A Cathedral in need. (Closed to Drake, Kially Gaith, and Chiroptera)

[Karla]

Karla quickly looked at the map one last time. If they had to exit out the same way they came in, she was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to survive for long, not that they stood much of a chance anyway, she was only just learning healing magic and they were going to have to face a necromancer, at least she hoped it was just one necromancer. Yeah one she could most likely handle, especially if it was a low level necromancer.

Karla began to wonder why she was fighting what seemed like an unwinnable battle, when she realized it was because she had no choice but to fight. Still, it looked like the map was showing one other way out. It was a crawlspace to a storage room behindone of the bookcases.

"Hey, Eltarri, mind helping me push this out of the way?"

[Chiroptera]

Eltarri jumped forward obligingly, eager to be useful as they shoved the bookcase out of the way. Scrolls and parchments fell off the shelves as the bookcase scraped noisily across the floor, but Eltarri only belatedly wondered if the noise would alert the bandits to their presence. They were deep underground, weren’t they? How far could sound carry through those stone walls? She didn’t really want to stick around long enough to find out.

The hidden door was set into an arched doorframe and was barely waist-high on the half-elf and made of a dark wood that, while aged, showed little sign of wear. There was no handle, but Eltarri noticed that there were no visible hinges either. She crouched down and pushed lightly against the door, but it didn’t budge until she hopped forward and awkwardly slammed her shoulder against one side of it. A gust of stale air even colder than that of the records room breezed in from the darkness beyond the doorway, but there was no sound coming from the darkness.

“Are you sure . . .” Eltarri cut herself off and turned to look uncertainly at Karla. She wasn’t scared of traveling underground, but she certainly wasn’t fond of wandering around in the church’s basement while there were murdering bandits on the prowl. But the white-robed elf didn’t seem to be sharing her apprehension, so Eltarri ignored her misgivings.

“Can I borrow your torch?” she asked Karla, then kneeled in the doorway to hold it out in front of her when she'd taken it from the elf. The flickering torchlight illuminated a tunnel of smooth stone that extended for only a few yards before it ended in a doorway identical to the one before her, except for the addition of a gleaming handle. The passageway was small enough that a full-grown man would only have been able to get through by crawling, but Eltarri went through bent at the waist after handing the torch back to Karla, squatting when she reached the other side to press her ear against the door. She didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything there. What if the bandits knew about that “secret” room and were waiting for them to come out of this “secret” passageway so that they could chop them to bits?

Only one way to find out.

Eltarri clenched her jaw determinedly and moved out of the path of the door. She took a deep breath and glanced at Karla to make sure the elf was ready before she silently counted to three and yanked on the door’s handle, throwing herself headfirst into the next room as soon as it had swung open, simultaneously yanking the clasp on her harness to free her sword even as she fell.

And fall she did. Whoever had built the secret passageway hadn’t done so with her unorthodox entry method in mind. This doorway was situated a few feet above the floor of the next room, and the doorway had been covered by a thick tapestry that sent up clouds of dust as Eltarri smacked into it. The hanging carpet billowed as she tumbled under it, hitting her shins against a small table that was on the other side of the tapestry before she slammed into the ground, dropping her sword noisily on yet another floor of cold, hard stone.

Eltarri stifled her grunt of pain, cursing internally at her own idiocy. Who hadn’t heard the old saying, “Look before you leap?” Her palms, shins, and knees had already started to sting, the pain an unwelcome but needed reminder of the necessity of thought before action. She wanted to scramble to her feet and pick up her sword to face whatever opposition might be waiting in the dark room, but she forced herself not to move, straining her ears for any sign of movement.

[Karla]

Karla had little problem moving the bookshelf once Eltarri helped her out. Staring at the tiny door, Karla shuddered.

"Well, I suppose it's better than the alternative." Karla sighed as she followed Eltarri out of the room. She couldn't help but wonder if the mystery man inside the room she had just left behind her would be fine. This houghh process almost distracted her from the long drop into a small dark room. She fell into the room, grabbing the hanging rug at the last second, slowing her fall.

"You okay, El? That sounded like it hurt." Karla asked, concerned after hearing the crash of her hitting the ground.

The room she was in was almost completely dark. The only thing that kept it from being pitch black was the torch she had given Eltarri. From what she could see, the room was rather small. Just in front of her was a small table that was covered in dust, Directly to her left was a larger table with some mysterious liquid eating through it. To her right was a hallway leading to who knows where. Karla tried to make sense of all this, but failed miserably.

"I hate to admit it, but I'm lost. I have never seen anything even remotely similar to this room." Karla said, confused by all this.

She tried to remember the map and what it said this room was, but with no luck. She did remember one thing, though. This room connected to another room that was right next to the room that needed the key.

"Actually, I take it back. I have a general Idea of how to get to where we need to go, but that's all. That way should lead us to the passage we need to take to get back on track, I believe." Karla said, pointing to the right.

Karla was about to help Eltarri to her feet when she heard some noise coming from down the hall. A skeleton soon came into view, then fell to the floor in a heap. A grim reminder of the fact that as long as there was a necromancer underneath them. Nobody was safe. Karla did have to wonder why it fell apart, though. It wasn't long before she recieved her answer. As skeletons appeared to her left and in front of her, they were each shot down by a strong holy magic.

"This way, Karla", a familiar voice rang out. It was one of the heads of the Cathedral. Karla recognized the man almost immediately. He was a small man with black hair, blue eyes, and white skin. He was wearing white robes.

"Flint? Man am I glad to see you." Karla said, relieved that she didn't have to deal with skeletons on her own, but despite the fact that he had likely saved both herself and Eltarri, she couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that something was wrong. This room was supposed to be off limits, wasn't it?

Karla needed a way to warn Eltarri without making it too obvious she suspected flint. Luckily, a way was soon provided for her.

"Holy crap! They just keep coming. Do you have any inkling whatsoever what is going on here?"

"No, unfortunately, I'm as clueless as you" Karla lied.

Feel free to bunny flint or my character if need be. Also, all previous bunnying approved.

[Chiroptera]

Eltarri pushed herself slowly to her knees, the pain in her shins completely forgotten as her attention fixed on the growing piles of bones and the approaching skeletons that generously added to them. Walking skeletons! The bones of their feet clicked against the stone floor, their toothy jaws smacking as the charged forward, mindless of their fallen comrades whose powdery remains drifted through the air before them.

Karla had said that they were dealing with a necromancer, and she’d prepared herself for the prospect of zombies, vampires, maybe even an undead dragon or two, but there was something unsettlingly repulsive about the walking bones that she glimpsed as flashes of strong magic lit up their pale frames before reducing them to jumbled piles of dusty bones. At least with zombies there was rotting flesh and gurgling moans to make them seem more monster than human, but the only thing that separated her from one of these things was the fact that her skeleton had flesh on it!

The half-elf shifted her attention from their assailants to their defender, a man who was almost as short as she was, dressed in the same pristine robes as Karla. Was this man a priest as well? Karla seemed to be familiar with him, and his magic—as far as she could tell—appeared to be strong. Maybe he was there to help them fight the necromancer!

Only . . . Eltarri looked questioningly at the elf after she’d answered the man’s inquiry. She had a better idea of what was going on than Eltarri, and Eltarri at least knew where the skeletons were coming from. Why was she lying? The half-elf thought back suddenly to the betrayals that Karla had mentioned before, comprehension dawning in a torrent of wary mistrustfulness. If even the heads of the cathedral couldn’t be depended upon, it made sense that Karla wouldn’t trust the truth with another priest, even if he was magically endowed. But there were only two exits to the chamber, staying put wasn't a viable option, and in a toss-up between a potential traitor and a horde of malevolent skeletons . . .

She stood up and moved towards Flint, stopping when she ran into the side of a table that was making strange noises that she'd been trying to identify before the skeletons had joined them. It sounded like tiny insects were munching their way through the wood of the table, but at the same time there was a sizzling sound like oil in a pain coming from the same place. She bent over and squinted down at the table, but her own shadow kept the torchlight from illuminating the surface’s contents.

“I don’t know how you got down here,” Flint yelled between shots, the sweat on his face glinting in the guttering light, “but you better get moving! I don’t know how long this onslaught with last.”

He was standing just in front of the door on the left side of the room, and as happy as Eltarri would have been to dart past him into the relative safety of a different room, she didn’t want to get past the door and get hit in the back with a bolt of traitorous magic. Besides, she didn’t even know where they were supposed to be going. She abandoned her investigation of the table and turned uncertainly to Karla for direction.

[Karla]

Karla turned to Eltarri and nodded. Any sign of uncertainty at this point would prove that they suspected him as a traitor to the Cathedral.

"Let's go, don't worry about him, he's extremely good at what he does, he'll be fine." Karla said to Eltarri, trying to make up a reason for her hesitant nature.

"By the way, miss Karla." Flint said, looking straight at her. "Why are you here? I Don't you know this room is off-limits?" Flint said, putting her on the spot.

"You know, I could ask you the same." She replied, trying to buy time to think of a good lie.

"I heard a ruckus down here, so I came to investigate" Flint replied.

"I came down here because I heard that woman screaming for help. Look at her. She must have been fighting those things off for quite a while, because she's injured. Otherwise I wouldn't have been down here, I swear." Karla finally said in her defense, hoping that Flint would buy it.

Flint turned around and stared at Eltarri before casting a healing spell on her wounds.

"Now, go on, get out of here, both of you. I'll take care of these guys."

Karla wasn't about to argue. She grabbed Eltarri by the arm and ran out of the room. The next room was well lit. There were skeletons and other beings all over the floor, but none of them moved. It seemed that Flint had already taken care of everything in this room. Looking around, Karla quickly realized that this was almost a mirror image of the room that the mysterious man that had given Eltarri the key had been in, complete witha staircase leading to a statue that was activated by using white magic or a switch on the other end of it. The only differences were that she was pretty sure there were no secret passages behind the bookshelves and this room's bookshelves were full of books on powerful artifacts from something called the holy wars. She really didn't know much about this place, but she had noticed that one single book had been laid out on the table in the center. It looked like somebody had been reading it pretty recently, so Karla picked it up and pocketed it. Perhaps she could figure out Flint's true motives if she looked through it later, but now was not the time. Karla took the staircase up and signalled for Eltarri to follow.

"Ok, I have no clue how many bandits will be on the other side of this door, but supposedly, the door we need that key for is right next to us, so whenever you are ready, I'll open the passageway and we'll make a sprint inside the locked door." Karla explained.

Once again, feel free to bunny Karla or flint. As long as it's light bunnying, I don't mind.

[Chiroptera]

Eltarri theatrically reached down to grab at her leg with an exaggerated grimace, hoping the man wouldn’t question Karla’s story. She hoped he was too occupied with the skeletons to remember that she’d been lying on the floor when he first saw her and didn’t even have her sword out. Flint’s blue eyes were sharp as he looked at her, but apparently her act fooled him because a moment later waves of cool energy were rushing over the half-elf, humming gently in her ears as gentle tendrils of strangely comforting coldness wormed into the bruised flesh of her hands and shins.

Eltarri could almost feel the benevolence of the magic as it made its way through her body, but moments after the spell was cast she could tell that something was wrong. As soon as the cool magic touched her, a fierce warmth blossomed in her chest, vibrating in her ribs before it spread outwards to bathe her whole body in heat that overwhelmed the quiet coolness of the healing. It was gone in just a few seconds and the healing coolness left with it, but her shins and hands still hurt just as much as they had before Flint had waved his hand at her.

That was healing?

She didn’t have a chance to inquire about it aloud; before she could speak Karla had grabbed her arm and dragged her past the little man and into the next room. It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, but when she could see she gaped at the shelves that lined the room. The key man’s records room had been well-stocked with maps and parchments, but it seemed to the girl that there were enough books here to record all the information everybody had about everything in the world! What would it be like to be a monk here, to be able to sit for days in this bright room and . . . She looked up at the walls with a frown as she stepped forward, realizing suddenly that there weren’t any torches. Where was the light coming from?

Her answer was delayed in coming when she tripped over a prone body and fell to the floor, her right palm landing on a rock that rolled out from under her hand with a low-pitched hum. She looked up and saw that the stone was hovering in the air a few inches off the ground in front of her face, a light blue marquise cut crystal that spun slowly in the air, light glinting off its many-faced surface.

The sound of Karla’s voice distracted Eltarri from her mesmerized gawk, drifting to her ears from the staircase that waited on the opposite side of the room. She realized that she was still lying on the floor amid a number of fresh and not altogether human corpses, and she jumped quickly to her feet.

The floating jewel followed her. It rose to stay in front of her face, still humming softly as it spun. Eltarri wished Karla was still in the room. What was this thing? She looked down at the body she had tripped over and saw that it was a man dressed in a long white robe. She couldn’t tell how the human had died, but his arm was stretched out at his side, fingers curled tightly even in death in a cage-like grip on something that was no longer in his grasp.

Eltarri shuddered. She didn’t like being left alone in a place so full of death. She stepped around the floating rock and headed for the stairs, but she didn’t get three steps away before the blue rock’s hum turned into a whine, still quiet but higher in pitch than it had been before. Eltarri turned back to it with a wary frown, and as soon as she was looking at it again its hum returned to normal. A step away, however, brought its drone to an even higher pitch.

“What do you want?” she demanded in a whisper. She could hear Karla walking up the stairs, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the humming stone, whose only answer was to bring its whine to an even higher pitch, a noise that was starting to give the half-elf a headache. The pain in her head made it seem as if the light in the room was dimming.

She took a step towards it and the humming lowered. What was it? A part of her mind sternly told her to turn around and go up the stairs, to save herself from the obvious trap that the stone represented, but she couldn’t make herself leave. Before she could stop herself, Eltarri’s hand stretched out tentatively and her fingers brushed against the smooth surface of the floating jewel.

A burst of light temporarily blinded the half-elf, and when frantic blinking readjusted her eyes to the light of the chamber, she saw that the rock was gone. Her head swiveled in search of it and she might have spent hours looking for it, but she abruptly remembered Karla and tore her attention away as she darted up the stairs.

“Sorry,” she panted when she’d reached the elf. “There was a . . . never mind.” Had she imagined it? There wasn’t time to be distracted by hallucinations, especially if there were bandits waiting on the other side of the statue. She swung her sword off her back and held it before her in the dim staircase, giving Karla a quick nod to tell her that she was ready. And she was ready . . . sort of.

[Karla]

Karla looked at Eltarri with a confused expression on her face.

"Something wrong?" Karla asked, before noticing the nod to open the door.

Karla opened the door and looked around. There were 11 bandits looking alive nearby, and 9 bandits looking quite dead. The 11 bandits that were alive were all in the middle of facing off against around 10 zombies and 20 Skeletons. It was going to be quite easy to sneak next door, seeing how preoccupied they were, but Karla suddenly began to look concerned. "Hey, El, after we check out what's behind this door, we should probably check up on that man that gave you the key. With all these Skeletons and zombies popping up everywhere, I'm not sure he's safe anymore." Karla whispered after watching another two bandits get mauled by the minions of the undead.

[Chiroptera]

The statue moved aside with as little noise as the last one had, but even if it’d grated across the floor with a royal fanfare the sound would probably still have been drowned out by the unmistakable din of fighting that swelled just beyond the doorway. Warm air rushed into the staircase as the statue moved aside, air heavy with the smell of sweat and blood and the sound of thudding weapons on flesh and bone. Eltarri’s heart was racing and her hands were tight on the hilt of her sword before she realized that no one was coming murderously towards them. How had the necromancer managed to get his minions up to the surface already? Did he know they were coming?

The half-elf’s muscles were tense and she shifted her grip on her sword, torn between staying put and rushing out to help destroy the monsters. As a general rule she wasn’t fond of bandits, but her dislike of the undead was much more passionate. She’d seen far too many zombies in her lifetime to blithely dismiss the threat of an undead attacker. She couldn't stand back and let the humans get killed by the monsters, but if she rushed forward and gave away their presence . . .

Eltarri jumped when Karla spoke, tearing her attention away from the skirmish with effort. Check on the man? If he had been attacked by the creatures that were battling the bandits in front of them then he was probably already dead! It was disturbing to consider that he would have been safer coming along with them and meeting bandits who were specifically out to kill him rather than staying alone in what was supposed to be a safe place and risking a zombie attack. But did they have time to abandon their necromancer hunt to backtrack to the man’s hiding place?

The girl’s golden eyes flickered from Karla to the battle that raged mere meters away. The bandits were falling quickly, crumpling before the undead minions like daisies under a stampeding bull. The stench of decaying flesh permeated the air, heavy and disturbing as the gurgled bellows that lurched from their throats. She couldn’t hold herself still any longer.

“I’ll be right back!”

The half-elf charged from the hidden doorway, her heavy sword smashing through the spine of two skeletons before the skirmishers even knew she was there. She swung her black blade in sweeping blows that hacked into rotten limbs and crashed through yellowing bones indiscriminately, her graceless slashing interrupted only when her bracers jerked her arms into a block that she swung free from as soon as the blow was deflected. She spun and struck with mindless intensity, committing all of her pitiful strength into each swing and throwing herself at each undead opponent as if its very existence was a personal offense. When she finally fell still, sweat dripping from her brow and eyes roaming hungrily for more opponents, she stood in the middle of the room on a floor littered with corpses, dry bones, and the moaning companions of the bandits, who had wisely stepped back at the half-elf’s haphazard attack, giving her and her sword generous legroom.

“Damn, girl, you nearly took my head off,” one of the men grumbled, shaking flecks of rotten zombie flesh off his sword.

Eltarri was breathing too hard to speak, but she lowered her sword and nodded carefully, her gaze fixed on the bandits. Was it happening again? The only reason they wouldn’t kill her was if they thought she was one of them. If they were distracted enough by the undead attackers, they may not have noticed her entry. How much luck did she have left?

“The others found a secret entryway,” she panted, lifting one arm to point aimlessly in what she hoped was the direction of the center of the cathedral. “Zombies are pouring out and they need everybody they can!”

Several of the bandits immediately started moving towards the hall, but one of the men held up a hand, squinting mistrustfully at her. “Hey, weren’t you the one—”

Eltarri jerked her chin up and glared at the man, daring him to challenge authority that she definitely knew she didn’t have. “If I were working against you would I have bothered to save your sorry butts? Get moving!”

They did, much to the half-elf’s surprise. The room was cleared of able-bodied bandits in a moment, leaving only the mostly-unconscious thieves and the twitching bodies of the undead.

“Ready, Karla?” Eltarri moved across the room to the exit that didn’t lead to the hall, an innocent-looking door of heavy wood with a small keyhole beneath its ring-shaped handle. She returned her sword to its harness on her back as she stepped over bodies, reaching into her pocket to retrieve the key-containing envelope and shaking the small but precious item onto her palm. It was disappointingly nondescript; iron with a meaningless inscription at the end of its short stem. It slid easily into the keyhole and turned with a smoothness that was unnatural for a door as infrequently used as this one was supposed to be.

Eltarri stepped back to pull on the handle, keeping one hand warily on the hilt of her sword as the door swung open.

[Karla]

Karla was the first to enter the doorway. At first, what lay beyond the doorway confused her. It looked almost like a small closet, but entirely empty. After a bit more searching, though, Karla found what she had been searching for. The whole reason for the locked door was on the floor. It was a trap door, the whole floor was a trap door. But this trap door had no handle or any other way of opening it, What it had instead was a strange magical rune, and from what she could tell, it was a complicated magical rune, too. One that seemed to need some kind of powerful magic to destroy. Karla knew that in order to break a rune, you needed magic equal to or greater than the one that was used to create the rune.

"Crap, dead end. We need to head back to the man's room El, I ned to check that map again. Hopefully there is another route.

As Karla began to head back, she saw three of the bandits from earlier joined up with a group of twenty others, fighting off skeletons and zombies by the dozens. Once again, thier backs were turned to Karla and Eltarri. They were fighting thier way through one of the passages that could only be opened via Dark magic. It was directly opposite the statue they passageway to the man and the map.

Deciding once again that the best plan was to ignore the bandits, she opened the secret passage with some more of her magic. Hearing a loud crash down the stairs, Karla quickly rushed down the staircase.

What she saw amazed her. This man was holding his own against what had to be at least thirty zombies alll by himself, and the sound she heard was him collapsing a bookshelf on five Skeletons.

"Hey, Eltarri, you might want to see this!" Karla yelled out so just loud enough for her partner to hear.

Karla got ready to press the switch as soon as Eltarri caje in the secret passageway, so as not to let any bandits in. Her yelling didn't seem to go unnoticed by the zombies either, as three of them charged at her, but the man was too quick for them. He stabbed each one in the back of the neck with his twin daggers, sending them toppling to the ground. Karla had no clue where the daggers came from, but at this point, she wasn't too worried about it. The man was taking down the creature two to three at a time and dodging enemy attacks as if they were slow a molasses in january. He was obviously not just your average thief, from the way he was moving, but he was tiring out fast.

Karla started backstepping up the stairs as another zombie went after her. She kicked it back down the stairs in a panic.

"Come on, Eltarri, let's help this guy out."

[Chiroptera]

A broom closet? The mysterious magical key of terrible deadly darkness opened the door to a broom closet? Eltarri rolled her eyes in exasperation as she watched Karla poke around in the tiny space before pronouncing what Eltarri had seen in an instant. It was a dead end, a false trail, an erroneous lead. They were no better off than they’d been before they’d left the records chamber!

Eltarri stifled her frown as the elf spoke and swallowed a grimace at her decision to go back to the key man. It seemed counterproductive to go back when the necromancer was still loose, but then again she couldn't think of a better option. She nodded wordlessly and followed Karla as she left the room and went out into the perilous hallway, though she paused to grab the key and put it back in her pocket before she left. The elf moved confidently, finding her way through the nearly identical halls without a hitch, and Eltarri was glad to be able to follow without having to worry about getting lost. What had happened to the angel-boy and the shadow man? Perhaps it was better not to worry about them. Once the necromancer was taken care of, the bandits would surely realize that there was no point in sticking around, and maybe if those two had found good places to hide . . .

Karla turned a corner, and when Eltarri followed she saw that there was more fighting going on at the other end. Bandits were fending off undead monsters by the drove, but the number of living fighters was large enough that Eltarri didn't feel obligated to offer her help as the two females stepped into a side room that undoubtedly should have been familiar.

The statue had barely moved aside before noise of a scuffle drifted up the staircase from the records room below. Karla was down the stairs in an instant, but Eltarri followed at a slightly slower pace, her gaze fixed on her feet so that she wouldn’t tumble and make another painfully graceless entry to a room of unknown occupants. The staircase seemed brighter, somehow, which helped immensely as she made her way down.

She was so focused on her feet that she almost ran into Karla when the elf came back towards her. She spoke, but her words were lost in the din of crashing bookshelves and the angry groans of re-dying zombies. She saw a blur of motion among the slow-moving corpses and gaped when she realized that it was the man who had given her the key. He certainly didn't fight like the average human she knew. He leapt around like a monkey in a frying pan, his hands glinting as his daggers found their way into zombie necks. Who was this guy? She felt a pang of regret at the sight of the cathedral’s records being trampled by the shuffling zombies, but she forgot her regret when some of the monsters started heading in their direction.

Her sword was in her hands again in a flash and she stepped off the staircase and into the fray to join the human without a moment’s hesitation. She didn’t have any of his well-aimed finesse; her sword cleaved through flesh and bone at random, slashing at whatever moving mass came into her line of sight-- often repeatedly to make up for a superficial first strike. At the back of her mind, Eltarri spared a thought trying to remember whether the room actually was brighter than it had been the last time she’d seen it. It might have been her imagination, but she was certainly seeing the misshapen faces of the zombies more clearly than she had that of the dangerous key man.