1.3 - In Search of Sanity - Never-Ending Nightmare

When it's clear they are all dead Iosef flicks few his book before channeling it's energy to heal everyone.

With Grim still looking worse for wear he approaches a hand out. May I? I fear I am running low of magic but I may be able to still do something. ' Energy starts to flow from him and knit Grims wounds, before Iosef frowns.

'I had been hoping to achieve more. How are you feeling? We have the wand.. It may be wise to make sure we are all in top shape.'

Elias thanks Iosef for his healing magic. He quickly walks around the room, checking the parchment pages. "This looks like our friend Zandalus' art studio... he's probably not too far"

Grim moves to cover the hallway leading west, as others are being healed. He stays there until joined and offered healing himself.

Elias realizes in reviewing the myriad of pages pasted to the wall and covered in coal and chalk are, in fact, pages of a book with text on the back side of them.

Axon joins him to look over the pages and he sees just enough to realize the book to have some amount of mystical or arcane value, but now would not be the time to do anything with it - though, given maybe an hour, the pages could be carefully collected and potentially then reassembled.

You make a mental note of this then turn your attention to the west hall.

It's only a short walk to what appears to be a dead-end. Comprising multiple toppled cells, this chamber looks as though it ccould collapse at any moment. Thousands of parchment scraps cover the walls, as if in a pitiful attempt to plaster the countless cracks.

The flickering of dozens of candles illuminates the artwork's subject matter: innumerable forlorn, surreal landscapes stretching into bleak infinities. The multitude of visions transforms the room into a threshold of nightmares.



A gaunt man with a pontail of long and exceptionally straight white hair sits cross-legged upon a pallet in the center of the room, like a Keleshite mystic. He wears multiple patients' gowns that have been shredded and stitched to create a layered robe. His arms and much of his chest are exposed, revealing lines of charcoal and yellow chalk that streak his flesh, the most prominent of which appears to be a yellow flame on his forehead.

Upon spotting you coming down the hallway, his eyes go wide and his mouth falls open. A voice like a tempest wind hisses over borken glass, sheering from his split, motionless lips - as thoughs omething other than Zandalus himself speaks from inside his body. "You're supposed to be dead. I already killed you. Why. Aren't. You. DEAD!?"

The man yanks upward, as if a puppet on invisible strings.

Name	Init	Status
Razhel		21/21hp
Axon		18/18hp, Mage Armor (+4 AC, 1hr)
Elias		22/23hp
Grim		21/22hp
Iosef		23/23hp

Grim enters the area ready to meet this all-seeing prophet and instead sees Zandulus as he truly is: A puppet. With Red Destiny in hand, he laughs at the words of the voice that seems not to be from the physical being jerked from its bed and replies in his own shadowy voice; that of the spirit that currently rides him. "You tell us puppet man. You're the one who they say can see all. In a minute from now, you will be seeing nothing at all."

Healed up, Razhel joins the rest down the hallway. She is thankful that the mist is starting to dissipate. She holds her loaded crossbow at the ready, as they proceed and quickly studies the weirdness that is Zandulus.

As Zandalus speaks and doesn't speak at the same time Iosef brings up his crossbow, his mind already racing through as knowledge of things such as possession as he get ready to defend himself.

Had a fugue come over him again? Axon shook his head, and prepared himself mentally for the confrontation.

Before you can act, Zandalus, floating in the air takes on an eery glow as spectral tatters of cloth appear to roll down his shoulders and trails behind him into the dark corners of the room. He jolts through the air, almost like a rag doll, coming slightly closer before he raises his hand and points at Elias, laughing. Invisible tendrils of psychic power threaten to tear the Paladin's mind apart.

Name	Init	Status
Zandalus	A	?
Axon	B	18/18hp, Mage Armor (+4 AC, 1hr)
Iosef	B	23/23hp
Razhel	B	21/21hp
Elias	B	22/23hp
Grim	B	21/22hp

The sight before him was shocking but was it mind-numbing? Zandalus was yet another horror in a long line of horrors. If he could withstand them, he could withstand this.

Razhel doesn't even flinch as Zandalus goes into his spooky antics. She pulls the trigger and sends a crossbow bolt into his stinking yellow robed body.

Well, that is definitely evil Elias things as he sees the spectral tatters of cloth trailing behind him into the dark corners of the room. "You!"

"Crazy bastard!" Axon grunted as he sprinted forward. Was he referring to Zandalus or himself?

የሚቃጠሉ እጆች

While he contorted his fingers, Axon cantillated words of power to bathe Zandalus in arcane fire!