Empirical Gnollage: Installment 55 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment055.png]
Gruntle shoved his shield forward to interpose, and the dead snake's sharp teeth sank into the wood instead of the flesh of Gruntle's torso. The rest of the skeletal snake pulled itself up out of the illusory altar and began coiling itself around the gnoll.
The bones of the dead snake were dulled by long age, and there were signs of previous damage. The skull was chipped and punctured in a few places, and some of the ribs had been broken off. The remainder seemed to be held together by a dim, pulsating violet glow in place of the ligaments that had long since rotted away. Points of violet light floated freely within the empty eye-sockets of the snake's skull, and shifted position to point towards Gruntle as though they were pupils of a living eye. The scrape of the undead thing's ribs against the floor as it moved was the only sound it made.
Breaking into his usual barking laughter and his eyes turning black as his pupils dilated fully, Gruntle brought his flail down onto the snake's back, and several more ribs broke loose from the spine. Pieces flew and cracks appeared in the backbones, and the violet glow leaked through holes. Wikwocket dodged behind the gnoll and came out lunging. BiteySue pierced between its fangs and directly through the snake-skull's palate, up into its braincase. Wikwocket was dismayed to find that this didn't seem to bother the long-dead thing. Al didn't fare much better, trying to maneuver around the coiling bones to swing at the thing's skull but not being able to land a solid hit. Bote called upon Indicina to bring the undead creature's flouting of the natural order to their attention, and a ray of divine light answered from the ceiling to shine down onto the snake's skull. It released Gruntle's shield and pulled away quickly, jaws wide. A few wisps of smoke rose from it. Then, with a swift convulsion, it constricted its coils tightly around Gruntle and squeezed a defiant snarl from the gnoll, who lunged down within the coils to bite down hard on the most accessible bit of spine. There was a CRUNCH and a flare of the violet glow as bones cracked and crumbled under the pressure.
The skeletal snake's ribs clicked against each other as it squeezed Gruntle harder, evoking another snarl and strained barking laughter. Gruntle seemed almost to be enjoying the struggle to the death as he shifted his jaws a bit further along the spine and CRUNCHed it in his teeth again. The violet glow further down the spine sputtered and dimmed as ancient vertebrae crumbled under the assault. Wikwocket tried to aim a careful stab between the backbones near the head, but the it was moving too much to get a good shot. Fortunately, Al managed to time a swing just right, and connected with the spine right behind the skull with a swing of his mace. The flickering violet glow flared out and then disappeared.
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With a triumphant whoop and a mighty push, Gruntle broke free from the coiled bones, scattering pieces across the chamber. He bit into the collapsing spine which crumbled like chalk in his teeth now that no animating magic held it together. Spitting out the tasteless pieces Gruntle spun and looked for other targets for his violence, but found none. He swung his flail through the illusory altar in annoyance as he calmed himself, his eyes returning to normal.
Al approached the altar slowly, sweeping disassembled bones of the long dead snake away with one foot. Some of the pieces disappeared as they skittered near the altar, with a quiet clattering sound that suggested they were falling into a large hidden hole. Al tapped gently along the floor with the torch in his left hand and then down into the illusion-covered hole once he found its edge. He waved the torch and braced to jump back at any sign of activity, but no further threats appeared.
“Gruntle, do you hear anything down there?” Al asked him, pointing to the base of the altar. Gruntle turned from where Bote was checking him for injuries and leaned to listen carefully and sniff at the air. He huffed.
“Nah. Smells like old dead things. No noises.”
Al risked crawling forward until he felt the edge of the hole, then slowly stuck his head down into the illusory floor and altar. From beneath the illusion, the light from the braziers shone through to dimly illuminate the pit beneath. It was only perhaps three to four paces deep, but regularly spaced metal spikes as log as Al's forearm stuck upright from the pit floor and angled upwards from the walls. A pair of mildewed human-ish skeletons lay in pieces amid the spikes. They were too large to be gnomish, but too small to be dwarfish. They seemed to have been carrying packs, though the long ages had rotted them down to barely recognizeable pieces, and at a glance the contents had long since been turned to sludge, mold, and then finally unidentifiable lumps of black mud over the damp years. One glint of bright metal beside one of the skeletons reflected the flickering glow of the braziers from above, standing out in contrast to the patina on the spikes and a few lumps of obvious rust that were all that remained of some other metallic objects.
“I'm guessing that's a couple of long-dead adventurers I'm seeing down here,” Al called out. “It doesn't look like there's much of their stuff left but there might be one or two things on them that we could put to good use, if anybody wants to go poke around in their remains.”
“That sounds morbid - I'll do it!” Wikwocket volunteered cheerfully. She set BiteySue back in her resting-place on her back, then cautiously approached to find the edge of the pit in the illusion. She took her new grappling-hook out from her left sleeve and uncoiled her bright blue yarn “rope” to climb down, setting the hook into the lip of illusion-covered stone around the hole. Al poked his head back under the illusion to watch, in case he needed to intervene. He watched Wikwocket rappel down and carefully make her way through the forest of corroded spikes. She drew BiteySue and stabbed gently at the boney remains and picked through the decayed equipment with the tip of her sword. She improvised a cheerful singsong chant as she investigated.
“These poor saps are rotting, I'm going to loot their bodies, I'm taking all their magic and gold because I'm just that naughty…Oh! What's that?”
She spotted a shining silvery glint from a small blade lying on the floor next to what was left of one of the dead halflings' right hand. Just to be safe, she prodded it as well.
“Try not to touch that with your hands yet. Either that dagger was put here a lot more recently than the bodies, or there's something unnatural about it. I'd expect normal metal to be pretty corroded down here,” Al warned her.
“Unnatural? Like…magic?” She mimed covetous grasping motions at it with her hands. She thought for a moment, then went to grab then end of her improvised rope, uncoiling it out to the middle of the pit where the dagger was. She carefully slipped the doubled-up yarn underneath the small blade without touching it, and tied it loosely.
“There you go - haul it up and use your magic wizard powers to tell me if my new dagger is magic!”
“Why is it automatically yours?” Al asked as he pulled it up with the yarn.
“It should be obvious, right?” she gleefully retorted, and turned to start picking apart the remains of the dead halfings' other possessions with the tip of her sword.
“It's…,” Al began to argue, but then considered. Even assuming the thing wasn't cursed, it would be absurdly small in Gruntle's hands. Bote didn't strike Al as the stabby sort, and Al himself preferred the solid heft of his mace in an actual fight - knives were for more utilitarian purposes in his mind. “Well, as long as nobody else minds. Hurry up and finish your undignified looting, we can take a short break for me to see what I can find out.”
There turned out to be very little that was salvageable amid the mildewed scraps of rotted materials. A few lumps of colorful crumbling material may have once been copper and silver coins. Deep in one pile of pack remains Wikwocket did find a metal ring, with a collection of metal and bone tools hanging from it. They were coated with some sort of grease that seemed to have preserved them. “Well, at least they were taking care of their tools. Always nice to have a spare set!” Wikwocket declared, Disappointed in how little there was to find, but eager to know more about what little they'd recovered, she climbed back up out of the pit.
Bote declared Gruntle in good health. Despite having no flesh, the necromantic magic animating the dead snake had reinforced its bones and given it the strength to squeeze its victims to death the same way one would presume the live one had. Gruntle's ribs seemed to be intact, but there would probably be bruising along the lines where the rib-bones had pressed so hard against Gruntle's body.
Al got out his wizardry notes and followed along the meditation process to sensitize himself to magical influences. He tried to ignore the others gathered around waiting as he did so. After a while, the familiar shift in Al's vision happened. He blinked and looked around, and he could see the magic.