"Defiler! Fiend! Show thyself, and face the wrath of God! Grant us thy name, that we might spite it whence you return to hell!" says Father Purius. His voice seems magically amplified.
Rising from the teeming masses of the dead, shrouded ominously by putrid fog, you smile. "Kaviik Nalrathai has returned..." you say, barely a whisper. All of them seemed to have heard it, however, and the pompous priest's face flickers with fear.
"I-impossible! The Dead-raiser died a century ago! My ancestors buried him!" He motions for his men to strike. "P-p-paladins of Redridge, attack!"
His paladins rush into the horde of undead, swiping and slashing left and right, dismembering and breaking the corpses around them. You motion for Red to run into cover with her toy. She looks indignant, but one baleful glare is all that takes to make her scurry off into an alleyway. The battle seems to favor no one, but both sides receive considerable losses. Your number of undead are greatly thinned; understandable, considering the effort you put into them. The paladins have lost five of their eleven; the remaining, though undaunted, are seriously injured.
Smiling maliciously, you extend your will and tear into the priest's mind. He seemed to caught up in the battle to defend his psyche. He yells in agony as you rend and rip through his consciousness, searching for valuable information, in the meanwhile saying 'hi', among other things. The sheer shock of your prying causes him to instinctively banish your presence. Good reflexes, you think to yourself, but the damage has been done. The priest is dangerously pale, his eyes bloodshot and watering.
Time to end this. You prepare to fire a bolt of pure malice, channeling your century-old fury and malevolence into physical form. The priest does not expect this at all. The bolt, undetectable to the naked eye, tears a foot-long hole in the middle of the priest. He falls, limp and lifeless, to the ground. You notice, in the corner of your eye, Red clapping gleefully as if it were a puppet-show. The paladins rush back into the castle. I've won.
Or so you think. You distinctly hear one of them shout to perform the ritual. Intrigued, you move in closer. To your horror, all the living in the castle are marking themselves with knives; they're all about to perform mass suicide. This is a desperate, last-ditch attempt you've encountered before. What exactly they're sacrificing themselves for, you don't know. When the ritual is over, their souls will be raptured to heaven (very, very painfully), and the ground where they killed themselves sanctified.
"T-they m-must," stutters one of the paladins, heavily bleeding, "not g-get to the r-reliquary.... Begin the rapture!"
Whatever they have in the reliquary, it must be very important to them. Especially to rely on such brutal and ancient magic to safeguard it from you. You could try and rush to get it, but if they manage to complete the ritual with you inside or nearby, you could be reduced to an even more feeble state than before, or even outright killed. Your undead are critically low in number; the remaining humans inside could easily dispatch them. Red Killer, while sneaky, faces the same predicament as the others inside; she might be killed and her soul used to power the ritual.
Or you could leave whatever artifact they're trying to protect. It might not be worth the risk. The choice is yours.
Author
Topic: (SG) Returned. (Read 11805 times)