Stoopeed, happy to have shielded the priestess with his own body, makes sure there’s no enemy left in the room. If there are, he gently place her on the ground and continues with attacks. If there aren’t any, he tells her. « We...got...you..mylady....for..the........ducons.. ». 

Lyoko runs through the gauntlet, and the skeletons strike where he moves less nimbly than others:

Attack: 3 Damage: 6

Attack: 15 Damage: 6

Attack: 10 Damage: 6

You make it back to the fountain exuding radiance.  The pursuing skeletons follow you, but begin disintegrating as soon as they enter the light of the fountain.  Like lemmings, they proceed into their own destruction, leaving naught but piles of dust.  

Sister Irulan begins to come back to conscious lucidity, her torpor and languor giving way to the alert and confident body language of a woman possessed of all her faculties.  

"Thank you for coming to my aid.  As you can see, we should be safe from the undead while bathed in the light of this fountain.  I see that some of you are injured, as am I.  Please, allow me to call upon healing from on high..."

She says a prayer of healing, returning all of you to full health.  Her own bruises, cuts, and bleeding has been reversed.  You realize that her nose was broken before, as it knits itself straight again.

"Malkil is a formidable necromancer, and a past master of manipulation.  He finds ready alliances with the weak-minded, which are in greater supply than ever, sad to say.  However..."

Sister Irulan's lips curl into a conspiratorial grin:

"The mastermind of the Interalia underworld is the half-brother of the Grand Ducon!"

Stoopeed freezes in place. He feels the ground opening under him. For Generations his family has fought for the glory and the safety of the Ducon Dynasty. "The Ducons are good. The Ducons are Godsent. The Ducons are more important than your life." HOW COULD IT BE that the Underworld is associated to the Grand Ducon himself?? HOWWWWW?? (He said the last How out loud).

Lyoko snarls, "No surprise, this land stinks of corruption.  These insestual Ducons are a blight on their people... What must be done?"

"How, indeed!"  chuckles Irulan.  A grim shadow crosses over her face before she continues:  "Truth be told, I wasn't always a priestess.  I was born out of wedlock, the love child of my mother, a courtesan in the House of Beauty and Pleasure.  I am not ashamed of it.  However, Malkil's mother... well, she had designs of rising abover her station, and those designs involved seducing Malkil's father, Ignoramus, sixth of his name, the 151st Grand Ducon of Interalia.  While making a perfunctory inspection of the House during his goodwill tour, Ignoramus was seduced by Ehlana, a dancer and courtesan of the third rate.  Ehlana convinced Ignoramus to lay with her and fill her with his seed, hoping to coerce him to avoid scandal and marry her.  Instead, the opposite happened:  Ignoramus fled from the bed as soon as he "got his rocks off", as mother used to say.  He ran all the way back, crying  to the woman who was his sister, begging her forgiveness for failing to observe the Duconic traditions of only bedding relatives to prevent dissipation of the Duconic fortune.  In short order, Ignoramus married his sister and filled her belly with a... real bundle of joy, our current Ducon, Stultus.  Fearing scandal, the court of Ignoramus banished Ehlana and the royal bastard festering in her gut.  Malkil and his mother were eventually taken as slaves by the drow, but Malkil proved an apt student of the arcane, a true prodigy whose genius allowed him to memorize incantations and formulas after hearing them once when uttered by careless drow mages.  Malkil ended up taking terrible vengeance on the drow, eventually winning his freedom from a drow family which he annihilated for enslaving him and killing his mother.  He is brilliant, but twisted and evil.  He blames all of Interalia for his misfortune, and wishes to put every citizen in the realm to the sword so he may preside over a nation of galvanized corpses."

Woa

Folsorm hears Irulan's story and is frankly not overly shocked, the Ducons are nothing if not morons.  "That is grave new indeed priestess, but enough about the Ducons, how are you doing?  You had quite an ordeal back there, is there anything I can do to ease your fright?"

Digg shudders at the thought of a nation of corpses, gasping audibly when he envisions himself traipsing about as an undead minion. "This is no good. No good at all."

Lyoko thinks it's time for a revolution in Interalia... " Do you think that this Malkil could be reasoned with?  Turning his focus specifically to the Ducons that wronged him could be of serious benefit to the people of this land."

Stoopeed feels really uneasy hearing this. He was told from a young age that the grand Ducon always made the kingdom great again. Ever since they built that wall far, far away, ennemies of the people were scarce. And the amazing thing is that the kingdom to the south PAID for that wall.  At least, that’s what the great Ducon said. But what if he’s been wrong all his life?  What if his ancestors before him have been  also wrong to the core?? Stoopeed felt his conscience wrestling with his heart. He weakly said:

 « But... for the....Ducons?? »

Amazed at he lady's healing abilities and equally frustrated by being sent to do a Ducon's dirty work, Rhogar speaks up.  

"Ducons be damned....dis level of corruption and evil mustbe brought down.  But if we do remove dis inbred Ducon, will not anutter, slightly less qualified nobleman take his place?  What say you lady I-Rule-Land?  How vood one such as yourselv go about toppling such an unvit ruler?"

(Love the accent)

Irulan pauses, pursing her lips.  Her obsidian eyes twinkle with intelligence.  She appears to take her measure of each of you, looking each of you in the eye before speaking:  

“I am well now, as I trust you are, Master Folsorm.  I see Naseem has chosen his agents well, for you do have the temerity to speak the truth when it is perilous to do so.  The stupidity of the Ducons is indeed the  greatest liability of the land.  The centuries of inbreeding have reduced our rulers to simpering imbeciles. A violent coup would be ill-advised: the people would not stand for their beloved leader to be usurped.  The Ducon is not one with whom you could reason, either.  His grand speeches from the balcony are actually the effects of magic mouth spells prepared by wizards to trigger when he approaches the railing of the balcony.  I have undertaken to search for a relic in these catacombs that legends say would confer great intelligence upon whoever wears it.  The Lord knows Stultus needs more brains than he was born with. He might even have the sense to abdicate and pronounce that the Ducon’s court should form a new government to rule openly in his name.  As it is, the Ducon does well to find his chamber pot and not sully the floor with his incessant drooling.”

Lyoko looks disappointed... "Not exactly the revolution I had in mind, but if it will better the lives of the simpletons that make this land their home then I will lend myself to this cause.  Where might we start looking for this relic?"

"Wait", Stoopeed says. "The Ducon Lineage is inbreeders and the Grand Ducon is an idiot?   I feel so stupid for not seeing this before.  Maybe I'v been. eeeeerr..brain -cleaned and talked to in a way to make me believe things..ARRR just remembered the world INFLUENCED from birth so I believe I owe my live to the Ducons?  And you ALL confirm to me, they are stupid?....Hey. Wait aminute.  My name...."

Folsorm looks at Stoopeed with a mix of pity and anger in his eyes, "There are literally rocks that are smarter than the Ducon"

Digg looks about anxiously, all the seditious talk of the Ducons making him nervous. "So, what is it we do now? What can we do about all of this?"

Rhogar scratches his scaly chin.  Agreeing with Lyoko, “Dah,  not exactly dee glorious story of revolution, but if it means in-oh-sent lives are not taken it duz seem the best course.  So yes, where is dis relic so we can make the Dumb Ducon more, how you say..,.smarter?”

“The relic itself is in a tomb three levels below here.  The tomb is sealed by the power of five mighty artifacts.  They were used by an archmage to seal a lich into the tomb.  The archmage used the aid of five heroes and the magic of their weapons to create the seal.  It would take that same magic again to open the tomb.  Alas, the lich’s phylactery was never found and the weapons have been spread across the world.  It would take a miracle to find them and defeat the lich...”