The home base of the lich lord Shigoriath. Deep under the soft earth of the Aurian marsh, it is a well-protected shrine filled with so many objects of dark magic that the marsh directly above it flows with blackened water. Here is where the phylactery where Shigoriath's soul resides can be found, hidden behind a trick wall, within a locked box, wthin a safe, within a sorcerous sphere, within a block of endlessly frozen ice.

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Aurian Marsh
Helantri Deru
Niven Ai
Shigoriath's Temple
Marsh Temple Shrine

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Ting blinks, and looks around. The sorcery here is thick, almost choking...and so dark. It's claustrophobic...and far too quiet. "Dewei?" she inquires softly, taking a tentative step forward, naginata quite primed.

"No." The first chamber is small, almost chokingly small. And Shigoriath is just outside it, waiting. Here his body looks even more mutilated than outside, insects crawling along his flesh as if they had been there as long as time could recall. 

The lich lord steps inside the dim, tiny room. "But if you are lonely, let me keep you company."

Ting bares her fangs just a little, taking a defensive step back even as the naginata whips down for the blade to face the lich. All told, she's actually working on being scared, for once in her life. She's no match for Shigoriath alone...or, she doesn't think so. "Where's my brother?"

"Busy," Shigoriath shrugs, "how could I know? He could still be with my dragon. He could be boiling by now." The lich takes a step closer, hollow eyes fixed upon Ting. As he moves, the hallway to his rear becomes visible and the slip mage Makyon can be seen standing there, leaning against the wall. Just watching.

"He's alive." They're psychic twins. That she's sure of. "And I know he'll get here okay." She's slowly slipping back into her usual courage...even as her life flashes before her eyes. If she dies, she's going out with a bang and taking at least one more creepy skeleton with her, that's for damned sure.

Shigoriath stretches out his free hand, holds it palm up. A sound not unlike the wailing of the lost soul rises from the blackness as a centipede emerges from Shigoriath's left eye and disappears into his right. 

A warning flashes into Ting's area of perception. The sight of a greenish mist rising from the floor, turning her feet, her legs, into the decayed, fleshy stalks of the zombies above. Makyon shifts his position a bit.

"Then your brother will happen upon your dessicated carcass." It's obvious that there is no energy rising from that hand, though.

Ting's eyes widen, startled...her mother's bracelet is glowing brightly now, straining mightily against Shigoriath's spell. She leaps then. "Back off!" The blade of her weapon, making full use of its reach, sings towards his raised wrist in a movement that really shows her formidable skill.

"Gra!" Shigoriath hadn't expected a physical rebuttal, and cries out in irritation when his hand is slip from his arm. The eye of the staff opens and fires its horrible spell even as the hand begins to drag itself across the floor, towards her.

She tries to move. But, for the first time and largely due to her damaged legs, the attack connects, albeit to an arm, at about the elbow. A sharp, pained, feline-esque cry hangs and echos in the air for a few moments. Then, eyes set, Ting grits her fangs, shifts the polearm to apply its more limited one-handed forms, and leaps forward again, sidestepping faster than she really should be able to given her legs and swinging her spell-enhanced blade at the eye of the staff even as a brilliant burst of light--a low energy light attack--explodes through the room, rendering everything pure white.

This close the phylactery, the lich lord can function without the staff at top form. The head of the weapon bursts into glistening white shards, glowing hot with the energy of Ting's attack, but Shigoriath is quick to move away to keep from being burned by the light, and his hands busily work a spell that brings dozens of putrid arms bursting from the walls, floor, and ceiling, all reaching for Ting.

Makyon shifts again.

She skips like a firewalker as they try to grab what's left of her legs, wild, set determination in her eyes...stiffens when one manages to grab her weapon, and two more join it almost instantly. She enhances her strength psychically, tries to jerk it away...then loses her focus a moment too long when she has to move her feet again, and the weapon's dragged upward.

The half-dumen catches her breath...grits her teeth. Damnit! She begins gathering the same kind of power she'd used a minute ago against the rats, eyes just beginning to take that purple sheen...ducks back, jumps, ducks back again at the hands, then sprints forward at Shigoriath, an obscenely powerful light-slanted psionic attack just begin to crackle to life at her hands.

Shigoriath opens his mouth in a wicked grin. As the hands reach for Ting the lich lord's jaw dislocates. His mouth stretches, wider and wider, the skin and tendons snapping to rearrange themselves until his mouth, within a few seconds time, yawns open wide enough to engulf the entire Ting. His slimy purple tongue lashes out to meet her charge, to drag her in.

Ting's eyes widen, but only an instant before she grits her teeth, literally snarling, and flings her attack ahead of herself, right into that hideous maw.

Shigoriath's mouth closes, remaining at its tremendous size, though beginning to shrink down.

Just before the head explodes. A rain of decaying flesh, bone, and light flies across the room, but the arms keep coming, and the body remains upon its feet. 

At the end of one of the arms hanging down in front of Tin, a sickly looking face blooms like the petals of a black rose, its eyes staring, unblinking.

"Have to try harder than that..."

Ting is breathing hard. And in very real pain...two legs and two thirds of an arm look undead, but can still feel at least a portion of how they look. There are tears running down her face, but these she doesn't acknowledge...an invisible but brutal psionic enhancment lets the claws slicing towards either "face" with blinding speed--and, really, any part she can reach--have some chance at damage.

The face rips cleanly in half, as do the other targets, beneath Ting's powerful claws. From the shredded, fleshy protrusions a rain of centipedes spills towards Ting. Massive red ones with waving antenna, tiny black ones as long as her arm. 

All around her, hands shrink down and bloom with macabre copies of the lich lord's face, slathering from lips that part and yawn open to take her in, dozens of them reaching for her, hungering for her flesh.

One actually manages to take a chunk out of what's left of her left arm, near the shoulder. It blots out the pain of centipedes biting. The other set of claws strikes through that despite the scream of pain, which lets a couple of the small centipedes in her mouth. They're smashed between tighly gritted teeth.

"I..." Ting mutters after a few moments, face absolutely fierce in its determination, claws slashing at another head... "am my mother's daughter..." Slash. "And the granddaughter of Tel-tiono." Slash. Bitten again, less seriously. Energy begins to build. "I have millenia of power behind me, and a family name to honor..." Face twists into an absolute snarl, red-violet energy flashing to life around her eyes and nearly illuminating the room... "And I will not let you DEFEAT ME!" That said, the absolute most powerful attack that she's ever formed--a chaotic mess of psionic and magical ability, all but the entirety of her massive, uncontrolled reserves of energy--bursts outward from her body.

Makyon mutters a silent curse. He is smart enough to move down the hall several yards to avoid any fallout from the blast, but Shigoriath takes it full force. He is a mighty lich lord, but then, Ting is Ting. The centipedes vanish, even the ones too close to her to be straightway blasted. Shigoriath and all his horrible faces burn away, leaving only a few piles of ash in the tiny room.

Ting is very quiet then. She takes a few steps over to where her naginata has dropped, eerily calm. She kneels, picks it up, and examines it a few moments...then, without further ado, simply collapses. Her energy's dangerously depleted, her body's exhausted, her mind's exhausted. Three limbs are least partly undead, she's losing a dangerous amount of blood where there are chunks missing from her arms, and the venom from dozens of centipede bites is racing through what she has left. She's just...done.

It's nearly a full minute before Makyon pushes away from the hallway wall, face set irritatedly into a scowl. He kneels beside the fallen Serinian and produces a piece of chalk from within his vest's inner pocket, gazing over her grimly. 

"When your brother arrives," he whispers as he sets the chalk to the ground, "tell him to look behind the chapel ice." He draws a circle all the way around Ting, vanishes and reappearing in his unusual method of moving to make it faster so that within a few seconds she is surrounded by a layered, complex rune of pure life energy. It rises from the symbol in a cool blue light that smells faintly of evergreen, bathing her in light. It's not a fast spell, by any means, but... he needs a moment to get away from the scene.

Ting is actually conscious...debatably. Her eyes are the littlest bit open, watching Makyon when he's in her direct line of sight--which is limited, as she'd fallen forward. Whether she's comprehending what's going on is very hard to say, though. She closes her eyes when the rune glows to life, listens to the fold mage leave...and then it's quiet. Just painfully quiet, except a muffled sound of water from far above. She hadn't noticed it before...just listens, slipping in and out of the waking world.

Makyon moves deeper into the temple shrine, away from Ting and the doubtlessly approaching Dewei. He walks past generic arrow-traps, phase-shifts through some kind of idiotic memory puzzle, and at last arrives in the inner sanctum. Before a wall of ice Shigoriath stands once again, wholly skeletal and clothed in a blackened robe. 

"You told me that we weren't going to kill them," the slip mage opens without bothering to make nice. "You said that we would frighten them away and spare them."

The lich lord hisses softly. "So I lied."

The phase-shift that follows lands Makyon about a quarter inch away from Shigoriath's face, his eyes set, his pearl teeth bared in rage.

"Don't lie to me, Shigoriath. If you try to kill them again, you'll regret ever animating me." He scoffs audibly. "Get it?"

Shigoriath pauses a moment. "Women," he says at last, "who wield weapons, remain the enemy. Hesitating for a pretty face and mammaries is folly."

They continue to argue, the heat of it building slowly, but noticeably.

Arrow traps and one pitfall, predictably, don't particularly slow Felina's youngest..."Ting? Where are...Ting!" His heart positively freezes when he sees her...she looks awful. Absolutley...god, she's barely alive. His sprint skids to a stop, arms waving for balance, right at the edge of the rune...hadn't been aware of it fast enough. His wide, wildly fearful eyes scan over it...it's helping. Makyon...and it's helping. He swallows hard...steps over the chalk carefully, and kneels beside his sister. "Ting...?" He lays a hand gently on the sweat-plastered back of her head.

It takes a few moments. Then, she opens her eyes the littlest bit, manages a shadow of a smile. "Hey, Dewei, you're late..."

He manages a tight, insincere smile. "Yeah. Took all the fun, huh?" He brushes her hair from her face gently...lays a hand on her shoulder, between bite wounds, and they begin to knit at an impressive rate.

The partially undead legs and arms are still glaringly there, though. The upright half-dumen grits his teeth after a few moments, forcing himself to look away from them. "Ting, I'm...so sorry. God, look at you...if I'd been here..." he can't finish. Then she wouldn't have been fighting alone, and she'd be okay.

"Heh...I bet you...I could still kick your ass..."

He has to smile in response, though his eyes sparkle. "Yeah. Probably. Hey, Spot...I'm going to send you home, okay? Let mom take care of these injuries.

Ting shakes her head stiffly. Winces at the process, but then Dewei eases that pain and the begins to heal the wounds. "No...Dewei...look at me. We're no good alone, you know that...we need each other..." Her eyes travel up to him in a slow, cloudy manner, but her ash-rose lips are something between smiling and absolutely serious. "Okay? We started together...let's finish that way. Just...give me a few minutes...."

Dewei has never been good at arguing with her. He tries to smile in return, and fails...then just keeps healing her, and waiting by her side as the energy rune helps stabilize her aura. He's watchful for any danger...but mostly focussed on his sister. His twin sister.

Nothing stirs to interrupt them for a bit. Not the slightest sound taints the rush of running water far above, not even Makyon and Shigoriath's bickering carries far enough. Nothing, that is, until...

"Stupid... urgh! Just wait till I get my hands on..."

Ai appears in the doorway where Ting had come from, and simply stands, taking in the scene. Ichor drips from pretty much all over her, and stench of ghouls is about her. Her staff is saturated with undead muck... it's been a busy day. Without a word she heads towards the two of them, intent on adding her own power to Dewei's to try and help.

Dewei blinks. "Ai! You're okay."

Ting mumbles something, but she's in a "half-there" state again, so it's not exactly clear.

Ai holds her hands out, over Ting, and pours out a tiny sliver of her divine essence enfolded with the package of a healing spell. "For her... decay," she informs Dewei. "Yeah. I'm fine."

She's only lying a little. A stabbing wound open just beneath her left breast is bleeding pretty heavily, it's edges gurgling with rot, but she pays it little mind. Ting is in much worse shape than she.

It's a slow process. But eventually, Ting's hand and feet are almost completely knitted, and what's above--though clothed in rotted rags--is living again. She's sitting up, though leaning against Dewei. "Well what do you know. You guys are pretty good at this." She's trying hard to act like she's less off-balance and upset by a rather horrific near-death experience than she is.

Ai sits back on her knees and huffs softly. "Well. I promised I would look after you, and I don't care to listen to Felina bitching. I brought you a present, though, that ought to help you feel better." Into her cloak she reaches, withdrawing the dispelled, skeletal head of the draugr who had trapped them to begin with, which she drops to the ground before them. "The little freak thought to snare me, too. So."

Dewei tilts his head at the skull. "Well. One less thing to worry about."

Ting is quiet as she tries to get to her feet, her brother helping...no one had protected her then. They'd healed her, and her staying here prone would certainly have killed her before long, but...in that awful, hideous fight, she'd just been alone. And she's not sure how she feels about that.

"Well...shall we go?" Dewei finally inquires. "If you're okay, Ting?"

She nods. Looks at her weapon strangely for a moment before picking it up, almost hesitantly, but she does.

Ai stiffens. "I can't go with you," she warns in a resolute tone of voice, a hint of worry in her eyes.

Ting looks up quickly at this. "You can't? Why not?"

"There's another complication." Ai looks back the way she had come briefly, and then again at Ting and Dewei. "I don't know how he did it. But somehow, someone here has killed a world worm. And Shigoriath reanimated it." She doesn't need to say 'and by the way, it's coming to eat us.' That much, she's sure, is understood. "I must stall it."

Dewei bites his lip, and nods. "We can handle whatever is ahead, then. We'll find the phylactery."

Ting nods, more hesitantly. But nods.

Ai smiles at the both of them. "Confidence is one hell of an asset. Um... Dewei? Can I have a moment with Ting? Girl talk, you see."

"Uhh...sure. I'll be...over there." He points back at the hall he'd come from, and heads that way.

Ting's leaning on her naginata for support, still lacking all her strength and the full use of that ankle, though it's coming along. And she's definitely uncomfortable.

Ai waits until he's moved away, and then faces Ting. "Dear. What was that light, surrounding you? I have a guess, but... enlighten me."

She looks down at it. "It's an energy rune...life energy type, I think...really advanced stuff. My brother could probably tell you more. It...may have kept me alive by replenishing my energy somewhat. It was...really low, dangously. I think Makyon left it...but...the memory's really, really fuzzy. I could be wrong."

Ai considers this thoughtfully, her mobile mouth twitching a little bit as thoughts teased her brain.

"Ting. Listen. Don't be afraid to use your appearance to get help, if you need it. If you are right about this rune, I think you might have Studly in there at your call." The goddess winks. "Leading a man on is your unalienable right as a female. So." She looks to the other entrance, and sighs. "The worm comes," she says loud enough for the both of them. "I'm off."

Ting bites her lip a little...just nods. "Right. Take care, okay?" She's not sure how she feels about that. She's more feminine than her mother ever has been, to be sure, but she still...well. She isn't quite comfortable with the notion.

Ai, of course, is fine with it. She nods, and briefly touches Ting's arm before racing back up the stairs to tend her decaying wound and head to the surface. A world worm... just lovely.

Okay, Dewei. All... "...clear," she finishes, as her brother steps in. She smiles a bit. "Not far off, huh?"

"Yes, well...I have to make sure you 'girls' don't set booby-traps for the rest of us or something." Translation: he still can't believe what had just happened and he'd rather have his balls cut off and nailed to something than leave Ting alone right now. He sets a hand around her shoulders. "Ready to go on?"

Ting smiles...pauses. Shoves him. "I'll beat you!" And she scampers towards the exit despite a slight limp. She's not feeling playful, really. But it'll make Dewei feel better.

And he does grin a little, and hurries along after her.

An obelisk rises before them, or... rather, descends. Deep beneath the earth the power of Shigoriath's phylactery radiates its foul power, though even from the end of the tunnel Makyon and the lich lord are visible down below, still arguing heatedly.

Ting bites her lip. Dewei...? You're the smart one, what should we do?

Just be quiet, and keep your cloaks up. We won't stay hidden long, especially since I bet they're where we need to get, but...let's not hurry it faster than necessary.

She swallows hard, he squeezes her slightly trembling shoulders briefly, and they start to decend. Ting's still leaning on her weapon for support, but both are quiet, unobtrusive...and extremely alert.

"... ungrateful pile of meat! I should send you back to where I found you, rotting in the dirt!"

"Like you could! Don't be stupid, lich, you know I am immune to your magics."

"Magics, perhaps, but think you that I have only the one weapon in my arsenal?"

"I think you had best allow me this concession." Makyon paused at last, and he and Shigoriath both turned their heads in unison towards the twins. "Took you long enough," the slip mage grumbles. "I don't suppose you'll do me the honor of leaving?"

"We can't," Ting answers, most unhappily.

Dewei nods. "Not as long as our home is poisoned..." he bares his fangs just a little. "And not as long as your master here is party to a plan to murder our mother."

Makyon's expression darkens, but remains unsettled. 

"Well then. You've come here aided by a goddess. Your way has been pointed by the sad, pathetic spectres who writhe beneath my rule." Shigoriath taps his staff, whole once more, upon the ground, watching as it rolls and boils beneath. To see stone boil... even Makyon is impressed at that. "Here you are alone. And so shall you die."

Dewei's sword come out...Ting is a half a moment slower, but she shifts her weight to stand without her pointy stick and raises it to a fighting position as well. "We're not alone this time," she almost growls. She's scared. She's not trying to hide that this time. But she's not going to let her brother fight alone. This time, they're not alone. They're together.

Shigoriath taps his staff upon the earth again. Stone and soil spews up from the ground, as if the very earth is nauseated by his touch. The form of a hellish, gaping mouth surges forth from within the mess of rock and ground, searching specifically for Ting... the weak link, at this point. 

It's a good call on his part...Ting freezes a moment, fangs locked in a grimace. Her brother grabs her aside, his sword glowing faintly with holy magic he hopes will add strength to the one-armed swing.

The mouth splits and separates, this time without a rain of insects. Only with Shigoriath lunging for Dewei, staff sprouting long, white barbs as he swings for the fences.

Ting finally gets it together at this point and growls in the back of her throat as her hard years of combat training kick in again. Pole weapon versus pole weapon, huh? Bad choice. She elbows in front of her brother, weighted end of the naginata sweeping out at the lich lord's flying staff...if it works right, the staff will go severely off course if not flying, while a second pass of her weapon's unbroken movement will bring the weight into his skull. Again.

The staff's barbs extend a upon contact, attempting to snag Ting's weapon as the staff leave's the lich lord's hands. A hiss of poisonous gas shoots up from the cleft in his skull at the nagina blade, issuing forth from his eyes, nostrils, and mouth as well.

Careful, an anonymous warning fades through the psychic spectrum, this close to his phylactery Shigoriath is nearly invincible.

Makyon looks around, as if searching for the source of it. He shakes his head, and cracks his knuckles to join in the fight as well.

Both twins jump back at this, even as both wonder at the voice...long enough for Dewei to instate the same breathing spells they use on inhospitable planets. Then Dewei flings a psionic attack at Shigoriath, which will connect a second before Ting, who's pulling the tried and true "go for the staff eye!" bit with the blade of her naginata.

True to form, Shigoriath slaps the psionics away as if they were physical objects.

Old tricks will not work forever.

The eye of the staff splits along its vertical pupil, the meat seperaating with a nasty suckling pop. Rows of glistening fangs just out horizontally from either side, the gasping slick-hot breath of the living staff spewing out as it bites down upon Ting's weapon edge. The smell of corroding metal permeates the already stinking air, and Shigoriath hisses with laughter.

Makyon makes his presence known at last. His phase-shifting step brings him to within a foot of Dewei, hand rising in an attempted uppercut to the solar plexus.

Gah! A well-placed spring vaults Ting neatly over Shigoriath, still clutching her ruined weapon...which is impressive, considering the enchantments on it. She stumbles when she lands, as per a still less than perfect foot, but stays on her feet. So I see. Who are you?

Dewei hadn't quite been ready for this...the wild energies in this room are clouding his perception, and he hadn't known that Makyon was in the fray. He just takes a clean blow to the gut, coughing...the back of his sword fist whips inward, at what's about Makyon's throat level though this is just luck.

Shigoriath and Makyon are both old. Smart. In control of their abilities. You won't win by force.

Makyon shifts back and forward again, so briefly that he scarcely appears to have moved. The fist misses by a hair's breadth, and the slip mage's hand reaches out at inhuman speed for Dewei's throat.

Shigoriath turns to launch a cloud of hissing, buzzing rot-flies at Ting from within his horrible mouth.

A shield, low-energy, snaps to life around Ting against the flies. Well we're young, I'm dumb, neither one of has a handle on our power and THAT DOESN'T HELP!

Makyon connects. Dewei is pretty good, but not the fighter his sister is...even so, he's about as flexible, and a foot goes careening up for Makyon's jaw.

Dewei's foot cracks against Makyon's jaw with a cavernous thwack, sending the slip mage reeling for about two seconds.  He steps back normally, grinning at Dewei. His hands rise. "Come on," he dares the hybrid.

The flies latch onto Ting's shield, assaulting it, feeding off it, but they are not enough to breach it. The lich lord hisses again, watching each of the thousands of flies burst into a puff of greenish smoke. 

Stay calm. The fight is yours. But you won't win it if you don't take out that phylactery... Shigoriath will just come back. Makyon is busy. Cast a light spell upon the ice!

Okay...THAT helps. The most powerful light spell she dares with her still pitiably low energy level flashes to life around the ice.

Dewei is tense...he remembers how this had gone last time. "Yes, but will you actually fight?" He charges Makyon, sword swinging low, for his knees.

Makyon leaps, phase shifting to the crest of his jump and just missing the edge of Dewei's sword. His heavy fist flashes out for Dewei's nose, with plenty enough force to break it should it connect.

Shigoriath roars as the ice thins and cracks all over, his thick, meaty tongue shooting out for Ting.

Dewei's hands jerk up as a lowered stance gets him out of the way...he tries to redirect Makyon's force in a very typical judo-esque move that will throw him over...but the mutt won't go of his wrist. Not letting Makyon get away to teleport seems more than pertinent.

Ting jumps back, but isn't quick enough to avoid the scarily fast tongue.

Shigoriath's tongue snakes around her waist, dripping goo all over her even as minute hands reaches out from the pulsing muscle tissue to grab her her, tear at her, if they can.

Makyon goes tumbling with the throw, but phase-shift's part way to make the trip much faster... hoping that the extra force will drag Dewei down with him.

Makyon is not a threat. Help your sister.

Nnng...gross! Ting swipes at the little hands two at a time with her perfectly normal claws. Her spellcasting's concentrated on the ice...the light spell intensifies. Dewei, go for the ice!

Dewei's agility helps him here...he does go down, but ends up on his feet after a well-placed roll. He pauses at the voice, confused...his eyes widen when he sees Ting's predicament. But just as his muscles tense to carry him that way, her follow-up command getting his attention as well...he finally grits his teeth, chooses his direction...and leaps away from both Makyon and Shigoriath, flinging a powerful, fire-laced energy attack at the wall of ice.

Shigoriath's mouth widens, a swarm of rot-flies, poison gases, centipedes, and corrosive goo pooling in preparation to launch at Ting.

Better thank me for this.

Makyon moves as the wall of ice starts to shatter. His gloves come off to reveal a full set of razored claws of black matter, and he drives those claws through the horrible tongue of the lich lord. The muscle relaxes, freeing Ting from its slimy grip.

Shigoriath growls at Makyon.

"I warned you," the slip mage cries, "to let them live. So now-ggnhgh!"

Makyon's speech is cut short by the severed tongue's hands shooting shooting out like dozens of ultra-thin needles, piercing through his back and out his front in fifty places or more in an instant. He groans, eyes frozen wide, and topples over in a spreading pool of blood. Alive, but not very.

"Eep!" Ting's eyes are wide...she has no idea what just happened, just catches her breath when her feet plus a hand meet the ground again. She takes a second or two to process, then dashes over to Makyon, a brightly glowing hand pressing to his chest with potent healing magic.

Dewei finds a big enough hole and slips through what's left of the wall, hurrying to find the phylactery.

Shigoriath ignores Ting... the other is getting too close. Clouds of flesh-rending flies stream from his various openings to chase Dewei, who now stands in a smallish room with one hollow-sounding, suspicious wall.

Makyon coughs, blood staining his vest and lips. He can't speak... his lungs were perforated by that.

Guess I should have changed my side sooner, huh.

That's okay. You're pretty. Pretty men can get away with not being so swift on the uptake. Ting pats his hair reassuringly...cuts off her healing spell to continue on its own and jumps to her feet, hands raising to cast a powerful shield spell in front of her brother. Her eyes flash faintly with that red-violet hue.

Dewei had spun to face the assault...stops at the shield, then turns to fling the psionic attack his senses tell him should go through the wall before him.

The wall crumbles into a pile of powder, revealing behind it a heavily locked chest as flies ricochet off the shield, turning in air to attack Ting instead. Shigoriath screeches, his corporeal body dispersing so that meaty bones float aimlessly about the room. This one is too close!

Inside the tiny room the walls begin to swirl, faces and hands, claws and teeth appearing in the horrendous images. From every surface, vicious malefactors arise to spew venom and fire at Dewei, to slash at him with their wicked claws. The shape of small, rotten monkies, they are squealing little horrors.

Ting yelps when the first several bite before a shield forms over she and Makyon as well...she tries to fill the room with an elemental light spell, but it only lasts a moment or two when the shields sputter and she abandons it for their sake. She doesn't have that kind of energy left...as it stands, she's freezing and fatigued, signs of serious energy depletion.

Dewei leaps backward, sword slicing neatly through one monkey before another gets a solid, fiery bite on his calf, its claws slashing and digging wildly. Another leaps towards him almost as fast but, maybe three seconds after the monkies appear, Ting's shield reorients itself close to her brother's skin. He matches it with one of his own--there's no time to fight, only time to go for the phylactery, and they both know that--and then hers guards the entrance to the room again, albeit losing strength all the time.

Dewei kicks monkies aside and swats at them with the flat of his sword, since the halves of a monkey attacking him have determined that slicing isn't effective...drops to his knees in front of a locked box as soon as he gets close enough, laying his hands on the lock and examining it even as his shield struggles against the undead and their vicious attacks, trying to figure it out. Code? Key? Magic? Combination?

It's a code. 2-87-635-33-4-4. Makyon sends the thought with urgency towards the twins, knowing that, for all his talents, Shigoriath is no telepath.

The lich, however, is not out of tricks yet. He decides to attempt something more basic... a flick of his disjointed wrists sets the attacking Malefactors ablaze with hellfire, and they continue their assault upon Dewei. The wall opens up in a bizarre mimicry of Shigoriath's mortal face, and opens a massive mouth to try and vacuum Dewei in.

Ting picks up Makyon's message more clearly, relays it to her beseiged brother...actually, half throws his hands around for him until he picks it up. Just as he finishes the code and the locks flip open, the hellfire-blazing specters quite suddenly burst through his shield, which had only guarded against elemental fire, burning him severely. The one that latches to his neck very nearly kills him. Would have had he flung it away even a few seconds more slowly.

He'd jumped back at the first burn with a startled scream of pain...then the immense mouth jerks the ungrounded psychic up. He fights this telekinetically, the way he and his sister fly...grabs onto the safe.

"Dewei!" Ting sprints towards the opening, weapon raised for action. Ruined blade or not, the weighted end can do some damage. Safe...Makyon, how do we open the safe? She inquires as she runs, leaving a shield to protect the slip mage.

Makyon is up to a knee, ignored by Shigoriath for the moment. The bones are spread out, connected only by angular beams of black light so that the lich lord looks more like a connect-the-dots than a lich.

Break it. It's made of rosewood, to protect against geists.

The mouth in the wall engulfs several of the malefactors, smashing the little beasts in the back of its stone throat.

This gets relayed to her brother...enhanced strength smashes the safe even as Ting does just about the most stupid thing imagineable...she jumps straight over her brother's head, directly at the mouth, headfirst.

Her outstretched arms and the weapon they're grasping connects first. The polearm plants on the upper and lower "lips", giving her a place to plant her feet for a precious few seconds...long enough for a powerful kinetic attack to smash far into the ceiling above with slow, crushing force, meant to bring this section down in front of the mouth.

Dewei's head jerks up when she goes flying over his head. "Ting!" He he grimaces when she lands on the polearm...hands snap to just above the sorcerous sphere, trying to read its energy and so figure out how to unwravel it.

Shigoriath's entire being flares into a bright violet glow at Ting's creative efforts, though the blocks of ceiling fall enough to cover the mouth, the last several chunks moisten and burst in the air, raining down towards Dewei and Ting's heads. Transforming. Softening.

Leeches. Piles, and piles, of leeches.

Ting shrieks something veyr profane at this, but it's muffled...she's trying to get out from under her own rubble.

Dewei jerks...a fire spell springs to life around him, and he ignores any leeches left...they just can't do damage fast enough. Hopefully. Unless they're mutant leeches of some sort, which seems like a distinct possibility at this point.

He grits his teeth, and keeps trying to figure out the counter for this energy sphere.

Feel for a crack in the surface of the structure. Fill it with fire along the fault line!

Shigoriath whirls around. "You! You are feeding them information...!" Makyon phase-shifts just in time to avoid a swipe of Shigoriath's black-bleeding right hand and a blast from his filthy staff. 

"Hurry up!"

Dewei blinks, then searches for just that...his eyes snap open when he finds it. There! A wickedly intense fire spell blasts into that fault line.

The sphere spits and falls open like a walnut shell, revealing a bright, atom-esque sphere of blue, black, and grey light to Dewei's eyes. The leeches all around swell and puff up at being so close to their creator's energies, and as if in harmy with the soul itself a dozen clawed hands tear loose from the walls to strangle him, to stop him at any cost.

"Grr..." Ting raises a hand, still pinned from the waist down by rubble, and a light-based shield. Hurry! This won't last long!

Twitchy and cringing but trying hard to concentrate, Dewei examines the sphere critically. Just what is this?

From above, a terrifying rumble of soil and stone parting ways screams out, and even Shigoriath pauses to look up at the source.

"The world worm," Makyon breathes in disbelief, "as if this situation did not suck enough!"

Surround it in a shield! You cannot destroy it, Dewei, but cut him off from it!

Both twins' eyes had darted up too, of course...Ting's jaw hangs open. "...damnit!" She snaps back to attention, when her brother's most powerful shield snaps to life around the orb, one designed to prevent energy transfer...she tries to add her own meager power reserve to this, but blacks out.

Shigoriath shudders. As the shield cuts his body off from its energy the black lights flicker and burst into sparkles, allowing the bones to clatter to the floor.

Makyon doesn't even have time to celebrate before the immense head of the world worm shatters the ceiling, sending blocks of stone tumbling over him. He phase shifts madly, evading the debris save for a few sharp rocks that rip at his flesh. 

When he stops, the beast's horrible head sits mere inches from its face, a face so cavernous that its vicious front fangs each run as long as the slip mage himself. 

Mixed in with the soil and stone, a semi-conscious Ai rolls from the beast's putrid mouth and lands sprawling upon the ground.

"... shit."

A portal is drawing on the ground about halfway between the twins and Makyon and Ai as Dewei, shielded orb carried carefully with telekinesis, digs his sister from the rubble. She helps a little...not much. She's fading in and out, but partly here, anyway. There's a portal in the middle of the room...grab Ai and get through!

There's nothing to stop the world worm from following except size. Dewei doesn't consider this as the window completes itself and, orb thing and sister both in tow, runs that way.

The worm dives after them, and Makyon, breathing a worried breath, phase shifts into its path. Ai wakes up just in time to see its ungodly lips smash into his open palms, his muscles bulging and straining with natural and unnatural strength. The beast, unable to fully open its mouth here, can only push, and Makyon screams in agony and resolve as he holds it at bay as best he can.

"Ai, the portal!" He cries out. "Go!"

The goddess blinks, but does as commanded. She drags herself hand over hand, leaving a long trail of rot and blood before vanishing into the small window.

Makyon stiffens suddenly. With a gargantuan heave the world worm snaps both of the slip mages arms and rams its head into him, shoving him into the portal as it, itself, goes with him.

Thus, the entire beaten up party is catapulted to a prepared world.