~Playtime~

Every piece of her body hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. (but it's not her body anymore, is it.)

Every inch of skin feels like it's being frozen off.

Every fiber of muscle feels like it's been torn in half.

Every fragment of bone feels like it's been shattered in place.

Every length of nerve feels like it's laced with horrible lightning. 

Even the parts of her that don't have pain receptors hurt, which, Ridaya thinks distantly, is because what she's feeling isn't physical pain, but the horrible arcane chains that have bound her soul to her corpse.

It's an abstractly fascinating thing about necromancy, really, the way it incidentally tortures the soul. Uma did some reading, and then pulled Ridaya in to help her with the spellwork, trying to sketch out the parameters for a version of animate dead or create undead that didn't also leave the target in constant pain. The fucked up thing they found was that it's not a hard problem, exactly. All magic that manipulates the soul directly is necromantic, so Fahyan's theorem doesn't apply - you can tack on a numbing layer without making the topology more complicated. But unlike the rest of the spellform, the numbing isn't topologically closed, so it would wear off over time, and need to be reapplied with a separate spell, and that spell would still consume onyx. Possibly someone in the history of Golarion has ever fully written out these variants, and cast them, but they're impractical.

(...Also, this kind of necromancy is evil, and the kinds of people who use it consider the horrible torture it causes the soul a perk.)

A thing she's noticing is that the magic that did this to her is a bit different, from those spellforms she studied with Uma. She's no expert in necromancy (far from it, really, despite the theoretical work she's done), but she thinks it's older magic. That would fit, given the circumstances. 

The main difference she's noticing is that it keeps hurting her in ways she's not expecting.

It hurts her if she tries to zone out - a pulse of agony that says no. be present; pay attention.

It hurts her if she tries to think too hard - a spasm of hurt that says no. your mind is not yours to use. 

It hurts her if she tries to direct her eyes - a burning lash that says no. you are not in control.

And it hurts her when her enslaver gives her orders, because she's been robbed of her will, more savagely and completely than any enchantment ever could. She's just here to watch the horror show. (She still strains against it, when he commands her, from something approximating reflex - but each time it hurts, because of course it hurts. Her existence is pain and horror and it will be pain and horror forever unless her family can free her somehow.)

Her mouth continues to speak. "...and those safeties have to borrow spellforms from some mid-tier divinations, right? But since this is a conjuration spell, and Fahyan's theorem (...which you would know by a different name, Master, but the principle is the same) tells us that inter-school spellform weaving inherently takes more power to stabilize even if the individual effects involved don't take more power, which is why the spell we now call Greater Teleport is seventh circle." (aaaaaaa)

While her mouth explains the important advancements in the art of arcane magic to Vordakai, her hand is scribing spells from her spellbook to his. (aaaaaaaaa)

"But the actual useful work that Teleport does, if you cut out that entire chunk of safety, and move some other things around - that fits into fifth circle, if you replace the targeting mechanism with something simple enough. It is really limited, to the point where there's a decent chance of failure, and gets worse the less familiar the caster is with the destination, and it limits the distance somewhat, but obviously none of that matters in the face of having access to Teleport at fifth circle. The failure chances..." (aaaaaaaaaaaaa)

When adventuring parties of high circle run an operation, it tends to be a very fast affair. Everything important is often over within a minute.

So it really cannot be overstated how much begins happening all at once.

Silence falls. She's still being forced to talk, of course, but now there's no sound coming out.

Her wings flare open. She throws the tanglefoot bag (misses the stupid tiny demilich; it lands on the floor next to him), and then she's mixing a bomb, and then she looks, 

Time seems to stand still.

Ridaya, right there, but - not dominated - undead

and - the thing using her body and and binding her soul has her magic, is already starting to move - 30 feet of teleporting is enough to get the demilich out of the silence - 

It's obvious, what Umakhi needs to do. She doesn't have a choice, not really, not if she to survive the next several moments, not if she wants to ever see Ridaya in this life or the next.

She doesn't hesitate. She throws the first bomb, is already mixing the second, loading it, throwing it, right at the person she loves more than anything, because - because there's no other choice.

(The noise is overwhelming. It hurts her ears. It hurts her throat.)

The first bomb is indescribably painful.

(The silence is a small mercy. It means she doesn't hear Uma scream.)

The second one brings a perfect stillness that she'd never ever thought she'd crave, before today.

Thank you, she thinks, as she fades away.

Others can still hear Umakhi scream, though there's not much that can be done about it.

But those that hop into the area of Silence are blissfully unaware.

A large carnivorous leopard, silver-grey with black spots, leaps upon Vordakai like he's the greatest cat toy in the world, and gets to mauling.

She's falling and she sees Ridaya, but she looks wrong, and then she hears the screaming and then she sees Ridaya explode, twice, and then she's in the silence and the noise stops and she's hit the ground - 

And then she enters the flow of battle and there's no space in her brain for anything but the perfect duet of her and her sword. Nobody to bodyguard. (Ridaya-) Just a stupid floating skull to put in the ground. 

She stabs it three times in under 2 seconds, clinically, mechanically, perfectly. Twice, she shoves her katana through that stupid shocked eye socket and feels it connect with the bone on the opposite side.

And there is a something there, helping her blade find purchase, even through silence. Technically, the performance started just before the Dimension Door, tiny lines of the written word flowing from one rather small bard, to her allies' arms. Little words of encouragement, of stand fast, you're not alone, of we can do this, of we will make him pay. Of one little word in Celestial, one of the few she knows, Here to help.

And there are more bombs, all with the same precise aim Umakhi had, all just as fast, none of which need to be directed to a mercy killing. His bombs do not deal positive energy damage, but they burn all the same, and there are an awful lot of them.

Striking a tiny demilich through his damage resistance with mere arrows involves hitting the same spot, over and over, with every single arrow, one after the other. 'Hammer the gap,' is the term for it, and it's usually used in reference to melee, but Ekundayo kills monsters. This looks like a monster to him. His aim is true.

(Technically speaking, though, the feat he's actually using is Clustered Shots.)

There's a reason Tristian has been so withdrawn.

He did not prepare Spellcrash this morning.

It's kind of funny, actually, because he's a terrible liar. His allies know this about him, but they still haven't pushed for the truth. Or possibly haven't realized that 'lying' is what he's been doing; attributed his awkwardness or terrible decisions to nerves, or something. He's not sure why, they've absolutely noticed that something is off with him, in regards to this. The trust they have in him, probably, not that he deserves it.

There was an extra buff, in the series of them that he made earlier. Not one of their normal ones, and entirely personal. He's sure someone noticed him cast it, but nobody questioned him about it. They have a lot of buffs, in this party, and he'd said he had something to get past the demilich's spell resistance, so they probably made the (admittedly correct) assumption that it was in relation to that. And they hadn't seen it before. They made no mention of the spell components he burned, or how the holy symbol he used was more extravagant than his normally more modest one.

He's really not sure why nobody said anything.

The spell he cast, about two and a half minutes ago now, is called Invoke Deity, and he is not using it as he's supposed to. Usually, it's meant to invoke the grace of one's deity to strengthen oneself, in set, safe, predictable ways. That is the proper way to use it. The way that leaves a mortal cleric fully intact. It is not a bad buff, exactly, but it wouldn't really be notable in comparison to everything else they already have available to them. Not really worth using a sixth circle spell slot for, especially in this party. It's also not what he needs.

What Tristian needs is a miracle.

Not for Vordakai, exactly. He actually does trust his companions' ability to kill it, and even mostly make it out intact afterwards. Vordakai is not one of the really dangerous liches, and Tristian has more experience with them than he's let on. He is no Iomedean, carefully allocating his goddess's attention for Her, but he is perfectly aware that the material plane doesn't really need Her intervention in this matter. No, what he needs help with is what Vordakai holds.

Vordakai, great cyclops demilich, devoted follower of Charon, was gifted an artifact by his master. The Oculus of Abaddon, it is called, and it allows for the domination of minds, the raising of sapient undead, and can be used to find things past even great defensive spells like Mind Blank. A great and terrible artifact of Evil, that Tristian is bound by his geas to deliver into the hands of someone who has committed many great evils. Who will almost certainly commit many more.

He cannot break free from his binding, but he can destroy the thing he's bound to deliver. There was nothing in the geas that said he had to deliver it intact.

"O Righteous Sarenrae," he says softly, and he reaches towards the upper planes in a way only someone from them knows how. "Use me as Your instrument to destroy the artifact of Evil before me. Burn out this creature's eye with Your power and wrath."

There's a great golden light that takes Vordakai by the artifact he replaced his eye with. It burns like the sun, and the artifact cracks and shatters under the strain.

(Vordakai is stunned for one round!)