Entering Nacreous

In Nacreous, Advisor Soder stands at the edge of the Corpsedrop and stares out at the glowing specks of golden and icy blue light that are streaking ever closer. "They are coming," he croons to the line of ghoulish apprentices that he has gathered there. "And they've discovered our friends in the Pinnacle." He tries to whistle a jaunty little tune, but one of the lips in the borrowed body has fallen off and all that comes out is a dry hiss. He settles for a grin as he turns to the cast-off wizards and sorcerers that did not fit elsewhere into the defense. His grin fades almost immediately as he realizes that the troops are staring at the distant lights instead of casting their spells. In irritation, Soder almost has to raise his voice.

"I know you all feel the power thrumming through you. The joy of Imbindarla's song may be driving you into a stupor, but I myself will eat your innards if you don't focus! Ganest didn't get slain by the accursed sun demon and give up his endless life for nothing. Use the spell he gave us. Far strike them, and give them something else to think about as they try to outrun the spectres!"

"I'll keep the troops focused," hisses a horrible sibilant from behind him. "You're wanted at the trap."

Soder turns to regard the repulsive cross between a beholder and a mindflayer, one of Pechel's early works and an unqualified success. Pechel called it a mindwitness; ahh, such a shame to have lost him forever near Akin's Throat when the Goddess fell. He was so very good at his task, and it was difficult to find any former druid-wizards at all, never mind one who took to fleshcrafting so. Pechel had been with the White Kingdom for more than forty years, and in that time he alone had developed the necrotic techniques that had given the ghouls such an advantage when expanding their empire. All gone, gone in a single blow from a githzerai's fist. A githzerai! Outsiders had no call butting in and interfering; really, people should learn to just mind their own business. That's what polite people do.

"Very good. I see you have the giants well supplied with ammunition, and grouped so that their field of fire overlaps. You know our task: delay them until our sovereign finishes his meal. It shouldn't be too difficult." Soder winks, and the watchbeast winks back with one of its many eyes. Behind it, the ghoulish mages are finally firing their fiery bolts far into the air in a cataclysm of fiery rain that the invaders will be hard-put to dodge.

"You best go, advisor. I'll coordinate things here."

"Time to change my outfit, then." Soder's giggle is dry and papery as he shifts. He can't remember the last time he was this excited, because this is a day he's been looking forward to for quite some time. His beloved King is about to ascend, yes indeedy, but that's hardly the best part. No, the best part is that his new friends are finally coming to visit.

-- o --

"Ooof," Mara grunts as a fiery bolt slams into her misty body and causes her vaporous form to steam. Another bolt flashes down within a foot of her and is only avoided by her divinely enhanced reflexes. The barrage from Nacreous is coming faster now that the group is closing, and the undead demons behind them had almost succeeded in cutting the group off from its goal; the closest spectre managed to pull within thirty or forty feet of the hindmost Defender before the group of heroes began to gain ground by dint of greater speed. Now the spectres are trailing behind the group like the tail of a comet, falling behind but doing everything in their power to trap their prey. Mara shivers at the subsonic screams of the monsters. "Let's hear it for countersong," she mutters over the mindlink.

"You said it," replies Nolin mentally. "There's just nothing like a couple of rollicking verses of the song 'Folderol, I did her all day' to cut off that basso-profundo of terror."

Priggle gets hit by one of the fire blasts, as does Burr-Lipp. Cruciel flings herself in front of Velendo misty body to take a hit for herself. The group closes in on Nacreous and rises above the edge of the cliff, and for the first time they get a good aerial view of the city.

Here we are, whispers Elder in Stone Bear's ear, you're here at last.

The shaman looks down through the magical link with Agar's eyes, and there sure are a lot of things moving.

There are giants near the edge of the cliff. There are dozens of companies of ghouls arrayed strategically throughout the city, each one with hundreds of soldiers. There are three different spots where the flame blasts are coming from. There are elementals visible, and undead mindflayers, and aerial troops of some sort, and thousand of flickering green corpselights spinning back and forth around the cenotaphs and pillars of shining bone. For a few seconds, Nolin wishes he was an artist.

The group speeds towards the very edge of the city, but at the last second Agar's true seeing shows him that a huge wall of magic blocks the edge of the cliff. His remarkable mind picks up the subtleties of the dweomer almost instantly, and he shouts in panic that's usually reserved for an intrusive insect.

"Do not cross the edge of the rift!" Agar sheers desperately off to the left.

"What?" asks Mara, confused.

"Do NOT cross the edge of the rift! There's some kind of double barrier covering the whole of the cliff's edge, consisting of a combination between anti-unlife and anti-life. Don't try to cross it."

"That's bad." Nolin glances over his shoulder as he follows the instructions. "Do we drop the windwalk?" It's immediately apparent that if they do the spectres will catch up. "Cancel that. We'll have to lure them farther back." As one, the group bears to the left and does a flyby along the outer edge of the invisible wall, moving sixty miles an hour as they speed along the length of the city. Huge clouds of arrows soar out from innumerable archers, almost all falling harmlessly into the depths of the black canyon. If the tingle of a ghoulish dispel magic goes off in their midst, the effect is too feeble for anyone to notice.

"Do you see that?" asks Stone Bear, still viewing out of Agar's eyes. "Excavation equipment in four places up and down the body. They're digging in to Her."

Priggle speaks up. "There's some near her chest, and a few other places, but most of the activity is up near her head."

"Braaaaiiiinnnnnnsssss," jokes Agar. Only Proty chortles at the joke.

"That's where the Ivory King will be."

"I could dispel the barrier with dispel evil if I can get close enough and get solid," considers Velendo. "And I have a unique wand of maximized dispel magic. There are only four or five more charges left on it, but that might be able to punch a hole through it. Either way, those, you guys would have to draw the cloakers away."

Then the Defenders are past the city, the spectres strung out in a flickering line behind them. One of the spectres makes a dash for the city and bounces off the wall. "Hmm," says Velendo. "It's an anti-everything shield. Objects and magic goes through it, but they just don't want anything living or dead going through it. Well, that's sensible." His tone is of grudging respect, with perhaps a hint of fear. "It keeps out spirits who are unfriendly to them. If there's something they want to keep out, I want to let them in."

"Except then we'd be trapped inside with ghouls and spectres," points out Stone Bear logically.

"I could pray for a miracle and probably kill them all," gropes Velendo. "Maybe."

"Not yet," says Malachite.

"Then anyone have any good ideas?" Another barrage of Ganest's far strikes crashes down amongst the party, doing exceptional amount of damage. "Damn it! I can dispel the windwalk effect on just one of us, but that person will get swarmed by spectres."

"Malachite has sealed life, right? He's immune to their level draining." Nolin voice has a certain amount of glee at volunteering his former cohort.

Malachite snorts in disdain. "They'll simply claw me to pieces. If this is the right time, then fine. I will gladly give my life so that we can succeed, but you won't have me for the rest of this. If this is the right time – "

"Nonononono," Nolin interrupts. "Never mind. It wasn't a good idea."

"You don't think you can take those spectres yourself?" Stone Bear asks Malachite.

"I might. I'd certainly get most of them. But one burst alone won't be enough to kill them, and if I fail I won't be there to truly slay the Ivory King. I'm not sure we want to take that chance."

"Then we need to find an alternative."

They speed around in a huge circle, trailing the incorporeal undead farther and farther behind them and leaving the ghoul-lights of Nacreous at their backs. As they fly they discuss different plans, finally settling on one that might work. They circle around to buy themselves more time, perhaps almost a minute, then close on Nacreous once again while dodging fiery bolts. They slow as they draw parallel to Imbindarla's entombed feet, down near the section of the city where the ghoulish Defenders first chewed on a zombie Mara, for the defenses are sparser here. Velendo dismisses the wind walk on himself and Cruciel and they snap into solidity with a jarring thud.

The icy cold of negative energy batters at them and foul vapors sear their throats, but Agar's spells hold.

Cruciel's white wings thunder against the chill air as she catches the elderly cleric in her strong arms. She grips him tightly and desperately tries to avoid the hail of arrows, boulders and magical spells that arc in their direction. Velendo pulls out his wand from his belt, making sure not to accidentally drop it into the darkness below, and aims for the section of magic wall in front of him.

Seen through Velendo's true seeing and arcane sight, a small section of wall shatters like a flung crystal goblet. "Go!" screams Velendo through the mindlink. "Fly in!" The rest of the adventurers, all still in windwalk form, stream forwards through the gap in the wall.

"What's that?" gasps Agar. "It's beautiful!" He points to a bulbous mindwitness five hundred feet away, entranced by its wiggling tentacles and bobbing eye stalks. "I bet it wants to be my friend."

"Don't bet on it," grimaces Mara. "We need to keep moving." Nolin agrees with a smirk.

"I'm just not feeling very friendly today."

The mindwitness, however, seems fixated on the soft and squishy targets of Velendo and Cruciel two hundred feet away, and the other ghouls obey its will. Fireballs go off around the elderly cleric, but his spell resistance protects him; Cruciel isn't as lucky as her wings ignite. Several boulders fall short of the couple, and poisoned bone arrows snap like twigs as they bounce off the cleric's shield.

"Come on, Velendo!" The rest of the group takes a few seconds to survey the city, the Goddess's corpse and the tumult of the ghouls. "If I was a fat guy eating my mother," muses Stone Bear, "where would I go?"

"We don't want to waste firepower just bombarding excavation sites," frowns Malachite. He can see excavations in the bone of the cavern floor upon a leg, the belly, an arm, but by far the largest concentration of digging equipment and ghouls is on the far end of the city up by the Goddess's head. There is no immediate sign of the Ivory King. Stone Bear tries to use Velendo's sight to see if there is any activity around the heart; while there is certainly an excavation in the area of the belly or the chest, it looks completely abandoned.

"I'll plug the hole in the wall as soon as we're through," announces Velendo. From behind him, he can hear once again the distant screams of the spectres. He casts his anti-undead positive wall to plug the hole as Cruciel flaps forward, and is horrified to find that the negative energy in the air around him completely overwhelms and swallows his own holy prayer. He tries to prevent it but he doesn't know enough about magical theory to prevent the effect, and the spell completely dissipates.

"Crap," he says emphatically.

"Nolin, Claris," murmurs Stone Bear. "I think it's a fine time to put your plan into action. They're starting to close in."