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Water spirit's strike at Archer. (Against his AC)

Edit: The snake water spirit dives into the water, missing Archer and accomplishing nothing worse than soaking the three of them, but begins re-gathering for another strike..

"The latter!" Rae calls back in reply to the wizard, "From th' ceilin'!"

((How large is Xepil's buckler?))

He silently cursed at his lack of use. Suddenly he worried about a possible ambush from the other side of the tunnel, and turned to see if anything was arriving from the other way.

Archer curses wildly.

What the hell do you do against this kind of thing?! He thinks quickly. My daggers will just cut through the water...will my poison-tipped ones do anything?

Archer grabs one of his daggers, one that was tucked in his boot, and hastily dips it in the poison-filled vial at his side, before aiming it directly between the water-creatures eyes.

As the brittle roots and branches almost flake away at being disturbed, Rae decides to abandon the fire idea - for now, at least. While the flames would shoot upwards toward the ghoul, burning bits would be falling all over themselves.

One half of a half-baked idea hatches in her head, and she decides to act on it. She drops her weapon and places both hands at either edge of Xepil's buckler. She roars out the words "Shield smash!" in the ridiculous hope that he'll understand what she means and go with it. Then she launches herself upward and to her left (or vice versa if he carries it on his left arm - she's intentionally not trying to dislocate his shoulder...) in an attempt to pin the ghoul by its chest to the side of the chimney.

((John, make a listen (wisdom) check, please!))


The shield slams into the ghoul's chest, pressing it against the side of the tunnel, still with its head oriented down toward Xepil and Rae. She sees its stomach bulge, the decaying skin seeming about to give way. The creature's dirt caked claws swipe across the intersection of the two tunnels in an effort to catch either Rae or Xepil ...

Archer's dagger goes through the snake head of the water spirit, causing it to splash back down into the pool before it can fully form. It does not remain quiet though and quickly begins reforming itself. The short reprieve however, gives Hadden and Iraco time to dive into the tomb. "Com'on!" Iraco shouts to Archer.

Nervously, I make my way through the debris laying around her residence. "U-uh hello..." I stutter, cautiously looking at Cat and Oleen. I think for a moment about what I was originally here for. I felt nervous, but I gathered what guts I had and asked the question I came to ask. "Do you know anything about the Hell Hound attacking the town?" a part of me hoped she didn't take it the wrong way, Gods knows what she could do if she is angered....

"Oh yeah! GRRR!" Xepil is all about shield slams. He pushes into the blow with Rae's assistance and pins the ghouls against a wall. Up close and personal now he raises his hunting knife and goes for the overhead stab to try and pierce through the undead's skull. "Die punk!! GRRR!!"

((in a rush so posting this quick for now))"

Cat and Oleen both hang back just slightly, there to support Vilod in this endeavor, but neither of them have a clue what to do if things turn sour with the widow Ymae.

But she grins at the elf, her mouth missing many teeth. "I do," she answers, beckoning the elf closer as she continues spinning the flame into a golden thread. "Enough to know it is not a Hell Hound, but a spirit of chaos. It cannot tread here."

---

As John turns back to keep watch over the rear, he hears the distant sound of stone scraping against stone echo slightly through the tomb. The others are too caught up in the struggle with the ghoul to notice. (From the front where Archer, Iraco, & Hadden moved the great stone circle.)

---

The tight quarters make for difficult maneuvering and the flailing ghoul's arm knocks Xepil's blade to the side. The rotted and decaying skin on its belly begins to rip, showing the first hint of the purplish-black scales.

I gulp heavily, walking steadily closer to her, repeatedly looking back to Cat and Oleen. I clear my throat, "Ah, forgive me. So, where has this spirit of Chaos come from? Is it here from an angry God, or perhaps some prophecy unraveling?" I fear talking too much or directly talking about her would anger her, so I tried to keep it simple, yet still to the point.

The widow's rheumy eyes slide momentarily to Vilod before returning to her spinning.

"It's been here since before the time of the Savage Kings," she answers in her cackling voice. "Worshipped by the tribes of old before the Ulfheonar trapped it. But your fool friends freed it from its prison so it emerges each night from its inky black pool in the Sunken Fens."

Cat and Oleen looked uneasily at each other. "Hey, I didn't do nuthin'..." Cat started to object and then immediately shut his mouth and gulped as Ymae's gaze shifted to him.

"Not you. The brothers Kej, Stein, and Ilham."

Why were those names familiar? They were vague, but still present in my mind. It scratches at the back of my head like a dog while it's master is not present. Then, it pops in my head. Cat had mentioned them when I had first arrived in Hirot. They hadn't returned for months, and I never saw them while working on the job. "What? How did they manage to do that? A-and why?!" I asked her eagerly.

"Because they were greedy fools!" Ymae retorts, her eyes wandering over Oleen and Cat, as if wondering if they might be cut from the same cloth. "By unearthing a passage into the Ulfheonar's tomb, they released it and it craves the bloody sacrifices of its past."

The mottled cat jumps down from the shelf and moseys over to the visitors in a circuitous route.

"Is that why you come, Vilod?" the widow asks. "To find what happened to them? They paid for their stupidity with their lives."

But of course, their greed. Something so powerful it could turn most beings to death of themselves or others. As a thief, greed is no new thing to me. It is how I stay fed and clothed, sooner or later it will provide a roof over my head. I had suspected that to be the cause of their sudden disappearance. "No, and that is the reason we came to you, Ymae. I want to..." I trail off looking for the right word that doesn't make me look like a real fool. I mean, no words could cover that up. I want to see the beast, kill it if I can, and look to see deeper into it's crypt. "Well, I want to find the beast. A fool I sound, I know, but I feel that I have the skill to at least get close to it. I wanted to know what it is capable of, other than ripping us mortals to shreds..."

"By Odin's beard," the dwarf grumbles at the sight of the bulging belly and then the tearing of the putrid flesh. She quickly bellows out, "Gimme a blade or fire! 'E's got a serpent in 'im!"

Rae eases her weight off the shield slightly, as she's not too keen on getting a snake bite to the face. She takes a quick glance upward to gauge the height of the vertical shaft.

"Uh oh! Grr!" Xepil quickly moves away from the zombie and hands his knife to Rae.

In the Mad Widow's hut:

Ymae pauses and stares at Vilod for several moments before answering, as if judging her mettle. Her answer was less than direct. "Can you get close enough to shackle it, elf?" But she did not give Vilod time to answer that before continuing. "You know why it cannot come here? Enchanted threads spun from the hair of the dead! Pressed into the mud form an impassable barrier to it. These same threads could bind it so that it may be slain."

---

In the tomb:

The vertical shaft does not go far... only about 6 feet up. Rae can tell it opens into a larger space above that, but it's too dark to see any details.

As she shifts her weight away, the serpent fully erupts from the ghoul's stomach...

John being busy with the noise, he doesn't try to help in the small corridor where his magic would only have a nefast influence on the situation, and where one single unprecise shot would wound his allies.
He continues advancing in the direction of the noise, saying just before doing so : "We might have something from there!". He prepared to fight with spells.