Braunheld rushed up the stairs behind the vanguard of skeletons, she could hear the guards mustering above and hoped to take them quickly. Then the ball of flame careened down the stairs, bouncing and crashing, taking skeleton after skeleton with it. Braunheld ducked, using the door she carried as a shield. The impact of the ball of flaming bones was jarring, but the shield held. The mass of flames bounced over her head and continued down the corridor below, killing dozens of the other prisoners.
The three witches who had freed them called for everyone to regroup. Concentrating together they raised a wall of force over the stairs. “Got a plan B?” the ogre asked them.
“There,” the red-head pointed at the fireplace. “We should be able to chimney up that to the ground floor.”
“What about fire?” the ogre asked.
“Who cares about fire?” the dark-haired tiefling laughed. “I’ll go up first…but, before that…” The three girls began to sing in unison again and the felled prisoners animated, their bones and flesh bursting into flames as they stood up. The girls dropped the force barrier and allowed the burning skeletons to rush up the stairs. “That should keep them busy…”
They raised another wall of force behind the skeletons and the blond sent a rat scurrying up the chimney with a rope in its mouth. Moments later she gave a tug on the rope and proclaimed it safe to climb. One after the other the prisoners slipped up chimney and into the first-floor kitchen. Braunheld could only shake her head and marvel at the magical power wielded by the three girls.
The ten prisoners still standing grabbed bags, bowls, and any other containers they could find, shoving as much food as they could carry in them. Outside the door they could hear battle raging between the guards and the skeletons out in the hallway.
The red-head, Heather, crept over to the exterior door leading to the kitchen gardens and peaked out. “There are archers on the walls…” The girls gathered at the door and peered at the guards, then began again to sing. The archers vanished. Just…vanished. Braunheld could not believe what she was seeing. When they reappeared, this time in different locations, she was flabbergasted. Then they began to fall. They reappeared in mid-air. They re-appeared perched precariously on the battlements. They reappeared fused waste-deep in the walls or ground.
In less than a minute, the walls were clear of archers…
But, for some reason that Braunheld could not fathom, they opened the other door. Rather than fleeing across the undefended yard to freedom, the girls opened the door to the hallway where an entire regiment of guards were in the last phases of mopping up their skeletal assailants.
Then she understood. The blonde, Talia, raised her hand and unleashed a burst of brightly coloured lights that left the guards reeling and unable to defend themselves. Then the girls neatly sectioned off the room with more force-walls…
What followed was slaughter, complete and wholesale. The prisoners rushed their defenseless jailors and beat them mercilessly. The ogre casually walked up to the warden and caved his head in.
It was miraculous. Not only were they free, but every single one of the guards was dead or dying.
The prisoners rushed throughout the prison keep, looting to their hearts content. They found weapons. They found food. They found silver. They found a wagon and loaded it to the brim with everything they could carry. They were ready to flee with their prizes when the three girls stopped them again.
“Now to leave some gifts for our pursuers…” the dark-haired girl said.
And they did.
The girls knelt by one of the dead prisoners and laid hands on him, the burned and battered corpse crumbling away to ash and reforming. Where once there was a dead man, now there was a quite living adult male lion, a mass of claws, teeth, and sinew. The lion spoke its gratitude and vowed to cover their escape.
Then the girls set about animating the guards. Their former captors now formed a small army of bloody, groteque undead. The girls gave them back their swords and their bows and set them to watch upon the walls. The guard dogs were likewise raised, changed into horrible slavering beasts with long tongues and swarms of roaches crawling in and out of their still-fresh wounds.
The girls commanded Braunheld, the ogre, and the other prisoners to begin digging a great pit in the midst of the gatehouse. They filled it with spears and sharpened stakes. They set skeletons in the gatehouse above with a great vat of boiling oil. The brunette took the animated bodies of the guards and commanded them to lay down in the courtyard, forming some horrible infernal symbol with their bodies. Then they covered it all…
The girls sang and the walls crumbled. They sang and the pit vanished. The skeletons vanished. All signs of their passing here were gone, and behind them they left a death-trap. Braunheld was beyond impressed.
Done with their work, the prisoners and a small escort of skeletons set off across the old moor. The ogre hauled the wagon filled with their treasures while a pair of tieflings carefully picked a path across the soggy ground for them. The blonde pointed them to a spot on a map she had taken, “the Old Moor Road…we most go there…a house on a hill waits for us.”
Crazy as she sounded, the other prisoners dare not question the girls.
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