‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?’ says Lilla.
The morgue is cold and dry, same as always, but the crystal she used as a focus for her clone lies shattered on the floor. The shelves of slabs for Lilla’s stock of corpses seem taller without its soft light.
The traitorous Dragonborn – the one who’d defected from the Royal Church and murdered Lilla’s last body, leaving her stuck in this ridiculous childlike one – and a woman covered in shawls both stand over the mangled remains of Lilla’s backup body.
It’s a safety measure she’s maintained for centuries, created with the necromantic clone spell. Shit, she thinks. Lilla was immortal until around thirty seconds ago.
What appears to be an elf, standing closer than the others, flips Lilla off. Above her raised finger, a little bolt of violet fire appears, and the elf flicks it towards Lilla’s ruined vessel. It ignites like a pile of dried foliage, and Lilla finds herself near blind with outrage.
How dare these three sacks of meat and sinew barge in here, like they’re anything more than corpses that haven’t yet begun to rot?
‘You may have rendered that useless as a clone,’ says Lilla. She grits her teeth so hard they might crack. ‘But that doesn’t mean it can’t be turned against you.’
The Ruined Vessel clambers to its feet as Lilla lifts her hand, and the two of them begin channeling the danse macabre.
*
Cranzalar senses the movement of the ruined vessel before it even begins to rise, and quick as a flash he bears down on it with his flail. His blows, which have been known to bring down walls in the past, crush the bones in the thing’s shoulder to a fine powder.
It doesn’t stop its spell. Every single corpse in the morgue begins to drag itself towards them.
*
Vi sees the drawers with the bodies in sliding open. She ducks out of the way as Lilla casts a chill touch at her, and sees her attempting to hide behind one of the shelves. Thinking on her feet, she conjures up a blast of elemental power, and the heavy steel shelves crash down on Lilla.
Zombies are shambling up behind her, and as Vi turns from where Lilla went, one of them grabs her. It tries to sink rotting teeth into her arm.
*
Uzi is still incensed about the Royals’ use of soulbinding. She barely registers the ruined vessel, doesn’t even see the corpses shuffling towards her friends. A tidal wave, surging from her hand, sends another set of shelves over like dominoes. When Lilla avoids being crushed, Uzi sends a crackling ball of lightning towards her, cursing her as she does so.
*
Lilla takes the hit. Hard. She knows she’s in a corner, but that doesn’t mean she’s in peril. The Ruined Vessel is concentrating on her danse macabre for her, so Lilla’s free to bring out some really vicious spells.
She casts creeping death, and a pillar of necrotic fire erupts around the Cleric and Sorcerer. She gives them both a taste of undeath, ghostly hands gripping at their throats. As zombies begin to fall, she clenches her fist and casts corpse burst, showering them with gore and bile and offal.
The sorcerer falls. Once she bleeds out, Lilla can raise her corpse and really turn the tide. She’ll keep the bones of these three in her elite storage, and…
The Dragonborn is still standing. He looks serene, even as viscera rains down all around him. His eyes snap open, and Lilla shrinks away from the crackling light that surges from them.
Echoes of the Cleric thunder into being around him; shining dragonborn warriors that flash outward and into the encroaching zombies with the force of an industrial revolution.
He kneels over his ally, and pulls her to her feet. The two turn on Lilla, and for the first time in a hundred years, Lilla feels afraid.
*
Vi throws the zombie downwards, and brings out a signature spell of hers. She lifts her hands, glowing softly in the stygian morgue, and when she drops her arms in a dramatic gesture, a solid beam of searing moonlight vaporises her attacker.
She thrusts her arm out and the moonbeam races across the room, obliterating three more zombies as it passes over them. Lilla is focused entirely on the other two, and Vi presses this advantage by sending the moonbeam right down on top of her.
For a moment it seems like Lilla’s gone up the same way as her undead thralls, but she sprints away with an expeditious retreat on herself, fleeing toward some pile of mulch in the corner of the morgue.
*
There are too many zombies in the room. Cranzalar wants to focus on the biggest threat – Lilla herself, who’s getting away – but even with his spirit guardians, the tide of the undead is growing too much to contend with. He needs to put a stop to it.
The Ruined Vessel still channels the danse macabre, its eyes unseeing.
So Cranzalar draws the Blade of Glass.
*
Uzi throws bolt after bolt of power after Lilla’s retreating form, but she stops as she hears the distinctive shing of the sword on Cranzalar’s back being pulled from its sheath. The curse on the sword leaves her friend vulnerable while he holds it – as Uzi watches, the edges of Cranzalar’s silhouette begin to grow blurred and wispy, like he’s turning to smoke.
And then he’s gone, moving toward the ruined vessel with unimaginable speed, faster than Uzi can follow. Lilla’s clone abruptly stops its spell. It collapses into ribbons.
Before Cranzalar can sheathe his sword, however, the pile of soil erupts. Lilla has raised a gargantuan undead Ent, its bark-covered face weeping sickly green tears. It lumbers toward them, fists raised like gnarled wooden wrecking balls.
There’s a crash.
The party is falling.
*
By fate, or probably just dumb luck, the three land on an island made of rubble. The cavern-like room they’ve fallen into is filled with an eerie lake, pulsing with some strange lambent glow. Vague humanoid shapes can be seen floating in its depths.
Zombies land in the water from the shattered floor above. Upon so much as touching the liquid, ghostly hands burst from it and the zombies are pulled into its depths. Their borrowed souls are ripped from them, sinking back into the pool.
The colossal Ent towers before them, blocking the only exit. It looks as though the party is in for a rough fight – wounded as they are from the battle with Lilla, and the fall, not to mention with the threat of the lake of souls.
Firuzeh is having none of it. She shapes water, and hurls a globule the size of a medicine ball at the Ent. The Ent doesn’t take it very well, and collapses into a pile of diseased wood and bubbling rot.
The three rush through the gate, towards Lilla’s last stand.
*
Lilla has retreated to her Elite Storage Room, where she’s just finished clothing three sets of bones with ichor from her canopic jars. She’s picked them especially to deal with her assailants.
The Dragonborn steps into the room, a flash in the air signalling the appearance of more of his spirit guardians.
The Elf appears, brandishing a crooked staff and another insulting ball of fire.
The sorcerer joins them, looking as furious as Lilla feels. A tangible pressure fills the room.
For the briefest, most minute moment, Lilla considers trying to bargain with them. But no. She thinks of the betrayal, of the insult, of the arrogance of these three. She could never deign to ask them to spare her life. In the incredibly unlikely event that this was to be the end, she’d return to Aurifar with her pride intact, and she’d spit in his face for sending this plague upon her.
*
Lilla stands in the corner of her sanctum, guarded by a rotting Orcish Cleric, a spectral wizard, and a massive minotaur’s skeleton.
The skeleton launches forward like a siege engine, and its greataxe practically vivisects Verischa, dropping her.
Cranzalar ducks its next blow and leaps toward Vi, and the last healing light from his hands pulls her from the brink of death.
While Cranzalar is reviving Vi, Uzi has to contend with attacks from the minotaur, as well as bolts of electricity being thrown out by the spectre. She leaps to the side of an axe swing, but is struck by a lightning bolt, and the next axe blow takes her in the stomach as she reels from the shock. Her form collapses into liquid and reforms a few feet away.
Through Firuzeh’s watery defense, Cranzalar has leapt back to his feet, and brings his flail down on the skeleton, smashing it into a pile of bones. Vi, recovering from her wound, begins focusing to cast another moonbeam on the ghostly wizard.
But Lilla casts her creeping death again, with another pillar of necrotic flame bursting forth around the party. She resurrects the skeleton, which picks up its axe for another assault. And she casts circle of death using a sixth-level spell slot.
Cranzalar’s spirit guardians shred the Minotaur as soon as it rears up for an attack, and the radiant energy burns its form away with nothing left, like a hydrogen flame.
Vi’s moonbeam destroys the spectral wizard in a similar way, and she begins working to send it towards Lilla.
Uzi casts her curse on the Cleric, moving to prevent his warding magic. She pulls power from her sorcerous blood, her tail flicking back and forth as she concentrates.
Lilla’s Circle of Death ripples outwards; a sphere of oily darkness that washes over the party and sets them to decay from the inside out. Both Cranzalar and Uzi’s internal organs all putrefy in an instant. They sink to the floor with seconds left to live.
Somehow, somehow, Vi is able to resist the spell’s effects. They still hit her, still wither her heart and blacken her lungs, but she pushes through the pain, leaning on her staff for support. And as Lilla prepares to claim the corpses of the Cleric and Sorcerer, Vi slams her staff on the ground.
There’s a flash of verdant light. The sound of the absolute stillness of a forest clearing. Uzi and Cranzalar’s lives are saved.
Lilla is starting to realise the dire straits she’s in, and struggles to react. She detonates her Cleric, though this does practically nothing to stop the three bearing down on her.
That’s it, then, she thinks. No point in avoiding risks when things have come to this.
Lilla summons up the spark of Aurifar’s power she holds, and forces it to the surface. She casts horrid wilting, and lets her divine spark fuel the magic.
If the three don’t fall before she loses her grip on the spell, it’ll turn inwards on Lilla and mummify her. She thinks of it as a remote possibility, but one that’s worth the gamble when the stake is not just her life, but her dignity. She couldn’t actually die. That’s not how the world worked.
Even though Cranzalar is reeling from the circle of death, he pushes against the horrid wilting. He’s in agony, but he raises his weapon.
Vi can feel the moisture in her body, the blood in her veins, turning to dust as the necrotic spell tears at her. Nevertheless, she presses toward the Royal.
Uzi’s connection to water has her feeling like she’s being erased; evaporating as some terrible vacuum drinks her up. But Lilla has committed acts worse than the pain Uzi is feeling. She needs to be stopped.
And the three are able to disrupt the spell before it reduces them to withered husks. Lilla, her concentration shattered by the force of their attacks, loses her grip on the horrid wilting and it lashes back in on her, leaving nothing but a dusty corpse, and not even a mote of necrotic power to animate it.
She never really thought she could be killed. Right until the end, she considered death not quite beneath her, but certainly above the three that came to slay her.
She was wrong.
*
In a blank white expanse that wasn’t quite real, a man with a sharp black suit and a cloud of charcoal where his features would be peered at Lilla, despite his apparent lack of eyes.
Lilla wasn’t a child anymore. She stood in her original form, the first shape she’d had before she even learned the clone spell. Against the endless white of the plane she stood in, her clothes and pale skin stood out as dull and faded. Her black hair fluttered in a nonexistent breeze.
‘You certainly took your time,’ said the man, despite his apparent lack of a mouth. ‘I suspect your demise should get the ball rolling, don’t you think?’
‘Aurifar,’ said Lilla. ‘You can’t be here. We killed you. We tore you up and shared out the pieces.’
Despite his apparent lack of teeth, Aurifar’s smile was wide, and sharp, and utterly terrible.
Roll History 