Re: The Haunting of the Rose - Chapter 3, Against Nature
As the bolt of mystic power struck the last remaining zombie, who was looking down at the sarcophagus at that moment, the undead creature simply shuddered, sighed and fell over backwards with a low thump. Despite how incredibly precarious their situation was, for a moment Midagarra seemed hesitant as she had held her spear like staff in her hands.
Battle for the Golden Sarchophagus: Players gain 30 Experience Points each.
Midagarra seemed visibly shaken as she walked towards the sarcophagus. She seemed lost in her own thoughts as she started at it for some time. Her hesitation seemed to be costing everyone precious time. Then she raised her staff, closed her eyes and stabbed the blue jewel at the glowing box.
It seemed impossible that a gemstone of any sort could pierce the stone of the sarcophagus yet it did, sliding noiselessly into the lid which did not seem to do much of anything. Midagarra opened one eye to look down at the situation. The jewel, half-imbedded in the lid grew in brightness until it was a brilliant pale blue-white light.
A cord boomed through the dark, like some celestial trumpet blaring, the noise was deafening. From the jewelled head of the staff, glowing, blue lines were flowing out over the sarcophagus and in moments the box was covered in some strange diagrams and glyphs the adventures did not recognize.
Suddenly the box shattered.
All the pieces pushed out of the way of the staff as the interior was exposed a dim red light shone out of it, bathing Midagarra in its glow. Still, Midagarra held onto the staff, her eyes wide and her expression apprehensive as from the broken sarcophagus rose a mass of iridescent blood. The staff raised itself, the jewel at its head pointing straight at the centre of the floating mass of glowing blood which began to shrink until it was only a ball a few inches across. Around the ball of blood a lowing figure of a headless human formed. Something flashed in the air above it, casting shadows and silhouettes of something towering up far into the sky lighting up the dark clouds from underneath as beams of sunlight began to break through the clouds.
The remains of the sarcophagus flew out from where they had been held loose by whatever magic the staff had used, the pieces glowed and spun into a circle about Midagarra and the headless, glowing, white, figure of a man. They began to lift up into the air buoyed by some unseen force.
Directly overhead the dark clouds churned about a brilliant hole in the clouds as stars streaked down from the aperture upon the village below. There were no crashes the stars resolved themselves into radiant angelic figures who gathered themselves in a series of tiered rings around the rising company of Midagarra and the headless, glowing figure. Who had by now reached a point so high above the adventures as to be barely discernible as individuals.
The angels began to sing.
The song was without words only the tones of their voices, and the melody they sang was both beautiful, peaceful and sorrowful. In conjured up feelings and memories of lose and despair, of hope and joy, of wonderment and awe.
Midagarra and the headless figure of a man was joined by someone or something descending from the radiant vortex above. The distance made it impossible for the adventurers to make out what or who it was, only that it was glowing much like the headless man. Midagarra was swallowed up in radiance and the newly arrived being or thing seemed to split as it and the glowing figure which had been Midagarra rose off into the vortex and dissapreared from view. The two figures that remained, one the headless man and the other a featureless radiance merged as the angelic song reached a crescendo.
The dark clouds overhead had all but for the glowing vortex disappeared, and the sky revealed was not one the adventurers recognized. It was filled with the radiance of countless suns each of different size and brilliance. The sudden warmth radiating down from the heavens was so intense that in moment’s beads of sweat were dripping down from on each of the adventurers. The undead simply collapsed everywhere as the magic that sustained them could not hold against glaring, celestial barrage.
The angels song ended and with it darkness returned, not from the clouds, but as the brightly lit sky of millions of suns faded into the more familiar night sky of Ancerenth, lit only by the stars and the pale, copper light of the full moon.
The angels flew back up into the glowing vortex in the only clouds in the sky, the remains of the sarcophagus and the glowing man that stood at its centre descended to the earth, coming to rest softly on the earth before the adventurers where the glow disappeared, leaving behind what appeared to be a completely nude young human, with short unkempt hair and a rather average build for a human man. He opened his eyes, blinking repeatedly and rubbing them revealing his strange eyes to his companions, they were black save for his scintillating, red irises. He looked around at the adventurers before him managed to croak a husky ”Hello?” then promptly stumbled forward and fell forward onto the dirt with a loud ”Oomph!” followed by a long groan.
One of the choir of angels was not rising up to the glowing vortex like its kin but was instead descending down to Kyssea.
