In the library, Radegast read through the book. The book’s illustrations
included strange diagrams of rune-covered worms inside human heads, and,
grotesquely, human stomachs and wombs.
Varien stood outside staring down into the pit.
Xylon checked
over the scrolls in his possession.
Erwen moved
closer to the edge of the pit near Varien, looking down at the green swirls of fog.
Radegast closed
the book and cast minor illusion to
create a skylight that showed blue sky for just long enough to feel better
about her situation, and then turned to the jars of worms.
"How
long has this been going on?" she asked the worms.
She received
no response from the creatures, who merely turned lazily in their grey-green
bath.
She picked up
a jar and tossed it experimentally. "So, can not my steel kill the
corruption?" She shook the jar, hoping to provoke a response.
"What
are you doing?" Varien said as he walked into the room. “You’re wasting
all of our time.”
"Oh,”
Radegast said innocently. “It turns out these are anti-necromatic worms!"
"Gimme them
worms!" Varien tried to gather all the jars up in his arms.
"Easy.
This is my working theory," Radegast said. "The worms exist to absorb
dank corruption and purify the waters of this well. But if they are left too
long without proper upkeep, the corruption takes over and you get these green
zombie worms instead. So we need to go down into the pit, put a blue worm back
into circulation, and things should go back to normal."
"Down
into the pit?" Varien said. "That is what I have been saying!"
He grabbed a
couple of jars and put them in his rucksack. "I will keep these
safe."
“Are you sure
the jars will be safe with you? You do tend to get jostled around,” Radegast
said.
“Don’t worry
about it,” Varien had already left the library.
Radegast
walked out into the main hall. "Now if my reading is correct, Ancient
Netherese magic works with command words, usually spoken when standing in a
certain spot. She stood before the pit. " Chelaunt !" she said confidently.
A ripple of
invisible energy passed through everyone, but nothing else happened.
"Okay,"
Radegast said. "Maybe if I try over here..."
As Radegast
tried various positions, Varien sighed and began seeking handholds along the
edge of the pit.
Xylon cast spider climb on himself and began
walking down the side of the pit.
Erwen peered
down into the pit, then turned his back to it and fell backwards into the
darkness.
"Erwen,
what are you doing?" Varien tried to grab for the halfling's bearskin
cloak as he fell silently past.
The
Halfling's fall was about to come to a splattering halt when at the last second
he spun about and absorbed the impact as best he could. The wind was knocked
from his lungs and he felt bones nearing the breaking point, but he was alive.
He wildshaped into a giant snake and took advantage of his blindsight
abilities.
Something
squishy had broken his fall. He felt around, tasting the air with his tongue,
and realized the solid stone floor of the chamber he had dropped into was
covered in a carpet of wriggling worms. Those worms were now inching towards
him from every direction.
“Erwen!”
Varien called into the darkness. “You okay?”
Far above, Radegast
paced about, flipping through the Netherese tome as she walked. "Okay, so
it says if the arancists stood in front of the Hall of Corruption and spoke the
word..." She paused in front of the room that Xylon had posted a warning
outside. "Hmmm." She turned to the pit and said " Chelaunt !"
Her voice
echoed, but instead of receding it began to grow in volume and intensity. There
was a deep rumble from within the pit.
Down on the
floor below the pit, Erwen-Snake felt something like an electrical field wash
over him from the ground up.
As he walked
down the side of the pit, Xylon could see something rising to meet him. It was
like a glowing disk of force, rapidly coalescing into something translucent but
very solid, whisking up towards him. He flattened himself against the wall of
the pit as it rushed past him.
“Ha!” he
said. “Missed!”
Varien wasn't
so lucky - he tried to dodge but felt the disk slam into him and gather him up
as it continued to rise. He groaned.
The disk,
with its grumbling passenger, came to a hovering halt nearly level with the
edges of the pit, but it was clear that whatever shaft the disk usually
traveled in, the pit had widened considerably. Everyone would have to jump in
order to get on board. Everyone except Bob, who used his misty step ability.
“Show off,”
Radegast said.
Erwen-Snake
dropped out of snake form and took on the form of a flightless white dragon
wyrmling. He bared his teeth at the approaching worms and blasted them with his
breath weapon, frosting them over. But still more came wriggling out of the
darkness.
He coughed a
draconic cough, trying to use his breath weapon again, but he discovered that
it would likely take time for him to build up enough juice to try again.
Radegast
spoke the command word and the disk began to descend into the pit, first
slowly, then with increasing speed.
Alec tried
not to throw up as the disk wavered, unbalanced by the number of people standing
on it.
Xylon looked
up to see the disk flying down towards him. He tried to flatten himself against
the side of the pit but miscalculated, and then he was suddenly splayed against
the force field like a bug on a dragon-rider's helmet visor.
The disk
slowed to a halt. Xylon was able to detach himself while Erwen-Dragon slithered
out of the way. The disk disappeared into the floor and ceased to exist.
Bob stared at
Erwen-Dragon with a newfound respect, and more than a little jealousy.
The party was
suddenly aware of the approaching swarms of worms.
Alec pulled
out his hammer after decided his sword would do little to injure the swarm of
roiling worms. He swung it overhead and splattered worms every which way,
laughing.
Radegast
looked around at the swarms of worms and decided discretion was the better part
of valour. "Worm-free zone over here!" she shouted as she dashed for
the chamber beyond.
She skidded
to a halt as she saw the room was full of people.
"Oh."
Radegast said. "Oh my."
She was
surrounded by the standing dead.
Perfectly
preserved corpses stood rigid upon the stone floor of this rectangular chamber,
arrayed in perplexingly neat rows. Thick dust obscured the walls and floors,
signs of the room’s great age, yet no trace of decay touched the corpses as far
as Radegast could see. The massive green stone blocks that lined this chamber were
covered with ancient symbols resembling coiling worms.
“What…what is
this place?” Radegast said. She stepped towards the nearest row of corpses.
They appeared freshly dead, but she could detect no corruption, no decay.
“Fascinating,”
she said. “Must be magic…”
Some of the corpses were dressed in clothing of Ancient Netheril, while others looked to be of more recent vintage.
Here and there,
single green worms slithered over the stock-still bodies.
Varien dashed
behind Radegast and ran clear through to the chamber beyond.
Dozens of
skeletons lay sprawled on the floor here and there in rows, surrounded by halos
of stonework stained with ancient decay. The room was choked with the smell of
death and corruption.
"It gets
worse!" he shouted back to Radegast.
Xylon walked in
onto the ceiling like a spider, eyes growing wider at the strange sight before
him.
Radegast
pointed at the worms. “Keep an eye on these, in case that’s what animating
those corpses we found upstairs.”
Erwen-Dragon
tunnelled into the ground below the stone floor, intent on finding another way
out of the worm-ridden chamber.
The masses of
worms seemed drawn inexorably towards the Trevelyan brothers. Alec slammed his
hammer down again and again. Worms began to jump towards him, and before he
knew it, three of them were attempting to burrow into his body.
Bob plucked
one of them off his brother, stepping back as more worms appeared.
Radegast
looked at the chamber that Varien had discovered, seeing the remains scattered
here and there and wrinkling her nose at the smell. She moved to a corridor
that led south, trying to step lightly around the piles of bones and desiccated
flesh.
Something
shifted amid the scattered bones and tattered shreds of clothing.
A large
creature with a hard segmented shell of yellow and green shook off the debris
and began creeping across the floor on dozens of sets of paired legs. Eight feathery
tentacles sprouted from the creature’s head and thorax, waving in the air,
searching as if for prey. Its eyes were insect-like, but gleamed with predatory
cunning.
Varien’s hand
strayed to his blade and he watched the thing approach.
Radegast
followed the corridor south, taking note of how it branched off to the west.
She continued south until she came to a sealed door.
"Chamber
of Contemplation?" Radegast read the Netherese sign over the door.
"That's not in this book!" She pushed on the door and stepped through
into a nightmare.
Nests of tattered
books, bits of fabric, and other refuse lay scattered about the chamber, cut
through with curved troughs each big enough to fit a worm or snake the size of
a small horse. There was a disconcerting symmetry to the way the nests had been
positioned in the room, a marker of alien will making itself at home amid the
darkness and decay.
The door slid
closed behind her.
Her heart
sinking at the sight of so many water-damaged tomes and scattered pages, Radegast
sang a quick hymn to Oghma and cast thunderwave ,
shattering the unstable nest-like construction and sending a whirlwind of
debris in all directions.
Her blast
uncovered several swarms of worms, which blew apart, but also a larger
creature, which reared up and hissed. Its snake-like body terminated in a
humanoid face that gawped horribly at her. The creature's head even had a
circlet fringe of scraggly white hair still attached.
"Oh, I
think I've found the corruption!" Radegast said.
The echoing
boom of her thunderwave reverberated
back into the chambers of the dead.
“Right then,”
Varien said, stepping into the creature’s path and drawing Talon from its
scabbard. “That’s enough of that .”
The
centipede-like creature struck Varien with its tentacles. Varien jerked back at
the touch of the feathery antennae, which stung with a cold fire that numbed
his flesh, even though it was protected by armor.
Radegast
ducked the snake-like creature's attacks and pulled two daggers, leaping
astride the creature and plunging Xylon's weapon deep into one of its eyes
while slicing into its bulging hide with the other. The creature convulsed in
agony.
In the
Chamber of Ascension, the Trevelyan brothers were losing their battle against
the worms. Alec feverishly swung his hammer, aware of the worms that were
beginning to crawl over his boots and up his legs.
Bob cast ray of frost , but for every bunch of
worms he froze, dozens more crawled over them and drew ever closer.
“This is it,
brother!” Bob said as a wave of worms drew over him like a blanket. “The horns
of Kirkwall are calling me home!”
Xylon moved
back and cast burning hands , searing
the worms from the skin of his companions.
"Maybe
follow after us next time?" he called down from the ceiling to the two
brothers as worm-shaped ash husks fell off their bodies.
"These
Westerners, I dunno," Bob whispered in his native tongue to Alec, who
nodded.
Varien swung
at the giant centipede, calling down a divine
smite . He frowned as the creature seemed to shrug off the worst of his
attack. “Wait, this thing isn’t undead?” he muttered.
Alec and Bob
joined him in the corridor and attacked the monster. Alec swung his hammer
twice, cracking the creature’s carapace.
Bob cast ray of frost and a rime of ice spread
across the monster’s shell.
Varien
stabbed his sword down, slicing the creature open. It fell to their feet, dead.
Xylon climbed
down from the ceiling and ran ahead into the room, pushing the door open. He took
half a step back as he saw Radegast hanging on to the worm creature’s body,
laughing maniacally as the creature tried to buck her off. He recognized the
blade the rogue was driving deeper into the creature’s eye.
“What are you
doing with my family dagger?” Xylon shouted.
“Kill this
thing before I stick this dagger where the sun doesn’t shine!” Radegast shouted
back, whooping with nervous glee at her predicament.
Varien slid
past and struck the worm creature with a divine
smite . “This thing’s for sure undead!” he shouted triumphantly.
The creature
reared back, bending nearly double. Varien grinned and saw his opportunity. He
rushed forward and stabbed upward, driving Talon deep into the green worm’s
body, and then jerked the sword in a single motion that split the creature like
a sausage on a spit.
“Ugh!”
Radegast’s shouts of mirth turned to choked retching as she was covered head to
toe in worm ichor. The green goo splattered everywhere as the worm creature
expired and fell apart in two pieces. “It’s in my hair…” She said as she tried
to wring her tresses out. Then her eyes widened in horror as she turned pale.
“And my mouth!” She began spitting gobs of green.
“Yeah it is,”
Xylon said, grinning. Then he remembered the dagger. He glared at the rogue.
“What were you thinking, using my knife like that?”
“Oh, you mean
this dildagger?” She held up the dripping blade by its phallic pommel between
her thumb and forefinger. “What perverted swordsmith designed this thing? Not
that I’m not impressed, but…”
Xylon
snatched the dagger back. “This is a family heirloom!” He attempted to wipe the
blade off on Radegast’s cloak. She danced out of the way.
“So what
now?” Varien said. “What about all those dead people back there?”
“Not a
factor,” Radegast said. “I think I’ve killed the corruption infesting this
ziggurat.” She indicated the dead worm creature on the ground in front of them
and then presented one of the worm jars. “All we have to do is undo the doodoo
the green worms can do by putting this blue worm somewhere, or something like
that.”
“Okay,”
Varien said. “What about the worms?” He indicated the approaching green worms.
“These things
don’t matter anymore,” Radegast said. “Let’s go.”
They left the
Chamber of Contemplation, being careful to shut the door behind them.
Radegast
explored a corridor to the west, which ended abruptly in a crumbling cliff.
“Oh my,” she
said.
The immense
cavern before her was filled with a horrific sea of writhing green and the
nauseating susurrus of millions of slimy bodies slithering over each other
reverberated off the chamber walls.
There was no
floor – the hallway simply fell away to the undulating surface of the wide lake
of green worms. The rippling surface lay about five feet down from the floor of
the passageway, while the ceiling rose to a vault nearly ninety feet above.
Alec joined
Radegast and pulled on Clockdrive’s goggles. As he twisted them into focus, a
crystal snapped into place over one of the eyepieces and suddenly the fighter
could see clear across the lake. Low islands of stone protruded here and there
from the wormy expanse, and additional passageways extended of the sea and back
onto solid ground in the wall opposite and in the walls to the east and the
west.
There was a splash
near the centre of the lake that sent an undulating ripple through the writhing
carpet of worms. Something – a tangle of somethings – breached the surface of
the lake, glistening in the semidarkness and sending a standing wave out in all
directions.
“Wait, what?”
Alec said, focusing on the disturbance.
It was a huge,
confused morass of tentacles that waved and flexed, extruding green fluid from
circular maws at the end of each one. Upon closer inspection, the party could
see that these tentacles were in fact made up of thousands of wriggling worms,
working together like a colony or hive to give the greater creature shape and
mobility.
Here and there,
along the thickest of the creature’s tentacles, crusted weals split open to
reveal glowing orb-like eyes within a circular toothed socket, each of which
turns its terrible dead gaze upon them.
The party’s presence
in this chamber seemed to have agitated the creature, which began to lurch silently
towards them, sending wormy waves across the lake.
Radegast looked
at the Netherese tome in her hand, and then back at the torrent tentacles
heading her way. “How did I miss this?” She asked aloud.
A wave of
chilling trepidation seemed to emanate from the creature as it approached.
“Stand firm lads,
and have no fear,” Radegast said as the horror washed over her, Erwen-Dragon
and Alec.
It was like
nothing they had ever experienced. The trio’s psyches were suddenly awash in
colours out of space, shades of suffering tinted with abject terror – a
polychromatic pane of poison that opened into a realm of deep despair.
“Holy!” Alec
said, pressing the heels of his hands against his head in an effort to keep his
brain from exploding.
Radegast’s gums
began to bleed.
Erwen-Dragon
yelped, shedding scales involuntarily in fear.
Bob rushed in, casting
guiding bolt and a healing word on his brother. The bolt
lashed out over the lake and detonated within the tangle of tentacles. The
explosion sent several tentacles flying apart, peppering the water with falling
worms like raindrops.
But more worms
rose up as the creature drew more of them into itself, reforming its lost
limbs.
“Uh oh,” Bob
said.
Varien cast eldritch blast and then backed off out
of the range of the fearful aura.
Xylon stepped
forward and cast his last fireball . The
pinprick of star-hot flame dazzled the darkness and blossomed into a flaming
sphere, roasting everything within range.
The wizard was
rewarded with the sound of thousands of worms screaming in agony at near
ear-shattering volume.
Alec cast fire bolt . He then found himself staring
at one of the creature’s dead eyes, and felt his knees weaken. In spite of
himself, he found himself running, trying to put as much distance between
himself and the creature. He ran around a corner and collapsed against a wall,
retching.
Radegast put some
distance between herself and the creature, wracking her brains to see if she
could discern any sort of weakness.
Erwen-Dragon was
seized with an idea, and tunneled down into the ground, laying in wait to
spring a trap.
Bob shook his
head firmly. “I shall float like a butterfly,” he intoned. “and my friends will
sting like the bee.” He cast haste on
Erwen and Varien.
“Get in there!” he
shouted at his friends.
“Right!” Varien
was a blur as he bounded forward. He called down a prayer and abjured his
enemy.
The invocation
had no effect.
“Fine,” Varien
said. He cast his vow of enmity ,
hauled back on his javelin, and threw it with all his might.
The missile stuck
in the tangle of worms, and then was drawn in, with a horrible crunching sound
as though hundreds of mouths were chewing it to flinders.
“That’s it!”
Radegast said. “It’s probably immune to-”
“Slashing and
piercing damage, obviously!” Bob shouted.
“Whatever,”
Radegast said. “I’mma shoot it.” She unlimbered her longbow, nocked an arrow
and let fly. The arrow disappeared into the worms.
“Got one!” she
shouted half-heartedly. “I mean, probably.”
She spied the bit
of upturned earth at the edge of the corridor. “Erwen,” she yelled. “Wait for
my signal!”
The creature
moved ever closer to the party. It lurched up against the edge of the corridor,
causing a shattering quake. Its tentacles found purchase on the stones of the
corridor floor and it hauled its ever-shifting mass halfway out of the dark
waters of the lake.
“NOW!” Radegast
shouted.
Erwen-Dragon
erupted from the ground, claws and teeth flashing as he opened his jaws.
His breath
fogged.
Yes , Erwen-Dragon thought. Time to
give this thing the cold shoulder.
Erwen-Dragon
breathed a blast of ice over the creature, freezing tentacle after tentacle.
Then he was on the creature, slashing with his claws and biting mercilessly,
heedless of the worms in his mouth as he tore chunks out of the main mass.
The creature sent
out new tentacles to replace the ones Erwen-Dragon had ripped to shreds.
Glorious! The druid thought as the tentacles flexed and
flashed towards him.
Alec cast another
fire bolt with Radegast’s assistance.
Varien let his
shield drop to the ground and gripped his sword with both hands.
The first worm tentacle
bashed into Erwen-Dragon, knocking the wildshaped druid sideways, whipping up
and slamming down upon the dragon’s wingless spine. Then it reared up over him,
and with a horrible cracking sound, the end of the tentacle broke open and
birthed a weeping eye, which turned its deathless gaze upon Erwen-Dragon.
Erwen’s mind’s
eye was assaulted by a phantasmagoria of inscrutable insanity and secret sin.
Erwen-Dragon’s
roar turned into a Halfling’s scream of agony.
The psychic blast
hit the druid so hard that it knocked him out of wildshape. Erwen fell to his
knees but scrambled to his feet as the creature began to crawl up and out of
the lake before him.
Bob cast bane on the creature and sent a healing word Erwen’s way.
“I don’t think
you can Bane , Bob,” Radegast said.
“We only adopted the darkness. This thing was born in it. Moulded by it. It
never knew light until we walked in, and by then it wasn’t even blinding.”
Invigorated by
Bob’s healing magic , Erwen drew
himself up to his full height and stood defiantly, gripping the hem of his
cloak and spreading the bearskin wide as he roared a final challenge at the
creature, which crawled over him, enveloping him in writhing, dripping
darkness.
This is a good death, Erwen said, as visions
of his woodland home replaced the terrors of the creature’s psychic assault. I
regret nothing, except maybe that fall earlier.
There was a
sudden flash of flames as a searing blade cut through the worms that threatened
to cocoon him. Erwen looked up, tears of blood running from his eyes.
It was Varien’s
blade, Talon.
The paladin
struck the massive worm creature with a divine
smite that sliced a third of the tentaclular mass away, the edges of the
cut suddenly ablaze with radiant energy and flaming fire. The holy inferno ate
through the worms like a runaway wildfire.
The worm
creature’s advance shuddered to a halt.
Varien’s second
swing took another third of the creature down, pieces of it falling away with
blazing radiance.
Varien stared
into one of the monster’s eyes and saw its fear. His own eyes flashed with
flicking flames, glowing with divine determination.
“Ah, you know the
purity of holy fire?” he hissed. “Do you feel it? Can you feel remorse? Or only… PAIN !”
With that, he
stabbed what was left of the monstrous tangle of worms with a two-handed strike
that drove Talon clean through it. Fire blazed from within the writhing,
wriggling mass as the creature’s eyes betrayed sudden panic. Its remaining
tentacles waved frantically, whipping about in an attempt to reform over the
smouldering holes that were opening up in its hide. One by one the eyes
dissolved, boiling away in the heat of the paladin’s holy fervor.
“You lit the fire
up in the darkness,” Radegast whispered, fanning herself.
Erwen remained
standing over the retreating, disintegrating tangle of worms that fell back
into the stagnant lake, an expression of defiant scorn on his face.
All throughout the ziggurat,
the worms began to scream.