The blood mist was behind them, but its stench lingered in their lungs like wet iron. A mere quarter-day’s march separated the weary party from the sanctuary of Ogre’s Thorn, but for Lucia, every step was a lesson in agony.
The skirmish with the bloodlings had left its mark. Lucia moved with a heavy limp, her boot soaked where a severed toe—a grim souvenir from a prior encounter—protested the march.
Rudver knelt in the dirt, chanting softly over the injury, but the magic flickered and died. The weave was stubborn today. As Lucia considered the desperate gamble of a Chance Cast, Torbin intervened. With a “mad dash” of frantic energy, he snatched the linen from Rudver’s hands.
It was crude, bulky, and looked ridiculous, but the pressure held. Lucia stood, testing her weight. She was fragile, but she was mobile. She offered Torbin a look of hesitant, pained impression. They moved on.
The party chose the high road—the sharp, winding cliffs of the hills. It was meant to be faster. Instead, it became a fever dream of grey stone and circular paths. Perhaps it was the pain clouding Lucia’s mind, or the shifting shadows of the crags, but it felt as though they wandered for twenty-one days in those jagged heights, though only hours had passed.
As dusk began to bleed into the sky, a misplaced step triggered a cascade of gravel. The clatter echoed through the canyon, and then came the answering screams:
“Give me! No, give ME! I want to eat the little ones!”
Three Harpies crested the ridge, their wings beating a rhythmic thrum of filth and feathers. They rained jagged rocks upon the party. Lucia, caught off guard by the barrage, was slammed into the dirt, prone and gasping.
The tide turned when Rudver raised the Whale’s Horn. A blast of sonorous, oceanic power ripped through the mountain air, shattering the harpies’ flight. They tumbled to the scree, screeching in confusion. Torbin didn’t give them a second chance. With a singular, brutal Circular Swing of his longsword, he silenced all three in a spray of dark ichor.
Amidst the feathers, they found a gift from the mountain: an unusual short sword, curved like a kukri, gleaming with a wicked, alien edge.
They reached the ridge overlooking Ogre’s Thorn just as the last light failed. The sight that met them was not one of welcome, but of a nightmare.
The stronghold—their home of half-rebuilt ruins and stone ramparts—was under siege. A giant spectre, a towering translucent horror of ancient spite, was hammering against the walls. On the battlements, Gwyn and Tou were tiny silhouettes against the ghost-light, desperately loosing arrows into the fog of the creature’s soul.
The battle was a chaos of cold and terror.
- Zara let fly arrow after arrow, but the shafts passed through the spectre’s ribs, dealing only half-strength bites to the spirit’s essence.
- Lucia stepped forward, her hand glowing with a divine, searing light. She unleashed Purge Undead, the force of her will staggering the giant.
- Rudever shifted, his body twisting and expanding into a massive, Super Eagle. He soared toward the turrets, his talons raking through the spectre’s misty form.
The creature fought back with a Primal Roar that froze the blood. The scream shattered the minds of those below. Lupendous Firm collapsed, his courage broken by a new, soul-deep phobia of the dead. Torbin felt his senses warp—the sun-drenched world felt alien now; he was a creature of the night. Even the Eagle-Rudver suffered a magical backlash, his mind ravaged by anxiety as he was forced back into human form.
Desperate, Torbin reached for Narsica, Lucia’s magical longsword. The blade felt “judgy” in his hand, a cold sentience radiating disapproval at his touch, but it bit deep into the spectre where steel usually failed.
Lucia struck again, a second Purge Undead illuminating the valley like a second sun. The spectre wavered, its form fraying at the edges. Seeing the opening, Tolu—the loyal hireling—leveled his crossbow from the ramparts. He took a breath, aimed for the hollow where a heart should be, and fired.
The bolt hissed through the air, and with a final, mournful wail, the Giant Spectre dissipated into the evening mist.
Ogre’s Thorn stood, though scarred. Gwyn and Tou were bloodied, and the party’s minds were fractured by the spectre’s roar. As they gathered in the courtyard of their ruined home, the chilling truth remained: without a full ritual to purge the land, the spectre would return with the next month’s moon.
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