Chapter 06 - Die Alten Hofs - WHQ - Exorcism

Image – The final Objective chamber, the Tomb Chamber where Die Alten Hofs face the final challenge and must first dispatch the Halberd Guard and the two tomb priests

Die Alten Hofs descended the obsidian stairs of the Harksheide’s Gate. The air grew colder, fouler, with each step. Dust hung in the air like ash, and the stones whispered of old screams.

At the first crossroad, they paused. Gwendolyn traced the magical ley lines with her staff; the path eastward pulsed weakly with necrotic energy. They moved forward cautiously, passing crumbled murals of forgotten saints and rusted iron grates.

Soon they entered a large, iron-doored chamber—the hinges screeched as they were pried open. Inside, a Torture Chamber, long abandoned. The walls were blackened with old blood, and iron maidens and racks lay broken across the floor. Skeletons hung from chains. One corpse, a decayed soldier, slumped beside an overturned brazier.

Jederman stepped forward, lifting the body and turning it gently. From beneath the armour, a leather purse of gold coins fell to the stone. Helga murmured a blessing, and Elendriel, fingers fluttering with curiosity, opened it. Ancient coins, stamped with the image of King Gerold the Wolf-Born—a monarch who died three centuries ago.

Sundras knelt. “No recent blood. No recent death. But someone—or something—has been here. Recently.” He gestured to scratch marks on the floor—long, jagged, and clawed.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped. Gwendolyn’s staff flared with blue fire. “A ward,” she said. “An ancient barrier was here—broken recently. The path below is no longer sealed.”

A low rumble echoed down the corridors. Not from above—but below.

“Something moves,” Helga said grimly. “Something vast.”

Elendriel played a slow chord on his lute, and the room trembled slightly. “The dead are not resting. The songs of the underworld are discordant. There are too many voices.”

They pressed forward, deeper into the labyrinth.

With the stench of the old Torture Chamber fading behind them, the band of Des Alten Hofs pressed on into the depths of Harksheide.

The corridor ahead was long, narrow, and oppressively silent, its ancient stones damp with centuries-old condensation. The only sound was the soft footfalls of warriors on worn flagstones and the distant, almost rhythmic groan of the earth.

Gwendolyn led the way, her staff alight with a pale-blue flame that cast warped shadows along the cracked walls. The first corridor was straight and seemingly devoid of threat. Still, Sundras, ever cautious, kept close to the side walls, his eyes flicking to hidden cracks and floor seams. At the far end, the path split at a T-junction.

“There,” Jederman growled, pointing left. “Fresh drag marks. Something was hauled that way—recently.”

“We go right,” Helga countered. “The drag marks might be a trap—or worse, lead us into a nest.”

Elendriel, strumming a low, murmuring note from his lute, whispered, “Fate coils both ways. But I sense a pulse… to the right, like a heartbeat behind the stone.”

They turned right. The corridor narrowed, forcing them into single file. Gwendolyn touched the walls as they walked—her lips moved in silent chant.

“These stones were blessed once,” she said, “but no longer. Something has leached the sacred from them.”

At the end, they came to another T-junction—this one marked by the broken remains of a stone statue. The head of the figure—a knight of Ulric—lay shattered on the floor.

“I don’t like this,” Sundras muttered. “Too much room. Too much quiet.”

As they advanced cautiously into the next corridor, the tunnel widened into a gallery of collapsed pillars and shattered benches. It may have once been a memorial hall, but now it was a ruined passage—one that suddenly erupted in war cries.

From alcoves above and behind stone fragments ahead, twelve orcs burst forth—six archers on a ledge lining the upper wall, and six swordsmen charging from ahead, snarling in crude, guttural tones.

“DOWN!” Gwendolyn shouted, and with a flick of her staff, conjured a shimmering barrier of translucent ice. Arrows shattered against it, buying precious seconds.

Helga raised her wolf-crested shield. “To me! Form on me!” she shouted, planting her feet and raising her blade.

Jederman roared, eyes ablaze, and leapt forward before the others could stop him—cleaving into the first orc swordsman with an overhead blow so powerful it snapped bone through mail.

“Flank them!” Elendriel called to Sundras, already nocking an enchanted bolt to her hand crossbow. She strummed a discordant chord—sickly green energy surged down the corridor and struck two archers, causing one to fall shrieking from the ledge.

Sundras vanished into the shadows, scaling part of the crumbled masonry, moving like a serpent toward the archers.

Gwendolyn, behind the ice barrier, began chanting. Runes of flame spiralled from her hand, forming a ball of fire that shot through the air—detonating among the sword-wielding orcs, catching two ablaze.

Helga held the line, her shield deflecting blow after blow. She moved with precision, honed by years of knightly training—countering with strikes to the neck and thigh, rendering her foes broken and bleeding.

Jederman fought like a storm. An orc sword bit into his shoulder, but he snarled and grabbed the attacker by the neck—lifting it and slamming it against the wall until it stopped moving.

Above, the archers released another volley. One arrow struck Elendriel in the side—he gasped, stumbled—but chanted a spell mid-fall that sent phantasmal wolves leaping up the wall, mauling two more archers with ghostly fangs.

Sundras appeared behind the remaining archers, his twin daggers flashing in silence. One after another, the orcs fell—never hearing the assassin coming.

Within minutes, the ambush turned into carnage. Orc blood flowed like ink into the cracks of the old stones. The gallery fell silent again—haunted now by the echoes of violence.

Gwendolyn moved to Elendriel, casting a minor healing charm. “You’ll live,” she said flatly. “Though you may sing more slowly for a day or two.”

Elendriel grinned through the pain. “As long as my fingers work, the songs shall rise.”

Sundras searched the bodies, retrieving crude maps and bone-carved tokens. “These orcs didn’t find their way here by chance,” he said. “They were drawn here. By something dark—and near.”

Helga lifted a shard of broken stone from the wall—beneath it, a symbol of Ulric had been deliberately defaced, replaced with a crude glyph of death.

“Desecration,” she hissed. “The enemy is nearby. And they fear Ulric’s name.”

The gallery held three exit corridors—one west, one downward, and one sealed by rusted iron bars. Jederman kicked at the floor. “We press on. Downward.”

Gwendolyn nodded. “Yes. The evil stirs below. Its heartbeat grows stronger.”

And so, bloodied but unbowed, Des Alten Hofs gathered their weapons and steeled their resolve—for the real darkness was yet to come.

The descent wound on like a spiral carved through the bones of the world. The gallery faded behind them, and silence returned—thicker now, heavier, like a presence watching from every shadow. Gwendolyn’s flame dimmed, flickering unnaturally.

Jederman grunted. “Something down here doesn’t like light.”

“That’s because it doesn’t need it,” Elendriel murmured. “This realm belongs to the blind and the dead.”

Sundras knelt at the mouth of the stairwell. “Footprints. Deep. Heavy. Something armoured passed this way recently.”

As they continued, the walls began to change. Smooth-cut stone gave way to ancient brickwork blackened with soot. Wolf sigils—now cracked and defaced—lined the ceiling arches. A heavy door awaited at the bottom, sealed not by lock or bar, but by divine ward: a wolf’s head etched in silver, half-faded, yet still faintly pulsing with power.

Helga stepped forward and produced her Holy Symbol of Ulric. “His flame still watches,” she whispered.

She pressed the symbol into the etching. The door hissed open—not with a creak, but a sigh, as though exhaling centuries of forgotten breath. The room beyond was vast, circular, and utterly silent.

It was not dust or time that filled this place—it was reverence. The walls were lined with statues of ancient knights, their faces serene, their blades sheathed, watching forever. At the center lay the tomb—a black sarcophagus inlaid with silver and gold, draped with faded banners bearing the mark of the Burning Wolf. But the room was not empty.

 

Standing between the heroes and the tomb was a lone sentinel: the Halberd Guard—a towering knight clad in ceremonial armour, unmoving, faceless behind a wolf-mask helm. His weapon, a great halberd twice the length of a man, was etched with runes and blood-slick from recent use.

To either side of the tomb knelt two figures in tattered priestly robes—brothers of Ulric once, now twisted by dark fervour. Their eyes were milk-white, their mouths smeared with ash and blood. They whispered in broken tongues, cradling bone daggers and relics turned dark.

Gwendolyn’s voice was hushed. “The tomb is warded by devotion… but not the kind we came with.”

Jederman cracked his knuckles. “Then we cut it down.”

Helga raised her blade. “By Ulric’s will, we reclaim this place.”

The Halberd Guard moved first.

With an inhuman lurch, he surged forward, the haft of its polearm spinning with lethal precision. Jederman met it with a roar, the clash of steel and brute force ringing through the chamber. Sparks flew as the halberd deflected his axe, and the blow that followed sent the barbarian crashing into a column.

The priests chanted, their voices rising in shrill cadence. One extended a hand—and darkness unfurled, a coiling bolt of unholy power that struck Helga in the chest, nearly driving her to her knees.

Sundras leapt into motion, weaving through shadow. He appeared behind the first priest, his dagger finding its mark. But the fanatic shrieked—not in pain, but exultation—grabbing Sundras’s wrist with impossible strength. It took Elendriel’s voice, swelling with a haunting chord, to stagger him. A bolt of spectral force shattered the priest’s spine, and he collapsed in a tangle of broken limbs.

Gwendolyn’s staff ignited. “Burn it away,” she chanted, unleashing a searing beam of celestial flame. It struck the second priest mid-ritual, disrupting the spell. He howled, ablaze, staggering back—until Helga rose once more and drove her blade into his heart.

The Halberd Guard, now alone, fought like a creature possessed. Jederman bled from his brow, but did not retreat. He grinned—bloodied and wild.

“You don’t bend,” he spat. “Good. Then you break.”

He dodged the next swing, grabbed the haft of the halberd with both hands, and twisted. The Guard resisted—but Sundras was already behind it, driving both blades beneath its helmet seam. Elendriel’s spell exploded against its chest as Gwendolyn’s fire consumed its legs.

Helga moved in, the Holy Symbol clenched in her left hand.

“Ulric watches,” she said as she plunged her sword through the knight’s chestplate.

The construct gave a final twitch—then froze.

A hiss escaped the tomb chamber. The dark pressure eased.

Silence fell, broken only by laboured breaths. The tomb no longer pulsed with malevolent energy—it was waiting.

The group approached the sarcophagus, reverent.

Helga laid her symbol upon the lid first. The metal glowed with soft white light, seeping into the tomb’s seams.

Then Gwendolyn, her hands trembling from spent magic.

Jederman followed, solemn for once. “For honour.”

Sundras, wordless, placed his symbol, bowing his head.

Last was Elendriel. “Sleep, tyrant,” she whispered. “Your song ends here.”

When the fifth symbol touched the tomb, a great wind howled through the chamber—though no wind should blow underground. The banners lifted. The statues of the knights seemed to watch with pride.

And the tomb sealed. No latch, no lock—just silence. Deep. Final.

A voice echoed in the minds of the five: “The bond is broken. The tether is undone. Ulric’s flame burns anew.”

They did not speak for some time.

When they emerged from the tomb chamber, bloodied but whole, the air of the labyrinth had changed. The fetid stink had lessened. The stones no longer wept.

But Gwendolyn, as they prepared to ascend, looked back down the spiral stair.

“That was not the Necromancer,” she said. “Only the tomb. The prison. The heart is yet deeper.”

Elendriel’s fingers brushed her strings, a dissonant minor key echoing through the hall. “Then the real song has only just begun.”

And so, Des Alter Hofs climbed back to the surface—not to end their journey, but to gather strength for the final descent. For beneath the sealed tomb… something else stirred.

Something watching.

Something waiting.