by Marty Myers
Hank became aware of a disturbance at the edge of his awareness. He suddenly realized something was moving on his scree pile down below the castle. Hank concentrated and looked out from the pile and saw what could only be a small adventuring party. “ Alastor we have some company coming, go tell Master Provoas we have four people coming on up the pass and tell him we have a room ready for him down here now. If he is ready bring him and all his stuff down to the great hall and then move any of the skeletons that are still up in the castle down here or to the second floor please. Oh yeah and the tools from down in the cellar too. I am going to see if I can see or hear anything from the pile.”
Birch looked up the trail at the stone rubble partially blocking the pass. He paused to let the others catch up as he eyed the stone contemplating what it meant. Roaric was next to arrive leading the others by a bit. He stopped and hawked up some phlegm before spitting it to the side and gave the pile and Birch a keen stare. Lindel and Kaiden came up last quietly talking about some eternal difference of opinion between mage and cleric. “ Well, said Roaric, here we have the first flaw in the story, the pass is supposed to be closed by a rock slide further up above the castle not down here below it and this is hardly enough to make it impassable. A couple hours work would clear this amount of stone off the trail and people would be driving wagons up it again, let alone people like us who can probably scramble up and over it now without moving it aside.”
“ All is not what it seems,” Birch replied. “This stone is not from a natural rockfall coming down the mountain. Look closely and you can see tool marks on some of the stone, it is more like the tailings from a mine but I see no sign of one here. Its harder to tell but this pile looks recently quarried too. Some of these rocks even still have dust on them from being cleft from the mountain.”
Back at the dungeon, Hank swore to himself on hearing this. He may have outsmarted himself with this first roadblock for the adventurers. He realized that the same things would apply to the first work he and Alastor had done in mining the cellar and the first floor cells with the skeletons. It would all look fresh to a keen observer like this ranger type.
“ Okay so something odd is going on then, Roarie said. “ It could be someone secretly mining gold or something else and not wanting for it to be discovered for fear of others jumping their claim on it or not wanting to pay the kings taxes from it. I wonder where it is their digging. Let’s say we believe our farmers story about the dirt pile with the turnips he found out back of his place being connected with the castle. If that is true then let me ask you where do you keep turnips in a castle? Probably in the cellar right, now I have no idea why you would haul them all the way down there to dump them but if you did it begs the question of why you would need to clear out a cellar to begin with and I say maybe its because you need to dig under it.”
Hank swore again, how had these two little things immediately pointed some adventurers right at them. What could a few turnips have possibly told the farmer that had led him to connect them to the castle? Luckily he remembered then that the first two floors weren’t actually connected to down here at all and were decoys. Still, he and Alastor would need to move the rock piles off the trail to a more hidden spot once these guys were dealt with.
Now Lindel and Kaiden were looking at the pile with interest, They both reached out to pick a stone up to examine it closer when Hank had had enough and summoned back his essence from all of the stone. Suddenly Both Lindel and Kaiden startled as something metaphysical happened nearby. A rush of energies brushed past them and disappeared on up the trail. “ Well, Kaiden said, “ that may have been a ward of some kind to warn them of visitors. I don’t recognize the casting it felt very primitive, maybe a shaman’s watcher spirit?” Lindel wasn’t so sure but didn’t have anything definite to add so he said nothing.
The party cautiously made its way up over the scree pile and up the pass to the castle. Birch found a few old footprints here and there leading up to the castle. They looked as if several someones had been carrying something up to and inside of the castle. The four of them quietly made their way through the gatehouse and into the courtyard. “ I feel like we are being watched,” Kaiden whispered. “ Again it doesn’t feel like a classic scrying, maybe it is a spirit?” Lindell said, “ I definitely feel an oppressive presence here. Dark essences have been collecting here. We need to look for more signs to see if they have manifested anything.”
Hank looked down on them from one of the upper windows of the castle. He didn’t want to spook them by getting much closer while they were still within easy running distance of the gate. Am I haunting them he thought to himself? No, I am haunting this place and they have come here to solve the mystery that is me. Well gang, he thought to himself, it looks like we have a mystery that won’t be so easily solved.
Finally, after looking around the courtyard for a bit the four started into the doors leading into the great hall. One of them stopped and dug out some torches since it was dark in much of the castle. Birch led with Roarie next and then Kaiden and finally Lindel, their healer coming in last. Again Birch found lots of prints on the dusty floor. He said, “ lots of tracks here, they look recent. I’d say six to eight men.” Lyndel opened his soul sight more. “Guys there has been a lot of Dark energies thrown around in this room, especially over there.” He pointed to in front of a large ornate chair. “ I didn’t feel it earlier I think there must be a ward around the here hiding it from detection.” Kaiden nodded his head while looking around. “ I think so too,” he said. Roarie spit and hefted his ax tighter as he peered into the dark doorways in the back of the hall. “ So do we go further in or turn around and get,” he asked his companions. Each party member looked at one another before nodding and stepped towards the doorways in the back of the hall.
Hank meanwhile listened in, he couldn’t believe how much evidence they had left of themselves here. The adventurers should have tried taking what they knew back out of the castle and escaping to tell others instead of going further into the trap. Hank hoped they would remain overconfident until they had their heads too far in the noose to get away. They already knew too much.
Birch and his fellows searched throughout the castles first floor without finding anything more. They found a staircase leading up and one off of the kitchen leading down. They once more nodded to themselves and headed down. Birch was nervous, he didn’t care for being underground in ideal circumstances. And these circumstances were less than ideal, but the life of an adventurer led you to places and circumstances like this, he thought and that was the life he had chosen.
He was a child of two races, fitting in poorly in either mans world or into Elfin society. If he stayed with his parents he would be a burden. He was young yet but would never outlive his father who would see him die of old age in a couple hundred years before he would even be considered as an adult in their society while long before then he would have to stand with his dad and see his mother wither and die after a few short decades. So he had chosen leave his parents to find his place on the fringe of things. Adventurers were more accepting of his mixed blood. For them what a companion could do was more important than who his relatives were or where he came from. Besides the life he chose was so dangerous that he and his friends would likely never see old age so who outlived who with them or his family was going to be a moot point anyway.
A darkly humorous smile played across his face at these thoughts and then he got back to concentrating on safeguarding them all from what might be hiding in the darkness just beyond the next bend. “ This doesn’t look like a mine,” Kaiden said as they stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked around at the cellar. There was nothing here to see as the cellar was completely empty. but on the far wall a stone staircase leading further down a few steps to an empty doorway. Birch looked around with interest. “ No mine indeed, but look at this cellar, it is ridiculously clean for such a long-abandoned castle. Also the stonework of the cellar walls is old as you can see here
from the damp and some faint signs of scrapes here. But this stonework here appears new, or maybe somehow magically cleaned?” They all examined the dungeon entry at his words. “ You will notice the soot stains above us from countless torches and then this lentil here where there are none.”
Hank floated within the nearby wall of the cellar watching and learning. At every word from the elf he wanted to kick himself. So many little mistakes, he didn’t even know if he could find and correct them all. Maybe if he managed to kill these guys he could turn this genius ranger into some kind of greater minion to help him fix everything he had spotted so far.
Roaric was annoyed nothing about this was making sense. “ Who sneaks into an old castle and secretly builds cells for a dungeon,” he asked? “ Maybe someone is expecting to need a place far out of the way to stash prisoners they don’t want anyone to know about?” He walked down the stairs and the hallway and looked into each of the empty cells. Lindel, Kaiden and finally Birch joined him in looking around. “ I don’t know either,” Kaiden said. “ But I can tell you something about them.” “ Whats that,” Rorie asked? “ Well their not done yet obviously,” Kaiden said as he pointed out the lack of doors on the cells.
Hank wasn’t sure if he should just summon up several of his skeletons to attack them and maybe block the doorway in the kitchen with a big stone block at this point or wait to see if they found the way down and tested out his second-floor greeting parties. He decided to wait because he just couldn’t believe Mr. Elflock Holmes over there would miss finding the air ducts or the faux privy holes when he had found all these other clues up to this point. It took a while but he wasn’t disappointed when the pointy-eared one, told the others he faintly heard water somewhere below them from one of the privies and then explained that since none of the cells had been used they were likely cleaner now than any other hole in the ground the adventurers would have ever climbed in before now or in the future.
Hank did zip down first himself to make sure the water hadn’t overflowed the sunken tunnel into the rest of the floor. But it hadn’t the elf’s hearing was just that good. He knew it was going to take a minute or two for the party to get down here so he flew down and gave a highly edited report of what was going on to Provoas. Hank saw that Provoas and Alastor had been scrying the party from down here the whole time. Luckily the scrying pool was set to sight only right now and so they could see what they were doing not what was said. Alastor wanted to come up and help kill them. But Hank convinced him to stay down here and watch through the scrying pool.
“ Alastor, you can be more useful by working your half of the skeletons and your golem from here. Plus you can always teleport up if they manage to fight through all that. You can also bring Provoas up if that happens and we will all kill them together, if it comes to that. But, Hank said I feel confident our minions and traps will kill them. Really this is an excellent first test of what they can do. So let’s sit back and see how effective they are. I am going to go back up so I can hear them too in case something they say sheds further light on improvements we could make.” With that, he sped back up to the second floor.
Birch didn’t know what to make of this anymore. The short floor he found once he had climbed down here might be a sewer for the cells above he supposed, although who built a sewer system to take care of waste from prisoners in just a few cells he didn’t know. It would take forever for the privies to fill from prisoner use. Unless you were planning on keeping immortal prisoners like elves here for great amounts of time? His other three friends came down once he had found there were entire rooms cut out of the stone down here. There just had to be something here after all no one would do all this and not have some purpose to it.
They had found a lot of nothing so far and Roarie was tired of it. He began moving stooped over down one of the half hallways as fast as he could the opposite way Birch and Lindel were going. Kaiden was still climbing down the shaft behind him but he would be down here soon enough. He came upon a doorway to the left and looked into a large hall full of columns, it was still squat here but he could partially see at the other end some kind of rim or stonework coming up out of the floor.
He duck walked in with a torch in one hand and his ax in the other when suddenly a skeleton lurched out from behind one of the columns and stabbed him in the right arm with a knife! He yelled out and tried to take a swing at the thing but one handed and bent over between the close-set columns it was really awkward. The blow landed but did almost nothing to the skeleton who stabbed him again two more times while he tried to get his ax back into position. He dropped the torch onto the floor and reached over to get a better hold of the ax when another skeleton lunged out from the left and also began stabbing at him.
Birch heard the commotion Roarie was making and he and Lyndel turned back to see what was happening. It took longer than they liked to get back down the hall and find Roarie badly wounded fending off two skeletons, while Kaiden had just reached the bottom of the privy they had come down through. Suddenly there was a bang of something heavy settling over the privy hole above them and then several other similar sounds on down the hallway. Kaiden looked up the shaft and let loose a fireball to confirm the way was blocked now by stone.
Lyndel cast a healing on Roarie while Birch drew his long knife and waded into the melee to help out. It was then that they heard a loud scraping on the stone and a nightmare centipede made of skeletal ribs raced out of the columns and attacked Birch. Its sharpened bones cut through his leather armor leaving a long shallow gash across his chest as it raced past him. A couple long bony arms up on its sides smacked him in the head also. Lindel finished his healing chant and began one meant to drive back the undead from his friend’s position.
Hank watched the fight play out on the second floor. He had begun teleporting stone blocks over the exits when the first skeleton had attacked to keep them sealed in since his idea for a fire and smoke trap wasn’t in place. He wanted them to stay and fight so he could see how their defenses were going to hold up. When he saw the cleric began healing he was okay with letting it happen because that was all part of the party dynamic. But when he began another chant that sounded suspiciously like an effort to repel his gang of skeletons he decided to interfere. He quickly teleported a crouched skeleton who hadn’t attacked yet from behind a column to right behind the cleric. As soon as the skeleton saw the man he stabbed him in the back which disrupted his chanting just as Hank had hoped it would. The mage whipped around at that point and with a quick chant threw a fireball at the skeleton which just barely missed his friends back and caught the bonehead right in the rib cage charring it. The cleric let out another yell as the blast of heat and light must have startled him. Hank then turned to the mage and teleported him his own little friend to play with.
Birch and Roarie meanwhile got back to back to keep off the skeletons and whatever the centipede thing was off them and began trying to back out of the room while fending off stabs and grabby hands. Several more hunched over skeletons came out from behind columns and headed towards them. Roarie said, “ if we’re going to make it we need to get to the doorway and have Lyndel cast a ward there or drive them off with a protection, otherwise we’re done for.” Birch agreed and he yelled, “ Lyndel get a ward up or repel these bastards or were all going to be joining them shambling about soon.” Lyndel’s staff had a modest blessing that was doing wonders on the skeleton now that he had turned around and began whacking it. So after two more hits it crumpled to the ground and he was able to try another chant to repel the undead.
Hank decided to let this one happen and see how effective it was. He also felt bad as he was getting a first-hand look at people being stabbed and even maybe killed by his creations. He watched as the cleric cast while displaying his staff to the skeletons, then a ball of light essence built and expanded from the clerics chest until it made a sphere about thirty feet across. The skeleton stabbing the mage stopped and retreated out of the effect of the life magics as the
necromantic energies invested in it began to dissipate. The Cleric meanwhile stepped forward a few feet to include the two fighting in the other room in the effect. All the skeletons in there trying to overwhelm the two adventurers likewise backed off once the field began eating into their enchantments. Hank could see the spell continued to use up essence as the edges of the sphere bled away into the environment. Kaiden wasted no time in throwing fireballs at the retreating skeletons and burning several of them before they could shuffle behind the pillars as Hank directed them. Hank felt a heated command to finish them off come from his bond with Provoas. He really didn’t want to but the pressure from the bond continued to grow.
Birch began to think they might survive this encounter after all. Lyndel had managed to drive back the skeletons off of the party and should yet have enough energy to heal up the worst of their wounds. If not he had a few potions in his pack to help out. Now if most of the skeletons were inside this one room they could hold the doorway until Lyndel got a more permanent ward up on it and then they could try to find a way out of this.
Suddenly Hank felt control of the skeletons and the centipede shift to Alastor who rushed them out of hiding and crashed them into the cleric’s field of life energies. A couple of the skeletons crumpled over, but the rest pushed through and viscously attacked the adventurers as they began to deteriorate. Under direct control, the skeletons were faster and more coordinated fighters but the centipede was death incarnate as it tore through the ax mans armor and nearly sliced him in half in its initial charge. Hank tried but he couldn’t hold back anymore against his master’s compulsion. From the back of the party, he flew towards them casting death bolts at the mage and the cleric and rupturing his sphere as he crashed through it. In seconds all four adventurers lay dead at their feet overwhelmed by the onslaught. As each foe had perished their death energies had burst forth and fed into Hank and his dungeon.