Story HourPost your ongoing tales from your campaigns, and read those from others for inspiration. Lots of other RPG boards post "Story Hours", but this is where it started!
Carzen held up the waterskin, letting the spray wash again over his face. His skin still stung where the acid drops had seared through the gap in the front of his helmet, and he was just thankful that they had missed striking his eyes. Vhael had taken the blast with more equinamity, although the caustic gunk had damaged his scaly flesh as readily as it had Carzen’s.
“Our supplies of fresh water are limited,” Vhael only said in reply, turning back to where Gral and Surina were returning from the direction of the doors.
“It’s no good,” Gral said. “We hit the pillar with fire and ice, and neither did so much as scratch those things.”
“Did it try to blast you in response?”
“It would appear that the range of the acid spray is limited. But we’d definitely have to pass close by it to enter the room.”
Vhael nodded to himself. “Then we do it.”
“I will go,” Surina volunteered. “There is no sense in risking all of us.”
“We cannot afford to divide our strength,” Vhael said. “If you should fall, we would be where we started, but down a fifth of our resources.”
“You seemed willing to go on ahead alone in the blood room,” Carzen found himself saying before he could think. But he didn’t try to take the words back, and he met the dragonborn’s stare with what he hoped was coolness.
“I have no compunction against risk when it furthers the mission,” Vhael replied. “But I did not see the artifact we seek in that room, and we have no way of knowing what lies beyond those pillars. So we stay together.”
The warlord swept his gaze over all of them, as if verifying that there was no further dissent. None of the others ventured a challenge to his orders, so they gathered together and warily returned to the still-open double doors.
The pillar had returned to quiescence, but it came alive again as they reached the doors. Vhael did not pause, leading them along the wall to their left, just out of reach of the grasping hands. Gral followed, not even looking at the violent movements of the forms trapped on the pillar. The animated heads didn’t spray acid at them this time, but they did start up a maddening babble, a noise that pounded at Carzen’s ears like hammers. Clenching his jaw tightly enough to hurt, he pressed on.
Behind him, Gez fell against the wall, clutching his head, but Surina, bringing up the rear, picked him up and carried him after the others.
There were two exits in the chamber, one to the left, the other on the far side of the room behind the second pillar. Vhael took them left. The second pillar started screaming, a painful, jarring noise, but it was far enough away that they were able to get past it without any ill effects.
The side passage didn’t go far, opening onto a shallow alcove to their left, and a larger space to the right where two more of the pillars were visible, flanking another opening. As the shone their lights in that direction, they could just make out the edge of another stone altar, with a heavy object that gleamed brightly set upon it.
“I presume that is our objective,” Gral said, shouting to be heard over the continuing screams coming from behind them. The two pillars ahead had started to come alive, but it wasn’t obvious yet what diabolical attack they were going to muster against the intruders.
“I will go,” Surina said, stepping forward with that fanatical determination glowing in her eyes. Vhael turned to her, and Carzen thought he would object, but after a moment he nodded. “You can bypass these with your magic?”
At the warlock’s nod, Vhael drew his sword. “Go then.” Turning to the others, he said, “Be ready.”
Surina stepped forward. The pillars reached for her, but as she entered their reach, she shimmered and reappeared beyond them, closer to the altar. She stepped forward, and reached for the golden bell.
White hands seized her from behind, pulling her away. Another pillar, standing out of sight beyond the edge of the passage, had grabbed her.
The noise from before abruptly died. “Surina!” Vhael shouted, the sound of his yell eerily loud in the sudden silence.
But before she could respond, the pillars shifted, the tangled bodies pushed aside as something stepped out of each one. They were demons, the familiar forms of evistros, the blood-demons they had confronted during the last trial. As soon as they were free of the pillars, they hurled themselves forward, Vhael lifting his big sword to meet their rush.
Carzen started to his aid, but a shout from Gez drew his attention back to the passage they’d just left. “More behind!” the soldier yelled, and Carzen had just enough time to turn as two more of the carnage demons sprang upon him.
Surina believed in the cause of Order, and the virtues of “civilization” that her god, Erathis, represented. It was that fundamental belief that had drawn her to the Seven-Pillared Hall, and to Vhael’s banner. She would have come here even without the need to rescue the captives, not because of the evil that this place represented, but because the Well of Demons was a wellspring of chaos, of the disorder that she had fought against since her conversion eleven years past.
So when the sea of grasping hands parted, and a fiend straight out of the Pit began to emerge, it was to Erathis that she prayed.
It was another of the ape demons, the barlgura, indistinguishable from the other two that they had already faced and defeated. As it emerged from the pillar, jaws slavering eagerly even before it saw her, she tore free from the grasping hands and staggered toward the altar-stone. As the demon’s feet landed upon the floor behind her she reached for the golden bell. Her hand closed around the bone handle, but even as she started to lift it a terrible pain pierced her flesh. Reflexively she loosed her grip, and saw thorns, stained with her blood, running down the length of the bone shaft. As she watched, they retracted back into the handle.
There was no time to do anything more, as the demon struck her from behind. A heavy arm smashed across her shoulders with the force of an iron club, and she was falling, hard, the edge of the altar cracking her in the shoulder before she slammed into the cold stone of the floor.
Carzen thought he was doing an admirable job at keeping the demons at bay, under the circumstances.
The evistros threw themselves upon him in a blind, furious rage, relying upon numbers and sheer aggressiveness to overcome him. He drove the first back with a solid thump of his shield, and met the second with a stroke of his sword that forced it to veer or accept decapitation. But the demons were only hindered for a moment, and their claws were like little daggers, digging under the scales of his armor to leave small gashes that bled freely. If they got a good grip on him, he’d be torn to pieces in seconds.
Gez tried to help him, lunging at the one Carzen had cut, but the demon suddenly lashed out at him with a claw, and the soldier was forced to dodge back or lose half his face.
Vhael had faced the first two demons head on, but before he and the evistros could come to grips Gral intervened, blasting the pair with two icy rays. His first ray missed, but the second sliced the evistro across the hips, flash freezing it. The demon fell forward and landed snarling upon the floor, struggling to overcome the debilitating effects of the dwarf’s spell. The other bent low and then sprang up, claws extended toward Vhael’s throat. The warlord calmly held his ground until the demon came within reach, and then brought his sword down in a stroke that struck the demon solidly in the torso. The blow would have cut most creatures in two, but the evistro merely spun in mid-air, landing in a snarling, vicious heap next to the dragonborn, claws ripping at his side. Vhael grimaced as one claw found purchase and bit through the chain links protecting his hip, stabbing into his flesh. He slammed the hilt of his sword down into the demon’s face, hard enough to have cracked the skull of a mortal man, but again doing little more than enraging the demon yet further.
“Aid Surina, if you can!” Vhael urged Gral, but the dwarf had his own problems, as the demon he’d immobilized regained its feet and came stalking forward, eyes burning with hate as they fixed upon him.
Surina knew she was in trouble. She sprang up quickly from the floor before the barlgura could reverse its momentum and fall upon her, putting the altar between it and her. The barrier did little to slow the demon, which sprang upon, inadvertently knocking the golden bell flying as it hit the artifact with its foot. It slashed at the warlock with its claws, but this time she was able to dodge under the strokes, the razor-sharp edges passing close enough to scrape lightly against her scaled hide.
The dragonborn was dedicated and fearless, but she was smart enough to see that the demon was stronger, faster, and tougher than she was. And as if the odds weren’t bad enough, she saw an evistro demon appear in the chamber through another passage that opened behind it. Behind her, the pillar had started babbling again, the noise scraping at her consciousness like a dull knife.
It was time to get out of here.
She ran, avoiding another claw sweep, ducking low to seize the golden bell—by the mouth this time, not the handle—and charging toward the passage toward the others. They were fighting demons of their own, but Surina’s faith preached the way of cooperation and unity of purpose. It was a dictum she had often ignored in her solitary crusade, but right now it was the only way to survive.
With the bell clutched against he chest, she surged ahead. She felt hands grabbing at her as she passed between the two pillars warding the passage mouth, but she thrust through them, growling a threatening roar. Then she was through, and she saw Gral and Vhael fighting for their lives directly in front of her. Shifting the bell into the crook of one arm, she lifted the other and summoned her magic.
But before she could unleash her power, one of the pale while hands, straining to its limit, closed around her ankle. It pulled with the inexorable strength of the fell magic that animated it, and the warlord fell forward, the bell falling out of her grasp to clatter loudly as it rolled across the floor of the room.
Shifting, she was able to twist around just enough to see the barlgura suspended above her, descending from a leap that would crush her under its hairy body.
Carzen continued his dance with the two evistros, barely keeping them off him with his shield and sword, but having to fight every few seconds against a renewed rush.
The demon on his right already bore several wounds from his sword, but gashes that would have cut to the bone on a human had merely opened shallow cuts in the evistro’s hide. The thing was unnaturally tough, and it seemed to fight in unspoken concert with its companion, the two coming in together to force Carzen to split his attentions between them. Despite the protection offered by his armor, his skin blazed from several small wounds caused by their claws; the long points were able to dig under the steel scales, opening wounds that would get much worse if they were able to seize hold of him for more than a second.
Thus far he hadn’t given them the chance, but as worn down as he was, he knew he couldn’t sustain the fight for much longer.
Gez’s initial attempts to help him had been ineffective, but as Carzen repulsed the wounded demon yet again the soldier slipped in and drove his small sword into the demon’s red hide, right under the ridged line across its back where the bones of its shoulders protruded out. His thrust did not penetrate far, but he finally got the demon’s attention, and it swiveled to face him, death promised in its eyes. It lunged at Gez before he could escape, and it would have killed him right then and there, but for Carzen.
The fighter had marked the demon, waiting for just such an opening. Ignoring the other demon, which was grabbing at his shield, trying to tear it away, he drove forward and slid his sword into the evistro’s back. He felt the resistance of its thick hide but pushed against it with every bit of strength he could muster. The sword slid home, and the demon stiffened as the fine steel drove mercilessly through its body. Carzen let out a yell as he drove it forward, finally slamming it into the wall. Yanking his sword out, the demon crumpled.
The other demon had followed him all the way, and he felt pain tear into him as it got through his guard, seizing his shoulder with its claws. Before it could get a good hold he pivoted and slammed his sword down, slashing the demon across the face. It fell back, hurt but not out of the fight.
“You want some more of this!” Carzen roared, holding up the sword above his head. “Come and get it then, you stinking bastard!”
The demon obliged, attacking with a renewed fury that caught even Carzen off guard. He was forced back, the demon’s slavering jaws snapping at his face. Blood coursed down its face, and flaps of skin hung from the vicious cut Carzen had inflicted on it, including a big piece of its nose. But it had gotten stronger, if anything, forcing him back against the wall even as he had done the same to the demon’s comrade just moments before.
Just a few paces away, the fighter’s companions were having a tough time of their own. Gral had gotten a magical shield up that had held against his foe’s initial rush, but the evistro had ignored the freezing blast that the wizard had sprayed across its torso, leaping past him before springing up onto his back. The demon was furiously trying to rip the dwarf’s head off, but Gral refused to either go down or let it get a solid hold on him. The two spun around, the demon’s claws flicking blood with each ripping tear. For a moment it looked like the dwarf was finished, but then he planted a foot and drove his staff up into the demon’s body. A concussive blast of sonic energy lifted the demon up bodily into the air, and it tumbled over backwards before landing on the ground a few paces away, still dazed from the impact of the thunderwave.
Gral, his beard smeared with blood, looked up to see the barlgura on top of Surina, ripping and tearing. The warlock was still fighting, but she’d taken an incredible battering, and her struggles were growing weaker. An evistro loomed in the shadow of the pillars behind it, moving through the grasping arms that failed to so much as brush its skin.
Vhael was still fighting his own evistro, which had gotten a hold of his leg, and was trying to bite through the chainmail links protecting the limb. “Gral!” he shouted, unable to come to Surina’s aid himself.
Ignoring the demon that sprang back up to its feet in front of him, Gral drew upon his magic. As it always did, the chill touch of the magic pulsed like ice through his veins, but he drew more of it, channeling it into a spell he’d only just mastered.
A blast of frost filled the room, coalescing into a whirl of power that gathered into substance as it approached its target. Ridges of ice materialized, forming into a crude but huge hand that snapped shut around the barlgura, yanking it off of Surina. The demon roared as the icy cold of the magical fist tightened around it, pinning it despite its considerable strength.
Vhael couldn’t bring his sword into play with his foe at such close quarters. He dropped the weapon and roared a draconic challenge as he tore the demon free of his leg, lifting the flailing creature high above his head. The warlord roared again, a sound that filled his allies with determination that was punctuated by action as he drove forward, slamming the evistro down into the floor, head first. The demon’s skull cracked like a melon, spreading the putrid contents in a wide arc upon the stone.
Taking up his sword again, the dragonborn stepped forward like the grim avatar of Death itself.
The dragonborn’s example had reenergized his companions. Carzen and Gez, working together, put down the remaining foe on their side of the melee. The fighter reached Gral in time to help drive back the demon clawing at him. The last evistro tried to take the fighter from the flank before he could shift his defenses, but Surina hit it with a blast of fire, knocking it screaming into the wall. Taking advantage of the barlgura’s temporary entanglement, she crawled free, falling back to where Carzen and Gral were holding their position.
Vhael moved forward to confront the barlgura as it started to tear free from the grasp of Gral’s spell. The pillars behind it continued their attack, launching another spray of acid toward the dragonborn, but he stepped to the side, letting the demon’s bulk absorb most of the blast. The barlgura rounded on him furiously, but Vhael was not about to yield the advantage to it. Sword and claws met, and it was the demon that fell back, blood oozing from a deep gash in its side. Still the fiend came in again, and the pair exchanged hurts, the demon’s claws striking hard enough to bruise even through the warlord’s enchanted mail. The warlord’s counter was only partially successful this time, his sword only drawing a shallow cut along the thick hide protecting its fat neck. Vhael was reaching the limits of his endurance, weakening as blood continued to ooze from his many wounds, but the warlord refused to give ground. As the demon drew back and gathered itself for another rush, he let his guard drop slightly, the end of the heavy sword sagging down, as if he could no longer keep it raised. The barlgura responded by springing into the air, claws extended. Vhael stepped back and fell into a crouch, propping the hilt of his sword upon the floor, holding the blood-slicked steel almost vertical with a taloned hand. The demon, realizing it had been tricked but unable to change its momentum, slammed into him, putting all its strength into a heavy buffet from both claws that knocked Vhael sprawling. The dragonborn, laid out upon the floor, struggled to get up, and finally slumped over, conscious but unable to do more than gasp weakly for air.
The demon, on the other hand, would never do even that again, as it laid upon the floor next to him, Vhael’s sword piercing its chest, two feet of bloody steel jutting from its back.
The sounds of battle had come to an end; during the brief confrontation between Vhael and the barlgura the companions had finished off the last of the evistros. Surina was on her feet, but she looked barely better off than Vhael, blood trailing down her body from the wounds she’d suffered in the battle. She bent to recover the golden bell, careful to give the nearby pillar a wide berth.
“Help me up,” Vhael said, as Gral, Carzen, and Gez came over to join them.
“Those cuts need treating,” Carzen said, but Vhael shook his head. “Gral can put his needle to work as soon as we get out of here, but I’ll not linger by those pillars.” As if to punctuate his words, the trapped faces began screaming again, setting them all on edge.
“So we got the last of them,” Carzen said, as he assisted the dwarf in getting the warlord back to his feet. Carzen’s own wounds burned, but he ignored them; just looking at the two battered dragonborn made him feel better by comparison. “What now?”
The five exchanged a long look, but for now, Vhael did not answer. Staying close together, moving slowly and trailing blood behind them with each step, the companions made their way back to the central hall.
Jaron’s warning shocked Mara into full awareness; she realized she’d fallen into a sort of trance, trudging onward through the seemingly endless tunnels of the Labyrinth. They’d left the shores of the underground lake behind hours ago, and hadn’t detected any further signs of their pursuers, either the troglodytes or the duergar slavers from the Horned Hold.
Not that it would have mattered if they had been caught; they were in no condition to fight off a pair of giant rats, let alone a party of warriors.
Still, she lifted her weapon—a club taken off one of the troglodytes—and stepped forward past Jaron. The halfling had an arrow fitted to his bow, but he deferred to her, showing a trust that right now she didn’t feel entitled to. Behind him the halfling refugees stopped; several slumped to the ground, exhausted beyond endurance. She lifted the lamp she carried, the only one they were using now, its flame fitful. She could feel the remaining oil sloshing around inside it. How much longer would it burn, an hour? They they would be completely dependent on Jaron and Beetle to guide them, unable to see at all.
She lifted the lamp higher and steadied her arm to allow the flame to brighten. The shadows of the passage recoiled incrementally, revealing a figure standing there, waiting for them.
Relief flooded through her as she recognized him.
“Rendil, what are you doing here?” Jaron said from behind her. Mara jumped; she hadn’t heard the ranger following her.
The halfling looked the same as he had back in the Hall, and if anything seemed a bit underdressed for the Labyrinth, clad in a simple tunic and breeches, and without weapons save for a small knife tucked into his belt. The halfling did not seem surprised to see them, and raised an eyebrow as his gaze traveled over the three of them and their charges beyond.
Mara, Jaron, and Beetle all started to talk at once, relating elements of their recent misadventures. Mara tried to call for order, but her head started swimming, and she found herself suddenly unsteady. After a moment, she realized that Jaron was standing in front of her, looking concerned. She was surprised to find them looking eye-to-eye; somehow she’d ended up on her rear end without realizing it.
She looked over at Rendil, who was watching, an odd expression on his face. Jaron offered her his waterskin, which was still half full with water taken from the lake. She allowed herself a few swallows, which didn’t do much to ease her unsteadiness or cure the gnawing hunger in her gut.
“Where are the others, Rendil?” Jaron asked, as he took back his skin. “Are we far from the Hall?”
“Quite far, actually,” he said. “But you are where you need to be. We stand near the entrance to the Well of Demons, where your erstwhile companions—the dragonborn general and his cohorts—are struggling to free the last of the captives originally taken by the Grimmerzhul.”
“Yarine,” Jaron whispered. “We have to get her out of there.”
“Wait a minute,” Mara said. “We’re in no position to help anybody. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re almost dead on our feet, and we’ve got people here who are in worse shape. They need food, rest, and a healer’s care.”
“I will take the halflings back to the Hall,” Rendil said.
“Alone?” Jaron asked. “But—”
“There are other allies, not far from here. They will be safe, I assure you.”
“Look,” Mara said. “We’d like to help, but this Well of Demons is not our business. We’ve already been through several fights, haven’t eaten or slept in what seems like days, and we don’t exactly have the gear needed to…”
She broke off as Rendil reached into a small pouch at his belt. To her surprise, his hand—and a good part of the attached arm—dug deep into it, deeper than should have been possible given its size. He drew out a sword, its hilt wrapped in dark leather, its scabbarded length easily as long as her arm. He offered it to her.
Almost by reflex she took it, and drew the steel a few inches from the scabbard. Even in the weak light it shone like a mirror, flawless.
Caught up in the spell of the blade, she almost didn’t hear Jaron. “A sword is all well and good, Rendil, but we’re pretty beat up here…”
“Drink this,” the halfling replied, offering a small metal bottle that had likewise come from the tiny pouch. “Two swallows each, no more.”
Jaron took the bottle, unstoppered it. After a dubious glance, he took a drink. The response was instantaneous; the halfling’s entire body shook, as though he’d taken a shot of hard liquor. His eyes burst wide, and he stared down at the bottle in his hand like a man dying in the desert who’d suddenly found a flask of water within his grasp.
“That’s… I feel…”
“Take one more draught, then give it to the warrior,” Rendil directed. Jaron did as he said. By the time he handed the bottle to her, Mara had recovered enough to accept it. “What is this?” she asked.
“A magical potion. It will ease the physical effects of your ordeal.”
She took a small drink. Like Jaron, she felt the effects immediately. The pain, hunger, and exhaustion she’d felt started to fade, as though she’d just eaten a meal and taken a long nap. She blinked and looked at Rendil in surprise; he prodded her to take her second drink, then Beetle all but snatched the bottle from her hand. The halfling drained the remaining liquid in a single gulp, and started bouncing around, animated by whatever magic had resided in the elixir. Mara got to her feet, surprised that she could do so, her body feeling as good as it ever had.
Jaron looked back at the halflings under his charge. “What about the others…”
“I fear that I have no more of the liquid,” Rendil admitted. “But as I said, I will see that they get safely back to the Hall, you have my word.”
“I don’t suppose you have a quiver of arrows in that bag, or another bottle of lamp oil?”
Rendil shook his head. “I carry no arrows, but this stone will suffice for light.” He drew out what looked like a pebble, which did nothing until Jaron took it. As he held it in his palm, it began to glow, until it shed the radiance that was brighter than that cast by the simple mining lamps. “What you have with you will have to suffice,” Rendil went on. “You must make haste. The fate of your friends hangs upon a fine balance, and even the slightest twinge of fate may make the difference in the outcome.”
“Oh… okay,” Jaron said, then tightened his jaw with determination at the thought of Yarine. The three of them turned toward the passage that forked off to the side of the tunnel that Rendil indicated, near where the halfling had greeted them. Jaron looked back to see him urging the halflings from Fairhollow to their feet; to his surprise, they obeyed, despite their exhaustion. He turned and followed Mara and Beetle into the passage.
It wasn’t until they were a good fifty feet down the side passage that it occurred to him to wonder how Rendil had known to meet them there.
He looked up at Mara, who reflected the same awareness in her eyes. “When this is over, we need to have a little chat with him,” she said. In her tattered clothes, she looked more like a beggar than a fighter, but when she slid her new sword from its scabbard, any doubt about her identity faded away. “Let’s go,” she said, leading them down the passage.
“This ritual seems designed to put us at a serious tactical disadvantage,” Gral said.
“I am certain that was the intent,” Vhael responded. The dragonborn seemed distracted.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Carzen ventured. “We’re still pretty beat up—no offense to that needle of yours, Gral, but I’ve had doublets with fewer stiches than you’ve put into me over the last few days. It might be a good idea to fall back again, recover our strength, before pressing on.”
They were gathered in the blackened, scored passageway that connected all of the chambers where they had overcome the trials created by the original occupants of the Well of Demons. Vhael had his back to the others, his stare fixed on the heavy stone doors that warded the only part of the complex they had not yet explored. Behind those doors lay their final destination. They had already tried more traditional means of forcing a way through, with no success.
Without turning, Vhael responded, “Our time has run out. Can you not feel it?”
The others exchanged a look, but said nothing.
“Gral, am I right?” Vhael prompted. He did turn, now, and they could see how tired he looked, a first for them, who had gotten used to the warlord’s masterful concealment of his feelings. Dozens of scars, new and old, covered his body, and his armor showed a half-dozen rents, places where he’d taken damage that couldn’t easily be repaired in the field. They were all like that, clothes and armor and weapons and bodies beaten and battered, held together by thread, wire, and will.
They all looked at the wizard, but it was Surina who spoke. “I can feel it,” she said. “There is a power building here. I do not know where it is coming from.”
“I do,” Vhael said. He turned back to the doors.
Carzen surprised himself by being the next to break the silence. “All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s get it done with, so we can leave this hellhole.”
They made their preparations quietly and efficiently. Once they were ready, Vhael distributed the four items of power needed for the ritual, and they split up to bring them to their assigned places. The ghosts had told them what was needed, and they had already marked the rune circles, faded and covered in dust, situated in the outer halls around the edges of the blackened central corridor. They left the connecting doors open, so they could hear each other, and act together on Vhael’s signal.
Vhael lingered, with Surina. The two dragonborn entered the chamber in the center of that rectangle bounded by the black corridor, the one dominated by the dark shaft that seemed to go down forever, and which radiated a certain cold malevolence. They knew too from the dead adventurers that had come before that this was where the Guardian would come, once the ritual was completed.
“You don’t need to do this,” Vhael said. “Remain with me, and we will fight the thing together, all at once.”
“We discussed this before,” Surina responded. “Your plan to reunite in the entry hall is a sound one, but unless someone delays the Guardian, it will fail.”
Vhael looked at the pit, now almost completely obstructed by the barrier they had rigged at its mouth; using the remaining table from the gnoll quarters, weighed down with rubble taken from the destroyed minotaur statue, they had blocked off about two-thirds of the opening. They had also moved the heavy stone altars that had originally occupied this place, stacking one upside-down atop the other and siting them right along the edge of the shaft. “We could do more, maybe tear up the chairs and bunks the gnolls used, construct a more significant barricade…”
Surina touched his arm. “As you said yourself, we do not have much time. The enemy will not wait.”
Vhael nodded. He walked to the nearer exit, then paused, and looked back. “Remember. Delay, then fall back to the rendezvous. A needless sacrifice will benefit no one, least of all the hostages. I suspect we will have another big fight ahead once we get that door open.”
Surina nodded. As Vhael departed, she turned back to the pit, and walked over to the edge of the dark opening. A faint breeze stirred from below, stinking of decay.
Vhael made his way to his assigned position, not far from the sealed doors. The rune circle was on the far side of a rubble of humanoid bones. When they’d first found this room, the skeletons had been intact, shackled to the walls. The skeletons had been inanimate, but the companions had taken a minute to smash the bones into dust, just in case.
He took out his artifact, the golden bell. Surina had warned him not to grasp the handle, so he held it by the body. He lingered for a few moments, then turned to face the door.
“Ready!” he shouted.
“Ready!” came Gral’s voice. The dwarf was nearest, in a room decorated by several small pools lined with colored stone.
“Ready!” came Carzen’s voice, fainter.
“Ready!” shouted Gez.
“Ready!” came Surina’s cry, the last of them. Vhael nodded to himself, and held the bell over the circle.
“NOW!” he cried, and lowered the bell to the ground. He imagined the others doing the same with their artifacts, at the rune circles scattered around the complex.
Everything happened all at once, as he had expected. What he hadn’t expected was they way all their careful plans were thrown into chaos in that first second.
Beautifully done, as ever, I'm running my lot through this at the moment, the Friday Knights, a bit away from this point in the scenario but I can't wait to get them here. I know it's a grind, and I'm even less impressed with H3, but there are some potentially good moments, when heroes emerge etc. and the players have to really start to think about how things are going to play out.
An absolute delight Lazybones.
Any idea which scenario you are going to be running the players (Lazybones with actual players no less) through in your next story hour? If you've already indicated then forgive my ignorance- I've read everything here at least once, but my memory has never been great.
Thus far I'm keeping the new project a surprise. I'll start a new thread with a teaser post in the near future.
* * * * *
Chapter 62
Gral would have liked more time to examine the dagger they’d recovered from the chamber of blood, but duty was duty, and as soon as he heard Vhael’s shout he placed it within the rune circle. The runes flared into life, erupting with a soft yellow glow that filled the circle and limned the dagger. The wizard could feel the power gathering; it tingled on his skin.
Then the dagger abruptly disappeared, and a roar, louder and deeper than Vhael’s shout, echoed through the complex.
Turning, he saw that the water in one of the pools had come alive. A swirling vortex had caught up the water, which rose up out of the basin, taking on form, extending toward him.
Carzen almost casually tossed the carved wooden mask into the rune circle. He was wary as the runes lit up, but knew enough to keep his distance and leave it alone. But when the mask disappeared and an ugly roar sounded through the open doors, he reached for his sword and turned toward the far exit, toward the rendezvous that Vhael had set.
But between him and the doors a pair of odd mechanical devices had appeared, dropping down from openings in the ceiling that he would have sworn had not been there a minute ago. The mechanisms, attached to some machinery hidden within the ceiling, swiveled around, revealing steel-tipped bolts that came to point unerringly at Carzen’s chest.
Gez did what he was supposed to do when he heard Vhael’s shout. He didn’t want to touch the book in his bare hands, so he’d wrapped it in his cloak. He didn’t even want to hold it, but he followed orders, and once the signal was given he quickly set it down in the rune circle and stepped back. He was amazed by the sudden glow from the runes, but it wasn’t enough to make him linger. He was already running toward the far exit toward the rendezvous when the book disappeared.
The roar caught his attention, but it was followed by a closer, more terrible cry that seemed to come from the carved columns around the edges of the room, filling the place with a sound that echoed off the walls until it reached a deafening crescendo. The sound filled Gez’s head, pounding like a hammer and scattering reason like an explosion. He veered off his course, running in a blind panic through the open doors into the central corridor.
A rumbling noise drew his attention, and he looked up to see a huge orb of black death bearing down upon him.
Once he’d given the signal, Vhael placed the golden bell within the circle and turned to depart. He glanced at the sealed doors as the runes began to glow, and hesitated. Yes, they were beginning to open, but slowly, incrementally, the gap between them emerging as a narrow crack. It would take a while for the doors to open enough to let anyone through, he realized; he’d been right not to have the group rush here upon initiation of the ritual, hoping to escape the Guardian through sheer speed.
That thought reminded him of his own role to play. He’d deliberately given himself the most distance to cover to the rendezvous. The bell had vanished, and a terrible roar reached his ears through the open doors at the far end of the hall. But as he turned, he saw that the bones of the assorted skeletons had started to reform, drawn together by the same magic that suffused this place. His delay had proven costly; even as he ran across the room the still-forming skeletons reached for him, trying to stop his escape. He made it almost to the far doors when a skeletal hand closed around his ankle, almost bringing him down. Turning, he smashed down his sword, doing once more what he’d done before, crushing the ancient bones into powder. He tore free, but the skeleton started reforming almost at once, the bones crawling together of their own volition. Another claw scraped at him, but Vhael dodged back, and then he was through, and at the doors.
As he dove through them into the outer corridor, he looked up at a scene that sent a spike of horror through him.
Surina knew that the others had completed the ritual when the roar from the mouth of the shaft shook the chamber. Vhael had expected a quick response, but when she stepped forward to the edge of the pit, a globe of fire materializing in her hand, she could already sense it coming, surging up the shaft, even in the darkness that seemed to press up against the light in the room above.
The warlock kicked the altar stones perched upon the edge of the pit; balanced as precariously as they were, they toppled forward easily and vanished into the darkness. No sooner had they disappeared out of her view than Surina heard another roar, this one tinged with anger and pain. She drew back from the pit, drawing her magic into her, tasting the sweetness of it, the purging power that filled her and made all else seem pale by comparison.
The Guardian burst from the shaft, the barrier at the top slowing it for barely a fraction of a second before it was clear, the force of its rage focused on the dragonborn warlock who stood alone before it.
Gral did not wait for the elemental vortex to emerge fully from the pool. Even as the outer edges extended toward him, he lifted his staff and fired a ray of frost into the water. The blast froze where it touched, leaving a glistening layer of ice along the outer edge of the phenomenon. The ice began to crack almost at once, absorbed by the still-swelling waters of the pool, but by then Gral was safely past and on his way.
Carzen was caught off guard by the surprise appearance of the bolt-throwers from the ceiling, and stood looking dumbly at them until they stopped spinning, the pointed tips of their bolts pointed straight at him. That realization shook him out of his funk, and he lifted his shield just barely in time to absorb the impacts. The bolts struck hard enough to send a jolt up his arm through the shield, and as he peeked out over the upper edge of the barrier he saw that they appeared to have some sort of automatic reloading mechanism, the devices whirring as the throwing mechanism retracted and new bolts were slid into place.
Carzen didn’t wait around to witness that wonder; he was already running for the exit.
Vhael had emerged into the central corridor in time to see the Guardian emerge from the shaft, shattering the barricade they’d put up like a battering ram. Because of the angle he couldn’t see far enough into the room to see Surina, but he knew where she was even before a globe of fire erupted under the Guardian, saw it dive forward out of his view. Even with his own orders echoing in his mind, he’d taken a step forward before he could think, his sword coming up in his hands. But while his view of the chamber broadened, a cloud of gas filled the place, obscuring everything—chasm, warlock, Guardian—in a roiling confusion of white mist.
He hesitated, but before the struggle between duty and desire could resolve itself in his mind, a massive black sphere, easily eight feet across and studded with hundreds of short spikes, appeared around the far corner of the passage, coming straight toward him.
He could have retreated back to the relative safety of the south corridor, but that would have taken him farther from the rendezvous, farther from the Guardian. He could have dove forward, trying to beat the sphere to the central room where Surina faced the creature, but it would have been a close chance against the onrushing sphere.
Instead, he turned and ran, first west to the bend, then down the long length of the passage north. The sphere rumbled on behind him, closing the distance rapidly, barely slowing as it negotiated the turn behind him, if anything seeming to pick up speed in the stretch despite any apparent source of animating power. The mystery of the damaged corridor was now answered, the spikes scoring the floor and walls as the sphere moved. Vhael ignored the relative safety offered by the side passage leading to the blood chamber—another false choice—and instead ran to the doors to the next room, the one where Carzen had been assigned his share of the ritual. The globe was right on his heels as he darted through the open doors, and he could feel the wind caused by its passage on his back as it rumbled by.
“General, look out!” Gral shouted from across the room, near the far door. Vhael looked up to see some sort of mechanism affixed to the ceiling, one of two that hadn’t been there before, turning toward him. The other one, he saw, was clogged with ice crystals, although it was still twitching, its mechanisms trying to operate.
He didn’t stop to ask questions, running toward Gral. Something struck the wall behind him, likely shot by the thing above, but he didn’t pause or look back. Gral held the door for him and closed it behind him. Carzen was there, his sword out. Vhael looked around for Gez, but Carzen saw and shook his head.
“Didn’t see him, I went to the other room, but the room was empty, and this noise… screaming… I had to retreat. I saw Gral, and…”
“Seal the doors,” Vhael commanded, hurrying down the hall toward the room where Gez had been assigned his part of the ritual. He avoided the blood marking the floor, but there was no sign of the ghosts that had set all this in motion. The spirits had predicted that the Guardian would destroy them, and the brief glimpse he’d gotten of it had not left him confident.
It was not too late; they could flee, leaving this place and its terrors behind. He doubted that the Guardian would follow; it was bound to this place, its purpose set by creatures who had likely died before he’d been born.
No. They had come this far, and they would…
His thoughts were interrupted as the double doors ahead of him exploded outward. The heavy slabs of iron-reinforced wood were blasted off their hinges; they shot forward, one bounding into the exit passage, the other caroming off the wall to his right, flipping twice before sliding to a stop at his feet.
The Guardian came through the opening it had created. The creature rose to its full height, huge and monstrous, its wings spreading behind it as it pushed through the threshold. The weak pulsating light glistened off its scales.
The green dragon radiated power and malevolence. In its jaws it held something clasped tight, and it wasn’t until it dropped it that Vhael recognized it as what was left of Surina, now a bloody mess that was missing its arms and legs.
The dragon opened its jaws and roared a bloody challenge before charging forward to put an end to K’rol Vhael.
Mara shook her head as she tightened the belt around her waist. The armor she’d taken off the dead gnoll had been oversized, damaged, and soiled with blood to boot, but with it around her body she felt far better. She tested the heft of the spear she’d found lying on the floor not far from the body, and nodded to herself; it would do. She had the sword Rendil had given to her, but even with the rejuvenating effects of the halfling’s potion, she wanted to be able to inflict damage at a distance if another fight was forced upon them.
Jaron waited for her. She couldn’t see Beetle, but Mara suspected he was somewhere nearby. It was he who’d found the intact corpse whose armor now protected Mara.
It had been immediately clear on entering the room that a desperate battle had been fought here, and not too long ago. The stink of blood filled the room, and streaks of it covered the floor. The room itself looked to have sustained some recent damage; they had found floor tiles scattered about, as if ruptured by some momentous tremor of the earth, or poked up by something below. Neither scenario much appealed to any of them, so as soon as Mara was ready they moved on once again.
There were two exits on the far side of the room. After a brief pause, Jaron led them into the passage on the right. Up ahead, the passage forked, with one branch jutting left and the other continuing straight ahead for a short distance before turning right. Before they could evaluate their options, Beetle suddenly appeared from the left passage, all but jumping with excitement. He burst out something so fast that Mara couldn’t decipher the words, something that sounded like “bippug,” and was running back before either she or Jaron could ask him to repeat himself.
Sharing a look with the ranger, Mara hurried after him.
The left passage ended after only about thirty feet in a set of double doors that were just slightly open, clearly indicating that Beetle had already explored in this direction. The halfling ignored Jaron’s hissed warning and darted again through the opening, leaving the others little choice but to follow. As they neared the doors, Mara could hear noises coming from beyond them, a harsh grunting noise accompanied by the clink of metal, a sound that made Mara’s grip on her spear tighten.
Then she pushed through the doors, and her eyes widened in surprise.
Beyond the doors, the passage opened onto a fairly large rectangular room. To her left, a crude pen maybe ten paces across had been erected, the wooden braces rising nearly to her waist. That barrier was completely overshadowed by the massive boar that was imprisoned within the pen, held in place by a thick chain secured around its neck and bolted to an eyelet embedded in the floor. Even restricted by the chain, the boar’s motions were powerful, shaking the ground with the ferocity of its movements. Its tusks were as long as her arm from shoulder to fingertips, and she knew that they would poke through her armor just as effectively as a steel sword, backed by the sheer mass and strength of the creature.
She could see that the creature had been mistreated; bloody scars were visible around its neck where the chain had dug into its flesh, and for all its size it looked as though it had not been fed for some time. The boar shook its head, agitated by their arrival, grunting ferociously but ineffectively as it struggled uselessly against the chain. Beetle had gone right up next to it, stepping under the barrier. The boar spun menacingly toward him, but the halfling had judged the distance perfectly, and its tusks missed him by scant inches.
“Big pig!” Beetle said, and Mara finally understood what he’d been trying to tell them before. She looked around the rest of the room; on the far side opposite the chained boar a low wall fashioned out of bales of odd purplish hay had been constructed, stretching across the width of the room.
“Leave the thing alone,” Jaron said. “It can’t hurt anyone, and it’s cruel to torment it.”
Mara came over toward him, slowly; the boar shifted and grunted, but the energy that had animated it was clearly already fading. “I know this boar,” Mara said after a moment. “Well, not personally, but I believe it is the pet of a friend of mine, back in the Hall.”
“Who makes friends with a dire boar?” Jaron asked. Beetle ran past them, heading for the bales of hay.
“He’s a dwarf miner, the priest of Moradin I mentioned to you, when I was looking for information about Vhael and the others. He said it was tame… well, mostly tame.”
“It doesn’t seem so… Beetle! What are you doing?”
His cousin had picked up a bale of hay and ran it back across the room, despite the fact that it was larger than he was. The boar watched him suspiciously as he tore at the twine holding the bale together with his knife. “Pig hungry,” he said.
“Do boars even eat hay?” Mara asked.
“They eat just about anything,” Jaron said, frowning. “Including careless halflings.” Beetle ignored him and started feeding the boar, which accepted the fat bites of hay he offered. He obviously had been listening to the others talking, for he talked to it in Dwarvish, and the boar grunted in response, fixing Beetle with an odd stare, as if trying to reconcile the halfling with what its small brain knew of dwarves. He picked up another double-handful of hay, entering the boar’s reach to jam it into its mouth. Jaron froze, but the boar only accepted the offering, slurping every last bit of straw into its maw. The halfling laughed and made a face as the boar’s slobber got on his hands, but he wiped them on his coat and grabbed more hay. Within just a few seconds, the bale was gone, and Beetle ran back for another one.
“What the heck are we supposed to do with it?” Jaron asked.
“Pig pet! Pet pig!” Beetle said, with an enthusiasm that made Jaron cringe.
“Maybe once we find the others, we can figure out a way to get it back to the Hall,” Mara began, but before she could finish the thought, a roar sounded through the room, coming from the open doors behind them. It was answered by a much fainter cry, but one that both of them instantly recognized as belonging to Vhael.
“Come on!” Mara yelled, dashing back toward the doors.
Vhael felt a weird momentary sense of kinship as the dragon appeared before him in all its majestic power and menace. There was intelligence in those dark eyes that fixed upon him, and malevolence in the roar that it unleashed before surging forward toward him. Even as it tossed aside the mangled wreckage that had been a friend and ally just minutes before, he could not help but be awestruck by it.
In all his long years and varied experiences, he’d never before faced a full dragon, and in those first few seconds he came to understand the stature that the beasts held in the legends and tales of the world. Dragon stories crossed nations and cultures, and were told by all races, not just those that shared some link of blood with the creatures, as he did.
But that realization came and went in a flash, as he had to fight for his life. An answering roar to the dragon’s challenge came from him before he even realized it, and his sword came up almost automatically into a defensive stance. But the dragon’s assault came with the force of an avalanche.
He thought it was going to lunge right at him, and he’d even started swinging his sword to intercept its darting jaws before it abruptly stopped, arresting its momentum just out of his reach. Too late he realized what it was doing, too late to avoid the blinding gout of caustic gas that blasted into him. Agony filled his lungs as the gas entered him, burned his scales, sizzled at his eyes and blinded him. It only lasted a second, but even as he fought to recover, the assault he’d expected before arrived.
Claws tore into him, shredding armor and scaled flesh with equal ease. The cuts weren’t lethal, but they burned even fiercer than the dragon’s breath. He tore free before the dragon’s sheer mass could overbear him, staggered back and swung at it. But the clumsy stroke failed to even connect with the dragon’s body, dragged him off balance. The roar he issued sounded more like the mewling of a stricken beast than a challenge, and it hurt him just to cry out, his scorched throat protesting even at the passage of air.
He tried to recover from his swing, but the dragon lunged in again, seizing his shoulder in its jaws. White knives of fire pierced his body, and he could feel the dragon’s grip tightening, crushing with the force of a vise. He could only hiss in agony as his bones started to give under the pressure.
But before the dragon could finish the job it had started, Vhael’s companions came to his aid. A javelin arced high and missed its target, glancing off the ridge of armored scales running along the dragon’s crest without so much as scratching it. Carzen Zelos cursed and drew his sword, but he hesitated there, valor warring with the seeming inevitability of death against such a foe as this.
“It’ll tear him apart!” Gral shouted at him, unleashing a series of freezing pulses that struck the dragon, but likewise seemed to have little effect. They’d gotten the beast’s attention, however; with a shake of its head it tossed Vhael roughly aside, blood coursing down his side from the deep punctures where it had bitten him. The dragonborn fell, his sword clattering uselessly from his grasp.
“Gods damn it all!” Carzen cried, then he charged, screaming incoherently as he lifted his shield high to block out the dragon’s fearsome visage. Clad in heavy armor, shield raised, his sword trailing behind at the ready, he looked for a moment like a knight out of some old story.
Then he met the dragon.
His arm tensed, the sword ready to strike as soon as he entered its reach, his target square in the middle of the monster’s chest. But in the split second before he reached his goal, a battering ram slammed into his shield. The impact stole his momentum and reversed it, and he staggered back, his feet barely moving quickly enough to keep him from falling.
He lowered his shield, amazed to see a big dent in the hard steel plate. The dragon had batted him like a cat playing with a mouse; he hadn’t even gotten close enough to have a chance of hurting it.
He looked up, into the eyes of the creature looming over him, and saw death in that stare.
It didn’t attack at once, and for an instant Carzen thought that maybe this was a dream, that he’d been reprieved, and would soon wake.
Then the dragon opened its jaws wide, wider than Carzen would have thought possible, and breathed upon him.
“Ware its breath!” Vhael shouted, but Carzen was already bringing up his shield. He heard a terrible noise, and then everything around him vanished in a white haze. Wisps of the stuff curled around his shield, causing his eyes to tear up, but he avoided any serious harm.
Instinct warned him before his vision cleared enough to see the dragon’s follow-up attack. His sword bit into something hard, the impact nearly jarring it out of his hand. He didn’t have time to think about it, as he took another blow on his shield that spun him around in almost a full circle. He tried to bring his sword up into something approaching a ready position, but another hard impact caught his forearm, and he felt an angry bite of pain as his bracer was torn roughly free.
The dragon didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate, didn’t let up. The best he could do was avoid being overwhelmed or knocked down; his own counterattacks were feeble at best. He did manage to hit it once more, but his sword bounced off its chest as though it was wearing a steel breastplate. Pale blasts of frost shot past them both; Gral was having a tough time scoring a hit despite the dragon’s size, its rapidly darting movements proving as challenging for the wizard as they were for the fighter. As it reared up over Carzen again, one of those beams sprayed across its left wing, forming a white rime that immediately cracked into a thousand tiny pieces of ice. The dragon hissed a warning, but apparently it considered Carzen a greater threat, as it did not push past him toward Gral.
Even as Carzen struggled against the dragon’s assault, Vhael rejoined the fight. Charging forward, the dragonborn delivered a two-handed stroke from his big sword that clipped the dragon hard across the neck. The impact would have killed many foes, but the dragon merely jerked back, blood oozing from the shallow gash. Carzen lunged in to exploit the momentary advantage, but before he could strike the dragon sprang back at both of them. Spreading its claws wide to enfold both warriors within its reach, it caught them up and smashed the two into each other. Carzen and Vhael both grunted as they collided hard and fell to the ground.
Now it was the dragon that had the tactical advantage, and it surged forward to put it to good use against its fallen foes. But as the creature spread its wings and lifted its body once more, preparing to attack, it let out a cry of pain and jerked roughly to the side. The movement showed the companions the shaft of a heavy spear, jutting from the dragon’s side just under the socket where its right wing connected to its body. The head of the spear was buried deep into the meaty flesh of the joint, and each movement was working it deeper into the wound, no doubt causing the creature considerable pain.
“Quick, we’ve got to get up!” Carzen urged, grabbing at Vhael, who barely clung to consciousness. Carzen’s own movements felt wooden, his body behaving as though he’d been drinking heavily. The thought sent a quiver through him—he would have paid a hundred gold pieces, a thousand, to be in the seediest dive in Fallcrest right now—but he knew that the dragon’s distraction was likely to be short-lived.
But its attention—and Carzen’s—was drawn to the charging form that rushed it from behind. Carzen was amazed to see the enforcer from the Halfmoon Inn, the woman he’d fought beside against the Bloodreavers in the Chamber of Eyes. She was clad in rags overlaid with what looked like a gnoll cuirass, but a bright steel sword blazed like fire in her hand.
The dragon saw her coming, but it didn’t turn away from its current foes. But Carzen saw the danger a split-second before it struck.
“Look out!” he shouted, but it was too late to do anything to stop the dragon, as it snapped its tail around. The long appendage cracked hard across the charging woman’s body like a whip, knocking her into the adjacent wall. She hit hard enough for Carzen to feel the impact twenty feet away, hung there for a heartbeat, and then toppled over onto the floor, landing on her face in a bruised heap.
Once again I find myself cringing after one of the characters takes a hit... great descriptives LB, keep it comin!
Looking forward to the live game posts too!
Thanks, guys. Thought we were dead for a while there with the ENWorld shutdown. At least I can post now, even if it's ssslllllllooooooowwwww.
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Chapter 67
“Fight!” Vhael wheezed, lifting his sword—barely—and lunging at the dragon. For all his spirit, the dragonborn’s strength was exhausted, and the thrust failed to so much as scratch its scaled hide. The dragon’s counter was almost languid, and it slapped him aside with a swipe of a claw. Vhael toppled over backwards, rolled to a stop, and did not move.
Carzen was in better shape, although his arms throbbed, and he thought he could feel the bruises forming where the dragon’s claws had impacted him. But other than the cuts to his right forearm, he hadn’t suffered any serious injuries from the dragon’s furious attacks. That could change in an instant, though, a thought that dashed through his mind as he aborted his next attack to duck under a snapping lunge from the dragon’s ferocious jaws. The fighter tensed, expecting another fearsome swiping attack from those nasty claws to follow.
But the dragon didn’t attack him. Instead it roared and reared up, and Carzen saw a spray of ugly dark droplets fly into the air from its flank. It turned, nearly knocking him down as its wing buffeted him across the brow. He caught a glimpse of the woman fighter, on her feet again, her sword glistening with the dragon’s blood. There was another, smaller form behind her, in the mouth of the entry passage. Carzen recognized the halfling archer, and saw that he’d already scored at least one hit, the tiny arrow jutting from the back of the dragon’s dagger-shaped skull. He lifted his sword to help them both out, but before he could swing the dragon’s tail swept his feet out from under him, and he landed on his back hard enough to send stars flashing across his vision.
“Damn,” he muttered, ordering his reluctant body to get back up.
Mara had no time to spare for conscious thought. The dragon was bigger and faster than anything she’d fought before, and it seemed to anticipate her moves before she even started them. She’d gotten in two good hits, the first from surprise and the second because it had underestimated her, but now that the dragon’s full focus was on her, her luck seemed to have fled. The sword that Rendil had given her was sharp and light, and it moved like a blur in her hand, but it couldn’t keep the dragon’s claws off her. In that first exchange she took two solid hits that tore through her armor, digging bloody furrows in her skin. She thanked the gods for the gnoll armor; without that, the dragon would have torn her to pieces in the first seconds of the fray.
Jaron was sending a barrage of arrows at the dragon, but she knew that it was up to her to keep it busy long enough for the toll of damage that they were inflicting upon it to take effect. The dragon was hurt, bleeding now from several wounds, including the spear that still jutted from its side. But the creature’s stamina seemed inexhaustible.
Carzen got back to his feet, while Mara dodged a sweeping claw and lifted her sword to strike again before it could recover. But even as the gleaming sword slashed down, the dragon’s head snapped around, and it grabbed her arm in a crushing grip that caught her from wrist to elbow. Mara screamed as the dragon lifted her off her feet, unable to do anything except flail desperately; she pounded at it with her free hand, but she might as well have been a rabbit struggling against the jaws of a steel trap.
Her companions tried to come to her aid; Gral splashed another beam of frost along the dragon’s flank, while Carzen lunged in and delivered another glancing hit that just drew blood along its hindquarters. The dragon responded by swinging around, using its captive like a club, smashing Mara into Carzen hard enough to knock the soldier flying. He landed and rolled, much like Vhael had earlier, and while he was still conscious, it was clear that his wounds were starting to slow him down.
The dragon, still holding Mara, took a step toward him, but abruptly reared up, an angry hiss coming from the sides of its mouth. It snapped its head to the side, releasing Mara at the end of its sweep, sending her flying into the nearby wall. She impacted the hard stone a good eight feet off the floor, falling into a limp heap not far from where Vhael still lay unconscious upon the cold stone. Her sword, torn from her grasp at the last, clattered off the wall and landed in a corner a good ten paces away.
The dragon finished its turn, and now they could see what had drawn its ire; one of Jaron’s arrows had scored deeply, only a few inches of feathered shaft jutting from the spot at the base of its skull where its head met its neck. The dragon fixed a malevolent look upon the halfling archer, who somehow withstood the fell power in that gaze. Jaron’s hands did not shake as he reached into his quiver, where one arrow remained.
But even as he drew out that final shaft, the dragon dropped into a crouch, and sprung at him, a charging engine of destruction against which the halfling ranger seemed to stand no chance whatsoever.
Jaron stepped back, but did not flee before the dragon’s rush. His hands shook slightly as he fitted his last arrow to the string, but the steel head did not quiver as his drew the bowstring to his cheek.
But the dragon was faster, too fast; it covered the gap between them in a few bounds, its jaws snapping out to enfold him in a single deadly bite.
In the scant instant before impact, a huge form, almost as big as the dragon, came hurtling out of the corridor, colliding into the drake with the force of a boulder tumbling down a mountain. The dragon was flung aside by the force of that collision, and both it and the newcomer hurtled in a mad confusion across the crowded space of the hall, finally slamming together into the far wall with enough force to make the stones tremble.
Carzen had gotten back to his feet, and still held his sword. But he meandered back and forth, staggering dazedly as he made his way over to where Mara had fallen. The woman warrior was conscious, but her battered arm hung limp at her side, and while she fumbled against the floor with her other hand, she couldn’t quite manage to get up. Both of them stared in amazement at the scene developing in front of them.
“What in the hells…” Carzen began. His confusion only deepened when he heard a familiar yell superimposed over the roars coming from the dragon and its foe.
The two fighters saw that the new arrival was the dire boar they’d encountered earlier. Pinning the dragon against the wall, it twisted its head violently, working its tusks deeper into the monster’s body. The dragon, caught off-balance, responded with a violent storm of claws and teeth that forced the boar back, bleeding from gashes across its face and shoulders. Blood from both creatures started gathering upon the floor below, splatters joining into a muddled pool that was further scattered by their frenzied movements.
And sitting astride the boar, shouting his lungs out, was Beetle, having the time of his life. There seemed no way he could have kept that precarious perch through the charge and impact with the dragon, yet somehow he did, clinging to a bony spur jutting from its back as though it were a saddle horn.
The boar, driven to a mad rage by its imprisonment, took out its frustrations upon the dragon. Its hooves beating upon the floor, it surged forward, snapping its head up as it gored the dragon again. One tusk, already slick with blood, stabbed into the dragon’s belly like a curved dagger, ripping the scaled hide and releasing a fresh gout of dark, stinking blood. Beetle contributed by throwing a small knife that glanced off the dragon’s skull, narrowly missing an eye.
The dragon’s rage easily matched that of the boar, and while it was now bloodied, it responded with no less violence. Seizing the boar with its claws, it fired off another blast of toxic gas that scoured it at point-blank range, bleaching the thick bristles that covered its hide. The boar staggered back, temporarily blinded and dazed by the attack. The dragon’s breath had also finally dislodged Beetle, who was flung across the room by the force of the blast. The halfling somehow managed to get his feet under him as he landed, and he tumbled to a safe if somewhat awkward stop, coughing to clear the remnants of the poison from his lungs.
The dragon exploited its advantage as it had against its armored foes earlier. The boar’s angry grunts became squeals of pain as the dragon’s claws dug deep furrows in its hide, but those cries were abruptly cut off as it sank its jaws into its neck, driving it down into the ground, pinning it there despite its weakening struggles.
Carzen bent down to help Mara, trying to ignore the way the room started spinning when he lowered his head. He had to put his sword down, but he was able to take her good arm and pull her to her feet. She grimaced in pain as the movement jarred her battered arm, but her eyes were mostly lucid as they fixed on him.
“My… sword… where…” she stammered.
“We have to finish it, now!” Gral shouted. The dwarf had come up to join them, his staff raised and surrounded by a wintry glow as he continued to draw upon his magic. He hesitated by Vhael, clearly torn between two conflicting duties, but after a moment stabbed the head of the staff forward like a lance, unleashing another beam of magical cold.
“Stay here,” Carzen said to Mara, propping her against the wall, while he reached down to recover his sword. He almost lost it there, as the hilt of the weapon drifted out of focus when he dipped his head, and his equilibrium likewise threatened to desert him. But he gritted his teeth and recovered, taking up the sword and stepping forward toward the dragon for one final confrontation.
The boar’s struggles had grown weaker, and the dragon continued holding its death-grip upon the creature, digging its claws in deeper, holding its jaws tight around the boar’s neck. Finally, with a shudder, the boar collapsed, blood splattering out around it as its bulky torso settled to the floor. The dragon drew up, its jaws soaked with fresh blood, droplets spraying as it roared in triumph.
In other news, check in Friday for a new thread with a teaser post from my upcoming new story. I think you'll find it both different and familiar.
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Chapter 69
“MURDERER!” Beetle screamed, charging forward. The dragon’s head spun to face him as the halfling sprang up onto the bulky hindquarters of the dead boar; battered as it was, the creature’s attack was as fast as it had been before, the wedge of its head darting forward to intercept this puny foe.
“Beetle!” Jaron yelled. There was nothing he could do to intervene; he’s shot his last arrow, and while he ran forward, drawing his sword as he charged, he was too far away to help his cousin.
But as the dragon’s jaws snapped shut, they closed on empty air. Beetle had kicked off the boar’s back and flung himself sideways; something in his hand flashed as his body intersected with the lunging head of the dragon. Then both were flung in different directions; Beetle was knocked roughly off to the left; hitting the wall feet first, actually running along it for several paces before gravity drew him back to the floor. He slid several paces before coming to a stop, breathing heavily.
The dragon’s head reared back on its long neck, nearly bouncing off the high ceiling above. Its wings and foreclaws flailed, and it tore free from the boar, almost falling over onto its back before the wall behind it arrested its gyrations. Carzen, who’d come tentatively forward to confront it a moment ago, was forced to quickly retreat, lest he get trampled by the dragon’s wild movements. Gral, however, held his ground, taking careful aim, firing a lance of white cold squarely into the center of the dragon’s chest. The beam pierced it like a knife, forming a ring of frost around the point of impact.
The dragon tumbled forward, its violent struggles suddenly transformed into an almost placid limpness as it sank to the ground. The head was the last part to touch the stone, and as it came to rest, they could see the hilt of the tiny dagger that protruded from the ruins of its left eye.
The dragon was dead.
“By… the… gods…” Carzen breathed. He glanced back at Gral, but the dwarf was already tending to Vhael’s wounds. Mara was still standing, and gave him a funny look as he stared at her.
Then Beetle came forward. He came up to the dragon, looked down at it. Even in death, the thing dwarfed him. He reached down to recover his dagger, made a face as the weapon came free with a sick sucking noise.
Jaron came up next to him. “Wow,” he said.
Beetle grinned, then his gaze turned to the dead boar, and the expression darkened. “Stupid dragon,” he said mournfully, kicking it in the head.
They found Gezzelhaupt’s body where it had fallen, mangled almost beyond recognition by the rolling ball of force that had been conjured up by their completion of the ritual. Dozens of puncture wounds covered his body, including several that made his face an unrecognizable mess. One of his arms had been cut free of his body at the elbow, and they never did find it, carrying the rest of him hastily out of the way of the black globe before it could return on its circuit around the length of the rectangular hall.
They gathered with the remains in one of the anterooms off that hall. With the Guardian defeated, the corrupt effects that had been summoned by the ritual had faded, although the black sphere continued its course, rumbling as it passed the open doors leading to the central hall.
Mara flexed her right hand; she’d kept doing that, as if to remind herself that she still had it. While her arm had been painfully strained by being yanked around by the dragon, and her shoulder had been dislocated, miraculously the limb itself was intact, with no broken bones. Gral had cleaned the dozen or so gashes the dragon’s teeth had made, and wrapped the entire forearm in a fresh linen bandage. She’s shifted her sword to her other hip; if it came down to it, she could use it effectively with either hand, one legacy of her uncle’s training.
But nothing in that training had prepared her for this.
Carzen and Vhael were arguing, not far away. Gral stood silent between them, but there was no doubt whose side he was on. She felt detached, even her hatred for Vhael overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of what they’d just been through. Beetle’s voice at her side drew her attention out of her musings, and she looked down to see the halfling there, holding a sword in his hands.
“Hey, I found this,” he said, offering it to her.
She knew the blade; half the size of hers, it was standard light infantry issue in the Nentir Vale, and she recognized the maker’s mark of Fallcrest just above the crossguard. Gezzelhaupt’s sword, not that it had done him any good in the end. Still, she took it, almost reflexively sliding it through her belt. Somehow it made her feel more confident to have her usual two blades at hand as she stepped forward to the dragonborn and his companions.
“There’s only so much abuse a body can take and fight on,” Carzen was saying, keeping his voice pitched low, his words clipped and controlled, but no less earnest for that.
“The ritual fluxes and gathers,” Gral said. “The spirits said that the doors would remain open but briefly.”
“There is no shame in knowing when you have reached your limit,” Carzen began. He looked about to say more, but Vhael’s eyes had shifted toward Mara as she approached, and they all turned to face her. For a moment Mara felt the force of those combined stares like a weight, but after all that she’d faced in recent days, gathering herself under that attention was not a difficult challenge.
“It would appear that we are once more in your debt,” the dragonborn said. He looked as though he’d rolled around atop a heap of daggers; cuts and gashes, some still trailing faint courses of blood, covered his body. One of his nostrils was deeply notched, and one eye was surrounded by swollen flesh, almost obstructing its vision. Old bandages and new formed a chaotic pattern across the scaled flesh that wasn’t protected by armor, which was a large portion of the whole, given the damage his gear had sustained.
A sudden surge of anger filled Mara, filling her with its intensity. “I don’t want your gratitude,” she barked.
Vhael did not shrink from her anger. “I am no stranger to hatred, but if I am to face it, I should know the reason for it.”
“The reason? My reason is not unique, ‘general’. Oh, yes, I am sure you know it well. How many hundreds, how many thousands have you left behind, bereft? How many lost everything they had, because of you?”
Gral started to interject, but Vhael forestalled him with a hand. “Ibarion,” he said, the single word hitting like a mallet.
“Ibarion,” Mara echoed, that word filled with pain.
“I take full responsibility for what happened there,” Vhael said. “The decision not to march to the relief of the militia of the town was mine. My army was not yet ready; had I initiated the march in time to intervene, they would have arrived disorganized, unprepared. It would have only led to a worse outcome.”
“Worse outcome?” Mara responded. “Worse outcome!”
Carzen looked around nervously. “Perhaps a bit less shouting…”
“That ‘outcome’ was a massacre. You were entrusted with protection of those people. The militia held out for days, almost a week, even as the enemy grew stronger and stronger. By the time that you finally arrived, the militia had been decimated. The walls breached. Four out of every five within the walls were dead. The militia trusted you, waited for you. The great general K’rol Vhael, he wouldn’t leave an entire town to be destroyed. Wouldn’t leave brave men to be killed.”
“You were there?” Carzen asked.
“No. My father insisted that my mother leave with the other families, once the raiders were seen approaching. He stayed, along with the other members of the militia, to protect their lands and property. He was a trader, not a soldier, like the other craftsmen, merchants, and farmers that made up the militia. They stayed, knowing that the Duke would send aid. Believing a lie.”
“The general did what he could with what he had,” Gral said. “Trederan was trying to provoke us at Ibarion, draw us out to fight before we were ready, before the levies from the east could bolster our forces. Ibarion’s defense was not in vain. The raiders were caught; Trederan’s army was destroyed, the rebellious baron hanged. If Vhael had let his army get trapped prematurely at Ibarion, nothing would have been gained, and many more towns would have suffered the fate of Ibarion. We avenged those lost…”
“I don’t care about vengeance,” Mara hissed. “I cared about my father. My mother died barely two months later, of the pestilence that followed in the wake of the war.”
Silence followed for a long moment. Mara’s revelation seemed to have deflated her; her shoulders sagged as the force of her anger bled away from her body. But it still burned in her eyes as she watched Vhael.
Jaron appeared from the corridor. Sensing the tension in the room, he cleared his throat; attention shifted to him. “The doors open onto a passage, not too long. They end in another set of doors, big ones, rimned with red light around the edges. I didn’t get too close, but I heard sounds, chanting, sounded like, sent chills down my spine.
“The ritual approaches completion,” Gral said. “We don’t have much time.”
Vhael turned back to Mara. “I can say nothing to ease your pain, young woman. Evadron wrote that in war, there are no good decisions, only choices less bad than others. War is an ugly thing; the soldier practices an ugly trade. But that is all that I am, all I have ever been.” The warlord drew in a heavy breath, held it a moment before releasing it through his damaged nostrils. A fresh trail of blood emerged with the exhalation and trailed down the front of his face. “Perhaps it would have been better to march on Ibarion with what we had, no matter the odds. There is rarely a day that passes that I do not think of that day. The decision was mine, and I made it. That is all that can be said.”
Turning to the others, he said, “It is time to finish this.” He headed back to the double doors, waiting a few seconds until the rolling sphere had passed, then vanished into the blackened hall. Gral followed, then Jaron, with Beetle hurrying after.
Carzen remained a moment, looking at Mara. He opened his mouth to say something; closed it. Something unreadable flashed across his expression. Finally he shook his head. “Damn it all to hell and back,” he said, turning to follow the others, leaving Mara standing there alone.
Yarine felt as though her body was on fire. Pain wracked her, dragging her toward unconsciousness, but that release seemed to hover just out of reach, even that faint escape denied to her.
She could see, but everything around her was green fire, rising up around the rune circle, currents of magic given form and shape by the pulsing ritual. How long had she been here—hours, days? Their arrival here seemed vague and indistinct now, memories overshadowed by the assault upon her senses being conducted here. The rasping words of the gnoll shaman, by that thing, had faded into the background, but still present enough to know that it was there, inflicting this pain upon her for some nefarious purpose of its own. The gnolls hadn’t bothered to share their plans with her, hadn’t bothered to do much more than lock her and her companion in a darkened room after their arrival here. They hadn’t been given food, and only a few swallows of brackish water. She suspected they had only gotten that because of a need to keep them alive long enough for this ritual to be completed. She had no illusions about her fate at the end of it.
Her muscles quivered, locked, but through a vast expenditure of will she managed to shift her head slightly. She couldn’t see much more than the wall of green fire, but as she lifted her head more, she could just make out the body her of the other prisoner brought here by the Grimmerzhul, sold to the gnolls as fuel for their foul rite. She tried to speak, but nothing but a tiny croak escaped her lips.
Still, the other seemed to hear, for he stirred. It took the same heroic effort for him to lift his head to meet her eyes. When their gazes finally met, Yarine saw only the same despair that she felt.
Rendil Halfmoon looked at her for another few seconds, then he slumped back down, pain and exhaustion overcoming him once more. Yarine could do no more than echo him, fighting against the waves of agony as the corrupt drone of the gnoll chief all around them, growing stronger even as the prisoners’ strength continued to ebb.
The heavy stone doors at the end of the passage swung ponderously open.
The survivors of the expedition from Fallcrest stepped warily into the chamber beyond, into a scene of nightmares.
The place was huge, the large open space ahead further extended by a higher tier on the far side of the room, an annex that continued out of their line of sight to the left. The air was hot and thick, the chamber lit by a diffuse crimson radiance that shone from the walls, and by the light that came from several massive iron cauldrons that glowed red with heat. Fetid vapors and an aggressive bubbling noise came from those containers, the nearest of which was directly to their right upon entering. A massive stone statue of a minotaur rose up behind the cauldron, its carved features staring down malevolently upon them. A raspy droning noise reached their ears, coming from somewhere atop the upper level, its origin out of their line of sight.
A flight of broad stone steps led up to that upper tier on the far side of the room. The chamber’s occupants were up there, including several evistro demons, their attention fixated upon the back of the platform, where an orb of sinister green flames pulsated in cadence with the droning sound. One of them turned as the doors opened, and upon spotting the companions, let out a foul cackling noise that echoed through the chamber.
“Stand ready!” Vhael warned. He and Carzen took up positions near the door, while Jaron, armed now only with his small sword and dirk, huddled near the wall to the fighter’s left. Gral stood behind and between them, protected but still able to get a clear view of the entire battlefield. Beetle, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen.
The evistros leapt down from the platform, three of them in all, the last two joining the first in their fiendish cries. They were obviously eager to join the fray, but hesitated for a moment, slashing the air with their claws.
Vhael was quick to exploit their delay. “Gral, if you would,” he said.
The dwarf summoned his magic, drawing upon the power of his staff to enhance the freezing cloud that he summoned around the demons. The fiends shrieked furiously as they vanished within the icy fog, but they emerged almost at once, their fury quickly directed into a loping charge toward the intruders.
“Wait for them,” Vhael rumbled, lifting his big sword. Next to him, Carzen likewise readied to take the rush. The demons kept on coming, and as they reached the line, they sprang into the air, leaping at the defenders in a surge intended to overwhelm through sheer speed and ferocity.
But the adventurers were ready, and the terrible cackles of the demons failed to weaken their resolve, hardened by the terrible experiences they’d already overcome in the Labyrinth. Vhael caught the first with a two-handed swing that dashed it to the floor, snarling as blood jetted from a terrible wound that slashed from its shoulder to its breastbone. The demon failed to stay down, however, darting forward to tear at the dragonborn’s legs with its claws.
Just two paces distant, Carzen interrupted the second demon’s charge with his sword. He too scored a hit, but the demon caught his swordarm before he could draw back, tearing at the skin left unprotected since the Guardian had ruined his bracer. He grimaced but escaped the trap, trying to ignore the pain from the bloody rents that trickled bright red in long trails down his forearm.
He had no time to do more, as the last evistro leapt onto his shield. Claws scraped at the metal, and the demon’s weight almost overbore him. He couldn’t shake it off; the demon was too strong, too focused on taking his blood. But then, even as the base of the shield jabbed against his side, as the demon’s claws started to scrape off his helmet, it shrieked and fell back. As it dropped away Carzen saw Jaron standing there, his sword slick with the demon’s blood.
“Thanks!” he yelled, lashing out with his sword again to keep the other demon at bay. A pulse of white energy caught it in the chest before it could surge forward again, and it hissed in fury. Gambling that the fighters were too heavily occupied by its comrades, the demon darted toward the gap between them, intent on dealing with Gral.
Unfortunately for the demon, Carzen had been waiting for such a maneuver, and he slammed his sword down into it as it tried to get by, knocking it roughly to the ground. The demon snarled and sprang back, now bloodied from its multiple wounds.
Thus far the companions had more than held their own against the chamber’s defenders. But even as the freezing cloud started to dissipiate, they heard a new sound, a ponderous step that thumped upon the floor, an ominous noise accompanied by a faint scraping rattle. Even embattled with the evistros, both Vhael and Carzen looked up as the fog cleared, and a new monstrosity stepped through it to face them.
It was a skeleton, but only in the same sense that Vhael’s sword was a knife. It stood easily fifteen feet from its feet to the tips of the curved horns that jutted from its long skull. In life it had been a minotaur, a giant even for that race, and in death, it was a fearsome undead monstrosity. It carried a huge club, a maul easily nine feet in length, and as it reached the bottom of the stairs it turned toward them, promising a most unwelcome meeting.
And as if that wasn’t enough, as it came forward they saw another hulking figure behind it, coming forward to the edge of the platform. Smaller than the minotaur skeleton only by comparison, they recognized it easily, having fought a number of its kin over the last few days.
The barlgura waited only until the skeleton was clear, then it leapt down, ready to tilt the odds yet further against the would-be heroes.
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