Sunday
Written by Chiz

Mukli heard the familiar click from the bronze lock. He took a step a way from the ornate double doors. Then looked back to make sure Belcona and Thani'toria were being guarded by Guts in the other room. He glanced over the three guards that they had to end to get in here.

Draped in Lloth symbols and heraldry, they had fought to the death to keep them on this side of the door. He didn't know if that was because of their devotion, or the fact that none of them had a key. He waited as Kurgen listened at the door.

Kurgen could still hear the muffled chanting from beyond the double doors. As Mukli knocked her bow, Kurgen tightly griped the handle of his khukuri trusting its weight. He counted to three with his left hand. As he held up his third finger he kicked open the door. As soon as the door's seal were broken the distant chanting became an ear-burning calamity. The sickly sweet incense could not compete with the reek of blood and sweat.
Time froze for an instant. Instead of guards, a chanting congregation met them. A see of naked dark elves. Each clutched a dagger as they retraced freshly carved wounds in to their own flesh. Their glissading pitch-black skin gave way to a vibrant pink at the edge of the wounds followed by the deep red of flowing blood in the middle. Each of the cultists had marked their skin with the spider symbols of Lloth. Neither Mukli or Kurgen could understand the drow's tongue but they could tell by their impossibly wide and bloodshot eyes that they were far past intelligible speech.

Just as that instant had started it ended. The cultist came at them in a black bleeding chanting wave. Mukli loosed her arrows into the front as they surged forward. Two of the front elves staggered, only to be swallowed up by the advancing wall of cultist. Kurgen drooped two of them in quick suggestion, but not before one raked his side as he was swept past in the push. Mukli stood, backed into a corner, firing point blank into their possessed faces. The insane mob lashed out at them both, with daggers emblazon with the symbol of Lloth and wet with their own blood.

When the mass of cultist hit the door to the entry way Guts met them. The cultist wave had broken on a very large orc with a very large sword. Mukli could no longer see him, but he did see two cultists fly back into the antechamber in three pieces. Then a steady rain of dazing magic missiles started to strike into the cultist as Thani'toria shot over Guts' shoulder.

Kurgen slashed the belly of the cultist in front of him. Letting his entrails drop to the ground. As the cultist followed his visra to the floor, Kurgen saw a cloaked figure beyond the wall of cultist. Surrounded by the mayhem of the crowd she stood out with here poise and sanity. Kurgen stepped over the cultist desperately trying to get his intestines to stay in his body and started at the cloaked figure. Their eyes met for a split second as the figure made a gesture with her left hand. Kurgen froze.

It was as if a bubble had formed around his brain. He could still see out of his eyes but he could not tell them where to look. He felt himself starting to fall forward, but couldn't move any limbs to catch himself. His forward momentum was stooped when he crashed into the cultist crush. A female cultist, not much taller then himself, wrapped her free hand around his small throat and brought her dagger up into it hard. To Kurgen it felt as if his neck had been burn trough. He felt his hot wet lifeblood flow down his chest. The cultist stabbed again and again, almost severing her own thumb in the frenzy of killing for her goddess.
Mukli moved amongst the cultists now. There was enough room for her to dodge the drow, going around, under and even over as she ran up the back of a few of them. When a dark elf lunged at her they would only find an arrow hanging in the air. Entering their chest while still bent from the bow. But try as she might, she could not reach the enchanted kobold.
The crowd thinned quickly under the attention of Guts. The Orc cut a swath through the drow trying to get at the dying kobold. With their momentum broke the cultists tried to avoid the Orc. But the room was too small for them to escape. Each swipe of his sword divided the top half of drows from their bottoms. Those that did manage to duck under Guts' blade caught magic missiles from Thani'toria wand. The blue bolts occasionally fizzled when they hit the dark flesh. But for every one that failed two found their marks.
The cleric of Lloth knew that her thralls wouldn't stop the party from entering her church. Mukli saw the cleric turn and sprint to the back of the main room. She also saw a glint of metal flying through the air at her. She ducked behind one of the remaining male cultist. She kicked out the cultist knee and pulled his torso over her small goblin frame.
Instead of an impact on the cultist Mukli heard a small metallic “tink” and the world exploded. Flames flowed around the cultist body and singed Mukli's hair. Heat and a broken drow body bounced off of Guts' chest. All of the remaining cultist died in that moment. Their glossy black skin turned a dull gray, glissading only where their fat had dripped out of their spider shaped wounds.

Guts was the first party member into the church itself. It was a long sparse room, with a gently domed ceiling. Guts saw the leg of the cleric as it slipped behind a closing secret door on the far wall, behind a golden gilded alter. Between Guts and the altar, against the left wall, was a large cage. It's bars ran from floor to ceiling and it held two badly mutilated bodies.

Belcona searched amongst the shattered cultist and found Kurgen's body, still enwrapped in the body of the woman who had killed him. The kobold was beyond her aid. Mukli slid out from underneath her elven shield and joined Belcona and Thani'toria as they entered the church. Guts ran to the secret door and began searching for a way to open it.
Thani'toria and Belcona both took in the magic of the place. It was a mixture of evil and will twisting together to demand power from a selfish goddess. Belcona began to try to clean the small wounds on Mukli as they moved to where Guts was now pounding on the wall. Mukli brushed her away and pointed at the bodies in the cage, Belcona hurried over to them when she saw one of them move.

When she reached the bars and knelt down to examine the prisoners the very church shook. Past the bars, and the near unconscious prisoners, the wall began to slide down. Cold, moist air hit her face, it carried with it the smell of blood and corrosion. Thani'toria backed away from the cage as Mukli and Guts searched the wall for the door.

The bars followed the section of wall disappearing into the floor. Belcona took steps back and readied for something to happen. She wasn't ready enough to get away from the 30-foot wide spider that jumped out of the darkness with a speed unnatural to its size. A fang the size of her forearm pierced Belcona in the shoulder, tearing her flesh and deposing a milky venom behind it. The impact was enough to send her across the church. Her armored body sliding across the giant mosaic of a spider on the floor. By the time her body stopped at the far wall she was pale, sweating and shaking uncontrollably. She rapped a shacking hand around her holy symbol and asked her god to either heal her or embrace her in a final welcome.

Mulki hit the monster with arrows the same time that Thani'toria hit it with a spell of acid. The spider seemed to ignore them and concentrate on the holy symbol clutched to Belcona's chest. It lumbered over to her. She could see her reflection in the creatures many eyes. It seemed to her that the reflection was not as she remembered herself but as the creature or it's god wanted her. Dead and drained, parts of her face burned off and crushed in, her holy symbol broken in two and stabbed into her throat.

Her world went black as a warm sensation entered her hand that clutched her god's symbol and Guts leaped at the spider. He was a few feet off the ground when his sword made contact with the spider's chitinous armor. Biting deep and letting a gray ooze flow free from the spider's side. Mukli put arrow after arrow into the harry thorax of the monster. Thani'toria shoot energy after energy into the now rampaging beast. A leg shattered to cold and electricity caused the creatures juices to flow from it's pours. The spider's head snapped down at Guts. He met it with his sword. He tried to pearce the spider's skull with the tip of his sword. When the tip slid off the shell where he had put it he taught that he was done. The tip traveled up the face of the spider until it found the largest of the eyes on it's left side.

Finding a brain that small in a creature that big can lead to many out comes. In this case it was as if the creature simply stopped being. No thrashing about or twitching. Just an immediate release, practically landing on Guts and Belcona.

The cleric of Lloth fell back from the eye slit she had been watching trough as if she'd just been shot. She looked around her private chamber as if in a daze. She had thought of herself as a chosen of Lloth. Three months earlier she had been the lowest of her order. Most of her time was spent keeping their torture victims from bleeding to death or swallowing their own tongues. Then the Drow city had been found and destroyed. All of her fellows and her highpreastest had been killed. When the refugees had reached her church for shelter she greeted them as the new highpreastest. Spared by Lloth herself, chosen and elevated to do her bidding.

Then her worshipers and guards had been slaughtered. And the biggest blow of all, Lloth's own embodiment had been killed. And by this group of creatures. She never thought she would see a human, elf, orc, kobold, and goblin fighting together. It went against nature. If this group was responsible for the destruction of her church and their army for the destruction of her city could Lloth really have chosen her. She had felt Lloth's power first hand. Mere moments ago she had used it to paralyze the little dog creature. But now she could feel it deserting this place, deserting her.

She would not die for a god that would allow such scum to force her out. She went to the far wall and unlocked the secret escape door. It would take her outside into the field that surrounded the mound the church was barred in. Out into the hated sun but to freedom. She would leave Lloth behind in this church.

She was so intent on finding the hidden latch that she did not notice the spider shaped chandelier in the center of the small room begin to sway. Two of the four ropes holding it aloft snapped setting the chandelier swinging through the air. The front leg impaled the cleric, right through her heart. She lived long enough to feel her heart tear itself apart trying to beat around the metallic spider leg.

When the party finally found her body they knew her soul was with her goddess. They just didn't know that she was greeted, not as a loyal follower, but as soul to be tortured for the enjoyment of the Spider Goddess for the rest of eternity.

 

But now she could feel it deserting this place,
deserting her.

-Guts
-Kurgen
-Mukli
-Thani'toria

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