We regrouped after that, taking some time in our camp to tend wounds and refresh magic. I went for a brisk walk to clear my head. We went back to the same area of the manor the next day. I was finally beginning to get a sense of how vast the manor actually was. There had to have been hundreds of rooms, and we had barely visited a quarter of them. Each one had some strange or bizarre haunting, but by now we were so used to them that they barely registered. Most served to distract and annoy, so on that morning, we spent an hour exploring before our first real fight, against a giant wasp (felled by a sneak attack from Yours Truly. You’re welcome).
Nearby was a chapel, which was as close as I have ever come to snuffing it. There were twelve ghouls in the room, and they were on us before we could close the door and bolt it. There was also an animated statue of a stag-god in there, but since that seemed trapped in a magic circle, we decided to deal with the ghouls first. As fights go, it was epic. We were completely surrounded, back to back. Qual took a lot of hits but he just shook off the effects of the paralyzing touch as if it were nothing. Aleandra was not so lucky. She took down three ghouls before they overwhelmed her, and I saw her go rigid. They bit her while she was down, which sickened me, but at least it distracted a few of them while we held on. Qual and I protected Ex and Sorel as well as we could. That meant I had to fight like a front-line fighter, a role at which I do not excel. I was the next to go down, so that’s all I remember. The others mopped up, and when I came to Sorel was leaning over me tending to my wounds (apparently I had also served as a lunch buffet while I was paralyzed). The look of concern on her face was genuine, and I have to admit it felt good to have someone so concerned about my injuries. It looked like Ev was doing the same thing to Aleandra. In just a few days, we had gone from a hard-core adventuring party to a pair of couples, plus Qual. For his part, the Dwarf rolled his eyes and muttered something about how, despite all of his injuries, he had no-one to baby him.
Well, we decided to leave without messing with the angry statue, which did not please it, but I have better things to do than to please the statuary. We went back to the camp to rest and recover. I would have been happy with a week off, but I had to settle for a good night’s sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment