| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Struggling while wrapped in the chaotic creature's elongated tail, Flint can only manage a grunt of agreement as his friends rain down blows on the Xiritix.
The protean sheds its last vestiges of disguise, taking its natural form. You take in the creature's shimmering violet and aquamarine scales, four arms, and three glistening eyes above a fanged maw. But you have barely a second to appreciate its strange beauty before it slams Flint right into the neighboring mirror slab. While he's dazed, it lifts him up by his neck and slams him right back into the same pillar.
A harsh noise screeches through your heads.
|||| INIT ||||
Sammad (13 dmg)
Bel (23 dmg)
Mari (14 dmg)
Flint (86 dmg, pinned)
Ordyt (30 dmg)
Xiritix (89 dmg, get em)
Swearing profusely as his captain is repeatedly slammed into the nearest slab, Ordyt stabs and slashes with furious abandon.
Cursing just as profusely in Auran, Mari fires off another blast from her breaching gun before loading more slugs into the weapon.
Grunting with pain, Flint calls on healing energy as the Glow of Life heals his wounds and stops his bleeding (1 RP, up to 24 hp healed).
”Strike and step back,” he growls into the comms as his body begins to glow brightly with barely-contained solar energy.
Supernova with Distant Burst to position the last to damage the foe and catch as few of his allies as possible.
Very badly injured but still standing, the protean seems to contemplate escaping, but then its attracted once more to the glow billowing from the solarian. It attempts a last ditch effort to squeeze the light of life from his eyes. With Flint tightly bound, it swings him from side to side and pummels him against the scenery. Its grip loosens a bit
|||| INIT ||||
Sammad (13 dmg)
Bel (23 dmg)
Mari (14 dmg)
Flint (105 dmg, grappled)
Ordyt (30 dmg)
Xiritix (139 dmg, get em)
"Let go of him, dammit!" Mari yells, firing two more shots at the crazy snake.
His Solar inferno frying the Xiritix but not quite killing it, Flint reels from the continued slam attacks. The second one, though, knocks his sword arm free. With a yell of anger and determination, Flint seizes the opportunity and sends holy fire back into his scimitar, swinging it at the tail once more!
"Let the captain Go!" Ordyt bellows as he lunges in, the point of his bayonet aimed right between the proteans shoulderblades. Or at least, where the shoulderblades would be on a less chaotic creature.
"You won't get away!" Sammad yells as he sends another pair of shots towards the creature!
With the protean slowing down thanks to its wounds, three of you spy openings in its defenses. Mari sends a slug into its serpentine tail, followed by Flint's cleaving the end of the tail off, while Ordyt plunges his bayonet through its head. The protean shrieks sharply before erupting into a cascade of colored light.
Combat Over!
Despite the brightness of the room, you can now explore it at your leisure and with the full party. It doesn't take long before you find a niche in the centermost mirror slab holding a small golden sigil - this one in the shape of a stylized nova.
The moment you withdraw it from the niche, the light level in the room begins dropping to a more manageable brightness.
Staggering back as the Xiritix fades from existence and he is released from yet another grappling foe, the battered and bloody captain leans heavily against a nearby wall and says, ”Well, that was…unpleasant.”
Tucking the nova sigil away with the others, Ordyt turns his concerned attention to Flint. "Hold still a moment, Captain..."
"Did we miss anything? I can't think of a reason to delay returning to the sepulcher at the center--for better or worse, I think it's time to finish this."
"If we did miss anything, it'd be hard to tell," Mari answers wryly. "But I think we all need a bit of a breather before we throw ourselves into the next set of non-Euclidean teeth."
She returns her breaching gun to the magnetic holster on her back before getting out her medkit to treat Flint's remaining injuries.
Visibly returning to health between Mari’s treatment and Ordyt’s spell, Flint says, ”Thank you all for coming to my rescue, then healing me of my wounds. Yes, once I catch my breath, I’ll be ready to head to the center and see what opens up with the third key engaged.”
|
Belmarniss is about to hack at the protean some more, before the others finish it off. She breathes a sigh of relief as the light level comes down.
"That's much better. It was difficult fighting without worrying about going blind to boot."
As they move to catch their breath, Belmarniss looks around them to get a better look at the room.
"So...what about that wraith pinned outside?"
Sammad shrugs at Belmarniss' question. "We killed one once, and fore-knowledge will only improve our chances. If it comes to a fight, that is."
He pauses pensively, looking away from the others and mumbling to himself, "Which I'm sure it will, like every other time...I hate it here."
After taking a well earned rest and patching up Flint's wounds, you retrace your steps through the nova wing of the complex and return to the cubic monolith. The massive black stone structure looms ominously, its surface traced with horacalcum veins. You come up to the door and place the three keys in the depressions, one by one. An odd sensation - a feeling of weary longing - washes over you as you stand there. You place a hand against the push plate below the three keys and push. The plate slides in effortlessly.
A moment later, a soft whispering starts emitting from the door. Its edges glisten with a wet sheen before it starts to fold in on itself, like a piece of paper transforming into origami. After a few seconds, the last plane of black stone sweeps together and disappears from this plane of existence. Beyond the opening lies a stone staircase, seemingly made of obsidian, descending into the dark interior of Ezorod.
Before you can contemplate the damage you might've done to the evil-sealing properties of Ezorod, the ceiling above you starts to shimmer with the colors of an aurora. A massive cloud of multicolored light pulls itself free from its hiding space within the stone, then surges downward. At first it looks like its lunging at you, but then as it transforms into a whirl that blasts past your group and directly down the now-open stairway! In seconds it's gone, and all you see is a dimming cascade of light from somewhere far down below.
"What was that?" exclaims Flint as the light flies down the long tunnel?
"I suspect that was the Colour--the being that infected that poor woman on our ship," Ordyt stares grimly down the stairway. "What is it doing, I wonder."
Indeed, Ordyt recognizes the light immediately as a Colour out of Space. He also recognizes that the faint sense of weariness you felt for a moment must have come from the Colour.
For all of you other than Ordyt, that sensation of listless, weary longing grows over the next minute until it has its dulling hold on your heart.
Flint says, ”Well, all we can do at this point is head down the steps and see what we can do to reinforce this prison.”. A bit worried that they may be doing more harm than good, Flint hopes that they are like the scalpel—in order to heal the deep wound, a shallow one must be created.
He heads carefully inside and down the stone steps.
With Flint leading the way, you descend down the stairs. Once you take the first few steps down, a sense of vertigo sweeps over all of you. The previously straight stairs start to twist into a spiral and the dark stone walls turn to utter blackness that not even those of you with darkvision can make out. The spiral grows tighter and tighter, until suddenly Flint takes a step and he finds himself it another room, the straight staircase directly behind him.
This oddly shaped chamber is made of charred stone, but its dimensions seem subtly wrong, as though its straight lines curve at the edge of vision. A wide staircase leads up the way you came. Ahead and to the larboard, you notice strange "circuitry" traced into the stone floor, which continues through an archway and into another room. It glows a dim orange but doesn't seem to give off any heat. Another glow, this one somehow more fiery, emits from around the corner.
The scritching of a fountain pen on paper is audible here, the same sound that you heads when first approaching Ezorod.
Sammad narrows his eyes at the strange sound. "Not this nonsense again...I truly do hate this place."
Shrugging, Flint says, "Well, let's explore and see what we can figure out." Moving over to look around the corner and get closer to that strange circuitry, he asks, "What do you make of this circuitry? Magical or scientific in nature, or some kind of hybrid?"
Turning to Ordyt, he asks, "When we run into this Colour, how do we fight it?"
Ordyt's glance at Bel is alarmed even as he answers Captain Flint. "They're powerful, but they can be fought--even killed. They aren't physical beings, and they're resistant to magic, but the best weapon against them is force effects. If Bel knows force magic that is likely our best bet--such powers are beyond me, however."
Flint isn't sure about the circuitry. Those of you with detect magic do sense an aura from it, suggesting it is at least not solely technological.
Ordyt notices a little more than most as he looks down the hallway. Through the doorway with the 'circuitry', the walls of the hall there seem to be subtly shifting in color, as though colored light might be reflecting upon them from a distance.
Growing ever more taciturn by the minute, Mari examines the glowing circuitry. "Only way out is through," she mumbles.
"Then through we must go," says Flint, though his attempt to sound determined echoes a bit of desperation instead. He walks around the corner and avoids stepping on the circuitry as Mari continues to investigate it, looking to see what else is in this strange room/hallway.
Mari is fairly confident that despite looking like circuitry, the inlays in the floor are more magical than technological. Unfortunately, that means their exact purpose is fairly opaque to her.
Rather than heading through the doorway glowing with magical traces inlaid into the floor, Flint circles around the corner. He's struck with a strange sensation, as though he turned his head too fast, but it passes quickly as his subconscious starts to compensate for the strange physical dimensions of this space.
Around the corner, he sees an angled hall containing two alcoves, each with countless pieces of half-melted glass inset into the scorched stone of the walls. A large block of translucent glass is also set into the floor, and a hallway is just barely visible beneath it. The hallway below the glass blazes with indistinct orange light - like a bonfire viewed through a foggy lens. Openings lead out of the hall forthwards and back the way Flint came.
Sticking to Flint's back, Ordyt peers around the corner and glares at the block of glass as though it were responsible for this strange and unsettling place.
"Which way, Captain? I've got an uncomfortable feeling that we started a countdown when we activated those sigils."
”Correct me if I’m wrong, Belmarniss, but glass distorts less with a straight-through view, right? What day I fly over top of that glass prism and see if I can get a clearer view of what is beneath it?” asks Flint as he first moves closer carefully, assessing both the glass and the shards in the wall…If those shards seem to be made out of the same glass, he will not want to get that close in case the object expels shards in some fashion.
Flint is able to walk all the way up to the glass floor without any unpleasant surprises. When he looks down through it, he gets a better look at the source of the orange light. He sees the hall below with three stone plinths, each about five feet one a side. Each plinth holds a different device - one a mask, one a bracer and one a crystal. A flat, spiny disk about eight feet wide sits on the floor. A fiery giant of some kind stands in the center of this room. As Flint approaches, it looks up. Its skull-face seems to stare directly through him, but other than watching him, it doesn't take any other action.
Looking forwards in the direction Flint just went, the hall passes through an archway and into another larger chamber
"Another fire skeleton creature," Mari says, looking down at the giant from behind Flint. "Even bigger, this time. Think he's friendly?"
"Same as the others probably, just...more so." Ordyt shrugs and turns to look over his shoulder at the circuitry-gate. "Unless one of you sees something I don't one doorway seems as good as another. That way first?"
Mari shrugs, seemingly in agreement.
”If you truly want to try and communicate, Mari, we could try and display some text—likely in Ignan—and see if it can read. Otherwise, we can explore some more on this level through the circuit passage,“ suggests Flint
Bel's expectation is that this giant flaming skeleton is probably just a more dangerous version of the burning, cursed skeletons that you'd already crossed paths with, but she doesn't know any specifics. Without much to go on regarding the skeleton, you turn back around and Flint leads the way down the circuitry-marked passage.
The visual impression of shifting colors of light grows stronger as you proceed through the arch, and soon you see the source of the display. This large chamber is suffused with a strange, coruscating light of rainbow hue, strongest where it clings to a massive device of metal and stone that squats directly ahead. Ordyt recognizes the haze of color as the Colour out of Space! It seems attracted to the device so strongly that it doesn't react as you enter the chamber.
You also recognize that the magical 'circuit' inscriptions are connected to the device. Any efforts to damage the device are diverted through the circuits and dissipated through the room - possibly into any individuals that might be in the room at the time.
Ordyt, who has been glancing with concern at the other's listlessness--especially Mari and Bel who seem more strongly affected. When he spots the Colour clinging to the large device, he pauses and opens the comm channel in his helmet. "Listen, I know things feel grey and unimportant right now, but that's not you--it's the Colour, leeching the feeling out of you! Fight it as best you can, and we'll kill that thing and hopefully shake off whatever hold it's got on you."
"That machine it's wrapped around is some sort of magical keystone. It's anchoring, or maybe generating, the whole bubble we're in. I'm not sure about the specifics though, sorry."
Mari shrugs again, but checks to make sure her breaching gun is fully loaded before giving Ordyt a nod.
”Hopefully the Color will burn,” says Flint, readying himself for what promises to be a difficult combat.