Shadows of Death

Dropping out of the portal to the Shadow Fell was rough to say the least. The Hand of Destiny landed on smooth stone tile about twenty feet from the floor and took some damage from the fall. They recuperated as best they could and looked around at where they had landed. It definitely looked like the Shadow Fell. It was oppressively dark and gloomy. Colors only ranged from black to blue to gray blending together to blur the edges of closer structures and creating an illusion of less space around them. 

They had landed in blue black ground before a large bone structure. Large rib looking bones protruded from the ground. It looked like a huge creature had died there. At one end of the bones, was a raised dais where two shadowy figures stood silent. Behind them, at the other side of the visible area was a temple. From the open mouth emanated a low moan. There were probably undead in there, they concluded. There were also three pillars that pulsed with eerie light in the near vicinity. Light slowly shifted in brightness around them, causing an almost hypnotic pattern. The two figures on the raised dais spoke as one. 

“To face Null you must defeat us within a few moments of each other, or else, you will lose and die.”

As the last word rang out through the strange landscape the figure on the right vanished. The partner was still there So they made quick assessments of the situation before jumping into the fight. The remaining figure simply stood in place, waiting on their first attack. The party’s first priority was cover, they wanted to make sure they could defend their positions since they didn’t know what abilities their opponents had. The spell casters began using their long range spells to provide cover for the physical fighters to get within reach of the figure. They thought they were doing pretty well when the figure vanished as well. He reappeared at the furthest dais and was no longer in humanoid shape. What greeted them upon reappearance was a white dragon.

On the other two pillars were two wraith drakes waiting to attack. After a brief pause where both sides measured each other up the drakes dove on the party. They steadily began draining the party members of their vitality. Exhaustion began creeping up. They also had to attack the dragon and avoid its ice breath. They used what cover they could find to stay out of the ice attacks and fought off the wraith drakes. The moaning at the mouth of the temple was getting louder and closer. When Kaladrax saw the first undead shambling to the open he cast a stone shape spell to seal the opening and keep the undead from boxing them in. If they got through, the group would be surrounded on most sides. 

As the fight progressed, they were faced with more and more dangers. An undead red dragon also showed up so Kariss had to change her familiar into its silver dragon form. They fought against the coming perils and were faced with even more when wraiths began swarming in from the murky darkness. Kaladrax was also using a large magical hand to add muscle to their group. It reeled back and punched the red dragon so hard it crashed to the ground as Kariss’s spiritual weapon attacked from another side. As they fought, Milo began to creep up to the white dragon, invisible to the eye. Aleera almost fell as the spell casters provided cover fire for Milo to make his move. At one point they thought they had managed to kill the first figure only to have him rise up a short time later. Realizing they had to kill them within a very close margin, the group reevaluated their tactics. 

Leaving Milo and Kariss outside to deal with the white dragon and other threats, the others made their way into the temple full of undead to search for the remaining figure they needed to defeat. They spread out into the temple being careful about where they stepped and dispatching undead as they encountered them. There seemed to be no end to the shambling corpses that assailed them. The undead were destroyed one by one until there was no one left but the second figure that needed to be killed. The inside group chased him around the temple as he teleported and flitted in every possible direction. They managed to chase him out of the temple and onto the dais just as Kariss and Milo landed their killing blows on the white dragon. 

With one gone the other was easy to dispatch and soon both lieutenants were dead upon the raised magical dais. It glowed with pulsing blue light and a shadow appeared in front of the platform. It was still just an aspect of Null. He spoke directly into Kaladrax’s mind. He kept muttering, “Mine, mine, mine.” There was no end to the litany. For a moment he didn’t know what to do, paralyzed by the mantra repeating in his head. If this was an aspect of Null then he had to go deeper. He thought of the Shadow Fell and what it lay above in the hierarchy of planes. The only plane below it was the negative plane. Real death waited there. 

He realized he had to die to get to where he needed to go and so stepped onto the dais planning on letting a wraith drain him to death. Every now and then, one floated past so it wouldn’t be too hard to catch the attention of one. That was when the aspect attacked the party and tried to kill them all.