Chapter Three

Ghost Of A Chance

The companions took some time to rest and eat a meal before they resumed exploring the Hall. Another half hour of travel brought them into a second residential district, far larger than the one they’d just left. A large castle had point of pride on an island set in an underground river on the eastern side of the cavern. The shoreline along the mainland side of the river was lined with buildings that resembled barracks and guard houses. Most of them were crumbled ruins now, broken by war and time.  

After a brief conversation, the companions agreed to search the castle first. They knew it was the most likely place where any treasure could still be found. Searching the homes and stores of the rest of the city could take days, if not weeks, and wasn’t likely to provide enough reward to be worth it. The companions saw more corpses as they passed through the streets on their way to the river, but nothing attacked them.

When the companions finally reached the shoreline, they weren’t surprised to find that all the bridges connecting the mainland to the island were destroyed.

“Now what do we do?” Seline asked her friends.

I could probably swim, Ma’non’go said, but I doubt that’s a good idea.

“We could take a couple of those boats,” Revafour said, pointing off to their left. Following Revafour’s gaze, his friends saw several boats, their bronzewood hulls still strong despite the many years they’d been docked, tied to a well-crafted wharf.

“Normally I’d agree, but we need to test the waters first,” Airk said.

“And I mean that literally.”

The companions had no trouble finding enough mattresses and blankets in the ruined barracks and guard houses to fill one of the boats. When they made the boat look like it was weighed down with passengers, they pushed it out into the river.

The boat drifted downstream, moving slowly but inevitably towards the island. It had just reached the halfway point when the water all around it suddenly exploded. The boat and its contents were torn to shreds by a group of thrashing forms that seemed to come out of the water. The cavern was too dark for the companions to make out exactly what the forms were, but they could imagine what would’ve happened to them if they were the ones in the boat.

“What were those things?” Revafour said, squinting as he tried to get a good look at the frenzied creatures.

“Giant gars, I think,” Airk said. “They’re a constant hazard in underground lakes and rivers. They could swallow any of us whole. Now you can see what I meant about testing the waters. We’ll need to find another way across.”

I may have an idea, Ma’non’go said to his friends as he glanced at the siege equipment littering the grounds around the barracks and guard houses. The dwarven race was nearly as skilled as its gnomish cousin at engineering, and no race in all the Oerth was better at metalcraft. Some of the equipment was still intact and functioning, despite all the years since the Hall’s collapse.

In particular, he was looking at a ballista that was still fitted with a spear of mithril.

Luna sighed with relief as she slid her mace into her belt. She hadn’t minded the effort the companions put into dragging the ballista onto a suitably high pile of rubble. Nor did she mind the time the companions had to put into finding a suitable rope to tie to the ballista bolt, and the sacks some of them needed to carry their heavy armor in.

What she did mind, though, was what came after. Once the ballista was in place, the companions fired it into a guardhouse on the other side of the river. The ballista’s bolt functioned as a sort of harpax or grapnel, being securely wedged into the guardhouse’s stonework. The rope tied to the ballista bolt then served as a bridge that the companions had to crawl across one after another, some of them carrying their heavy armor in sacks tied to their packs so it wouldn’t hinder their efforts. They made it across safely, but Luna was distinctly aware of the swirling river waters below them, and the giant gar lurking in their depths. She’d always disliked water, nervous at how helpless she would be against any monsters within it.

Luna prayed her thanks to Pelor for the companions’ safe crossing and tried to put it out of her mind. The companions were approaching the duke’s castle, and her friends needed her to be ready.

It wasn’t long before the companions found the first set of bodies. To their surprise, the bodies were those of gnomes, humans, halflings and even an elf.

“It looks like we weren’t the first adventurers to come here,” Revafour said. “There’s something odd about them, though…”

“Odd indeed,” Luna said as she knelt down for a closer look at the bodies. They were all torn and maimed, as she expected, but she was astonished at how old several of them looked. Their hair was stark white, their limbs particularly frail and their joints were unusually stiff.

That was a very, very bad sign.

“Gather around, all of you,” she said, as she took a vial of holy water from her pocket. Chanting a spell to Pelor, she dipped her finger in the holy water and touched each over friends’ foreheads in turn, imbuing them with her god’s blessings. She then returned the holy water to her pocket, taking out a candle of incense instead. Lighting it, she moved her hand in a circular fashion, causing the incense smoke to rise in a circular pattern as she cast a second spell on herself.

A few minutes later, the companions found themselves in a large feast hall, their weapons at the ready and their nerves on edge. There were several doors leading to and from the hall. The companions heard the footsteps and howls of a rapidly approaching mob come from each one, right before the monsters stormed into the room.

The monsters were humans and dwarves in life, but undeath twisted them into something else entirely. Their limbs were stretched into uneven lengths, their eyes bulged in their sockets like tumors, their tongues hung grotesquely from their mouths and their teeth and nails were grown far larger than in life. They were a deathly leprous white in color, and emanated a stench that spoke to the rotten corruption infecting them. The stench revealed the monsters to be ghasts, a type of undead more powerful than the ghouls they so resembled.

Luna once again invoked Pelor’s power, forcing many of the ghasts back. Her friends raised their weapons and tore into the ghasts that got past Luna’s attack, as the blessings she cast on them enhanced their skill and power.

The ghasts weren’t what Luna was afraid of, though. She knew what else was coming, and she knew it’d arrived when the ghasts she repelled with Pelor’s power were suddenly able to charge in again.

A horrific white thing materialized among the ghasts, inspiring its minions’ efforts against the companions. Like some of the ghasts, it too was human once. Now, it was a ghost, a tortured, enraged mockery of the man it was in life, its very form distorted by the malice that was practically tangible around it. Ghosts were some of the most dreadful undead of all, the spirits of people so wicked in life that their evil allowed them to continue their depravity even in death.

Luna expected the ghost ever since she saw how aged and withered the adventurers’ bodies were. Ghosts could age and wither the living just by seeing or touching them, and Luna was afraid this one would do that to her friends. Fortunately, they were all experienced adventurers. With the help of Pelor’s blessing, Luna’s friends all managed to fight off the ghost’s evil power, causing it to howl in rage. The ghost lunged at her as she pulled her mace from her belt, crying out for Pelor to be with her.

The ghost recognized Luna’s power against its undead minions, and the healing powers she wielded. That made her the natural choice for the ghost to possess, to deprive her friends of those powers. The horror seemed to flow into her mouth, nose and ears, and her eyes glowed for a moment as it tried to take control of her body.

Luna’s second protection spell, the one she’d cast with the incense, helped her resist the ghost’s efforts. Marshalling all her willpower and all the support she got from Pelor, she retook control of herself and expelled the ghost from her body. The ghost looked angrier than ever as it rematerialized in front of her. It thrust a clawlike hand at her, now determined to simply age her to death.

Luna’s protections and blessings helped shield her from the ghost’s attack. It struck short, only touching her shield instead of the flesh it needed to age her. It thrust its other hand at Luna, but she was quicker, striking it right on the arm with her mace. The ghost howled again, this time in pain. Its form rippled briefly as it flew back and Luna’s mace glowed brightly.

Luna smiled at that. Her mace was enchanted with holy energy specifically meant to destroy the undead. It inflicted far more damage against them than the living, sometimes to the point of destroying them on the spot. Luna wasn’t that fortunate, but the ghost reeled from her blow.

She heard Weimar’s cry as he ran towards her, eager to help her battle the ghost. It lunged at Luna once again, but Weimar chopped deep into its side and back, causing it to howl again. Weimar grinned as he drove his axe into the ghost’s abdomen as it twisted in pain. The ghost swung one clawed hand at Weimar, trying to force him back, but he easily dodged it. It floated back, glancing between Luna and Weimar as it tried to decide which of them was more dangerous.

Luna decided for the ghost, as she struck it square in the head with her mace. The entire feast hall was briefly filled with golden light as the mace struck home, blasting through the ghost’s resistance. It howled one last time as it disappeared along with the light, permanently destroyed.

Luna and Weimar exchanged smiles. They turned to help their friends fight the remaining ghasts, but they needn’t have bothered. Revafour cleaved one in two with a sideways slash of his sword, before driving his sword down on a second one. Ma’non’go swept his trident from side to side, ripping into the ghast that tried to get past him and attack Seline. She’d cast a fiery sphere on the ground that she could control, and she moved it all around the melee, scorching any of the ghasts that tried to surround her friends. One ghast dealt Airk a fierce blow across the chest, but his new armor absorbed all of it as he crushed its skull with his morning star. One final ghast charged at Airk, heedless of all its dead kin, but it collapsed when Amyalla’s sling stone smashed through its head.

Despite the companions’ victory, they didn’t feel like celebrating. They were all exhausted from crossing the river and the brutal fight with the ghasts, and several of them were painfully injured in the battle. Luna healed her friends’ wounds, but they all needed a rest.

Luna hadn’t exerted herself in the battle as much as her friends, but she felt just as weary. Her fatigue came more from worrying over the presence of the ghost. She could only wonder what the person it was in life did to become an undead monster, and what it had to do with the Glimmering Hall’s downfall. The wights the companions fought earlier, a mix of humans and orcs, were no less puzzling to her.

Luna had a bad feeling the Glimmering Hall’s story was worse than Airk had initially told them.

That worried her, but not as much as the look of red-hot rage she saw in Ma’non’go’s eyes. Somehow, she knew that Ma’non’go was thinking along the same lines she was.

She couldn’t understand why it made him so angry, and that made her worry all the more.