Rune Seeker

The lich didn’t look the same as the Remnant of Ur’Thal from the necropolis; he wasn’t wearing the Second-Skin of Ur’Thul Hiral now wore. Instead, he was dressed in rich purple-and-silver robes, a gold crown on his head and jewelry on every finger. His eyes had the familiar blue flames within the sockets, though they roared like funeral pyres, and the tears leaking down his cheeks were thick and bright, almost too bright to even look at. Despite the differences, there was no mistaking the cold power radiating off the creature above them.

“Geckodiana, I’m impressed you managed to appear inside my castle while my gaze was focused outwards,” Ur’Thul said. “Now you’ll…” He cut off as Hiral’s RHC spat a bolt of Impact at his face, only for it to deflect off the column of blue light. “Pathetic. You thought I would leave myself unprotected?”

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” Hiral said, lifting his other RHC and pulling the trigger at the same time lightning and fire also struck the light curtain. Like his first attack, all three blasts ricocheted harmlessly away.

“As long as Ur’Thul is within the column, we can’t get in and he can’t get out,” Li’l Ur said.

We can’t reach him? Odi?

The Lizardman had his back pressed up against the column of light like it was a solid wall, and his head followed the lich’s descent until it stopped to hover upside-down a few feet above the Urn.

“How do we stop it, Odi?” Hiral asked, uselessly pulling his triggers again.

“You don’t, fools,” Ur’Thul said, and his blue-flame eyes stopped on Hiral. “You have my Second-Skin? How is that possible? It doesn’t matter, I’ll take it from your corpse.” He turned his attention back to inspecting the seals. “Ah. I see. Ingenious, Geckodiana, if I hadn’t arrived to stop it.”

“It’s already begun,” Odi said. “Even you can’t destroy the crystals now that they’ve begun gathering energy.”

“True,” Ur’Thul said, extending a skeletal hand towards the Urn. Black mist like steam from a boiling pot shot out from under the lid, most of it falling like it had weight. It rolled down the throne like a waterfall, pooling at the floor, and then spread towards the edges of the circle within seconds. The mist that didn’t fall, though, climbed into the air around the seals, growing denser and denser. “Luckily, I don’t need to destroy them myself. Seals like these have limits, while I do not.”

“Boss?” Wule asked, an orb of cold slapping into the light column and having no more effect than anything else.

“Open to ideas,” Seena said.

Hiral’s eyes stayed fixated on the black mist—That has to be death energy—then widened when it crawled up and over the circle of roots. The column of light wasn’t containing that!

“Don’t let it touch you!” Odi warned him in a harsh voice. “It’s pure, concentrated death.”

Hiral didn’t second-guess the Lizardman, quickly jumping back several steps until he was ten feet from the column of light. The mist seemed to stop around the five-foot mark, but it was better not to take chances with something like that.

“Yes, run while you can,” Ur’Thul said. “Once I’m finished with this seal, there’ll be nowhere for you to go.”

“Odi?” Hiral called to the Lizardman standing knee-deep in the mist within the column. At least it didn’t seem to have any negative effects on the undead.

“I don’t know,” Odi said.

“Ur’Thul is using the energy of the Urn to overpower the limits of the seals,” Li’l Ur said. “The only way to stop him is to siphon off the power he’s using.”

Ur’Thul’s head slowly turned in the little lich’s direction. “After I’m finished here, you and I are going to discuss exactly what sort of abomination you are. Then I will pull you apart piece by small piece.”

“We just need to suck up that mist?” Nivian asked.

“Just?” Seeyela said.

“Yes,” Li’l Ur said.

“I’m counting on you, Wule,” Nivian said, and then he strode forward.

“Counting on me for what?” Wule asked, voicing what everybody else was thinking.

“Fool. You come to your own death,” Ur’Thul said as Nivian stalked past Hiral and into the hanging black mist. As soon as his feet touched it, his health bar in the Party Interface began to drop like it had a leak in it, but he kept going until he was standing right beside the column of blue light.

“Wule!” Seena shouted.

“I know!” Wule said, solar energy pulsing off him to replenish Nivian’s health bar. “What are you doing?”

In answer, Nivian dropped to one knee and slammed the base of his Aegis of Extinction to the ground. “This,” the tank said, the mouth of the shield opening up and sucking in the mist like it was taking a deep breath. Within seconds, the ground and throne were visible again, leaving just a steady stream of death-mist extending from the Urn to the mouth of Nivian’s shield.

Even the mist pooling around the seals had thinned, once again revealing the glowing scripts, and Ur’Thul’s blue-flame eyes narrowed at Nivian.

Nivian gave the lich a wink.

“You’ll die before you stop me,” Ur’Thul said, pulling harder on his connection to the Urn. The stream of mist pouring out doubled in size, but it still all shot straight into Nivian’s shield.

“Not on my watch,” Wule said, keeping Nivian’s health up even as the corrosive death energy ate away at the tank’s life.

“Left, banner,” Seena ordered, and the double shaped the Banner of Courage immediately.

Golden light washed over Wule, increasing his solar absorption and granting a minor healing effect directly to Nivian.

“You can’t win on your own,” Nivian said to the arch-lich.

Then, as much as a lipless, undead Lizardman could, Ur’Thul smiled. “That may be true.” He held out his other hand, and three shadows leapt off it. No, not shadows. Copies.

The three other versions of Ur’Thul sailed over the party faster than even Hiral could track with his eyes, then spread when they reached the center of the room. Dropping to the ground, each landed in one of the other root-circles, and more columns of light burst to the ceiling—one red, one blue, and one green.

But it wasn’t the columns of light that were the worry—no, it was how the pulsing light within the roots grew in intensity, as if they were pumping additional energy towards the throne.

By the time Hiral turned from the three copies back to the Urn, it had more than doubled—tripled—the amount of black mist venting. Nivian’s shield valiantly continued sucking up as much death energy as it could, but it was quickly losing the battle, more of the terrible energy seeping out around his legs. The tank grimaced in pain as his health started dropping faster, though Wule just pumped more healing into him, bouncing his health bar around like a ball.

“Nivian, get out of there,” Hiral said.

“No,” Nivian said, teeth clenched. “If I stop now, the mist will spread.”

“He’s right,” Ur’Thul said with a chuckle. Then he looked at Nivian. “You’ll serve me well in death.”

“Seena?” Wule said, another pulse of healing energy pushing into Nivian.

“I don’t know!” Seena said, hurling a ball of fire to splash uselessly against the blue column of light surrounding the Urn.

“The roots are supplying more energy to the Urn than before,” Hiral said, mentally playing out different scenarios. “We could destroy them… but we’d just flood the room with death energy faster.”

Instead, he aimed his weapon back at one of the three copies and pulled the trigger.

The bolt hit the red aura extending to the ceiling, and rather than deflecting off to the side, it passed straight through the field and the copy of the lich to shoot out the other side.

“That won’t work,” Li’l Ur said. “They’re spectral copies. You won’t be able to harm them.”

“What are they even doing?” Seeyela asked, stalking towards the one shrouded in green.

“Little imposter,” Ur’Thul hissed, “if you don’t want to truly suffer, keep your mouth shut.”

“Controlling the flow of energy from the nexus points of the roots,” Li’l Ur said after only a second’s hesitation.

“If they can do it, can we?” Seena asked, eying the icy blue column.

“Their auras will kill you,” Li’l Ur said. “They’re much stronger than they were in the necropolis.”

“So are we,” Seena said. “What do we have to do?”

Li’l Ur hesitated, a look of obvious worry crossing his face.

“Tell me,” Seena insisted.

“You’ll need to enter the circle of light, survive their auras, and rip control of the nodes from them,” Li’l Ur said.

“How?” Seeyela asked, getting closer to the green column.

“It’s like Cycling,” Li’l Ur said.

“Wule, this is going to be tough on you,” Seena said.

“What’s new?” Wule asked.

“We need to do all three?” Seena asked the little lich.

“Yes, if you want Nivian to live,” Li’l Ur said.

“I’ll handle ice guy,” Seena said.

“I’ve got Mr. Poison,” Seeyela said, taking a deep breath within her Armor of the Ghost-Web Matriarch.

Hiral looked at the red column, then at Yanily. “That one has to be me,” he said, despite the traumatic memory of his last trip within the Blood Aura. At least his Coat of Ur’Thuloffered some additional resistance to blood… but would it be enough?

“What about me?” Yanily asked at the same time something thudded to the ground somewhere off to the side. When the withered undead Lizardman pushed itself to its feet and more thuds sounded around the room, the spearman had his answer. “I’ll keep them off you.”

“We will,” Right added, his fist already glowing with purple flame.

“You’ll fail, is what you’ll do,” Ur’Thul said. “And your friend will die to serve me.” The black mist had practically filled the column of blue, and Nivian knelt in it up to his chest. The tank’s face was sallow and pinched, like being in the mist was literally sucking the life out of him.

But he didn’t move. Didn’t give up.

And neither would the rest of them.

Hiral spun, sheathing his weapons as he went, then launched himself into the blood aura with a burst of Rejection before he could really consider how terrible an idea this was.

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