That's So Raven

The sun came up cold over Leilon and started burning AC alive.

His necklace ignited as the first light hit. Eight points of radiant damage. Angelic singing in his ears. He kept his face still and did not say anything. Sgt. Azros led the ceremony as the elf was brought up the rough timber stair. The rope swung. A masked paladin with a long halberd stepped forward in a gold spiked mask, and as the rope dropped, split the elf's stomach open in one motion. That is not how the Knights of Vindictus usually do it.

Ubys knew the symbol used in the rite: archaic Lathander. The order are Torm's friends, Lathander's cousins. The morning is theirs. AC's necklace, apparently, belongs to someone else.

AC stepped away. He said it was unrelated. Lessie followed him, quiet.

He walked toward the ruined tower at the edge of Leilon — the High Tower of Thalivar, the long-rotten root of Leilon's three-year restoration. He found a homeless camp on the upper levels, Baphometian graffiti scrawled on the walls — bored teenagers, probably. He found a tile. "Enter," in Infernal. Beneath it, another tile: "1 of 10."

He made up a chant. The floor glowed red. A staircase opened in the rubble, and he descended.

The chamber below was eighty feet across and the centerpiece was a skull — Storm Giant or Titan-sized, abandoned for centuries. Two stone figures flanked a bronze door at the far end: a halfling and a half-elf. He lit braziers. He pushed the bronze door open.

You'd been chasing him. By the time the rest of you arrived at the staircase, Moist had already tracked him down. You followed the torchlight and found AC walking down a long hallway toward something.

That's when you heard the singing.

Two wraiths at the end of the corridor. Ghost-women in ragged shrouds. The kind of voice that sang to you, not at you. AC was hypnotized — he heard a lullaby, a chorus he couldn't place, and stood there at peace. The rest of you were Frightened. Except Lessie, who was already pushing toward him.

Then they wailed.

Twelve psychic damage to nearly everyone. Lessie went down to zero. Moist caught her with a Healing Word and she came up swinging, a Hawk Spirit unfurling from her shoulders. Ubys turned one of them with channeled divinity. Dhuxtyn's pan flute lit a wraith with eldritch fire. KeYs's javelins kept arcing in. Lessie hit the bloodier of the two with her Shepherd's Crook for twenty, and the room shook.

The other one was still up.

Next session: end of the song.