REVENGE…
Khala knew that the infidels would return. They had somehow managed to piece together the details of his Father’s grand design, and now they meant to disrupt it. Little did they know that their feeble attempts would amount to little more than a delay, in the grand scheme of things, but his patron would be most displeased in any event. Therefore, it was Khala’s intention to make examples of them, so that no others would disturb his rituals. He had all-but emptied the skinwalker thorps on the island, and Xerkamat had been alerted as well. No…this time he would be ready, and there would be no survivors!
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The Legionnaires appeared in a circle surrounding Mandi, standing on the same balcony where they had first viewed the great shrine. Miraculously, they had all managed to find each other the day before, and even more miraculous, they had all lived to tell the tale. Their defeat had been a telling blow to their confidence, and a much-needed wake-up call in regards to the nature of their own mortality and short-comings. There had been many recriminations and second-guessing through the long night of their recuperation, but in the end it had simply come down to the fact that they had been arrogant and too certain of their own heroism. They were now painfully aware that it was no game that they played. Powerful forces were on the move, working towards some as yet unknown goal. The only certainties were that the production of the shadow pearls had to be stopped, and that whatever or whomever was behind all of these machinations was intent on stopping the Legion and their allies at any cost.
So it was that when they made their second foray into the shrine, they were neither surprised nor alarmed to see a horde of skinwalkers arrayed along the balconies that flanked Khala. A lone skulvyn swam languidly in the black water below. No, in fact the Legionnaires were eager, if such a thing were possible. They had prepared themselves in anticipation of what they knew would be a winner-take-all battle, and they were determined to stop the demon, or die in the attempt.
Khala turned, laughing as they appeared, but his twin smiles quickly faded as Mandi spat out the words to one of her many incantations, and an incandescent beam of light flared from her palm and struck the demon-spawn about his legs. Instantly, Khala felt his lower extremities grow numb, and when he tried to move, his feet betrayed him, tangling themselves and causing him to pitch forward, barely catching himself on the altar before he struck the floor. He was still struggling to regain his balance when a second wave of energy washed over him from the sorceress. For a moment, his heart lurched to a shuddering halt, and the great fiend knew fear. The instant passed, but his wits where still dazed…confused. He couldn’t seem to gather his thoughts into coherent form. Disorientation shackled him.
“Just where we want him,” Mandi grinned sadistically. She had one last trick up her sleeve before her prodigious expenditure of magic left her weak and shaken. An emerald halo surrounded Khala, and though there was no visible effect, Mandi knew it had worked perfectly. The demon was now dimensionally bound. There would be no fortuitous escape for him this time.
Sepoto’s time had come. He had known Mandi’s plan and had waited, muscles vibrating with pent up expectation. Once the final spell had been cast, the crusader threw himself over the balcony, and soared through the air, his chain a whirling vortex before him. With a cry to Savras, he struck at the dazed fiend, slashing into Khala’s flesh with abandon. Though the demon’s stone-like hide resisted the full power of his blow, it was still rent asunder, and fiendish blood flowed like black sap. Closing his eyes, Sepoto focused himself…centered his being. When he opened his eyes again, power flowed through him, and he struck again, and again, and again.
Techuatil’s eyes went wide. He could not believe that he was seeing what he was seeing. The skinwalker acolyte had thought this duty a mere formality, confident that his lord could handle any threat that the mortals posed. Now he was watching his master barely able to stand, being beaten at the whim of one of the infidels. Techuatil could not allow it. If his tribesmen saw Khala go down, their will would break, and they would flee like cattle. Thinking quickly, the acolyte rushed to his master’s side, and laid one hand upon the reptilian skin, uttering guttural words as he did so. A moment later, the demon faded from view. It was a temporary solution at best. Techuatil knew that the intruders would figure out his ruse sooner or later, but at least it would buy time.
Daelric, a master at invisibility himself, knew immediately what the skinwalker had done. Darting across the balcony to where Tower Cleaver stood braced to follow Sepoto, the priest laid one hand on the minotaur’s shoulder and spoke a brief prayer. He watched, smiling as Cleaver’s eyes began to glow, and his mouth gaped open in wonder.
“I see…everything!” the barbarian exclaimed.
“Can you see the demon?” Daelric asked, as if speaking to a small child. Cleaver nodded.
“Good…then kill him!” the priest commanded.
Tower Cleaver snarled in approval and soared aloft, streaking towards Sepoto and the still addled Khala.
By that point, the skinwalkers had realized where the true threat lay, and at Techuatil’s command, they began converging on the central platform. All of them had the ability to fly, thanks to Khala’s tactical genius. Like a great flock of demonic vultures, they rushed at Sepoto. The goliath saw them coming, however, and braced himself. As they swooped and dove at him, his chain was a blur of motion, striking out seemingly at random, but connecting unerringly when it did. The demons screamed and howled, but not one of them could get within striking distance of the goliath. At that moment, a bestial roar from behind drew their attention. Turning, they beheld the awesome sight of Tower Cleaver descending upon them, axe upraised. As he plowed into them, his blade swung in a great arc, slashing into a pair of the skinwalkers as well as Khala himself. Sepoto gave his back to the flying demons as he felt the spray of dark blood wash over him. He still could not see the fiend, but when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could visualize an outline of his enemy, and it was at this that he struck. Each time he felt his weapon impact solidly, and each time he saw the image in his mind’s eye shudder from the impact. Though Khala could not scream, he knew pain like he’d never experienced before.
Mandi knew that they had very little time before Khala shook off the effects of her spell. She intended to use every precious moment to maximum effect. Chanting, she began flinging flaming blasts at the spot where she still guessed the demon to be. She saw the rays impact…something, and from the amount of blood appearing out of thin air courtesy of Cleaver and Sepoto, she thought she had guessed correctly.
Techuatil was beginning to panic. With the way things were going, his lord wouldn’t last much longer. The acolyte knew he had to even the odds somehow. Concentrating on the rampaging minotaur, he prepared a spell, intending to weaken the great beast so that its blows would be less effective. As the words left his mouth, however, he himself was struck by a massive wave of divine power. Turning, he saw the priest of Shaundekal smiling at him from the far balcony, obviously pleased with himself at having disrupted Techuatil’s plans. Snarling, the acolyte began casting again, but before he could even form the words to his next spell, he saw the gnome wizard already in motion. A massive explosion of fire suddenly ripped across the central platform, hurling Techuatil some twenty feet across the room. When his head cleared, he saw three of his tribesmen lying dead on the flagstones.
Not all of the skinwalkers had gone to Khala’s aid. A handful flew toward the balcony where Mandi, Daelric, Marius and Octurus still stood. As the nearest approached, the Maztican warrior rushed to meet it, his scimitars weaving their deadly pattern, sending the demon screaming back into the air. As Octurus paused to catch his breath, he saw something truly horrifying. The skulvyn had taken flight. It lifted its cumbersome bulk out of the water and, as if it didn’t quite know how to control its new form of locomotion, it careened awkwardly towards its master.
Mandi saw the acolyte preparing to cast another spell, and she knew intuitively what he intended. He was weaving a dispelling field around Khala, one that would undo her own invocation prematurely. She was not about to let that happen. Focusing her mind, filtering out all of the chaos raging around her, she cast. The spell she summoned was the same as the one she’d used to daze the fiend earlier. Though there was a very slim chance it might slay Khala outright, that was not her intent. Thus it was that she was utterly shocked when she saw the demon abruptly reappear and topple over the dais and onto the platform floor. For a moment, all went still in the great shrine as both enemy and ally gazed uncomprehendingly at Khala’s corpse. Then, all at once, the melee resumed. The skinwalkers howled in fury and hurled themselves at their enemies with abandon. Tower Cleaver and Sepoto met the onslaught with vigor. Demon after demon went down under the brutal one-two punch of the minotaur’s axe and the goliath’s chain. Cleaver was barely cognizant of the fact that one of his blows cleaved the flying skulvyn in twain, so lost was he in his bloodlust. Unfortunately, he was also unaware of the acolyte drawing a bead on him. With a pulse of emerald power, Techuatil finally succeeded in sapping the barbarian’s formidable strength. Cleaver felt his power ebbing, but he didn’t falter. Slowly, he turned and began stalking towards the acolyte.
Mandi felt a soft ‘ping’ sound in her mind, and her eyes grew wide. She smiled, realizing what the signal portended.
“We’ve got company!” she shouted to her comrades, which was true, but not as imminent as their new arrival might hope. In preparation to face Khala, the sorceress had prepared a special trap. If any being attempted to teleport near her location, she would sense it before hand, and the incoming creature would be temporarily shunted into the Astral plane, though the creature itself would be completely unaware of this little side trip. Thus, if it was Xerkamat, as Mandi assumed it was, that was in transit, the wastrilith was going to be in for a rude welcome. Abruptly, her musings were interrupted as three skinwalkers flew at her, arms and claws reaching out to grapple her. Instantaneously, her body shifted into that of a barbed-skinned devil and she snapped viciously at the nearest skinwalker, biting off the pinky of its left hand.
Octurus continued to defend Marius and Daelric from the onrushing demons. Two more fell before his blades as the warmage wove his magic behind the Maztican. The gnome tossed an orb of glowing light at the platform, where the acolyte was bracing himself for Cleaver’s assault. When the orb struck, the demon mage was hurled backwards. As he struggled to regain his feat, Tower Cleaver lunged. The result of his mighty blow is not fit reading for the faint of heart. Suffice it to say that Techuatil finally met his true master that day.
Realizing that time was running out, Mandi darted past the trio of skinwalkers, who had fallen back a respectful distance in deference to her snapping fangs. She knew she had to make it to the platform before Xerkamat arrived. Behind her, she heard Daelric’s voice rise up in prayer, and seconds later a ten-foot tall wall of spinning blades appeared on the spot where she expected the wastrilith to appear.
‘Good boy,’ she thought. Perhaps there was hope for the priest after all. She reached the platform a split-second before the air began to shimmer, and Xerkamat popped into view. Before the wastrilith could even begin to take note of his surroundings, Mandi laid her hands on its slimy skin and magic pulsed from her palms into the demon. Xerkamat knew in an instant what had happened. The witch had dimensionally locked him in place, preventing him from teleporting out again. Then came his second surprise when the blades of the wall he’d materialized in the midst of began to tear into him.
“Rally on me!” Mandi shouted to the others, and with brutal efficiency, they responded. Marius tossed another orb of force, causing Xerkamat to reel with the impact. Then Cleaver and Sepoto were there, one on each side of the wall of blades. The minotaur’s axe hacked mercilessly at the fiend, while Sepoto’s spinning chain prevented Xerkamat from exiting the blade barrier. Within seconds, they had torn the wastrilith to pieces.
It was a formality for the Legionnaires to mop up what remained of the skinwalkers. The entire conflict had occurred in under a minute from start to finish, yet it had seemed like hours. The victorious heroes looked about them in amazement, still not quite believing what they had accomplished, especially in light of the previous day’s near disaster. As they regrouped on the central platform, Mandi walked purposefully over to the altar and the glowing pearl resting there. Laying one hand upon the gem and another upon Khala’s body, she began to chant. Closing her eyes, her mind filled with images of the recent past. She saw Khala ripping apart one of the fiendish oysters and tearing the pearl from its maw. She bore silent witness as the fiend then sacrificed six living Mazticans from Mantru, ripping the still-beating hearts from five of them as he simultaneously decapitated them. Then he consumed the bodies of all six before regurgitating the remains over the pearl. She watched him strip the flesh from the skulls and then combine it with the liquefied heart tissue in a vile alchemical process. She observed him cloistered in constant prayer and mediation as he continuously anointed the pearl with the obscene concoction. Blessedly, the visions ended. For even one as jaded as herself, the ritual she had beheld was depraved and cancerous. In disgust, she cast another spell, striking Khala’s remains with a thin, green beam, turning the corpse instantly to dust, erasing any trace of the demon’s abominable existence. Suddenly, a pair of bone-shaking roars echoed through the great temple, as an immense wash of black smoke erupted from the dust pile. For the briefest of moments, Mandi could swear that she beheld the shape of the Prince of Demons himself in the haze, his twin glares falling balefully upon her.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
