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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 4782003" data-attributes="member: 3285">Secret of Semar: Part 8c – Ancient SecretsThe massive fresco of one of the Unspeakable One’s spawn glowed a sickly green color and slowly detached itself from the wall with a horrible sucking sound.“Run!” shouted Emric.Vlad drew a glowing gladius, the blade made of pure energy.  “This weapon can take Carcosan beings down—“Emric turned.  “You can’t fight this!  RUN!”Kham was backpedaling.  “But Emric, you can’t stop it either…”Emric shook his head.  “If it’s true, that I was manufactured by the Unspeakable One to betray you, then I won’t be able to fight this thing. And if I don’t have free will, I don’t want to live anyway.”  He drew a thin longsword.  “Sliver, don’t fail me now!”Tentacles stretched and twisted towards Emric.  “Come on!” shouted Emric.  He hacked at one of the tentacles.  “Is that the best you’ve got?”There was a grin on Emric’s face, wild with the confirmation of his new-found independence, however brief.  Snapping like whips, the spawn’s tentacles pinned his arms to his body.  Another tentacle strained for his face…Kham didn’t look back.  He hit the wall running and climbed straight up it.  Sebastian flew up the length of the rope and tied it around his waist.   “Hang on!”Beldin tied a length of rope around his wrist as Sebastian lifted into the air.  Vlad hacked his way out of a forest of tendrils.  He was quickly overmatched and he knew it.“If that thing gets out this whole continent is doomed!” shouted Sebastian.  Beldin slowly lifted up. Kham jumped through the air and snatched the rope.  “We can’t let it get out of here,” said Kham desperately.  Then he remembered the extra blastpowder. “Vlad, Beldin, throw the blast powder at it.  Sebastian, when I say go, you hit it with everything you’ve got!”Sebastian struggled.  The power of his new wings was impressive, but it was all he could do to keep them aloft.  The mass that was once Emric sunk into the gelatinous form of the spawn.  Kham concentrated, and suddenly he and Vlad switched places—Vlad was wrapped around the rope and Kham was in the forest of tentacles. Thanks to Kham’s ring, the spawn couldn’t get a handle on him.  He threw the powder horn and the feeling tentacles caught it, slurping it upwards into the body cavity. Kham twisted and tumbled out of its path. He snatched the tail end of the rope. “Throw it!”Beldin reached into his pouch and tossed a powder horn into the scintillating cap of the jelly-like spawn. Vlad did the same.  The powder horns stuck to its flesh before slowly sinking beneath the surface.Sebastian elevated them up so that they were level with the opening into the cavern. Kham whistled the last powder horn over his head by its strap.  Once, twice. The tentacles lunged for him.  On the third swing he let the powder horn fly.  “NOW!”Sebastian pointed both palms downwards into the hole, “INCENDIARES GLOBUS!” A blast of flames whooshed past Kham’s nose into the hole.  One of the powder horns, attached to the surface of the spawn, exploded. The abomination jerked this way and that, a balloon caught in a typhoon.  Its tentacles flailed, smashing a massive stalactite.  The cavern shuddered.“Fly faster!” Kham twined his legs around the rope. Sebastian was drenched in sweat as he concentrated wholly on lifting three men up on a single rope.  Tentacles probed out of the hole. Then the explosion reached the other two powder horns stuck in the thing’s hide.  Bright red mushrooms of energy exploded in the flesh of the spawn, bursting outwards a second later and spewing viscous fluid in great gouts everywhere.  The entire cavern blasted upwards as the gas that propelled the beast caught fire.Suddenly Sebastian’s load got lighter.  Beldin, Vlad, and Kham sailed up past him as the rope went slack.  The superheated air of the explosion tossed them like feathers.  Sebastian flapped his wings furiously.  He caught sight of Beldin at the apex of the blast.  Then all three hurdled back to earth as gravity took over.  The cavern was slowly imploding, rocks dropping away from where the spawn continued to flail in a spray of fire, rock, and unnatural fluid.  It seemed as if would envelope the entire landscape.Kham snapped downwards, his leg trapped in the rope.  Beldin and Vlad weren’t so lucky.  The force of gravity ripped the rope from their hands.Kham hung upside down, arms outstretched.  He was holding on to both of them by their hands, the world a churning mass below them.“Hold on, Vlad! Hang on to me!”“Don't let go!” shouted Beldin. Kham strained.  His grip was slipping.“Hold on, Beldin! Hang on!”Though they were further away from the lip of the rapidly expanding crater, they were slowly falling back into it.  Sebastian’s wings were finally giving out.“Come on! Get up!” Kham tried to tighten his grip but his shoulders were already numb from Ffasheth’s attack. “Pull up! Come on!” “Kham!” shouted Vlad. “I can’t…” There were tears in Kham’s eyes.  “Guys…I can’t…I can’t hold on to both of you.”</blockquote>

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