LORD OF THE IRON FORTRESS-- Part III (cont.)
Firing up a brutal seething surge, the little peck’s hand shot out and grabbed Keldas in the most uncomfortable of places. Massive energies pulsed through the link, and had it not been for Keldas’ energy buffer, he’d have easily been slain by this single spell.
Keldas’ thrice-addled mind concocted an appropriate response:
He fired a disintegrate ray into Shorty’s face.
Fortunately, halflings are made of sterner stuff than most-- or so it’s said-- and Shorty looked ready for more. This realization slowly seeped in to Keldas and he backed up, stepping off the carpet to float in midair.
Shorty’s brain struggled with options: Kill the elf? Kill those winged things? In the end, he decided once again to simply wander away. The carpet took off like a shot and Keldas was left hanging in mid-air to face the horrors alone.
Fortunately, Loyal’s wounds were not as bad as they appeared, and before long he stabilized and his breathing returned to normal. By the time Shorty regained his senses, Keldas was a thousand yards away. Sadly, Shorty could do nothing but teleport to safety.
*****
In the interim, however, Wulf had not been idle. He roughly shoved a scroll of plane shift into Alliane’s hands, and with Karak’s helmet the three of them were soon back in the Forge.
The Old Man hardly seemed surprised to see them. “You look like you just walked off a battlefield in Acheron,” he deadpanned.
“No time for jokes, Old Man! We need a miracle and we need it now!”
“Ahh, as you know…”
“Right, right, 28,000… We’ll settle up later. Bring Keldas, Shorty, and Loyal back here before it’s too late.”
“Are they dead?”
“Dead or alive, don’t care, just wish ‘em home.”
“Miracle.”
“Whatever. They WILL be dead if you don’t move yer ass.”
All things considered, it was a simple Miracle. They weren’t unravelling time or raising folks back to life. Wulf figured if they acted quickly enough, it wasn’t all that much more complicated than a planar summons. And it worked: Their three companions were returned to them, bodies, gear, and all.
“How did you defeat those winged horrors?” Shorty immediately blurted out.
“I didn’t. They were taking their time with me.” Keldas frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Bet they were sorry to see yer go… Ach, by the way, yer owe the old man here twenny-eight large.”
*****
After a brief rest (and one more misadventure with some infernal rocs) the party finally managed to set foot on Imperagon’s so-called Lost Cube. A flat iron plane stretched off for hundreds of miles in every direction. There was no sign of any “Iron Fortress.”
Wulf thought for a moment. “Right… Let’s head to the corner, then we can peek over and scan three sides at once.”
They took to the sky and headed for the “southeast” corner. It took them the better part of the day-- or at least, what apparently passed for a day in Acheron-- before they reached the corner. Luck wasn’t with them. Shorty lay down to peer over the edge and reported the disappointing news.
“No tower. What now?”
“Reckon we head for the opposite corner and try again.”
It was a journey of several hundred miles back across the surface, covering acres they’d scanned already. There was a growing suspicion in Wulf’s mind that the side they wanted would be on the opposite face of the cube. Fortunately, before he could get work himself into a foul mood, they struck paydirt.
No, it wasn’t the Iron Fortress, but it would do. Below them on the surface of the cube, some sort of nasty scrap was going on. Wulf looked at both sides like he was scanning a menu and couldn’t decide what to order for his main course: Three formians were lined up in orderly fashion against three humanoids.
Like Wulf, Shorty was itching to let fly with something nasty. “Who do we blast? The bugs?”
“Not sure yet… Let’s get closer and give it a second to decide.”
Wulf was glad he’d waited. As they swooped closer the humanoid figures resolved into better clarity. They were fiends of some sort, and from the looks of the dead formians lying around, they were getting the better part of the deal. It took no time for the group to move into attack formation alongside the formians.
As soon as they had closed the distance to the melee, the leader of the fiends stepped back, cackled madly, and belched forth a power word: blind. Keldas and Alliane were both temporarily blinded by the blast, but Shorty took the worst of it. With a flash and a bit of smoke, his eyes were completely vaporized. Loyal held on for dear life as Shorty wheeled the carpet around and flew off in full retreat.
The other two fiends weren’t idle, either. They each blasted the area with a chaos hammer, pounding the formians and the two elves-- much to Wulf’s amusement, of course. Unfortunately they’d acted a bit too soon, otherwise they might have caught the paladin who came charging into their ranks to smite their leader. Wulf took the opportunity to dart past the three fiends and come up in a nice flanking position, his weapons hacking away in a blur of destruction.
Though blinded, Keldas stepped back slightly and polymorphed himself into an umber hulk. Clever move, Wulf thought. Tremorsense! Alliane, also blinded, back-pedalled out of the area just as another two chaos hammers rained down on the group. This time, Keldas and Karak were caught, and they were both staggered by the blast-- again, much to Wulf’s amusement.
Wulf changed his tune a moment later when the formians unexpectedly countered with Order’s Wrath, leaving Wulf dazed for a moment. Through the haze over his eyes he saw Loyal grab control of Shorty’s carpet and come sailing around in a wide circle on their flank. Loyal had pushed Shorty to the front of the carpet, and though the little blind halfling should have been holding on for dear life, he was gritting his teeth, staring forward with his empty eye sockets, and casting.
“What the hell are yer doin’… oh, no…”
Wulf realized just in time what Loyal had in mind. He was already dodging before he heard Loyal shout, “Now, Shorty! Lighting bolt, dead ahead!”
The stroke of lightning would have caught Wulf had he not jumped at the last moment to hide behind the fiend’s leader. Karak finished the work they’d started, finally dropping the fiend’s leader. One of the hench-fiends, acting with military precision, dropped back from the front line to grab a potion from its belt. Wulf acted quickly as the fiend tried to pour the potion down the throat of their fallen leader.
“Ach, no…” Taranak lashed out and smashed the flask into a thousand pieces. The potion sizzled in the wake of the fiery axe.
Thinking they’d got the better of him, the second fiend stepped up to try the same trick.
“No, again…” Another flask was smashed to pieces. Clearly, they’d underestimated Wulf’s combat reflexes. The dwarf with the fiery axe seemed to tower over their fallen leader, and there was nothing they could do but watch his life bleed away. Oddly enough, the fiends chuckled, a deep throaty sound that was oddly familiar. They continued chuckling and babbling even as Loyal and the formians cut them down.
Wulf was genuinely surprised to see the “fiends” revert to their natural form as their bodies finally gave up the ghost.
Slaadi! Wulf slapped his forehead in frustration. I guess if I’d ‘a known that, I might’ve fought with ‘em.
But it was all for the best, as they soon discovered through Wulf’s canny interrogation.
“What yer doin’ out here?”
“We were on a hunting / reprisal raid versus the metallic cats,” came the nearly monotone reply. The party instantly recognized the metallic cats-- surely the same assassins that had been sent to Rigus.
Wulf grinned his friendliest, most genuine grin. “Reckon we ought to talk, then. Take us to yer leader.”
