Chapter 3: “Wherein our protagonists try on the coat of heroism, and find it tight across the shoulders.”
“SQUUEEAGHHHHH!” The Ratman beside Argent was suddenly … bisected. With the Ratman still frozen with his spear held high, the two halves of the titanspawn just slid moistly away from each other.
The two halves parted to reveal Indigo, her massive dark blade still held above her in the finishing pose of her stroke. She pivoted in the mud, the indigo blade describing a great arc, taking the next Ratman in the torso. The blade passed halfway through the titanspawn and CHUNKED to a stop on its sternum. Almost casually, Indigo placed a boot on the thing’s twitching chest and SHOVED it off her sword with a meaty GLURK. “I really have to work on the follow-through,” she muttered as she dueled the remaining beast.
Alec hauled himself through the window on the rear of the ruin. Dropping down into the muck, he followed the cover of the wall, circling around to get the wagon.
The three Ratmen pushing their way through the barricade were focused on Kirby. So they didn’t see Taggart do a full two-and-a-half gainer off the top of the wall, his leather duster splaying out behind him like great wings. Still in mid-air his right arm SNAPPED out, and a foot-long blade SLID from his sleeve, past his hand, his fist closing on the grip carved directly into the base of the blade. They didn’t see the flash of that katar, the Ubantu punch-blade also honed for slashing.
And so they didn’t see the first of them die.
Taggart landed outside the ruin, behind the Ratmen. One coughed blood as he perforated its lungs. The other two turned and flailed at him. Taggart was staring right into their eyes when a rapier-blade PUNCHED through one of the Ratmen’s skull from behind, the point emanating from its hissing mouth. The remaining Ratman turned back to find Kirby in perfect en pointe, a flawlessly extended lunge with his rapier completely skewering the other creature’s skull.
(DM’s Note: Two rogues. Enjoy the brutal flanking goodness.)
Back among the wounded, the majority of the Ratmen pressed in on Indigo. The glory of killing an Oathblade would give them incredible prestige. She expertly parried their blows, her massive sword moving impossibly fast. The largest of the Ratmen muscled his spear past her defenses, though, and GOUGED her along the ribs. She swore so violently, the titanspawn almost stopped in shock.
Outside the ruin, Alec leapt into the driver’s seat of the wagon. With a “he-YAAA!” he drove the team back toward the rear of the ruin. As he turned the corner he looked back in the direction of the battlefield. He saw exactly what –
-- Taggart saw as he finished the last of the Ratmen on the gate. Something was happening at the Black Tower, something more than the lightning. Now a cyclone of raw power spun around the tower, rippling up and down the walls. Suddenly, they all ROCKED as a tremor ran beneath them, the harbinger of an earthquake. He pulled himself through the wreckage barricade. “You feel that?”
“All the hair up on the back of my neck, yes!” Kirby pulled Taggart free of the barricade and the two raced to aid Argent.
Argent was bleeding from multiple wounds. The sudden arrival of his brother and Kirby pulled his opponent away, giving him a chance to fall to his knees, gasping. But before attending his own needs, he crawled through the mud to the wounded old soldier. He pressed both hands against the man’s ragged throat wound, closed his eyes and prayed. A warm glow emnated from beneath his palms. As Argent stumbled back, exhausted, one could see the soldier’s throat was intact.
Taggart and Kirby quickly had their hapless victim spinning like a top between them. Even as it died, something arced gracefully over Taggart’s head. His peripheral vision caught the Ratman’s surprised expression still on its severed, flying skull.
Indigo stepped away, her Oathblade describing a delicate figure-eight in the air as the Ratman’s beheaded body slopped down in the mud.
“Told you she was good with that,” Alec called out from the windowsill. He toppled off as another tremor SHUDDERED through the ruin. Parts of the wall came tumbling down, massive stones SPLASHING in the mud.
Taggart hauled his brother to his feet. Above the rain, the deafening screams of the titanspawn army were almost on them. “We’ve lost this strongpoint!” he yelled. “Get into the wagon!”
Kirby sprung to the wall again. He looked East again –
-- and barely shielded his eyes in time to save them. A brilliant FLASH appeared where the Black Tower stood. Then, Kirby saw as he blinked into the horizon, there was no Black Tower. At once, an eerie stillness descended over the battlefield. The Dark Army was still charging toward him, but even its sound was muted. For where the Black Tower had been, there was now nothing but … well, a DOME.
Or a bubble. Kirby couldn’t figure it out. It was like a huge, glowing dome, and the weird thing was, it was expanding. It grew larger and larger, higher and higher, and the near edge of it raced toward him in total, unnatural silence. Some sort of containment spell …
Then, Kirby’s not-quite-human eyes picked out tiny shapes in the surface of the dome. Men. Monsters. Swept up and crushed, blown away –
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kirby thought. ”A shock wave!!?”
Kirby hopped back down to where the others were still arguing.
“I’m not leaving without the wounded!” Argent yelled back to Taggart.
“Fine, but whoever’s not in that wagon in thirty seconds isn’t coming!” Kirby shouted. “Monsters and apocalyptic magic, heading this way!”
The party pulled wounded into the wagon. Almost simultaneously, the opposite wall of the keep COLLAPSED as a squadron of low gorgons SMASHED through the walls. Behind them, Indigo saw for the first time the onrushing wall of energy and wind. Her eyes widened – gods, it had to be a quarter-mile high and moving so d@mn fast –
