The Tale of One-Tree, Chapter X: Blood, Light, and Darkness, Part II
The adventurers were holding their collective breaths after the fall of the stele they had undermined and the spell of concealment on the other steles suddenly breaking, anxiously surveying the land for any kind of reaction from the Orgoths’ undead servants. Odrys swept the sky with his gaze, disappointed that an idea he had brought up in the past that the Orgoth might have built a hovering installation in order to prevent if from being found by accidental digging seemed nothing but a flight of fancy now.
While the adventurers were waiting, William took the opportunity to gaze into Samira’s eyes, shielding them with his hands so he could study the glow in the blackclad’s sockets in the dark. Both the druid and the bokor saw at once that there had been a change, the lambent firefly luminescence was now pulsing like a heartbeat in both of their eyes. Reporting this observation to the others, Odrys immediately suggested checking whether the pulse matched any of their heartbeats, and it did not take them long to establish that the pulse followed a rhythm that was all its own.
During the adventurers’ investigations, Roza had kept her eyes on the area, and so it was her who alerted the others that the ground was falling in in a spot somewhere close to the centre of the stele configuration. A group of dreads begun clambering out of the gaping hole and started marching towards the fallen stele, with one of the robed and masked excruciators in command. Watching the undeads’ plodding walk, before the adventurers could decide on a course of action another opening formed in the ground, and a second group of Orgoth monstrosities emerged. The excruciator in charge of that group then pointed at William with its grey-fleshed forefinger and called out to the gatorman bokor-chieftain, calling him a slave and ordering him and his companions to aid the other excruciator in repairing the damage to the site.
Feigning obedience, William and his companions trudged toward the fallen stele, where the dreads’ metal-infused limbs struggled to attempt to right the stele under the watchful eyes of their commanding excruciator, while the second group remained at the centre of the site, still as statues except for the excruciator’s robes fluttering in the wind.
Whispering amongst themselves how they might try and engineer an accident that would see the dreads crushed under the stele, the adventurers’ scheme was unfortunately crushed in turn as the excruciator at the fallen stele immediately began ordering them around as they approached, sending the gatormen William and Odrys to help brace the stele, while instructing Roza and Samira to dig underneath it so that it could be levered upright again.
Moving as if to circle around the stele to assist the dreads on the other side, William then passed closer to the excruciator, and as he approached the spectre suddenly flung up his hands, sending bolts of arcane power ripping into the one undead present who could be targeted by his magic and rending its ephemeral flesh apart until its glowering metal mask fell heavily unto the upturned earth. Before the dreads could respond, Odrys and Roza charged them in turn, tearing into them with jaw, axe, spiked shield, and enchanted blades, while Samira sent the warpwolf Bacarl and her woldwatcher against the remaining dreads, tearing them to shreds.
The other excruciator hovering at the centre of the site had not failed to notice the rebellion and was now rushing towards the adventurers, secure behind a line of dread running ahead. While Odrys, Roza and William were still busy finishing up the dreads at the fallen stele, who were proving as repugnantly resilient as always while thankfully inflicting little damage on the adventurers even though their cursed blades bypassed the protective spells Samira had put on her comrades. Samira now interposed herself between her companions and the second excruciator’s forces, pointing her voulge at them in challenge while drawing power from Bacarl and her wold to cause the ground to break open. While the excruciator did not fall for the blackclad warlock’s trap and neither sent its dreads through the fiery crevasse Samira had opened, nor split its forces into two groups to circumnavigate the obstacle, its choice of making the dreads stay close together and veer off to one side still was a significant detour that delayed them long enough so that the initiative in the coming clash would be on the adventurers’ side.
Having finished off the dreads at the stele in the meantime, William now circled around the dreads rushing their position while Odrys and Roza sprang to Samira’s aid, engaging the dreads before they could pile on the blackclad. William again began casting his magic at the excruciator, but failed to bring it down, and then Samira sent Bacarl charging at the excruciator as well, the warpwolf’s headlong rush scattering the dreads in its way left and right until his slavering jaws finally closed on the excruciator’s head – and then opened again to contemptuously spit out the sodden mask, all that was now left of the spectral undead.
Samira and Odrys then quickly advanced on the knocked-down dreads to end them before they could find their feet again, but even then Samira found that her voulge’s power was not quite up to the task, and the dread’s blade found her flesh just as she realised that she had overtaxed her warbeasts, the link between her and them now too strained to send the pain of her injury to one of them. Thankfully, the gash was not deep enough to truly imperil the warlock, and even when a dread was trying to avenge its fallen commander by striding up behind Bacarl’s back, William gladly took the opportunity to charge that dread from behind in turn, the magical staff Corpse-Eater temporarily nullifying the dread’s ability to overcome grievous injuries so that Bacarl could now turn around and rip it apart, while Roza and Odrys took care of the dread Samira was facing, the Tharn bloodweaver employing her own enchanted blade to great effect to nullify the other dread’s resilience.
With silence now settling over the battlefield, William was immediately wary of more foes springing from the ground, and, peering at the holes the dreads had emerged from, realised they were aligned with two of the three steles. The bokor-chieftain quickly urged his companions to position themselves at the site where he suspected a third entrance would exist, and his foresight was indeed rewarded by the ground suddenly beginning to cave in as an aperture formed and more dreads were trudging up a set of green-veined black marble stairs below. The undead were immediately greeted by the adventurers raining blows onto them as they emerged, with Bacarl in particular sending one of them crashing down the stairs again. Then another excruciator rose from the ground, bypassing any need for stairs or apertures as was the fashion of their kind, and, raising its gaunt hands, sent bolts of black radiance against Odrys and Bacarl from erupting circles of sinister runes. The pain caused by the bolt that struck Odrys was terrific, partially paralysing the gatorman warrior, but the other bolt missed the warpwolf. William attempted to engage the magic-wielding excruciator in a duel, but could not strike true against his elusive spectral foe, and then Bacarl was on the robed undead as well. While the thing mostly managed to wind its way out from in between the warpwolf’s snapping jaws, his claws still found the solidity in its shape, and in just two more swipes another excruciator was destroyed.
It did not take the other adventurers much longer to bring down the other dreads as well, which failed to inflict any significant injuries. A tense quiet once again fell, but no more assailants seemed to be forthcoming for the time being. Wishing to attempt to establish the dimensions of the site, William then approached the hole the adventurers had dug in the centre of the steles the previous days, and was now astonished to see that they had actually unearthed a structure fashioned from the same crisply cut, solid black marble that made up the steles, only the concealing magic of the steles must have prevented the adventurers from becoming aware of their find before toppling one stele had finally disrupted the enchantment.
Odrys, in the meantime, had busied himself examining the aperture from which the latest group of dreads had emerged, and found a broad, green-veined stair of night-black marble disappearing into the darkness below… a darkness which, however, was haunted by a lambent, pulsing green glow emanating from somewhere further down…