Sadly, there didn't seem to be anything in the room that immediately stood out. It appeared to have really been a wine cellar at some point, as well as a place for guards to hang out. Cups, plates, and old games were still set for the next watch.

  Everyone was giving Selvi plenty of room to do her thing, which as usual involved lots of slashing and thrashing and gnashing of teeth. The barbarian's scimitar struck in wide arcs that flashed brightly in the light of the magic lanterns, while her spectral cohorts literally glowed as they defended the half-orc princess from harm. Each whack from the steel blade sent a fragile, dusty corpse flailing to the floor, but despite their slow and shuffling gait the dead guards were quick to pick themselves up, and even quicker with those black blades. When those ghostly weapons hit the bright-shining swords of Selvi's entourage, a rainbow of sparks flew forth -- tiny lights that soon winked out of existence.

  On the sidelines, the others were helping as they could. Gwen was firing the occasional arrow, mindful of the position of the sole living member of the melee. Each magical shaft found its place in the head or the chest of a dead man, stunning it if not actually damaging. Isabel had her sword and shield up, visibly annoyed that she couldn't do anything but defend her cousin and Flora, who'd started a joint singalong extolling the strengths and virtues of one Selvi Khan's-daughter.

  Personally, it hurt Bianca's ears, but every little bit helped, she supposed.

  Beyond the fray, there was a large, oaken door set on rusty hinges. According to Lady Dee-Dah, beyond it lay her late husband's personal laboratory, and so the little witch kept a close eye upon it. Even as Selvi lopped the head off of the final guard and had its dark core skewered by blades of light, the bloody red metal of the doorknob began to turn. Bianca had just enough time to shout a warning before the heavy doors burst open, and a black wind blew through them.

  Gwen resisted the urge to gag as the stench of a hundred years of decadence poured over her. There was the lingering odor of ancient incense, parched and bitter on the tongue, overlaying the wet, fetid smell of blood, guts, and gore. Ancestors only knew what it had been like when it was still fresh!

  Next to her, Isabel was not so lucky. The former paladin was dry-heaving upon the stone floor. Cassie and Flora were decidedly green in the face as well, while the druid's red squirrel hid in the corner.

  But not Selvi. The ranger could admire her fellow half-human's stubborn tenacity, even as she knew it would lead to nothing but trouble. With a full-throated roar, the barbarian and her four bright shadows threw themselves at the darkness behind the door, only to be thrown back by another gust from the grave. As she hit the stone floor, Selvi cursed creatively, and the phantom heroes of the khanate faded from existence.

  The darkness rippled and spread out from the other room, spilling like ink over the walls and floor. In the middle of it, a shape bulged outward, gaining definition until it revealed the form of a man. Or rather... Gwen blinked, and nearly lost that fight against the forces of nausea. The thing that approached now may once have been human, but that time was long past. Now it was bent, distorted, warped and disfigured like a waxen effigy left out in the summer heat. Ancient robes with dubious runes thankfully hid most of it from view, but that still left the face, with its left cheek that sagged down practically to where its heart should be, or its lack of a nose, or the way its lopsided eyes now dribbled like half-cooked eggs...

  Then the thing opened its mouth to groan, and three teeth oozed out of place. Decorum be damned; any princess would retch at the sight!

  "How the heck were you the only one who made the fortitude save?" Shelby demanded, glaring at Katelyn. The quiet girl just smiled and hugged her black kitten stuffy to her chest.

  "Circumstantial bonus," Uncle explained for her. "Experience with witchy brews, alchemic fumes, and the fact she's still up in the rafters. Question is, what's she going to do now?"

  "Bomb the monster!" shouted Cynthia.

  "Ooh! Ooh! Fireballs!" chimed in Claire.

  Katelyn shook her head. "...look for wards..." she murmurred. "Quickly." Before the others could protest, her purple d20 was rolling.

  "That's a... 14," Uncle announced. "And I'm adding in your spellcraft skill bonus to make it 26. More than enough. What now?"

  "...well..."

  Even from up on high, the smell was atrocious. Not quite as bad as Gran'mama at her worst, perhaps, but still not the kind of thing one shared with neighbors. Bianca's eyes now scanned the room frantically, looking for any clue to what she sought. Abjuration charms tended to be very specific in their placement. If it blocked access to this room, then it really had to be in the room. But where? There were no runes carved into the walls, and really, this kind of thing was best scribed on--

  Paper. Or... Her eyes went to one of the long tables, where some of the guards had played a friendly game in their previous life. Those cards were looking pretty good for their age, and someone had taken a quill to them at some point.

  Well, now she was taking a bomb to them. The little alchemic incendiary flew from her hand and landed neatly in the center of the table. The ensuing explosion was anything but neat. Pieces of wood flew through the air, together with bits of burning card.

  There was a brittle sound, a crack and a chink that didn't reach her brain by way of the ears. The abjuration charm tinkled as it fell to pieces.

  "A-HA!" Lady Dee-Dah stormed into the cellar, moving with the forceful grace of a wave reaching the shore. The vampire grabbed a chair in passing, hurling it straight into the yucky, icky mass that must have been her former husband, forcing it backwards into the next room.

  "Collect your stomachs, young women!" the lady declared loudly. "Old Runny might be half-boiled, but he's still dangerous. Desperta ferro! Awake, steel, and charge!"

  Isabel and Selvi led the way, in what would have been a mighty charge if it weren't for the careful way they stepped into the room beyond. They were both aching, physically and mentally, and bracing for the worst. Three paces in, they dropped to the ground to give the ranger behind them a clear shot.

  Gwen had a special arrow out. It wasn't one of the shafts from her magic quiver, but rather one carefully fletched by the half-elf and fitted up in front by Bianca with some special concoction she'd learned from her little book of recipes. When loosed into the chamber, it flared into life, a bright, shining streak of flame that lit the room in spite of the cloying, magical darkness. With a clatter, it bounced off the far wall, where it continued to burn away shadows.

  Lord Runcible Rubantaga crouched in the center of the room, not-living up to his wife's nickname for him. "Dwuuuuuulcy..." he groaned, his jaw bending unnaturally as he tried to speak. "Whottisss... t'e meeeening of t'is?"

  "Hello to you too, Runny," Doña Dulcinea said. "I would say that you are looking good, but I'm afraid we dispensed with proper politeness when you tried to sacrifice me. It is time to end this."

  "Nwooo! Revwenge s'all bwe mwiiiine! Yooo stooole fwom mwe, Dwulcy! Mwy immortaaaaalitwy!" The half-baked immortal grew more agitated, spitting and losing bits with every malformed word. He raised a hand, its fingers bent and curled like clumps of worms, and muttered dark syllables. Unlike less unnatural verbalizations, these did not seem to actually come from the throat, and they possessed a presence that snaked down Runny's arms. Red flames appeared on each fingertip.

  "Behind me, everyone!" Selvi shouted, covering her face and turning her back. The brunt of the flames broke against her drake-scale armor. The well-crafted suit was resistant to heat, but that didn't make it a comfortable experience. The smell of burning hair hung strong in the empty space of the room. "Dammit!"

  "Runny, Runny, Runny," his former wife tutted. Raising a single finger high, she began an incantation of her own. Light focused momentarily on one delicately painted nail, only to shiver and be pulled away. The dead wizard caught it and clutched it to his chest greedily. "Your brains must have gone as the soft as the rest of you," concluded the lady. "Now, girls!"

  Bianca flew high, letting loose a blast of fire that fell like a curtain from her hands upon the dead man. As Runny spun around, Gwen put two arrows in his back, where they sagged and then fell out with ichor dripping from the holes.

  The princesses of Sun and Moon rushed in together, with Isabel providing her shield to cover her cousin as the cleric prepared a blast of light energy. "Moon's Piercing Beams!" she yelled, bringing her wrists together with the palms open and spread. Power pooled between her hands, shooting out as a blast of blinding light.

  There was a gurgle of outrage from Runny. Taking Doña Dulcinea's stolen spell in his hand, he flung it back at the retreating princesses. "Twaaaake t'is!" he shouted. The mote of light shivered in the air, then with a pop turned into a small, old bouquet of flowers. The shriveled blooms dropped to the ground with a plop.

  "Seriously, Runny dearest. Did you think I would waste a good spell on you?" the lady called mockingly.

  Around the table, everyone was giggling at that one. Señora Hernandez had a laugh that was remarkably like her granddaughter's. Uncle let them have their moment, because it had definitely been a good one. It'd been the teacher's idea to add a few dummy spells to her repertoire, mostly replacing dark magics that wouldn't have affected the malformed wannabe lich in any case.

  "Okay, Flora's patched up Selvi a bit, and you've succeeded in embarrassing and angering Lord Runny," he announced. "Angering him even more, that is. With a wet, rude noise that sounds like it came out the other end from his mouth, he summons up some reinforcements."

  The girls watched carefully as he placed four undead figures onto the dry-erase sheet around Lord Runny. "Quick knowledge check?" asked Helen nervously.

  Uncle nodded, and six dice rolled across the table. A second later, and an ebon die with white numbers followed behind. Katelyn's purple hit Cynthia's yellow-orange, coming up 5 and 15, respectively. Those were also the lowest and highest numbers in the set. Helen's green die got 14, while Isabel and Señora Hernandez's dice tied at 13. The big difference now was in the bonuses. As a higher-level enchantress with previous knowledge of the magics involved, the vampire lady got both a skill bonus and a hefty insight bonus.

  After making a little show of factoring up the totals on a napkin, so that everyone could see the relative results, he presented an info card to the retired teacher. The lady took it, scanned the details, and then began.

  The action had stopped when Runny let out his flatulent wheeze, and the princesses weren't in a mood to rush back in. The mouldering old lord was no longer alone. Shadows had leaked out from under his patched robes, rising up into a quartet of hooded silhouettes. Breaking away from their master, the shadow-things took defensive positions and raised their heads. The hems of their cowls rippled and wriggled like circles of tiny tentacles surrounding huge, empty mouths.

  "Shadow elementals." Doña Dulcinea snorted in derision. "And not even strong ones, at that. "Hardly your best work, Runny."

  "T'eeef!"

  "No thief, I," she shot back. "You learned useful things from my research, and I learned just as much from yours. Only, my path to immortality worked better. Try not to dribble too much on the carpets," she added.

  "Gweeeeeeeet t'em!" the dead wizard screamed, and his dark servants lurched forward.

  Overhead, Bianca hovered nervously. So far the ugly, icky man hadn't really looked up, and the others had successfully drawn his attention away before he could retaliate for that burst of fire. Her fingers were still warm and itchy; there was at least one more blast ready to go right there. She didn't know much about these shadow thingies -- certainly not as much as Lady Dee-Dah -- but she was pretty sure they wouldn't like fire.

  Quickly her fingers made the intricate motions needed to call the flame, and the heat rose eagerly to her command. But... something was strange, wrong! There was a cold, hungry presence, centered on Lord Runny, that tugged and slurped on her magic spell, trying to pull it away from her. Belatedly she recalled what the lady had said about her former husband's powers, and she cursed under her breath. Behind her, Jinkies mewled as he felt the magic's tension through her. Darnit, why hadn't she just thrown a bomb...

  With a great huff and all the willpower she could muster, the little witch held on to her spell, spitting out the last few words necessary to prime it. Then she let it go, to fall and wash over the shadows like a wave of red.

  Double darnit; the things weren't so flammable after all.

  Behind her forehead, a tiny little fairy with a whomping big hammer was ringing her skull like a bell. Better to stick to other tricks. She wished she'd decided that earlier.

  Bianca bided her time, nursing her headache carefully as she watched the others hack and whack at the shadows, with predictable results. Even though Cassie was handing out weapon blessings like they were candy at a faire, it was hard to make a dent in something that didn't have any mass to it. Still, Lady Dee-Dah managed to peg one with a small fireball, spat from one of the golden serpents circling her arms, and the moon princess herself took down another with that shining moon blade of hers.

  Finally she had an opening, a moment when everyone on the ground fell back to regroup against old Runny and his two remaining creeps. Bianca kept her magic rod strapped to her broomstick, where she could get at it quickly, and it was all ready and raring to go. With a loud "Hah!" she activated it, willing it to call down whatever random power it had upon her foes.

  There was a second of silence, like the universe itself was throwing dice to see what would happen, and then the floor of the chamber sprouted a thick, luxurious green carpet of living grass.

  She could either cry, scream, or swear death threats upon Gran'mama from afar -- she just couldn't decide which. Why in the world had the old bat gifted her with such a dud artifact?

  Cynthia had her hand raised. Not waving, not shaking, not wildly bouncing in her seat at the same time, but calmly sitting with her hand in the air and one eye on Señora Hernandez. "Um, may I ask a question?" she said politely through bucked teeth.

  "No need to be so formal," he said, "but sure. What is it?"

  The last time she'd had something to ask, it had resulted in a giant squirrel mowing down some animated topiary beasts. Uncle was expecting something equally interesting to come out of it this time.

  "Well, we all basically agreed that Claire's princess shoots out pure bright magic 'cuz that's the main element she's got goin' for her. Question is, can my princess do something like that, but with green magic? Since, like, she'd a druid and all?"

  He considered for a moment. It was a good question, especially in light of all the little tweaks and in-house rules he'd made to help develop the world in the way the girls were imagining, but it also required some changes that went deeper than reorganizing the elements chart or giving spells new names. "Gonna have to say no," he replied. "Channeling is a class feature for clerics and a few others, and unless Flora decides to find a vocation in the middle of battle right this minute, there's no way to work it in. Also," he added, "it would interfere with your plans for a druid-bard hybrid."

  "She's gotta be able to do somethin' with all this grass, though!" Cynthia whined, pointing to the space where Uncle had filled in the dry-erase sheet with green marker. "Can she, like, boost a spell or something? Maybe use it at triple power, like she was casting it three times at once?"

  "I might allow that."

  "Good!" The freckle-faced girl picked out one of her spell cards, titled 'Strangling Grass', and slammed it one the table. On top of it she placed three of the round, flat marbles that the girls used to represent the cost of casting a spell. The spell was only a bit of first-level magic, which needed blue marbles, but one of the three was red.

  "Hm, you're pushing it a bit there," he warned. "What you're trying to do is to over-cast the spell, which is supposed to push it up to the next level of power." He picked the red marble off the card and handed it back to her. "Now, this spell of yours doesn't actually have a more powerful version, so instead you're making it more concentrated and forceful. That makes it more difficult at the same time, so you'll need to roll really high to make this work at all. Still gonna go for it?"

  Cynthia just blew him a raspberry and grabbed her goldenrod d20. She shook it in her cupped hands and then released it with a flourish, only to watch it wobble around and land with a number 2 on top.

  "Okay, so--"

  "Wait a minute!" the girl shouted. She slammed another card down on the table. This one was laminated with an insignia of crossed swords over a pepperoni pizza. "Do-over!"

  "Was wondering when someone was gonna play the hero card," Uncle said good-naturedly. "Well then, we're assuming that Flora's mustering all her strength to make this really work. One more roll, and whatever you get is final. Even if it's worse."

  "Pft, like that's gonna happen."

  "Hey, it's still a five percent chance on these things..." And actually, he added mentally, it was more like a twenty percent chance of getting a number high enough to work.

  The girls all cheered as Cynthia took up her d20 once more, winding up like a pitcher at the plate, letting it go with all the spin she could muster. The little yellow-orange polyhedron spun and hopped, and landed up 1. "Um, that's not good, is it?" she gulped.

  "Nope, that it isn't. Okay, ladies," Uncle announced. "Time to re-fill your drinks. I'm gonna need a minute to go through my lists and tables for magical surges here..."

  For most of the fight, Princess Flora had been a wallflower, careful to stay back away from the action. She knew when she was out of her element, and this time it made sense to focus more on keeping Selvi and Isabel patched up. That didn't mean she had to like it.

  So when the wonderful verge of green grass sprung up out of nowhere, she'd taken it as the sign it was. All of a sudden, they were playing on her turf, and she figured she had just the spell for the occasion. With the secret words of the druids on her lips, she was ready to call up the grass, to tangle it and twine it around Lord Runny, when another thought struck her. Why not boost it up a rung on the old magical ladder? She had enough magic power stocked to cast this spell three or four times, so maybe she could just put it all into one big blast instead!

 

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