The bottle was red glass and as the liquid inside agitated it began to glow with chemiluminescence. The wizard saw the alchemist reaching to her belt for another brew, one she had recently developed. Kara gulped down her shielding extract and looked at Rahab. The warrior moved up next to Gloriana with sword and shield and attacked one of the shadows, then watched in horror as her sword simply passed through the shape with no effect. What in the Nine Hells is she doing? the wizard wondered in alarm. Rahab and Kara were just beginning their own battle preparations when Abby did something rash. 2 He clutched the fire the way Kara held a bomb, and he waited for an opportunity to fling the burning missile into the fight. A magical ember appeared in his hand that grew into a ball of flame the size of a small melon. Kuch heeled his wolf and held a magic wand over one upturned palm, slowly turning a circle like stirring tea in a cup. “Come and shed your darkness, and find peace at last!” 1 Standing fore and center she shone in the gloomy hall as a lighthouse pierces fog and night by the sea. Do not let them touch you! You must trust that this fight is mine!”Ī starburst of light shone around the oracle in brilliant contrast to the encroaching shadows as Gloriana transformed her body into golden-white energy. “They are incorporeal, yet cause great harm. “Shadows!” Gloriana called out to the others as the murky shapes drew closer. Their touch drained life to feed undying greed.
When their bodies failed their souls became creeping darkness, cursed to linger and lay in wait for hapless travelers who stumbled upon them. Caravan grandmothers used to tell cautionary stories around the family fire about the excessively greedy, those whose covetousness was so great that even death was no escape. Tendrils of darkness crept forward like talons slowly growing from a cat’s paw. Moving soundlessly, vaguely humanoid in shape, it was as if the creatures were not candle smoke, exactly, but rather the shadow that candle smoke makes against a plastered wall. In the flickering illumination of torches and lightstones the party watched four shapes coalesce from the areas around the sarcophagi.
As they spread out and made their way into the chamber a darkness drifted from the walls to attack them. Like the previous incarnations, the statue looked very old. At the center of the hall, perched on a granite plinth, stood a marble statue of a figure the group had seen before: a tall man, stern and gloating of aspect, clutching a book and a glaive. Four stout pillars supported a vaulted ceiling, and along the walls were several standing sarcophagi in alcoves. These admitted the party to a long, columned hall more than fifteen feet wide and thirty-five feet long north to south. Cautious, the adventurers decided not to approach the column for the present, turning to the double doors at the southern wing of the room. Gloriana whispered a spell to detect magic and saw the whole column light up with significant resonance. The edges of the stone coins depicted spiky runes they did not recognize. Like the room the pillar was stone, but it had been artfully chiseled to resemble a stack of gigantic coins four feet in diameter. Shaped like an “L,” the room had a set of double doors at the south end, while the eastern branch of the chamber ended in a curious feature: a heavy, broad pillar set against the far wall. Like the other areas they had found on the lowest level the room was carved from the bedrock stone of the island. Abby listened and again heard no sound, so proceeded into the room beyond. The door opened on a short hallway mercifully free of traps.