Struggle for Paruhapta X: Spirits More Evil Than Itself

As the uncanny, bat-like creatures fled to the halls north of the current room, the nauseating pressure was relieved from the ears of friend and foe alike. Kegho cast a glance after them before heading back to the hall to fight off the bearmen who had been trapped there by Teleptyon's magic. He and Antonious both struck mighty blows on the bearman who attempted to die honorably attacking Kegho, but fumbled his weapon as he weakened from massive blood loss. Herk watched in the dim lights of the high windows as the bat creatures fluttered against the walls before escaping into the wilderness of Paruhapta. Kegho turned and struck an even mightier blow upon the other bearman trapped with them. The wood of the door, reinforced by Teleptyon's magic held as the bearmen trapped outside it clawed and hacked at it with their axes. With that extra time, The Jiam spread oil on the floor near the door, Elissa braced herself by the burning brazier ready to tip it into the oil.

Herk and Khufu began exploring the rooms branching off from the hall, finding an empty storeroom and a small, well furnished personal chamber with rugs, tables, and reclining sofas. Alex collected the dropped implements in the bat room and returned them to their owners.

Antonious struck the last bearman who stumbled his riposte. Theo saw an opportunity and brought the edge of his shield down upon the base of the bearman's skull before he could right himself. With a sickening crack the bearman's neck was broken and he crumpled to the floor in a heap that twitched briefly before growing still forever.

The door began to splinter and the group readied themselves. Alex asked Teleptyon if he wanted to temporarily release the spell since they were ready and he called back from the darkened hall to the north "Nah, I'm good" and so they waited as bit by bit the bearmen destroyed the enchanted door. As the door began to splinter, Theo swept through the room granting himself, Elissa and Antonious a benediction of Edius to protect them from the flames of the brazier and oil. The door finally fell to the floor and the remaining bearmen snarled at the arrayed La Compagnia and battle was joined yet again.

Khufu and Herk opened the door to the room to the northwest and found tables laden with ritual implements, blood, and bits of flesh. They backed out and closed the door. As the door shattered to the south of them, Herk and Khufu opened a door onto a room dominated by a limestone altar and a crudely carved statue of a naked woman with six arms holding weapons, at her waist her body began to taper into a serpentine form. Herk tittered "Bewbs" and Khufu rolled his eyes and adjusted his robes uncomfortably before saying "demoness bewbs" and he lifted his mace to crush the demonic visage.

An arrow whistled through the air and passed through two open doorways to narrowly miss one of the bearmen, the one in front charged into the room as Theo reached across to tip the hot coals into the oil. The bearman howled as flames licked up his greasy fur. As he writhed in agony, Elissa sliced his head off with the bone scimitar she had lifted off the bearman chief. Kegho shot an arrow into the armpit of another bearman in the doorway as Antonious stepped into the flames which wended around his body without touching him and grinned at the two outside the door. One pushed into the room and Elissa dispatched him as well. The last fled south around the leech pool and disappeared into the warren of rooms that way.

With the din of battled ended, Alex called down to Elissa that the dwarves had found a blood spattered altar and a blood filled corpse might be useful . "Oh and loot the bodies. Waste not, want not and all that." Kegho and Elissa found a few Arhani coins and dragged the freshest bugbear corpse up to the doorway of the altar room where they found a most curious tableau: two dwarves mashing at the face and breasts of a statue with hammer and chisel, while Teleptyon flipped through his grimoire—Theo and Alex alternately vying for his attention and talking one over the other: "It's the same scratchy script as we found in the arena, can you do the bit where your eyes glow purple?" "she's a demoness, an agent of Abythos, flip to the bit in your little book about Abythian creatures" and so forth. Teleptyon pushed the stump of a finger into the page and said "Says here she's a servator of 'Mormo'" that last word tasted slightly metalic to Teleptyon like he had bit his tongue, and the room grew quiet for a moment. Theo inhaled sharply "there was a cult of Mormo in the early Rexan Republic. Foul cultists, they were driven out and the church teaches they were utterly destroyed." Teleptyon scratched notes into the margins of the page. "An Abythian abomination" Theo's eyes lit up with zeal as he bade Antonious to join with the Keb in smashing the altar and idol into dust. Alex who had been tracing some of the undecipherable Abythian script, hoping it pointed to a secret compartment, scampered from the room as a mace cracked the bit of text he was reading into gravel.

The Jiam glanced back into the main room as the rest filtered out covered in rock dust and a sense of accomplishment, the gnarl in the uculu had eased, but the weight of it had shifted into the room they now entered. Gooseflesh ran up his neck as they opened the door to the room filled with ritual implements.

As light spilled into the room the party was revolted by piles of viscera, disconnected pieces of mummies, hammers and cruel looking maces encrusted with blood an dried brain matter. An old wooden table was deeply stained with blood both old and fresh and the room stank of brushed copper, bile and shit. Theo looked up from the table and was startled as he noticed a prisoner chained to the wall, arms up and spread from high manacles. Vomit caught in his throat as he took in the sight: something that may once have been a man, but was now the upper part of a torso, its ribcage splayed open and head lolled forward, hanging by its arms on the stone wall spine and organs hanging loose and rotten from what was once its chest. As he approached to release the corpse from its profane resting position, his mouth filled with ashes as he realized with creeping horror that desiccated heart still beat.

Khufu stared unblinking at the horror as he told of cultists eventually being turned into corrupt undead fetishes in some sects. He crinkled his nose in disgust saying he had hoped it was not still being practiced.

Theo began to splash the cursed thing with holy water, chanting the Ouranic liturgy to hallow the space. The head reared up at the touch of holy water and it writhed back and forth its jerky like muscles pulling as the manacles chafed its long rotten wrists. Foam appeared at its mouth, then nose, then eye sockets as black ichor dripped down it severed spine and oozed from the osseous pores of its cloven ribs and onto the floor.

Lighting in the room flickered even as Theo and Alex's lanterns blessed by Aelos remained bright.

As Alex watched the spectacle he felt time slow and a presence, like maggots crawling across his skin, exploring the meridians where Nekhtebu had once invaded his being. He began prayers to Dhureus and Bennos, but as the sensation moved down his back it recoiled at something and he heard a papery voice in his mind whisper "this is not for you" as the crawling sensation fled from him. He thanked his gods, and grudgingly whatever scars Nekhtebu had left on him. One might have noticed a spark of something paternalistic and serpentine to Alex's appearance, but only a second had passed and the corrupt fetish had only just stopped moving. "Brother Theo, I believe something reached out during your exorcism and tried to gain purchase in other hosts." Alex offered, but nobody else had noticed, and Alex was not sure how to explain his intervention.

So Alex went to work on what he was best at and sorted the ritual implements out by perceived utility and value. Theo was aghast at the idea of repurposing any of the implements in the room, but Alex countered that repurposing the tools of evil for the purposes of good was also in-and-of-itself a good thing. Khufu joined the conversation with a list of spices that could be added to a forge fire to purify tainted ritual implements, and ceremonies for deconsecrating unholy relics. Teleptyon began looking through the implements and flipping through his grimoire noting he had only ever read descriptions of some of the implements. Kegho stopped their increasingly fractious discussion to politely suggest that scrying, consecrating, deconsecrating, reconsecrating, or destroying could all be decided on when they were not under constant threat of attack. Everyone thought that was sensible.

The Jiam having rejoined now that the worst of the karappu taint had been ameliorated "About that, I think this is the lair of the part-serpent people we've been encountering."

They moved into the rooms to the north closing the doors to the altar room, and the ritual implement room as they exited. To the near left and the far right were doors and after finding the left door locked they paused and ate, and Alex fiddled with the lock and found it easy. The Jiam opened it and found a set of stairs heading up. A voice warned him that if they went up the stairs while the first floor was occupied they may get trapped and he backed out and closed the door. Kegho had moved toward the door to the top right by himself.