March 21, 2026
As told by a wandering bard at the Inn of the Desert Winds, Tephu, nursing her third cup of mint tea
Friends, I have told you of the bat that would not let go. I have told you of Blade crawling across the sharp obsidian to save Iverson. But you have asked me where the obsidian came from, and why Lishka was already bleeding before any of that began, and who first raised the dead on that terrible platform. So pour another cup, and let me go back.
Back to the round before the end. Back to the beginning of the end.
The Sepulchre of the Servant was already chaos when this chapter of the tale begins.
Nebta-Khufre stood atop his ten-foot stone pyramid, twenty feet above the obsidian-strewn floor, and he had been ready. He had seen them coming, or sensed them, or simply been the kind of man who is always prepared for adventurers to ruin his evening, and he had met them accordingly. Mummies had been sent into the party like thrown stones — Mummy 1, Mummy 2, Mummy 3, Mummy 4 — while Nebta-Khufre himself cast his worst spells from on high, surrounded by two orbiting balls of lightning that drifted through the room like patient, murderous planets.
Smashy Smashy was entangled in cooling obsidian and could not move. Ryoshi, Iverson’s animal companion, was paralyzed. Striaka Fandar, Shavrak’s Eidolon, had already been sent away. And Shavrak Asha himself had just been struck with a critical hit from a wand of Enervation — a critical Enervation — dropping five negative levels onto the summoner in a single terrible moment, reducing him to something approaching a very confused first-level commoner with delusions of grandeur.
The party was hasted, at least. Iverson had seen to that. Small mercies.
Rochelle Martham opened the round the way she almost always did: with arrows. She was hasted, she had her bow, and she had her eyes on Mummy 2. She hit. She hit again. There was a critical threat, and the critical confirmed, and Mummy 2 staggered under the impact of the arrows. Every little bit helped, the party had been saying to each other for several rounds. Every little bit helped because nothing was killing anything cleanly in this room.
Nebta-Khufre shouted a command in ancient Osiriani, and Mummy 2 withdrew. The Spiritual Weapon Iverson had conjured latched onto the retreating mummy like a hound that has found a scent — it would follow him, Iverson noted with some satisfaction, to the ends of Iverson’s spell range and keep hammering away regardless of walls, furniture, or the mummy’s feelings on the matter.
Blade charged. This is the thing about Blade: when presented with a problem, the solution is almost always a greatsword swung with sufficient force, and the only real variables are whether to use Power Attack and how many times. He hit Mummy 3 hard. He hit him very hard. He hit him hard enough that Mummy 3 went prone and stayed there, which in a field of razor obsidian meant that Mummy 3 was having a worse day than almost anyone else in the room.
Iverson stepped forward, cast Prayer — a wide blessing that washed over the party as a soft golden light and over the enemies as a subtle but meaningful curse — moved his Spiritual Weapon toward Mummy 2, and then stood there calculating whether he could reach anyone useful. He could not. Ryoshi was paralyzed. The spiritual weapon would have to carry the divine fury for now.
Then Nebta-Khufre cast Feeblemind on Xander Zeltz.
There was a flash of glass spheres, a few words of arcane power, and Xander’s intelligence and charisma dropped to one. One. The sorcerer who had thrown a fireball three rounds ago, who had directed magical fire with casual precision, who had opinions about everything — suddenly could not communicate, could not cast, could not understand language, could only follow his friends with vague animal loyalty and perhaps, on good turns, throw a dagger.
Taz the thrush, sitting on Xander’s shoulder, spoke to him in common. Xander did not respond. Taz tried again. Nothing. Taz resigned himself to being the most intelligent creature in Xander’s skull for the foreseeable future, which he found both alarming and somehow unsurprising.
Then Nebta-Khufre cast Obsidian Flow.
The surface of the room simply melted. Stone liquefied, spread, and flash-froze into a field of sharp, glassy shards that covered the floor like a carpet of knives. Blade, Shavrak Asha, and Smashy Smashy were caught in it as it solidified — entangled in cooling stone, their feet suddenly encased in obsidian. The room became difficult terrain everywhere at once, which meant half movement, which meant no charges, which meant that every tactical option anyone had was suddenly slower and more dangerous.
Iverson was immune, because he had a Liberation domain, because Sun Wukong had blessed his cleric with the ability to ignore impediments to movement, because sometimes the universe rewards preparation with small but precisely shaped gifts.
Lishka tried to break free of the obsidian. She failed. Smashy Smashy tried to break free. He also failed. He tried again. He also failed again. He stood there, massive and dignified, wiggling his feet uselessly in the cooling stone while the room exploded around him.
Lishka, still trapped, shot at Mummy 3 with her bow. She hit him. Then Smashy Smashy, on his one good turn before the obsidian reclaimed him, smashed Mummy 3 into dust. The mummy who had been lying prone on a field of obsidian was smashed into a pile of something-that-had-been-a-mummy, and that was the end of Mummy 3.
Shavrak Asha, meanwhile, had summoned a Dire Bat of enormous size — a creature large enough that the room felt smaller when it arrived — and directed it up toward the platform where Nebta-Khufre stood. The bat flew up. The bat attacked. The bat missed. The bat missed again. The bat continued to miss with the particular consistency of a creature that is absolutely committed to its purpose regardless of results, which is either admirable or depressing depending on your perspective.
Rochelle Martham stood in the doorway and shot at Nebta-Khufre. She hit once. She hit again with her hasted attack. The temporary hit points he had layered on himself absorbed some of it. Every little bit, she reminded herself. Every little bit.
Nebta-Khufre then directed his ball lightning with purpose.
One ball of lightning drifted toward Rochelle Martham — she was wearing a mithril shirt, which is metal, which made her the lightning’s preferred destination. She saved. The ball stopped in the square next to her, hovering there like a threat deferred.
The other ball moved toward Blade in his good scale mail armor. Blade saved with a roll that would have impressed even Iverson’s god. The ball stopped beside him instead, crackling with patient menace.
Then Nebta-Khufre pointed his wand at Shavrak Asha and fired the Enervation.
And it was a critical hit.
Five negative levels in a single action. Shavrak Asha, who had been struggling to function with two negative levels, suddenly had five. He was, as the party ruefully noted, operating at something like first level. The summoner who had called down apes and bats and various other large animals stood in the room and was, temporarily, rather more than a little diminished.
Round after round, the mummies continued their grim work.
Mummy 4 came down the stairs from the raised walkway and hit Lishka. He hit her hard enough that she had to save against paralysis. She succeeded. He hit her again. She had to save again. And then Mummy 1 reached her as well, and between the two mummies and the obsidian floor and everything else happening in the room, Lishka went down.
Dead. Or close enough that it required two hero points — Blade’s, donated on the spot — to keep her at negative hit points rather than beyond all saving.
Smashy Smashy had broken free of the obsidian by this point and charged Mummy 1 with the righteous fury of a dinosaur who has watched his person fall. The roll came up. The damage came up. Mummy 1 had enough hit points remaining to be hit by a critical from a large dinosaur and survive, which tells you something about the constitution of mummies and perhaps something about the cruelty of the universe. But Smashy Smashy was not done.
Then Mummy 1 hit Smashy Smashy.
Thirty-three points of damage. The stegosaurus went down.
There is a particular quality to grief in the middle of a battle — it does not stop anything, it does not pause the initiative count, it does not excuse you from making your saving throw or directing your spiritual weapon or deciding which of the three terrible options in front of you is least terrible. Lishka was down. Smashy Smashy was down. Xander Zeltz had the intelligence of a sparrow. Shavrak Asha had five negative levels. The ball lightning orbited patiently. Nebta-Khufre stood above them all and began raising the corpses on the platform — the bodies of fallen enemies and adventurers who had come before this party, now standing up as zombies with all the enthusiasm of the freshly re-dead.
Rochelle Martham finally came unparalyzed and put arrows into Nebta-Khufre with the focused intensity of someone who has been waiting several rounds for the ability to do exactly this. She used Rapid Shot. She hit. The temporary hit points kept absorbing it, but they were running out.
Blade stood near Lishka’s body and delayed, waiting for Iverson to do something — anything — that would let him keep standing. Iverson channeled his last positive energy of the day, a burst that rippled through the room and kept the party breathing. He looked at Smashy Smashy, just out of reach, and could not get there.
The Dire Bat grappled Nebta-Khufre for the first time. It was the beginning of something.
And there the bard sets down this portion of the tale, because what came after — the bat that would not let go, Blade crawling across the obsidian, Shavrak Asha picking up the wand — that is the tale you have already heard.
But now you know why the floor was covered in glass.
Now you know why Lishka was already bleeding.
Now you know why Xander Zeltz spent three rounds throwing daggers at a necromancer twenty feet above him with all the strategic coherence of someone who has forgotten what strategy is.
The bard finishes her tea and looks into the cup for a moment.
Someone in the back of the inn asks: did Smashy Smashy really die?
The bard says: yes. But Smashy Smashy came back. And when he came back, he was large.
She says it the way people say things that are both true and still a little miraculous.
And she orders another cup.