DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Feeling the fangs sink into his calf, Dufgal knows that he must clean the wound quickly or be stricken by poison. This ain’t his first snakebite. He squeezes the bite wound and keeps running. How much farther is his pack? He feels delirium not too far off.

His leg dribbling blood from two small puncture wounds, Dufgal surges on ahead, still on his belly, then on his hands and knees — then spilling out of the crawlspace over the doorway and down onto the floor. He lands with a huff in the near dark, but there, right next to the door — should be his pack and the items he left behind!

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As Dufgal crawls on ahead, scrambling like mad to get away, Ty risks a glance over one shoulder. The slithering guardian, which now looks like it’s partly made of cinders and glowing embers, continues to bear down on him. Sparks and smoke hiss from the thing as it slides unnervingly down the narrow passage. Behind it, the flaming heap of its host still burns — and has in fact caught the woven branches of the ceiling alight.

A hole has already burned through that dry thatch, and the elf sees that the cylindrical passage above, where the ghoul was hiding, is actually stone-lined. Moreover, there are rungs from some old ladder or the like.

They have not yet plumbed every passage and room of the Tomb of Ulfheonar!

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ROUND 3
Init Order: Tomb Serpent (22), Dufgal (17), Ty (6)

"Dufgal? What happened to Aldric and Anora? Dufgal!"

Ty shouts, but the thief has already squirmed ahead of him, into the gloom beyond the light of his torch.

Left alone, and with the charred snake bearing down on him, the elf hesitates.

He knows that he should flee. He's quite good at fleeing; it is in fact one of his principal career skills, as his shameful sojourn in the human lands may attest. But something about Dufgal's abject retreat, muscling past Ty himself as if he were no more than a side of beef, sticks in the elf's craw. It rankles to be scrambling madly away from this... diseased intestine given life.

Ty wants to know what happened in the relic room. Are they simply abandoning the priest and the high-haired human woman? And where does that upward passage lead, revealed by the burning roots?

Tyravasiel scowls back at the serpent. He turns.

First, the elf places his torch crosswise on the passage floor and shuffles back a few paces. If the snake wants to strike at him, it will have to do so through flame. Then he takes his measure of the distance to his opponent and thrusts across with the mithril-headed javelin.

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ROUND 4
Init Order: Dufgal (21), Tomb Serpent (13), Ty (7)

Scrambling around in the dark, dropping down from the crawlspace, Dufgal is grateful his pack was right against the wall where he left it. He rummaged through it to find a torch and his spark stick.

He prioritizes getting his torch lit to aid his exodus. Hearing Ty call out for answers on the fate of his friend and the Lady, he takes another two moments. His eyes get watery but he blinks them back, trying to find the words. The best he can do is encourage the elf to follow him out.
"you’se best ‘urry, master elf! No tellin if there be more o’ them snakes a-hidin"
And then he puts his feet in the direction of way they came in.

Ty allows himself a satisfied smirk when the guttering torch frustrates the creature's attempt to reach him.

"One would think you'd have had enough of fire, you putrescent thing," he growls. Despite his dire situation, despite the throbbing pain of his wounds, the elf does not fear. His sheer, cussed hate for this place and this beast is stronger now. It puts acid in the sap of his veins.

Again he drives his weapon through the dying flames, aiming right for the serpent's foul fangs.

The torch gutters and flickers out as Ty spears the red-hot snake through the mouth. The thing fights fiercely for a moment, turning the elf's weapon violently in his hands before it simply comes apart, raining sparks, glowing scales and sizzling bones down onto the floor of the narrow passage.

Tyravasiel-Llir's exhausted, sweat and grime-covered face reflects the glow of the cooling embers that used to be one of the tomb's most fearsome guardians... but the thing is dead, and Ty is safe. Elsewhere, Dufgal huffs as he hurries towards an exit... while Anora the Blue and Aldric lie silent, entombed not far from where Ty lies panting.

The thief, stealing away in the dark with none of his companions, feels the quiet listening to his heartbeat as if a judge hearing the plea of a murderer. The crackle of his torch was a welcome interruption as he hustled his way to the tomb entrance. He slows to walk the edge around the sloping pit, then picks his pace back up down the hallway and begins to push on the back of the circular stone.

As darkness crowds in around the last flickers of torchlight and the smoldering corpses, Tyravasiel's wrath ebbs. He is once more sensible of his wounds, which sting like so many relentless hornets. The day's exertions weigh upon his bones; his breath rasps in the close confines of the crawlspace.

But the tomb guardians are dead. Again. And Tyravasiel-Llir is not.

So he moves back down the passage at a limping crawl until he locates his pack, which was shoved aside when Dufgal wrestled him toward the exit. Ty pulls out a torch, feels for his flint and steel, and strikes sparks until they catch in the swaddled wood. Ruddy light blooms again over rock and earth.

First he raises his fresh torch toward the relic chamber-- or rather, the massive, fallen stone that now seals that chamber from view. The elf presses his lips together. After a moment, he makes his way to the stone and places a cropped ear against it, listening for any sound from the other side.

Nothing.

"Lady Blue?" he calls. "Holy Father?"

But they do not respond.

Briefly, something flutters about Tyravasiel's heart. It's a strange sensation, fitful and intermittent, like a moth wheeling and battering itself against a lantern's pane. And it leaves Ty more puzzled than sorrowful. Why should he feel such a tremor for the loss of these humans? They were his cover and his traveling companions, to be sure, but what is one clever squirrel more or less in a world choked up with the things?

Still, the moth wheels; still it strikes, feebly.

Curious.

With a sharp shake of the head, Tyravasiel returns to the upward passage he spotted earlier. He glances along the darkened tunnel towards freedom, down which the thief Dufgal seems to be long gone. Then, leaving his pack and his javelin at the bottom, Ty takes the torch in one hand and uses the other to climb.

Aldric and Anora have paid for this venture with their lives. He may as well see a little more of what they've bought.

Dufgal would feel a lot luckier with a week’s rest, a belly full of food, and a tall mug of ale, but that is a far-off fantasy. In this moment he needs grit. But he’ll take the luck if it keeps going his way.

INSIDE THE TOMB OF THE ULFHEONAR (TY)

Spurred forward by feelings he doesn't quite understand, the bloody-footed elf ascends the cylindrical passage, a stone-lined chimney or tube that ends in a small, vaulted funeral chamber. A silence hangs in this room as Ty gains his feet and holds his torch high, it's quiet crackle the only sound.

He has, surely, found the final resting place of the Ulfheonar.

A skeleton, garbed in crumbling hides and a rusted ringmail hauberk, sits atop a graven throne of stone. A long wolf-spear lays atop a lustrous hide on the skeleton’s lap, glimmering faintly in the darkness, and a polished drinking horn hangs from the throne’s stone arm.