Editing Journal - Death on Karmana (section)

==Sullinassauri==

We climbed the stairs, and it must have been over fifty feet before we started wondering whether they were going to end at all. It certainly looked like they hadn't been used in a long time. Finally Falcor caught a sound coming through the stone wall, like metal catching stone on the other side. We paused, but the sound faded and I didn't hear anything. We carried on, but it wasn't far before the stairs ended in a short corridor ending in a stone door with a catch clearly visible. Whilst the mechanism was obvious, it hadn't been used in so long that it wasn't going to open easily; Falcor put some force behind it and there was the sound of cracking of plaster as it broke a seal to move open slightly. This didn't go unnoticed, of course, and a legionnaire turned as we forced our way out.

Fortunately he was so close that he didn't have time to react before Falcor closed to attack. I turned left and came face-to-face with another legionnaire coming towards us. These foe fell quickly, but a third farther down the corridor we had entered was able to get out a call of alarm before we both fell on it and smashed it to pieces. There were arrow slits in the wall so I peered through, seeing a walled city in darkness in the distance. There were doors beside us and up ahead, and Falcor started to listen at the closest one just as both were opened and legionnaires came at us. We took two on each, besting them but not before I took a blow from one.

I ran to join Falcor as he moved into a room, and I closed the door behind me. Falcor crossed a small room and listened at a door opposite before opening it into a small corridor with doors at either end. We turned right and carried on through the door, keen to keep moving so the defenders found it hard to keep track of us. There were stairs leading up just beyond the door, but much nicer than the last set, even having carpet laid on them. At the top of these was a small landing, but there were more stairs up so we kept climbing. We found exactly the same at the next level, and again climbed, trying to reach the higher levels quickly.

We reached the top of the stairs and entered a large open room with a throne on a raised dias to our right. It was darker here, with drapes around the room covering any arrow slits or windows. An ornate carpet covered the floor, but there were deliberate holes within it that passed all the way to the floor below, with similar holes in the ceiling. Lounging on the throne was a woman I didn't recognise, but that Falcor called &quot;Shalleth&quot;. She greeted Falcor far too casually, but he ignored her and ran towards a door on the left, suggesting that I question her. Surely he couldn't think that she was in any way innocent when she was sprawled across a throne in Sullinassauri's tower? Weird. I studied her, and that didn't help much; she didn't seem to be of Death exactly, but there was certainly a taint of Death upon her. I didn't trust her at all, but she said that Sullinassauri was waiting above and Falcor was off. Was he scared of her? I backed away slowly, watching her with suspicion, and then ran through the door after Falcor.

He had found a door that we couldn't open, presumably to protect something, so he used a wand to open a gap in the wall beside it. There was a dark lecturn within that had an unmarked book on it, and chests were against the walls all around it. Before we could investigate farther, though, a gas descended from the ceiling (there were holes here too) and coalesced into the form of Ythlena. She held a glowing energy blade in one hand and a crackling staff in the other. When we challenged her, reminding her that she had told us she was opposed to Sullinassauri, she admitted she had told a &quot;small lie&quot;. Then she said that she would not allow us to take from &quot;her possessions&quot;, and a ray shot from the staff to strike Falcor. Thankfully it didn't seem to affect him, but she was moving forward to strike as well., but doesn't seem to affect him.

I cried out that I had destroyed Marrellthenon, so I could destroy her! She recoiled slightly at my words, and Aramat burst into flame at my command, biting into her twice. There was almost a shift in her form as another shape, gaseous in nature, was displaced from the body with each strike. One more hit was enough and this time the gaseous form was fully dislodged, flowing through the holes in the floor. I felt a little guilty knowing that Ythlena had only been possessed but now lay dead. Falcor confirmed it, finding no sign of life, and he took the energy sword hilt and passed me the void dagger I had given her in the forest. We needed to follow the gaseous form somehow, but it could be almost anywhere by now.

We both had the sense that the book was trying to draw us in, tempting us to read it, but we were able to resist its call. I tried to strike it with Aramat, but it gripped the blade and I had to slide it out and down to get it free. Best to leave it well alone! Falcor found and grabbed some potions, asking me to look at a couple of boxes in the corner that he could sense dweomer within. I couldn't seem to open them, so he threw me a sack to put them in. As I picked up the second one, though, there was a blinding flash of light and I couldn't see any more! Falcor was grabbing some gems as this happened, and a door on the other side of the room we'd fought Ythlena in was opened by a legionnaire. A couple of them were together and saw Falcor, calling out an alarm.

I called on my patron to cure my blindness, feeling a burning from within that painfully built up behind my eyes until it was gone and I could see again. I realised that I had been staring into the void rather than being completely blind, not that the idea was any better. Falcor charged at the legionnaires, using the spirit blade of Ythlena to cut deeply into one, and on the reverse swing its body exploded and a black cloud was sucked into the blade to burn up. I stepped through behind him, passing him the sack to carry, and headed back towards the throne room. I paused by Ythlena's body, taking a moment to say a few words, and surprising myself that I actually hoped she found Kraldar - that would be better than Eversor's chaos or Sulinassauri's void!

The only way back led down, but we really wanted to keep climbing the tower. There wasa square corner of the throne room that was at odds with the shape of the tower, so we went to investigate that instead. Falcor started to search, and I was going to do the same when I noticed what looked like an outline of a door on the edge of my vision. I moved beside it and put my weight against the shape, hearing a lock break inside. There was a strange smell in the air, possibly a trap, but I managed to step back and take a moment to let it clear. Inside were some spiral stairs heading up, so we followed them as far as they would take us.

When we reached the top we stepped out of the corner of a wide open area with archways leading outside into the open air all around it. There were more of the massive bats around the edges, and a tall black form at the centre near a stone sarcophagus. The bats let off a screech as we entered the space, and the black figure turned towards us. We felt a pressure trying to move us apart, but managed to resist it and stay in place. Lightning arced from Falcor into the black form, which looked weakened and reduced once the shreds of darkness finished coming back together. I managed to exert some control over the nearest bat, forcing it to settle back onto the floor, but I could feel it fighting me.

Falcor sent magic missiles at the black form, peppering it with holes until it just fell apart and dissipated into nothing. I was just thinking what nice work that was when I was grabbed from behind and carried outside by another bat. It was holding me badly in one claw, but that wasn't particularly reassuring as I was now dangling over a drop of a hundred feet or so! Falcor deflects some bat claws as two of them tried to grab him, and instead focused on the sarcophagus, trying to use his wand to destroy it. It seemed to be well protected though, as it didn't have the desired effect. Suddenly Shalleth ran in from another corner, straight towards Falcor shouting at him to stop. She thrust a book at Falcor, teling him that it would help, but for once he was not convinced and didn't take the bait. There were legionnaires following her, so things were getting a bit busy!

I managed to control the bat that had me, releasing the other one, and get it to take me back into the tower. It was a relief, even if I did bump against the wall and slide unceremoniously across the floor on the way in. Suddenly the brightest daylight bathed the area as Falcor waved his new sword above his head. Shalleth fell to the floor, dead, with a gaseous form sinking straight down through the floor. The bats sprang and jumped away, flying as fast as they could away from the tower. I managed to stay but the light felt like it was burning my very soul, so I ran to shelter in the stairwell we had come up. The darkness had never felt so soothing.

Falcor tried to disintegrate the coffin, but still could not affect it. He tried the wand again, but once more was thwarted. I had descended, hoping to intercept Sullinassauri, but found Borarrba being held by more tall guardians and a couple of legionnaires. Falcor exploded a fireball amongst the legionnaires on his floor and some jets of flame shoot down through the holes near where I stood, affecting one of the black guardians. Both the guardians stepped forward as the body of Borarrba lifted into the air, presumably being possessed by Sullinassauri again. It seemed she had been keeping a close eye on us all along!

She came to life and reached down to pick up the black scimitar - the Aramat that would bring death to the dead. Shit. It was the perfect weapon to use against me, and I was trapped between her and burning energy above me. I stepped back and closed the door! I knew it wouldn't stop them, but it might buy a few seconds. Falcor was being attacked by the legionnaires on the floor above, but he fought back to smash two down, and then finally managed to blast a hole in the sarcophagus. As he did so Borarrba let loose an unearthly scream of pain that I could hear even through the walls.

The door was demolished in front of me, as I expected, and I slashed one of the black guardians as it forced its way through. It looked quite ragged after my attack, but it was Borarrba I was worried about. I threw the serpent staff on the floor and commanded it to constrict around her, although it would take a minute to grow to full size. It worked, though, as it grew alarmingly big in the confined space it was able to entwines her and start to constrict. Falcor knocked a legionnaire down and ran towards the stairs, knowing from my mental message that the true foe was with me. I cut through one of the guardians and it split in half before dissipating entirely, but the other teleported the snake outside the tower to fall to its &quot;death&quot; below. This freed Borarrba, and she dashed forward to strike with the scimitar. I could feel it sucking at my soul, wrenching it as the blade bit into me, but I managed to fight it off.

Falcor arrived and healed some of my damage, but I knew that we would have to defeat her quickly if I was going to survive; her sword was the worst! I was quickly struck again, and Falcor retaliated with lightning. Sadly it flowed around Borarrba without hurting her, although it did course through the other guardian leaving it quite ragged. I was struck again, and was sorely wounded, but Falcor was able to make my skin harden like stone and that deflected the next blow. I tried to protect myself from evil to buy us time. Falcor used a fireball next, although he aimed it into the room beyond the foe to avoid hurting us. The guardian was gone when I blinked the flash of light out of my eyes, and it did seem to have affected Borarrba a little.

I attacked her again, now that Falcor had afforded me some protection, and it was my own Aramat's turn to bite deep; again we could almost see her other form being dislocated from the physical body. Falcor grasped his staff and struck with another lightning bolt, this time Borarrba collapses as it danced across her skin, and the other form we had been seeing was thrown backwards out of the body as it fell. She was finally in her true form, looking thoroughly pissed off! Seeing Borarrba fall, I had turned to strike at a legionnaire behind us, but Sullinassauri came screaming at Falcor, scraping nastily at his face with clawed fingers. In return he landed two powerful blows that left gaping holes seemingly filled by a shade-like form. She stabbed her fingers into Falcor, leaving nasty wounds, but that gave me an opening. Aramat cut into Sullinassauri's exposed flank. It was the final blow we needed, and she started to burn with dark flames until she was utterly consumed.

With her death, the legionnaires collapsed into bones; whatever dark sorcery had animated them had been broken. A shockwave boomed out from where Sullinassauri had stood, and the tower shook worryingly. I grabbed the &quot;Aramat&quot; scimitar from the floor and immediately found that I was in conflict with a will contained within the sword; it wanted me to kill... everything! I suppressed it with a little effort and sheathed it in the scabbard on Borarrba's body, unbuckling that and holding it by the leather strap as we ran up to the open floor. Falcor headed for Shalleth's body, but I went to the edge. I paused to focus my mind and then jumped off to start plummeting towards the ground. We were still in an unnatural darkness, but now there were shafts of natural light starting to shoot through in places. I used my mind to catch myself and slow my fall before I got too close to the ground and landed lightly, immediately sprinting away so that I wouldn't get crushed if the tower fell. Just as I was about a hundred yards away and starting to think I was safe, I came across the serpent staff laying on the floor! Fate or just luck I don't know, but I gladly took it with me, looking back to see if Falcor was following behind.

He had just jumped, and I waved as he sprinted away. The noise was increasing and chunks of the tower were starting to fall around him, but he was able to get clear. We moved away and headed towards the nearest shaft of light, reasoning that we would be on Karmana within it. Then Falcor fished out the pyramid and concentrated to return us to Falcor's temple on the island. It was slightly surreal to appear in such a peaceful place with all the noise of the collapsing tower suddenly gone. We were safe; although we weren't sure what might be happening in the Saloroc nation we had left behind.

We took over a month to rest, resupply, train, and reflect. There were some items we needed to study that we had brought back. There was a spell book that was within Shalleth's backpack; Falcor had grabbed the whole pack because he didn't have time to search it with the tower crumbling around him. It had tried to drain Falcor's energy the first time he touched it, so he had left it to me! I protected myself from evil before touching it, and I was able to without harm but could see a shimmer as some kind of force rippled across the book and around my fingers. When I opened the book, though, a huge fireball exploded from within it! Thankfully the dweomer washed over me, as it sometimes did (another aspect of my heritage I suspect), and Falcor had taken a position some way back so although he felt the heat wash over him he was also unharmed. The book suffered a bit, though, with about half of the pages no longer useful. At least the malevolent presence seemed to have gone from it, which allowed Falcor to copy some spells into his own book; he was even able to teach me a couple once he had learned them. Add to that some scrolls we retrieved from the two long boxes and we had learned quite a lot before we were ready to travel again.

The weather had been improving, which suggested that the influence of the Forge was spreading again. There was no news from the Saloroc homeland, though, and no ships had been sighted leaving there. This did allow the Red Skulls to extend their journeys without challenge, increasing the fishing yield if nothing else. The Elvrabor brought news to the temple that Borarla was improving in health with the new spring, and they had reached a stalemate with the empire's forces in the south. The empire could not enter the forest, but the Elvrabor did not leave either. There was a similar situation in the east; there were still giantkin roaming in the mountains, but they were kept out of the forest. They had also renewed lines of communication with the Elvrahum in the north, which was heartening. Falcor was able to speak with Milada again, and she ordained one of the Elvrabor as her priest on Karmana, which was her first in living memory (for mortals anyway).