NOVEL NEXT Chapter 54 - A rock and a hard place
“What the fuck was that?” one of the skull-faces shouts, indicating in the direction Larissa disappeared in.
“A tier two rogue.” the leader drily remarks. “More importantly, they got Acolyte Francis. His spirit-bond broke.”
Huh. So they are linked, somehow, and can sense another’s deaths. That's useful information, and means that the doppelgangers won't be able to take the assassinated cultist’s spot, like they had planned.
Cancel operation! The doppelganger pauses about halfway in stripping down the intruder, obviously disappointed, and picks up his dagger again. While the cultists advance with a tighter formation, the only remaining human mask occasionally blasting the crowd near them with a wave of light. The snickering of sprites is audible over the general noise of the crowd, and the two leading cultists occasionally look up in the direction of one of my cloaked little menaces as they hover overhead.
They unfortunately make good time as the undead creatures waltz their way through the illusion of the room, exiting the crowd as they enter the tunnel leading up to the stage hall, and soon stand before the entrance. The lead cultist moves up to the large double doors and pushes down on the handle, attempting to push open half of it. It opens about a finger’s width, before it catches on the large Stone Slab I created to block off the entrance.
“It’s blocked!” he reports.
“We can see that. What is blocking it?” the leader inquires, increasingly frustrated.
“I can only see rock.” the other cultist replies again, equally agitated.
“All right, get out of the way, let’s see if the flesh golem can push this open.” the leader sighs. “Hold our rear, in the meantime.”
They all shuffle back, attempting to exit the hallway that the giant golem creature took up… almost entirely.
Larissa, it seems, has other plans.
“I did not expect to use all of these, but this might well be the best use case.” she exclaimed, while producing several glass marbles from an actual hole in space that opens up for her to reach through.
She then softly blows on them, before rolling them down the hallway from around a corner.
Where they explode in icy wind, freezing over the surface of the rock and stone, and impeding the golems shuffling backwards momentum.
The icy gust continues around the golem, causing the cultists to avert their faces from the cold wind’s biting sting.
With the winds still blowing, Larissa rushes down the hallway, both of her daggers glowing a strange yellowish or golden light, jumping over one of the flesh appendages the monstrosity forms to attack and slicing deeply into it. A gleaming sheen coats the edges of the x shaped wound, as she retreats from two more pseudopods that dart at her.
“Guess it's time… I am activating the golem!” the cultist leader exclaims.
He begins channeling, and I can feel the essence as they called it churn. A large mass of it begins swirling around him, a twisting maelstrom of power, accumulating atop his stretched out palm before flowing into the large creature at their rear, making its body exude an ominous, purplish aura and… compress?
The flesh twists and contorts into fibers and strands and the creature shrinks down, the gleaming X still visible as its form shifts, to what is more or less a humanoid form, though taller than even the berserker from that first adventuring party.
The mark glows brightly on its chest.
The creature releases a furious howl, its face splitting open to reveal rows of serrated teeth.
What the fuck.
With a look at Larissas retreating form, the creature readies itself to give chase, before a command from the necromancer causes it to freeze in its tracks.
“Halt.” the leader commands, panting heavily from exertion. “The door. See if you can open it, golem.”
With a growl, the creature turns, squeezing past the assembled cultists, and pushes upon the blocked door. Ha, you might look fearsome, but you won't be able to push this open, the rock I placed to block it off is about as big as your previous, lumbering body, you monster.
Of course, how could it be any other way, I immediately eat my words as the rock makes a grating noise and slides backwards across the floor half a meter.