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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4758171" data-attributes="member: 143">I hate to disappoint my readers, so... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />* * * * * Chapter 24When the shadow materialized out of the darkness and lunged at him, Gez thought that he was a dead man.  The soldier had felt like he’d been living on borrowed time ever since he’d survived the battle with the wyvern, which had slaughtered the other men of his squad.  He’d had an ill feeling ever since the dragonborn had led them under the ground, into the deep places where humans had no purpose intruding.  He was a man of the blade and followed orders, but he’d all but given up any hope of surviving this expedition. But the newcomer only pushed him roughly aside, and he caromed off the nearby wall before falling over onto his side, dazed.  Looking up, he witnessed a remarkable sequence of events. The figure that had knocked him down had charged into the room, moving almost in a blur.  He wore a cowled cloak, so Gez couldn’t clearly make out the identity of the stranger, but the way he moved bespoke a long familiarity with the art of combat.  He carried two swords, one long, the other short, and as Gez watched he put them to immediate use. The goblin that loomed over the fallen dwarf wizard shifted to face the new enemy, and as he drew within reach, the creature brought his axe down to greet him.  But the swordsman deflected the descending blade of the axe with a slight flick of his longer sword, without even breaking stride.  He kept on going, and at first Gez thought he was just going to ignore the goblin, until the smaller sword snapped back, and seemed to lightly touch the goblin on the neck.  That illusion was broken a moment later as the goblin collapsed, blood spurting in dark pulses from his severed jugular. Gez suddenly realized that there were more newcomers, much smaller forms that rushed past him into the room.  Halflings, four of them, most of them armed with slings that whirled in a blur around their hands.  His surprise grew even more as the cloaked swordsman glanced back at them, and Gez saw that it wasn’t a man at all, but a woman.  She shouted something that his addled brain couldn’t quite decipher, then turned back and charged into the melee still raging just a few paces away in the middle of the room.  The halflings spread out, firing fat lead pellets as they moved, while one of them rushed forward toward the fallen dwarf, unfastening a fat leather satchel that hung at his side. Almost as soon as the hobgoblin warchief had struck down Vhael, his men had surged forward to finish him off.  The two human brigands were first in line, eager to take advantage of a foe that was unable to strike back.  But before they could crunch their bludgeons into the dragonborn’s exposed skull, they were confronted with another obstacle.  Carzen half-staggered, half-crawled forward, his crippled limb tilted at a devastating angle, unable to fully support his weight.  The fighter forced the first bandit back with a wild swing that nearly cost him his balance.  He was unable to use his shield for protection, as he was relying on it to keep him propped up, and so he could do little to stop the lunge of the bandit’s friend as he swept his mace at the back of Carzen’s head.  But through some stupid tweak of luck the bandit slipped on the trail of blood that Vhael had left, and the head of the weapon caught only air as he slid to the side.  Jaron just couldn’t shake the last goblin Skullcleaver, who continued to press him.  He’d kept his bow but had drawn his sword to defend himself from the goblin, who had already scored one grazing hit with his axe, and kept up a steady progression of attacks that had forced Jaron away from the battle until the wall of the chamber loomed up behind him.  Jaron’s own attacks had all failed to so much as scratch the goblin.  He was aware that his companions were getting overwhelmed in the nearby melee, but he could not spare them so much as a glance, lest the goblin get in that solid blow that would put an end to his role in the battle, and then his life. He heard someone shout an order; he couldn’t make out the words, but the voice was familiar.  He started in surprise and almost died right there as his attention started to shift; the goblin, recovering from his last swing, jammed his forearm into Jaron’s face, stunning him with an unexpected strike.  The halfling nearly fell, only the hard presence of the wall behind him keeping him up.  But he couldn’t do much except stare as the goblin raised his axe in both hands, its head catching the light as it started down in a deadly arc. Carzen’s leg felt numb, which he knew was even more dangerous than the burning agony he’d felt from it earlier.  His strokes were slow and getting slower, and while he might have been able to handle the two bandits easily at his best, he wasn’t even in the same neighborhood of that right now.  But the bandits were hardly pressing the attack.  They knew they had allies, and they let the two hobgoblin soldiers come in to finish this persistent foe, their shields forming a protective wall before them, their flails whistling through the air over their heads.  Carzen grimaced.  “Come on then, you gods-damned bastards,” he muttered, unwilling to waste the breath for a defiant shout.  He spared a glance down at the limp form of the dragonborn general lying in a bloody mess beside him; the thought of dying protecting Vhael grated, but it wasn’t as if he was able to run away, and if he was going to go down, it would be swinging. But then everything got suddenly confusing.  The hobgoblins were careful to stay out of his diminished reach, extending their long weapons fully as they attacked.  But the blows didn’t come at Carzen, instead pounding at a slim figure that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, so quickly that the fighter almost stabbed it before he realized what was happening.  The spiked heads of the flail slashed through empty air, somehow missing the darting newcomer, who bent back and then snapped forward, two slender swords flashing forward, plunging through the gap between the shields before the hobgoblins could reset them, in and then out so fast that Carzen thought he would have missed it had he blinked.  But he hadn’t missed it, and neither had the hobgoblins, who staggered back, and then, to his amazement, fell to the ground, first one, then the other.  “Who the hell are you?” he managed to say. The newcomer turned and shot a grin at him.  His own jaw dropped; it was the woman bouncer from the halfling inn at the Seven Pillared Hall.  But her attention lingered only for a moment, as she lifted her swords again.  “We’re not done yet, pretty boy,” she said, narrowly deflecting the mace aimed at her jaw. As Carzen looked up to see the fallen hobgoblins replaced by two more foes, he felt a sudden cold twist in his gut.  The warcaster and the warchief had rejoined the battle. Jaron flinched as the goblin’s axe came down toward his head.  He couldn’t react; couldn’t do anything but watch his death coming. But the blow went wide, far wide, and the goblin followed it, leaning over, then falling forward to land on the floor at Jaron’s feet.  He could see the hilt of the dagger stuck in his back, a small knife like the ones that he and Beetle carried, but obviously big enough to do the job in this case.  He looked up and saw Rendil Halfmoon standing over him, in the company of another pair of halflings, a man and a woman who by their features looked to be close kin.  The siblings were already reloading their slings, keeping up a steady barrage of metal bullets into the ongoing battle not ten paces distant.  Rendil grinned and extended a hand to help Jaron up, but then shouted a warning, almost falling forward onto the ranger as an arrow sliced narrowly past his head.  Jaron fumbled to his feet as another arrow hit the wall behind him, its head shattering on the stone.  The archers on the balcony were still a deadly danger, the hobgoblin bows much stronger than the slings used by the halflings.  Rendil shouted an order at his fellows, and the twins unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of bullets toward the balcony as he pulled Jaron forward toward the closest cover, at the spot where the wall jutted out into the room near the center of the chamber.  Glancing out of cover, Jaron saw that the halflings’ shots were forcing the hobgoblins to keep their heads down, but none of them looked to be wounded enough to scratch off the tally of foes.  He still had his own bow, but despite the threat posed by the enemy archers, Jaron’s attention was drawn to the center of the room, where Mara was engaged in a violent struggle with the hobgoblin leaders.  Mara moved in a deadly dance, her two swords flashing in a blazing storm of steel around her body.  Her initial charge had taken out the two surviving hobgoblin soldiers, but against their leaders, it was all she could do to avoid their powerful assault.  She’d marked the warchief as the biggest threat, but she knew all too well of the dangerous magic wielded by the warcaster.  Both attacked her, the warchief thrusting with his spear in a probing attack designed to test her defenses.  She crossed her swords and deflected the thrust upward, but nearly staggered as the warcaster struck her with a coiling tendril of magical energy that tugged at her, pulling her off balance.  She was able to plant her feet and snap free of the force lure before it could draw her into the range of the caster’s deadly staff, but the distraction cost her, as the chief punched his spear into her side.  The steel scales of her armor held, but the sheer force of the impact felt like a hot knife through her body.  The hobgoblin easily avoided her counter, but she had no time to regain her equilibrium, as she came under attack from every direction.  One of the human bandits slapped her on the shoulder with his bludgeon, a love tap in comparison to the hit she’d taken from the chief, but still hard enough to leave a bruise.  The other one tried to take advantage from the opposite side, but the crippled soldier from Fallcrest kneeling behind her made a desperate lunge that clipped the bandit’s hip, forcing him back.  A hissing sound drew her attention back for an instant, and she saw the fighter go down, an arrow jutting from his chest to match the two that protruded from his leg.  She turned back, expecting another assault to exploit the distraction, but the chieftain only looked at her, his mouth twisting into an unpleasant grin. “You fight well, human woman,” he said, his lips smacking.  “But now you are alone.  The Grimmerzhul would pay a fortune for you, but I think perhaps, that I will keep you for myself.” He made a motion with his spearhead, and the warcaster moved to her left, flickering tendrils of electrical energy flaring around the head of his staff.  The bandits, in turn, spread out to come at her from behind, careful to keep their distance for now.The chief merely lifted his spear, and stepped forward, to take what he already thought of as his.  And as Mara stood there, surrounded, her side still flaring where the chief had stabbed her, she wasn’t sure that she could stop him.</blockquote>

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