Back up again- but this time, not just a few minutes. Back up a few months, and back to the Material Plane- Cydra. But north, far north of where our heroes have journeyed. Go north to a frozen land of glaciers and seas half-frozen into slush, with great icebergs the size of mountains floating through the water.
This zone of brilliant white ice and sapphire waters, like any other climate, has a host of life forms within it. The air, though cold, is not too cold for all life. Hoar hawks soar through it, riding cold air currents like their cousins ride thermals. They swoop and swirl over the sea, occasionally diving to take some smaller beast from the land below them. But they stay far away from the vast blue ice floe that dominates hundreds of square miles- the Floe of Chaffelliox.
Very occasionally, a very young and brave hoar hawk will fly closer to the great floe. Almost without fail, the braveling will stay high above the weird ice, peering from raptor eyes at the strange, crystallized field below. Sometimes, they will even see Chaffelliox herself. But none is both brave enough and foolish enough to approach her.
Chaffelliox is not to be trifled with.
She is a great beast of marvelous power and inhuman power. She is of a race of creatures rare and wondrous, the chilblains. She is, in her own estimation, magnificent: far more beautiful than others of her kind. Far more powerful, having devoted decades to icecraft. She can shape the ice as she wills, and bring it to life. Her aura of frost is far colder than that of others of her kind. She is a clearly superior specimen.
Thus, the Bile Lords take her. Using agents prepared against (or immune to) cold, they capture the magnificent beast, shanghai her and haul her back to their dread lair- back to Bile Mountain. They slam her into a tight, constricted set of rooms and set guardians in place to teach her that she cannot escape. And then they make her the typical offer: serve.
She rages. She refuses. She attacks, but the guardians were chosen with her in mind, and it quickly becomes apparent that she will perish if she persists.
She retreats, and licks her wounds, and broods.
Days later, the Bile Lords repeat their offer. She refuses again, violently, but they depart and the guardian beasts rear up in warning.
She growls, and retreats to her new lair.
Over the next weeks she fills it with as much ice and snow as she can, to make it more comfortable. She refuses to consider succumbing to the demands of the Bile Lords. She will starve first. She will die. She will...
She will bide her time, as long as she can, and if she must, she will die trying to break free.
Weeks more pass. Chaffelliox begins to despair. The Bile Lords and their servants never attack, never try to slay her. They want time and inevitability to wear her down. Even if she escaped, where is she? Is she somewhere where she can survive?
She steels herself. If she cannot overcome the Bile Lords herself, if she cannot escape the guards set over her, she will die trying. When the moment is right- when they show weakness.
But when their moment of weakness comes, it is much more than she had ever hoped for.
As Chaffelliox shapes more ice beasts to amuse herself, a sudden, deep rumbling shudders through the mountain. Chaffelliox’ senses are sharp, and specialized for snowy and icy environments. She recognizes, instantly, that something has just inflicted serious structural damage on the place. There is a tumult of activity; creatures shouting, her guardians being deployed elsewhere-
That is all she needs. As soon as they are out of sight, Chaffelliox roars, sending her ice beasts ahead of her, and begins smashing her way through the very walls that confine her.
***
Meanwhile, up above, a group of powerful servants of the Bile Lords find themselves unable to join the fight. They are under sudden attack by another, very powerful entity that is an unwilling guest of the Bile Lords.
Cirrus, the cloud dragon.
She has been here far longer than Chaffelliox, but she is also far more patient. She has lived millennia already, after all.
When the servants of the Bile Lords realize that she is loose, that she has decided to strike even though it means her certain doom, they are caught in an agonizing moment of indecision. The King has commanded everyone to attack below, and he is completely unforgiving of disobedience. Yet, to leave her behind them, able to attack from behind or cut off their retreat-
Indecision on the part of the Bile King’s servants, in this case, gives Cirrus the crucial moment she needs to seize the advantage. She strikes from surprise, remaining unobtrusive by hiding while polymorphed into a humanoid form. Her ambush begins with a combination of twinned and heightened stun rays and a sphere of ultimate destruction.
Which also allows her to begin a rather brutal remodel of the battleground.
***
When Chaffelliox smashes through the wall and into view, it is immediately obvious that she is fighting against the bile-tainted monstrosities that seek our heroes’ destruction. The enemy of my enemy and all that; without exchanging a word, the adventurers and the chilblain frost lord are sudden allies.
The enemy is momentarily abashed at the sudden, and cold, arrival of Chaffelliox. Blaze takes advantage of this to use a quickened displacement and a horrid wilting.[/a] Unfortunately, the Axenscion Prototype shrugs it off and fires another pair of null blasts at Inoke. The great warrior screams in agony and falls to his knees, but he knows that his final destiny is yet to be fulfilled.
“Inoke!” cries Wankerman. He tries to move to aid his friend, but a tide of aags swoops at him, pressing him back. He stabs and parries as best he can, but they sweep over him. Inoke staggers towards him; with a roar, he smashes his mace across two of the aags in a sweeping strike, badly wounding both of them. They snarl, but before they return the favor, a mass of headless charge in, leaping to attack both of the warriors.
The ultra-powerful nimblewright fires its null blasts at Inoke again. One strikes him; the other goes wide, obliterating a wall with a huge flash of light.
That thing is going to kill us all, predicts Inoke.
The party forms a line, slaying aags and headless monks left and right. Bodies are piling up in the room; Inoke already has one foot firmly planted in the ruin of an aag.
Gerontius flits past the aags and headless, weaving just above a pair of massive, bat-like wings and then dodging beneath and between a set of legs. He tumbles out and springs into action, swinging Golemhammer, his construct-bane dagger at the Axenscion Prototype.
The construct parries his every attack.
You might be right, Gerontius replies grimly to Inoke.
***
“Well,” Horbin the Holy sighs after a commune, “I can’t be sure that they’re in Bile Mountain, but I can tell you that none of their souls have transmigrated to the Outer Planes.”
“You mean they’re still alive,” Thrush replies. “Or- would their souls have transmigrated from Bile Mountain, or would they be trapped there by all the tricky mountain-sealing magic they use?”
Horbin purses his lips. “That would be hard to pull off,” he says, “but theoretically not impossible. But it’s safe to say that it’s not the case here. Remember, we all came back thanks to Ten Buck Tom after we all died in the mountain before.”
“Good point...” Thrush sighs. I should have gone with them, he thinks. Sybele... please be safe.
***
Safe? In Bile Mountain?
She’s alive, anyway, and throwing crystal shards left and right. JJ follows up with an energy stun. Even though the aags can’t be stunned, the blast can certainly blow them apart.
Chakar is dealing with the headless in his inimitable way: kicking, punching and throwing them until they can’t get up. The dwarven perfect master is at his finest, dancing through a melee that encompasses multiple rooms, chambers and shafts, and literally dozens of enemies.
But the screams of Gerontius as the ultimate nimblewright slashes him over and over again are not encouraging. He tumbles back and away, but he is bleeding prolifically from four terrible cuts. Even his incredible skill at defense couldn’t stop its relentless assault. The halfling shakes his head. This thing is bad, bad news, he yells over the telepathic link. Don’t let it hit you!
Don’t let it shoot you with those null beams, either! cries Inoke.
“Look out!” shouts Wankerman aloud. His voice betrays a sharp edge of fear. “It’s them!
“It’s the King and Queen!!”
Indeed- stalking onto the battlefield come the horrific royalty of the Bile Lords. Standing beside his horrific bride is a fifteen foot tall Bile Lord, with aged skin dripping thick blobs of bile. Scraggly bits of discolored hair sparsely pepper the withered dome of his head. He is supernaturally thin, all skin and bones, and scarcely looks like a living thing- but he is. A noxious cloud of foul yellowish vapor with a nauseating, piss-and-vomit stink surrounds him. Atop his head hangs a barbed crown of adamantine and mithral. Next to the King of Bile is his foul Queen- the Queen of Guts. She is twelve feet tall, a head shorter than her King. She looks like a female giant whose skin has been flayed off, leaving her bright red, glistening flesh exposed. Her intestines twitch and move of their own accord, dragging on the ground behind her and around her feet, yet seemingly never tangling her. Weird stinking fluids leak from her. Her eyes are pitch black.
Alcar immediately casts a mass heal, though only Inoke and Gerontius need it badly. He is just in time, as the King of Bile fires a quickened disintegrate at Gerontius (who manages to dodge out of the way), then follows it up with a quickened destruction on him (he survives), and finally a hellball that explodes in the midst of the party.
Maybe it won’t be the nimblewright after all, Inoke says dryly over the link.
***
Up top, the first wave of Cirrus’ opponents have fallen, and she takes a moment to cast a mass heal on herself and assess her situation.
I’m now fully healed, the cloud dragon thinks. Evidence suggests that the Bile Lords have more important things to do than deal with me at the moment. Which means that I can carve an escape route with my sphere of ultimate destruction.
At her direction, the fuligin sphere drifts to the wall and starts to carve a passage outward.
Cirrus muses on the injury to her dignity. They looted my hoard, she thinks. Her face hardens. They will pay. I must move quickly to secure my escape, and then do what I can to disable the Bile Lords’ defenses against whatever threat is attacking them.
She evokes a second sphere of ultimate destruction and sends it, smoothly disintegrating an adjacent hole, after the first one. Soon they break out into a foul outside. Cirrus frowns, bringing her disintegrationists to rest some 20’ from her.
I’m on another plane, she recognizes at once. Very well. This complicates things.
To revenge, then. Both spheres of ultimate destruction begin sliding straight down through the floor, disintegrating twin shafts.
***
Gerontius draws the prototype away from the rest of the party, but he has to keep moving very quickly so that it cannot get close enough to attack him more than once. This is quite dangerous, but it serves its purpose.
It gives Inoke an opening to charge the Queen of Guts.
Before he has time to think about what a bad idea it probably is, the slayer of Asmodeus roars and unleashes an Inoke Special.
The Queen’s guts lash out, trying to tangle him as he rushes in, but he is wearing freedom of movement and he slips them off. She tears at his legs, wounding him a little, but not nearly enough.
BAM! His first blow lands solidly on the Queen’s arm. It cracks.
BAM!! His second blow takes her on the hip, shattering it.
BAM!!! His third blow smasher her in the chest, and ribs nearly explode through her.
BAM!!!! His fourth blow crashes into her face, crushing the front of her head. The Queen of Guts falls without a chance to act!
“AAAAHHH!!” screams the King of Bile is disbelief. “YOU! I will KILL YOU!!” he shrieks at Inoke. Then, to the Axenscion Prototype: “Quickly! Retrieve her, and take her to safety!!”
Inoke’s eyes widen. The Queen is regenerating! “Uh-oh,” he mutters. Quickly, he sends this over the link.
Chakar tumbles over to the splayed form of the Queen of Guts. “Your constructs are not taking her anywhere,” the dwarf taunts as he hoists her body up.
Next Time: Is Chakar right? Will he keep the Queen out of the fight? Will our heroes survive the wrath of the King of Bile as his Axenscion Prototype?? And what will happen with those spheres of ultimate destruction?
