Session 34: Waking the Apostle
General Summary
The party returned to the carven doors and brainstormed awhile. After a minute, Sigvurd proposed they try attacking it with magical weapons, and swung his Frost axe at it.
This seemed to damage the magical shield that protected the door, though the damage recurved on Sigvurd, as well. Between him and Lins, the two managed to shatter the protection and push the doors open. But what they beheld at the end of the hallway behind them gave the whole party pause.
Standing on a pile of corpses and rot lay a festering worm, swollen like a maggot, its fleshy sides heaving with each fetid breath. It was gigantic, occupying most of the room with its bulk alone, and ringed with a moat of putrid liquid.
The party fell back to discuss their plan, then arranged themselves in battle positions. Zeke protected himself and the front line with magical darkness, while Vin, Lins, and Nemara fired from a distance, but they found even the end of the hallway was not enough to protect them from when the creature launched a thousand whips from its body and began to lash the air with them.
Seeing that the tides had turned, Sigvurd raised his axe and brought it down with all his might into the creature's side. He ripped it open, spilling pestilence and corpses, bile and bone out into the room as it shrieked a wet, rasping scream, and lay still, dissolving in its own acids.
But by now the party had seen many things return from the grave. They thought to collapse the ceiling on it, but seeing it already weakened, decided not to risk burying themselves alongside it. Instead, they hastened back to the coenoby, using magic to disguise their goopy appearance and smell until they could shower.
The rest of the gladiators murmured that the Owlbears were certainly sleeping early when they turned in before dinner, but they had a long day, and in the morning, the Champion's Games would resume...