- I’m sorry, she ended up saying with a sigh. I often fought against demons, but undeads… O Iomedae, if only Irabeth was here…

- Undeads and demons both are impious creatures, right? cut Konrad. Maybe they’ve got the same weakness!

- Uhh… Demons don’t really have a specific weakness…

- False!

Aravashnial had raised his voice, with the same tone as an enthusiastic professor to whom someone had asked him a question he dreamed about answering for a long time. He was wearing a huge smile, unable to see his interlocutors’ panicked faces. Puffing his chest, he continued:

- Well, true and false, if we want to be precise. Demons don’t have weaknesses, strictly speaking, that’s true : we can’t just throw fire at them. Most of them even resist it pretty well… Demons all have some sort of protective aura making magic and weapons less effective than on someone native of our plane. But there are several ways to reduce this resistance. The most well known and the most effective is to ask the help of a celestial creature, like an archon : those beings possess an aura weakening their alter-egos’ one. Mortals can also use a holy weapon blessed by a divine being, or by powerful priests and magic crafters…

Horgus suddenly opened his eyes wide, as if he just had a revelation.

- “Holy”... Of course! he exclaimed.

Listening to the old Elf’s ramblings, the noble remembered old books his private tutors used to make him read. Old bestiaries speaking of all kinds of creatures. Including undeads.

Horgus grabbed Konrad by the shoulder, and pointed his other hand to the stoup next to them. The young man looked at the container with a puzzled face.

- Holy water! explained Horgus. Throwing holy water at an undead will deal massive damage to them. With enough luck, the stoup's water is still blessed!

- No time to waste then! yelled Séliss. Find a container!

Anevia and Horgus immediately began searching the room, looking for any item that could help them carry the water. There was little chance that the water was still blessed after years of neglect, but they didn’t have a better idea for now.

Konrad, him, approached the stoup and stared at it with intensity. He quickly examined it under every angle, spotting the cracks that covered its surface, particularly on the part linking it to the wall. After some observation, Konrad closed his eyes. He inhaled, exhaled, emptied his head. He let his body, molded by years of training, take the dragon stance. No mistake allowed here. If he screwed up, Elemiah would be screwed. But he couldn’t take the time to search for another method.

When he reopened his eyes, Konrad let out a battle cry and hurled himself to the stoup, fist first.

Distracted by the sudden sound, Séliss took to much time to order her fire beetle to block the undead’s attack, allowing it to violently claw at Ashtor’s face. It was too much. Out of breath and unable to maintain his body’s coherence, the eidolon disappeared. His destruction’s backlash hit the summoner’s spirit at full strength, forcing her to let out a cry and making her lose her focus. The beetles disappeared right away, and with them their sole sources of light. Celia was now completely blind in the darkness and could not see the dwarf who was launching itself in her direction.

- Celia, watch out! yelled Séliss at her.

Per instinct, the huntress unsheathed her sword and put it in front of her as a protection. She felt something crashing violently into her sword. She ground her teeth in advance. She hoped to not have to use this, but if she kept fighting in the dark this way…

Trying to repel the panic that was starting to assail her, she used the sounds from the huecufeh's robes to approximately predict where he would strike next, blocking most of its attacks this way. She focused. Moved aside the apprehension. Disregarded the sharp pain provoked by the claws she could not stop in time. Ignored Séliss’s incantations, the sounds of destruction from the other room and Mali’s terrified mooing…

Suddenly, the world lit up in front of Celia. She could see clearly as day, but in shades of gray. The dwarf was just under her nose, ready to launch a new assault. It threw its hand at her, but, with her sight back, she dodged with a sidestep.

She immediately felt the pain. It was like someone shoving embers in her eye sockets. She blocked an attack and dodged another. With each passing second, the burning sensation increased in intensity. Her brain was sending her hundreds of distress signals. But she had to hang on. Win some time for the others. Soon there was only this growing pain and a feral instinct to prevent the next strike. She barely heard Séliss yelling at her to get close to the light. Her body reacted to the order by itself.

As soon as the draw put a foot in the light created by the new beetle the tiefling had summoned, Konrad went past the latter and set off to the fighters.

- Hey, ugly!

Surprised, the dead turned to the Human, prepared to defend itself from his attack. However, the undead’s limited intellect did not allow it to recognize the stoup Konrad was carrying in his hands. If it was the case, it would have dodged instead of trying to withstand when the steelbreaker threw the stoup at its face at full strength.

The dwarf shot an ear-splitting scream while the holy water covered it from head to toe. It frantically clawed at its own face, hoping to tear the burning flesh and stop the pain. Konrad took advantage of the opportunity to position himself to the creature’s flank, and threw a big punch on its temple while it was unable to stop him. The skull, weakened by the blessed liquid, split in multiple fragments on impact, and the undead was launched over a long distance. Its rotten skin was almost entirely melted when it crashed to the ground. Then it was its bones’ turn.

Soon, the only things left were an ash heap sitting in an old rotting monastic dress.

With the huecufeh destroyed, Celia deactivated her darkvision and dropped to her knees, her hands over her eyes, moaning and crying quietly. The burning sensation faded little by little, but she could still feel her eyes pulsating with a languishing pain ; an aftermath of her using her darkvision for too long. Séliss had to hold onto her staff to not fall as well. She stumbled to the bench. As soon as she was seated, she felt her consciousness fading. Those chain summonings completely wiped her out. The third beetle was a roll of the dice she wasn’t sure to succeed.

After some times, the last beetle disappeared while its mistress lost consciousness. Silence fell over the temple, bothered only by the huntress’s sob.

And by Aravashnial’s voice:

- Can someone explain what’s happening to me, now!?