Sworded Affair

Chapter 21: Impostors

With the need for subtlety dead alongside their tour guide, Emma and Amal swiftly split up and began to search room by room. No longer bothered with picking locks, Emma simply cut through any doors barring her path,whilst Amal would touch the offending barriers with his walking stick, aging the doors into dust within seconds. The ground floor turned up nothing of interest; offices, break rooms, a kitchen and a toilet, all completely abandoned and in varying states of disrepair. After clearing the ground floor, Amal directed them to the upper floors which soon proved no better; the pair having to break through wooden boarding more often than not, to reach empty rooms filled with dust, damp and a total lack of useful information.

“None of this makes a lick of sense,” Emma complained, once they’d cleared all the bedrooms an hour later. “This place must cost a fortune to maintain, and they weren’t even using most of the space available. Why not downsize and find a smaller office in any nearby town?”

“Specific requirements, most likely. Something that required them to be here, or close to here. Not just a typical practitioner’s aversion to technology either; not when there are far easier ways of disconnecting from the world.”

“Well, that’s all the rooms above ground; time to check the basement." Emma sighed. "Any bets that that's where we’ll find the problem?”

“Why do you think I left the basement for last?” Amal chuckled. “If we’re about to lay waste to the manor in an epic battle, best to have checked the other rooms for useful information already.”

Smiling a bit at that, Emma took point again as they headed down the singular staircase that somehow served the entire building. As they passed the ground floor and descended into the depths, Emma felt a nascent headache that reminded her of the time she went to hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning.

[Status condition: Poison resisted.]

Turning to warn Amal, Emma found he’d already encased his head (and the rest of him too) in a bubble that moved along with him. His left hand was aglow, emitting a halo of white light that flickered at odd intervals, releasing what looked to be puffs of air.

“Self contained oxygen recycling and purification, never delve into an abandoned ruin without it.”

Nodding, Emma continued her descent, now feeling a bit silly for having worried about someone who was probably going on these sorts of adventures back when her parents were still in diapers. The door at the bottom of the staircase was locked, for all the good it did; a single kick solved that problem once and for all. As she emerged into a long corridor that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Hogwarts, Emma’s vision immediately lit up with dozens of name tags.

[Impostor - Level 3]

They emerged from the shadows, wraiths that might just about pass for men if a viewer were to close their eyes and remove their nose. Sickly green gas laden with foul spores poured from gaping and drooling maws, filling the air with an indescribable vileness.

“Looks like we’ve got some impostors among us.” Emma couldn’t resist saying, before immediately gagging as their putrid stench made her regret retaining a sense of smell in undeath.

[You can switch those senses off with a mental command, you know?]

I do now. Emma snarked back, before doing precisely that. Immediately, the foul stench faded, though the memory would sadly linger in her nightmares for quite some time.

“Begone.”

Amal clearly wasn’t impressed by the malodorous creatures either, as a massive yellow sphere flew from his hand into their massed ranks, erasing the majority of them in an instant.

“You should be able to handle the rest.” Amal assessed, seeing a dozen had survived the blast by virtue of being on the periphery, though the resulting shockwave still knocked them flat. “Good spot of practice dealing with their kind; just make sure to avoid their bite!”

Giving Amal a thumbs up, Emma charged forward without delaying, eager to gain some more experience after a slight drought since her battles at the Colosseum.

[It’s been one day.]

Ignoring her System’s clearly skewed sense of time, Emma pounced on the first Impostor whilst the latter was still staggered by Amal’s attack. Epitaph stabbed straight through its throat; followed immediately by a burst of magic to blow his head right off. Emma managed to repeat the same trick on his nearest neighbor, reaping a second freebie before her foes rallied and rose to their feet.

[40 EXP gained.]

Lunging with surprising speed, one Impostor dove headlong for Emma; he swallowed Epitaph for his troubles, before a downward slice cut him open from throat to groin. Unfortunately, this had the effect of coating Epitaph in the Impostor’s insides, and Emma quickly discovered why Amal had warned her of their bite. Tossing Epitaph aside as infernal stomach acid dissolved it to the hilt, her first instinct was to recall the blade, but she smothered that impulse.

No piercing the plant zombies, if that's the outcome. Blunt force it is then.

The next Impostor to approach took a fist to the face, then two more as Emma swung again and again, testing how it felt to throw a punch in her new form. Satisfied, her fourth blow was imbued with magic, and punched the Impostor’s head clean off.

[20 EXP gained.]

Wising up to the threat she posed, the next Impostors charged as a pair, one approaching from either side of the corridor. Finally recalling Epitaph, Emma dodged rightward, smashing the flat of her blade into the nearest enemy's knee, paired with a shove that sent the Imposter into its turning companion and bringing both enemies to the floor in a heap. Taking Epitaph in a two-handed grip, the flat of the blade came down twice in quick succession, quite literally bashing her grounded targets' brains out.

[40 EXP gained.]

Now free to turn her attention toward the remaining seven Impostors, Emma found them not advancing, but rather gathered in a loose circle, their arms intertwined in a manner eerily reminiscent of a sports team huddling before the big game.

“Are they dancing?” Emma asked incredulously as their legs kicked back and forth, left then right then left in an impressive display of synchronicity for a pile of shambling corpses.

Around them, a ritual circle came into being; green and black, bulbous and misshapen like a bloated fruit fly left to feast freely. Then, with one final kick, the Impostors exploded into a viscous green cloud. For a moment Emma was ready to run, seeing the cloud approach bearing the hallmarks of a final suicide attack. Her fear proved unfounded however, as after growing no more than ten feet in any direction, the gas shrunk back upon itself, coalescing into a glistening green sphere from which sprouted a single eldritch eye.

“Oh, now I get it.” Emma snapped her fingers.

“Time for the boss fight!”

[The Colony - Level 7]