NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 4912618" data-attributes="member: 9546">NIHILISM“I knew it!”  Kat snapped at Malatrothe’s disappearance.O’Reginald shrugged.  “If there’s one thing you can always trust, it’s that evil will be true to its nature.  She didn’t really lie to us, after all.”“So where does that leave us?”  Kat asked.  “There are still two spirit anchors left, and we don’t know where to find them.”“The night hag mentioned that one of them, Nihil, dwells in the high towers,” Laori offered, “and the unknown one may lair in the donjon chapel.  I would suggest pursuing the devil we know.  The tower lies just there.”  She nodded across the parapet to where the highest spire in the keep could be seen just beyond a nearby rooftop.  “My sister speaks wisdom,” Sial added, clearing his throat.  Kat cocked an eyebrow at her companions.  Herc and Raelak shrugged noncommittally.  Michael and O’Reginald nodded in agreement with the Zon-Kuthonites, and Ratbone merely growled low in his throat and stalked towards the rooftop.  He reached up and grabbed the edge, and then hauled himself up.  He turned back expectantly, waiting for the others to follow.______________________________________________________Beyond the peak of the rooftop lay another balcony with a single door leading into the tower.  Herc led the way as the others readied themselves behind him.  The sparsely furnished chamber beyond appeared to be a guardroom with a single table, two chairs, and a tarnished brazier.  Above the table hung a bronze gong and striker.  Three creatures paced restlessly around the room.  They were humanoid in size and shape, but their skin was spiked with numerous wicked barbs.  Sharp fangs filled their mouths and hooked talons protruded a full inch beyond the ends of their fingertips.  “Fiends!”  Michael hissed over Herc’s shoulder.  Before the big mercenary could act, however, Kat stepped to his side and began weaving her hands hypnotically before her.  Two of the devils watched her, momentarily transfixed, and then their eyes glazed over in confusion.  A moment later, one of them dropped to the floor and curled up into a ball, cowering like a whipped pup.  The third fiend snarled and leaped forward, but Herc moved in front of Kat and caught the brunt of the charge on his shield.  He jerked the shield edge sharply up, catching the devil on the chin, but as he did so, his hand caught on the thing’s barbs, flaying his skin open to the bone.  The devil recoiled from the blow, but recovered quickly.  It raised one hand above its head and began to chant in its infernal tongue.  A wave of power coursed over the companions, wracking all of them with excruciating pain, save for the followers of Zon-Kuthon.Raelak stood up with an effort and drew back his bowstring.  He fired a shimmering shaft directly into the devil’s gut.  The fiend spun with the impact, but when it came around again, it unleashed another blast of dark energy.  Then, it was struck by a half-ton of fur and claws as Ratbone slammed into it, bearing it to the ground and then rending it limb from limb, ignoring the savage rents its barbs left in his own flesh.  At that moment, the confused fiend blinked its eyes once, its vision clearing.  Too late it realized its situation.  It launched itself towards Herc, but Ratbone was in the way.  The druid caught the fiend around the waist and hurled it savagely into a wall, snapping its spine.  Then he turned on the cowering fiend and quickly put it out of its misery.______________________________________________________Nihil the Ashbringer crouched brooding in the highest rafters of her tower, the same tower that once served as Kazavon’s personal bedchamber.  The irony was not lost on her.  She, once the personal assassin of the Dragon Lord, gifted to him by Zon-Kuthon himself, was now reduced to skulking amid the decaying remains of her former lord’s glory, a prisoner of the usurper Mithrodar.  She allowed her anger at the presence of intruders within her master’s domain to burn away her self-loathing.  They had already slain most of what was left of her once-grand army of gargoyles and fiends, and now they had the temerity to come for her personally.  She may have failed Kazavon once, but she swore upon her immortal soul that she would not do so again.  As the door to the tower swung open below, she silently ordered her minions to their positions…________________________________________________________The interior of the tall, hollow tower was silent and menacing.  High overhead, an opening at the tower’s peak let in light, as did the arrow slits set into the walls, yet nothing seemed capable of dispelling the gloom of ancient evil that loomed there.  A shallow pool of stagnant water from past rains had formed in the center of a floor that was largely empty of furnishings.  Near the far wall slumped a wide bed, swathed in rotten and moldy bedclothes.  The bed itself hung a few feet off the floor, supported at its corners by chains that hung from a series of iron support beams above.  To the side, a large gilt throne stood upon a short dais before a series of manacles inset into the floor.  A nearby fire grate, long cold, held a collection of branding irons and other torturer’s tools.  A series of alcoves climbed the walls of the tower in an ascending spiral.  Within each stood a statuette, art object, or polished skull.  Ratbone was the first into the tower, his hulking form taught and guarded.  His feral eyes scanned the darkness above, and immediately locked onto a bare flicker of movement.  His vision rapidly shifted through the visible spectrum, and then beyond.  The heat signatures of three large creatures jumped out at him.  They were invisible, hovering in the nest of rafters.  They seemed to be mostly skeletal, though the fact that their bodies radiated heat meant that they were of flesh and blood, not undead.  Long, scorpion-like tails arched over the heads, the spike-like stingers dripping with poison.  Ratbone turned to warn his companions as they filed into the room, but at that moment, a harsh, shrieking voice ripped the air, and power flowed through its words.  As the blasphemous sound hammered into the group, all of them felt their strength sapped, and their heads swam.  At the same time, the three fiends above appeared as they flew down, howling in hell-spawned fury.Katarina looked up as the devils drew nearer.  She closed her eyes, driving back her terror and brought the words of a spell to her lips.  When she opened her eyes again, they flashed with eldritch light, and the three creatures paused, hovering not twenty feet above.  Their eyes locked on one another, and hatred burned in them.  Talons hooked and fangs bared, they fell on each other, locked in mortal combat.  Raelak quickly took advantage of the confusion and began firing amidst the fiends, while beside him, O’Reginald hurled bolts of crackling lightning into the fray.  ‘There’s still something else up there!’  Ratbone snarled through the mental link the companions shared.  ‘These vermin can’t be the spirit anchor.  It’s still here somewhere!’“I’ll force it to show itself!”  Michael shouted aloud.  The priest cradled his holy symbol and began to pray fervently.  The medallion flared with light that reached all the way to the tower roof.  In its shining glow, Nihil stood revealed.  She was a twisted, contorted thing with as much iron as flesh to her body.  A huge pair of bat-like wings unfurled from her back and she wielded a brutal scythe that was fused with the flesh of her right arm.  She hissed in fury and folded her wings, diving towards the floor forty-feet below.  As she passed her quarreling underlings, she beat at them furiously with her clawed left hand.“Fools!” she spat in Infernal.  “If you want to die, I’ll kill you myself and turn your wretched souls over to the flesh peddlers!”The bone devils shook themselves free of Kat’s beguilement at the sound of their mistress’s voice, and then proceeded to follow her down.  Nihil backwinged just above the floor, hovering as she raised her free hand.  Power gathered around her, and she unleashed it in a black burst, the magic siphoning the very moisture from the bodies of her enemies.  At the sight of the enraged ashmede devil, both Laori and Asyra quailed, their faces draining of color.  In stark terror, the pair fled the room.  Sial watched them go in disbelief.  His eyes narrowed as he assessed the situation, and in an instant, his decision was made.  “No!” he cried in mock fear.  “Spare me, Unholy One!”  He then turned on his heel and ran after his companions.Ratbone watched the withdrawal of the Brotherhood of Bones with a mixture of disgust and satisfaction.  Quickly, however, his attention was drawn back to the matter at hand.  Willing his body to transform, he shifted into his avian form and lifted off the floor.  As he rose towards the fiends, he seized Herc by the shoulders in his talons and carried him aloft as well.  Both of them struck at Nihil as they drew close, but the devil’s skin was like striking iron, and it shed the brunt of their blows.  “Now!”  the ashmede cried.She folded her wings once more and dove past the druid and the mercenary, landing heavily on the floor in the midst of Raelak, Michael, Kat and O’Reginald.  A moment later, the bone devils chanted in unison, and frigid mist began coalescing below Ratbone and Herc.  Within seconds, it solidified into a wall of solid ice bisecting the tower, separating the two from the rest of their friends…and Nihil!Raelak darted clear of the ten-foot tall ashmede devil, struggling to get enough room to bring his bow to bear.  He loosed three arrows in rapid succession, and Nihil shrieked in a mixture of pain and fury.  She lunged at the ranger, batting O’Reginald aside as she charged.  Her scythe-like appendage slashed at Raelak like a thresher through wheat.  The Shoanti reeled, and felled heavily to his back.  Nihil reared above him, preparing to drive the point of her scythe through his chest, when suddenly a bolt of green energy struck her from behind, where O’Reginald had managed to raise himself up on one elbow.  Nihil stumbled as her limbs felt loose and clumsy.  Her eyes blazed, and lightning flew from her fingertips, arcing from O’Reginald to Raelak to Kat, and lastly Michael.  In the aftermath, all four lay on the ground around her.  She howled in victory as she moved in for the kill, but her celebration was premature.  Too late she saw Raelak raise his bow a final time.  Two arrows flew from his string simultaneously, and both struck the fiend in the middle of her chest.  Stricken, she stumbled back.  Her foot caught on the short dais, and she collapsed into the ancient throne, her head slumping down upon her chest, which heaved one final breath and then was still.  Somewhere in the distance, a chain snapped and an anguished moan rumbled through Scarwall.Ratbone rapidly shifted back into his ape form, dropping Herc to the surface of the ice wall as he landed upon it himself.  Just in time, as the first of the bone devils leaped upon him.  Ratbone caught the fiend in mid-air, enfolding it into his four-armed grasp.  The druid squeezed as the devil clawed and bit at him, as all the while its spine snapped and cracked.  Finally, it went limp in Ratbone’s arms, and he dropped its lifeless corpse to the ice.  As it struck the wall, however, the ice began to split and crack beneath the feet of Ratbone and Herc.  A moment later, the wall collapsed entirely.  The druid and mercenary fell, and the remaining two bone devils came after them.  Katarina hurled a lance of solidified sonic energy at one, and Herc managed to grapple with the fiend as it tumbled through the air.  He slammed at its neck with his shield again and again as it fell, and when the two of them finally struck the floor, only Herc rose to his feet again.  Ratbone and the last devil landed heavily near Kat, and as they rolled to their feet, the beguiler blasted the fiend with another sonic lance.  It stumbled from the impact, and in that moment Ratbone was on it.  The feral druid savaged and tore at the devil as if he were possessed himself.  It was no contest…</blockquote>

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