Lazybones's Keep on the Shadowfell/Thunderspire Labyrinth

[Lazybones]

Chapter 66


“Ware its breath!” Vhael shouted, but Carzen was already bringing up his shield. He heard a terrible noise, and then everything around him vanished in a white haze. Wisps of the stuff curled around his shield, causing his eyes to tear up, but he avoided any serious harm.

Instinct warned him before his vision cleared enough to see the dragon’s follow-up attack. His sword bit into something hard, the impact nearly jarring it out of his hand. He didn’t have time to think about it, as he took another blow on his shield that spun him around in almost a full circle. He tried to bring his sword up into something approaching a ready position, but another hard impact caught his forearm, and he felt an angry bite of pain as his bracer was torn roughly free.

The dragon didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate, didn’t let up. The best he could do was avoid being overwhelmed or knocked down; his own counterattacks were feeble at best. He did manage to hit it once more, but his sword bounced off its chest as though it was wearing a steel breastplate. Pale blasts of frost shot past them both; Gral was having a tough time scoring a hit despite the dragon’s size, its rapidly darting movements proving as challenging for the wizard as they were for the fighter. As it reared up over Carzen again, one of those beams sprayed across its left wing, forming a white rime that immediately cracked into a thousand tiny pieces of ice. The dragon hissed a warning, but apparently it considered Carzen a greater threat, as it did not push past him toward Gral.

Even as Carzen struggled against the dragon’s assault, Vhael rejoined the fight. Charging forward, the dragonborn delivered a two-handed stroke from his big sword that clipped the dragon hard across the neck. The impact would have killed many foes, but the dragon merely jerked back, blood oozing from the shallow gash. Carzen lunged in to exploit the momentary advantage, but before he could strike the dragon sprang back at both of them. Spreading its claws wide to enfold both warriors within its reach, it caught them up and smashed the two into each other. Carzen and Vhael both grunted as they collided hard and fell to the ground.

Now it was the dragon that had the tactical advantage, and it surged forward to put it to good use against its fallen foes. But as the creature spread its wings and lifted its body once more, preparing to attack, it let out a cry of pain and jerked roughly to the side. The movement showed the companions the shaft of a heavy spear, jutting from the dragon’s side just under the socket where its right wing connected to its body. The head of the spear was buried deep into the meaty flesh of the joint, and each movement was working it deeper into the wound, no doubt causing the creature considerable pain.

“Quick, we’ve got to get up!” Carzen urged, grabbing at Vhael, who barely clung to consciousness. Carzen’s own movements felt wooden, his body behaving as though he’d been drinking heavily. The thought sent a quiver through him—he would have paid a hundred gold pieces, a thousand, to be in the seediest dive in Fallcrest right now—but he knew that the dragon’s distraction was likely to be short-lived.

But its attention—and Carzen’s—was drawn to the charging form that rushed it from behind. Carzen was amazed to see the enforcer from the Halfmoon Inn, the woman he’d fought beside against the Bloodreavers in the Chamber of Eyes. She was clad in rags overlaid with what looked like a gnoll cuirass, but a bright steel sword blazed like fire in her hand.

The dragon saw her coming, but it didn’t turn away from its current foes. But Carzen saw the danger a split-second before it struck.

“Look out!” he shouted, but it was too late to do anything to stop the dragon, as it snapped its tail around. The long appendage cracked hard across the charging woman’s body like a whip, knocking her into the adjacent wall. She hit hard enough for Carzen to feel the impact twenty feet away, hung there for a heartbeat, and then toppled over onto the floor, landing on her face in a bruised heap.

 

[Richard Rawen]

Once again I find myself cringing after one of the characters takes a hit... great descriptives LB, keep it comin!
Looking forward to the live game posts too!

 

[Tamlyn]

Your battle descriptions are usually spectacular. But for some reason I find myself particularly riveted by this one. Keep 'em coming!

 

[Lazybones]

Thanks, guys. Thought we were dead for a while there with the ENWorld shutdown. At least I can post now, even if it's ssslllllllooooooowwwww.

* * * * *

Chapter 67


“Fight!” Vhael wheezed, lifting his sword—barely—and lunging at the dragon. For all his spirit, the dragonborn’s strength was exhausted, and the thrust failed to so much as scratch its scaled hide. The dragon’s counter was almost languid, and it slapped him aside with a swipe of a claw. Vhael toppled over backwards, rolled to a stop, and did not move.

Carzen was in better shape, although his arms throbbed, and he thought he could feel the bruises forming where the dragon’s claws had impacted him. But other than the cuts to his right forearm, he hadn’t suffered any serious injuries from the dragon’s furious attacks. That could change in an instant, though, a thought that dashed through his mind as he aborted his next attack to duck under a snapping lunge from the dragon’s ferocious jaws. The fighter tensed, expecting another fearsome swiping attack from those nasty claws to follow.

But the dragon didn’t attack him. Instead it roared and reared up, and Carzen saw a spray of ugly dark droplets fly into the air from its flank. It turned, nearly knocking him down as its wing buffeted him across the brow. He caught a glimpse of the woman fighter, on her feet again, her sword glistening with the dragon’s blood. There was another, smaller form behind her, in the mouth of the entry passage. Carzen recognized the halfling archer, and saw that he’d already scored at least one hit, the tiny arrow jutting from the back of the dragon’s dagger-shaped skull. He lifted his sword to help them both out, but before he could swing the dragon’s tail swept his feet out from under him, and he landed on his back hard enough to send stars flashing across his vision.

“Damn,” he muttered, ordering his reluctant body to get back up.

Mara had no time to spare for conscious thought. The dragon was bigger and faster than anything she’d fought before, and it seemed to anticipate her moves before she even started them. She’d gotten in two good hits, the first from surprise and the second because it had underestimated her, but now that the dragon’s full focus was on her, her luck seemed to have fled. The sword that Rendil had given her was sharp and light, and it moved like a blur in her hand, but it couldn’t keep the dragon’s claws off her. In that first exchange she took two solid hits that tore through her armor, digging bloody furrows in her skin. She thanked the gods for the gnoll armor; without that, the dragon would have torn her to pieces in the first seconds of the fray.

Jaron was sending a barrage of arrows at the dragon, but she knew that it was up to her to keep it busy long enough for the toll of damage that they were inflicting upon it to take effect. The dragon was hurt, bleeding now from several wounds, including the spear that still jutted from its side. But the creature’s stamina seemed inexhaustible.

Carzen got back to his feet, while Mara dodged a sweeping claw and lifted her sword to strike again before it could recover. But even as the gleaming sword slashed down, the dragon’s head snapped around, and it grabbed her arm in a crushing grip that caught her from wrist to elbow. Mara screamed as the dragon lifted her off her feet, unable to do anything except flail desperately; she pounded at it with her free hand, but she might as well have been a rabbit struggling against the jaws of a steel trap.

Her companions tried to come to her aid; Gral splashed another beam of frost along the dragon’s flank, while Carzen lunged in and delivered another glancing hit that just drew blood along its hindquarters. The dragon responded by swinging around, using its captive like a club, smashing Mara into Carzen hard enough to knock the soldier flying. He landed and rolled, much like Vhael had earlier, and while he was still conscious, it was clear that his wounds were starting to slow him down.

The dragon, still holding Mara, took a step toward him, but abruptly reared up, an angry hiss coming from the sides of its mouth. It snapped its head to the side, releasing Mara at the end of its sweep, sending her flying into the nearby wall. She impacted the hard stone a good eight feet off the floor, falling into a limp heap not far from where Vhael still lay unconscious upon the cold stone. Her sword, torn from her grasp at the last, clattered off the wall and landed in a corner a good ten paces away.

The dragon finished its turn, and now they could see what had drawn its ire; one of Jaron’s arrows had scored deeply, only a few inches of feathered shaft jutting from the spot at the base of its skull where its head met its neck. The dragon fixed a malevolent look upon the halfling archer, who somehow withstood the fell power in that gaze. Jaron’s hands did not shake as he reached into his quiver, where one arrow remained.

But even as he drew out that final shaft, the dragon dropped into a crouch, and sprung at him, a charging engine of destruction against which the halfling ranger seemed to stand no chance whatsoever.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 68


Jaron stepped back, but did not flee before the dragon’s rush. His hands shook slightly as he fitted his last arrow to the string, but the steel head did not quiver as his drew the bowstring to his cheek.

But the dragon was faster, too fast; it covered the gap between them in a few bounds, its jaws snapping out to enfold him in a single deadly bite.

In the scant instant before impact, a huge form, almost as big as the dragon, came hurtling out of the corridor, colliding into the drake with the force of a boulder tumbling down a mountain. The dragon was flung aside by the force of that collision, and both it and the newcomer hurtled in a mad confusion across the crowded space of the hall, finally slamming together into the far wall with enough force to make the stones tremble.

Carzen had gotten back to his feet, and still held his sword. But he meandered back and forth, staggering dazedly as he made his way over to where Mara had fallen. The woman warrior was conscious, but her battered arm hung limp at her side, and while she fumbled against the floor with her other hand, she couldn’t quite manage to get up. Both of them stared in amazement at the scene developing in front of them.

“What in the hells…” Carzen began. His confusion only deepened when he heard a familiar yell superimposed over the roars coming from the dragon and its foe.

The two fighters saw that the new arrival was the dire boar they’d encountered earlier. Pinning the dragon against the wall, it twisted its head violently, working its tusks deeper into the monster’s body. The dragon, caught off-balance, responded with a violent storm of claws and teeth that forced the boar back, bleeding from gashes across its face and shoulders. Blood from both creatures started gathering upon the floor below, splatters joining into a muddled pool that was further scattered by their frenzied movements.

And sitting astride the boar, shouting his lungs out, was Beetle, having the time of his life. There seemed no way he could have kept that precarious perch through the charge and impact with the dragon, yet somehow he did, clinging to a bony spur jutting from its back as though it were a saddle horn.

The boar, driven to a mad rage by its imprisonment, took out its frustrations upon the dragon. Its hooves beating upon the floor, it surged forward, snapping its head up as it gored the dragon again. One tusk, already slick with blood, stabbed into the dragon’s belly like a curved dagger, ripping the scaled hide and releasing a fresh gout of dark, stinking blood. Beetle contributed by throwing a small knife that glanced off the dragon’s skull, narrowly missing an eye.

The dragon’s rage easily matched that of the boar, and while it was now bloodied, it responded with no less violence. Seizing the boar with its claws, it fired off another blast of toxic gas that scoured it at point-blank range, bleaching the thick bristles that covered its hide. The boar staggered back, temporarily blinded and dazed by the attack. The dragon’s breath had also finally dislodged Beetle, who was flung across the room by the force of the blast. The halfling somehow managed to get his feet under him as he landed, and he tumbled to a safe if somewhat awkward stop, coughing to clear the remnants of the poison from his lungs.

The dragon exploited its advantage as it had against its armored foes earlier. The boar’s angry grunts became squeals of pain as the dragon’s claws dug deep furrows in its hide, but those cries were abruptly cut off as it sank its jaws into its neck, driving it down into the ground, pinning it there despite its weakening struggles.

Carzen bent down to help Mara, trying to ignore the way the room started spinning when he lowered his head. He had to put his sword down, but he was able to take her good arm and pull her to her feet. She grimaced in pain as the movement jarred her battered arm, but her eyes were mostly lucid as they fixed on him.

“My… sword… where…” she stammered.

“We have to finish it, now!” Gral shouted. The dwarf had come up to join them, his staff raised and surrounded by a wintry glow as he continued to draw upon his magic. He hesitated by Vhael, clearly torn between two conflicting duties, but after a moment stabbed the head of the staff forward like a lance, unleashing another beam of magical cold.

“Stay here,” Carzen said to Mara, propping her against the wall, while he reached down to recover his sword. He almost lost it there, as the hilt of the weapon drifted out of focus when he dipped his head, and his equilibrium likewise threatened to desert him. But he gritted his teeth and recovered, taking up the sword and stepping forward toward the dragon for one final confrontation.

The boar’s struggles had grown weaker, and the dragon continued holding its death-grip upon the creature, digging its claws in deeper, holding its jaws tight around the boar’s neck. Finally, with a shudder, the boar collapsed, blood splattering out around it as its bulky torso settled to the floor. The dragon drew up, its jaws soaked with fresh blood, droplets spraying as it roared in triumph.

 

[Lazybones]

Yay, fast ENWorld is back!

In other news, check in Friday for a new thread with a teaser post from my upcoming new story. I think you'll find it both different and familiar.

* * * * *

Chapter 69


“MURDERER!” Beetle screamed, charging forward. The dragon’s head spun to face him as the halfling sprang up onto the bulky hindquarters of the dead boar; battered as it was, the creature’s attack was as fast as it had been before, the wedge of its head darting forward to intercept this puny foe.

“Beetle!” Jaron yelled. There was nothing he could do to intervene; he’s shot his last arrow, and while he ran forward, drawing his sword as he charged, he was too far away to help his cousin.

But as the dragon’s jaws snapped shut, they closed on empty air. Beetle had kicked off the boar’s back and flung himself sideways; something in his hand flashed as his body intersected with the lunging head of the dragon. Then both were flung in different directions; Beetle was knocked roughly off to the left; hitting the wall feet first, actually running along it for several paces before gravity drew him back to the floor. He slid several paces before coming to a stop, breathing heavily.

The dragon’s head reared back on its long neck, nearly bouncing off the high ceiling above. Its wings and foreclaws flailed, and it tore free from the boar, almost falling over onto its back before the wall behind it arrested its gyrations. Carzen, who’d come tentatively forward to confront it a moment ago, was forced to quickly retreat, lest he get trampled by the dragon’s wild movements. Gral, however, held his ground, taking careful aim, firing a lance of white cold squarely into the center of the dragon’s chest. The beam pierced it like a knife, forming a ring of frost around the point of impact.

The dragon tumbled forward, its violent struggles suddenly transformed into an almost placid limpness as it sank to the ground. The head was the last part to touch the stone, and as it came to rest, they could see the hilt of the tiny dagger that protruded from the ruins of its left eye.

The dragon was dead.

“By… the… gods…” Carzen breathed. He glanced back at Gral, but the dwarf was already tending to Vhael’s wounds. Mara was still standing, and gave him a funny look as he stared at her.

Then Beetle came forward. He came up to the dragon, looked down at it. Even in death, the thing dwarfed him. He reached down to recover his dagger, made a face as the weapon came free with a sick sucking noise.

Jaron came up next to him. “Wow,” he said.

Beetle grinned, then his gaze turned to the dead boar, and the expression darkened. “Stupid dragon,” he said mournfully, kicking it in the head.

 

[Richard Rawen]

HA! "“Stupid dragon,” he said mournfully, kicking it in the head."
laughed my arse off!
Don't mess with the Halfling!

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 70


They found Gezzelhaupt’s body where it had fallen, mangled almost beyond recognition by the rolling ball of force that had been conjured up by their completion of the ritual. Dozens of puncture wounds covered his body, including several that made his face an unrecognizable mess. One of his arms had been cut free of his body at the elbow, and they never did find it, carrying the rest of him hastily out of the way of the black globe before it could return on its circuit around the length of the rectangular hall.

They gathered with the remains in one of the anterooms off that hall. With the Guardian defeated, the corrupt effects that had been summoned by the ritual had faded, although the black sphere continued its course, rumbling as it passed the open doors leading to the central hall.

Mara flexed her right hand; she’d kept doing that, as if to remind herself that she still had it. While her arm had been painfully strained by being yanked around by the dragon, and her shoulder had been dislocated, miraculously the limb itself was intact, with no broken bones. Gral had cleaned the dozen or so gashes the dragon’s teeth had made, and wrapped the entire forearm in a fresh linen bandage. She’s shifted her sword to her other hip; if it came down to it, she could use it effectively with either hand, one legacy of her uncle’s training.

But nothing in that training had prepared her for this.

Carzen and Vhael were arguing, not far away. Gral stood silent between them, but there was no doubt whose side he was on. She felt detached, even her hatred for Vhael overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of what they’d just been through. Beetle’s voice at her side drew her attention out of her musings, and she looked down to see the halfling there, holding a sword in his hands.

“Hey, I found this,” he said, offering it to her.

She knew the blade; half the size of hers, it was standard light infantry issue in the Nentir Vale, and she recognized the maker’s mark of Fallcrest just above the crossguard. Gezzelhaupt’s sword, not that it had done him any good in the end. Still, she took it, almost reflexively sliding it through her belt. Somehow it made her feel more confident to have her usual two blades at hand as she stepped forward to the dragonborn and his companions.

“There’s only so much abuse a body can take and fight on,” Carzen was saying, keeping his voice pitched low, his words clipped and controlled, but no less earnest for that.

“The ritual fluxes and gathers,” Gral said. “The spirits said that the doors would remain open but briefly.”

“There is no shame in knowing when you have reached your limit,” Carzen began. He looked about to say more, but Vhael’s eyes had shifted toward Mara as she approached, and they all turned to face her. For a moment Mara felt the force of those combined stares like a weight, but after all that she’d faced in recent days, gathering herself under that attention was not a difficult challenge.

“It would appear that we are once more in your debt,” the dragonborn said. He looked as though he’d rolled around atop a heap of daggers; cuts and gashes, some still trailing faint courses of blood, covered his body. One of his nostrils was deeply notched, and one eye was surrounded by swollen flesh, almost obstructing its vision. Old bandages and new formed a chaotic pattern across the scaled flesh that wasn’t protected by armor, which was a large portion of the whole, given the damage his gear had sustained.

A sudden surge of anger filled Mara, filling her with its intensity. “I don’t want your gratitude,” she barked.

Vhael did not shrink from her anger. “I am no stranger to hatred, but if I am to face it, I should know the reason for it.”

“The reason? My reason is not unique, ‘general’. Oh, yes, I am sure you know it well. How many hundreds, how many thousands have you left behind, bereft? How many lost everything they had, because of you?”

Gral started to interject, but Vhael forestalled him with a hand. “Ibarion,” he said, the single word hitting like a mallet.

“Ibarion,” Mara echoed, that word filled with pain.

“I take full responsibility for what happened there,” Vhael said. “The decision not to march to the relief of the militia of the town was mine. My army was not yet ready; had I initiated the march in time to intervene, they would have arrived disorganized, unprepared. It would have only led to a worse outcome.”

“Worse outcome?” Mara responded. “Worse outcome!”

Carzen looked around nervously. “Perhaps a bit less shouting…”

“That ‘outcome’ was a massacre. You were entrusted with protection of those people. The militia held out for days, almost a week, even as the enemy grew stronger and stronger. By the time that you finally arrived, the militia had been decimated. The walls breached. Four out of every five within the walls were dead. The militia trusted you, waited for you. The great general K’rol Vhael, he wouldn’t leave an entire town to be destroyed. Wouldn’t leave brave men to be killed.”

“You were there?” Carzen asked.

“No. My father insisted that my mother leave with the other families, once the raiders were seen approaching. He stayed, along with the other members of the militia, to protect their lands and property. He was a trader, not a soldier, like the other craftsmen, merchants, and farmers that made up the militia. They stayed, knowing that the Duke would send aid. Believing a lie.”

“The general did what he could with what he had,” Gral said. “Trederan was trying to provoke us at Ibarion, draw us out to fight before we were ready, before the levies from the east could bolster our forces. Ibarion’s defense was not in vain. The raiders were caught; Trederan’s army was destroyed, the rebellious baron hanged. If Vhael had let his army get trapped prematurely at Ibarion, nothing would have been gained, and many more towns would have suffered the fate of Ibarion. We avenged those lost…”

“I don’t care about vengeance,” Mara hissed. “I cared about my father. My mother died barely two months later, of the pestilence that followed in the wake of the war.”

Silence followed for a long moment. Mara’s revelation seemed to have deflated her; her shoulders sagged as the force of her anger bled away from her body. But it still burned in her eyes as she watched Vhael.

Jaron appeared from the corridor. Sensing the tension in the room, he cleared his throat; attention shifted to him. “The doors open onto a passage, not too long. They end in another set of doors, big ones, rimned with red light around the edges. I didn’t get too close, but I heard sounds, chanting, sounded like, sent chills down my spine.

“The ritual approaches completion,” Gral said. “We don’t have much time.”

Vhael turned back to Mara. “I can say nothing to ease your pain, young woman. Evadron wrote that in war, there are no good decisions, only choices less bad than others. War is an ugly thing; the soldier practices an ugly trade. But that is all that I am, all I have ever been.” The warlord drew in a heavy breath, held it a moment before releasing it through his damaged nostrils. A fresh trail of blood emerged with the exhalation and trailed down the front of his face. “Perhaps it would have been better to march on Ibarion with what we had, no matter the odds. There is rarely a day that passes that I do not think of that day. The decision was mine, and I made it. That is all that can be said.”

Turning to the others, he said, “It is time to finish this.” He headed back to the double doors, waiting a few seconds until the rolling sphere had passed, then vanished into the blackened hall. Gral followed, then Jaron, with Beetle hurrying after.

Carzen remained a moment, looking at Mara. He opened his mouth to say something; closed it. Something unreadable flashed across his expression. Finally he shook his head. “Damn it all to hell and back,” he said, turning to follow the others, leaving Mara standing there alone.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 71


Yarine felt as though her body was on fire. Pain wracked her, dragging her toward unconsciousness, but that release seemed to hover just out of reach, even that faint escape denied to her.

She could see, but everything around her was green fire, rising up around the rune circle, currents of magic given form and shape by the pulsing ritual. How long had she been here—hours, days? Their arrival here seemed vague and indistinct now, memories overshadowed by the assault upon her senses being conducted here. The rasping words of the gnoll shaman, by that thing, had faded into the background, but still present enough to know that it was there, inflicting this pain upon her for some nefarious purpose of its own. The gnolls hadn’t bothered to share their plans with her, hadn’t bothered to do much more than lock her and her companion in a darkened room after their arrival here. They hadn’t been given food, and only a few swallows of brackish water. She suspected they had only gotten that because of a need to keep them alive long enough for this ritual to be completed. She had no illusions about her fate at the end of it.

Her muscles quivered, locked, but through a vast expenditure of will she managed to shift her head slightly. She couldn’t see much more than the wall of green fire, but as she lifted her head more, she could just make out the body her of the other prisoner brought here by the Grimmerzhul, sold to the gnolls as fuel for their foul rite. She tried to speak, but nothing but a tiny croak escaped her lips.

Still, the other seemed to hear, for he stirred. It took the same heroic effort for him to lift his head to meet her eyes. When their gazes finally met, Yarine saw only the same despair that she felt.

Rendil Halfmoon looked at her for another few seconds, then he slumped back down, pain and exhaustion overcoming him once more. Yarine could do no more than echo him, fighting against the waves of agony as the corrupt drone of the gnoll chief all around them, growing stronger even as the prisoners’ strength continued to ebb.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 72


The heavy stone doors at the end of the passage swung ponderously open.

The survivors of the expedition from Fallcrest stepped warily into the chamber beyond, into a scene of nightmares.

The place was huge, the large open space ahead further extended by a higher tier on the far side of the room, an annex that continued out of their line of sight to the left. The air was hot and thick, the chamber lit by a diffuse crimson radiance that shone from the walls, and by the light that came from several massive iron cauldrons that glowed red with heat. Fetid vapors and an aggressive bubbling noise came from those containers, the nearest of which was directly to their right upon entering. A massive stone statue of a minotaur rose up behind the cauldron, its carved features staring down malevolently upon them. A raspy droning noise reached their ears, coming from somewhere atop the upper level, its origin out of their line of sight.

A flight of broad stone steps led up to that upper tier on the far side of the room. The chamber’s occupants were up there, including several evistro demons, their attention fixated upon the back of the platform, where an orb of sinister green flames pulsated in cadence with the droning sound. One of them turned as the doors opened, and upon spotting the companions, let out a foul cackling noise that echoed through the chamber.

“Stand ready!” Vhael warned. He and Carzen took up positions near the door, while Jaron, armed now only with his small sword and dirk, huddled near the wall to the fighter’s left. Gral stood behind and between them, protected but still able to get a clear view of the entire battlefield. Beetle, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen.

The evistros leapt down from the platform, three of them in all, the last two joining the first in their fiendish cries. They were obviously eager to join the fray, but hesitated for a moment, slashing the air with their claws.

Vhael was quick to exploit their delay. “Gral, if you would,” he said.

The dwarf summoned his magic, drawing upon the power of his staff to enhance the freezing cloud that he summoned around the demons. The fiends shrieked furiously as they vanished within the icy fog, but they emerged almost at once, their fury quickly directed into a loping charge toward the intruders.

“Wait for them,” Vhael rumbled, lifting his big sword. Next to him, Carzen likewise readied to take the rush. The demons kept on coming, and as they reached the line, they sprang into the air, leaping at the defenders in a surge intended to overwhelm through sheer speed and ferocity.

But the adventurers were ready, and the terrible cackles of the demons failed to weaken their resolve, hardened by the terrible experiences they’d already overcome in the Labyrinth. Vhael caught the first with a two-handed swing that dashed it to the floor, snarling as blood jetted from a terrible wound that slashed from its shoulder to its breastbone. The demon failed to stay down, however, darting forward to tear at the dragonborn’s legs with its claws.

Just two paces distant, Carzen interrupted the second demon’s charge with his sword. He too scored a hit, but the demon caught his swordarm before he could draw back, tearing at the skin left unprotected since the Guardian had ruined his bracer. He grimaced but escaped the trap, trying to ignore the pain from the bloody rents that trickled bright red in long trails down his forearm.

He had no time to do more, as the last evistro leapt onto his shield. Claws scraped at the metal, and the demon’s weight almost overbore him. He couldn’t shake it off; the demon was too strong, too focused on taking his blood. But then, even as the base of the shield jabbed against his side, as the demon’s claws started to scrape off his helmet, it shrieked and fell back. As it dropped away Carzen saw Jaron standing there, his sword slick with the demon’s blood.

“Thanks!” he yelled, lashing out with his sword again to keep the other demon at bay. A pulse of white energy caught it in the chest before it could surge forward again, and it hissed in fury. Gambling that the fighters were too heavily occupied by its comrades, the demon darted toward the gap between them, intent on dealing with Gral.

Unfortunately for the demon, Carzen had been waiting for such a maneuver, and he slammed his sword down into it as it tried to get by, knocking it roughly to the ground. The demon snarled and sprang back, now bloodied from its multiple wounds.

Thus far the companions had more than held their own against the chamber’s defenders. But even as the freezing cloud started to dissipiate, they heard a new sound, a ponderous step that thumped upon the floor, an ominous noise accompanied by a faint scraping rattle. Even embattled with the evistros, both Vhael and Carzen looked up as the fog cleared, and a new monstrosity stepped through it to face them.

It was a skeleton, but only in the same sense that Vhael’s sword was a knife. It stood easily fifteen feet from its feet to the tips of the curved horns that jutted from its long skull. In life it had been a minotaur, a giant even for that race, and in death, it was a fearsome undead monstrosity. It carried a huge club, a maul easily nine feet in length, and as it reached the bottom of the stairs it turned toward them, promising a most unwelcome meeting.

And as if that wasn’t enough, as it came forward they saw another hulking figure behind it, coming forward to the edge of the platform. Smaller than the minotaur skeleton only by comparison, they recognized it easily, having fought a number of its kin over the last few days.

The barlgura waited only until the skeleton was clear, then it leapt down, ready to tilt the odds yet further against the would-be heroes.