The party took up defensive positions, spreading out along the inner wall of the temple so as not to be in—as Robin still thought of it—fireball position. No one wanted to get hit with an area attack.

‘Watch for others,’ Savra warned. ‘Undead of this kind often dwell in groups.’

Then she raised high her holy symbol and began calling upon her goddess to rebuke the undead thing before them. Her features fell into sharp relief, and Savra took on a strange angularity, as if all ambiguity had been leeched from her body.

Robin conjured the illusion of light, blazing brightly though the room. Motes of starfire glittered and danced in the air like an aurora, threading through and around Drev’s globes of force-light.

Vance conjured a sword of light and Jhess looked sourly out at the incipient battlefield. Her daggers were unlikely to find much purchase on an incorporeal enemy, and Savra didn’t seem to be available to offer any kind of blessing that might help with that.

‘Watch your shadows,’ Robin shouted. ‘Some of these things can step right through them and stab you right in the back!’

‘Someday,’ Jhess muttered.

There was a flicker of movement as the shadow revealed itself, lashing out at Drev from the pool of liquid darkness cast by the altar. The mage was ready, however, and three bolts of force leapt from his fingers and lanced toward the shadow, aiming unerringly for its sinuous form.

The missiles slammed into the shadowy form, but not having a physical existence, it was difficult to tell how much damage they may have done to the shadow.

It did change, however, shifting in outline from a hobgoblin soldier to that of Drev, a two-dimensional doppelgänger of darkness,

Robin didn’t want to think about what that might portend.

Nothing good.

Vance uttered a battle cry and attacked while the thing was stood there staring at Drev. The blade of light arced toward the shadow but it split apart, allowing the sword to pass harmlessly through thin air before rejoining itself.

Fortunately, Robin had been ready, and managed to score a sizzling hit with a [Lesser Witchbolt] but this thing was not behaving like the last shadow he’d fought. Something was different.

The shadow skitted along the edge of the room, coming near to Savra and then dancing away. The cleric tossed a bolt of white fire at it, but it managed to coil out of the way.

‘We’re going to need to attack it in waves,’ Vance called. ‘One of us will miss, but if the other can anticipate and land a hit, we can whittle it down.’

Hopefully the thing didn’t speak the language, but Robin wasn’t terribly hopeful. Ugh. Why was telepathic communication so far away?

Because it wasn’t his specialty and he wasn’t looking for workarounds in his interface. He had enough on his plate with the illusions and the bardsong and everything else.

He really needed some combat bardsong options.

Vance and Savra fell into a rhythm as Robin moved closer to work with Drev. Jhess took the odd shot with one of her daggers when the opportunity presented itself, but the rogue was forced to act mostly as a distraction in this fight.

His from white fire and sword of light landed, the odd witchbolt or missile of force, bit of shadow sprayed into the air and dissolved, but the thing didn’t seem to be getting any weaker. It stayed dancing at the edges of the room, keeping well away from the light emanating from Savra’s holy symbol, but the party just didn’t seem to be making much headway.

‘Fuck that thing is fast,’ Vance complained after his sword of light slashed through the air near to the creature a moment too late.

It was fast, and it seemed to draw power from the shadows in the room, though something about its movements was niggling at the back of Robin’s brain.

So he watched. He counted the shadows. And then his eyes widened.

The thing was going for the shadows cast by Robin’s illusions! it was mostly ignoring the ones cast by the other light sources in the room. At least the thought so. It was kind of hard to keep track.

‘Going to get a bit darker,’ he warned. ‘I need to test something.’

Robin cut his illusion of dancing lights and the overall illumination in the room fell. Not drastically. Most of the light had been coming from Drev’s efforts, after all, but there was a noticeable difference.

The shadow thing turned and hissed at Robin, assuming his silhouette. Robin could tell by the billowing of the coat.

And honestly, could anyone else here cut such a dashing figure? Even through a mirror darkly, in two dimensions?

It was clear it changed shape to that of someone who had hurt it in some way. Like the first time it had done so with Drev. So why had it changed now? When all Robin had done was remove his illusory light and the accompanying shadow. The only thing that made sense was it was worse off without the illusion Robin provided. It had to be gaining power from it somehow.

Weird, but they were in Tarin-Tiran, capital city of a whole civilisation built on illusion—of course! This thing somehow fed off of the magical energies that produced illusions! There probably used to be some kind of divine illusory fresco in here it had fed off of, but with the city advancing in ruination, its food sources must have been slowly drying up.

‘Try hitting it now! See if it gets weaker!’ Robin called.

The party fell to it again, with blade of light and flaming spell, with force-missiles and raining hell.

And the thing still wasn’t going down.

Oh, the magical attacks were having an effect, to be sure, but it was always less than it should be, by a large percentage. Maybe because the thing had fed off illusions for so long it was only quasi-real itself.

Frustrated, Robin called upon [Visual Phantasm] and fired a bolt of pure light like a laser right through the thing.

That hit. And it hit hard. The illusion of pure light burned through the shadow like a hot knife through butter. The thing keened in pain and vanished into a nearby shadow, taking a hit from both Savra and Drev in its haste to flee.

Vance was too far away with his sword of light, unfortunately.

So magic hit, and illusory magic hit harder, when it was shaped in a way that directly opposed the shadow. Was it actually part illusion at this point?

Robin put aside the idea of an illusory life form to focus on the matter at hand. His hit had driven the shadow mad with fervour and it had surged up out of the shadow behind Savra to slash at the cleric with its nails, completely ignoring the effects of the holy symbol.

Which made perfect sense if it wasn’t actually, an undead shade of a lost soul but actually the sentient illusion of one!

Robin called out a [Healing Word], hoping to offset the damage as Savra slumped to the ground, eyes staring blankly into the middle distance.

Vance and Drev struck with their magic as Jhess howled and slashed at it with her daggers. The shadow sank out of sight.

‘Grab Savra, fall back to the corridor,’ Robin called.

Jhess sheathed her daggers and hefted the cleric and moved to the corridor, Vance and Drev covering her, taking shots at the shadow as it tried to manifest from the shadows at their feet.

Robin conjured the illusion of a flashbang to temporarily drive all shadows from the corridor, then sealed it off with a uni-directional plane of light so the shadow couldn’t see them—or more importantly, any of the shadows in the corridor with them.

‘What is that thing?’ Savra hissed in frustration as she tried to shake Savra out of her catatonia. Whatever the shadow had done—some kind of mind-influencing attack—was keeping the cleric trapped somehow.

They had to hope Savra’s will own out in the end. That was usually the way out of illusory attacks. That, or the effect might end if they killed the creature.

Fortunately Robin had an idea for that.

‘I’m going to try something,’ he said. ‘Watch my back. If it managed to shadowstep in here or out of the room this won’t work.’

Vance raised his sword of light and sparks of purple-white light danced at Drev’s fingers. They had his back. Robin nodded slightly and turned his attention to the room in front of them.

He could see through is own illusion easily enough. The room was now mostly shadow, with a lot of them now stretching away from the plane of light he’d conjured to block the door.

Robin murmured to Drev and the mage’s dancing lights that were still orbiting the room vanished.

It made it easier to count the shadows.

‘Let’s see how you like this,’ Robin muttered, a smile crooking the corner of his mouth. He’d had a little idea that was part party and part blender.

What they needed here was a little 🎶Disco Inferno!🎶

Robin bent his mind and his will to the room in front of him, and then he conjured a disco ball. But not just any disco ball! This one was a whirling blaze of laser death, with beams of cutting light lancing out from every single facet of the thing.

The light moved so quickly shadows barely had time to form before they were disrupted and the burning light danced a dance of death across every surface of the room and all the intervening space, whirling and slicing, cutting through mostly air, but also the strange illusory darkness that made up the substance of the shadow-thing lurking in the temple.

The scene was begging for a musical underpinning but Robin didn’t have any more attention to lend to the effect. Missed opportunity. He should have prepped the [Lesser Phantasmal] beat in advance. It would only have lasted several seconds, but, as it turns out, those few seconds of total concentration were all that he needed.

The shadow creature dissolved under the onslaught of illusory beams. The bits of it that were cut off from the main body of the creature dissolved into nothingness, and soon there was nothing left but a small scrap of shadow trembling in midair, as if too terrified to move..

Robin morphed the [Visual Phantasm] into another flashbang and blew that last little remnant to nothingness.

Then he let the illusion drop.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing over at a blinking Savra who seemed to be coming out of her stupor, ‘let’s see what that thing was guarding, shall we?’