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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4756021" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 23A lot of things happened all at once. Carzen started to turn toward the exit, but before he could take even one step, an arrow from the balcony caught him on the leg, this time in the thick calf muscle on the same leg where he’d been shot before in the thigh.  He cried out as the limb buckled, and went down hard.  The one consolation was that the attack probably saved him from a worse fate, as a twisting tendril of force energy from the warcaster’s staff passed harmlessly over him, quickly dissipating into nothing.  Vhael was left alone to face the Bloodreaver charge, and he held his ground against the overwhelming odds, shifting slightly to protect the fallen Carzen.  Under the enemy warchief’s direction the enemy line snapped shut around him, the humans moving to flank him while the hobgoblins threatened him from ahead.  The goblins, rather than trying to press into the crowded space around the dragonborn, spread out around him and ran toward the others in the rear ranks.  A pair of goblins ran up to Gral.  The dwarf wizard slammed his staff into the floor before they could reach him, unleashing a thunderwave that drove both of them back.  One fell to the ground, blood oozing from his mouth, nostrils, and ears.  The other one shook his head to clear it and started forward again, more wary this time.  Gral lifted his staff again, but before he could work another spell a goblin crossbow bolt shot him in the hip.  The wizard, already seriously wounded, toppled over, grimacing in pain.  Jaron had brought a goblin down with a point-blank shot, but he had his hands full with the last one, who was pressing him hard, forcing him to fall back.  The only other person in a position to help was Gezzelhaupt, who’d gained the shelter of the exit.  He hesitated there for an instant, with escape right in front of him.  Finally he started to turn back around, but before he could intervene in the battle, he sensed movement out of the darkness of the tunnel.  The startled soldier dropped his bow and started to draw his sword, but before he could ready his weapon or shout a warning, a tall figure barreled out of the darkness and knocked him roughly aside.  The battle degenerated into a violent, chaotic melee.  There was no way that Vhael could stand against the enemies around him, yet somehow, in those first initial instants, he did.  The dragonborn parried one attack, dodged another.  He somehow got the two human bandits tangled up together for a moment, and they were forced to disengage briefly before coming in again, swinging at his less-protected flanks with their iron bludgeons.  The hobgoblin soldiers attacked with methodical overhead strikes from their flails, but like the warlord they were wounded and tired, and Vhael was able to turn crippling blows into glancing hits that were absorbed by his coat of mail.  But even Vhael could not stand before the hobgoblin warchief, who stepped forward, and out of reach of any counterattack, thrust his spear with a single powerful jerk of his arm.  The dragonborn tried to lift his own weapon to parry, but his effort came far too late, and the head of the weapon slammed into his shoulder, piercing steel and leather and hide and muscle, hitting him hard enough to topple him over onto his back, where he lay, stunned and bleeding.</blockquote>

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