Day 22 – The shrew battles madness

Day 22 – The shrew battles madness

The end is the beginning is the end

And I woke as myself. But for how long if that Cutherbite keeps waving that skull around as if it were not the bloody key to everything! So we made a plan to free Fillian. We prayed to our deities to give us powers to dig into rock. Now we think we knew where exactly Fillian’s statue stands from the corridor on the other side and intended to drill into the rock and swipe it right off the fountain before the Juggernaut could stomp us into the pretty tiles of the water temple. But we didn’t bloody take into account the sheet of copper behind the fountain and our plan was thwarted.

So instead we hatched an even more insane plan involving a magic item Joe had pilfered off the gnome. It was a figurine that could transform into a fly the size of a bloody horse. Now we decided to let Joe use this to fly over the temple and lasso Fillian’s statue with his magical rope. Just to put the icing on bloody rock cake we made him, and the fly, invisible and then magically silenced them. The rest of us just stood by the doors to the temple and could only bloody watch as the thief tried to pull off the madness. Although we couldn’t see a bloody thing, because he was invisible, and the first sign we had that it might have been working is when Fillian’s statue seemed to pick itself up and start to have a wobbly fly, all by itself, across the water temple.

He was almost at the door when we heard a vile screeching and four gargoyles swooped down from the temple’s rafters after the invisible Joe and his fly mount.  We all ducked aside as Fillian’s statue flew past us and we turned to combat his gargoyle pursuers. Sameson remembered the undead gargoyles from before and raised his holy symbol of Obad-Hai to turn them all to dust before they could trouble us. On the other side of the temple we heard the Juggernaut rumble to life and it pelted us with a barrage of magic missiles. Quickly we slammed the double doors closed, I quaffed a Speed potion and us three remaining clerics of varied faiths hitched up our chainmail skirts and ran off after Joe like we had Zugotmy herself snapping at our heels.

Joe was much faster than us though and we lost him in no time. So we ran around the temple like crazy things trying to find the exit. And in our haste we almost ran right into a bubbling black pudding, which was slithering around the second floor looking for tasty morsels like ourselves to consume. We went to leg it back the way we came only to see the other end of the corridor blocked by a humongous troll decked in the armour of the greater temple flanked by two other human temple drones.

We didn’t have time to mess around, what with the black pudding on our rear, and so I dropped a Wall of Fire right on the bastards. The two drones were consumed by my goddess’ flames but the bloody troll seemed to have some sort of protection from fire because it barely scratched its sweaty hide. The troll muttered some words of magic, to further protect itself from acid, and advanced on Sameson and I. The thing fought with surprising skill for a troll and had both of us on the defensive instantly. I could do little but heal myself before its rampageous onslaught. Behind us I could hear the screams of Cedric being eating alive by the horrid black pudding, and to make matters bloody worse that yellow bellow Sameson put on his gargoyle cloak and flew off and left me to fight the troll.

Now I ain’t a coward but I also ain’t bloody stupid so I tried to parley with the troll. The thing said I could leave alive if we surrounded The Orb to it. So I told the monster where he could bloody find the damn thing and moved out the way to let it take it. Sameson had managed to dispose of the pudding but not before it had done enough damage to Cedric to knock him unconscious. The troll took The Orb from Cedric, and at that point I knew I had to do something even if it got me bloody killed. So as the troll passed me by I put my foot out and tripped it and as it scrambled to stay standing The Orb was in its outstretched hand in front of me for just a moment and I reached out, grabbed it then…

…I was somewhere else. A dark place that looked like the interior of the Earth Temple but surrounded by swirling lights and mist. Within the mist I’m sure I could see Ugg and then Joe and then Sameson and even Cedric shouting at me something about beating the evil of out me. I’m sure I could even see my old Aunt Garin waving her finger at me and warning me about indecent men. But then another voice pierced the air. A venomous shrill calling my name. ‘Vida’, Viller said. ‘You can’t hide from me.’

So we must be in my mind, I realised. And The Orb had provided a battleground for Viller and me. I knew that I must win; else the bitch would find a permanent foothold in the material realm. As that warped monster of a woman moved closer, ranting obscenities, I called upon Joramy to bless me with every bloody power and protection imaginable. Then I caught sight of Viller coming around the centre pyramid of the earth temple, and the horrifying thing was that she looked just like me…although nowhere near as pretty and with bad hair. The bitch wasted no time in going for the jugular and hurled her worst spell.

A nightmarish apparition appeared before me. All muscles and charming smiles I saw before me an image of perfect masculinity looking down at me most patronisingly from its horse, threatening to scoop me off to carry me away to a castle to be his perfect little princess. Luckily I realised that this horrifying image was no more than an illusion created from a Phantasmal Killer spell and shrugged off the misogynistic image before it could destroy my very being.

I threw a Silence spell in answer. But it’d take way more than that to shut this harpy up and her madness protected her from my spell. She began to bombard me with a deadly assault of mental attacks. First she tried to knock me out with sleep magic (clearly she had forgotten my Amulet of Wakefullness) then she sought to wrack my body with crippling pain. It was only through the protection of my goddess and sheer force of will that I shrugged off these attacks. I knew that just one lapse of concentration would be the end of me.

Viller finally grew frustrated in her futile attempts to break me and she conjured a ring of slashing blades to surround her and moved to close the gap between us. I tried to dispel this new threat but only succeeded in knocking off one of her weaker protection spells before the crazy witch charged me. Good, I thought. About time the bitch felt the wrath of my warhammer. My goddess is one of war unlike her god of madness. Her first attack with her war axe barely missed my head as she swung it about in her insane fervour.  I tried to bathe her in my goddess’ flames but I failed to cast it and avoid the axe at the same time. Her ring of blades cut into me and I knew I must dispose of her quickly else I would be ripped to shreds.

She dropped the axe in favour of calling on her dark lord to cause me grievous wounds with her touch. I felt the unholy power sap my strength and used Joramy’s powers  to replenish myself. I repaid her with a blow from my warhammer and got great pleasure in seeing the scank have to resort to the defensive and heal herself. And so the battle went for a while, with us trading blows and her deadly ring of blades sapping away at my health and healing reserves.

Suddenly my full rage at what this foul excuse for a woman had done to me filled my very being. How dare she steal my body from me! Every woman’s body should be her own! Then she had the temerity to threaten my friends. ‘I will kill them all when I return victorious’, she spat. I was a woman on the edge and so I raised my warhammer high and smited her with the full rage of a volcano. My aim was true and I knocked the cacophonous whore sprawling to the floor barely conscious.  ‘It’s over,’ I told her.

I underestimated the depths of her insanity. ‘I will drag us both to the abyss!’ she screamed and before I could stop her she cast her last spell and exploded in an energy vortex of acid. My body exploded in pain as the acid burnt my flesh. Everything went black and suddenly…

…there I was standing back in reality with the orb in my hand, covered in troll blood instead of corrosive acid. I had won! The wicked bitch was dead. Cast back into the abyss forever more. And she was not the only one. Before me lay the remains of the troll which, seemingly, The Orb had imploded. Now although I was jubilant in my victory I had not forgotten my friends and sought them out. Sameson had managed to heal Cedric and the two stood nearby looking at me quizzically. Cedric insisted that he use The Orb to see if there was evil in me and of course now he found none! No more bloody evil! Thank Joramy!

I took The Orb back and put it away safe between my tits. Cedric looked like he might argue but thought better of it. I’m linked now to the bloody thing and will use it to bring down both the fungus queen and Iuz and then destroy the bloomin thing and be done with this place, with any luck all before the next eclipse. So the three of use quickly exited the temple avoiding any other creatures on route. We found Joe waiting with a stoned Fillian outside the temple and took turns in carrying Fillian’s statued self-back to Hommlet.

In Hommlet we encountered that bloody slacker Ugg and he helped us convince Burne to use a scroll to change Fillian back to his true form. Now we used the barracks as the place to do this. It was only here that we got a good look at Fillian and noted he seemed to be covered in strange magical runes beyond that which the gnome was able to graffiti. Odd as that seemed we still continued with his transmufic..whatever the bloody mage word is for turning him back to flesh. But of course the whole bloody thing went wrong and it took an entire night for the spell to take effect. So Burne left us waiting with Fillian tapping our feet for the rest of the night but I didn’t care so much. Tonight I can go to sleep knowing that tomorrow I shall definitely be me!