#teamgoodpunch

The air pressed heavily against the party, each member quickly succumbing to their own disgraceful form of unconsciousness. Soon the loamy shed was permeated with the distinct minotaur-snores of Grom, the stone-grinding haggard breath of KaElla, and the piercing gaze of the drow in her own meditations glinting hints of red light from the corner opposite Ember. Cora lingered at a doorway, content to allow the party to rest despite his insistence that they leave this ruined craft. Still untrusting of this spectral elf, Ember shut his eyes and attuned his senses to the Aether, allowing the splendor of nature to flow through him as he steadied his frayed mind.

He was halfway through aligning his soul chakra when a familiar titter of bemused idiocy cracked his concentration like a malnourished quail egg; slumping through the vent-opening into the room with all the grace of a sedated water-buffalo Nyx dragged the half-mad-half-dead sorcerer into the room before dumping him carelessly on the floor, where they both immediately sunk into an exhausted rest. Ember briefly considered turning them over so the moss wasn’t pressed into their faces, but ruled out the idea as tedious and unnecessary. Forcing his eyes shut and blocking out the dreamy whispers and giggles of the newcomers, Ember refocused on completing his meditation.

It wasn’t until sometime later that Ember opened his eyes; a deep shuddering breath flowed out of him, condensation clinging in the cool air as he unlocked his third-eye chakra. Glancing around the dim chamber now offered a cornucopia of beauty. Flowers of every variety budded, bloomed, and blossomed in rapid order as if Ember was watching a sped-up slideshow of seasons. His companions faded into the background as brownish lumps of breathing compost, irrelevant against the splendid beauty of the dancing petals. In a tiny, tinny voice Ember could hear whispers issuing from a fuchsia snap-dragon by his ear: “Ember of Elves, with Members who delve remember my casual warning; All things will die, no matter how sly; no matter the depth of the mourning. Return you I can, O handsome elf man; so you may resume forest adorning. Follow my flora and ignore the old Cora; you’ll stroll through your glade by morning.”

Ember found himself moving despite not recalling standing up. A glance over his shoulder took him by surprise; for years Ember had sought to perfect astral projection, allowing him to leave his physical shell behind while his ethereal state was free to tread through the barrier between the world and the feywild. Ember now clearly saw his body still peacefully held in its lotus position as more brilliant flora bloomed over him, keeping his body safe. Bioluminescent lilies bloomed in a line along the floor, guiding Ember out of the room and up a flight of steps.

For just a moment Ember lingered at the top of the flight of moss-covered stairs; why hadn’t Cora tried to stop him? Surely an elf of his age should have been able to notice Ember slinking by, but the aged guide had made no effort to impede him. Curious, Ember considered for a moment going back and asking the guide about this strange plant-life, but as the thought form it curdled and turned to dust. The lilies on the floor blinked an urgent pattern, enticing Ember to move deeper into the heart of this mossy realm. Ember knew he had been thinking of something, some danger, but it had trickled out of his head and turned to naught but smoke.

Drifting in a dream-like state Ember bore witness to hints of shades bustling through the craft; busy-bodied orc-silhouettes hurried to-&-fro carrying tools, boxes, clipboards, alien items from an alien time. The more Ember watched the more he remembered being a member of the ship’s crew. He could suddenly recall the mining vessel in its heyday, its crew toiling in the heat of hard work as they sucked the life from planet after planet. The idea was an anathema to Ember and he pushed the memories away, sickened at the horrid despoiling of the Nature.

Back in his own mind Ember found he had drifted up another flight of stairs in the twisted memories of lives half-lived; now he stood before a glass chamber filled-to-burst with moss with guardian humanoid forms lingering just in sight scattered around the spongy, moss-coated floor. Protectors, Ember reasoned, implied that he was at the heart of the moss. It had promised to return him to his forest, and had brought him to its core, but Ember could discern no further way to progress.

As though it was beckoned by the thought, a portion of the glass slid soundlessly open, and the rustle of the moss whispered pleas to Ember, begging him to step inside, to come closer. A part of Ember was trying to scream something to the rest of him, something about danger, or anger. Ember tried to remember the significance of those words, and found that staring into his mind was now akin to shouting into a dense autumn fog; regardless of your fervor, the depths of the haze was impermeable. He allowed his feet to float on, into the depths of the gaping portal of mysterious moss.

Inside of the chamber, Ember found perfection; the walls of glass and moss faded, and his bare feet were brushed and scratched by parched summer long-blade grass. High-above in branches bluebirds tweeted their mating song as a kingfisher cheeped merrily over a well-won meal. Ember gazed around and recognized every inch. True to its whispered word, he was standing in the heart of his forest. He didn’t know what magic had transpired to bring him home, but it didn’t matter. He was home now, and as far as Ember could remember that was all that ever mattered.

He spent the rest of the summer strolling through his thousand-acre garden, visiting old friends and relatives and spending his nights sleeping under the sparkling twilight of the stars. Contentment was the word Ember would use to describe the idyllic time; he could not remember a more perfect summer in the forest. As Ember reflected on that, he couldn’t remember a time ever this perfect in the forest. Every summer brought infestations, fires, interlopers, and a dozen-score other problems that required Ember’s supervision. Ember tried to remember any problems he had faced this summer.

He came up empty. He sought out his forest friends only to find their burrows and nests empty. Ember scanned his mind to think where they might have all gone, and was unable to come up with answers. The deeper he thought about his forest friends, the more he realized he had no memory of anyone else living in his woods. He began to run over the underbrush, shouting, making noise to startle some life in the woods. Had there been a sunrise since he arrived in his woods? Had the days passed at all, or have they been locked in permanent night? Ember couldn’t remember, and as he ran panic overtook him.

These were not his woods. The grass hadn’t grown at all, and Ember could not find a single fallen leaf missing from any of his trees. Ember searched frantically, cold terror-sweats flopping over his graceful limbs. In the center of the forest there was a lake, Ember knew. He would find fish there, at least. Had he eaten since he arrived? How long had he been here?

He ran full tilt now, barreling towards the lake at breakneck speed; the faster he ran, the louder a roar of whispers began to catch-up to him.

“You fool!” the voice shrieked at him. “I have given you perfection, and yet you still seek escape. You are nothing! You have always been nothing. You will return to oblivion and be mine!” The image of the forest shattered under Ember’s feet, trees and boulders falling away like stained glass from an ancient temple’s panes. The lake at the center of Ember’s glade stood a floating black mass of malevolent moss, twining twisted forms in its wretched coils. Ember tried to recall facts about moss, but the mass of vines shot out, twisting an icy band around his throat.

He could feel it now; his memories being drained away as the noose of vine twisted tighter around Ember’s slender throat. He tried to call his power to him, to shift out of the moss’ grasp, and instead found his mind bombarded with more horrendous false-memories. A thousand snippets of squandered lives, Ember was made to witness in agonizing flashes of memory as the orcs built this massive space-ship, toiled through the outer void to rob the souls of planets before unearthing the heart of darkness.

Ember saw as they brought dark relics aboard the ship, and was treated to the centuries of degradation as the ship plummeted to this earth, its crew devolving into the horrid foulspawn as the shadow-monster the crew had brought aboard tainted all life it touched. Twisted shadows twined throughout the craft, warping the flesh and awakening the evil inside the moss. His mind burned with silver pain, as he tried to fight the images back. Beside himself with anguish Ember cried out as another shockwave of hideous thoughts tore his memories from him and bombarded him with false lives.

Without warning the pain stopped. Ember realized he was now screaming in relative silence, and braved to open his eyes. He sat in a small box, five walls colored an unearthly glowing white, with the six a window of crystal before Ember; on the other side of the window, a patient and tired elf sat on a small stool, sipping white tea. Ember recognized Cora, though he appeared now to be much more solid than his ghostly form Ember was used to.

“Ah, you were able to tear yourself away for a moment. Splendid.” The elf spoke calmly, and took a small sip of tea. “You see now why I have been trying to cast you out of this ship. This is no place for the soft-of-heart.” Ember made to speak, but when he opened his mouth mossy sludge began to issue forth, twisting tendrils coiling on the floor. “Yes, I see the moss has you.” Cora remarked with a trace of disdain, and a hint of sadness. “The Oblivion Moss has claimed hundreds of minds, and savors elves the most. It will try to keep you alive for decades, if it can, harvesting your thoughts until you are nothing but a compost heap.”

Cora hesitated before speaking again. “I have watched many souls claimed by this wretched craft. Orsimer or no, they were beings, and no living thing deserves the fate this ship condemns so many to.” Cora stood and looked at Ember for a long time, as if trying to make a difficult decision. Several more times Ember tried to speak, but the tide of moss in his lungs felt endless, and was helpless to do little more but slip about in slime. Cora seemed to reach his decision; “nevertheless, I will not let an elf perish under my watch. You, Ember, must become a paragon of elves. I will give you what power I can yet offer.”

Somberly, Cora walked towards the window-pane that separated the two small, white rooms. He glided through the separation easy as breathing, and touched the white-hot point of his thumb to Ember’s scattered mind. “I cannot repair your mind, but I can empower your Soul.” With this and a gasp of breath Cora was gone, his silver energy crackling over the bent form of Ember. As the mind-fog lifted, Ember could sense the void behind his eyes; something had stolen his memories from him, and the only things Ember could remember now were his woods and a thousand scattered images of half-lives half-lived on this ruined vessel.

Ember peered into the void that occupied the space behind his eyes; no matter how hard he stared, he could scarcely espy more than a trace of memory before it turned to smoke and ash. Deep in the recesses of his mind something echoed a whispered threat:

“You think I’m playing at some game? You think iron or platinum will keep you safe? Heed my words, questers; Do not mistake my shadows for my form. Your kind sees a glimmer of light dappling on the water and forgets the fathomless, frigid black beneath. Listen, fools; You cannot harm me but you can still run & hide. In this I will not be defied. Leave this place if you value your lives.

The malicious words streaked black pain through Ember, the threat magnified inside his mind. “By the Vashta Nerrada (elvish for: enveloping shadow [a type of shadow found in the underdark known for swallowing entire cities]): if you run counter to my desire, the remainder of your brief mortal spark will be a symphony of misery. I swear by stone and steel and stygian pits; I’ll make a game of you; I’ll stalk you unseen and choke-out any flicker of solace you find; you’ll never know a kind touch; a breath of rest; a moment’s piece of mind.

Ember couldn’t help but imagine being swallowed by the malicious shade, his body being ripped apart and dissolved by acidic night. “By the empty night and the dozing moon: if you bring any amount of despair to my Master, I will tear you open and wallow around like a slaad in slime. I’ll string a lute with your ligaments and command your bones to play it while I dance.

At mention of the Master Ember was treated to scarring images of a scaled monstrosity in the back of the shadows, a massive form of angry flesh and bone exuding fear and hatred as intense as the sun’s own light. “By all that is endarkened: You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared; you do not know the first note of shadow-music that I orchestrate.

Ember awoke, terror shaking his body so hard he was snapped out of his trance; as he awoke he could see through dappled luminous rainbows he was lying not-uncomfortably on the bottom of a sphere made of condensed moss and vines. Pinning him down was a terrifying beast unlike anything Ember had seen before. An abomination of flesh and chitin, the creature perched on Ember’s chest with 3 rows of sharp viney limbs piercing his pale torso. From its back spread enormous moth-like wings, gently flapping as fractal spirals of moss and vines spread out from behind it to further spread its tainted flora. The creature’s chest was gaping open, a putrid purple crystal seeping hideous energy into the fiend’s body.

The face was the worst; resembling a mix between moth and mantis, terrifying segmented eyes gazed in all directions atop spindly flesh-tubes; dripping mandibles protruded from its gaping maw, and Ember could feel the points of pressure and pain pressed into the temples of his skull; the profusely leaking maw shrieked a ‘skree’ of horrified surprise as Ember locked furious eyes with the abomination. As it continued to shriek, Ember could feel the psychic assault regain its footing and vehemence.

“You will not escape!” the creature shrieked into the void of Ember’s mind. “Your friends will fail, I will turn you all to oblivion! You are nothing!!”

“NO,” said Ember, fighting the assault back. “NO! I am not nothing! You may have taken my memories, but you cannot take me. I am ELF! And you will feel every iota of my wrath!” Rage boiled in Ember’s veins as he allowed his muscle-memory to ease into the shift; without memory of animals, his wildform grew to a massive ape-man, silver-white fur appearing in mats over his skin. An extra pair of arms burst from his chest and in a flurry of furry fury Ember began tearing at the delicate carapace of the aberration. Limbs flew and shrieks issued as Ember allowed his blind fury control, rippling and tearing and biting everything he could reach. When the weight of the bug lifted from his body he shifted back into his lithe elven form and slipped away from the monster. Readying his energies came naturally (the creature could not steal that from him, at least), and Ember lobbed volleys of flaming sparrows at the beast. It turned on him, rearing its massive wings behind it and blocking Ember from leaving its cage. The creature retreated to a corner of the moss-filled chamber, clearing a space on the floor before Ember. Humanoid shapes, distorted through the medium of maddened moss, rose from the ground between Ember and the glass-paned exits of this cage.

As Ember gazed at the humanoid effigies before him something about them seemed familiar but he was unable to place what. Lost in the moment’s thought the effigies took their chance to attack; the tallest among them, a towering humanoid with bull’s horns on its crown charged Ember; slender figures at the back of the groups shot out hissing dark energies; several blocky forms held crude wooden sledgehammers, menacing Ember and protecting the other effigies; and suddenly Ember was aware he’d been flanked by a shadowy plant grasping short, sharp spikes.

The creatures attacked in perfect unison, each lunging forward intent on slaying the foolish elf who defied their master. Though coordinated, Ember was able to deduce they were far from combat-educated, and with grace Ember was able to side-step the attacks while firing bolts of energy in return. He spun and dodged the elegant dance effortless despite the thought-theft. Despite how masterful the dance, however, Ember was unable to make progress towards freedom. Each step would awaken a new effigy to block his path, and soon Ember was once-again surrounded by moss, though the lurking forms of the twisted effigy was little enough improvement from being pinned under a monstrosity.

“You will not escaped” the creature hissed from its shadowy corner. “No one escapes. You are mine! You are NOTHING!!!”

When Ember next spoke, it was not his normal voice; it was as though another was speaking for him, through him. “I AM THE GUIDE, THE GUARDIAN OF TWILIGHT! YOU! DEFILER OF LIVES AND LEGIONS! YOU!! RUINER OF HOPES AND DREAMS!! YOU!!! STAND BEFORE ME AND COWER. I WILL SHOW UNTO YOU THE WRATH OF NATURE!!! PERISH, ABOMINATION!!” Silver light cracked through the darkness, blasting the effigies into duff as the stunned hive-mind reeled back from the force of the energies flowing from Ember. As wisps of moss burned away Ember’s sensitive eyes could see a sea of chaos before him; out the door of the life-support wing Ember could see physical shadows assaulting more of the mosslings, the wretched pairs entwined in a horrible melee.

Far beyond the swiftly swinging and singing blades across the bridge Ember’s fine eyes could see creatures, more human than anyone else, fighting for their lives as a floating disk carried them away; though he couldn’t remember anything something about those beings seemed familiar. With the litheness and form of a massive jungle cat Ember leapt through the glass of the chamber towards the bridge. Outside of the insulated glass Ember was suddenly struck by a wailing klaxon of dissonant sound that nearly knocked him flat. A pitchy voice in rough elvish was screeching nonsense over the klaxon, warning of “singularity containment breaches” and “structural collapse imminent if not contained.”

At the far-end of the bridge the vault door opposite the life-support wing was slowly opening and with each inch a sensation of a constant tug pulled Ember, moss, and shadows alike toward it. Ember tried to fight the steady beckoning, but when he turned found the massive looming form of the Moss Queen. It shrieked and dived towards Ember, now fighting to maintain grace amid all the chaos, and he was forced back along the bridge. Mosslings and shades fought in a bitter rivalry while Ember struggled to dance his retreat away from the wretched abomination. Looking for an escape, Ember peered into the quasi-darkness of the deck below in time to witness a sea of twisted forms boil forth from a gaping chasm far below. The foulspawn crashed along the walls of the craft like waves, speckles of madden monster latching to the walls and scaling it with spider’s ease.

The klaxon reached its peak as the third massive vault door yawned open; inside Ember could see a monstrous crack in the space, a yawning portal into the hungry void. A splinter of physical fury lay trapped before it, drawing in light and life in equal measure and maliciousness. Pinned beneath the splinter were the bones of an elf, encircled by green fire. With the doors open monsters and platforms alike sped into the gaping glowing maw, compressing into specks of minute light before being ultimately snuffed out.

An aged, familiar (though Ember could no longer place from where it was familiar) voice crackled in Ember’s ears: “Use the fire, Ember.” With a moment’s focus Ember peered in to the green flames, and as he stared the fire took form, shape, until it hung in the air in an ancient symbol; elves have many symbols to convey many things, but there is no mistaking it when the sigil of Nature’s Wrath burns bright. Shadows, monsters, and moss all shrieked in sudden terror as the chamber filled with emerald light. “There! That Platform! Fly, you fool!” the voice shouted in his head over the din of the monster-storm.

Ember saw the platform; a squat disk with several rings set into it was flying towards the portal. Shifting into an eagle as he leapt, Ember saw the clawed hooks of the Moss Queen fly out to catch his leg. He spun and tore at the tendril with his razor-sharp beak but more tendrils found purchase amid his avian-flesh. Panicked eyes scanned for a tool, a bit of leverage to use against the approaching horror, and Ember heard the familiar voice one last time “I will use what’s left of me to save you. Do not squander this chance. You are a paragon for elves; protect nature, honor earth.” As the whispers died away Ember saw the faintest of outlines of an old elf on the platform before it dived at the Moss Queen, driving it and the shades into the yawning portal even as the doors began to shut.

A shiver of energy ran over Ember, and a swirling galaxy of pin-pricks of light began coruscating around his tired body; the shiver continued, and blurred though it was by the dancing lights Ember saw the doors of the chamber snap shut, the sigil of Nature’s Wrath still burned into his mind. As the lights subsided Ember let out a shuddering breath, blood and vomit fighting for first-place out of his weary throat. Ember fell to the ground in his Elven form, the weariness and exhaustion steaming off his body.

Ember looked around; he was in an unknown chamber, dimly lit from high above. Knowing not the way out, or how he even got here, he sat and waited. He knew not for what, but, with nowhere else to go, Ember sat down, folded into his lotus form, and meditated. Someone would surely be along soon, wouldn’t they?

Nyx seized the opportunity; dragging Sebastian backwards Nyx headed deeper into the prison, down the long corridor to the looming vault at the end of the path. She reasoned that with doors that big they must be guarding something, and anywhere that wasn’t these halls was an improvement in her mind. What caused her to decide to head deeper into the wreckage than back the way they had been brought was somewhat a mystery to her; it felt as though her infernal benefactor was tweaking her actions, a puppet-master pulling at her strings.

As she back-pedaled along the hallway glowing stones lining the floor stabbed at her eyes, a specter of the torturer lurking on every side of her periphery. Nyx noticed a faint glow pulsing steadily from Sebastian’s front, finding scarred lines of energy burned into a checkerboard of light over his entire front. ‘No wonder he’s tired,’ Nyx thought to herself as she leered at Sebastian’s burned body. It wasn’t until she reached the towering door of the chamber behind her (there appeared to be some dialect of elvish scrawled above the door, but without a way to read it Nyx was left guessing at this room’s purpose) that Nyx realized the door was barred and sealed, with no obvious way of entering.

The things down the corridor had been tracking her movements, slowly advancing on the edge of Sebastian’s light; now that she had stopped and realized the trap had been set the foulspawn allowed themselves wide, confident smiles, the teal light of Sebastian’s magic-scar glinting black off of their yellowed and cracked fangs. Panic began to shake through Nyx, confident as she was in her murderous skills she felt the odds were far too long to begin with, not counting the handicap of a dozing wizard in her clutches.

She poked and prodded Sebastian, hissing that now would be a lovely time to turn the magic back on. Sebastian burbled softly to himself, a spit-bubble popping softly between his lips as a slime-trail of exhausted drool ran down his chest. After a slap, a jab, and finally a titty-twister just as the foulspawn closed in Nyx was able to jostle the dozing mage awake; Sebastian started, looked around in a panicked half-awake fashion before letting out a shriek when he noticed the encroaching overly-limbed horde. In a surge of energy that burned brightly even through Nyx’s clamped-shut eyes Sebastian leaped backwards into his would be friend-sassin and the both tumbled ass-over-ankles through a sizzling portal of energies.

Nyx stared back through the portal in tangled bewilderment; hanging in the air was a yawning oval of fire through which she had just stumbled through. She caught a brief glimpse of the shock on the once-confident foulspawn faces before the portal snapped shut with a boom of power echoing around a much-larger chamber. As Nyx’s eyes adjusted to the now relative pitch-darkness of this room she realized the portal had traveled in a straight line: She could just barely make out the faint outline of the high-vaulted and barred doors looming against the far wall of this room. Several similar doors similarly loomed, each barred and sealed, accepting one to Nyx’s left which had been smashed down by a regiment of monsters.

A regiment, Nyx realized a moment too late, that had been in the middle of some perverse ritual inside these very chambers until they had surprised to be interrupted by two escaped victims. Infuriated to still be surrounded by unequal scales Nyx looked frantically for a way away from these horrid aberrations; The only way she saw was up. An enormous pit gaped above them; an opening in the ceiling wide enough to drive a stampede through, stretching up (in complete contrariness to normal pits) into a void of blackness so encompassing Nyx was momentarily overcome with a bout of homesickness.

“Yoo-Hoo, Sea-Bass-Chun!” Nyx shouted in to Sebastian’s ear (No sense in being quiet now, she figured, since the things had already noticed their entrance). “TIME TO GET OFF YOUR ASS AND BE USEFUL!” Nyx screamed at Sebastian who had slumped onto the floor and was trying to whistle while remaining face-down. “You asked for it, boy-o,” Nyx sighed.

Nyx had, in her past, learned many ways to hurt/motivate men. There was poison, torture, extortion, and blackmail, but a lesson her first defense tutor had imparted to her never diminished it its wisdom; “Sometimes a bloke just needs a good ol’boot to the nadgers.” Sebastian had gotten his legs under him, and was pushing his face along the cool metal like a 1-man wheelbarrow. This happened to bring Nyx’s target to a conveniently swaying distance, and after checking for cross-drafts she brought her shadowy foot back and swiftly delivered a Pele-esque kick directly into Sebastian’s Mage-Maker.

Sebastain let out a eunuch’s falsetto shriek as consciousness returned on the intense-pain-express line. He whirled on Nyx, fury and literal fire forming in his eyes, his magic-scar a turquoise mosaic of fury. Quickly Nyx jumped on to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his. “Fly, You FOOL!” she half-screamed in his ear.

“Where!?!?” Sebastian managed to squeak out.

“UP! Where Else!!?” Nyx shouted back, digging her heels into his calves as if she was spurring on a steed.

Fury boiling like hot-tar in his veins, Sebastian scanned for a witty retort. In the growing light of his blossoming rage he could see that they were surrounded, but nothing could be seen impeding their ascent. Taking a deep breath, he told Nyx “HANG ON!” (to which she replied a curt and quiet ‘Duh’) before focusing on his pain, his fury, and his feet. Tapping deeper into the chaos, allowing more energy to flow into his body from the tangential outer-reaches, Sebastian focused on the Demon’s name still floating with the flotsam amid the rest of his mind.

With a single step Sebastian could tell it had worked; Fire flowed from his feet like water from a geyser, pushing both himself and the now too-tightly clinging Nyx up the shadowy-shaft of the paradoxical-pit. Anachronisms aside they rose like a rocket through a missle-silo, pure fire a billowing blue column beneath them. The light burned at Nyx and she had to force her face into the still-wet-from-drool chest of Sebastian to keep herself from letting out a sob of terror. Sebastian however was all-too-obviously thrilled, judging by the uncomfortable bulge Nyx politely chose to not notice or mention ever.

They flew for a lifetime, until the cloying blackness of the shaft was only penetrated by Sebastian’s hot blue column of flame. A pinch at the top of Nyx’s head alerted her senses to a danger Sebastian was far too Excited to take notice of; they were quickly approaching what appeared to be a roof, and though Nyx hadn’t studied any of the academic’s advanced physics she was dead-certain that at the speed of their approach they would be squashed like dretchs (poo-demons).

Extending her senses allowed Nyx to realize the ceiling was not solid, and acting quickly Nyx held on to Sebastian tighter before her head bashed into his Adams apple and slipped them both through the shadows as his screams and fire died out. They tumbled through pocketed pitch-black, in the shadowy realm between planes as they flew through the ceiling until it became the floor of a platform that filled the shaft. Nyx gasped for breath and threw herself from Sebastian’s arms as the air and light of the material plane returned its assault on Nyx’s senses.

They lied there for a time, both fighting for calm and breath by their own rights. By the time either of them had regained enough composure to stand, it became dreadfully apparent they were alone, and that their party was nowhere within sight; they stood on the bottom of a massive chamber, it’s ceiling an arched cathedral of steel and girders barely visible even through darkvision. Massive hammering plates thundered in erratic coruscations of concussive collision. Scything blades swung wildly around a narrow rod, all set over an ancient walkway.

Several circular platforms, some lying forgotten beside steel pillars, lay around the room. Sebastian was drifting amiably throughout the wreckage, eyes unfocused and not remembering to search for signs of his party. Nyx slowly stalked through the ruined amphitheater of a chamber, her steps and breaths echoing oddly off the too-dark walls. Her instincts screamed at her that this chamber was filled to spill with danger, though for the life of her Nyx failed to ascertain any greater danger than the smashing plates above.

Once again the feeling of a pinch in her attention drove Nyx to take notice of a concealed door nested into a far wall. Hissing to grab Sebastian’s attention Nyx crept closer to the gateway in an attempt to espy what lay beyond it; on the edge of her hearing Nyx could just make out a frantic jabbering in an unrecognizable tongue. Shushing Sebastian and leaning him against the door Nyx slipped into the chamber unnoticed by the squat creatures seemingly arguing over a lumpy grey form between them.

“Only four,” Nyx whispered, mostly to herself, “too easy.” Stepping through the shadows Nyx appeared behind two of the goblin-ish creatures, burying her blades to the hilt in their skulls. The creatures burst in a bubble of psychic gore, red and pink matter speckling Nyx as the remaining creatures soiled themselves in unrestrained surprised terror. More of the creatures popped into existence with an effort of energy, but the copies did not fool Nyx; she recognized life-preserving tactics, and would continue to focus on her primary targets and not be distracted.

Her assassin’s training kicked in before she tried to move again; The creatures leapt into the air with surprising grace, and Nyx’s instincts alerted her to the lighter sensation in this room. She realized that she could float as easily as fly in this room, and a perverse sense of pleasure washed over her as she knew she could have FUN with these deaths. She pushed herself hard into the air while whistling for Sebastian. As the two original creatures attempted to escape her their duplicates were caught full-on in the chest by a blast of ice from Sebastian’s implement rooting them in place.

Nyx streaked through the shadowy tube like a falcon, reaching and overtaking the fleeing foes in half-a-breath’s time. Quick slashes as she passed left them spinning in a helix of bright blood, shrieking terror and agony in their weary lungs; unused to being on the prey end of the predator-prey dynamic, they gave away their positions far too easily. Nyx flung blasts of eldritch energy as well as blades into their shrieking goodnight. Sebastian had brightened considerably, finding a modicum of solace in scorching flesh from bones, and as he dispatched the duplicates the originals popped with another fiesta of gore which hung in the air like skum on water.

When their shrieks had subsided Nyx took care to stop Sebastian bouncing off the walls; unprepared for the change in his own weight, the sorcerer had bounded into the room in triumph only to found his residual energy sending him ricocheting endlessly off of the round walls of the smooth chamber. When they were able to reclaim the ground Nyx noticed the smashed-in access panel high atop the room. Lifting the weightless but completely exhausted Sebastian over her shoulder Nyx lept once more, with perfect timing and aim, to glide effortlessly through the opening.

The pin-points of the needles pierced her devilish flesh and thin trickles of dark blood began to flow down the table. The twisted whispering abomination from the previous room shambled in, twisting its hands so that the sickly purple light from its crown hummed through a staff made from various humanoid vertebra; The light turned piercingly bright, burning the image of the twisted forms into Nyx’s retina like a pin-hole camera. Shutting her eyes barely disrupted the awful light, and a sickened retch shuddered through Nyx’s body, the nails ripping wider gouges in her flesh.

As Nyx struggled, the foulspawn tore a section from the wall, shedding physically searing bright orange and teal light through the room. The other foulspawn retreated as the light issued a billowing miasma around the floor of the chamber. Distorted whispers as if heard from afar echoed around Nyx’s pain-wracked brain; “Iiiiii….wwwwiiiiillllllll…..ssssssteeeeaaalllllll…yyyyyoooouuuurrrr….lllllliiiiiiifffffeee!!”

The words repeated, echoed, snaked and writhed through Nyx’s mind, the feeling driving her mad as she began to convulse against the nails. The silver pain crystalized in her veins, and for a moment everything froze. A much vaster voice boomed in the perfectly still moment’s silence: “I DID NOT GIVE YOU THIS POWER TO SQUANDER LITTLE WORM.”

Nyx recognized the voice with a draining sense of dread; it was the voice of her infernal pact, the entity her sect of the assassin’s guild pledged allegiance to in exchange for eldritch power: The Queen of the Nine-Hells of the Shadow, Lorianna. “IT IS NOT MY WILL FOR YOU TO DIE HERE, SO YOU WILL PERSIST. I HAVE SENT A WHISPER OF MY POWER TO YOU, DO NOT WASTE IT.” The crystalized moment faded as the whispers of the foulspawn returned.

Nyx found, however, after the touch on her mind of such a powerful devil as her benefactor that the whispers of this tainted abomination no longer held the same sway. Nyx could see, though the bright light still shone, as the hunched form crept closer, twisting a finger to spread its sick whispers. Nyx noticed in its hand it held a simple medical blade which it was slowly reaching towards Nyx’s exposed throat.

“Iiiiiiiii….wwwwiiiiillllllll…..ssssssteeeeaaalllllll…yyyyyoooouuuurrrr….lllllliiiiiiifffffeee!!” the creature uttered from its lips. Nyx caught its milky-blue eye just as it came within her reach. Nyx nimbly slipped her hand from its restraint and placed her hand on the things curdled stomach.

“Not if I steal yours first” Nyx hissed as she unleashed her eldritch blast into the things guts; Hideous black energy screamed in the chamber as the blast blew the foulspawn’s entrails against the back wall, coating and blocking out the brilliant energy source and shunting the room into near darkness. Nyx freed her other hand, pried the blade from the creature’s hand before slitting its throat. She then with blinding speed reached up through the hole in its guts to find the spasming heart in its chest, tearing it from its atrophied arteries and holding it before its face as it died. Wretched, agonized pain and shock frozen on its visage Nyx crushed the heart before its eyes, feeling the soul and power of the creature melt into her hand, a tiny black spark in the brilliant purple light.

As the light faded, Nyx heard an explosion of arcane force from nearby, and knew it was time to get Sebastian and leave this foul prison.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE SET-UP YOUR PARAGON PATH “LIFE STEALER!” ADDITIONALLY, NYX HAS GAINED A PHOBIA FOR BRIGHT LIGHT!! Treat dim light as bright, and anything brighter than dim as blinding. Being exposed to bright lights will constantly remind you of the horrors you suffered 

Sebastian:

Sebastian was tossed into a room crowded with looming shadows, slimy hands roughly passing him through a gantlet of hulking foulspawn before he was hurled onto his chest by a massive pressing force of an ice-cold downpour. He found it had become nearly impossible to move, but was barely able to make out the waterfall completely surrounded him by at least a meter on each side. The downpour of water pressed Sebastian into a steel grating below him, the cold bars against his chilled and abused flesh sending shivers of pure agony through his body.

Attempting to reach his magic, Sebastian found that the deluge of water ground out any connection he had to his power. He tried in vain to make contact with the chaos inside of him to free him from this aqueous prison, and succeeded merely in driving what little breath he could draw from his body. Only by spreading out his limbs and pressing his face to the grating below him could Sebastian catch his breath.

Gazing down into the pit below the grating Sebastian expected to see a means of escape or a water run-off, but instead all he found was death; a pile of desiccated corpses lay below the grate, visible in the water-silhouette he now cast. They were not bodies but bones, chunks of flesh, as if something had picked away at them slowly. No sooner had he given life to the thought then something vile began slithering through the dank pool below the bodies where the cascade of water stagnated.

Blurred as his vision was, Sebastian could scarcely make out the finer details of the monster, a fact he will be forever grateful for; as it were, he could only see a slithering form of dozens of twisted appendages, arms and legs and limbs there weren’t words for, each sporting dagger-sharp claws and sucker-like mouths. The form locked eyes with Sebastian, if it had eyes to begin with, and slowly began climbing the picked and pickled pile of body-parts below the cascade to reach up and pluck pieces from the mage. Sebastian could feel the gleeful malice emanating off of the foulspawn as it climbed its mountain of leftovers.

It muttered masterwork malignance directly to Sebastian’s overworked brain, attempting to drive the half-mad mage over the precipice of insanity and into the depths of the chasm that lies below. It showed him such horrors, horrors that only such a twisted fiend could know; deaths of a thousand innocents as a massive craft fell to earth, gouging a giant scar in the earth and leaving the Tarrasque’s Quills as a poorly-healed wound on the planet; generations of horror, as foulspawn spread; cannibalism, barbarism, brutality; the worst a human mind could handle, and worse yet as the psychic assault continue all the while the monstrosity climbed.

The bombardment of horrors continued and peaked, showing Sebastian images of a scaly doom, clad in blackest shadow, laying around the heart of this tomb, a skeletal wizard suckling on dark secrets. The horrors too much Sebastian felt his mental foot falter at the edge of the cliffs of madness, but something held him back. Not something within him, but an outside force; the chaos he drew on, pouring out from the plane of the elementals, the djinn, the demons, enraptured him in their grasp as the monstrosity tried to pull him down.

Words floated into focus before Sebastian, unsure if they truly hung in the air before him or if it was a demon’s trick of the mind. The words read: “YOU WILL KNOW MY POWER; YOU WILL KNOW MY NAME!” They did not appear as seprate statements, but as the same statement twice overlayed, power and name sharing the same spaces. As the words faded Sebastian could see the spindly limbs of the monstrosity, now at the top of its pile, reaching up to tear Sebastian through the grating piece-by-piece. In the moment before they touched, Sebastian was once-more given a vision of the twisted black scaly doom, and demonic letters floated in the vision: “BALTHARUMZAREL.”

Without thinking the word whispered out of Sebastian’s trickling lips, and in his vision the massive eye of the scaly doom opened and focused on Sebastian. The word caused a massive tremor of arcane energy to flow into Sebastian, but without his implements to focus the energy Sebastian chose to allow his body to be the conduit for the energies despite the dangers wizards were so quick to claim this action could pose. Pure arcane energy, the four elements blended into purest light and steam and fire, lashed out in all directions from Sebastian as a shockwave flies from thunder. The water around him became steam, hissing and burning; the grating turned to molten-rain, cascading over the reaching limbs of the monstrosity as it shrieked in unknown agony; lightning laced with fire rebounded around the room, turning the entire chamber to glowing, white-hot ash.

The blastwave threw Sebastian back out the room, his back smacking into the far wall, painful through the numbed cold. He found his implements, gathered himself up, and prepared to unleash all of his pain and wrath against the creatures who imprisoned him in that timeless hell. And, he supposed, he should try and find Nyx as well, if there was time. A familiar titter bounced around his hazy skull, raw energy still crackling between his fingers and thighs. This was going to be… FUN!!

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE SET-UP YOUR PARAGON PATH “WILD MAGE!” ADDITIONALLY, YOU HAVE GAINED A MAGIC-SCAR!!

For most of the group, their grip instinctually tightened as Cora hastened his pace to pull the party through to safety; but the entire group did not make their will saves. Sebastian, trailing in the back with Nyx and Nietri, felt the stifled laughter bubbling under his surface. He attempted to force the calm down on the burbling titters flip-flopping his guts, but a feeling like an ice-pick stabbed into the back of his brain and he let out a bark of laughter as he fell to his knees, letting go of Nietri’s hand as the group was pulled away.

For a tense moment Nyx and Sebastian were alone and blind before they tore the impediments from their senses; by the time they could see the light of Cora it was the faintest point of blue in a surrounding sea of shadows. Indistinguishable in the darkness, the duo could only make out the twisted silhouettes of horrid abominations quickly closing in. Before either of them could summon their power the crush of slimy, sticky, clammy, and spiky bodies were upon them, pressing in like a fiendish scrum of fists and teeth and barbs. Sebastian and Nyx were lifted, thrown, caught, punched, pummeled, stabbed, bitten, pinched, licked, titty-twisted, wet-willied (with something distinctly not a pinky finger), thrown again, slapped, trampled, kicked, stomped, and farted (and potentially queefed, it was too dark to tell) upon before finally being dumped in small torture chamber.

The rough road that led them to these chambers felt as if it had taken hours, though it may have merely been minutes; In the screaming/whispering dark time and shadow were as one immaterial. Now both Sebastian and Nyx were strapped side-by-side on two stretcher-tables as more hideous hands brutally tightened the worn leather straps. A dim light bobbed into the room, a twisted purple halo clinging around the crown of a hideous humanoid, its too-long arms ending in too-long hands with sickeningly jagged talons at the end of each finger. It smiled like a demented watermelon, ichor black in the purplish light dripping through the gaps in its broken teeth to sizzle on the floor. As it drew closer the light cast over the weary duo and it let out a shaking cackle, unnatural sounding as it echoed through its distended chest-cavity; it had noticed, as quickly the duo did, that they were still holding hands.