Tenebres didn’t want to look around the tight, sloped tunnel that led to the deepest part of the compound. He knew that, and he reminded himself of it frequently. Nevermind that the last time he had been in this tunnel, he had been tied to a board and carried by two of Kellen’s thugs. Nevermind that he should’ve died that day. Nevermind the smell of dry blood and rotting meat that mixed with the cool, mineral tang of the hard-packed dirt that surrounded them.
Nevermind that he was now willingly walking through that same tunnel towards something just as capable of killing him.
This was a bad idea. A terrible one, in fact. Every bit of Tenebres itched to run away, to flee back to the sunlight of the surface, to leave this place and its horrors, past and present, behind him forever.
He saw similar reluctance in the faces of his companions. He saw how Olivia examined every shadow carefully, sword and shield both pulled in tight and ready. He saw the nervousness in Caden’s frequent looks back up the tunnel, clearly longing just as much to be out of this prison of darkness and blood and death. Allana didn’t show her fear in the same way but Tenebres had been in enough places like this with her to see the signs. Her face was too calm, too remote. She was quietly terrified.
It was too much. Tenebres wasn’t as brave as them, able to march forward and spit in the face of his fears. He couldn’t do this. They needed to go, now, before the hag became aware of their presence.
He had just opened his mouth to beg his party to turn around when a boom shook the cave around them.
All four came to a stop, their tightly restrained fears breaking free. Even Allana couldn’t help but take a trepidatious look at the natural dirt ceiling overhead.
“What was that?” Olivia hissed.
There was only one thing it could be. “Combat,” Tenebres answered. “Someone’s fighting at the entrance right now.”
“What?” Allana’s eyes went wide with something that lived in the vicinity of panic. “We went through all of this to sneak in, and now her undead have been set off anyways?”
“By who?” Olivia asked, casting worried glances up the slope of the tunnel.
“Shh!” Caden interrupted them, lifting a hand. “I hear footsteps, someone’s coming!”
The air around them grew tight, and they fell into battle positions, Tenebres and Caden slipping behind Olivia while Allana stepped deeper into the darkness, watching patiently.
Caden closed his eyes, concentration obvious on his face. “Lots of noises… can’t make out those up top very clearly, but it sounds like a fight of some kind… the steps are coming from down there.”
He pointed down the tunnel, and Olivia frowned more intensely. She shifted a little, putting her back to the wall, with the smaller pair of adventurers behind her, a minor effort to keep from being flanked.
Before long, those without an awareness boon could hear the footsteps too, the odd rustling of quickly moving bodies without any of the breathing expected. Undead.
Tenebres bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, ready to invoke a distraction as soon as it was needed.
The shapes finally came into view, all four of them. Three were giant, hulking figures, bloated and rotted in death, still covered in the savage wounds that had ripped their lives away. Kellen’s guards. Which meant the smaller figure in the middle, moving with a level of fine animation beyond the other three, could only be…
Tenebres tensed, grinding his teeth, as his gift of the void seemed to burst alight in his chest, desperate to be used. Olivia moved, ready to swing, but Caden put a hand on both of them.
“Stop!” he hissed, just in time, before either of the gifted could make a move.
“Why?” Olivia asked, eyes wide, unwilling to look away from the approaching undead. Their steps still hadn’t slowed as they neared the group, and Tenebres finally understood what Caden meant.
“Undead,” he breathed. “They’re mindless. They were sent to the entrance, not to deal with us.”
It didn’t seem possible, but somehow, their luck continued. The four undead approached the group–and kept moving, not stopping to fight them, not even giving them a second look of their empty eyes.
Olivia, Tenebres, and Cadence watched them with more or less equal amounts of shock, and Allana soon joined them. They stared, disbelieving, until the slope of the tunnel carried the undead out of view.
“Rogue’s purse,” Allana breathed, “that was… insane.”
All four of them looked back down the tunnel, towards the ritual chamber below.
“She… couldn’t have just sent away her guards, right?” Olivia asked.
“That was Kellen,” Tenebres explained, a little breathless. Hate still burned at his chest, desperate to be vented, his fears burnt away from the sight of the cult leader. “Or at least his corpse. The other three were his muscle. They were the highest level gifted in the cult.”
“Meaning that she sent away four undead, each likely on par with the wights, at least, right before we reached her.” Caden blinked. He may have talked big about fate, but this level of coincidence was a little too much even for him.
If they had walked into the chamber with Hellesa and those undead… They wouldn’t have had a chance.
Another bang echoed through the caves, sharper than the first had been. It jolted the adventurers back into action.
“We need to go now,” Olivia said, voice sure and solid once again. The energy of approaching conflict and the spark of hope their luck had lit in the squire was obvious, and she seemed more confident than she had been since Culles.
They set off without another word.
#
“Here we go,” Allana breathed. Ahead of her, the tunnel leveled out and opened into a cavern. They couldn’t quite see inside, not yet, but once they were close enough to see in, the hag would be able to catch sight of them, too.
“We go in waves. Tenebres, start us off. Allana, Caden, be ready.”
They had gone over this, and over this, and over this, but it seemed to comfort Olivia to rehash their plans again. Tenebres nodded and took a step closer. He closed his eyes, and Allana saw the darkness around them flutter in what had become an increasingly usual way.
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The boy sagged, and the shifting shadows resolved into the heavily clawed green imp, invoked from his strength attribute. The ugly little fiend looked around, bloodshot yellow eyes glittering with malicious glee, then Tenebres growled at it, “Go.”
It set off immediately, and Caden hurried after it, arrow nocked and ready. Allana gave him a step of space, and the rest followed, finally getting their first look at the underground ritual chamber and at Hellesa herself.
Aside from its shape, the chamber was unremarkable, lit from above by the pale white light of a large glowstone. It was a perfect circle, carved whole from pale gray stone. The domed ceiling of the chamber had a bunch of those spikes that seemed to accumulate in any cave like this (Tenebres claimed they had a name, but Allana could never remember it), but the floor was smooth and flat.
Though long dried, blackened red bloodstains covered nearly every surface, especially dense around a few cracks, flaws in the otherwise flawless chamber, that must’ve been remnants of the night Tenebres released the power of his new gift in this wretched place. The sharp mineral tang in the air was muted here, drowned under something more fetid and rotten.
In what Allana felt sure was the exact center of the chamber was a stone table, a solid block of the same gray rock as the rest of the cavern, apparently carved right out of the floor. And over that altar was the corpse hag herself, Hellesa.
Most of her body was covered by a shabby black cloak, held close to conceal her form, but her head and arms were revealed as she worked over a corpse atop the altar. Her skin was a uniformly gray, nearly the same color as the stone around her. Her arms were too long for her height, as if several extra inches had been added on each side of her elbows, and ended in oddly dextrous, six fingered hands. Her face was like some insane craftsperson had imperfectly spread clay around a warped skull and left it to sit, letting it run in uncomfortable ways.
What could only be blood oozed through veins all over her body, but it wasn’t the bright red Allana expected. Instead it was a deep purple, and oddly viscous, running wet along her limbs without dripping off of her. Her eyes locked on them as the imp ran into the room, and they were somehow the most unsettling thing about her. The orbs themselves were jet black, as black as the shortsword Caden had once again lent Allana, with bright white dots in their center.
“How did you get in here?” Her voice was a dry rasp, inhuman and uncanny at the same time. It made Allana think of moldering bodies and skittering bugs. “You should still be busy in the front… unless… That wasn’t you who set off my guards at all, was it?” The hag stopped speaking to instead make a ragged, wet noise, like a retch. As the adventurers spread out, Allana was struck by the realization that the sound was some sort of laugh.
The green imp hadn’t stopped dashing straight for the outsider as she spoke, and it still didn’t. The diminutive fiend leapt into the air, heavy claws ready–then the hag batted a hand through the air and it simply came apart, bones and flesh and blood tearing themselves to shreds before it dissolved into tatters with a final agonized squeal. Still, Caden had taken even the momentary distraction to loose one of his white-wood arrows, one of the magical ones that had hurt even Xythen’s wight. The projectile struck cleanly into the hags shoulder, sinking a few inches in, but the hag didn’t even seem perturbed.
“Very well,” the hag rasped, reaching up to pull the arrow from her flesh with a casual gesture. The wound healed even as it was pulled free, and Hellesa tossed the object aside. “Do me a favor and let me savor your screams.”
Caden’s eyes went wide, and he lifted another arrow to his bow, but he was already too late. The hag crooked a finger at the celestial’s bow, and it seemed to rot in his hands. He pulled back, desperately trying to shoot, but the decaying weapon simply snapped in his hands.
Allana had seen enough. She threw out a hand, not bothering with her pattern, and instead filled the air around the hag with a cloud of green-ish poison.
[Poison Cloud] - Poison, Trickster - Active, Manifestation - Manifest a low potency awareness poison in an airborn cloud. Lesser quintessence cost.
She didn’t wait for the cloud to clear, instead Trick Stepping in even as she dashed forward to get behind the hag, unafraid of her own poison.
[Poison Immunity] - Passive, Triggered, Healing - Quintessence is consumed automatically to negate poisons affecting you. Cost is relative to potency and volume of the poison. Mundane or tier one potency poisons are negated at no cost.
She held her dagger in one hand and Caden’s raidblade in the other. Each was coated in poison–one of stamina, the other of focus, high potency and designed to sap the hag’s reserves of energy and wear her out, as none were sure if Allana’s resilience poison was likely to take effect on the outsider.
[Toxic Manifestation] - Active, Manifestation - Create a variety of magical poisons, targeting any single attribute. Three potencies of poison can be created, with lesser, moderate, and major quintessence costs respectively.
Both blades slashed through the hag’s cloak, but her flesh resisted the weapons. The raidblade at least managed an actual cut, but the dagger only barely managed to poke through the hag’s skin.
Bone spurs suddenly sprouted from the hag’s body at odd angles, locking the dagger into place. Allana blinked, nonplussed at the incongruous ability–then Hellesa turned and whipped one of those too large, too nimble hands at her.
All the speed and coordination of Allana’s gifts weren’t enough for her to get out of the way of that blow in time and the outsider’s slap slammed into her ribs and threw her to the side. Allana felt a burning pain instantly as ribs snapped, and blood burst out of her mouth as she flew away from the hag.
#
Olivia couldn’t see what was happening inside of Allana’s poison cloud, but she knew it wasn’t good. She waited impatiently until Allana went flying out of the poison cloud, and Olivia made her move, releasing a savage gust of wind.
[Gust Blast] - Active, Attack - Manifest a gust of wind straight in front of you. Inflicts little direct damage, but can disorient or physically move enemies. Moderate quintessence cost.
The ability had little direct impact on the hag herself, but it blew both Allana’s gas and the outsider’s cloak away, revealing her otherwise nude body. Her torso was as ill-formed as the rest of it, like an amateur's sculpture, giving her a disturbingly squat silhouette.
Olivia lunged forward, sword flashing, Wind Slashes leading the way as she waded into the fight.
[Wind Slash] - Wind, Vanguard - Active, Attack - Use a bladed weapon to make a ranged attack delivered through hardened air. Damage and quintessence cost depend on the weapon used to make the attack.
The hag crossed its arms as the flying cuts rained down on her, the seemingly futile gesture somehow sufficient to ward off any damage. Potency, Olivia guessed. She’s using flesh necromancy to enhance her body.
Olivia paused half a step before she reached the hag, and sent a Reckless Strike coursing into her sword, charging her next attack with enough potency to bypass even the hag’s defenses.
[Reckless Strike] - Active, Attack - Make a special attack with potency increased by two tiers. Major stamina cost.
But when her sword came down, rather than tearing through insufficient flesh, it met a club of solid bone. The attack was still strong enough to carve a deep notch into the makeshift weapon, but that mattered little when Hellesa reached into her torso and simply withdrew another.
#
This is bad, this is bad, this is bad, Tenebres kept chanting in his head. Their plan to keep the hag off-balance had, quite simply, failed. Now she was beating down Olivia, her club potent enough that the squire’s own shield was rapidly getting beaten out of shape. Allana had rejoined the fight, but more spikes of bone shot from Hellesa’s back every time she went for an attack, keeping her away.
Tenebres had force bolts flowing, but they were futile against the hag’s resilient flesh, flaring and disappearing without leaving so much as a mark behind. Desperate, he conjured his fastest fiend, the blue imp.
[Void Invocation] - Active, Summon - Open a gate and beckon a fiend to cross over. Nature and power of the fiend as well as ability cost varies based on the strength of the invocation. Sufficiently powerful fiends may be difficult to control. Moderate duration.
It suffered the same fate as the first, ripped to shreds in a single moment. He could only be thankful that the hag seemed incapable of turning that same lethal power on them.
Tenebres gritted his teeth. He could feel the scars opening on his arms already, as he had tapped into his Blood Magic in a panic.
[Blood Magic] - Void, Evoker - Passive - You may take damage in order to enhance the power of your evocation spells.
Next to him, wild-eyed and desperate, Caden threw his hatchet with what seemed impossible accuracy, only to have it glance off the hag’s skin.
There was only one option left. Tenebres turned to the gnawing hunger of the gift of the void. He couldn’t sacrifice all his attributes, not with both his green and blue imps wasted, but maybe he could still turn the tides…
[Void Invocation] activated
Coordinatio-
“Oh no you don’t!” Impossibly, somehow the hag turned to Tenebres, accepting a pair of blows from Oli and Allana so that she could hurl a bolt of black energy at him, faster than he could respond, before his invocation could finish.
