Tower Battle

"You didn't think I would come that unprepared?" Ireselan looked in disdain at the newly reanimated skeleton. "While you were on your little jaunt in the woods, my men were doing a little side job for me." Ireselan pulled out a long, ivory-white rod tipped with a rats skull and wrapped around with ebony engravings of skeletons.

"My Rod of Command!" Taliesor the ghost choked in rage, his eyes burning blue in beat to those of the skeleton that had now paused in its shuffling advance across the room. "Where did you steal that from?"

"It's not stealing if you're already dead," Ireselan laughed in suprise. "You're still around, Taliesor old man? I guess you just can't keep a necromancer down these days, even if he's dead." With that the mans' eyes sparked with purple light, and he gestured with the Rod. "Obey me, creatures of the night!"

His theatricality would have been comical, if at that moment they didn't hear the sounds of the entire village moaning for their blood and clambering up the stairs. Sorn peeked out of one of the tower windows. Skeletons were clambering up the sides like grotesque overgrown spiders, skittering and clawing up the rough stone. As one of them reached the window he banged the shutters on its face, and it fell down the ledge, but two more took its place.

Valasar was already wading through the men at arms, lashing out with tail and claws and spear. One man made the mistake of slashing at the lizardman's face with his sword. Valasar dodged and bit down on the man's hand. Another of the men got a lucky swipe, scoring an angry line of red across Valasar's side. A quick kick opened sent him flying through the nearest window, screaming until an abrupt silence told them he had hit the ground.

Heljah and Quinten borded up the windows as best they could, standing their ground against the growing onslaught of the undead. Sorn darted between them, lobbing fire-flasks through the cracks. The concussive blasts through the skeletons back to the ground, but others scrambled to take their place. Heljah's axe sheered through the skeleton limbs left and right. Wherever she placed her blade, skulls rolled and ribs cracked. Quinten finished off two skeletons, and then turned and quickly dodged as the corpse of Taliesor uttered a nefarious spell that rolled out of his mouth in drips of black fire and sent their teeth on edge.

"Get my Rod!" Taliesor the ghost swiped in helpless fury at the men at arms, but he couldn't touch them.

Kol and Han fought skeletons on one side and Men at arms on the right. Han pulled out his kamateka with a snap and the long-wired weapon tangled between the feet of three of the men at arms. Taking the opening, Kol paused for a moment to aim carefully, and in quick succession shot off three throwing knives at Ireselan. He blocked one with his free hand, and dodged the third, but the second dug squarely into the forarm holding the Rod of Command. He snarled in rage as his hand spasmed open.

Suddenly the fight was a bit more fair, as the undead horde turned on men at arms and Quinten's party alike. Among the chaos, the ghost of Taliesor pounced forward. Somehow the insubstantial ghost managed to hold onto the Rod of Command. His face twisted in fury, his hand raised, he shouted, "None of you will have my secrets!" He touched the staff to the floor of the room, and suddenly arching lines of purple fire traced themselves in intricate arcane patterns across the room. The light from the fire grew brighter and brighter, centering on the undead necromancer.

Their was a flash of light, momentarily blinding everyone, and an unutterable cold that sunk deep into their bones. When they could see again, cold dread pierced their souls like knives.

They were no longer in the tower. They stood on the slope of a great, black mountain. The sky was night, and twinkled with alien stars, but a cold sun burned down on them from the sky, illuminating in harsh clarity their monstrous environs. All around them twisted black grocks loomed in menacing shapes, undefinable and disturbing. Nothing grew on the mountain except coldly glowing green lichen. A tower stood twenty miles or so in the valley below them, the highest room still glowing an angry purple.

Quinten was there, and Heljah, and Valasar. The Twins stood panting, back to back, but Sorn was missing.

A little ways off they could see Ireselan standing, flanked by six of his cronies. For the moment they just stood, staring at their cold surroundings, shocked for a moment from their struggles.

"Where are we?" Quinten murmured. Though his voice was quiet, it carried in sharp echoes across the landscape, and forty yards away Ireselan answered him, his voice bitter.

"The Shadowlands." He spat on the ground and cluched his wounded forearm into his side. "That blasted magician trapped us all in the Shadowlands."