The Tarnished warrior raises its skull shield, tightening its defences, a hollow metallic voice rings out from the creature, calling the last of the cultists to its side. Amarion slays his opponent as the cultist he faces turns to obey its command. All that remain now are two cultists and the Tarnished Dargean warrior.
The party maneuver to face the enemies new front, gathered within one of the narrow tunnels. Crom draws the distance and stands toe to toe with a cultist once more as the other party members catch up behind him. Edward sees the enemy is clustered together and ceases the opportunity. He conjures forth a spark from the underworlds of his patron, it whirls forward dodging through the gaps between Tarnished, cultist, and icen walls. Just behind the hulking metallic creature erupts a searing ball of fire, a wave of flames hot as a furnace roll over the Tarnished leader and his followers. Both the cultists are immediately turned to ash, leaving Crom singed and soot covered. As the fireball diminishes, as quickly as it was conjured, it leaves a figure still standing. Robes burnt to a crisp, the rusted silver armour of the Tarnished glows orange with heat, and it appears to have little fight left in it.
The Tarnished, shield still raised, attempts to talk the party down. "If you want any chance of getting to the Element Stone you will yield." The party begin talking, trying to pry information from the corrupted Dargean. What does it want, why should they not kill it, what are they all doing here? Some questions are answered, others just create more questions. It states that the necromancer Teo Ramu was with them, but disappeared two days ago. They would be rewarded if he is returned. The whole time the Tarnished warrior is slowly backing up toward the exit, and the party inch forward to keep it in check, but it now stands in the tunnel to the outside. They can see energy has been building within its body, light spilling from the gaps of its dragon-forged armour. "You'll have to deal with the others who dwell here if you do not listen to me." They come close to wanting to use this creature as a guide through the iceberg, but it gives them an ultimatum for acquiring its help. "If you want to work together, join us, join our cause, swear your allegiance to Karna-Kar!"
The party are shocked, the Tarnished, these shadow cultists, the necromancer, they are in league with Void Wing! The powerful black dragon once banished to the Shadowfell, the very being that killed one of their fellow adventurers. Disgust washes over the party, of course they will not side with such evil. Morningtons mind slips back to that fateful day on Horn Peak Mountain, acid spilling from the dragon's mouth, the bubbling fumes rising from Fenris' mutilated body. His sorrow turns to white hot anger and he can see the mouth plate of the Tarnished begin to shift down, revealing a burning light within its head. The standoff is suddenly broken, and everyone lunges for weapons. Mornington is the fastest to react, raising a pointed finger, he whistles an ear piercing Shatter one last time. A concussive sonic explosion rips through the body of the Tarnished, creating a controlled demolition of the power building within it. The explosion shakes the iceberg around them, and the tunnel in which the Tarnished stood collapses, their exit blocked.
The party now find themselves trapped within the iceberg. Crom investigates the one remaining tunnel that leads away from the area, about 40ft down lies a wooden barrier constructed from dismantled ship parts, the ships the cultists must have used to sail from the now burnt and sunk hulk vessel. Edward and Mornington continue to look through the supplies left by the cultists and find more tools for ship maintenance, more crystal shards, and a skull decorated brazier with stacks of incense. Edward summons Brogmim and questions him about the brazier, he predicts its used to create undead familiars, rather than those summoned from planes of the living. Edward puts the incense in his bag and notices the map he took from the hulk vessel. On the reverse side is some scrawled message, hastily written in a kind of craze. It reads "They tell me to go, they tell me to join, back where I belong, back to water's embrace."
Crom and Amarion try to use the pickaxes in the tool rack to chisel away at the collapsed tunnel from which the cultists arrived. It is very slow going and they drop it once they all agree they need to rest and tend their wounds. The bodies of the cultists in the area all decay at a supernatural rate. One of them spawns an ethereal mass that starts to rise from the bones. Brogmim is the first to notice it, and quickly draws the parties attention. A ghostly figure rises from the fallen corpse below and forms a harrowing banshee, a tethered spirit to this shadowy cultist.
A soul splitting scream echoes through the chamber, both Edward and Brogmim instantly lose consciousness. The sounds of his companions sprinting to meet the new threat fade and Edward is plunged into darkness. A voice of coal echoes up within him, and asks if he needs help, he is weak and constrained to only confirm or deny such help. His thoughts reply to the voice of his patron... yes. Crom, Mornington, and Amarion surround the ethereal creature, its tattered hair and clothing waving weightlessly around it. The form shifts, changes, and reveals to them a terrifying vision of the person's death, and the journey of its body after life. Throat slit, buried, dug up, body contorted, bones stuffed in a bag, dragged to darkness, dragged to its severed soul, reunited body and soul, but reformed against its will, reformed to become a shadow cultist, forever sworn to the darkness. The party's courage remains intact despite this imagery, and the final blow of this haunted encounter is landed by Amarion, undead's bane, his Dawn Shard longsword destroying the creature in a climactic burst of ethereal light.
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