The first encounter Jackson’s party encountered barely had time to react before Morris’s arrow dropped one of the skeletons and Eimme’s holy-water boosted [Disrupt Undead] blew the zombie to bits. It worried Jackson a little that the remaining two skeletons ran after Jackson cut one of their arms off, but it was quickly replaced with a glowing sense of pride.
“See that? The best this place’s got is a ritual user, probably only a level or two higher than our Eimme if he can only manage undead this weak.” Morris talks to the air as he kicks over the skeleton he had headshot.
Eimme grunts, and Jackson feels Maylee tug at the back of his tunic. He turns to see what she’s looking at, and spots the branching paths, one to the left, one to the right. He notes that the left door is shut, but the right door the skeletons ran through was already open when they entered.
“Let’s check the right first, then close the door and clear the left once we know it’s safe.” Jackson gives his best ‘look at me I’m the leader voice’ to the group, but Eimme grunts back immediately.
“Librarian in the village said the left was a dead-end last time anyone had checked, we should keep moving further.” Eimme was making a conscious effort to hide her accent, which immediately set the entire party into their actual serious modes.
“Right, th-then let’s go!” Maylee’s voice shakes a little with nerves, but she nods at the end and lets go of Jackson as they fall back into formation.
This dungeon is fucking weird. Jackson thinks to himself as they clear the third empty chamber in a row without any traps or… anything. Jackson quickly corrects himself when he realizes that it’s probably just because some dropout level 2 priest is the one running the place as opposed to anything actually threatening. The only thing even remotely ominous so far was the few [Permanent Light] spells around the staircase they’d avoided going down until they’d cleared the upper floor.
Outside of the couple dead-end rooms with nothing in them, the chambers and hallways with nothing in them, and the stone chest in one of the rooms with nothing in it, the only thing that had stuck out to any of them was just how quiet it was. They’d all expected some noise, like maybe water dripping or rodents scurrying around in the dark, but there just wasn’t anything. Just eerie silence, stagnant air, and empty rooms. They’d even considered taking a short break to take a few bites of jerky before going down the stairs, but Morris had pointed out that you never let your guard down in a dungeon.
So they’d started making their way down the stairs, in the same formation, Jackson, Eimme, Morris, Maylee. Human, Half-Orc, Human, Half-Elf. Fighter, Cleric, Ranger, Sorcerer. Jackson kept going over that formation in his head as he descended the steps, torch in one hand and sword in the other. He felt like there was something he wasn’t accounting for, but concluded he was probably just being paranoid. They’d gone over how to fight a negatively-aligned priest; don’t let him touch you, back off if you get de-buffed. They’d gone over how to fight undead; let the cleric pop the biggest one with magic, cover the sorcerer from ranged attacks if needed, and throw bottles of holy water into crowds. They’d gone over so many things, but Jackson’s feeling of missing something just wasn’t going away.
Jackson reaches the closed iron door on the landing at the bottom of the staircase, and signals with a hand for everyone to form up behind him. Eimme takes a position at the right side of the door, Jackson at the left, Maylee stand behind Jackson and readies a [Flare] spell to throw through and disorient any undead, and Jackson nods to Morris as he knocks an arrow into his longbow.
“On three, one, two, three!” Jackson counts them off in a harsh whisper, and pulls his half of the door open at the same time Eimme does. He sees the flare spell sail through the opening, but doesn’t have time to look inside the chamber before it goes off, so he instead tries to take some cover behind the door. That’s why he misses the fact that Morris’s shot never goes through. The first to notice is Maylee, as she yelps in surprise as a crossbow bolt hits her in the stomach, and two more, plus a couple arrows, barely miss Eimme. Morris abandoned his shot in favor of trying to pull Eimme behind the door, which is probably the only reason she’s alive when Jackson looks up.
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“Fuck! Maylee, take cover and try and nail one of the crossbows!” Jackson shouts before charging forward at the undead before him. Looks like… Bunch of low level zombies, couple skeletons, should be manageable with Eimme’s magic…
“[Disrupt Undead]!” Eimme shouts as she steps into the open, and three of the zombies in the front blow apart as the wave of positive energy hits them.
“[Firebolt]!” Maylee’s spell rips the head off of another zombie, just as Jackson reaches the right edge of the melee line.
“There’s a fuckton more of them than I thought! I’ll take the ranged ones, Cover me!” Jackson shouts as he swings his longsword down vertically, cleaving the smallfolk zombie in two before stepping back out of the range of the skeleton spearmen. He cocks his head to the side as he feels an arrow whiz by and behead of one of the spearmen.
Eimme, without needing to be told, immediately charges the last remaining zombie with her morningstar in hand, and her raw strength breaks its wooden shield-and the arm beneath it-as she brings it down. She turns to the skeleton spearmen poking at her from behind the zombie and prepares to cast.
“[Disru- uyck!” Eimme’s spell stops as a skeleton with a club catches her in the back. Jackso turns to see the cleric get hit and sees the second hiding skeleton.
“Morris, to the right!” Jackson shouts as he breaks out of the main melee and makes a beeline to the crossbow formation. He hears the clattering of bones against stone, and hears a second thwip almost immediately afterwards. Morris’s rapid-fire shot misses any of the undead, but Jackson hears a yelp and a thud, and turns to follow the arrows path. He sees a female elf, slumped over in the doorway behind the undead wall, and for a brief moment his confusion overtakes his combat sense.
When he comes to his senses, he takes another step forward and slices at the skeleton guarding the- Where did it go? Why does my chest feel… Fuzzy… Jackson looks down at his chest, and sees a skeletal arm buried in the middle of his chest up to just below the elbow.
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Vey throws the body of the fighter-boy to the ground, finishing him instantly with the Slam attack from [Fists of Stone], skull chips, blood, and gray matter splattering over the floor and nearby wall. Vey instinctively slashes open the boy’s stomach with its other claw, relishing the blood pouring out from the wound. What is this feeling? Vey thinks to itself as it stands again, and looks back briefly at the balled up form of Sera, clutching her right shoulder and bleeding profusely.
Vey knows it should be satisfied with this outcome; yet again she served as a perfect distraction for a sneak-attack. But it isn’t. Something feels… Hollow. It had been building from the moment it felt the command bond with some of the other undead sever. Vey looks down at the bits of rotten flesh and broken bones that were formerly some of its fellows, ignoring the voices of the mortals. Vey feels something sinister and primal welling up in its mind, and it turns and immediately holds up its bloody hand to the archer that shot Sera.
“HOW DARE YOU TAKE WHAT IS MINE! [MAGIC MISSILE!]” Vey explodes, overcasting the spell by over double its cost. It sees the bolt of purple energy sail through the air at blistering speed, and Vey doesn’t stop to watch what sort of damage the impact makes; the fact that the archer falls over screaming is good enough. It sprints past the melee to the priest desperately trying to hold off its fellows without the support of her teammates. “I WILL LEAVE NOTHING LEFT OF YOU!”
Vey drives its hand down in a fist, and the cleric spins to catch it on her morningstar, deflecting it away and winces, Vey laughs in satisfaction as it hears the telltale crack of broken bone before it drive its [Cutting Hand] enchanted claws through her eyes, and plunges its thumb-claw into her mouth. And tears. The only thing that cuts off her screaming is the second slam attack coming down on her neck, and Vey revels in the satisfying crunch it hears as her body falls limp. It smashes her skull into paste against the floor anyways, and throws her corpse towards the staircase, using its other hand as a meathook under her ribcage.
Its gaze turns to the white-haired caster hunched over the bloodied archer, his chest a wreck of pulverized flesh, and his back blown open by the exit wound. Vey nearly laughs when it sees the pulp that was once the majority of the archer’s vital organs splattered against the staircase he was standing in front of, and finally does as it sees that the girl is speaking gibberish to herself and prodding him with her hands. Vey orders the skeletons not to fire as it grabs a dagger off of one of the fallen zombies and steps closer to the girl with loud, stomping steps. Vey’s crude laughter falls away as it reaches her, and it wracks its mind for the best way to make her pay, as the last living member of the invader’s group. It settles on something simple, and perhaps… As it looks back at Sera for a moment… Fitting.
“Do you have a god?” Vey’s earlier explosive tone replaced by its original grating, hissing tone, only several times louder and more aggressive. Vey pushes the tip of the dagger under the girl’s chin and tilts it up until she’s looking directly at Vey, and it feels true, genuine joy as it sees the tears streaming down her face. Vey drives its hand straight between her legs, and wrenches its bladelike limb upwards with a single word. “Good.”