JollyDoc's Curse of the Crimson Throne: Updated 1/29/10
carborundum
Adventurer
Nice!
/highfive
/highfive
JollyDoc
Explorer
BATTLE WITHOUT HONOR OR HUMANITY
‘Now!” Sermignatto screamed mentally through the ether. ‘Destroy them all now!’
The bdellavritra was enraged at the loss of his favorite pawn. He’d spent years cultivating Togomor and then placing him within Ileosa’s inner circle, and now it was all ruined! No matter. Once the mortals were dead or enslaved he would find a new vessel. He’d ruled many a kingdom from behind the throne, and Korvosa would be no different. Ultimately, the city would belong to him. Even now his minions were answering his summons. Within moments the meddlers would be surrounded, and there would be no escape for them.
__________________________________________________________
The companions stood amid the carnage, breath coming in ragged gasps. Warily, Ratbone stalked back towards the deadfall. Cautiously, he began lifting the logs aside, piece by piece, until finally he saw a flash of crimson near the bottom. When he’d finally cleared enough of the debris aside, he saw only Ileosa’s clothing and a pool of blood. Of her body, nothing remained.
“A simulacrum,” Kat said from behind him, where she peered over his shoulder.
The druid grunted questioningly as he turned to her.
“A construct,” she explained. “Some wizards used them as proxies. They make a body out of ice, blood or other materials, and them imbue it with false life. This is not Ileosa. We’ve been mislead.”
As if on cue, the air within the throne room suddenly exploded with the smell of sulfur and brimstone as multiple creatures teleported into the chamber. No fewer than nine black-winged erinyes devils appeared circling in the air, wickedly curved bows in their hands. Near the entrance to the chamber, a huge fiend stood with curving ram-like horns and a cruelly spiked chain gripped in his hands. Before him were three identical barbed-skinned devils, giggling and chortling evilly to themselves. Mavrokeras, the horned minion of Sermignatto, cracked his chain and sent the Yallops charging forward. One of the brothers wove his hands in a complicated pattern, and the air before him spun and churned. From within the vortex emerged four more fiends, these with beards like thorny brambles. They appeared in between Raelak and O’Reginald just as the ranger unloaded his bow on one of the fiendish Yallop brothers. A moment later O’Reginald seized the Shoanti by the arm and whisked both of them to safety by stepping between dimensions. No sooner had they reappeared than the wizard conjured an invisible wall of pure force between themselves and Mavrokeras, the Yallops and their summoned henchmen.
Herc touched the golden breastplate of his armor, and wings of purest silver sprouted from his back. He leaped into the air of the throne room and closed rapidly towards the deadly erinyes archers. Below him, Ratbone assumed his avian form and took flight as well. The she-devils turned their bows on their approaching enemies, but Ratbone closed the distance too quickly. He raked across three of them, ripping their bows from their hands. The others grinned savagely, and then redirected their shots below. Three arrows struck O’Reginald, slamming the young wizard into a nearby wall. Two more hit Katarina, one of them taking her through her left eye. She screamed in agony as she clutched at the projectile. Raelak whirled and loosed his own volley in return, impaling one of the erinyes and sending her tumbling towards the ground. Ratbone disemboweled another, transformed into his ape form in mid-air, ripped the wings off a third fiend, and then plummeted towards the floor with her still screaming in her death throes.
At that moment, the Yallops abruptly teleported themselves past O’Reginald’s barrier, reappearing next to him, the still-sobbing Kat, and Raelak. The ranger turned towards them, but as he did so, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Before he could react, a masked Red Mantis assassin drove a saw-toothed saber into his back. As his vision blurred, he saw three more assassins emerge from the shadows. A moment later, he would have sworn he was hallucinating as almost two-dozen Gray Maidens swarmed into the throne room.
Herc saw the dilemma his companions were in, and he turned his attention from the erinyes and dove back towards the floor. One of the Yallops whirled as he approached, and Herc slammed into him shield-first. The fiend screamed as bones cracked, yet Herc grunted in pain as well when the sharp barbs on the devil’s hide pierced his arms and hands. Suddenly, the big merc heard more screams…coming from Kat and O’Reginald! He looked up and saw that the erinyes had opened fire again, peppering the two wizards like sitting ducks. Desperately, O’Reginald flung out his hands, conjuring a second force wall between the devils and themselves. Herc’s attention was quickly drawn back to the wounded Yallop as Raelak sent a shaft through its forehead and point-blank range. It collapsed in a heap at his feet. The ranger’s satisfied smile faded a moment later as a second Yallop leaped at him, shrieking and tearing at him with its razor-like claws. Herc surged to his feet, raising his shield high above his head and then bringing it down on the back of the fiend’s exposed neck. A tingling, sixth-sense from Serithtial warned him just before the last Yallop brother came for him. Herc spun low, thrusting upward with the holy blade and burying it in the devil’s gut. It spewed black blood from its stretched mouth, and then crumpled.
“At least that’s one problem out of the way,” the mercenary sighed.
“I think we’ve got a bigger one,” Raelak said, his eyes going wide.
Herc turned slowly, and saw the massive form of Mavrokeras looming over him, his spiked chain gripped tightly in both hands. Then, it was Mavrokeras’s turn to widen his eyes as the four-armed, ape-like hulk of Ratbone landed behind him. The feral druid ripped and rent with all four claws, and as he did so, a thick rime of gold-flecked ice covered the horned devil from head to toe. Mavrokeras toppled to the floor, completely encased.
The Yallops were down, as was their master, Mavrokeras, but they were only four, and more than two dozen foes remained. The remaining erinyes archers began teleporting past O’Reginald’s second wall at the same time that the Gray Maidens began knocking arrows to their own bows. Ratbone pulled one of the she-devils from the air almost as an afterthought, yet the sheer numbers arrayed against them was overwhelming. It was at that precise moment that Sermignatto chose to make his presence known. The bdellavritra was an amphisbaenic monstrosity with the body of a mottled, slimy slug. At one extremity of its body was the wormish mouth of a leech, while at the other was a knot of three human heads, their features contorted in expressions of incredible pain. Between the teeth of his three human mouths lashed three elongated, writhing tongues, each slashing through the air like hair-thin, deadly blades. The fiend was not at all happy with the turn of events, and the time had come for him to play a more direct role. Before the drop-jawed mortals could react, he filled the area around them with a soup-like, green rolling fog. He chuckled to himself as he imagined them trying to move through the quicksand consistency of the cloud, all the while their skin being scalded by the droplets of acid concealed in its vapors. His mirth faded a moment later when the cloud abruptly vanished. It was the accursed Harrow witch! Even with an arrow through her eye, she would not die! Suddenly, the air crackled with electricity as the younger mage wove a cone of lightning, engulfing several of Ileosa’s maidens and assassin allies. Sermignatto snarled in rage and slithered eel-like into the fray.
The horde surged forward, blocking the bdellavritra from view temporarily. Herc met them head on, Raelak at his back loosing arrow after arrow in a blur of motion. Two more of the Mantis assassins went down, and then O’Reginald loosed another deluge of electricity into the mass, and more Maidens fell. A hole opened, and Herc saw his opportunity. He leaped forward, dodging the slashing tongues of the huge fiend. Serithtial howled in fury as she struck, and Sermignatto howled as well…in agony. Raelak moved also, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. One of Sermignatto’s tongues lashed out, wrapping around his throat. The ranger’s face began to turn an ugly shade of purple. With a guttural snarl that was purely animalistic, Ratbone hurled himself at Sermignatto. The druid and the devil clashed like titans, but it was obvious to any onlookers who the victor would be…and it soon became obvious to Sermignatto as well. In desperation, he tried to shift himself back to the Ethereal, but Ratbone would not release his hold, and he kept the fiend firmly anchored in reality. It was over in moments, and Ratbone raised his head and howled, blood dripping from his fangs and claws.
The remainder of the battle was furious and frenetic, with numbers pitted against might. Magic pulsed and steel clashed. Arrows flew and blood spilled, but in the end, though battered and beaten, the Korvosan Intelligence Agency stood victorious, with not a single one of their foes left alive. Silence fell over the throne room once more…and that silence extended throughout Castle Korvosa as well.
‘Now!” Sermignatto screamed mentally through the ether. ‘Destroy them all now!’
The bdellavritra was enraged at the loss of his favorite pawn. He’d spent years cultivating Togomor and then placing him within Ileosa’s inner circle, and now it was all ruined! No matter. Once the mortals were dead or enslaved he would find a new vessel. He’d ruled many a kingdom from behind the throne, and Korvosa would be no different. Ultimately, the city would belong to him. Even now his minions were answering his summons. Within moments the meddlers would be surrounded, and there would be no escape for them.
__________________________________________________________
The companions stood amid the carnage, breath coming in ragged gasps. Warily, Ratbone stalked back towards the deadfall. Cautiously, he began lifting the logs aside, piece by piece, until finally he saw a flash of crimson near the bottom. When he’d finally cleared enough of the debris aside, he saw only Ileosa’s clothing and a pool of blood. Of her body, nothing remained.
“A simulacrum,” Kat said from behind him, where she peered over his shoulder.
The druid grunted questioningly as he turned to her.
“A construct,” she explained. “Some wizards used them as proxies. They make a body out of ice, blood or other materials, and them imbue it with false life. This is not Ileosa. We’ve been mislead.”
As if on cue, the air within the throne room suddenly exploded with the smell of sulfur and brimstone as multiple creatures teleported into the chamber. No fewer than nine black-winged erinyes devils appeared circling in the air, wickedly curved bows in their hands. Near the entrance to the chamber, a huge fiend stood with curving ram-like horns and a cruelly spiked chain gripped in his hands. Before him were three identical barbed-skinned devils, giggling and chortling evilly to themselves. Mavrokeras, the horned minion of Sermignatto, cracked his chain and sent the Yallops charging forward. One of the brothers wove his hands in a complicated pattern, and the air before him spun and churned. From within the vortex emerged four more fiends, these with beards like thorny brambles. They appeared in between Raelak and O’Reginald just as the ranger unloaded his bow on one of the fiendish Yallop brothers. A moment later O’Reginald seized the Shoanti by the arm and whisked both of them to safety by stepping between dimensions. No sooner had they reappeared than the wizard conjured an invisible wall of pure force between themselves and Mavrokeras, the Yallops and their summoned henchmen.
Herc touched the golden breastplate of his armor, and wings of purest silver sprouted from his back. He leaped into the air of the throne room and closed rapidly towards the deadly erinyes archers. Below him, Ratbone assumed his avian form and took flight as well. The she-devils turned their bows on their approaching enemies, but Ratbone closed the distance too quickly. He raked across three of them, ripping their bows from their hands. The others grinned savagely, and then redirected their shots below. Three arrows struck O’Reginald, slamming the young wizard into a nearby wall. Two more hit Katarina, one of them taking her through her left eye. She screamed in agony as she clutched at the projectile. Raelak whirled and loosed his own volley in return, impaling one of the erinyes and sending her tumbling towards the ground. Ratbone disemboweled another, transformed into his ape form in mid-air, ripped the wings off a third fiend, and then plummeted towards the floor with her still screaming in her death throes.
At that moment, the Yallops abruptly teleported themselves past O’Reginald’s barrier, reappearing next to him, the still-sobbing Kat, and Raelak. The ranger turned towards them, but as he did so, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Before he could react, a masked Red Mantis assassin drove a saw-toothed saber into his back. As his vision blurred, he saw three more assassins emerge from the shadows. A moment later, he would have sworn he was hallucinating as almost two-dozen Gray Maidens swarmed into the throne room.
Herc saw the dilemma his companions were in, and he turned his attention from the erinyes and dove back towards the floor. One of the Yallops whirled as he approached, and Herc slammed into him shield-first. The fiend screamed as bones cracked, yet Herc grunted in pain as well when the sharp barbs on the devil’s hide pierced his arms and hands. Suddenly, the big merc heard more screams…coming from Kat and O’Reginald! He looked up and saw that the erinyes had opened fire again, peppering the two wizards like sitting ducks. Desperately, O’Reginald flung out his hands, conjuring a second force wall between the devils and themselves. Herc’s attention was quickly drawn back to the wounded Yallop as Raelak sent a shaft through its forehead and point-blank range. It collapsed in a heap at his feet. The ranger’s satisfied smile faded a moment later as a second Yallop leaped at him, shrieking and tearing at him with its razor-like claws. Herc surged to his feet, raising his shield high above his head and then bringing it down on the back of the fiend’s exposed neck. A tingling, sixth-sense from Serithtial warned him just before the last Yallop brother came for him. Herc spun low, thrusting upward with the holy blade and burying it in the devil’s gut. It spewed black blood from its stretched mouth, and then crumpled.
“At least that’s one problem out of the way,” the mercenary sighed.
“I think we’ve got a bigger one,” Raelak said, his eyes going wide.
Herc turned slowly, and saw the massive form of Mavrokeras looming over him, his spiked chain gripped tightly in both hands. Then, it was Mavrokeras’s turn to widen his eyes as the four-armed, ape-like hulk of Ratbone landed behind him. The feral druid ripped and rent with all four claws, and as he did so, a thick rime of gold-flecked ice covered the horned devil from head to toe. Mavrokeras toppled to the floor, completely encased.
The Yallops were down, as was their master, Mavrokeras, but they were only four, and more than two dozen foes remained. The remaining erinyes archers began teleporting past O’Reginald’s second wall at the same time that the Gray Maidens began knocking arrows to their own bows. Ratbone pulled one of the she-devils from the air almost as an afterthought, yet the sheer numbers arrayed against them was overwhelming. It was at that precise moment that Sermignatto chose to make his presence known. The bdellavritra was an amphisbaenic monstrosity with the body of a mottled, slimy slug. At one extremity of its body was the wormish mouth of a leech, while at the other was a knot of three human heads, their features contorted in expressions of incredible pain. Between the teeth of his three human mouths lashed three elongated, writhing tongues, each slashing through the air like hair-thin, deadly blades. The fiend was not at all happy with the turn of events, and the time had come for him to play a more direct role. Before the drop-jawed mortals could react, he filled the area around them with a soup-like, green rolling fog. He chuckled to himself as he imagined them trying to move through the quicksand consistency of the cloud, all the while their skin being scalded by the droplets of acid concealed in its vapors. His mirth faded a moment later when the cloud abruptly vanished. It was the accursed Harrow witch! Even with an arrow through her eye, she would not die! Suddenly, the air crackled with electricity as the younger mage wove a cone of lightning, engulfing several of Ileosa’s maidens and assassin allies. Sermignatto snarled in rage and slithered eel-like into the fray.
The horde surged forward, blocking the bdellavritra from view temporarily. Herc met them head on, Raelak at his back loosing arrow after arrow in a blur of motion. Two more of the Mantis assassins went down, and then O’Reginald loosed another deluge of electricity into the mass, and more Maidens fell. A hole opened, and Herc saw his opportunity. He leaped forward, dodging the slashing tongues of the huge fiend. Serithtial howled in fury as she struck, and Sermignatto howled as well…in agony. Raelak moved also, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. One of Sermignatto’s tongues lashed out, wrapping around his throat. The ranger’s face began to turn an ugly shade of purple. With a guttural snarl that was purely animalistic, Ratbone hurled himself at Sermignatto. The druid and the devil clashed like titans, but it was obvious to any onlookers who the victor would be…and it soon became obvious to Sermignatto as well. In desperation, he tried to shift himself back to the Ethereal, but Ratbone would not release his hold, and he kept the fiend firmly anchored in reality. It was over in moments, and Ratbone raised his head and howled, blood dripping from his fangs and claws.
The remainder of the battle was furious and frenetic, with numbers pitted against might. Magic pulsed and steel clashed. Arrows flew and blood spilled, but in the end, though battered and beaten, the Korvosan Intelligence Agency stood victorious, with not a single one of their foes left alive. Silence fell over the throne room once more…and that silence extended throughout Castle Korvosa as well.
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
That was just...epic !!! ![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
carborundum
Adventurer
NO. WAY.
That was epic. That was ridiculous. That was awesome!
Many many congratulations for surviving that onslaught! And many many thanks for writing it so ... epically, JD!
That was epic. That was ridiculous. That was awesome!
Many many congratulations for surviving that onslaught! And many many thanks for writing it so ... epically, JD!
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
Thanks, JD. That would be a very JollyDoc Christmas, indeed.
Also looking forward to your other upcoming project. Any teasers there?
JollyDoc
Explorer
Thanks, JD. That would be a very JollyDoc Christmas, indeed.
Also looking forward to your other upcoming project. Any teasers there?
Look further down the story hour board for JollyDoc's Council of Thieves preview...
Joachim
First Post
Ask and ye shall receive....
(I would like to have placed this as an .xls spreadsheet, but for some reason ENWorld has a 244 kb limit on that...and a 4 GIGA-byte limit on pdf's).
