Round 43

The tower's stone groans under their weight, settling into centuries of decay. The wards pulse slows to a trickle, each beat a countdown measured in seconds rather than minutes. Jeane lies trapped at the bottom of the pit, her breath fogging in the sudden chill that sinks from below.

Halie descends carefully toward the pit's edge, raising his mace as he goes. The wards' pulse has slowed to something deliberate somehow, waiting. He holds out his silver disk etched with prayers to the Goddess of Light. "Jeane! Can you hear me? We're here." His voice echoes back at him from the darkness.

Merrin leans over the edge, her crossbow held ready even though she knows it's unlikely to do more than annoy these creatures. "Jeane! Can you hear me?" She's not cut out for this—descending into literal darkness with only faith and a crossbow against whatever horrors the tower holds. The scraping sound grows louder, closer, and she knows with absolute certainty that something is coming up from below.

Halie raises his mace, the cold iron a comfort against the encroching darkness as the skeletons advance with unnatural silence. Their bones click together in a rhythm that echoes the pulsing wards around them, each beat a countdown measured in seconds rather than minutes. He can feel it now—the wrongness of this place seeping into his bones, making his muscles ache with exhaustion that shouldn't be possible after mere minutes.

"Jeane!" He calls out one last time, his voice barely more than a whisper now as the chill sinks into his bones. Still no answer—just the sound of shifting stone and that growing cold that makes his breath fog in front of her face. He raises his mace higher, the cold iron a comfort against the encroching darkness.

The lead skeleton steps forward into the torchlight, its skull grinning at them with empty eye sockets that seem to drink in the light around them. Behind it, more shapes move in the darkness—at least three more of the undead guardians, perhaps more beyond his vision. He takes a step back instinctively, his mace held ready as something moves in that darkness.

The air grows thick with something beyond simple cold—magic, dark and ancient, pressing against his skin like physical weight. His prayers feel... thin here, insufficient against the raw power flowing through this place. The wards pulse again, and he sees it this time—a crack in the stone wall opposite the pit, a darkness within the darkness that swallows torchlight whole.

He takes a step back instinctively, his mace held ready as something moves in that darkness. Bones—human bones animated by dark magic, moving with an unnatural grace that makes his stomach turn. Skeletons, just like the ones they encountered upstairs, but these.