drnuncheon
Explorer
Yeah, the 'bones is back! Somehow this one slipped under my radar, probably in all the yo-yoing of the boards, but I'm here now!
J
Dwarves rule!
More Lok!
J
Dwarves rule!
More Lok!
Travels through the Wild West: Book IV
Broccli_Head
Explorer
What spell was that? Super Bull's strength? Or Tenser's transformation? Is that spell still around?
Not good..Lok down, Benzan down...no more fighters for the heroes. It looks bleak.
Not good..Lok down, Benzan down...no more fighters for the heroes. It looks bleak.
Lazybones
Adventurer
Thanks for the bumps, everybody! New York was great, just got back today. If only I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow morning... 
But at least I have an update, as promised--hope it lives up to the build-up!
* * * * *
Book IV, Part 4
The lamia, bolstered by the power of a Tenser’s transformation spell, charged down the rubble-strewn stairs into the ranks of the beleagured companions. With Lok and Benzan, their toughest fighters, both down, the remaining adventurers were in an unenviable position.
Elly stepped up bravely and set her spear to meet the charge, holding the bronze head toward the charging monstrosity’s breast. While her tactic was sound, the lamia’s magic enhanced her agility as well as her strength, and she was able to twist aside faster than the sailor-turned-warrior could adjust. Elly cried out in pain as the lamia slammed Lok’s axe solidly into her torso, crushing her side and tearing the links of the steel mail-shirt she wore. The force of the blow, backed by the lamia’s enhanced strength and the momentum of its charge, knocked the crippled woman roughly aside, her spear clattering uselessly away.
On the opposite flank of the creature, Delem raised the hand wearing his new magical ring, and tried to summon its power. Unfortunately, the magic of the device was limited, for nothing happened in response to his call, this time.
“Get to Lok!” Cal cried, as the gnome tried to think of something—anything!—that he could do to stop the raging creature.
“But you—”
“Go!” Cal repeated, as he stepped forward, directly into the path of the lamia. He reached down to his magical lute and strummed a faint melody on it, calling forth the reassuring presence of mage armor around himself.
Yet he doubted that even that protection would be proof against this adversary, armed with the group’s most powerful weapon.
“Dana—we need you!” he cried, as the lamia’s gaze locked on him—and she smiled.
It was a promise, that smile.
But Cal did not falter, even when the lamia charged again. Only a few paces had separated them, so it could not build up the same momentum as before, but it matched that with a powerful flurry of blows as it wielded the axe almost as if it were a wooden switch. Cal tried to dodge, or to deflect the blows with his pitifully inadequate shortsword, but it was a stark mismatch. The axe tore through his defenses twice, opening frost-frozen gashes in his compact form. The lamia let out a gleeful laugh as it drove him back under her onslaught, but there was nowhere that he could go. And Cal was not retreating in any case, and in fact the brave gnome began to sing, issuing a rousing chant of defiance in the face of his powerful adversary.
“I’ll cut you to pieces,” the lamia screed, launching into another series of attacks. The very first stroke came downward, dead on for the gnome’s exposed skull…
Once Cal moved to face the lamia, and draw its attention away, Delem went into action. He felt a twinge at leaving his friend alone against the beast, but knew that Lok needed his aid immediately. If he wasn’t already dead, the young man thought, but he dismissed that notion as he recalled the many fights and the massive damage he’d seen Lok absorb. Tearing his attention from the lamia and the battle, he rushed past and up the stairs to where the genasi was lying in a heap halfway up the flight.
He crouched beside his stricken friend, relieved to see that he still drew breath, if raggedly. The wounds from the ogre axes and the lamia’s strike left his armor slick with his own blood, and Delem knew that he had to act immediately if he was to save his friend’s life.
He closed his eyes, and opened his mind to the cleaning power of Kossuth’s fire.
Dana had heard Cal’s cry, and knew that her friends needed her. She had poured healing energy into Benzan’s battered form, and now he began to stir, restored to consciousness by the power she channeled from the goddess Selûne. While she wanted to stay, to more fully restore him, she knew that she had to go, could now sense the battle raging right behind her as she emerged from the haze of her spellcasting. She reached into Benzan’s pouch, where she knew that he kept his nearly-depleted cache of healing potions, and pressed the vial into his hand.
“Hurry,” she said, not sure if the still-dazed tiefling understood her. Then she leapt up and spun to witness the lamia unloading holy hell onto Cal. Even as her mouth opened to issue a shout of denial the lamia brought her axe down heavily onto the gnome. Cal managed to dodge enough to avoid a skull-splitting blow, but the magical blade still tore a deep gash in his shoulder, dropping him unconscious and dying to the broken stone pavement.
“No!” Dana’s cry finally came, an instant too late. The shout did bring the lamia’s attention around toward her, however, and without hesitation the creature came straight for her.
Dana stepped forward to meet it.
She immediately realized that the adversary she faced was not the same creature she’d engaged before. Oh, it was the same lamia, but it was enhanced somehow, fighting with a strength and fortitude that had transformed it into a slaying machine. She took it all in with one sweeping glance of the battlefield, at Lok’s crumpled form on the steps, Elly trying to hold the gaping wound in her side together with a bloody hand, Cal lying motionless on the hard stone. Delem was tending to Lok, but Dana knew that for the moment, she was alone.
She had to buy them time.
So she waited for the lamia to come to her, and when the lamia attacked she did as well, but using the defensive stance taught to her by the monks of the Sun Soul monastery where she’d fostered in her youth. Her own blow was utterly ineffectual, but it sufficed to draw the lamia after her as she retreated away from the others, toward the corner of the chamber near the dark tunnel opening. That might offer a temporary reprieve, as the lamia would take longer in slipping through the crack, but Dana’s goal wasn’t that escape. She had to keep the creature engaged, lest it turn on her helpless friends.
She spun and moved with alacrity, forcing the creature to follow and not giving it a chance to get set and launch a full series of attacks. Even trading attacks for defense was almost not enough, as the lamia pursued relentlessly and slashed at her with Lok’s axe. The first stroke came so close that she could feel the cold emanating from the blade, and only the mage armor that Cal had applied earlier kept her from taking damage.
But as long as she remained engaged with the creature, it was inevitable that it would hit her eventually—it was just too strong and too fast.
Still, Dana was able to keep ahead of it for several moments, darting and weaving in a complex yet flowing series of leaps and rolls. With each passing second the lamia seemed to grow more enraged, and as Dana neared the confines of the corner it finally connected with a darting backslash, the edge of the axe slicing through the mage armor and tearing a long gash in her exposed thigh. Dana stifled her cry of pain, focusing on her mental discipline as she rolled with the cut and came back up into a ready stance a few feet away. Now it was the lamia that was in the corner, and Dana had more move to maneuver back out into the open space of the chamber.
But the lamia was already coming again, axe raised for another cut.
And staggered, as a long arrow from Benzan’s bow slammed deep into its shoulder.
“Leave her alone, you monster.”
The lamia screamed, although it was less in pain than in frustrated rage. Dana took advantage of the pause to dart back another few feet, to where Benzan stood with his bow in his hand, another arrow already fitted to the string. Behind him, Lok stood on shaky but determined legs, and Delem was already tending to Cal, pouring life-saving healing energy into him. Elly was up as well, still wan from the blood she’d lost, but a healing potion from Benzan—his last—had stopped the bleeding from her side.
All of the companions were still battered, but they stood firm together as the lamia regarded them with a look of pure hatred.
“Let’s finish this,” Lok said. He hefted the bronze longsword they’d found in the tunnels under Taboo Island on the Isle of Dread, looking like grim death itself in his blood-covered armor.
The lamia, driven beyond any thought of flight by the magic of its spell, charged right into the knot of them, its stolen axe sweeping a broad arc before it. Benzan’s last arrow slammed hard into its torso, injuring it further but not stopping it, and the tiefling tossed his bow aside and drew his sword. Elly once again set her spear, and this time the tip dug a deep channel in the lamia’s side as it came forward. The lamia screamed again, this time in real pain, and tried to swing at Elly. Lok, however, stepped forward and took the blow on his shield, fully aware that one more hit would likely fell him once again. The genasi’s shield held, however, and as he turned the blow aside he drove the sword deep into the lamia’s chest. While not as skilled with the sword as with his axe, the blade nonetheless penetrated deep, backed by the full strength of the genasi, still boosted by the potion he’d drunk earlier.
But the lamia, lost in the power of its magic, fought on. With multiple opponents close at hand it lashed out blindly, swinging the axe in great sweeping arcs. Dana, knowing her own weak attacks would have little effect on the raging creature, stepped behind Lok and cast a spell, touching the genasi to fill him with a pulse of healing energy. That boon was timely, as well, as one of the lamia’s blows connected hard a moment later, barreling through the genasi’s defenses and adding a fresh hurt to his tally.
But Lok did not go down, and the lamia’s attackers redoubled their efforts, swarming around the outnumbered creature. Elly backed up and stabbed again, this time in the rear, driving her spearhead deep into its flank. Benzan joined the melee and took advantage of the creature’s distraction to launch a devastating sneak attack, his blade tearing into it from the opposite flank. Delem, having stabilized Cal, joined in the battle from ten paces away, firing a pair of magic missiles that streaked unerringly into the creature’s body.
S’reth struck for damage that could have slain two lamias, faltered. The magic slipped away, and she could feel her life going with it. She looked down at the creatures that had slain her, the creatures she had brought here, but in her last breath she didn’t think about bad choices or missed chances. No, she saved that final breath to offer one last curse at the world, at T’roth and the others, and at these… people… that had done this to her.
Only she never got a chance to utter that oath, as Lok took the lamia’s head from her shoulders with one clean swipe of his sword.
The companions gathered around the body of the lamia, the stones around them slick with their blood commingled with that of their foes. All of them were seriously wounded, and each felt keenly the knife’s edge upon which their fate had been balanced.
“Well, that was something,” Benzan said. That said, he turned to start looting the corpses, his attention drawn first to the silver ring that he’d spotted on one of the lamia’s forepaws.
The others spent a few moments collecting their breaths, drinking their remaining healing draughts, or casting spells to do the same to the most injured. With the battle over, each of them became aware of the biting cold, a stark contrast to the wet heat back on the Isle of Dread. Finally, once their immediate needs were seen to, Elly voiced the matter of most pressing concern.
“Where are we?”
But at least I have an update, as promised--hope it lives up to the build-up!* * * * *
Book IV, Part 4
The lamia, bolstered by the power of a Tenser’s transformation spell, charged down the rubble-strewn stairs into the ranks of the beleagured companions. With Lok and Benzan, their toughest fighters, both down, the remaining adventurers were in an unenviable position.
Elly stepped up bravely and set her spear to meet the charge, holding the bronze head toward the charging monstrosity’s breast. While her tactic was sound, the lamia’s magic enhanced her agility as well as her strength, and she was able to twist aside faster than the sailor-turned-warrior could adjust. Elly cried out in pain as the lamia slammed Lok’s axe solidly into her torso, crushing her side and tearing the links of the steel mail-shirt she wore. The force of the blow, backed by the lamia’s enhanced strength and the momentum of its charge, knocked the crippled woman roughly aside, her spear clattering uselessly away.
On the opposite flank of the creature, Delem raised the hand wearing his new magical ring, and tried to summon its power. Unfortunately, the magic of the device was limited, for nothing happened in response to his call, this time.
“Get to Lok!” Cal cried, as the gnome tried to think of something—anything!—that he could do to stop the raging creature.
“But you—”
“Go!” Cal repeated, as he stepped forward, directly into the path of the lamia. He reached down to his magical lute and strummed a faint melody on it, calling forth the reassuring presence of mage armor around himself.
Yet he doubted that even that protection would be proof against this adversary, armed with the group’s most powerful weapon.
“Dana—we need you!” he cried, as the lamia’s gaze locked on him—and she smiled.
It was a promise, that smile.
But Cal did not falter, even when the lamia charged again. Only a few paces had separated them, so it could not build up the same momentum as before, but it matched that with a powerful flurry of blows as it wielded the axe almost as if it were a wooden switch. Cal tried to dodge, or to deflect the blows with his pitifully inadequate shortsword, but it was a stark mismatch. The axe tore through his defenses twice, opening frost-frozen gashes in his compact form. The lamia let out a gleeful laugh as it drove him back under her onslaught, but there was nowhere that he could go. And Cal was not retreating in any case, and in fact the brave gnome began to sing, issuing a rousing chant of defiance in the face of his powerful adversary.
“I’ll cut you to pieces,” the lamia screed, launching into another series of attacks. The very first stroke came downward, dead on for the gnome’s exposed skull…
Once Cal moved to face the lamia, and draw its attention away, Delem went into action. He felt a twinge at leaving his friend alone against the beast, but knew that Lok needed his aid immediately. If he wasn’t already dead, the young man thought, but he dismissed that notion as he recalled the many fights and the massive damage he’d seen Lok absorb. Tearing his attention from the lamia and the battle, he rushed past and up the stairs to where the genasi was lying in a heap halfway up the flight.
He crouched beside his stricken friend, relieved to see that he still drew breath, if raggedly. The wounds from the ogre axes and the lamia’s strike left his armor slick with his own blood, and Delem knew that he had to act immediately if he was to save his friend’s life.
He closed his eyes, and opened his mind to the cleaning power of Kossuth’s fire.
Dana had heard Cal’s cry, and knew that her friends needed her. She had poured healing energy into Benzan’s battered form, and now he began to stir, restored to consciousness by the power she channeled from the goddess Selûne. While she wanted to stay, to more fully restore him, she knew that she had to go, could now sense the battle raging right behind her as she emerged from the haze of her spellcasting. She reached into Benzan’s pouch, where she knew that he kept his nearly-depleted cache of healing potions, and pressed the vial into his hand.
“Hurry,” she said, not sure if the still-dazed tiefling understood her. Then she leapt up and spun to witness the lamia unloading holy hell onto Cal. Even as her mouth opened to issue a shout of denial the lamia brought her axe down heavily onto the gnome. Cal managed to dodge enough to avoid a skull-splitting blow, but the magical blade still tore a deep gash in his shoulder, dropping him unconscious and dying to the broken stone pavement.
“No!” Dana’s cry finally came, an instant too late. The shout did bring the lamia’s attention around toward her, however, and without hesitation the creature came straight for her.
Dana stepped forward to meet it.
She immediately realized that the adversary she faced was not the same creature she’d engaged before. Oh, it was the same lamia, but it was enhanced somehow, fighting with a strength and fortitude that had transformed it into a slaying machine. She took it all in with one sweeping glance of the battlefield, at Lok’s crumpled form on the steps, Elly trying to hold the gaping wound in her side together with a bloody hand, Cal lying motionless on the hard stone. Delem was tending to Lok, but Dana knew that for the moment, she was alone.
She had to buy them time.
So she waited for the lamia to come to her, and when the lamia attacked she did as well, but using the defensive stance taught to her by the monks of the Sun Soul monastery where she’d fostered in her youth. Her own blow was utterly ineffectual, but it sufficed to draw the lamia after her as she retreated away from the others, toward the corner of the chamber near the dark tunnel opening. That might offer a temporary reprieve, as the lamia would take longer in slipping through the crack, but Dana’s goal wasn’t that escape. She had to keep the creature engaged, lest it turn on her helpless friends.
She spun and moved with alacrity, forcing the creature to follow and not giving it a chance to get set and launch a full series of attacks. Even trading attacks for defense was almost not enough, as the lamia pursued relentlessly and slashed at her with Lok’s axe. The first stroke came so close that she could feel the cold emanating from the blade, and only the mage armor that Cal had applied earlier kept her from taking damage.
But as long as she remained engaged with the creature, it was inevitable that it would hit her eventually—it was just too strong and too fast.
Still, Dana was able to keep ahead of it for several moments, darting and weaving in a complex yet flowing series of leaps and rolls. With each passing second the lamia seemed to grow more enraged, and as Dana neared the confines of the corner it finally connected with a darting backslash, the edge of the axe slicing through the mage armor and tearing a long gash in her exposed thigh. Dana stifled her cry of pain, focusing on her mental discipline as she rolled with the cut and came back up into a ready stance a few feet away. Now it was the lamia that was in the corner, and Dana had more move to maneuver back out into the open space of the chamber.
But the lamia was already coming again, axe raised for another cut.
And staggered, as a long arrow from Benzan’s bow slammed deep into its shoulder.
“Leave her alone, you monster.”
The lamia screamed, although it was less in pain than in frustrated rage. Dana took advantage of the pause to dart back another few feet, to where Benzan stood with his bow in his hand, another arrow already fitted to the string. Behind him, Lok stood on shaky but determined legs, and Delem was already tending to Cal, pouring life-saving healing energy into him. Elly was up as well, still wan from the blood she’d lost, but a healing potion from Benzan—his last—had stopped the bleeding from her side.
All of the companions were still battered, but they stood firm together as the lamia regarded them with a look of pure hatred.
“Let’s finish this,” Lok said. He hefted the bronze longsword they’d found in the tunnels under Taboo Island on the Isle of Dread, looking like grim death itself in his blood-covered armor.
The lamia, driven beyond any thought of flight by the magic of its spell, charged right into the knot of them, its stolen axe sweeping a broad arc before it. Benzan’s last arrow slammed hard into its torso, injuring it further but not stopping it, and the tiefling tossed his bow aside and drew his sword. Elly once again set her spear, and this time the tip dug a deep channel in the lamia’s side as it came forward. The lamia screamed again, this time in real pain, and tried to swing at Elly. Lok, however, stepped forward and took the blow on his shield, fully aware that one more hit would likely fell him once again. The genasi’s shield held, however, and as he turned the blow aside he drove the sword deep into the lamia’s chest. While not as skilled with the sword as with his axe, the blade nonetheless penetrated deep, backed by the full strength of the genasi, still boosted by the potion he’d drunk earlier.
But the lamia, lost in the power of its magic, fought on. With multiple opponents close at hand it lashed out blindly, swinging the axe in great sweeping arcs. Dana, knowing her own weak attacks would have little effect on the raging creature, stepped behind Lok and cast a spell, touching the genasi to fill him with a pulse of healing energy. That boon was timely, as well, as one of the lamia’s blows connected hard a moment later, barreling through the genasi’s defenses and adding a fresh hurt to his tally.
But Lok did not go down, and the lamia’s attackers redoubled their efforts, swarming around the outnumbered creature. Elly backed up and stabbed again, this time in the rear, driving her spearhead deep into its flank. Benzan joined the melee and took advantage of the creature’s distraction to launch a devastating sneak attack, his blade tearing into it from the opposite flank. Delem, having stabilized Cal, joined in the battle from ten paces away, firing a pair of magic missiles that streaked unerringly into the creature’s body.
S’reth struck for damage that could have slain two lamias, faltered. The magic slipped away, and she could feel her life going with it. She looked down at the creatures that had slain her, the creatures she had brought here, but in her last breath she didn’t think about bad choices or missed chances. No, she saved that final breath to offer one last curse at the world, at T’roth and the others, and at these… people… that had done this to her.
Only she never got a chance to utter that oath, as Lok took the lamia’s head from her shoulders with one clean swipe of his sword.
The companions gathered around the body of the lamia, the stones around them slick with their blood commingled with that of their foes. All of them were seriously wounded, and each felt keenly the knife’s edge upon which their fate had been balanced.
“Well, that was something,” Benzan said. That said, he turned to start looting the corpses, his attention drawn first to the silver ring that he’d spotted on one of the lamia’s forepaws.
The others spent a few moments collecting their breaths, drinking their remaining healing draughts, or casting spells to do the same to the most injured. With the battle over, each of them became aware of the biting cold, a stark contrast to the wet heat back on the Isle of Dread. Finally, once their immediate needs were seen to, Elly voiced the matter of most pressing concern.
“Where are we?”
Broccli_Head
Explorer
Horacio said:Wow!
What a battle!
Epic!
Thanks a lot, LAzybones, I really needed my fix
I agree! What a fight! My favorite line is when Lok says, "Let's finish this, " and draws his sword. Very vivid. I can imagine the bloodied and battered party surrounding their foe for the last tango....
Can't wait to see where we are!
B.H.
