Session 28 – Assault on Castle Ravenloft

1st Day of the 1st Quarter of the Reaper’s Moon, Season of Mists, Year 766.

Days in Barovia: 11. The moon wanes gibbous.

The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling

Dickie crushed the topaz bead and released its magic. Over the next minute, as the magic took effect, they underwent a very strange transformation. Slowly, their bodies- hair, teeth, flesh- their clothing, their weapons- the raven perched on Elliana’s shoulder- everything; began to turn into mist. It started slowly, gradually spreading through their form, until at the end of the minute they were barely corporeal accumulations of fog, roughly cohesive to the shape they had held before.

The Bullingdon Boys could not speak, with no functioning vocal chords, although they could still just see each other. And they were no longer bound by the weight of their bodies. With the ease of thought their gaseous forms rose into the air, and soon they were all executing exhilerating aerobatics- Dickie for the second time in his life, the rest of them for the first.

Maintaining rough cohesion as a group they rose into the sky above mount ghakis. All of Barovia lay before them, the beacon of Argynvost a brilliant star revealing the land below. The luna river swept from the bridge spanning the gorge up the valley, through the ruins of Berez and past the dragon’s mansion. To the north the Abbey of Saint Markovia perched above Krezk; Lake Zarovich was a dark stain, Vallaki a barely visible blot.

And to the east, looming over the land like a great black bat atop a pillar of stone seven hundred feet high, the Castle. Ravenloft. And in the deepest pit, the devil’s tomb, their final battle with Strahd.

Unable to talk, they managed to coordinate and began to move east- and they flew, swift as a storm, around and above the mountain, towards the castle in the far distance. The land was a blur below, and the Bully Boys soared towards their target not having to navigate their way down the mountain, through valleys, up hills, around lakes; not having to ford rivers and not bound to winding trails. How it was to fly above the world unbound, and how close the castle seemed!

The beacon of Argynvostholt moved from their north to north west to west; they soared over Tser Falls where the water of the Ivlis river crashes down into the pool where they had their fortunes read what seemed so long ago, to pass the village of Barovia; and in less than an hour; maybe less than half an hour, they were closing on Castle Ravenloft.

Thunder rumbled and the clouds grew thick around their misty forms. Huge hailstones began to fall around them, lightning crashed so close that they were blinded for a moment. The wind around them reeled and howled. Through the sleet and hail and cloud, illuminated by garish lightning, they could see the castle. Huge and batlike, black and foreboding, perched upon a gigantic pillar of stone, the castle loomed over the surrounding landscape. A bridge spanned the chasm to the west of the pillar, connecting the castle to the land; to the east, the pillar fell away for hundreds and hundreds of feet to the village of Barovia, a tiny spec below.

Cornelius’ mist-form pantomimed to the others, and they descended upon the castle to land before the chasm, before the bridge, before twin turrets of stone, broken from years of exposure. Beyond the guard towers the precipice of the wide, fog-filled chasm disappeared into unknown depths. The awesome presence of Castle Ravenloft towered above them.

A lowered drawbridge of old, shored-up wooden beams stretched across the chasm, between the Bullingdon Boys and the archway to the courtyard. The chains of the drawbridge creaked in the wind, their rust-eaten iron straining under the weight. From atop the high walls, stone gargoyles stared down from hollow eye sockets, grinning hideously. A rotting wooden portcullings, green with growth, hung above the entry tunnel. Beyond this location, the main doors of Ravenloft stood open. A rich, warm light spilled from within, flooding the courtyard. Torches fluttered sadly in sconces either side of the open doors.

Their forms regathered, and the across the bridge from the castle the Bullingdon Boys slowly became corporeal again.

“Is everybody here?” Cornelius asked.

“I seem to be,” said Paris, as Elliana nodded.

Dickie was looking up at the castle; up, and up, and up. “Blimey. Sure is a lot of that.”

“Are you all prepared for what is to come?”

“Quite,” said Elliana with confidence.

Paris whispered so that his daughter could not hear. “For quite a long time I really did hope that we were just pretending we were going to do this.”

“No Paris. There is no other way. If you wish to return to Saxonia, we must do this. Now, can you do that thing where you make people’s voices louder on me?”

“Most definitely!” Paris waved his hands theatrically, shouted a few nonsense words and Cornelius’ eyes glowed with magical power as his voice was amplified.

The last of the Bullingdons turned to the castle. “Hear me now, Strahd! This time, we are the ones who have come for you! It is I, your hated foe- KING Cornelius Pfeffil the First of Barovia, and YOU are a squatter in MY domain!” His voice boomed across the chasm, echoing off the walls of the silent castle. “Now I come to cast you down! But I do not come alone. For I bring with me: Paris Digby, the mighty wizard, who will flatten these walls with a flick of his wrists!”

“Hurrah!” Paris shouted.

“I bring also, my loyal and noble manservant Richard, who with his wicked dagger will cut your throat and flay your hide! I come also with the last of the Spency Squad, who you tried to kill, but who escaped your grasp- Elliana… Something.”

“In Anslem’s name you will not live to see another day!” Elliana cried.

“But these, Strahd, are not my only companions today, oh no. For I have brought an army; an army that will bring you to heel once and for all.”

Cornelius drew forth the silver horn of Argynvost and held it above his head. “Look upon my horn, ye mighty, and despair!”

He put the instrument to his lips and blew three times.

Uuuuhooooo.

Uuuuhooooo.

Uuuuuuuhoooooooooo.

The bright notes rang clear. As the final note lingered, there was a pregnant pause…

And then, coalescing in the air behind them was a splendid phalanx of knights, ghost-blue spirits in prisitine armour on barded destriers, shields and caparisons bearing the crest of the silver dragon. At their head was Vladimir Horngaard, the lord commander of the Order of the Silver Dragon. A knight by his side carried an enormous standard, the silver dragon emblazoned upon it given life by the rippling wind.

As Cornelius turned to regard the host, Horngaard spoke. “So. It is time?”

“Yes, you kitschy knights of the dragon. It is time to have your revenge!”

“Very well.” He turned his horse, raising his enormous sword above his head single handed. “Arise! Arise, Knights of Argynvost! Fell deeds await! Long centuries we have waited! Now, we act! Spears shall be shaken! Shields shall be splitnered! And Argynvost will be avenged! Ride forth! Ride forth, and fear not the darkness! ARGYNVOST!”

And as a single voice the spectral host cried “ARGNYVOST!” and charged towards the bridge, towards Castle Ravenloft, a stream of ghostly horses and men flowing around the Bullingdon Boys.

The Silver Order was a distraction. The Bullingdon Boys had no intention of joining a frontal assault; they would instead revert back to their misty forms while the magic lingered, and fly to the tallest tower wherein lay the heart of Exethanter.

As they underwent the weird shift of form once again, Elliana asked, “Who are these dragon fetishes?”

“Good chaps, they’ll be a lot of help I think,” Dickie replied, his hands becoming fog.

“Useful idiots,” Cornelius told her, “Just, don’t get in their way.”

As they transformed, the Bullingdon Boys bore witness to the Silver Order’s assault on Ravenloft. The tide of silver-blue spirits crashed over the bridge in a perfect formation, and there was a phantom cry, the twin of the horn Cornelius had blown. The knights’ charge carried them into the courtyard, where they spread in a wider formation, and the half-mist Bully Boys saw the tip of the spear reach the open doors of Ravenloft and without stopping fly up the stairs and into the castle…

And from the darkness within, the knights were rebuked, the line buckling then surging forward once again as some force beyond greeted them. As the charge lost momentum and the fight pressed into the castle knights began leaving their horses, and as the Bully Boys rose into the air they saw the host pushing, pushing, into the maw of the great castle, swallowed and out of sight.

They flew upwards, hundreds of feet above the walls of the castle, up and around and above the trio of tall towers that stood as a cluster over the huge structure. Cornelius, Paris and Dickie recognised the structures from the model of the castle in the Amber Temple: southeast, a tall tower with a conical roof, no windows or doors apparent; to the north, the tallest tower wherein lay the heart, and some way down the face of this tower, a bridge connecting to the flat roof of the third, southern, shortest spire.

As they approached, Dickie communicated his intention by flying around the top of the tallest tower, not descending to the obvious doorway. The others eventually caught on and gathered around him.

The tower roof was rimmed with battlements intermittently spaced with hideous stone gargoyles. As they approached, lightning flashed, and grotesque stone faces lurched into life; the gargoyles stiffly lifting themselves, their stone wings spreading as they rose into the party’s midst, hands outstretched with razor sharp claws. They lunged towards the Bully Boys…

And dove, down towards the courtyard, ignorant to their presence as near-invisible mist, swooping down in answer to some summons from the battle below.

The Bully Boys alighted on the roof and once again took solid form. They resumed their natural forms on the slick flagstones, pelted by hail and rain. What Dickie has seen was a trapdoor on the roof; this he investigated cautiously, and finding it unlocked and apparently not trapped, threw open. Rivulets of rainwater trickled from the roof into the pitch black room below.

Elliana moved to descend first, but Cornelius stopped her. “Woah there, Elliana,” Cornelius said, “traditionally it’s Dickie who goes first through the doors. We wouldn’t want to take that privilege away from him now!”

Dickie eyed up Elliana, in her full set of steel plate. “Now now, if the young lady in her very strong looking armour wants to go first I’m quite happy-“

“Dickie, be a gentleman,” Paris said, “this is my daughter! The least you could do is go fir- hey, you come back here young lady!” Elliana had pushed forward and slid down the ladder, hands and feet to either side of the rungs.

Dickie went into the trapdoor head-first and slithered off sideways, along the ceiling. Not batting an eye, Cornelius climbed down the ladder, followed by a muttering Paris.

Elliana unsheathed her sword, which glowed dimly, shedding some illumination around her. “You call that light? This is light, my girl!” and Cornelius’ holy symbol blazed radiantly to reveal a dreary room with manacles attached to the walls. In the middle of the room was a bed fitted with leather restraints, and at the foot of the bed was an embossed iron chest. A stairwell curled around the tower wall, leading downward.

“That’s a pretty ugly sigil,” Paris said, pointing to the iron chest which bore a hideous bat-like crest.

“Well, it’s better than having dragons everywhere,” Cornelius replied.  “Dickie, open that chest.”

Dickie casually strode to the floor, down the wall from the ceiling. The chest was locked but popped open after a moment under his fingers. Within was a bejewelled golden crown resting on a silk pillow. He raised it up to show his companions.

Cornelius’ eyes lit up. “Stick it on my head, Dickie! About time I had some proper regalia.”

“Paris, could you give it a look over to see if there’s nasty magic?” Paris did, and found the item to be completely mundane.

“Come on, crown me!” Cornelius demanded.

Paris was uncertain. “I don’t know, seems like the kind of thing you’d get Dickie to do?”

“No, Paris. You are a mighty wizard, and it is by your wizardly authority you will crown me king of Barovia.”

“Does that make me… Like, the bishop?”

“It makes you something.”

“Well, in that case… I, mighty wizard, Paris Digby, do proclaim thee king Cornelius Pfeffil Bullingdon the First, of Barovia!”

“Bully! Bully! Bully!” demanded King Cornelius.

“Oi! Oi! Oi!” his loyal subjects replied.

“Every minute we’re here, Saxonia feels closer to coming back under my grip,” Cornelius said softly with a smile.

“Every minute we linger, the closer Strahd gets to defeating your horde of dragon-fetishists,” Elliana said, making her way to the stairs.

Bleeding Hearts

From below, they could hear the familiar lub-dub, lub-dub of an enormous heart. Behind Elliana, Dickie drew his sword and dagger, the sunlight blade springing to life. Paris, not wanting to be last, tried to follow but Cornelius elbowed him aside.

A reddish light flared, settling into a dull pulsing glow illuminating the full immensity of the tower: the spiral staircase descending some two hundred feet, the tower wider at the base and narrowing as it climbed. Before them, suspended by grotesque veins clinging to the ceiling, hanging above the two hundred feet of empty space in the core of the tower, was an enormous heart pulsating with red light. The heart of Exethanter.

Dickie caught sight of concealed recesses in the walls along the stairwell around the heart; tall alcoves, with a faint glimmer of blades. Some sort of trap. “Careful, something on the walls,” he said, as he crawled onto the ceiling and started to slice through a huge vein with the Sunsword. Enchanted flesh sizzled as the light-blade began to cut through it.

As Dickie moved away, Cornelius used the space in front of him to make a running jump, out over the abyss and onto the gigantic organ. Clinging to it with his legs, he began to batter the flesh, his fists coming away bloody.

And then the tower responded.

The whole structure began to pitch and throw wildly, lurching one way then another. Cornelius held on to the heart, Dickie maintained his balance upside down on the ceiling, and Paris clung to the stairs; but Elliana, in her full plate, was thrown from the balcony into empty space.

From the hidden recesses Dickie had spied, poles extended with wicked blades at their ends; these animated halberd began flailing at the space on the stairwell around the heart.

As Elliana fell, her raven fluttered away from her shoulder, squawking with indignation. A flash of light surrounded her and she decelerated, defying gravity and gently floating downward. She reached out one hand and a lash of lightning wrapped around the pole of the lowest halberd. She swung towards it, one hand grasping the edge of the stairs as the magical whip sheared through the blade of the animated weapon; her weight jerked her down but she managed to raise her other hand, and heave herself up on to the stairwell,  a full turn of the tower away from where her father clung to the top of the stairs.

Paris crouched down on the stairs as the tower heaved this way and that, frost licking from his wand to strike the heart- “How about a… heart attack!” he cried- as with his other hand he summoned the Golden Bully Sword. The sword floated over to the nearest halberd and battered into it, bending prongs out of shape.

Dickie’s blades- one of sunlight, one of wicked metal- flashed, and he sliced clean through two of the huge flesh-tubes holding the heart to the ceiling. Blood sprayed all over the rollicking tower as the heart swung ponderously, and then the other veins suspending the heart tore free from the ceiling, and with Cornelius still astride it the heart began to fall.

The tower stopped its shaking, freezing at a weird pitch, the halberds stopped writhing, and Cornelius and the dead heart fell.

“Dickiiiie!” Cornelius cried as he fell; Elliana threw out a hand, and the rate of his descent slowed to a gentle floating fall as green light ensconced him. “Dickie?” Cornelius called again after a moment, as the initial excitement of the fall wore off. Dickie began to run down the wall of the tower, racing after his falling master. The manservant threw a rope, which came tumbling past Cornelius; he grabbed it, but the other end slipped through Dickie’s hands, and the whole rope fell past Cornelius.

The floor still rose towards Cornelius, quite quickly but not terrifyingly so. He impacted the ground, the heart beneath him, and was coated in blood and gore as the soft organ ruptured. “I feel… Icky,” he said, as Dickie walked down the wall towards him.

A few feet away from Cornelius was a descending stairwell, and two creatures emerged, frantic and panicking, shouting “The tower! The tower! The heart! The master!”

“No! No!” Elliana heard, as a third creature emerged on the landing near her, far above Cornelius and Dickie, where the bridge outside joined to the shorter tower’s rooftop.

The three were humanoid, pale, pathetic-looking with clawed hands and sharp canine teeth prominent. The Bullingdon Boys had fought their like before; vampiric spawn of Strahd.

Those on the ground floor stopped, hissing, as the radiance of Dickie’s sword fell upon them. Needing no more prompting, he leapt from the wall above, coiled and spun in the air and landed behind one of the undead, the Sunsword flashing down like a falling star.

The vampire’s arm came off at the shoulder and it screamed as the limb fell to the ground, the stump smoking.

Cornelius, stood, rope in hand, coated in blood, shouted “Stop right there!” and divine compulsion washed over the creatures; one stuck fast, paralyzed, while the one Dickie had disarmed continued to writhe away from the manservant. It turned and ran back down the stairs, wailing as the sunlight caused its flesh to melt and run.

Above them, Elliana threw up a hand at her foe and a spectral claw appeared; the vampire spawn evaded its grasp, and while the spell faded ducked under the sword blow striking at its neck. “Ha! Beaten up by a teenage girl!” Paris shouted at the creature in combat with his daughter. The Golden Bully Sword struck and the magic lacing the mockery caused the creature to wince and stumble. Its claws went skittering off of Elliana’s armour and shield.

Dickie chased after the retreating vampire down the stairs, swiftly closing on it; he ducked low, sliced through hamstrings and then the dagger plunged into its eye socket; the creature writhed, sizzling in the sunlight, then lay still. Cornelius stepped to the paralyzed vampire and began levelling punches into it, laughing at the defenceless creature as bones snapping under his pummelling fists.

Elliana’s blade leapt with green flame and flashed once, twice, biting deep into the vampire’s flesh; the Bully Sword smashed down on it and was joined by a ray of frost from Paris’ wand.

Dickie rejoined Cornelius, who asked “Could you pass me a handkerchief there?”

“Do you want this over with quickly, milord, or are you having fun?” Dickie asked, nodding at Cornelius’ paralyzed punching bag.

“I’m having a great time Dickie,” Cornelius said, “except for the fact that I’m covered in disgusting, disgusting heart blood.”

He continued throwing punches as Dickie rootled through his pack for a towel. Cornelius’ fists smashed into the paralyzed vampire spawn again and again until it was an unrecognizable sack of meat, flesh running in the sunlight, and finally the paralysis ended and the remains collapsed wetly on the ground.

High above, the remaining vampire scrabbled at Elliana, desperately trying to find purchase on her steel plate but unable to harm the newest Bully Boy. She smashed her shield into its face, her sword flashed again with green flame and as she stepped back to deliver a final blow, the Golden Bully Sword swung low to decapitate the vampire, crushing its skull sideways.

“That’s how it’s done, my girl!” Paris called down the stairs to his daughter.

Elliana, having heard Paris mocking the creature from afar, called back angrily “Is there anything wrong with being beaten up by a teenage girl?” Vampire gore dripped from her glowing sword and her eyes literally blazed.

“Of course not! I was just trying to put him off his game- and it worked.”

“I don’t appreciate it!”

Paris shrugged. “Helped you make short work of him.”

“Come up with some better taunts.”

“Don’t talk back to me,” Paris tried warily, testing his new found fatherhood.

A voice rose from below them- it was Dickie, calling “Everything all right up there?”

“Just teenager problems,” Paris shouted down the tower, “You’ll know what it’s like when you’re a parent, Dickie.”

The newly united father-daughter duo began to make their way down the tower, moving past doorways that led into the upper and middle floors of the castle to join Dickie and Cornelius below. They knew that they would face Strahd in his tomb, and the path to the catacombs would be down, deeper, into the bowels Ravenloft.

Dickie had withdrawn a vial of oil from his pack, and was applying it liberally to his dagger; oil of sharpness, that would make the weapon more keen. If ever there was a time to use it, it was now. Seeing this, Elliana followed suit with her sword. Paris helped clean Cornelius, blood and gore flying from the burly Bullingdon with flicks of his wand.

The distant sounds of battle rang through the castle as Vladimir Horngaard’s spectral knights clashed with Strahd’s forces.

“Down, then?” asked Dickie, nodding to the descending stairs where the vampire spawn had tried to escape him.

“Only way to go,” replied Paris as Elliana clattered to her feet.

“You know Elliana,” Cornelius said, “I’ve always said only cowards need to wear armour.”

She frowned at him. “I find it quite useful. Prevents bad things- like nasty blows to the head- from happening.”

“And death,” suggested Dickie, “let’s not forget about death.”

“My doctors tell me I have an incredibly thick skull,” Cornelius bragged.

“Armour to a fighter is like a spellbook to a wizard,” Paris explained, “you grow out of these things.”

Quietly, Cornelius said “It’s a shame Clarence never grew out of his book.”

The stairwell descended to a landing where lay the corpse of a one-armed vampire, turned, descended again. It led to a dark passage. To the north and south alcoves held rotting wooden cots and dirty rags. The ceilings were yellow with lichen. Beyond the alcoves, the light from Dickie’s sword revealed a shambolic room; shattered furniture in heaps, broken bones scattered amid crumpled armour, axes and swords jutting out from the walls as if driven into them with force. Doors led north and south.

Elliana cautiously stepped forward, eyeing the bones with suspicion.

“Elliana, what have we told you about Dickie going into rooms first?” Cornelius asked angrily.

“Dickie is not wearing thirty pounds of metal.”

“Yes, because Dickie is brave.”

“I don’t see him going first.”

“You keep jumping ahead and stealing his thunder! You need to learn some humility, if you want to fit in with the Bullingdon Boys.”

Elliana gave Cornelius a scathing smile, as Dickie let out a resigned sigh and stepped into the room. Nothing happened; the bones remained inanimate, the weapons remained embedded in the walls, no grumpkins or snarks jumped out.

They went through the southern door. Dark stains covered the floor of the room beyond. Large oak tables, scarred and beaten, lay scattered like toys, their wood crushed and splintered. Replacing them were furnishings made entirely of human bones.

The walls and high, vaulted ceiling were a sickly yellow colour, not from faded plaster but because they were adorned with bones and skulls arranged in a morbid decoration, giving the room a cathedral-like quality. In each corner of the ossuary stood enormous mounds of bones, and garlands of skulls extended room these to grim chandeliers of bones than hung from the ceiling above a long table- also constructed of bones- in the centre of the room. The chairs surrounding this were too made of bone, decorated with skulls, as were the doors to the south and the doors they had come through. The double-doors in the eastern wall were banded with steel and free of decoration.

“Well, that settles it,” Cornelius said. “No one in Barovia has any taste of interior décor.”

“What has to be wrong with a person to do this?” Dickie asked.

“It’s very crass,” Paris observed disdainfully.

“I think all of us can agree that we don’t want to linger here,” Elliana said, while Paris prodded a bone clad chair with his wand. Absentmindedly, the foppish mage asked “Do you think any of these could be your guys?”

“Yes, Elliana, which femurs do you recognize?” Cornelius asked viciously. “Maybe your friend has been made into a chair?” Elliana tensed for a moment, her jaw clenching, then took a deep breath and relaxed.  Her raven, Amity, fluttered from her shoulder to perch on a bone chandelier.

“I think it unlikely that Anslem has found such rest.”

“Maybe we can now rest on Anslem,” Cornelius quipped, grinning to Paris and Dickie at his pun.

Dickie rolled his eyes. “Let’s just leave this room. It’s not very nice.”

Elliana strode to the steel-banded eastern door, following the logic that the strongest door would be the one they would be least welcome behind and therefore the one they should go through, and opened it to reveal a dark corridor.

“I’m sorry old chap,” Cornelius muttered to Dickie as Elliana went first once again, “I keep trying to tell her.”

Generously and certainly not motivated by self-preservation, Dickie said “It’s alright milord, let the young blood go first.”

“Very well. You’re still my favourite, Dickie.”

Dickie smiled wanly. “Thank you, milord.”

Tourist Traps

Fog clung to the floor at Elliana’s feet as she entered the dark passage, backlit by the sunlight of Dickie’s sword, her own dimly glowing blade held out before her. A giant shadow lurched across the ceiling of the corridor as a figure shuffled purposefully down the hall towards her.

As it stepped into the light, Elliana recognised the figure; shuffling forward with an unlit lantern in one hand, less than five feet tall, hunched, muttering. The left side of its face- almost that of a man- was covered with lizard scales, and he had the ears of a panther. His left foot looked like a duck’s, large and webbed, and patches of black fur sprouted from his arms.

This was the creature that had served as her jailer for long weeks in the castle’s dungeon. As they saw each other, and both were struck with recognition, it took a step back, stumbled, crying feebly “Ah, no, no, you’re meant to, you gotta get back in the, ah, the master’s gonna-“ as Elliana rushed towards him.

“It’s one of those damn Belviews!” Dickie shouted, and indeed it appeared to be one of the strange mongrelfolk the Abbot had created in the Abbey of Saint Markovia. Elliana tackled it to the ground, and for a moment they were lost in the fog, then she stood, heaving the miserable creature from its feet.

“I see you remember me.”

“Y-y-you hurt my face!” she had, slamming it into the bars of her cell.

“Quite. I think we’ve found a guide,” she called to her companions.

Dickie wandered over. “What’re you doing out of the abbey?”

“I don’t live there,” the creature whimpered. “I serve the master!”

“How about you serve us, and take us down a floor?”

“Yes! Where is Strahd? Take us to him!” Cornelius slapped the jailer across the face.

“Cornelius!” Paris hissed, “don’t hit the disabled!”

“He’s a servant of the enemy. He deserves to be hit for his treachery to Barovia.”

“But he hasn’t got the, you know, the,” Paris pointed at his temple and circled his finger, “to know what’s the right choice and what isn’t.”

“I, I, I got some stew,” the creature offered, reinforcing Paris’ point.

“We don’t want your stew. We want to find the master of this castle, so we may destroy him!”

“You… You want me, to, to take you down?”

“Another thought that just occurred to me,” Cornelius continued, “if there is any great treasure in the castle, perhaps you can lead us to it.”

“I can’t get in the treasury, I don’t have the key,” the mongrel creature muttered.

“Just the master then.”

“Don’t think about doing anything clever,” Dickie warned the creature. “Firstly, you’re not clever- secondly, we’ll skewer you.”

“I’m, I’m not clever,” the creature admitted, “I’ve got stew.”

At sword point, the creature led them to a door that led to a corridor at the end of which was a stairwell. Elliana was struck by recognition; as they stepped through, she turned around to regard the doorway from the direction of the stairs beyond. She had seen this corridor before; she had climbed those stairs; the times that Strahd had invited her to dine with him, she had been led to the floor above from the dungeons below up that very stairwell. From here she could find her way to the magical brazier which had let her escape the castle, and which she thought could be used to find Strahd.

“Your services are no longer required.” The pommel of her sword cracked into the skull of the jailer and he collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

“That wasn’t very ladylike,” Cornelius chided.

“Why does everyone keep hitting the disabled?” Paris lamented.

Elliana turned towards them unrepentant. “Do you know how long that creature kept me down there, feeding me on stagnant water and…”

“Stew?” Paris guessed.

“Disgusting gruel.” Elliana’s eyes flickered with magical fire.

“I’m sure he didn’t know any better.”

“I always say you should face a man before you punch him into unconsciousness,” Cornelius said.

“He had plenty of time to face me through the bars of my cell.”

“I wouldn’t wish prison on anyone,” said Dickie, recalling how he met Cornelius, “and prison here I’d imagine is worse than most.”

Elliana strode toward the stairs, Paris on her heels, Dickie and Cornelius behind. All of a sudden there was a clang of metal as the heavy tread of the armoured youth set off some pressure plate; two metal grates crashed down from the ceiling, trapping the father and daughter in a cube. “What the hell!” Elliana exclaimed as, with a grinding of gears and a rattling of chains, the two new walls and the section of floor beneath and the ceiling above them began to rise; the whole cube lifted by some means into a shaft above.

As the box-trap rose into the ceiling above them, Dickie flew forwards, kicking off a wall to land on the bottom of the retreating cube. Unhindered by gravity, he pulled something from the pocket of one of the pouches on his haversack- a pot of paint and a brush, and began to paint on the bottom of the slab separating Paris and Elliana from him.

Below, Cornelius tried to jump up and grab on to Dickie but the manservant was lifted out of his reach. Within the cube, Paris let out a girlish scream as green-grey gas began to fill the cube; he took a deep breath and promptly collapsed to the floor unconscious. Elliana stabbed her sword at the floor in frustration but simply chipped at the thick layer of stone.

The elevator came to a shuddering halt almost a hundred feet above the corridor below where Cornelius looked up at Dickie worriedly, the manservant painting furiously. Dickie stopped, regarded his work: he had painted something like a crude trapdoor on the bottom of the cage, and as the magic of the marvellous pigments took effect the trapdoor became real, stone transmuting into wood and metal. He heaved it open, and Elliana jumped back as a hole suddenly appeared below her, Dickie’s head peeping through.

In the corridor below, something fell through the ceiling in front of Cornelius. A ghost-blue knight was thrust down from the floor above and landed at Cornelius’ feet in a crumpled heap. The head of the phantom appeared to have been twisted all the way around; as it landed before him, the ghostly corpse dissolved into thin mist.

“The old knights of Argynvost don’t look like they’re doing so well,” he called up the shaft nervously, as a second figure descended through the solid stone of the ceiling.

This one came feet first. Its cape billowed slightly as it came to rest before Cornelius. Not ghost-blue, but pale and striking, in royal regalia and with noble bearing, Strahd von Zarovich descended on the last of the Bullingdons.

The vampire laughed. “I see you have been separated from your frie-.”

“Can it, Strahd!” Cornelius shouted over Strahd’s monologue, hoping his voice would reach Dickie above. “It’s just you and me now, mano-a-mano, no dirty tricks.”

Cornelius glanced up the shaft, caught Dickie’s eyes and desperately waved him down, then leapt at the lord of Barovia. Strahd avoided the first blow but the second glanced him on the shoulder. Strahd winced in annoyance- “The heart,” he growled.

“That’s right, Strahd! I rode your heart into oblivion, and now I ride you to your doom!”

Dickie was streaking down the wall towards his master, assuming Elliana could make her own way down the shaft with the unconscious Paris, the Sunsword blazing in his hand. He rounded the bottom of the shaft onto the ceiling of the corridor above Cornelius and Strahd’s brawl, and the vampire hissed at the sunlight fell upon him. Strahd was blow for blow with Cornelius, his bare hands crashing in to the Bullingdon’s leader.

Elliana looked at her father. Paris was unconscious, but alive- asleep, in fact, open mouthed, drooling, snoring loudly. She gathered his smaller frame in her eyes, and clad in armour jumped through the new trapdoor. Magical energy crackled around her, and once again her fall was slowed to a gentle downwards float.

Strahd stepped around Cornelius and turned his gaze on Dickie. His will crashed in to the manservant. “That sword is my brother’s. Give it to me and I will put it in its rightful place. In his tomb, where it belongs.” But the sword flared and with a will of its own encouraged Dickie, who shook through the charm.

“I’ll put it where it belongs all right- in your foul heart!”

The vampire gave a growl of disgust and as his flesh smoked from the light of the sword, sank through the solid stone floor.

“Coward!” Cornelius shouted, as Elliana landed softly at the bottom of the shaft, placed Paris on the floor and drew her sword.

“I heard Strahd’s voice- where is he?”

“He went through… the floor,” Dickie said. “It was weird.”

She looked down at Paris. “Get up.” Paris rolled over, sticking a thumb in his mouth. Elliana reached down and slapped him. “Snap out of it, damnit!”

“Ow!” Paris moaned as Elliana began to shake him by the shoulders. “There’s no need to hit me, I was just resting my- wait, where are we?”

“If you’d bothered to be awake, Paris,” Cornelius said, “you’d’ve seen me and Dickie giving Strahd the old one-two.”

“You breathed in some gas,” Elliana explained, “it put you to sleep.”

“Well, I happen to be very sensitive to that particular gas. You see, I’ve got an allergy,” Paris blustered. “So that would be why my reaction was so much stronger than any of yours, you see.”

Elliana had real relief in her voice as she said “Well, you’re up now. I was worried there, for a moment.”

“I’m sure everyone was worried. I bet that fight was a lot harder without mighty Paris Digby.”

“I didn’t know you were asleep,” Dickie said. “I’ll be honest with you Paris, he just, kind of… left.”

“Probably because he saw I was coming to.”

“We should carry on,” Elliana said. She gestured for Dickie to go ahead of her, saying “Bren?”

“What is that, some sort of code?” Paris asked in confusion.

“That’s how he introduced himself to me,” Elliana explained. “I know you all call him Dickie, but-“

“That’s because it’s his name!” Cornelius said firmly.

“It’s his Bully Boys name,” Paris added.

Cornelius continued, “My valet has always been called Richard and Dickie here is no exception.”

There was a brief moment of pause as this revelation settled over Paris and Dickie. The manservant let out a long, “Oh! I’d wondered…”

Elliana suggested he walk beside her to look out for traps or anything else untoward. Paris narrowed his eyes at Dickie, who smiled back at him. “Don’t worry, Paris, I’ll take good care of her.”

“Not ‘too’ good care of her,” Paris said suspiciously.

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything. Stop flirting with my daughter.”

Elliana’s eyed flared.

“Paris, I don’t like you in parental mode,” said Cornelius, as the side of Dickie’s face that had movement looked askance. “You’re cramping the Bully Boys’ style.”

“Paris, have you ever known me to flirt with anyone? That is not what this is.”

“I thought you were just doing it badly.”

Elliana rounded on Paris. “I don’t appreciate you sticking your nose in my personal business, dad.”

“I’m just trying to do the job!” Paris said, exasperated.

Cornelius raised his hands to the sky. “Well, just in case anyone forgot, we’re all trying to do the job of defeating a mighty vampire lord, freeing the land of Barovia from his evil, raising a large army and marching upon Saxonia to reclaim my inheritance and wreak vengeance upon those who stole it from me!”

“I know!” Paris said, “But now I have to balance that responsibility with being a full-time dad!”

“Well you should’ve thought about that, Paris, before you took it out of your pants and stuck it in her mother!”

Dickie and Elliana left he bickering pair and headed to the stairs. There was a loud graunching noise and a rattling of chains and Paris and Cornelius dove out from below the shaft as the elevator came crashing back down to the place where they had just stood.

They descended into black, still water; a corridor with doorways to the north and south, that Elliana recognized as leading to the dungeon cells.

“There is a… teleporter- this way.” Elliana pointed down the corridor. “It is how I escaped the castle and came to the Amber Temple. It also allowed for transport to other places- including ‘yellow, to master’s tomb’. I think that is where we need to go.”

“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing,” Cornelius said, “so maybe you should lead the way this time. But! Only this time.”

In the chamber beyond, dark shapes rose out of the water. Hooked chains hung from the ceiling. Revealed by the light of the two glowing swords, the shapes were revealed as racks, iron maidens, stocks and other instruments of torture. Skeletal remains of their last victims were still trapped in the malevolent devices.

A balcony set on the north wall overlooked the room. A red velvet curtain was closed behind two large thrones. On one of these a man was splayed, his legs over one arm of the seat; a woman stood behind him, her hands on his armoured shoulders.  

The man spoke. “Ah, Elliana. We thought you may come this way.” Sprawled in the chair was her old friend, the only other survivor of the Spency Squad: Anslem Thruppington-Spence.