Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 166
(particular thanks to Piratecat who took round-by-round notes of the battle against the dragon, which is why I am able to include detail after so much time...)
Aravis approaches the demiplane, dreading what he might see inside. At first his worst fears seem realized; the Archmagi are sprawled out of their chairs, lying motionless on the floor. Aravis moves inside and looks closely at Ozilinsh. He’s breathing! He checks two of the others, and they too are alive, albeit unconscious. Perhaps he should…
Over the Rary’s telepathic bond: “I think… it’s a dragon!”
Ah, no rest for the weary. Aravis leaves the Archmagi to recover on their own, and drags his mind out of the Maze. He’s not thinking clearly, and he knows he’s not thinking clearly, but he doesn’t care -- his judgement isn’t what it should be, either.
His brain hurts.
Attrius and Portia watch anxiously as Aravis stands up suddenly, stumbles, sits down again, stands up a second time.
“Are you alright sir?” asks Attrius. “What happened?”
“I think I did it,” Aravis says groggily. “But we’re not done yet. There’s a dragon out there for us to fight. Come on!”
“I’ll stay here and guard the…” says Skorg, but before he can even finish the other three have flown out of the secure shelter and into the damp sky.
* *
Kay and her contingent of five Yrimpa were ordered to patrol the skies above the Mud Zone and surrounding forest. Their directives: make periodic checks of the “key room” which could be used by the enemy to release the monsters from their hanging boxes above Kinnet Gorge; and to be on the lookout for groups of flying enemies, dealing with them as necessary.
It is not long after the bulk of the enemy army arrives that this second condition is violently met.
Kay spots a flock a flock of almost fifty flying creatures, above and several hundred yards east of the "Mud Zone." They resemble small dragons -- maybe they are wyverns? -- and have spiked tufts at the ends of their tails. These creatures are swooping down into clearings where fighting is taking place, and firing off volleys of tail spikes into Kingdom soldiers. Their spikes grow back a few seconds later, and they dive-bomb again. They also (again, every few rounds) breathe jets of hot steam at their foes.
When she reaches them to engage, these creatures have already decimated dozens of Kingdom soldiers; the forest is sparser there, and the good guys are having a tough time finding adequate cover. And there are enough enemy soldiers in the area that the good guys cannot simply flee willy-nilly.
The battle against the drakes is long and difficult, a spectacular battle that ranges far and wide over trees and clearings, sometimes down near the ground, sometimes hundreds of feet in the air. For about half a minute Kay receives supporting arrow fire from friendly ground troops, until enemy soldiers engage them in melee. The whole fight takes as long as several ordinary battles often do.
In the end, Kay and the Yrimpa prevail. Kay has used her control winds power to blast many of them down into the ground, where kingdom foot-soldiers hacked them up with swords. She has used her whirlwind power when several of the creatures tried to surround her in the air and attack with claws and teeth. She has used the cure moderate wounds power of her magical warhammer as well as both of her cure light wounds spells, and still by the time the last of the creatures was dispatched, she looked like a human pincushion. One Yrimpa has been slain, shredded by a concentrated volley of tail spikes. Another is barely conscious, and all of them, including Kay, are badly wounded
Kay and the four surviving Yrimpa (and Oa Lyanna, who had not "disengaged" from Kay’s body) find their way to a healing tent, where clerics of Delioch manage to heal them somewhat back to health. As the last Yrimpa is being healed, there is a sudden blast of thunder from the direction of the Mud Zone. Wind begins to blow through the forest from that same direction, increasing until it’s a steady fifty miles per hour, and then that is followed by a shock wave of white energy that swept through the trees, leaving a glowing white outline on every leaf and branch.
There is moment of eerie silence after that, as if all the fighting has stopped to wonder at this new phenomenon. Then she hears a sound of concentrated shouting coming from the Mud Zone, followed by a distant roar. As healed they are going to get, Kay and her air spirits fly toward the Mud Zone to investigate...
* *
“A dragon!” says Dranko, disgusted. “Don’t we get a break sometime around now?”
“We cannot just leave this woman’s body here,” says Morningstar. “I want to make sure I have the chance to question it later.”
They quickly devise a plan. Ernie flies through the forest away from the Mud Zone for about 100 yards, where the fighting is less thick. He finds a small clearing, notes its location, and flies back. Meanwhile, the others rig a quick makeshift rope harness around the red-armored woman’s body, being careful not to touch the armor itself.
Ernie returns and explains to the others where the clearing is. Then he grabs the harness and dimension doors the body back to the clearing while the rest of the group flies there. Once they’re all in the clearing, Grey Wolf casts a rope trick. While most of the company starts hauling the body up into the extradimensional pocket, Dranko spots a small melee about thirty yards away and flies over. To his satisfaction, two kingdom soldiers have just finished off one of Naradawk’s men, but one of the good guys has fallen over. Dranko heals them both before addressing the one who is still standing.
* *
His name was Thomas, and he was a farmer, and that was that. He was a strong man, yes, but not young, not particularly brave, and he’d never picked up a sword in his life. He liked carrots. They were his favorite, and his most successful crop.
Then the war happened, some strange battle in a far-off part of the kingdom. And word soon came that if you had someone you could leave behind to look after your farm, you had to go fight. Thomas was a good man, and knew the law, and did what he had to do. He left the farm to his wife and his daughters, and three weeks later he was on the Balani Peninsula, digging trenches and cooking meals and (to his shame, he felt) hoping he would never have to kill anyone.
To his great relief Thomas was never asked to engage in battle, though once he was sent out with a force of fifteen to make sure a particular hilltop was clear, and they spotted an enemy unit of over two hundred foot-soldiers. They hid.
Then one day he heard that the Delfirians, those Fire God worshippers, were fleeing back to where they came from. He knew then that he could go back to his farm and his family and take up his hoe again.
But then word came again of another battle, this one not so far down the road from his farm near Minok. Again he was chosen, and soon was on a ship back to Harkran. This time the invaders were going to attack in the middle of the Greatwood, near that creepy village of Verdshane, the one with all the ruins. He had visited there one time, as a child. He hated it.
For weeks they had built up defenses, mostly chopping down trees. He got the general idea that the enemy was just going to sort of appear by some sort of magic, right in the middle of the forest. So everyone was basically hacking down trees, while a bunch of engineer-type fellows worked out how to divert some of the river into the clearing they were making. That way, when the bad guys appeared, they’d be up to their ankles in mud, and the good guys could just shoot ‘em while they were stuck.
He couldn’t remember when the crazy thunder had started, and the weird flashing lights. Everyone was nervous, even the real soldiers. They had offered him a sword, but he felt more comfortable with a pitchfork. He was stationed with a group of about twenty soldiers, some of them real fighting men and others who were conscripts like him. His leather armor didn’t fit so well, but he was glad to have it. They were stationed a ways into the forest, in case any of the bad guys got out of that muddy stuff.
This morning all hell had broken loose. It was just like they said – enemy soldiers just started poppin’ up all over the damn place. The man in charge of his group, an officer named Allin, had kept them together pretty well. They spotted a few bad guys in ones and twos in the woods, and finished ‘em off as a group. Gods, though, some of them enemy fighters were good. Even outnumbered, one of them had chopped up two of his group.
Then, finally, a knot of about eight bad guys just kinda appeared, no flash, no sound, no nothin’. Everything became chaos. Allin got shot with a crossbow bolt right through his helmet. A big battle was like nothin’ he had dreamt about – it was jus’ all chaos and jabbing and slashing and screaming and running. He thought he might have got one of the bastards with his pitchfork, but he wasn’t sure. Someone had nicked him with a sword on his shoulder, but not so bad, really. And then he realized that they had all gotten separated, and it was just he and one of his buddies, Rogen, another normal guy who they had given a weapon to, facing down one mean-looking fellow in fancy black armor.
But thank Pikon, the bad guy was pretty hurt already, and the two of them tried getting’ one of them on either side of the guy, like Allin had taught them. The bugger got Rogen pretty good, but Thomas spotted an opening and jammed his pitchfork into a gap in the bad guy’s neck armor. Blood started sprayin’ everywhere and the guy fell over, grabbing his throat.
Rogen fell over too. Blood was pourin’ out of the poor fellah, and Thomas was no healer. Damn it all! Rogen was a good man, and didn’t deserve to die like this. Thomas watched helplessly as his friend’s lifeblood poured out onto the matted grass.
Then things got weird.
This hideous looking guy who mighta’ been some kind of monster (he had big ol’ lower teeth like tusks) came flyin’ – no, literally, flyin’ – out of the trees. He was wearin’ an official fancy uniform, though, and had a holy symbol of Delioch the Healing Hand around his neck. This guy, he landed, and Thomas pointed to Rogen, and the new guy mumbled some words and cast a healing spell, and Rogen’s bleeding stopped and he opened his eyes and you could tell he didn’t understand what was happening. Then the healer did the same for Thomas, even though he wasn’t as badly hurt. He had a gravelly voice, and he said,
“What’s your name, soldier.”
“Thomas, sir.”
“Where you from, Thomas?”
“Minok, sir. Leastaways, my farm is just outside the city there.”
“I have a job for you, Thomas. It’s very important, and it doesn’t involve any fighting.”
“I’m all for that, sir.”
The new guy with the tusks picked up Thomas and flew them both back a ways, where there was the most crazy collection of people you could ever think to see. Two of ‘em were little guys, halflings, and one of ‘em was in this little suit of plate mail from head to toe. There was a tall woman with a pale face wearin’ all black, and a short guy in shiny plate mail holding a big honkin’ sword that was on fire, and, no kiddin’, a dwarf with a pile of rocks that was followin’ him around like it was alive. Then another guy’s head appears up in the air, just his head, upside down.
“The body’s all set up here,” said the head. Mean lookin’ guy, too.
“Thomas,” said the guy with the tusks. “Here’s your job. Up there…” he pointed to the guy with the head, “is a hidden invisible room. There’s a dead body up there, of an enemy soldier who we killed. We want you to climb up this rope into the invisible room, and guard that body. Whatever you do, don’t touch the red armor! It will kill you if you touch it, understand?”
Thomas didn’t understand any of the rest of it, but that much was clear enough. Don’t touch the armor.
“Once you’re up there, pull up the rope after yourself. No one will see you, or be able to reach you. Every so often, stick your head out just a little bit, and if we’ve come back, lower the rope.
“I think I got that,” said Thomas. If this wasn’t the strangest moment of his life, nothing was.
So Thomas climbed up the rope, and found himself in a plain little room made out of… well, made out of nothin’ as near as he could tell, and in the corner was a corpse in red armor, just like the tusked guy said. Thomas pulled up the rope while the strange folk all started flyin’ away, and then he moved to the corner opposite the dead body and sat down, scratching his head.
Thomas had often dreamt of what true battle would be like, in those nights on the Balani Peninsula. He had heard stories from the veterans, tales of horror, tales of glory, tales of pain and victory and blood and death.
He’d never heard anything like the story he was in just now.
* *
The Company is now converging on the Mud Zone from several directions. In the main group, Dranko casts prayer in anticipation of a battle. The drizzle has stopped and somewhere above the haze the sun has come out; it is rapidly burning away the mist. From somewhere ahead comes the sound of crackling electricity, followed by a tremendous bestial roar. Step gulps down a haste potion on the fly.
The dragon comes into view, a massive shape silhouetted behind mist being roiled by monstrous wings. The still hasted Grey Wolf doesn’t waste any time – he launches two fireballs through the haze at the dragon. The fiery explosions burn away much of the remaining haze in the area, and reveal the monster itself more clearly.
Its body is a dull yellow color, and bigger than a large wagon. Huge leathery wings sprout from its back, and each of its four claws has talons like daggers. Its maw is like a thicket of swords.
Around its neck is a huge red-iron collar, and in its eyes – madness. From what little the Company knows about dragons they have expected a great intelligence, but this one looks more rabid than cunning. A white froth is visible all around its gaping mouth. But insane or not, it still emanates a tremendous wave of fear. While the Company is not much affected, below on the ground, hundreds of soldiers on both sides are slogging as fast as they possibly can through the mud, fleeing in terror, thinking of nothing save putting as much distance as they can between themselves and the dragon above.
A humanoid form comes flying in from the other side and slashes at the dragon’s body, but the Company cannot tell who it is. The dragon swoops up and around, turning on the arriving Company, and breathes a wide, hissing cone of electricity that catches Flicker, Dranko, Ernie and Grey Wolf. The two rogues dodge gracefully and emerge unburned, but Ernie cannot avoid the lightning completely, and Grey Wolf takes the full brunt.
Dranko decides to try getting onto the dragon’s back where (in theory) he would be less vulnerable to its claws and teeth. He swoops in toward the creature’s back as it flies, but misjudges its speed and direction and bounces violently off its scaly hide.
Another humanoid figure appears, floating in the air nearby. It is Matthias, High Priest of Pikon, who the Company thought had been killed by the enemy invisible mages. Matthias gestures grandly, and in a booming voice intones: “You shall have no victory here, foul lizard of Naradawk! I shall smite you down with holy wrath!” The dragon turns its neck to glance at Matthias, but after a second it turns away, focusing on the Company again. Matthias continues to bellow threats.
Kibi fires off magic missiles which bounce harmlessly off the glistening dragon scales. Then the paladin of Pikon, Glade, flies in from the side to attack with her scythe. She is struck hard by a claw as she closes, but recovers, swings her weapon, and scores a gash across its foreleg. Ernie follows, but misses with a swing from Beryn Sur.
Kay arrives from above, trailed by her four Yrimpa warriors, and with her magical war-hammer in one hand and her magical dagger in the other. She flies down ready to swing but her arm is clipped hard by the dragon’s flapping wing. She loses her grip on the hammer, and it goes spiraling down into the mud. Her dagger strike is more successful, plunging in between scales. three of the Yrimpa close to try bludgeoning the dragon, while the fourth flies down to retrieve Kay’s weapon. Morningstar strikes the dragon with a searing darkness, but cannot tell if the beast is damaged. Step flies in and swings his greatsword but it turns harmlessly against the dragon’s hide.
Aravis, Attrius and Portia finally reach the battle, but they are greeted rudely by a cone of cold that seems to come from nowhere. The invisible mage who escaped earlier has returned at a most inopportune moment. Aravis and Portia survive the blast fairly well, but Attrius is badly frozen. Aravis orders Attrius to go get healing from Morningstar; the bodyguard reluctantly agrees.
The kingdom wizard Fulton arrives, and peppers the dragon with magic missiles. Flicker decides that this would be a good time to try his ring of blinking, which (out of fear) he has not used for quite some time. As he starts to blink in and out of the ethereal plane, he sees in the distance the black ethereal leeches that attacked him previously. They don’t seem immediately interested in him, so he keeps the ring on and heads toward the dragon.
Aravis, fully loaded with spells and hasted, unleashes a pair of sonic bolts at the dragon. Everyone in the vicinity winces at the deafening sound, and the dragon roars in pain. Its eyes roll madly in its head and foamy spittle sprays from around its maw.
Kibi, still under the effects of a see invisibility, spots the enemy spellcaster flying in for another attack. He flies himself in that direction, makes his best judgement concerning his target’s vector, and casts a spherical wall of force in mid-air. Success! The flying sorceress flies smack into the wall of force and finds herself trapped in a floating magical bubble.
Ernie retreats and heals himself with a wand of cure serious wounds. Grey Wolf flies around to put the force sphere between himself and the dragon, and then activates his Mordenkainen’s Cube to cast Mordenkainen’s lucubration, recalling a haste to replace the one that just expired.
Kibi watches with dismay as his trapped mage casts a spell and disappears. He still can still see invisibility so he assumes she has teleported or dimension doored out.
Finally the last combatant comes flying in to join the battle; it’s Royce, the leader of Fortune’s Children. Those in the Company who see him notice immediately that none of his adventuring group is with him. Royce flies in, swings his flail harmlessly at the dragon, and retreats. One Certain Step flies in from the other direction and has more success, striking twice with his greatsword and opening bleeding gashes in the dragon’s flank. The dragon flies upward, twists its body, and breathes another huge cone of electricity, engulfing Step and several others.
The dragon is now in the center of a swarm of attackers – all of the surviving Charagan heroes are flying around the beast like a cloud of insects. Kay flies in a strikes again with her dagger, while her Yrimpa buffet the monster with raw elemental force. Dranko takes advantage of his flanking position to whip the great lizard with pinpoint accuracy, tearing off scales from its neck. The wizard Fulton fires another volley of magic missiles. And the flickering Flicker swoops in to attack with his short sword.
The dragon quickly twists around and chomps down on the approaching halfling, snatching him right out of the air in its jaws. Only the ring of blinking saves Flicker’s life. The dragon finds itself chewing on something that keeps disappearing and reappearing in its mouth, so it can’t quite get a good bite down on the morsel.
At least Flicker’s arms are free. Wincing in pain, he digs around in his pack for a weapon long hoarded – a globe of acid fog. He smashes it against one of the dragon’s teeth, and suddenly a quickly expanding cloud of solid green vapor envelops the dragon along with Kay and Dranko. Aravis decides to fire off spells again anyway. (Something in the back of his mind warns that he might hurt his friends. It stays there.) Two more sonic bolts are sent blasting into the fog toward where the dragon just was. Dranko is hit by one and Kay by the other, but both also strike the dragon, which howls in agony.
Kibi starts turning in place, watching, waiting for the enemy mage to rejoin the fight. There is an unexpected calm in the battle, a few seconds where everyone stops, watching the roiling green cloud, waiting for something to happen. Then the dragon flaps its way out of the top of the acidic fog, its scales scorched and smoking. Flicker (smoking somewhat less due to his resistant armor) is still in its jaws, looking none too happy. Everytime he blinks he tries to fly out of its mouth, but he never quite makes it, and the dragon keeps shifting him around between its jaws. Morningstar flies around the acid cloud, endures a raking claw from the dragon, and heads right to its mouth. She heals Flicker. Looking up into its insane eyes and glistening fangs, she says out loud, “Well this is one of the dumber positions I’ve been in.”
“And you’re not even married to Dranko yet,” calls back Ernie, completely unaware that he might be making an off-color joke.
Step flies in next to Morningstar and also heals the grateful Flicker. The child wizard Wellington launches a fireball at the back half of the dragon, but fails to penetrate its natural resistance to magic. Glade slashes again with her scythe but cannot pierce the scales.
Kay, annoyed with the giant cloud of acidic fog that’s now cluttering the battlefield, takes out her wind fan and calls up a gust of wind. Within a few seconds the billowing vapors are dispersed and blown away. Once again everyone has a clear view of the madly-flapping dragon, Flicker in its teeth.
Dranko uses his healing wand on himself, needing it badly after getting struck full on by Aravis’ sonic bolt. Fulton casts a slow spell at the dragon that has no effect. Alas, that failed spell is his last act on Abernia. The invisible enemy spellcaster has returned, with an acid orb fired straight into Fulton’s chest. Horribly burned, the wizard’s body tumbles out of the sky. Aravis yells to the kid Wellington.
“Can you see the wizard? Blast it!”
“I can’t see anything!” shouts back Wellington. “It must be invisible.”
Aravis curses, but it turns out well. Kibi does spot their invisible foe, and nails it with a glitterdust.
“Hellooooo, target!” says Grey Wolf. He shoots off two ice knives at the enemy mage.
Like Dranko before him, Ernie gets it into his head to get onto the dragon’s back, but in preparation he drinks a potion of spider climb first.
The dragon, badly wounded and sensing its peril despite its madness, flies straight up, taking Flicker with it. Ernie shouts out “dragon-back express leaves any time now… who’s coming?” Morningstar flies over to him. Dranko heals Kay before she flies up in pursuit, and then flies himself over to join Ernie and Morningstar.
And that puts them in a perfectly targetable cluster. The glittering mage casts cone of cold, catching the three clerics, as well as Glade. Miraculously all of them survive, though Ernie is badly frozen.
Aravis grins, and almost giggles. Two can play at that game! He finds an angle that won’t catch any of his friends, and casts his own cone of cold. The enemy caster can’t get out of the way, has no resistance, and takes the full frozen blast. Another body falls out of the sky.
Kibi pulls out a fireball scroll and launches the spell at the dragon. It explodes harmlessly, foiled by its spell resistance.
“Here we go!” says Ernie. He grabs Morningstar and Dranko and casts dimension door. All three clerics are suddenly teetering precipitously on the dragon’s back. Alas, it turns out not to matter. Grey Wolf launches two more fireballs from far below, and both of them penetrate the dragon’s resistance. The dragon lets loose one last cry of pain before it blacks out, and begins to drop toward the ground far below.
Unfortunately, one of Grey Wolf’s fireballs also catches the badly wounded Ernie, and he drops unconscious, still stuck to the dragon’s back as it starts to fall. Morningstar makes a desperate grab, and by flying upward while holding onto the halfling, manages to peel Ernie away before he is borne downward.
Flicker is still in its mouth. “Heeeeeeeelp!”
Quick as lightning, Dranko uncurls his whip and lashes downward. All of his training as a lasher comes to the fore in this one crucial moment; the end of the whip curls around Flicker's waist. The gods must be with him as well, because Flicker doesn’t blink out in those few critical seconds. Dranko pulls hard, and Flicker is roughly torn out of the dead dragon’s slackened jaws.
The dragon’s body turns end over end as it completes its fall, down, down…
Squelch!
The body of the beast sinks deep, deep into the mud.
...to be continued...
