SHOWMANSHIP (100 CHAPTER SPOOKTACULAR)
Maniacal laughter echoed throughout the massive tomb, the kind of laughter you only get from either reading something hilarious that you can’t stop reading or from the laugher being slightly detached from any semblance of rationality or reality. In any other place, Mibbet would have thought the former, but given their current situation, she was willing to put good money on it being the latter.
That was further confirmed by the lack of gasping that usually follows option a. Usually followed by more laughter and groaning, and maybe a pause while they went and got themselves a drink of water (cackling is hell on the throat.) Whatever was laughing here seemed to consider things like breathing, lung capacity, and stopping to be optional extras. In the circumstances, it was a fairly safe bet that whatever it was either 1. didn’t have lungs, 2. was magical in nature, 3. (the most unlikely option) had created some kind of machinery to laugh manically for them or 4. was just about to implode. (Given how long it had gone on for though, that was not a particularly reassuring thought if they were going to Implode, then, Mibbet assumed they would have already unless they had lungs bigger than a dragon who took up yodelling as a hobby.)
Suffice to say, Errol was not chuffed, partially because he was trapped and partially because they had gone and nicked his tibia. (He liked that tibia, it hit with a satisfying donk.) and all his other weapons too. He was curled up in the corner muttering about revenge and how many things he was going to donk on the head once he got out of here (fairly safe bet it was a lot, Errol never was the type to hold back on the pettiness.)
Sir Leeroy, meanwhile, had taken a sharp rock and was starting to try and chip away at the several foot thick granite wall with a sharp pebble (he didn’t like being trapped, but if all went to plan, he may be able to loosen one of those stones and be out of here just in time for the end of the multiverse. OK, so maybe he’d be a little bit late; entropy was going to be pissed off; they didn’t like being stood up.) The skeletons, of course, could see what he was doing and were looking on with contempt (which it took real effort to convey with a fleshless skeletal face, but for Sir Leeroy, they’d put in some practice, and the pity and disgust was so palpable he almost noticed it. Or at least he would have had his desperation to escape not been something of a distraction.) Every once in awhile he would carefully, and with what he must have imagined to be subtlety, lift the musty, mouldy, moth-eaten bedding and sweep the pathetic amount of stone dust (mostly from the pebble, to be honest) underneath it as if it was somehow going to give the game away.
Elvira, meanwhile, had finally run out of bone puns to torture their captors with (it only took 2 hours) and had settled in for a rousing and seemingly never-ending rendition of a wizards staff has a knob on the end and some crude songs about a necromancers crusty rod. Which was clearly working quite well as several of the skeletons had unscrewed their own heads and carried them out of earshot (or whatever the hell you call a skeleton’s hearing range) to escape their unending torment. Eventually, it was agreed by the whole party (except Elvira herself, of course) that their tactic was far more effective on people with brains, and the meaty people in the area were about ten seconds away from gagging her themselves (like they could ever pull that off, it was very easy to threaten her, but following through? Not so much.)
That kept her silent for a few minutes before she pulled out a rubber ball from somewhere and started bouncing it off the backs of their guards (who clearly didn’t appreciate it but could hardly ask her to stop, at least until one figured out a gentle spear poke made a halfway decent deterrent from further shenanigans.)
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Eventually, several much larger and heavily armoured skeletons emerged from the depths; these ones were really overdone on the spikey bits and extremely underdone on the manners as they readied halberds, opened the cell, and herded the team out.
Sir Leeroy (who was feeling a little better for being out of the cell) looked around, “it seems we’re finally going to meet our hosts.” He muttered.
“About time, anybody would think this lot were raised with no manners; it really is grim.” Elvira chipped in, then yelped at another gentle spear poke. “YOWCH watch it with that thing; you’ll have somebodies eye out.” That comment, of course, earned her another jab, as her audience tried to make their point clear with some sharp critique.
As they got deeper and deeper into the tomb, it became obvious that somebody had worked hard to make the place a suitable lair and that the person in question was a complete and utter drama queen. Everything that could be made into a spike seemed to have been shaped into one, then had a skull jabbed onto it (there seemed to be a lot of those lying around down here, Mibbet could only think a savvy decorator would use what they had on hand.) Tattered tapestries bearing long-forgotten crests hung on the walls all over the place, and from somewhere in the distance came a distinctive sound which made everybody present wonder where in the name of all that was holy they had managed to get hold of a damned pipe organ, let alone get the bloody thing down all these narrow right-angled passages. This wasn’t the kind of place removal men usually delivered to. (There was an exception to that, of course, but that’s a story for another time.)
The questionable tastes continued, of course, with suits of armour clutching executioners axes Mibbet was fairly confident to bet would move by themselves (or at least they would after a good oiling. Being entombed is not good for metalwork, which is probably why all the skeletons they saw were clad in bone mould gear instead. At last, the music grew louder, and an eerie green light lit the passages, which was a fairly good indicator that they were about to meet the boss.
Sure enough, they rounded the corner and found themselves in a room laid out like an ancient feasting hall, with the remains of a long stone table running right through the centre. Off to the left was some kind of altar, decorated with surprise surprise, even more skulls, and to the left some kind of black obsidian font, they had obviously gone to great effort to fill with a red liquid that anybody who knows about anatomy can tell you was clearly not blood. Because otherwise, given that it was standing, it would have clotted long since, but a font of scabs doesn't sound as cool, and people won't stop picking at it. At the head of the throne, down a carpet that was probably once, a few centuries ago red, stood a throne that can not have been comfy. It had far too many spikes attached for a start, though Mibbet had to admit the burning moat around it was a nice touch, well so long as the individual who sat there didn’t trip, if they did, they definitely wouldn’t need an exorcist, as there wouldn’t be enough left of them to even warrant exorcising.
The hooded figure on the bone throne laughed; it was an impressive evil laugh (it would have been more so had they not heard him practising earlier, but with all these stone passages, sound carried fairly well, so a little of the drama was spoiled, but there was still plenty to go around, so it was fine.) They turned a baleful, glowing pair of eyes to the interlopers before snapping their fingers to stop the organ accompaniment. (Turns out there was no organ at all, just a lich wanting to show off.)
They stepped down from the throne and into the room proper, flanked by several skeletal guards, (and somehow they all managed to avoid tripping, accidentally impaling themselves, or burning in the fiery moat, truly a testament to how much practice the survivors must have done to get this particular routine right.) Looking at him, he was either a lich or really really really needed better sunblock. “Ah, it seems we have company,” he gloated. “Well, no matter, it’s not like I was hiding my plans from the beginning.”
“Plans?” Mibbet tried, earning herself a spear jab in the process.
The lich raised his hands dramatically and laughed once more, even adding a lightning spell for effect. “You are just in time to witness the downfall of a kingdom.”