Milo Greyson

While I activated the spells sealing the door and shoved a bar into place Thana was carefully making her way around the spell circle that took up most of the middle of the room. She had the bag with the anti-magic shackles in it, pressed up against her chest as she took the long way around.

“It won't turn on if it's not activated,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, and if something goes wrong and it does activate on me I'll puke up my organs,” she retorted. “Though I suspect the shackles would stop it.”

“They would, we have to remove them when we send people through,” I confirmed. “Made the paladins real nervous when it was done. Hand bindings and gags were the usual for it.

I had no compunctions walking across the floor of the room. My actions today may have been in flagrant violation of the law, but in this case, the law was wrong, horribly wrong. As I neared the door I stopped, picking up one of the holy symbols of Vitala that we'd been distributing to the prisoners who were being released. It wasn't a cleric's symbol, but a simple necklace, large and visible.

“Tell me Thana, are you a follower of Vitala?” I looked down at the symbol in my hand, a ring, always unbroken, twisted to form four lobes around the center of it.

“She objects to most of what I am Milo, or at least her followers tend to. I'm not one to show disrespect though, and in my younger days I prayed a bit; less so recently.” A waffling answer, but one I understood. I imagined she might well object to me killing those men, or releasing the others.

I came over to her and carefully placed the symbol over her head. “You are the last of the prisoners to willingly pass through the Room of Judgment, after going through an ordeal which you, beyond all expectations, survived. Do not make me regret this, and while you wear this symbol, show proper respect to its owner.” The necklace didn't burn or harm her, and even when she touched it carefully there seemed to be no harm, I felt that encouraging.

“I'll probably have to cast something if we run into trouble, and I imagine she won't like that, but I'll do the best I can,” she said quietly.

“That's all any of us can do.” I led us to the stairs as we started moving down.

“If they find out what really happened we're both dead, you know that right?” She asked.

“We'll worry about what challenges we face when we face them. On that note, we need to move now.”

“Right. One question, you know that keeping undead around is... frowned upon by the church right?” She pointed to our third.

“You took control of him from another, you didn't make him yourself. Also, when it's done, assuming we make it with him, we can give him a proper burial.” It was pushing it, and would really, really irritate others, but with the situation... it was understandable.

The Tower was thirty stories tall, the top ten being the maximum security prisoners. Below that were offices, interview rooms, and floors with lower security offenders in them. The top was the important part so far as the nation was concerned, a good place to dump, and potentially reform the worst people we had into something useful. The medium and lower security prisoners were local only. If you're building a prison you can easily make it bigger, and someone had wanted the excuse to make the building absolutely massively tall.

“So think the Corians will come for The Tower? Why would they care?”

“That a joke Thana? The Tower is the tallest structure in this half of the city, nearly the whole city. High ground will give them a place for siege engines on the roofs, arrows from the upper floors, ha, even using it to watch our movements inside the city. From a military point of view it's good there. Also, while keeping people in and keeping people out aren't the same thing, it is already strongly built and well set up for a temporary fortress. They'd also get the prisoners we didn't loose, potentially a source of troops. Opcan up there is a danger to us, and if some Corian commander asked him, he'd turn on the nation, smiling the whole time.”

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“So we slip out if we can. If I need to I can run some messages or something, no problem. I doubt they'll need me to if the wall fell I guess. Will you come with me?” The last part sounded hopeful.

“Maybe, let's see what happens first,” I responded, it was unlikely, but today seemed a good day for unlikely things.

“Thank you by the way, that's the first really nice thing anyone's done for me in a long time.”

“Your welcome,” I said as we reached another small landing that indicated a floor was passed. Five down, twenty or so to go.

Each landing had a door, arranged so that one could only enter this staircase. Those were generally hidden behind the guard's rooms on their floor, or otherwise restricted so that prisoners couldn't get anywhere near them. This staircase was for those who'd served their sentence, or those who were not here for one, not the prisoners.

The landings also had slightly larger windows then the rest of the corridor, enough to see how things outside were faring.

Thana Mourningjay

The city was... in chaos. We hadn't gone far down, just enough to give ourselves some breathing room, but the window here showed it all.

From this high the people were like ants, running to and fro like their hill had been upset. Well, at least our people were. The enemy was inside the gates, a metal clad figures pushing down the streets like the grasping appendages of an ooze. One was headed straight here, though from the angle I couldn't tell if they'd made it yet.

“What happens if they make it to The Tower?” I asked. “Is there like, a policy for that?”

“Don't know, there's probably something though.”

It was around this time that several projectiles arced up from places within the enemy ranks, peppering the walls of the prison with loud crashes. One came close to our location, too close for my comfort.

“We need to move,” I observed, and with a quick look we returned to our descent.

We'd made it not even to the next floor down when we saw what had struck the building. On the landing there was a massive stone in the shape of an egg, still disgorging its former occupant. It was some kind of black goo that pulsed and spread.

We also weren't the only ones trying to use this staircase, as several guards were trying to hack and slash at the monster that was making its way into the building. It wasn't going well for them at all, their weapons hissed and sizzled as the plunged them into the... thing, which in response to their attacks seemed to let pieces of itself fall off, where they continued fighting the men.

Most of the inky black mess was moving towards the nearest people, the ones in combat with it, as they made a fighting retreat downwards. One or two pieces however had taken different targets. A couple were sliding into the door on this landing, pushing themselves through as the metal hissed and blackened, large sections of it falling away as they seeped into the hallway beyond. Another was slowly making its way up the stairs, towards us. The last was thankfully very small, perhaps the size of a dog.

Milo moved forward, sword in hand, and taking a stance.

“No, didn't you see what it was doing to their weapons? Keep it off of me but otherwise I've got it.” I stepped up and focused, letting my energy flow into my hands as he threw backwards the bag to keep the field of dead magic away from me.

I slapped the thing, hoping it wasn't undead, and lucked out. My touch burned away some of it, and while it wasn't much, it did decrease in size. Its response was clumsy, that was good, it meant that we might be able to deal with these one small bit at a time. Clumsy or not though, more than that would be a disaster waiting to happen.

My next slap at it was far better, closer to the middle, and a horrible mistake. As I smiled at the large void that melted away in the goop it surged, pseudo-pod slamming into me and splitting to wrap around my chest.

I wasn't alone though, and before it could do much more Milo let his sword slam down, the blade began to melt as it plunged in, but it was enough to sever the piece that had me, and destabilize the rest. As the fragment of the creature died I stumbled.

The ability to heal myself may not have been smiled upon by my captors, but it was absolutely my favorite thing. I could, albeit slowly, repair any injury I took by focusing my own magic into them. The power was called negative energy, and being a living conduit for it had at least a few advantages.

“Are you okay!?” The man asked, clearly seeing that I'd taken a hard blow.

“One moment,” I wheezed, pushing my own power back into myself as I ran my hands over several burns and what felt like a cracked rib.

It took time for me to repair the damage it had done, while I did he looked on.

“Is it burning?” He asked as he discarded his ruined blade.

“No,” I returned as the pain finally faded. Then I looked down, “Ugh, gross,” The remnants of the monster were currently dripping down my only outfit and seeping into the armor I'd taken. They didn't look to be damaged by it, but it was disgusting.

“You sure?' He asked again as I tried to wipe, or shake away, the worst of the goo.

“Yeah, I can heal myself, but we don't want to fight one of those again, they hit hard.” The very fresh memory caused me to wince.

Down the stairs the sounds of continued fighting drifted upwards. Seems the other guards were similarly struggling with the bulk of the monster. There were also sounds of screaming coming from the doorway where parts had passed through, though more panic.

“Up is out, so, down or through?” I asked, he knew this part of the building better than I.

A loud pained scream came up from the stairs. That seemed to cement his opinion on the matter.

“Can you do the slow falling spell?” He asked, looking out the gaping hole the monster delivery egg had smashed in the wall.

“Sorry, no.”

“I vote through then, most of it went down.”

“Seconded,” I said, passing over the sword he'd had me take, it was pretty useless in my hands anyway.