Starter for @cursedbluebird @sweetroyalberry @arcaeda @breidabloom
The stench of sulfur was back again, a fine perfume over a more nauseating one: the syrupy sweet of not just one decomposing body, but an entire room full of rot. A low ceiling of earth and stone pressed down on it as if to keep it locked inside, like a crypt, or a mausoleum, erected to hold the dead in a world of their own. Or to promise that the living that had stepped foot into this forbidden realm would soon join them, barred from any visible escape. If the poisonous air did not corrode the physical body, then the mind would go in its stead and finish the job. The stagnant silence in dim-lit dark whispered futility; death would soon wake to grant them mercy.
The rattling of a dozen heavy, rusted chains heralded its arrival, and from bones and rotting blood rose a creaking giant painted in the palette of twilight and bruises, leaning heavily upon a massive, rusted cleaver for leverage. The stale air stirred with it, perhaps for the first time in centuries, and the stench of death swelled like a wave to crash over the party of breathing trespassers. Hunched beneath the ceiling, its tumorous back mere inches from mold-dusted earth, it turned deep-socketed eyes and a false smile of lipless teeth soundlessly toward them. A challenge, albeit a patient one. To the dead, there was no such thing as time; it was the living that had to contend with its relentless flow.
Death had grown to be something of an old friend, perhaps not for all of those who trod the fallen path, but for Griss, who had seen the faces of his own companions (however tenuously they could be called such) on bent and bloodied bodies, who had marched alongside an entire army of them like an imposter, who knew one day that his lord would call him, no longer satisfied with blood, to make devotion’s ultimate sacrifice, and who flirted with it, teased it, taunted it to take him sooner, it was always there. A ghost. A goal. A god. A lover. The dark did not scare him quite like its absence did. He bared his teeth back at it, eyes aglow with elation like the shimmer of fresh blood in lamplight.
“First a wedding. Now a funeral,” he cracked the silence with a sharp, one-note laugh, echo swallowed up by the wet walls and congealing floor. The absurdity of the joke elicited no reaction and the giant stared back with vacant, cloudy eyes. At least the tuxedo was gone - before Griss had managed to stain it, too - and what he wore now was more akin to his usual attire: cloaked but bare-chested, spiked cilices around wrists and ankles reminders of the inferiority of mortal flesh, and a leather-bound book in his left hand. A quick run through its ancient pages revealed lines of text similar to Nova’s, but there was something sinister about it, too. Something hungry. Only one way to figure out what.
Griss 10/10HP critically hits (auto) Golden Lich 15/15HP** with Aureola [Rolls: 12 + 4 = 16 & 5 + 4 = 9, -8/2HP + 8/2HP = -8HP; Golden Lich 7/15HP**]
Griss loses -2HP from recoil [8/10HP]
Two blasts of light exploded in quick succession, one after the other, throwing sharp shadows behind the hundreds of bodies that covered the floor. Striped and smoking with black burns, the giant staggered back. With its skeletal hand, it carved grooves through the multicolored fungus growing over the wall, and opened its cavernous mouth in a mighty roar.
Golden Lich 7/15HP** hits Griss 8/10HP with Echoing Groan [Roll: 14, -3HP - 1res = -2HP; Griss 6/10HP]
Griss lifted his arm to shield his face, but the magic cut him all the same. His wrists bled beneath their bindings, new lacerations opened across his chest and torso, but the red was so bright and beautiful that for a moment it mesmerized him. He laughed as if in a daze. His own blood. Finally. Finally. Finally. Finally. Expurgation for the rite of death.
His allies no longer existed in his world, if he had them at all here at the final frontier. Dropping his arm from in front of wide, unseeing eyes, he fervently dragged another spell from the pages of his book, almost impatient, almost desperate. The cilices dug their spikes deeper into flesh, and the blood ran thicker, spilling to the ground beneath his feet in loud drops.
GALEFORCE: Griss 6/10HP critically hits Golden Lich 7/15HP** with Aureola [Rolls: 20 + 4 = 24 & 16 + 4 = 20, -8/2HP + 8/2HP = -8HP; Golden Lich 0/15HP**]
Griss loses -2HP from recoil [4/10HP]
“HAHAHA! This is the moment I’ve been waiting for!” The dream was forgotten. The illusory nature of the realm, the exercise, the monastery, all shadows behind a manic haze. Lord Sombron called him. One final sacrifice. His body would be his.
The giant fell to its knees with earth-rumbling weight, catching itself with the cleaver plunged through a mountain of decay. Then with groaning, popping joints, it thrust both its hands into the ground, releasing a blast of miasmic smoke.
UNBEATEN: Golden Lich recovers HP [15/15HP*] and gains +1 magic and +2 speed
Golden Lich 15/15HP* uses Living Death
Griss 4/10HP loses -3HP and is inflicted with UNDEAD [Roll: 4, 10/10HP]
The world fell away. Griss felt himself falling with it, through a hole, down a well, deeper and deeper, giggling, laughing, praising his god with incoherent prayers, grateful, terrified, crying — what of Lord Rafal? Lady Nel? — still laughing. Praying. Praying. Praying.
The world was a distant square far above him, like the mouth of a well or some deep cavern. All he could do was watch, vaguely aware that what he saw was still through his own eyes. But his body was no longer his.
And for perhaps the first time in his life he was afraid of the dark, because the dark here was a yawning void enclosed around him. Because for the first time in his life there was no pain. No salvation. No god. Only himself in infinite nothingness. And there was nothing he could do about it, trapped and helpless, behind the eyes of a puppet.
