Denlo begins to slowly make his way down the hallway, deeper into the strange and ancient home. He’s careful about it, moving slowly and quietly, careful not to disturb anything in this suspicious place. Because, what Felazo failed to mention is powerful people, like some ancient mage type from long ago, also tend to be paranoid people. Behind him, the others trailed, Felazo staying close behind him, looking at everything. Sister Hilan stuck to the middle of the group, keeping the glow emanating out all around them. This Sari woman stays at the back, keeping an eye behind them. The group barely all makes it into the hallway before there is a slight clicking. Denlo’s hair on the back of his neck stands upright. He hears a wall behind them begin to shift, a subtle grinding of metal against metal. Turning around, he lets the cloth drop to the ground.
From the wall, a glow begins to emanate, a different color than Hilan’s glow. This one is a vibrant blue, almost seeming to pulse in intensity. Stepping out from the wall is what by all appearances is only a suit of armor. But the blue glow pulsing from within shows otherwise. Sari’s hands drop to her blades, too close into whatever this new threat might be to feasibly use her bow. Sounds, almost wordlike but no words any of them seem to understand, emanate from inside the armor. The armor isn’t the threat, it’s the blue glow then. The sounds repeat. Then, after a moment, the armor suddenly makes a different sound. This one a horrifying shriek, echoing around the hallway, deep into the house and back into the room they came from. It wracks Denlo to his core. Felazo collapses onto the ground. Ren’s armor seems to glow with a dull red, though Ren himself does seem shaken. The only person not to seem pained by it is Hilan, who takes whatever is happening in stride, merely gripping her shield tighter.
But Denlo, dazed as he may be, pained as he may be, pushes that feeling back. He tenses his muscles and launches himself across the group, to strike at the armor head on. And he brings his blade down onto its shoulder, trying to expose the light within as best as he can. The blade sinks down, tearing at the metal and separating it. Smoothly. Surprisingly smoothly.
Renalt and Sari also take a quick moment to breathe, to shake off whatever that scream was. As they recover, Ren spins back, moving over to where Denlo had been moments earlier, and leans over. Humming a quick tune that only Felazo can hear clearly, he etches a pattern into the air and watches as Felazo suddenly starts to breathe more easily again, recovering somewhat from the trauma of the echoes.
As Renalt begins to move behind her, Sari uses the distraction of Denlo’s deep strike to slide beside the creature in the hall. She looks at it, trying to figure out the details of how it’s moving, how it is thinking or reacting, but she can’t see anything sensible. It’s almost like its not consciousnessless but it is mindless. Not animalistic but acting on some kind of instinctual level. Taking her sword, she tries to jam it into the armor, to expose more of the glow like Den had. But as she struck towards an opening, the armor shifted slightly causing the tip of the blade to deflect off it. “Shit,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
Sister Hilan shakes her head. Looking behind her, she sees Felazo beginning to recover from whatever led him to collapse. With a prayer for protection, she grips her tower shield with both hands and rushes and the suit of armor. Smashing the boss of her shield into it, she makes firm contact. And yet, the creature does not seem particularly phased.
Finally able to breathe again, Felazo slowly gets up. Between the momentary rest and the song Renalt hummed, he was almost fully back to himself. And, he knows better than to simply charge in and try to smash an ancient magical entity. He tries to think back, to figure out what this actually is, what it might be. And he draws a blank. In none of his books, in none of the Chroniclings he has heard has there been any mention of something quite like this. So he shifts tactics. He considers the light itself, the reactions he saw to his companions’ attempts to harm it, and the runes that run along the armor. He recognizes the essence of several of those runes. And it comes to him. “It’s an amalgam of undead spirits, bound to armor and to obey some kind of command directive. Probably kill us. Hurting it physically is going to likely be hard, but magically will probably be harder still. Honestly, if it wasn’t in the way, I might even say a strategic retreat is in order.”
As though in response to Felazo’s statement, the armor swings out at the trio who are surrounding and are harrying it. And yet, it seems ill prepared. Like it was designed to fight more Felazo types and less martially focused armored foes. Denlo sidesteps the first punch with relative ease. The second punch hits the top of Hilan’s shield, sliding off as the shield moves to push it. Not expecting the first two to miss its third punch swings at Alessari. She, now knowing a bit more about this thing, flips over the arm as it swings by. With an echoing mutter, the armor seems to pulse more rapidly with blue light and carefully assess the three threats.
Den smiles behind his mask. He has the advantage. Time to press it. Taking the blade, he slashes at the briefly exposed side of the armor. It carves harshly through the metal like flesh. As he tries to follow that up with a second blow, the armor turns back towards him and catches the sword in a hand. Denlo can tell, he’s drawn the ire of this thing.
“You truly should try at the very least to hold oneself together better, dear glowing armor,” Renalt says, “You shan’t ever stay relevant otherwise.” The armor does not react, either not hearing him, or not caring. Realizing this might not be effective, Renalt draws his lute and begins to strum out a battle soundtrack, one meant to inspire violence and strength in his allies. And Denlo can feel that rush come over him.
Sari thinks for a moment. It’s not reacting to the statements. Not mindless, but an amalgam of undead spirits. Twirling her shortsword, she stabs it towards the glow. As she does the vines begin to twist down the blade, the life of nature pushing into it. As the spirits within move the armor to block the sword, she smiles. With a mental push, the light of life flows out from the sword and moves around the armor, right into the undead spiritual arms that are holding it in place. She watches as, almost in reaction to that, the other moving plates seem to struggle, clearly impacted by the life essence.
Sister Hilan also notices this reaction. She drops down, jamming the edge of her shield into the legs of the armor trying to knock it off balance. It stumbles slightly, but catches itself before it falls. She follows it up with a bash of her shield, but this time the offhand, the one not holding Denlo’s sword, swats the shield away. With a sigh, she returns to her stance, readying herself to help out her companions if they’re hit.
Felazo sees the focus and, trying to distract the creature of magic, he jokes, “Heads up, things are about to get a tad bit weird.”
“About to?” Sari muses.
Shaking his head, Felazo begins to trace some sigils onto the ground. Then, grabbing at his own shadow, he throws the shadow across the hall. The shadow flows, moving through Denlo and sending a cold chill down the Elfi’ika’s back. Then, the darkness stops behind the armor. Slowly, the stationary shadow coagulates, forming an almost exact copy of Denlo. The Denlo constructed of Felazo’s shadow grabs the armor, to keep the armor construct in place. The shadow grasps the armor’s pauldrons firmly.
“I do see what thy meant, dearest captain,” Ren says.
The armor, however, does not react to being held. Its mindless instinct is focused, even if slightly slowed down by Sari’s strike. Still holding the blade, it forms a fist with its other hand and strikes at Denlo’s chest. The glowing Hilan pushes down on the spirit emotionally, but the spirit pushes through the weight and into the Elfi’ika. Den can feel his ribs cracking. He knows he doesn’t have much more effort. The same unsettling essence that the shriek caused seemed to emanate out from the fist, but Denlo is not about to be affected twice. He lets out a roar instead. The roar surprises the creature slightly and, when he strikes a second time, his grip on Den’s sword loosens ever so slightly, allowing Den to withdraw it from the hand and drop to the ground dodging the fist and coughing up a little blood.
From the ground, Denlo, ignoring the pain, launches himself up at the center of the armor. For whatever reason, his allies’ weapons were struggling against this metal but his was not. So, he realized, if he could hold the armor in place, keep it from shifting around optimally, they might be able to do some real damage to the essence inside. He thrust, bursting through the front plate of the armor. The light within slid around to avoid the blade, but that was never Den’s target. He continued to push all the way through to the other side, skewering the armor fully. Between his shadowy duplicate holding the construct’s shoulders and his own sword keeping the main plates still, he was confident this creature wasn’t going to be able to do much to protect itself from his allies.
Sari, seeing that opening the Denlos are providing her, repeats the process from before. The blade glows with life as the vines twist out from her fingers around the hilt and into the blade. Then she strikes into the glowing heart of the entity. The plates cannot react to her attack, and she pushes her sword deep into it. Both sets of light now inside the armor let off a pulse, and the green glow of her life essence overwhelms the blue glow of the spirits. Then, with a rush of wind, the armor collapses onto the ground, no longer glowing at all. Or, all of the armor not currently skewered on Denlo’s sword. Just a set of strange, jointed, and interconnected armor inscribed with intricate runes.
Denlo wipes the two pieces off his blade before returning to his cloth, now sitting on the ground. “Be more careful,” he says as he bends down and wraps his sword once more.
Felazo, now shadowless, ignores him. “Scion, could you put that in our magic sack? I really want to check out the runes and mechanics later, we could learn so much from it.”
Shaking her head, Sari opens up the bag they got on the pirate ship and begins to place the pieces of disassembled armor. Felazo continues. “Sha-Denlo, can you continue down the hallway looking out for and marking any traps? You can join him if you want, normal Denlo. I’m going to go check out the hole that held this construct for centuries.” The mage walks over towards the opening in the wall, to look at the holding area for the construct. Meanwhile, the shadowy form of Denlo nods, grunts, and begins to walk further down the hall. Denlo, equally eloquently, nods silently and joins his duplicate. Because Denlo does not trust that Felazo’s shadow is any better at noticing traps without activating them than Felazo is.
There are no more traps on the hallway, though many of the doors do seem to have some locks more intricate than necessary. He does notice the shadowy version of himself does seem to notice much of the things he notices, and it doesn’t wander randomly into trouble. It seems more like him than Felazo, which is good to remember. Returning to the group after a few minutes, he reports to the others, “Doors seem like trouble, but the hallway’s safe.”
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