Victorious over the zombies, we rested. Armaziti spent some time loudly contemplating his spells and considering which ones to memorize. The rest of us felt like we got an education in cleric spells while he was doing that, but the room was starting to smell really awful from all those rotting zombies so as soon as Armaziti memorized and cast some more healing spells on Calbach (who was still bleeding) we hurried out of there.
Venturing across the hall toward the room that terrified Lhoss, we were blessed by Armaziti, who then passed the broken door and discovered a ghostly figure in a corner, with a skeleton lying on a stone slab. The ghostly figure was repeating the same action, lying down on the slab then moving back to the corner and back to the slab. There was a runic tablet next to the skeleton and Armaziti picked it up and tried to read it. Suddenly he looked very confused and seemed not to know where we were or how we got there. Calbach grabbed the tablet from his hands and crushed it, crumbling it into dust.
We turned to the ghostly figure again and realized that it was re-enacting its death over and over, like we had seen another do. Armaziti performed a blessing on it, releasing it, and the figure looked at him gratefully then shimmered away into nothing. We searched around the room, looking at the walls and the exceedingly-faded frescoes on them, which appeared to depict some sort of sacrificial ceremony.
Finding nothing, we exited back out to the hallway and decided to make use of the sledgehammers to bash down the brick wall at the end of the hall. There was an animal skull (possibly a cattle skull?) set into the wall near the top, but that really just made us more curious and after about 20 minutes of bashing, Armaziti and Calbach were able to bring it down. As the dust settled, we peered in and saw walls covered in time-worn frescoes of warriors, scores of burial alcoves, and four evil shade warriors floating toward us!
Armaziti tried to turn the undead but his ability failed again. Calbach shot an arrow at one but missed. Arnd ran at it, swinging, but also missed. Lhoss tried to stab the same one, and missed again. Frustrated with all the missed attacks, I swung at another one with my staff and should have connected but the staff went right through the creature! Chiki tried to hit the same one, but also missed. Finally, Calbach took a second shot at another one and his arrow also went right through it! Apparently they could not be hit with our normal weapons.
The shades retaliated and attacked repeatedly, doing damage to Arnd, Chiki, and Lhoss, and draining them of strength! Lhoss collapsed and both Arnd and Gnorcia were hit as they grabbed her and started to run down the hall. Chiki also started running. In the meantime, both Calbach and Armaziti pulled out their magical weapons and renewed their attack on the shades. Swinging wildly, Calbach suddenly heard a sound like shattering glass and the shade he was attacking vanished! He charged at another but missed and it tried to attack him in return but also missed.
Angered, the shades started attacking with fury! Chiki ran back into the room to help, shouting to get the attention of the creatures, and was immediately injured and significantly weakened by an attack as the shades turned on him. Sensing imminent death, Chiki yelled for Chick-chick to flee and the chicken let out a loud and mournful squawk as he flew to Arnd’s shoulder. As the shades pressed their attack, Chiki fell to the ground, pale and bleeding out.
Setting down Lhoss in the room where we fought the spider, I ran back out and picked up Chiki, evading the shades as I carried his frail body out of the room and down the hall. Calbach and Armaziti swung wildly at the shades as they also turned and ran. Everyone made it into the spider room and Armaziti quickly swung the door shut. He then healed the injured and prayed for his spells and as he did the rest of us slowly felt our strength returning, along with a severe hunger. We began gnawing hungrily on our rations as Armaziti continued healing. We could sense the evil creatures still outside the door and slowly became more and more frightened, even as we felt fortunate they could not get through to us.
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