword and step into the undead's path. She is in pain, but nevertheless confronts the caster.
How many more of those spells can she have?
"We were not proposing to let you go."
Lola looks slightly crestfallen, and accepts the woman's magical assault dauntlessly. The effects give her an even more ragged appearance, but she counter-attacks with a devastating blow from her spear, and stands over the downed woman, sadly.
*****
Lola accepts the hug, "It is possible." She looks quite tired, emotionally and physically. "There are wonders on this little globe, and beyond." She separates herself slightly from Vlad, and looks up at the ceiling. "My soul is more resilient than some would like." She looks down, "but - as with all things - there was a price. I am bound, now, to the boneyard. The essence of the place has seeped into my being more strongly than even before." She ends this with something of a whisper, as if it pains her, "para tal fin, I am now their sworn agent. You may all rest easy that the bargain I had struck before has been superceded." She smiles wryly as if she thinks the idea is funny, and pushes up the silver skull mask on her face.
She opens her hands, "my heart will always belong to Ashava, but I am a servant of the psychopomps from now until the end of all things." She adds, intensely, "this was the pact that Arazni made - for me. She has sent me to you to help you, twice now, but even she could not overcome their will." She stands up straight, "ask your questions quickly if you will, and I will tell you what I know."
The slight madness to her speech is now obviously greatly subdued. She no longer seems to be speaking any strange tongues, nor does she appear "haunted" (for lack of a better term) though she does look like she's crawled out of a grave.
Marya helps the others fell the villainess before she can escape. Once Vld is done with his bear hug, she steps up to Lola, unstraps her gauntlet, and holds out her bare, sweaty hand. She thinks better of it and wipes the hand on her gambeson before offering it again. ”I’m just f#~#in’ glad you’re back, Lola.” As she clasps Lola’s hand, she pulls her in for a hug. She starts crying. ”You couldn’t have come at a better time. Inheritor’s heart, I’m sorry. I’m so f++%ing sorry I let you down. Can you even find it in you to trust and f#$$-up like me? I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t.”
Coral approaches, and adds tentatively, "Lola, I too am sorry for letting you down before. First not speaking up in front of the psychopomp, and then failing to defend you from those fey.
But did you say Arazni sent you to us? How is that possible? What does... that being... want?"
Coral struggles with how to refer to the former herald of Aroden. Many in Lastwall refer to the undead as "the abomination that wears Arazni's flesh", denying that they are Arazni. Just a shell that needs to be granted rest. Referring to the undead as 'The Harlot Queen' sounds vulgar, needlessly insulting, and wrong. But is 'Arazni' accurate?
Coral isn't certain.
Arazni has kept surfacing during this ordeal, as Roslar's fixation. As a story with wildly divergent meanings for Coral and Marya. And now, as Lola's savior.
Is the undead still Her? Still Arazni? And what does She want?
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Feena was relieved the fighting was over and went over to hug Lola as well. She was relieved their friend had returned to them and said, "I am sorry, if I had not moved away to keep my flames from hurting everyone you would not have been killed. I hope you can forgive me."
As the others began to ask Lola questions Feena went to where Gerdish's remains lay. She found his head and brought it back to his body before she knelt next to him and began to weep. He may have turned on them in the end but Feena had heard his dying words and she felt sorry for the man. How bad must things have been for him that undeath was preferable to life. What caused him to hate so that he would help bring about Rossler's Coffer's end like he did?
"I'm sorry we couldn't help you Gerdish, I am sorry that things were so terrible for you that you felt this was the only way to make things right." She laced a hand on the head's brow and said, "I hope you can find the peace in death you could not find in life." Feena made sure to take the gear from him they could use and set it aside then crossed his hands over his chest, lay his head next to them, and she burst into flames. Feena hope that the immolation would make sure he would not be able to rise again and that he would feel the warmth of friendship for the first time, even if it wasn't in life.
When the undead caster is finally gone, you are able to take stock of Lola's return and grasp the current situation at hand. Once that is done, you take a moment to process Gerdish's betrayal. When that is finally over, you take inventory of your fallen enemies possessions.
Looking complete, you are presented with a number of options. The cathedral is humongous! You entered the room from the cellar at seven o'clock, Lola through the vestibule at six o'clock and unopened doors remain at one, three, five, eight, nine and eleven o'clock.
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Lola accepts the attention, smiling slightly, but after a moment she cracks her neck and puts down her spear. She begins weaving her hands together, and the fabric of her fine clothes begin getting clean and the small cuts get sewed up. She looks apologetic, ”lo siento, I do not feel like myself without being clean.” She takes off her hat and begins brushing out the tangles of her long black hair delicately.
”None of you should feel guilty over my death. It has now come three times, in three ways. The first was my fault. The second was an accident. The third - I was murdered by the fey. That it all” she pulls a wet, broken leaf out of her hair and wiggles her fingers to throw it onto the ground, frowning. ”it didn’t seem to me that anyone made a mistake - except me - for antagonizing those creatures, perhaps.” She shakes her head.
”Some of the veil has been lifted from the life I lived before, so I will say what I know. First, Arazni is funny, rude, but seems decent enough. I expect she will visit everyone shortly, but… she has una alma. Or something like one. You all seem to be taken aback - but I know that once she was a mage who protected the people of Xopatl, where I am from, originally.” She seems to realize something, ”you may not know this place. It is across the sea, to the west from here. In a place your people call ‘Arcadia’. It is wonderful.” He speech is clipped, as if recalling a painful memory, and her breath heavy.
”I know less of her later exploits - though I understand there was betrayal and murder and death, and that for a time she has been corrupted and turned into one of the undead?” She looks questioningly at Coral, ”but she has transcended this - I believe. She never lost her decent nature - regardless of her form. Perhaps she is not ‘moral’ any longer, but I am not one to judge.” Her hair, now untangled, is cleaned using the same magic, and she begins to tie it up into a braid and clip it onto her head.
”If you do meet her - I expect it would be wise to allow her her dignity and, for that matter, to thank her. I am certain she had a hand in you returning to life. To all of us. She hates the whispering tyrant and sees us as tools, but she also feels things. She has her own tasks, but she has always treated me gently, and with a rough kindness. Do not judge people by how they look, or where they come from. There is a depth of pain she has felt that no mortal can easily understand.” She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, and then opens them again.
”As for me, as I have said, the psychopomps would not let me go. Speaking up in my defense ultimately did not matter. Arazni asked for me to come back, using powerful magic, but such things are not enough to easily bypass Pharasma’s and the Psychopomps will. I had to negotiate.” She gestures again, and her eyes glow with the pale light of a lantern in a graveyard, of the moon illuminating a field after a battle, and of the candle of a church at a funeral - flickering in an uncanny way. The effect passes.
”I am now something of a psychopomp myself - what they call a ‘mortal usher’. My soul is entangled with the psychopomps until the end of this universe. This is my charge.” She looks at everyone, carefully, ”and this is a mercy. My crime in Xopatl was unspeakable. A violation. They should have erased me from all of the planes, but they gave me a task to do, to free the doomed souls of the undead. By happenstance, or through Arazni’s intervention, their scheme was foiled, and then foiled again by my own hubris. So, I begged them for a final mercy, and they granted it - to return to help you finish what we started.” She looks much more presentable. She bows slightly, ”and here I am. Though I believe I have run out of ‘chances’ as it were… perhaps not, my soul seems to be more resilient than any of them expected…”
She trails off as if thinking and then closes her mouth, only opening it after a moment to ask. ”I have seen glimpses of this plane, but not the whole story.” She shakes her head, ” descansa en paz” She shakes her head and sighs.
Marya slowly stops crying as she listens to Lola’s story with fascination, surprise, and finally a touch of joy. ”Hilde…she was a historian. She wanted to write a book about Arazni. That was her great dream. Bit of an obsession, honestly. If she was here, she would have so many questions for you. I wasn’t able to recover her notes, so I don’t know where she would have even started. I do know that hearing someone say Arazni is good at heart would have brought her to tears of joy. She…saw a lot of herself in Arazni, I think.” Marya’s eyes start filling with tears again. ”Thank you. If I ever see her again, I will have something worth telling her.” She remembers something and blushes. She digs in her pack and retrieves a wrapped bloody cloth. ”I, um, thought that if I ever earn the power from Iomedae to resurrect the dead that I could, um, try to….” She presses it into Lola’s hands. ”Anyways. This is yours. Sorry.”
Damian is crying too, and hugging Lola while mumbling apologies for his failure in keeping her alive before. As she steps back to straighten up her appearance, he looks her over carefully. "Are you... do you... do you need healing?"
Her story about Arazni has the paladin frowning at first - could they really trust an undead? - but the part about the former herald interceding on Lola's behalf, and Marya's reminder that some still believed Arazni to be fundamentally good, soften his heart. Perhaps there was a way to redemption for Arazni, as there seem to have been one for Lola... and maybe for Damian himself, as well.
Lola unwraps the greyed and slightly decayed parcel, and the quickly folds the cloth back up. She nods, obviously appreciative, ”thank you. It was a noble sentiment.” She turns to Damian. ”yes, that magic missile was a little painful, I will admit. I cannot portend what we will find ahead, but we had better be prepared if we can be.” She sighs, ”as for the nature of Arazni, evil, good, I do not know. She has had longer than all of us to ponder this, yes? If I have learned one thing though all of this is that we mortals judge things with haste. I believe she has her reasons for not… well, killing herself. Beyond that, is a hard thing to ask a person to do, especially if they still have their soul. She has seen empires rise and fall, and has known loss that none of us can comprehend, not truly.” She has a far-away look in her eyes.
”The reaper’s scythe comes for most of us - but some who evade the scythe have excellent reasons.” She closes her eyes, ”let us put these people to rest, and give them some of the peace they could not find in their lives, si?”
|
Vlad sits contentedly as Lola explains her story. Though it seemed difficult to trust anyone, and he had been distrustful of Lola initially, he no longer cared why they had been brought together.
Everything seemed okay now.
"Perhaps we should all take a rest and regather our strength. That was a difficult fight."
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"Transcended undeath?"
Coral looks down at the ground. Is such a thing possible? Probably not for Salcas.
"I am sorry, Lola. My whole life, growing up in Lastwall, hearing about the danger of the Whispering Tyrant... we have always held the undead to be among the greatest of enemies. Not for their appearance, but for what the transformation does to people. Rage and hunger destroying who they were. In the case of Arazni, the goal of ending the undeath was seen as a remotely possible mercy. Although maybe we were seeking that for our benefit, not hers - a partial atonement for the ways that Iomedae and the Knights of Ozem failed Arazni in life and in death. A way to alleviate guilt.
And yet Arazni has somehow held on to some of who she was?"
A miracle. But then, we have transcended death ourselves.
"I will listen to her with an open mind."
Damian begins healing everyone who needs it, occasionally bursting into a happy grin as he catches sight of Lola, and shaking his head in disbelieving joy.
"Thank you, Damian."
Coral moves to the next door (clockwise, so eight o'clock). She both examines it and listens at it.
Worn out from the battle and wanting to catch up with Lola on what's transpired since she was killed, the group retreats back to the cellar where they barricade themselves in and rest for the night.
The following morning, they slowly make their way back to the main cathedral to find that the dead bodies from their battle yesterday have all been removed. It's clear that their arrival in this location is no longer a surprise to its occupants.
Resuming where they left off, Coral checks the door to the southeast. She finds it locked, but not trapped. Vlad throws his shoulder into the door and it bursts open to reveal a gallery.
Five display cases occupy the majority of this room, their glass fronts shattered and their contents missing. Several empty frames hang on the western and southern walls, their canvases either shredded or simply torn away.
Searching the room, you find a phylactery of the shepherd and a scorched silver holy symbol of Sarenrae. Additionally, Coral locates a secret compartment in the base of one of the display cases. Inside is a small ivory box with ruby inlay, worth 400 gp. The box contains an exquisitely painted set of 34 3-inch-square portraits that function as a deck of illusions weighing 2 pounds. Each image has been lovingly crafted with oil paints and has bright and sunny backgrounds. Even the evil creatures depicted on these cards, such as the glabrezu and the lich, bear halos of light behind their heads, making them look saintly. The cards’ corresponding illusions look similarly beatific.
A single closed door leads north. Coral clears it and Vlad enters a meditation room where a wide bench runs along the western wall of this room, facing a mural painted to look like a stained-glass window depicting a sunny landscape of rolling hills. Warmth and the smell of fresh wildflowers seem to emanate from the painting. The room is empty and so you push north through another closed door.
The next room contains three long tables heaped with alchemical equipment, tattered tomes, and rotting body parts. The smell of decomposing flesh mixes with the pungent odors of various reagents to produce a nauseating atmosphere. Doors exit the room to the north, south, and west.
Three undead creatures here similar to the undead woman who battered Coral with magic missiles the previous day are busy toiling away conducting experiments on the body of what looks like the zombie you fought yesterday.
The various items that they found after their rest were of great interest to Feena, particularly the illusion deck given her ties to Sarenrae. She didn't ask to keep it but her expression showed how much she liked. The state of so much that would have been valuable damaged or ruined made the fiery haired woman sad and she resolved to find a way to save what they could.
As their explorations continued and they found the room with the alchemical reagents and books Feena's nose wrinkled in distaste at the stench. When she saw the undead abominations experimenting on the zombie corpse Feena wasted no time in attacking. She sent a bead of red light flying at them which promptly exploded in the middle of them.
Coral seems just barely able to see a single one of the foes from where she is, and isn't about to go charging blindly into a room if there could be more enemies lurking beside the door.
She will delay for now, waiting for some direction from allies (most likely will move up alongside Vlad).
Lola frowned, ”mierda, more of these pendejas…” She peeks into the room and tosses out a blast of positive energy at the closest one.
Then she moves to the corner, out of line of sight.
Marya still feels the rush of yesterday as she raises her sword high. "Drive them back to the grave!"
Feena manages to catch two of the three in the main blast of fire, the third managing to take cover behind a desk.
All three fire magic missiles at Damian.
Marya curses as Damian gets enfilladed by magic missiles, stepping forward and reaching out to heal him.
Damian's back arches and his body spasms as the force of the magical energy hits him fully. He gasps, a terrible hissing moan. But he is still standing, and better that he would be the one targeted than Coral, or Feena. Or Lola.
He looses two quick arrows at the closest undead, then takes shelter to the left of the door, sighing in relief as Marya's healing magic courses through him.
Seeing just how dangerous these bastards were with their flurry of magic missiles Feena chose the one that ducked behind the desk as her target as she sent a pair of fiery rays lancing from her finger tips at the monster.
Coral double moves to stay with Vlad as he advances.
Lola scurries into the room last, and it looks like she’s readying something.
Vlad, Damian and Feena just barely finish off the undead researcher behind the desk. As her body collapses to the floor, the two remaining ones shift targets and fire their missiles at Vlad.
One gets it's missiles off unhindered, but the second is assaulted by Lola's magical attack. Though the duskwalker's attack lands, the undead combatant successfully fires its missiles off at Vlad as well.
The undead woman on the right opens up the door behind her and the other caster quickly moves down into the corridor beyond.
[
Lola kicks her heels up, and moves her guitar in front of her, strumming a note which reverberates in the small room. A mournful note, Lola frowns at the undead, "you descrate much in the search of knowledge - and for what?" She picks a the strings of the guitar, sending notes of inspiring musical energy over her companions, and though she seemingly has lost something of her taste for singing, as she moves, her rhythmic swaying serves the same purpose as to inspire Damian as well.
Grunting slightly as the metaphysical threads connecting Vlad and himself hum and vibrate, Damian risks a peek into the room beyond, just in time to witness the apparent withdrawal of the undead. So they were not mindless creatures, which poses a separate set of challenges and questions.
"Surrender! This is hopeless for you!"
Coral moves up and strikes with her short sword at the one caster remaining in the room.
She tries to use Vlad for cover as she moves into position to attack, ducking around the warrior's legs.
Marya rushes up and pats Damian on the shoulder, healing him. "Damn, those magic missiles are a pain in the ass! I got you though, Damian."
Both Vlad and Coral move forward to the closest caster and strike the undead creature.
Backing up through the doorway, the undead creature that Coral and Vlad attacked tries to cast a spell. Damian's first arrow hits the doorframe next to Vlad and doesn't make it through to its intended target, but his second one does. When the arrow strikes her in the chest, she staggers back a half step and loses her place on her spell.
The second researcher, further in the back of the hallway is clear to cast her series of missiles which she sends forward into Vlad
Marya blasts out a wave of healing and protective energy before picking up her sword.
Coral moves up next to Vlad and tries to strike the undead caster.