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[Lazybones]

Chapter 70


For a moment, it looked like the end.

But the way to the Shadowfell was not completely open, not yet. The probing claws from beyond the portal slowed their reach, and came to a halt about five paces beyond the arch. The tendrils remained at full extension for a heartbeat, then retreated back into the black surface, which continued to roil and twist expectantly.

The sight of it seemed to shake Devrem into action, and he finally tore free of the wight’s dark spell. For a moment he stood there, indecisive, then Elevaren shouted at him, “Go! I’ll delay the wight!” The warlock drew his sword—itself an almost ridiculous gesture—and ran east, leaping over one of the narrow streams of blood that ran out from the central pool toward the nearest drain.

Devrem rushed to help Mara; the fighter needed the aid, as the skeletons were continuing to batter her. Weakened by Kalarel’s decaying ray, she was barely able to get her swords up to parry half of the blows the skeletons were raining upon her, and only the steel scales of her armor, and the protective power of the shield of faith that Devrem had placed around them before they’d leapt into the shaft, had kept her from being hacked to pieces. Her own attempts to attack were weak and ineffective.

Kalarel unleashed another decaying ray as Devrem came within range, but the priest withstood the attack upon his life energy, barely summoning the fortitude to withstand the effects of the eager red glow. He countered with a turning focused upon the skeleton warriors. The silver radiance that shone from his staff flared against an amorphous black energy that seethed from the animated bones; the necromantic energies that sustained them were potent. But the nearer of the two skeletons sagged back, as if punched by an invisible fist. The respite was temporary, but Mara put it to good use, summoning a desperate surge of energy from somewhere deep within and taking the attack to the remaining skeleton. Bone chips flew as she rang her longsword against its clavicle, but the skeleton refused to go down, countering with a blow across her stomach that drew a grunt of pain even through her armor.

Elevaren felt a cold thrill of fear in his chest as he approached the steps that led up to the platform where the wight waited for him. He wasn’t completely alone; he saw an arrow thud into the wight’s chest, but the creature completely ignored the shaft that jutted from its body, even though the steel head almost certainly would have penetrated its lung had it been living.

The warlock held his sword at the ready, but it was his magic that he used to attack. He lifted his hand and drew more deeply on the fey power than he ever had since arriving here from the Feywild, unleashing a pair of spiraling beams of power that sparkled and twisted around each other before slamming into the wight’s chest. Its feral snarl indicated that the attack had been successful, but as the glittering afterimage faded in the wake of the eldritch rain the wight burst forward, fixing the eladrin with a gaze that tore through him to the core. Elevaren lost all sense of reality for a moment, and only came to himself as he felt hard stone slam into his back. He looked up in surprise to see the statue or Orcus looming over him, a good fifteen feet from where he’d been standing a moment ago.

He looked down to see the wight’s hideous visage drawing rapidly closer as the creature bore down on him, its claws extended toward his face.