Chapter 32: Interrupting the Ritual

May 6

The group continues running. Kieron sneaks ahead at full speed, and Agnarr comes next, then Neiia, and finally Ertak. Kieron manages to sneak through the narrow tunnels without problems, but Agnarr has major issues with his shield and gets stuck. Neiia stops behind to wait, but Ertak doesn’t even notice the narrow spot or that Agnarr is stuck, so he passes Neiia and slips under Agnarr’s arm with his shield extended. Kieron comes to an empty throne room and continues to the side, but there’s an intersection, and Kieron stops there to listen.

Ertak, coming from behind, doesn’t notice that the sneaking Kieron has stopped and crashes straight into her back, throwing Kieron a couple of yards into the passage leading to the left. Kieron says, “Oh, this way,” and starts running forward. Kieron enters a room where an elf is tied to an altar, with a shaman standing beside it singing a ritual. In addition, there are two guards armed with ropes and spikes by the door. In the corner, there’s also a small child tied up.

The guards react to Kieron coming in, and one of them manages to knock Kieron to the ground, but the other guy also falls when trying to join the fight. Kieron jumps up and tries to strike the kobold but misses. The shaman states that he needs to finish this ritual immediately, so he sings his ritual to the end and then drives his dagger into the elf’s chest and pulls out the heart on the tip of the dagger, after which the heart bursts into flames and disappears. The dagger is aflame after this and leaves a trail of fire behind it.

Next, the shaman moves to the boy in the corner, ready to continue the ritual. Kieron moves to the shaman and tries to hit him, but the shaman blocks with his hand, and then the shaman orders Kieron to run away. Kieron runs to the other corner of the room as Neiia comes close to the shaman. Neiia conjures a cold portal in the room, and then the shaman orders Neiia to run out. Neiia runs to the passage leading out, but there’s a kobold in the way, so Neiia crashes into its back. That kobold at the door has managed to knock the incoming Ertak to the ground, but Ertak gets up and even Agnarr is finally getting close.

Kieron and Neiia manage to disturb the shaman so much that he cannot sacrifice the boy. Eventually, Ertak and Agnarr also get into the room, though Agnarr is still in the doorway when the shaman decides to go after the boy again. At the same time, the altar in the middle clearly gets angry because the shaman obviously doesn’t know his rituals. The altar jumps, clearly angry, at the shaman.

Ertak commands the shaman to bring his dagger to him, whereupon the shaman runs to Ertak’s back and places the dagger there, though it doesn’t penetrate Ertak’s thick armor. The altar jumps after the shaman. The shaman manages to dodge the altar. Agnarr notices the altar coming and calculates that if it falls there, the toe of his boot will be underneath, so he pulls his boot an quatr inch backward so that the altar remains about one eigth of an inch away from the toe of his boot. One of the guard kobolds decides to leave, jumping first past Neiia and then over Ertak, and even passes his friend before falling on top of the altar, lying down. The shaman shoots the altar with his spell, causing the altar to get properly angry and explode.

Agnarr manages to jump backward and dodge two fragments, but when he doesn’t manage to dodge all of them, with one still about to hit, he manages to get his shield in between and only takes some damage. Ertak dodges one fragment, and another hits but only causes a small wound through the armor. Neiia and Kieron manage to dodge all fragments. The tied-up boy in the corner is hit by many fragments, and pieces of the boy fly around. The kobold on top of the altar also breaks into small pieces and flies along the walls.

The shaman and the other guard kobold dodge the fragments without problems. That guard kobold says that this is too powerful magic for him, so he starts running away. Agnarr tries to prevent it but doesn’t succeed even though he gets his axe in front. The kobold escapes. Neiia has managed to slow the shaman, but spells from him still seem to come very quickly. Everyone runs at the shaman, even Ertak who finally got up.

The shaman jumps up after a couple of attempts but notices that it feels slow, so he creates a big cloud of smoke around the group. All the group members are outside the smoke, but the shaman himself is in the smoke. Neiia sees the shaman with her magic sight and tries to hit him with an ice sword before stepping backward, as does Ertak. Kieron has again run away due to a command spell and returns via a smoke-free route and hits the shaman a couple of times, even hitting with both strikes, but not causing much damage. Agnarr thinks he sees someone behind his back, so he turns and swings in that direction, but there’s no one there.

Ertak tries to talk the shaman to sleep but doesn’t succeed. The shaman shoots at Kieron, but Kieron doesn’t fall, so the shaman moves to shoot at Ertak. Ertak sees that this is not going well and leaves, trying to command others to come out of the room too. Kieron say that they haven’t listened to him so far, so why start now?. Agnarr says “let’s knock this one out first”. Agnarr also hits the shaman a couple of times quite well. Kieron falls unconscious to the ground, and the shaman starts getting irritated with Ertak, who is still explaining with his mouth open, and shoots at him with his spells. Neiia also hits the shaman with her ice spell.