Memoirs of a Lawyer turned Dungeoncrawler (Updated May 13, 2008)

[Cerulean_Wings]

Heya, Altelazar!

Good sir, I've read the first three chapters of your story, and I must say it captivates me. Simple to read, follow, and understand, told from the point of view of a psionic lawyer... simply perfect, I love the style.

You've got a fan in me, so do keep going with the story hour.

Edit: I forgot to mention your fabulous sense of humor! Please don't stop with the jokes in-between sentences

Since I didn't see the "fiction" tag, should I assume it's based on a real-life campaign?

 

[Altalazar]

Cerulean Wings - Thanks for the kind words. And yes, this is based on a real campaign, which is still ongoing. It started at 1st level and has now gone Epic (Cordozo is now a 23rd Level Psion).

And Pickfoll - I think I could arrange to have Cordozo give his general opinion of those he knows. I will be having some time for that in the next few weeks as there will probably not be any games for a month or so. But I wonder what Cordozo's incentive is to do that...

Oh, and now here's the latest installment, with a bit of meta-game commentary at the end...


Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Two – Stupid Kid, Demon Royalty

After the rather disturbing speech (which I will get to shortly) we quickly scouted out the rest of the library to clear out any stragglers. With forsight in place from Higgins, Morwen warned us of a room in a dark corridor, allowing us to charge in and surround one of the most impressive demons I’ve ever seen. Apparently he was known as the “Blood Duke” and he was a mighty demon. We found him towering over a small, prostrate child of a man sitting in a magical circle. At first I thought the demon had trapped him there, but soon it became apparent that he had trapped himself. It was a summoning protection circle. And the man was whispering something to himself over and over in some strange language.
After nearly crushing the demon, the demon teleported away. I tried to divert him at the last second, but his resistance to my mind was considerable, and he slipped away. I was able to discern from the act his destination, far below the ground, thousands of miles away in what was once an impressive demon temple. We made sure the poor sap was ok and then I inquired of my companions if they wished to pursue the demon. They did. So we did, courtesy of Posiedon (after I shared with him a vision of our destination).
The temple was hot, probably due to the lava. We quickly surrounded and finished off the demon, then returned to the room.
“Don’t kill me!” shouted the rather pathetic figure in the summoning circle.
Higgins offered a helpful translation of what the man had been saying earlier. “He was talking in Infernal, over and over, the phrase ‘Now do my bidding! Slay the monsters!’”
“He’s a demon summoner!” shouted out Ee.
“He’s an idiot!” I thought to myself, then realized with the mindlink I said it to everyone.
“What a great demon I summoned!” he said, proudly. “And that was my first time, too!”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the cliché that it was almost his last. Instead, I shot him a dirty look.
Tuvstarr offered helpful suggestions, and started into a long, detailed, rather esoteric treatise on how to summon a demon and how to do it properly, and isn’t that an interesting demon you summoned, it was probably this syllable you mispronounced.” In her excitement, she got rather close to the man, who then realized that Tuvstarr had small horns and claws herself.
As I walked out of the room behind Morwen, I could hear the echo of the man-boy’s screams just dying down inside my head.
We quickly discerned that the rest of the library was clear, except for a few more hiding patrons. We then returned to talk to Emery about where we should go next.
“Now what was this about going into space?” I asked him again.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Three – Yegga’s Lab and Tavern

Based on Emery’s information, and my vast network of information, we tracked down a person named Yegga. He was apparently staying at the Oxfield Traveller’s Rest in Marlette, a city of middling size just beyond the border to our Kingdom. The Inn was easy to find, as it was the only red building in the entire city.
I walked in and promptly approached the main desk.
“I’d like to buy the inn for the night,” I told the proprietor, a large man with an even larger apron tied around his waist. .
“You mean you want a room?” he asked as he dried his greasy hands on his already well-soiled apron.
“No, I want to buy the inn for the night,” I replied. “We don’t want to be disturbed.” I then placed a diamond on the counter worth a good percentage of the value of the entire building. “Do we have a deal?”
The proprietor’s eyes widened, and he started to stammer, his hands sliding off the apron, “Well, we have some, uh, long-time patrons who have their own rooms, and we can’t just…”
“Fine fine,” I said, cutting him off, “We’ll take the whole inn except for their rooms.” I then left Higgins to fill in the final details. Higgins was busy negotiating having the best food in the entire city brought in for our dinner when I started looking for Yegga.
Yegga was soon found. We talked to him about space. He told us of his vessel for transporting people there. He was excitedly talking about the vacuum of space and its dangers when the food finally arrived.
“Vacuum? Oh, we’ve already dealt with that,” I said off-handedly, referring to our time in the great evil tree. “That was not such a diffuclt thing.” Yegga was obviously impressed by this. He seemed eager to show off his knowledge. I was more eager to get a finally decent meal in my belly and then a good night’s sleep. Emery had warned us about the attackers of the library seeking to attack two further, unnamed libraries before attacking this Yegga. I figured that gave us at least one, possibly two good night’s sleep before they showed up here. I suggested we all retire for the night.
Yegga seemed eager to show us something, but I insisted he wait until morning. I paid for the inn and I intended to enjoy it before we headed off to his lab.
As I lay in bed, falling asleep, my true vision still active, as always, the last thought through my mind before I drifted off was “I wonder why this entire inn is radiating magic.” I did not wonder that after what happened in the morning.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Four – Fight and Flight

After a lovely night’s rest in my inn, I woke up and went down to have a four-star breakfast, all suitably arranged for all of us by Higgins. After enjoying our meal, we then causally ascended the steps up to Yegga’s room, so he could show us more of his work.
We again asked him about his lab and how he could get someone into space. Rather than tell us, like a sane person, he pulled a book out and then exclained that “See, works great! Here we go!”
And with that, we were ascending into space. The inn, and a good chunk of the ground around it, all encased in a magical bubble of protection. I silently wondered if we had enough of the four-star food stocked in the tavern for the journey ahead. I can’t stand common inn food.
Before I dwelt too long on this, I decided to go down and check. I figured I also ought to check on the other denizens of the inn, who may be alarmed at the sudden turn of events. As I was walking though the kitchen, I heard a commotion in the common room. Through the doorway, I heard a man’s voice threaten to kill the proprietor’s wife, a knife to her throat.
My companions rushed down the stairs to see what was happening, but none dared risk the woman’s life. I figured we could always raise her from the dead, so I walked out from the kitchen and into the room. Just as I stepped foot in the room, Posiedon dashed in and touched the woman and then both vanished. I wondered if he had time hopped her.
The two would-be killers looked rather startled at the loss of their hostage. Ee charged forward and they surrounded him, both stabbing him rather effectively, right in his chest, both front and back. Ee staggered and nearly fell. It was then that I finished my stride through the doorway.
“Enough of this nonsense,” I said, and then I quickly grabbed and crushed both of their brains, and they dropped lifeless to the floor. As it turns out this was rather fortunate, as the two were two of the deadliest assassins in the entire world. But I do not take kindly to anyone messing with MY inn.
We looted their corpses and calmed the patrons and then settled in for what ended up being a nine-day journey through space. Toward the end, we saw the Great Beast, which looked like a giant turtle. Or rather, more like a turtle the size of a world. An entire city was seen just on the side of its neck. As we “sailed” closer and closer, it loomed larger and larger until we could no longer make out anything but the green directly in front of us.
“Well, this is different,” I thought to myself. I hoped Higgins’s preparations would be adequate to help us with the task ahead.


==============================================

Metagame commentary: Yes, there were two Epic assassin types about to kill Ee, one like 23rd level and one 26th (if memory serves). And yes, using two Recall Deaths (primary and schismed) I did crush both of their brains as they both blew their saving throws (one missing it by one!), thus rather bloodlessly ending the combat within a round of its start. That was pretty cool. Cordozo's brain crushing hsa certainly improved with the years...

 

[pickfoll]

Cordozo may find a little more EXP heading his way if he does give his take on the PC and their cohorts. I have also been thinking of give Cordozo access to a nice little store that sell just psionic items that he may enjoy, that he could go to after this adventure ends.

Someone ask if Cordozo writings were fiction or not. They are write-up of our normal weekly game.

P.S. Turstarr wanted to say that she does NOT have horns, just claws!

 

[Altalazar]

As is obvious, it has been a while - I actually have only had time to play this game twice in the past several months - and not much time to write about it either - why, you might wonder? Because I have a new gamer in the family, born in February. Between him and his 2 1/2 year older sister, I've had my hands full. But now I'm starting to have a bit more time - so I hope to be playing (and writing) much more. I have missed it! Here's a little something to start things back on track...


Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Five – Eejection

As we got ever-closer to the world-turtle, I heard Ee come up behind me.
“Me the great massive turtle slayer!” he shouted, beaming proudly, his axe gleaming by his side.
I could sense it within the professor’s mind long before his limbs went into motion. I heard the word “eject” form in the professor’s mind as he turned to throw a lever and he aimed a device at Ee. The next thing we knew, Ee was floating in space behind us.
I quickly shot outside and then back in to retrieve him. It was reminiscent of being inside the enormous demon tree in the blackness. My body of iron was fine in the vacuum, but Ee was not quite so fortunate. Thankfully, his sojourn was short. Ee’s life thus spared from his own rashness, we prepared for our entry into the turtle. As it turned out, as usual, Ee’s closest brush with death this day was from his own mouth rather than from any of the rather nasty foes we would soon face. At least, that’s how the morning went.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Six – Arrival at Turtle-Firma

We flew closer and closer to the turtle, until we could no longer make out anything but a vast expanse of brownish-green scales in our forward view. Seeing the smaller details, it became apparent that we were moving at a very high rate of speed and that hitting the turtle like that would not be pleasant. So it was with some relief that the turtle vanished from our view as the whole structure was teleported inside the beast.
Our relief was short lived. While the building did come to a relative stop inside the belly (or wherever) of the beast, everything inside did not, and we were all thrown against the forward wall, along with all of the professor’s belongings. Were it not for my metal body, I would have been badly bruised. Higgins certainly looked the worse for wear until he healed himself.
Looking around outside the building, we saw an incredibly huge room. The walls were covered with dents and scratches and it was illuminated with a dim amber glow that seemed to come from somewhere above us. There was one extremely long door at the “south” end of the room, large enough that our entire building could have fit through it had it still been intact instead of smashed into a pile of rubble against the “east” wall.
Lacking any other means of egress, Morwen set about unlocking and opening the rather large door. Half of our group took cover in the corner behind the door while the rest of us peered around its immense length to see what trouble lay ahead. And trouble we did find.
Just beyond the door was an L-shaped corridor that went “south” then turned “east” out of sight, with a door on the “south” wall. At the elbow of the hall was a desk. Sitting behind that desk was a pale-skinned woman wearing a tunic of sea foam and lavender. She wore a heavy gauntlet on her left hand and had a huge key-ring on her apron. She looked peeved. So of course we killed her.
And when I say we killed her, I mean that, after she bashed Ee and Morwen, after I teleported and twisted her, and after she dimension doored into the huge entry room and assumed her true form (that of a gargantuan green dragon) and spewed poison on all of us, we killed her with a few vortexes of negative energy, a smattering of astral constructs, and a disintegrate for good measure. The keys turned out to open a few of the doors ahead that Morwen would have opened anyway, but the gauntlet was a bit more useful.
We found several rooms off of the hallway that were keyed to the gauntlet. One could create hexagonal columns of force with the glove (and also turn them off). It must have been some sort of cargo storage mechanism, though the fact that we found living creatures (and dead ones as well) in some of the rooms showed that cargo was not a limitation of their use. The first room had a large quantity of gold stored in a force column. We valiantly liberated it from bondage.
Halfway down the corridor, there was a large gold obelisk.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Seven – Obelisk to Infinity

Before we completely explored the extent of the hallway, we examined the gold obelisk. It was of a strange design, like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and by now, I’ve seen quite a lot. Morwen threw caution (and wisdom) to the wind and reached up to touch it. She seemed to slow down as she did so, never quite reaching it. Then she vanished.
Ee and I then had a conversation.
“Where she go?”
“I don’t know, Ee.”
“Perhaps she transport.”
“Perhaps, Ee.”
“Perhaps you link mind.”
“Yes, that is wise, Ee.”
I then attempted to contact her. I got an image of her floating out in space. And a silent scream for help. I quickly stepped forward and touched the obelisk. The world melted around me, and I saw five symbols floating in front of me. In the center was the symbol for infinity. Above that was an insect head. There was then a wheel, an octagon, and a small X. Given Morwen’s screams for help, I guessed that she touched infinity. And was still touching it. I sighed, then reached out and touched it myself.
I was instantly transported to space. Not needing to breathe, I appreciated the vast emptiness. Then I appreciated Morwen’s lifeless body hanging in front of me. I quickly grabbed her and transported us back to where we were. Then I revified her, draining a bit of my own life’s essence to restore her own for the brief instant she had departed this world, figuratively and literally. Though Morwen’s wisdom had seemed much improved of late, this reminded me of the old Morwen.
“Next time,” I told her, “do not touch infinity.” I then pondered just how we might determine what we should touch. I began to summon up a blob of ectoplasm. Time for a little scouting ahead.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Eight – Scouting ahead

I sent my small blob of ectoplasm into the obelisk. Unfortunately, I never realized just how dumb blobs of ectoplasm can be. While he certainly is good in a fight and can follow orders, he’s not very good at describing symbols or even his surroundings. After wasting a good portion of time trying to explain to the blob what an insect was, I gave up, dismissed him, and summoned forth Moira. While she doesn’t last long in most of the fights I seem to find myself in these days, she has a solid head on her shoulders. After I had Higgins make her invisible (and nearly non-detectible), I sent her into the obelisk.
She scouted obelisks and rooms for at least an hour. She discovered that there are at least three different obelisk networks. One is gold, one is blue, and one is red. To transfer between networks one needs to go to a room that has two different color obelisks present.
One room she found had what looked like a library with cultists busily reading. Another had what looked like a dining hall. Yet another had a strange figure sitting in the dark that looked like a cross between an ogre magi and something else. One room had four huge construct guards.
The most fascinating room of all had what looked like some sort of control center, with a big, strong being pulling at chains back and forth, perhaps to steer the turtle. Cultist-looking humanoids in robes sat in rows, manipulating some manner of levers and controls. A huge waterfall somewhere in the room made it difficult to hear anything but the sound of rushing water.
The final room I had her scout (but not the last room there was) had what looked like a connection to the turtle’s beating heart, perhaps using it for energy. Guarding the strange room was two pit fiends. Tired of our prolonged scouting, Ee was eager to jump into the fray.
I had Moira stay there and report while we all arranged to teleport into the room in two groups. I handled the far group, Posiedon handled the group that would drop in up close and personal.
It worked rather well. The fiends were chained to a wall, but were no less deadly. I quickly dominated one, only to discover that while my brain controlled its mind, its mind seemed to have no control over its body.
We quickly swarmed them, sending blades, axes, and various flavors of magic into each of them. They did not last long. When one lay dead and the other nearly so, I touched the nearly dead one and absorbed his strength into my own. Now if only that did not make me look sort of like him while its effects lasted.

Baron Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Nine – Cleaning out the hall

That room secure, we returned back to our hall. The remaining two rooms at the end of that corridor had more hexagonal-force-column storage rooms. One held a rather colossal water elemental. In return for freeing it, it attacked us and tried to kill us. So much for gratitude. We killed it. Its corpse splashed out of the room and filled the hallway with water. This is not very good for my wardrobe.
The second room we entered by my disintegrating a hole through the wall. This was to avoid setting off a magical alarm that was actually on both doors, though the water elemental’s room was disabled when Tuvstarr used dispel magic on it. Not desiring to use another spell, a hole through the wall seemed a prudent compromise.
This last room had several force-columns in place. Most held decaying corpses. A few were empty. One held a rather distressed-looking old woman. She had so little room in the hexagonal column that she had to stand up even as she was sleeping.
“So, good idea to free the evil demon,” I asked.
“No thank you,” Morwen replied. Once Morwen used the gauntlet to lower the field, she fell to the floor. The old woman did not look to be in good shape.
“Higgins, heal her.”
Higgins weaved his magic around her and her wounds were healed.
“Feeling better now,” I asked her.
“Yes, terrible,” she said. “This woman kept torturing me.”
“You mean the dragon?”
“Dragon??” she said, eyes wide.
“Yes, dragon. We killed her. So who are you, now?”
“I’m Elanor Shellsville. I teach at the Westphalen school.”
“Of course you do. Do you know of a young student who fancies himself a demon summoner?”
“Well, there was one student…”
“He succeeded. Tell him not to do it again.” I sensed that the conversation was not likely to go anywhere further, probably because the only thing in her mind was visions of being tortured mixed in with images of whacking knuckles with rulers. “Would you like to go home now?”
“Oh, yes!” she gushed.
“Posiedon, will you do the honors?”
Posiedon nodded and set about making a teleportation circle that would bring her to the hills outside of Westphalen. Feeling generous, I turned and asked the professor if he would also like to go home.
“No, doggunnut, no!” shouted Ee, before the professor could respond. “He brought us here, doggunnit, he can stay!” I saw visions in Ee’s head of exactly what would happen to the professor’s foot if he took even one step toward the teleportation circle. I didn’t quite believe that sort of thing was even possible with an axe, though Ee can be quite creative in his own way. Fortunately, before Ee’s imagination was put to the test, the professor declined.
“No no, no need to send me back. I have dreamed my whole life of coming to see the great cosmic turtle! I wish to be nowhere else!”
Now that that was settled, I was famished. “Higgins, lunch!”

 

[Arkhandus]

Glee! An update! And congratulations on the baby, Altalazar!

 

[Altalazar]

Thanks Arkhandus! I'm happy to have a new addition to the family and I'm happy to be gaming again!

Here's another installment:


Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Ten – Back to Pit Fiends

We returned to the room with the Pit Fiend corpses after lunch. Looking more closely at the room, I noted that there was a sign up on a large vat that apparently fed into the heart. Roughtly translated, it read, “best for all concerned.” I was not sure what that meant, but it could not have been good. The vat was filled with noxious poison.
Tuvstarr added a vial of poison neutralization potion to the vat. It was quickly swallowed by the foul ichor. There was some debate, then about the proper course of action.
“Higgins, can you neutralize that poison?”
“Yes suh, but it would take quite a long time with a lot of castings.”
I thought about it for a moment. Then my impatience got the best of me. I decided to focus my mind to bend reality around the vat. I closed my eyes and focused hard. “I want to get rid of that poison,” was the thought that coursed through my mind and then was rammed into our reality. When I opened my eyes, the vat was empty.
Then I pondered our overall situation. We were inside of a turtle larger than the largest mountain range, floating out in the vastness of space. Devils of the most horrid kind were minor slaves deep in its bowels. Ancient dragons acted as mere bookkeepers. I thought back to the tower and the vampires on that infernal plane. I decided that something needed to be done to ensure our ultimate victory.
“Higgins, we need to do a little research.”
“Very good, suh.”
“Care to join me, Tuvstarr? It may take several months.”
Tuvstarr whipped out her books and pens. “It probably won’t be long enough for me to catch up on my writing, but it will have to do.”
Higgins, Tuvstarr, and myself then shifted to the astral, with Tuvstarr forming a bubble of alternate time-flow around us. I asked Tuvstarr to increase the flow for us relative to the ether such that a single second would pass for every ten days we experienced. I had my worries about where the turtle would be when we returned.
As I floated in the nether space, I concentrated deep within. I crafted and built up from single tendrils of thought the formula of for a very special and powerful power of my mind. It was a tricky construction, one that provided a mere matrix for things more useful. I hoped I would never have to use it. My nose was bleeding as it was just from conceiving it.
Higgins, for his part, took care of his own matters. He fabricated a body of snow, and then took a bit of my flesh and animated it, providing us with a new, hooded companion, whose good looks were matched only by myself.
My mediation complete, we returned to our normal plane. Even though only seconds had passed, we were now floating out in space. Fortunatly, we were within range of the room and so I transported us back to the devil’s room.
Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Eleven – A grisly discovery

When we returned to the chamber, the first thing I noticed was that all of our companions were lying on the floor, motionless. In the few seconds we were gone, something had slain them all! Even Moria’s body lay motionless on the floor of the chamber.
I wondered just what could slay such a band of powerful beings so quickly, and with nary a mark on their skin. It didn’t take long for the answer to hit me. Nothing.
I then looked more closely at Ee. He was not so motionless after all. He seemed to be chuckling.
“Oh my, everyone is dead,” I said. “Let’s loot the bodies!”
At that moment, they all sprang back to life, my words acting as an intensely powerful, mass resurrection. I decided just for that prank, I would decline to introduce my new “backup” wearing the plain robes.
My mind refreshed (along with Higgins’s and Tuvstarr’s spells), we turned to the situation at hand. Where do we go next?
“Where do we go next,” I asked everyone.
“Ee want kill large demon ogre.”
I could only assume Ee meant the large, dangerous looking half-ogre-magi, half-something else that Moira had seen on her earlier scouting expedition. Given our success with the devils, we opted to again teleport in all at once under our own power to achieve surprise on the beast.
Before we departed, Higgins cast a web of enchantment over both Ee and Morwen. “This is the zealous wrath of my god,” he told them. “When you face a foe that is also his foe, his wrath will fill you and empower you as long as you focus your own wrath on that foe.” Thus prepared, we departed.

Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Twelve – Ten seconds, dead

We arrived in the room by the power of my mind, then quickly acted to surround and overwhelm the impressive looking foe. He was half dead before he could take a step. And then, just to seal his fate, I smashed his ego with my own, draining his force of personality and dazing him. Before he could recover, we had all hit him again, and he collapsed to the floor of the room.
His body was laden with rather impressive items of magic, but the most interesting items of all were the two tiny turtles he had up the sleeves of his robe. What made them so interesting was not so much the fact that they were positioned as if they were hidden weapons, but the fact that, by my true sight, they were not turtles at all, they were two of the hugest, most fiendish ropers I had ever seen. My read of the beasts’s brain as its life-force ebbed away informed me that it was his intention to throw these creatures out at us and dispel the enchantment that kept them as turtles. What an interesting idea. I’ll have to use that one. I quickly concentrated on the two tiny turtle brains and squished out of them any semblance of their wills. Now I had my own two pet turtle-ropers for later.
Turning my attention to the room, it looked like an observation room of some sort. Ee seemed to think we were looking out of one of the turtle’s eyes. There certainly was a lovely view out into space through a twin pair of windows on the “south” wall of the room. There were also two halls leading west and east from the “north” corner of the room. Unsure of what to expect, I sent Moira ahead, still invisible, to scout to the “east.” Morwen, not to be let out of her own scouting role, chose not to follow my suggestion to head “west” and followed Moira.
They quickly found a door, which Morwen opened and peeked through. There was a cavern of enormous proportions on the other side, the far side of which was in darkness. Moria, her eyes seeing true, teleported to the center of the room to scout and then came back a moment later.
“Dragon,” was all she said. Then she amended her report. “Colossal dragon.”
Wonderful. It seemed we were to get to engage in the ultimate test of our mettle.
“Well Ee, you are the one who wanted to name us ‘Dragonslayers’ – now we have a dragon to slay. A red one. The largest one there is.”
Ee’s only reply was, “Let’s go kill!”

Cordozo – Chapter Three-Hundred Thirteen – Dragonslayers at last

Once again, Posiedon and myself split our little band into two groups. Posiedon took a group to get up close to the dragon while I took everyone else, aiming for a crevice in the rocks that would give at least some cover to the soft underbelly of our group. Posiedon, Morwen, and Ee were in the close group, where they were soon joined by three huge astral constructs, courtesy of one of Posiedon’s followers.
Morwen, fleet-footed as ever, was poised to strike first when she realized that she could not actually see the dragon.
“Someone, let me know when you get rid of the darkness,” she shouted over the mindlink, obviously aiming her words at me. Rather than answer her, I quickly concentrated on the darkness, which then evaporated. Unfortunately for Morwen, she still could not see her.
Focusing my true-sight on the dragon, I realized why. There was more than just darkness here. The dragon was cloaked with magical invisibility, and on top of that, there were many images of the dragon bouncing around, also invisible. Rather ineffective combination, that, but no matter. I moved myself mentally to the other side of the cavern, closer to the beast, taking Higgins with me. With my split mind, I focused on evaporating everything cloaking the dragon, and succeeded, peeling away her invisibility, her images, and a few other things that I did not quite identify. Thus freed for assault, Morwen tore into the beast, her blade finding hot vengeance, fueled further by the zealous magic imbued in her by Higgins earlier. Dragon flesh flew in all directions, splattering blood all over Morwen and even up to the cavernous ceiling above us. I had never seen Morwen’s blade dance so deadly before. Several of her blows sent the beast staggering, nearly stopping its heart. The dragon did not look pleased.
Ee’s wrathful attacks were nearly as powerful, ripping up dragonflesh in a wild frenzy of his own. Posiedon added to the carnage, teleporting back and forth from the front of the beast and back again with each swing.
Tuvstarr and others send magical attacks the dragon’s way, but they were mostly shrugged off. My own personal simulacrum attempted to disintegrate the beast, but she resisted with ease.
Posiedon’s other followers drained the beasts with sharp exposures to the negative material plane, but she kept right on fighting. Then she roared up on her hind legs and inhaled deeply. I braced for the inevitable.
Because of where we stood, the beast could only target two of us with her searing breath: Posiedon and myself. I first felt a wave of heat headed toward me before my entire vision and being was engulfed in a wash of flames so large and so hot that I was afraid all of my flesh would be seared from my bones. The heat was so intense it ripped through my adaptive screen and tore through my mentally-enhanced vigor, as if those protections were non-existent. My protections gone or overwhelmed, the heat continued to burn, digging into my bare flesh, burning away the outer layers before finally dying down. I did not look forward to testing my ability to survive that again without restoring my protections, but I did not know if I would have the opportunity to do so with all that I had to accomplish each second.
Higgins bravely moved forward next and threw forth a ray of entropy against the beast, sapping all of its physical attributes at once, a little bit at a time. I was very thankful that Higgins was still hidden from view by his own magic, because I was not sure if he could survive the dragon’s fire.
Ee and Morwen continued to rip into the dragon’s flesh, axe and rapier sending flesh flying in a frenzy. The dragon was clearly taxed just to keep her heart beating with some of the grievous blows dealt by them.
In the end, despite the dragon’s great strength, she simply could not stand against us. I stripped away her force of personality, whipping her ego with my mind again and again, both of my minds at once, taking her sorcerous magic from her. The dragon finally collapsed at Morwen’s and Ee’s feet, a final firey scream her only death throe.
Now we had truly earned the name. Dragonslayers. I could feel the pride emanating from Ee as he stood beside the corpse, covered in the blood and entrails of the beast, his gleaming white teeth the only part of him not stained red by blood and flesh.
“Ee happy!”