Pulling Weeds

 ‘Four enthralled in lost Scarwall’

Tomas was trying to recall the words of the song that Zellara had sung, looking for clues. “There was something about someone waiting in a tower, and another in a kennel. One of the spirits was still at his post, probably a soldier. And something ‘on a stone, mid ash and bone’, whatever that means.” Tomas was focused on trying to decipher the rhyme. “Zellara must have told us where we need to go – we just have to figure it out.”

No one else was paying much attention. Asyra had taken the battleaxe that the dead orc had used against them, and leaned it in a corner. Erin picked it up and held it up to the light coming in through one of the arrow slits. The obsidian blade glowed green as the light shone through it. “This is really nice,” Erin said admiringly. She gave it a few practice swings, then used the thong tied to its handle to loop it over her shoulder.

Most of the others were getting ready to bed down; Wren had offered to cast Nap Stack to help them accelerate their rest and quickly recover spells. “Hang on a minute,” Nat called out. “Before we rest, we should probably experiment a little. It really worries me that our Dimension Door didn’t work earlier – who know what else might give us problems. Since we’re going to get them back in a couple of hours anyway, we might as well burn a few spells now to test them.” To kick things off, he tried to summon a Rope Trick in the bedroom, thinking it would give them an even safer place to rest. But no mid-air opening appeared. “Damn! No extra-planar spaces. Hmmm … I wonder about Passwall.” He moved to the outside wall of the castle, near the stairs leading up to the balcony, and cast a spell. The stone seemed to melt away, creating an opening that let the cold breeze off the tarn blow in. “Good! That works anyway.” Shadow moved to an area of shadows, and attempted to perform a Shadow Jump, but stayed right where he was. “Looks like moving through shadows is out, too.”

Shadowcount Sial had a worried expression (although it was a little hard to tell on top of his normal, dour look). He walked down the hall, away from Asyra, and tried to summon her to his side with his Maker’s Call. Nothing happened, and his brow knitted even more. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. We may have a bit of a problem. When I sleep, Asyra will return to the Plane of Shadow. I fear that I may not be able to summon her again in this place.” No one was quite sure how to feel about that; while every extra ally was welcome, the emotionless chain devil hadn’t exactly endeared herself to anyone. “I shall dismiss her now, and attempt to re-summon her,” the summoner declared. “Better to know now than find out later.” He said some words and the kyton vanished. He then began the summoning ritual they’d caught a glimpse of when fighting the orcs at the barbican. It went on for a full minute, and when he completed, Asyra reappeared by Sial’s side. He gave an audible sigh of relief.

By this time, nearly twenty minutes had passed since they’d killed the undead orc. Everyone spread out around the ruined bedroom and the short hallway outside and began to unroll their bedrolls, preparing to nap. Suddenly there was a grunt, and the corpse of the orc champion, which they’d drug into one corner of the room, gave a lurch and stood up! It surveyed the room, then locked eyes with Tomas and charged at him. As Tomas had “killed” her the first time, she’d said that he would soon join her in death, and she was apparently intent on fulfilling her promise. Wren took a wild swing as it went past her, but was so shocked that she missed badly. They’d disarmed the orc, but she swung a meaty fist at Tomas, who barely ducked out of the way. Then she muttered a Curse in orcish. Tomas felt the greasy power of unholy magic wash over him, but his force of will was too strong, and the Curse failed to take hold. “She’s back!” he yelled, as he stepped back and unlimbered his bow. Most of his panicked shots went wild, but one managed to find its mark.

Nat was in the hall outside. He rushed to the doorway and saw Tomas engaged with the orc they thought they’d killed already. As before, she fought in silence, with uncanny skill. Nat realized that her martial prowess, combined with her ability to return from the dead, could only mean one thing. “She must be a Fext!” he cried. Fexts were extremely rare and extraordinarily dangerous undead. Created from warriors of great renown, they were all but unkillable. He racked his brain – he remembered reading something about fexts, something about the only way to kill them being … what? He called up an Empowered Orb of Light and flung it at the orc. It exploded with a blinding flash of light, and suddenly he remembered. “Erin! Use that axe! It’s obsidian – it’s the only thing that can kill it!”

Erin was also in the hallway outside the room. She had no idea what Nat was talking about, but she could hear fighting from inside, and she saw no reason not to trust the wizard’s advice. She unlimbered the battleaxe off her back as she ran, and swung it at the she-orc’s head, but she ducked under the blow. Asyra was suddenly at her side, lashing the orc with her spiked chain. Asyra’s fighting style distracted the orc, and Erin could tell that it would have a harder time hitting her as long as Asyra were nearby.

Jax was in another corner of the room, under the arrow slits. He slipped in behind the orc, but she saw him coming and hit him with a fist. The blow bounced him off the back wall, and he felt a level of experience drain away. Nonetheless, he was now behind the creature, and slammed his rapier forward into her undead kidney. Shadowcount Sial slipped in behind Asyra and cast Shield on his eidolon, while Laori circled around the perimeter of the room, staying outside the orc’s reach, and cast Death Ward on Erin. Shadow joined Nat in the doorway and hammered the orc with Empowered Magic Missiles. Wren was still behind the orc fighter; she stepped back, out of her reach, and called down Destruction on the abomination, but its natural resistance to magic foiled the spell.

The orc swung at Erin again, but she caught its fist with her buckler, blocking the blow. Tomas drew an adamantine arrow from his quiver; he was sick of fighting the same enemy over and over, and wanted to finish this. He drew his bowstring back to his ear, and the arrow flew true. It hit almost the exact same spot as the last arrow that had ‘killed’ her, directly over the heart, and the orc crumpled to the ground. Erin stood over the orc’s dead body. It looked dead, but it had looked dead twenty minutes ago, too. Erin remembered Nat's warning. She tightened her grip on the obsidian battleaxe, and swung it down two-handed. It chopped into the orc’s chest. Her eyes flew open and she gave a sudden gasp. A look of relief passed over her face. “Thank you for freeing me from undeath,” she whispered in Orcish, and then her eyes closed forever. As they did, Erin felt a jolt of power run through the handle of the battleaxe.

Erin wasn’t taking any chances. She cut off the orc’s head, and then the group manhandled her body up to the balcony and threw it into the lake below. Everyone hoped that they could finally get a few minutes peace; Wren cast her Nap Stack, and everyone settled in to sleep.

But sleep did not come easy. The heavy sense of dread that permeated the castle seeped into their dreams, and they were plagued with nightmares they could not quite remember when they awoke, other than the certainty that those nightmares had been prophesies of horrors yet to come. Despite the uneasy rest, most were able to get at least some benefit of sleep, but Erin was still grumpy and exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes.

“I think we need to head back towards the castle proper,” Tomas declared as they were gathering their gear. “I’ve been thinking about Zellara’s song. We haven’t explored enough of the castle yet to figure out what most of the verses mean, but one says that an ‘infernal soul waits high in tower cold’. There aren’t any towers in this wing – they’re all back to the east.”

“True,” agreed Shadow, “but there’s a lot of them. Which do you think it is?”

“I vote for the star-shaped tower,” Jax offered.

“Good luck with that,” Nat countered. “On our fly-by, we didn’t see any way in to that tower, or into the donjon that it connects to. Other than that lead-sealed door, that is.”

“Whichever one it is, we’ll only find it if we head back east.”

No one had an alternative to offer, so Tomas’s argument won the day. They retraced their steps, back to the room with the faded tapestries. There was a door to the east, and from what they’d seen when they landed on the parapet above, it should lead out into the castle's courtyard.

Jax opened the door, and confirmed that their recollection was correct. They were looking out into a wide courtyard that gave an inside view of the castle’s looming walls and towers. A chill breeze whipped through the courtyard, carrying a few dry leaves from scraggly scrub bushes that grew fitfully at the yard’s edges. A broad, stone-rimmed well stood just outside the door, though the stone lip was crumbling and had collapsed in places. Thick patches of vegetation grew in and around this well, despite the apparent lack of soil to root in. To the north, stairs rose to a platform fifteen feet above the courtyard. Atop it, a black double door offered entry into the castle donjon. A double door to the east stood open, creaking on its hinges, as if left open by someone leaving in a hurry. Bent, rusted, and in some cases partially broken spikes protruded from the walls of the courtyard, and here and there, holes in the stone of the courtyard floor hinted at long-missing structures or poles that once stood within.

Erin was worried that something might be hiding invisibly in the courtyard, so she cast Detect Evil. The overwhelming aura of menace all around her was overwhelming, sending her staggering backwards into the room, where she stood in stunned silence for several seconds. Tomas was looking over Jax’s shoulder. Something about the scene in front of him felt off. The plants growing around the well were mostly nettles, poison oak, and brambles, but there was no reason any plants should be growing here at all, with no soil to nourish them. There was particularly large thicket of vegetation along the north lip of the well, and as he looked, it suddenly began to move. An enormous stalk raised up out of the thicket, topped by a bulbous bloom at the top. Long vines began to whip around, and one lashed through the open doorway, striking Jax and wrapping itself around his waist. Jax screamed out in pain as the vine struck, then his scream was choked off as it began to constrict.

Shadowcount Sial immediately considered opening a pit full of acid beneath the creature, but it was far too big for any pit he could create; instead he cast Haste on the party, as Erin rushed to Jax’s aid. She hadn’t counted on the length of the vines, however, and one caught her as she charged. She managed to get in a blow from the obsidian battleaxe, but found herself struggling to breathe and being lashed from side to side by the huge plant. Tomas fired past his friends; his arrows struck the huge plant, but had difficulty penetrating its woody exterior and the electricity from his shock bow didn’t seem to bother it at all. Asyra rushed into the doorway, nimbly evading the plant’s thrashing vines, and whipped it with her spiked chain.

Laori backed away, and called down a Flame Strike powered with the unholy might of Zon-Kuthon. The flames and divine fires sent a column of smoke up into the gray skies above. Nat’s long hours in the library once again paid off; he recognized the plant as a Corpse Lotus, a flowering monstrosity that grew wherever corpses abound – although it would willingly feed on the living if nothing else were available. “Fire! We need to use fire!” he called, and summoned an Elemental Wall of fire that cut across the courtyard, catching the rear third of the huge creature. Shadow didn’t need to be told twice, and immediately unleashed a Fireball that also engulfed the oversized weed.

Great chunks of the corpse lotus had already turned to ash, and it was being consumed by fire at its rear. It pushed forward, bulling Asyra back into the building as it pressed itself away from the flaming wall. It still held Erin and Jax in its crushing grip, and had no trouble moving them with it. They could see that the flowering bulb at its top had an open maw, lined with wicked teeth, but for the moment it was too consumed with escaping the fire to try to eat them. Shadowcount Sial cast Grease on Erin, hoping to help her escape, but even with this personal lubrication, she couldn’t pry herself free. Tomas could tell that Jax was near death, with Erin right on his heels, so he steadied his hand and drew back his bow. Arrow after arrow flew into the corpse lotus, sinking deep into its flame-blackened trunk, and at last it released its hold on Erin and Jax as it fell into a smoldering heap in front of the door.

Wren and Laori both had to spend quite a bit of time healing the pair of injured fighters back to health. As they worked, Tomas kept an eye on the courtyard, past the smoking remains of the corpse lotus. “Don’t you think it’s odd that our fight didn’t attract anyone’s attention?” he asked after a time.

“Well, it wasn’t all that noisy,” Shadow suggested. “My fireball was about the only thing loud. Well, other than Erin and Jax’s screaming.”

Tomas was still skeptical, and once everyone was healed up, he was extra cautious as they made their way into the courtyard. Tomas bypassed the stairs leading up to the donjon entrance, and made straight for the partially-open doors, creaking in the breeze. As the others fanned out across the courtyard, he pressed himself against the wall and then leaned forward, risking a peek inside. The interior was dark (no surprise), and hung with thick cobwebs.

Nat made his way to the door in the south wall, the one leading into the main body of the castle. The wall was lined with arrow slits, and he felt very exposed as he darted across the open courtyard. He pressed his ear to the crack between the double doors, and his heart stopped as he heard the rustle of movement inside. Before he could warn the others, there was the twang of bowstrings, and a hail of crossbow bolts flew out of the arrow slits. Most of them clattered off the far wall, but a cry from Jax meant that at least one had found its mark.

“Over here! To me!” Tomas cried as he pushed the doors open. Whatever might be inside, at least they wouldn’t be sitting ducks for the concealed bowmen. The Shadowcount’s Haste spell was still in effect, and everyone dashed across the open courtyard towards Tomas’s promised cover. Crossbow bolts were whizzing past them as they ran, but their speed threw off most of the archers’ aim. But not all. Jax yelped again as another bolt hit him in the back. Shadowcount Sial was bringing up the rear, and a bolt caught him in the thigh. He limped on, and Jax slammed the doors shut behind him.

As they tried to catch their breath, they got their first look at their new surroundings. It looked like this might have once been the castle’s livery, but any tack had long ago disintegrated. Thick swaths of shadowy cobwebs hung from the walls and ceiling in clumpy sheets, almost like congealed shadows. A particularly large mound of the stuff was heaped in the eastern part of the room, partially blocking a large archway.

Before they could take a closer look at anything, a creature appeared out of the shadows at Wren’s feet. It was a pallid caterpillar, scuttling on dozens of small legs, and covered with dark bristles that seemed to be made of solid shadow. It snapped its jaws at Wren, narrowly missing her. Another crawled out of the webs beside Shadow, and he darted out of its reach as it snapped. Tomas was not so lucky; one appeared behind him and sank its fangs into his leg. Its mandibles seethed with shadowstuff, and as they tore into Tomas his flesh and blood simply evaporated into shadow.

“Tenebrous Worms!” Nat cried. He knew these creatures from the Shadow Plane were most dangerous in dim light – exactly what they had here. “We need light!” Hoping someone else would follow up on his advice, he cast a Fireball that engulfed most of the room, using his Selective Spell metamagic rod to protect his friends from its flames.

Wren figured Nat must know what he was talking about, and cast Light on a coin that she tossed into the middle of the room, dispelling most of the room’s shadows. Shadow backed farther away from the worm that had tried to bite him, and cast Chain Lightning that sizzled between the three visible worms. Erin swung her new battleaxe in a figure-eight motion, chopping into first one worm and then another, killing them both. Tomas spun around, and fired arrows into the worm that had bitten him, pinning it to the floor.

With no more enemies in sight, Asyra moved forward to investigate the heap of shadow-webs in the archway leading out of the room. But another Tenebrous Worm, still smoking from Nat’s fireball, rose up out of the webs and bit her; fortunately, its shadow-acid didn’t seem to affect the kyton. Two more worms slithered out of the next room, snapping at the chain devil.

Jax hammered the one that had bitten Asyra with Magic Missiles, and it rolled over on its back, legs twitching in the air. Shadow fired his own Magic Missiles at one of the others, as Erin rushed to Asyra’s side, chopping into it with her axe. A trio of arrows whistled past her ears, and the worm joined its mates in eternal shadow. Asyra, still Hasted, whipped her spiked chain back and forth in a blinding flurry, hitting the worm four times, but it refused to die, and sank its mandibles into her again. Jax and Shadow both hit it with more Magic Missiles and then Erin brought her axe down in an overhand chop, cutting it in two.

No more shadow creatures emerged to threaten them. Beyond the archway, Erin could see a small anteroom. A set of stone stairs led up, and to her right was an open doorway leading into a larger dark room. She looked down at the pile of webs at her feet. It appeared to have been the creatures nest; she could see the remains of several shadowy cocoons. But something had ripped them apart and devoured whatever had been inside.

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The PCs earned 9,066 XP for the night, putting them at 227,768 XP, with 295,000 required for Level 14.