Prologue - Death House

Taniwha moves to the outside of Abraham closet to the swing blades, giving Amalthea more time to react. "No point in hanging around, this smoke will kills us just as quickly as the blades." He waits for Amalthea to ready herself and leads the way . . .

Amalthea nods and follows Taniwha’s lead, ducking her head a little to avoid breathing in more of the black smoke filling up the space.

Round TwoAmalthea and Taniwha manage to slip through the swinging blades with Abraham's body between them. The blades spark against Amalthea's shield, but better a scraped shield than torn flesh. Soon you are out in the main hall of the attic. The window here is also bricked up, but the walls of the house itself are cracking, spilling an ghostly light that banishes every shadow. You quickly realize that all the doors in the attic, and indeed the house, have been converted into slicing blades, including the door leading down to the third floor. You can also see that the two other rooms with stoves are full of noxious black smoke.

Glancing at the others, Amalthea is sure she is in better health so she pushes herself to her limit to try and get Taniwha and Abraham through the door safely first.

Taniwha grits his nerve and focuses as he follows Amalthea through the next test, doing his best to hold Abraham with his wavering strength . . .

Taniwha and Amalthea push through the blades, sparks flying where they meet Amalthea's shield. With Abraham's body in tow, you come down to the hall of the third floor, tripping over the clattering remains of the wolf knight. You fly down the red marble stairs to the main hall of the house. All the doors on the first floor are slamming again and again, as if the house is a petulant child having one final tantrum. The main entrance is clear across the foyer, but the walls have a strange fleshy texture and seems to writhe and twist on their own. The main doors have transformed into a set of gnashing wolf's teeth, howling and clashing with the clatter of blades. The walls of the place are peeling and shuddering, and an eerie ghost-light pours out of every crack.

"We are almost almost out Amalthea, this place has the stench of corruption to it. Hold on I will do my best to lead." With the last of his dying energy Taniwha drags himself and Abraham towards the snatching teeth of the door, hoping that his dexterity doesn’t fail him now . . .

"Yeesh, is everything trying to kill us here? Maybe we should have followed those cultists out…"

She puts up her shield once again and nods at Taniwha, believing in his sharp eyes to get them out.

Taniwha just nods his head at Amalthea, "I feel you are right." He adds simply as he takes a moment to pull back from the teeth, allowing Amalthea to get her shield up . . .

The two adventurers heave Abraham's body through the teeth, but the mighty slabs of iron clamp down on them and pierce their armor. Amalthea and Taniwha, you feel the blades shudder and wrench against shield and chainmail, throwing sparks and punching dents. Blood spurts from the wounds, and everything becomes a blur as you tumble out of the house and onto the portico of the house. The lanterns have fallen and lie in shattered pieces on the wood. You look back and see Abraham's limp form disappearing behind a snarling wolf's snout and fangs. The entire house is covered in glowing cracks; the biggest one splits the house in half from the roof to the floor.

Taniwha uses his fading energy to push through the snapping jaws of the door, stumbling under the weight of Abraham misjudging the timing. The pain of the wound making the Monk fall to his knees upon the portico, he focuses on the disappearing figure of Abraham as the blackness takes him. He never feels the slap of timber on his face as he hits the deck hard unconscious . . .

Amalthea feels the blades spark and then cut through her armor. Blood is everywhere as they tumble out onto the portico. She tries to look to see if the others are safe, but she sees Taniwha covered in blood and fall and Abraham caught in the jaws of a wolf, still inside the house.

So this is how it ends. No one safe.

Amalthea and Taniwha tumble onto the porch. The house roars, throwing their limp bodies down to the cold mud of the lawn. The glowing cracks running through the house become too bright to stand, and then the house explodes in a mushroom cloud of splinters and white-hot witchlight. The roof collapses into the foundation, sending mountains of smoke into the air. The ground erupts and churns into a whirlpool of mud, swallowing the remains of the house. The spirits of Vasha, Rose, Thorn, and little Walter soar high into the heavens, free of the agonies of four hundred years of timeless haunting. Whispered thank yous escape from their lips directly into the heads of the adventurers.

By the time the party awakes, the house is long gone. They are tenuously clinging to life, but alive nonetheless. It has been an unknown amount of hours; the bleary sun, fighting through gray clouds, seems to have moved only inches. At the same time, your bodies feel the tension of hours. On the horizon, you can see two figures walking towards you.

Taniwha shakes Amalthea after waking sprawled on the cold ground. He looks at the mud where once the house had stood, a feeling of calm and peace of such he had not felt since as a child wrapped in his mother’s arms. A visible tear falls from one eye which is wiped away quickly.

Once Amalthea is waking, to Taniwha’s relief, the Tiefling gets to his feet and starts going through movements taught to him at the temple that will remove stiffness. At some point during this route he notices the figures and moves to be near Amalthea, "Maybe you should speak with them, you are better at that than I."

Once she has gained consciousness thanks to the Tiefling rousing her, she says a silent prayer for the released souls and perhaps Abraham if he had joined them. She, unfortunately, does not see his body anywhere nearby. Before they can search though, she and Taniwha see moving bodies in the distance. She nods at his request to greet them first.

"Aye, I can do that."

The dwarf makes sure her shield is equipped and clear it is only for defence, that she is a paladin and will act honorably during the interaction as long as the others do the same.

"Hail and well met, strangers. Have you become lost in the strange fog as well?"

As they approach the taller of two who has not spoken pulls his hood high strengthening the shadows around them, one of the bandaged pale hands then waves towards the approaching couple. The figure then nudges the Dwarven Female and whispers to her, "We need to move on from here, I don’t trust the weather to hold and would like to leave this place behind now the spirits of those we helped have moved on."