Cleanse the Temple!

Stepping away from the pillar, you embrace the natural radiant light of the stars and form a shard of pure starlight, launching it at the zombie. It jerks and for a moment you fear it survived, but thankfully it poofs in a cloud of dust. You feel a rush of experience, not as much as you hoped but it was only level one after all. You wait, casting a prayer before stopping yourself. Are you really going to pray to the gods after what they did to their faithful? No... No, you are not! You are going to pray to the Stars! Even now, they still care for you, giving you the means to survive from this grave!

It seems as if he was the only one, but you sincerely doubt that. The gods would not be so kind to you, so you peered around the corner again. Using your truesight and lo and behold, another zombie! This time lying face down motionless. Not wanting to take any chances you spend a few more minutes looking, so far you have tagged five more zombies and two skeletons!

"Stars above!" You whisper, barely an utterance as you do not want them to know where you are. Taking another deep breath, you glance at your mana, happy to see that it already recharged to full due to basking in the starlight. You need to be cautious about this, having all of them swarm you would surely be your **** and you do NOT want to spend eternity being eaten over and over again so you devise a plan. Quickly but quietly grabbing some nearby pieces of rotting wood, you decide you will throw them as far as you can to distract the dimwitted monsters and blast them one by one, starting with the one furthest in the back naturally. First though, you tiptoe over to the zombie lying motionless and blast his head, he vanishes with a quiet puff. Phew!

With the plan as solid as it could ever be, you chuck one of the wooden pieces after waiting for your mana to recharge, wincing when it hits the empty reliquary casing with a loud shattering of glass. Broken glass is crunched under feet as multiple figures stand up, moaning in agony or whatever it was they are feeling, shambling towards the reliquary. You cast three starbolts in succession, each hitting and downing the nearest zombies without so much as a fuss. Giddy with excitement, you flit over to the other pillar and blast the skeleton there. DING! Wow? That easy to level up? Why did you not do this more prior to the Sundering? You admit creating things in the Scriptorium is still your main passion, but it is a far cry behind in terms of experience. Throwing another chunk of rotten wood, a few of the zombies and skeletons wade through the piles of stone towards the noise.

You close your eyes for a moment, feeling your mana recharge just a little bit faster due to your light meditation, when the sound of broken glass getting kicked right next to you startles you! A zombie with his mouth open lunges for you and you manage to blast him squarely in the chest, but not before his teeth sink into your shoulder! You try to muffle your hiss, slapping your hand over your mouth as you take in the damage he caused. Five percent is not bad, but you were foolish enough to assume where you were was safe. Thankfully, the skin is not broken as he bit into where your robe was, a hefty bruise would be there soon you bet. Why could he have not done that BEFORE you leveled up? Shaking your head, you wait some more, popping around the corner to blast a skeleton that somehow managed to get far too close for comfort. Throwing two more blocks of wood you manage to dispatch the four remaining zombies along with two more skeletons. You were about to close your eyes again to briefly meditate when a strong burning sensation blossoms on your left side, reducing your health by over twenty percent!

"Fuck!" As you move behind a pillar you notice a level three ghost hovering in the distance, it had launched a small ball of cold at you. You angle yourself on the opposite side of the pillar only for another to hit your back! "What in the nine hells!?" There was another level three ghost, perfectly positioned to deny you any cover! With a little less than half your health gone, you leap behind a broken pew, the ball of cold whizzing by inches from your head. Saying a quick prayer to the Stars for guidance, you notice a twinkle behind one of the ghosts. A Welkynd Stone!

Knowing that it stores mana, you might have a chance to blast them to **** before they could do the same to you! Making a mad dash as you wove between broken and chipped pillars, taking another ball of cold against your thigh, this time as it only grazed it took ten percent of your health. With some of your mana recharged, you launch two starbolts at the ghost in front of the stone. It wavered, but still clung to unlife by a thread much to your dismay. With your mana depleted and the other ghost moving to be behind you, you had **** but to go for it!

Charging in, you swiped at it with a stick and while ghosts are ethereal and thus have significant resistances to physical damage, this one was so close to **** that you managed to kill it while taking a hit straight to your torso. You were afraid you were going to die but thankfully your momentum carried you towards the safety of one of the apse chapels. Wounds knitted themselves shut as DING! rung in your ears as you reached upwards towards the table, hand blindly knocking aside glass, uncaring that it gave you dozens of small cuts. You felt the cool surface of the metal encasing and immediately grasped the stone. You willed it to release the mana inside and you sighed with relief as your mana bar refilled rapidly, only being set back when you wreath the ghost in faerie fire and launch starbolt after starbolt towards it. The ghost poofed in a cloud of ectoplasm. With a heavy sigh you slumped against the altar, glancing up towards the twinkling lights. Content that if you were to die now, you at least died a worthy **** for an Acolyte who single handedly killed ten zombies, six skeletons, and two ghosts!