Friday, July 23, 2021

Story Post: Koda’s Third Expedition

The Witch Koda, confident, snuck past the sleeping form of rector of the Cathedral, Father Bartlebas, noting with her third sight as she did so the satanic glyphs he had smeared upon his own corpulent flesh in whatever ritual he had used to bind himself to the demon below. Making her way into the Cathedral’s basement, she found a chest marked with the crest of the von Nestor family; muttering the incantation that Richardo had taught her, she flipped it open and found a silver-tipped stake. “That’ll come in handy,” she muttered, before heading down to the crypt entrance.

The crypt felt much larger to her, filling her with energy and purpose.

From the Crypt Entrance, she moved west, to the Tenuous Bridge. She watched her footing but failed to notice a batch of moss on one of the slats, which caused her to slip and bash her knee - incurring a Light Injury. Falling did cause her to notice an average chest on a ledge just below the bridge, however; she used a small spell to levitate it up to her and opened it, finding a secret passage map. She immediately used it, revealing a point where - if one was confident - one could dive off the Tenuous Bridge and be caught by the river Zahn, and carried to another part of the crypt.  She shrugged, tied off her robes, and dived.

The cold water carried her underground before depositing her through a sluice into the White Hallways. The water from the sluice ran off into a gutter, the only feature in this otherwise gleaming white walkway, which was lit from the north by a blinding source of white light. She investigated but that north exit was blocked; feeling a strong sense that the west exit had nothing to reveal, she instead headed east.

She found herself once again back in the Phlegm Chamber, and this time she took a moment to really examine the space. She spent a while making tracings of the demonic language carved into the bark, and took a small sample of the fluid leaking from the tree stump. However, when she tried to remove the speak from the stump - pulling against it with all of her might - a thick sliver of the shaft splintered away, slicing painfully into her hand and causing a light injury - and a splatter of blood to spray from her warm body onto the lifeless trunk, where it was immediately absorbed into the wood. Feeling an immense sense of dread, she backed away from the stump, then turned and fled from the room.

Her run took her back through the White Hallways, down a long Straight Hallway, and back into the Cobwebbed Cellar, where in her hurry she failed to notice an average chest. Finally pausing in the Gravity Room , she took a deep breath to steady herself as gravity eddied around her. Grabbing at a fine chest as it phased through she space, she opened it to find a bottle of find brandy - dutch courage that she immediate downed, becoming drunk in the process - and a rusty crossbow. She then, in a state of drunken despair, played in the gravity well for a while before being spat out into the Blood Pit.

She clambered her way up through the pit, barely noticing the viscera pouring from the walls - which seemed to have grown in volume and intensity - making her way through to the Entrance Vestibule, where she found another average chest. Opening it, she found a holy tincture - “Yesh, drink everythin’!” she muttered - downing it to regain a little energy, but no sobriety.

Then she staggered around for a while - to the Cliff Edge, where she tripped on a stalagmite and incurred a light injury, through to the Chicken Coop via the Marble Tunnel and the Intestinal Passage, bouncing on the magic effect, and then back the way she came to the Entrance Vestibule, where she sat on the floor and giggled for a minute - “Weeee! Round in circles!” This time when she opened the chest she found a Secret Passage Map. She looked at it very seriously for a long second, then fell over sideways and had a snooze for fifteen minutes. It didn’t help; when she woke up she was still drunk, but she was able to focus for long enough to find the one statue whose arm could be pulled to reveal a secret pathway.

The passage twists and turns before spitting her out into a wide courtyard, painted in lilac tones and cloudscape scenes, and decorated with a lot of soft furnishings, cushions, throw pillows, hammocks and one gigantic sarcophagus. “I already did you”, she mutters, seeing the familiar legend - “Beneath here lie the immortal sins of the Vampire Lord Jumble” - carved into its heavy lid. She blasted the lid off with her spell again, and the Vampire Lord’s eyes snapped open; for a moment they caught each others’ gaze, before she slammed her silver-tipped stake down and into his chest. She stumbled back (accidentally discharging her crossbow on a stray Nightmare), then turned and vomited as Jumble’s body violently disassembled behind her. Looking ruefully at her own throw-up, she headed for the east exit.

She finds herself… in a strange room? Wait - is she still drunk, or is she left-handed now? She tries to move to the right but instead finds herself moving to the left. This must be some kind of… Moor Derorrim? In the corner there is another familiar sight - the still-wet, moss-covered tomb with “ANCIENT…. BLOOD… ALL… NIGHT… AIS523” carved over the door. “Fussk this,” she hisses, tossing a fireball - awkwardly, missing at first - at the tomb before backing out through the door. A Noitcelfer watched her before being crushed by some flaming masonry.

She hurried through the rapidly-disassembling Slumber Yard and out the other side, to the West.

The dread that had gripped her in the Phlegm Room once again reached out to her as she entered the Blood Chamber. The room was malevolently, oppressively dark, lit only by the menacing red glow of burning runes carved into the stone surface of an obelisk in the centre of the room. Immediately Koda found herself set upon by termites and a wandering Dreamcatcher - she blasted at them with uncoordinated electric flame in a panic and they evaporated, but the room itself twisted and turned around her, and she found herself next to the menhir, drawn towards it, and found herself reaching into her belt and drawing out a knife, and opening the wound on her hand, and squeezing more blood onto its surface - it was so hungry, the blood disappeared immediately into the stone, and the pain of the light injury pulsed in her blood, and then she was out, propelled through the north door…

What had she done?

She wandered through the landscape outside the crypt - through a Bloodsoaked Plain, a Shallow Swamp, and a Marble Plaza - before sobering up enough to realise that she had to get back to the von Nestor manor, and quickly, to discuss their next move.

Stat changes:
Vampire Lord - Puissance - Influence
ais523 - 2 - 3
Brendan - 2 - 1
Chiiika - 4 - 4
Clucky - 2 - 1
Jumble - 4 - 1
Kevan - 3 - 1
lemonfanta - 4 - 1
Raven1207 - 0 - 0

Comments

Lulu: she/her

24-07-2021 11:55:30 UTC

I give permission for lemon to revive me.