The Voice from the Graveyard

The Voice from the Graveyard is a node in The Savage North. It appears only on Nightmare mode. It comes after Frost Wyrm Saga 2
==Enemies==
==Transcript==
===Introduction===
"Help me..."
A faint sound, so quiet you're almost certain it was a trick of the wind. And yet...
You stop, gesturing for you companions to do the same.
"What-" Hugh begins.
You wave him into silence.
"Help me..."
Again... Still faint, distant. Nearly inaudible.
You turn to the others.
"I heard it too," Tessa says. "It sounded like a child."
"Help me..."
"It came from over there." She points to a gentle slope that rises away to the left of the path.
You move through the soft, untrodden snow, crunching your way across the whiteness.
"Help me..."
The words are louder, closer. It's a young boy. And there's fear in his voice.
You quicken your pace. Your companions follow, kicking up clouds of snow as they ascend the slope in your wake.
The ground levels out, presenting you with a little area of snow-shrouded stone at the end of your climb. A cemetery... Gravestones and tombs lie beneath the whiteness. Some are almost completely buried. Their shapes would be indeterminable were it not for their larger counterparts -- which have only been partially swallowed by the relentless weather of Nordent.
"Help me..."
It's coming from one of the tombs. You plunge your way through the high piles of snow, making for one of the half-submerged stone structures.
"Help me..."
"I'll get you out!" you yell.
Your hands probe the cold stone, brushing away snow, trying to find a handle or some other form of purchase. But the door is smooth, wedged into its frame. Whoever sealed the tomb did their job well, and didn't intend for its occupants to be visited.
"How did he end up inside there?" Tessa asks, appearing at your side.
Images fill your mind of a little boy being dragged into the cemetery, bawling and shrieking. Cruel hands yank him towards the open crypt, toss him into the blackness within. The boy screams as his knees crack against the hard stone. His screams become louder still as the slab is shoved in place -- stealing his light, leaving him to the dark.
You shake your head, startled by the vividness of what you invisioned.
"Help me..."
"Move back!" you say, gesturing to your companions. "I'll have it open."
"<Player Name>," Brachus says, "you-"
The force of arcane concentration blocks out the rest of his words. Your hands pulse with cyan light. Energy in the same hue glows around the edges of the stone slab, framing it with its brilliance and melting the surrounding snow.
There's a cacophonous din as the doorway shudders open, revealing the tomb's dark interior -- smothered by shadows beyond the little pool of light at its threshold.
"It's okay," you say. "You're free now."
"Indeed I am."
The voice that emerges from the tomb's depths isn't that of a boy. It's a cold, rasping man's voice.
"I tried to warn you," Brachus sighs.
Two red orbs glow in the darkness.
===Conclusion===
[New Brawl boss unlocked]
"Help me!" the lich laughs. The sound makes his skull rattle, the bones of his long-dead face chattering as though in their own little chorus. "Help me!"
One of his skeletal hands darts out. A black globe flies from its fingers, hissing and roaring with ebon flame.
You slip aside, letting the melevolent missle burn its way past your face and explode against the tomb behind.
"Help me," he cackles, "so I may wreak my vengeance by flaying the souls of the living once more!"
"Who the bloody hell talks like that?" Hugh asks.
"Someone who's been emtombed with no company but the sound of his own voice," Brachus replies.
The demon's hand glows. A spinning silver object, like a spearhead, shoots through the air.
The lich raises his arms, crossing them at the wrists. Blacnkness erupts from his bracelets, a seething mass of shadow that receives that argentine projectile and swallows it.
Arrows fly one after another, Tessa's bow launching them as fast as her arm can move. Each one flies true, aimed with her exceptional accuracy. But they're repelled in turn, bouncing from the lich's skull -- rebuffed by his wards.
His magic is powerful...
But you have a trick or two of your own.
"Brachus!" you yell.
He's already moving, however.
When the lich rounds on Tessa, repays her shafts with a torrent of crackling purple lightning, the demon and his host are there -- raising a barrier to shield the trio from the onslaught.
And while the undead sorcerer is distracted...
Cyan light pulses around your hands once more. And around the big stone slab that lies propped against the wall of the tomb it once sealed.
You feel sweat gathering on your brow in spite of the cold. There's a throbbing at your temple -- mocking your concentration with each insistent pump of blood through the vein.
But the stone moves. This time it doesn't merely slide and shift. Instead it flies.
The lich whirls round. He's just in time to see the dislodged door before it smashes into him.
You can't decide whether the screaming or the crunching of bone is more satisfying. Fortunately you don't have to choose.
"Good one," Hugh says.
He steps onto the stone slab, lending his not inconsiderable weight to that pressing down on the lich's pulverized body. Only the skull and one outstretched arm protrude from under its mass.
Rakshara raises her sword to skewer his fleshless head.
"Wait!" you say. "I have a better idea..."
You strike instead. The lich's skull rolls free from his body, still screaming.
"That didn't kill him," Tessa observes.
"I know."
You drop to one knee beside the moaning, wailling chunk of bone. Then you drive your sword's pommel into it. There's a crack as the mandible bracks. When the lich continues his barrage of anguish, his voice is muffled and unintelligible. Despite whatever eldritch powers enabled them to speak without vocal chords or a tongue, for some reason liches still require their jawbones for that purpose.
The ways of magic are strange. But they can also prove amusing...
You snatch the skull from the snow and toss it into the crypt. A few moments later the stone slab is back in place, sealed as firmly as brawn and its renewed ward can manage.
Category:The Savage North