May 24th, 761, 6:23 PM; Day 68 of the Menetnashte Expedition
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[I'm not even bothering with the calculations, Defacer had 5 HP, Entomber 18 at the end of the last round. Very good job, guys!]
- "Q is for Quentin who turned the wrong trail
R is for Remy who rotted in jail
S is for Samael who was shot with a bow
T is for Tomas who froze in the snow
U is for Ulsaon who was clawed by a cat
V is for Vladimir with plague from a rat
W is for Waul who was stabbed in a bar
X is for Xavier who was sunk in the tar
Y is for Yashar who perished in pain
Z is for Zari who simply went insane."
The second Entomber did not have quite as impressive death throes as the other one, the positive energy Charles summoned flowing through it severing the necromantic connection that let Cavendish control it. With a quiet slump, the Entomber fell forward, unmoving.
The Defacer made up for it.
The blades pierced into its undead flesh again and again, and as they did, the screaming, wailing faces swirled faster and faster, screamed louder and louder, as though the Defacer was hard-pressed to contain the lost souls within itself. You weren't sure who landed the killing blow, but in a heartbeat, the power holding it together snapped.
Like angry birds startled, the screaming faces of crackling energy flew from the Defacer's undead skin, but now their screaming was different, a mixture of joy and rage, not pain and loss. Quickly, like ghosts but not quite, they circled the room, flying inches in front of your face, though you noticed none came too close to Cavendish. And as they flew, they grew, becoming not faces but forms, and brightening until it all but hurt your eyes to look at them.
The sound was deafening, but no longer fearful, and as the Defacer pitched forward, the losts souls yelled for joy at their freedom. They brightened yet again, and suddenly, in a flash of light and sound, they were gone.
Off to whatever heaven or hell would have them.
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The sudden silence was, in its own way, deafening. Even Cavendish had finished his song, and the skeletal accompaniment had fallen silent. Only the labored breathing of the explorers kept Ibn Sayyid's tomb from being as silent as it had been for so many, many centuries.
"Dvigaitis, Velikiye Kamne, E Slyshai Meni."
Cavendish's whispered spell broke the calm, as the floor of the roomb began to move, like a slow-motioned earthquake. But it was not to hurt you. Underneath the Defacer and the Entombers, the floor opened up, lowering them down even as new waves of stone moved into place above them, in a crude approximation of the floor as it had existed before.
It was as though the three undead things had never existed.
"There now, much neater." Cavendish stood behind the sarcophagus, casting a quick glance at the skeletons behind him and dismissing them with a casual wave of the hand. They fell back to the bone piles from which they came, the instruments laying where they fell.
Cavendish began to hum a little tune to himself as he took a pocket watch from his coat pocket, tucking the cane encrusted with dried blood in the crook of his elbow. The pocket watch was tarnished silver, and somehow of a part with the rest of him, at once rich and decrepit, stylish and sinister.
"I'd expected a bit more from Act One of this drama. Ah well." The necromancer commented. "And now a brief intermission, as Act Two begins in...."
Cavendish checked his watch again.
"Fourteen seconds."
