Adventure of Celia Graves 2

Celia reaches the blighted village as dusk bruises the clouds. The gatehouse has collapsed beside the necromancer's tower, burying Maurice Headsman beneath shattered stone and timber.

The towering, dark-skinned man is bloodied but conscious, his shaved head pressed against the mud, one massive arm still gripping his weapon. Corpse-lights drift around him.

High above, a barred window frames the local lord's daughter, a young adult woman in a torn blue gown. Her pale face is streaked with soot, and iron shackles bind her wrists.

Inside the tower, unseen chanting deepens beneath a slow metallic ringing. Mud bubbles as corpse-lights gather, and several dead figures close around Maurice's trapped legs.

Celia wades into the ring of dead, her flail sweeping low through mud and corpse-lights. Each impact scatters bone and blackened cloth from Maurice's trapped legs.

The undead collapse beneath the divine force in her blows, unable to rise again. Maurice's boots come free as shattered timber slides into the mire.

Maurice rolls onto one knee, then surges upright with his weapon in hand. Corpse-lights recoil from him, circling toward the tower's sealed doorway.

The metallic toll shudders through the village. Dust sifts from the tower stones, while the freed dead lie still around Celia and Maurice.

Maurice lowers his broad shoulder and charges. The sealed door bursts inward beneath him, iron bands shrieking as rotten timber and stone explode across the threshold.

The impact opens the tower, but a jagged hinge tears through Maurice's coat and scores his upper arm. Blood darkens the cloth while the bell's toll becomes deafening.

Beyond the threshold, a spiral stair descends into red candlelight. Names, scratched in fresh chalk along the walls, writhe like crawling insects whenever the bell sounds.

Maurice strides beneath the barred window, hooks his weapon through the ironwork, and wrenches. The corroded bars tear loose, dropping the young woman into his waiting arms.

Celia descends the spiral stair toward the red-lit chamber. Chalked names crawl beneath her boots, and the bell's vibration makes the stone tremble.

A violent toll breaks a stair edge. Celia catches herself against the wall, bruising her palm, but reaches the ritual chamber below as the final name begins.

Celia plants her holy staff among the crawling names and drives its sanctified head across the chalk. White fire races through every mark.

The written names convulse, then break apart into harmless dust. Their insectlike motion ceases, and the bell's red vibration falters.

The chamber emerges in the sudden dimness: a black altar beneath the bell, its candles guttering around a sealed stone reliquary.

The broken chalk darkens as if drinking shadow. Beneath the altar, something answers with three heavy knocks, and dust spills from the reliquary's seams.

Celia crosses the chamber and comes before the black altar. The tower master steps from its red shadow, an elderly man in layered ash-gray robes, thin and stooped, with a shaved scalp and one gold-painted eye.

The sealed reliquary rises between them, its stone lid veined with damp darkness. Three more knocks answer from within, close enough to stir grit across the altar.

He spreads his robed hands but does not retreat. Candlelight reveals black sigils burned into his palms, each one pulsing in time with the thing below.

Celia stands directly across the altar from him, staff planted on the stone. The tower master meets her gaze as the reliquary's seams begin to glow.

Celia swings the flail in a hard arc across the altar. Its sanctified head strikes the tower master's skull, and the elderly sorcerer drops lifeless beside the candles.

The black sigils on his palms flare once, then gutter out. His robes settle in the dust as the reliquary's seams blaze with hungry violet light.

The stone lid cracks down its center. A breath of grave-cold air rolls across the chamber, carrying whispers that sound like hundreds of names spoken underwater.

Beneath the altar, the first mouth of the plague awakens. Stone grinds against stone, and a darkness shaped like a vast opening presses through the widening fracture.

The tower shudders around Celia. Red candles topple and extinguish, while the dead master's bloodless hand twitches once near the broken chalk.

The reliquary is opening.