Your party proceeds down the center of the cobblestone avenue, tense and waiting for another ambush. The dense fog prevents you from seeing much beyond Cai and Llwyd to the front or Brighid or Ysbail to the sides, and you can only make out the vague shapes of ruined buildings as you pass directly by them. You strain your ears for every sound, but the city is as silent as a tomb aside from the noises made by your own team. The warriors are keeping their cool relatively well, but Ceirios is visibly fidgety and nervous and keeps very close to her golem.
You keep expecting another ambush, but your party continues down the avenue for another hundred meters, then another, then another. The meters stretch into a kilometer and still no attacks come. Rather than settling your nerves, the quiet stillness ratchets up the tension. There is no way the Taig doesn’t sense your party in the mists, and you don’t believe for a second that it sent all its minions into the field to fight the Starchaser force.The lack of response, to you, just means that the hammer will fall even harder once it does.
Still, though, the ambush does not come. You travel another kilometer, tension rising visibly in the entire party, and then another. Soon, the hill looms up out of the mists, and at its base the huge arched entryway into the tunnel. As you expected, the two dakhols loom large in the mists, but they are not alone. Lined up between them are dozens of other, smaller shapes. One of them, roughly human-sized, steps forward and the mists swirl and withdraw from around it. Brighid lets out a strangled gasp filled with rage and sorrow as the figure comes into clear view, and your other party members shift uncomfortably.
It takes you a moment to realize what you are seeing, but then your stomach begins to churn and roil and your mind shudders. Standing before you is your own corpse; its arms are attached at the shoulders and legs at the hips with dried, brown vines burrowed through the flesh like massive sutures, and you realize with revulsion that it actually isn’t walking but rather slithering forward on a massive vine which emerges from the lower half of your corpse.
“So, my little rat returns, what fun!” The mocking, insane voice coming from what used to be your flesh sends another shudder through your mind; in place of its tongue is another vine! “So happy am I, well done! Six more lovely sacrifices, yes, yes, that suffices.”
You don’t even wait to hear anything else, you raise your hands, palms-out, and shout a word. Silvery-white flames pour from your palms and you feel your soul itself fraying around the edges as you direct a Soulfire Blast towards the twisted mockery of your form.
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