Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)

[Solarious]

Party not healed up. Spells are caput from clearing out Skullrot. Vhalantru (now in Gargantuan Smoking Eye flavour) and Adimarchus running loose. Lok Energy Drained. Dannel is a bloody smear on the ground. The party being ECL 18 when they were supposed to be ECL 19.

Shall I dare to hope Arun be the first to fall?

 

[Neverwinter Knight]

Vhalantru (now in Gargantuan Smoking Eye flavour) and Adimarchus running loose.

I hope Lazybones at least gives the party the break from Vhalantru. That falling cage gave a lot of damage!

 

[Lazybones]

I have plans this evening, so here's an early Wednesday update:

* * * * *

Chapter 446

“Mole, what is it?” Cal asked, returning to the opening where his niece stood transfixed, watching the scene below. She could only point, unable to turn away from what happened next.

Vhalantru may have been reconstituted through Adimarchus’s power, but that certainly didn’t appear to have sweetened the beholder’s attitude toward the Prince. The beholder spun and fired a series of blasts into the freed demon lord, beams that lanced into his body as he slowly pulled himself to his feet. One cut a bright swath across his torso that hissed black vapors, but all of them had expected Adimarchus to have considerable resistance to magical assault, and Vhalantru’s initial barrage seemed to have little overall effect.

The Demon Prince of Madness reached his full height and spread his arms wide, the tentacles sprouting from his back forming a wide “X” behind him. He opened his mouth and unleashed a scream that shook the citadel of Skullrot to its foundation.

“Okay, we’re in trouble,” Cal said.

The beholder continued its assault, blasting the demon prince with more eye-beams, trying to find a combination that worked. It hit him again with the disintegrate ray, and again the prince suffered another flesh wound that hissed black smoke and drained black ichor.

Adimarchus seemed to belatedly recognize the presence of the adversary trying to destroy him. He lifted his hand, and unleashed a power upon the beholder. The companions could see its effect even at this range, as Vhalantru’s body shook in agony, ravaged by a powerful horrid wilting.

Vhalantru quickly responded by shifting its body and opening its central eye, bathing Adimarchus in antimagic. The Prince snarled as he recognized the smoking orb, a larger cousin to his own right eye, trailing a wisp of black smoke, its radiance brightening with the demon lord’s fury.

The beholder did not let up, running its disintegrate ray along the base of the railing that fronted one of the nearby galleries. Even as the moorings holding the metal construct were sundered, it hit the barrier with its telekinesis ray, ripping the structure from its remaining supports and hurling the entire thing at Adimarchus.

The demon prince made no move to dodge or avoid the huge object, merely bringing his arms up across his face. The metal barrier struck him solidly. The impact would have utterly crushed an ordinary man, as the banister had to weigh at least several hundred pounds. Adimarchus was driven back.

One step.

The form of the Prince of Madness shifted, and he took on the other form familiar to the companions, the golden-winged angel with the clawed gauntlet. The prince leapt into the air, his wings carrying him easily aloft, out of the radius of Vhalantru’s antimagic field. The beholder, now drawing back, resumed the full fury of his barrage, hitting Adimarchus with another series of eye-beams. Apparently recognizing that most of its beams with mental effects had little chance of affecting this enemy, the beholder had settled upon combination strikes with its disintegrate and finger of death rays; even when the full potency of those was resisted, they still inflicted considerable damage. Those beams drew black lines across the perfect features of Adimarchus’s angelic form, but did little to stop the demon prince as he flew directly at the beholder. Vhalantru blasted him with its telekinesis beam in an effort to drive the charging demon back, but to no avail. As Adimarchus flew past the beholder his golden wings lanced out, cutting deep gashes in the giant orb of its body. The golden claw shot out a moment later, puncturing the beholder’s body, drawing out a terrible sigh of agony as the gauntlet drew back covered with black blood and gore.

Now seriously discomfited, Vhalantru abruptly dropped twenty feet, its eyestalks twitching in unison as they all fixed onto the angelic figure directly above. Adimarchus was swallowed up in a blaze of colored light as beams from all ten of the beholder’s eyestalks blasted into him. Rents opened up in his violet skin, and fat droplets of golden fluid trailed from his body to drip down onto the beholder’s bloated form.

The beholder’s attacks were clearly starting to take their toll, but Adimarchus did not appear to be seriously hindered as he abruptly closed his wings around his body, and plummeted straight down. Vhalantru tried to get out of the way, but moved too slowly as the golden gauntlet was extended, straight down, and the demon prince slammed into the beholder’s body, his weight driving that member deep into its body. Vhalantru screamed as the prince unleashed some potent energy through the attack, an energy that drove into the core of its corrupted being. As Adimarchus clung to it, his arm sunk into its body up to his elbow, a bright glow seemed to shimmer around the beholder. Then, so quickly that an eyeblink might have caused one of the watchers to miss it, the orb collapsed in upon itself like an overfull waterskin rent open by a dagger. Adimarchus withdrew his arm as the wreckage of the beholder was reduced to a mass smaller than he was, and as he spread his wings to catch the air once more what was left of Vhalantru plummeted to the ground below to land in a sad heap on top of the mangled form of one of the Dark Myrakul’s flesh golems.

Up above, the companions had watched the entire exchange. With Vhalantru’s destruction, it was as if a switch had been thrown, suddenly restoring their ability to act.

“Um… we’d better get out of here, don’t you think?” Mole said.

“He has been weakened,” Arun said. “This may be our only chance to overcome him.”

“Did you just see the same battle that I did?” Dana asked. “We have to go, now!”

Cal nodded. “I agree.” He turned to the opening that Beorna and Lok had wrought in the wall of the chamber; fully ten feet across, it revealed the blighted landscape of Carceri in all its terrible glory. There was no wind, no indication other than the vast panorama that they were more than two hundred feet above the ground.

Mole was the last to leave the opening to the shaft. “Here he comes!” she said to the others, who needed no further incitement to gather at the breach.

Lok had taken the flying carpet out of his bag of holding, and was preparing to unroll it. “There’s no time for that!” Cal said. “Everyone, take hold of someone else; Dana, in the center; you’ll need your hands free. On the three count, we leap, as one.”

“You’d better know what you’re about, gnome,” Beorna said, as they took their positions. Lacking time to repack the carpet, Lok merely slung it over one shoulder.

“One, two, three!”

On that last word they leapt, the warriors all but carrying the gnomes, Dana locked in the center of the ball of interlaced limbs as they plummeted down, down, down.

More than one of them screamed, although Mole’s cry sounded suspiciously like a whoop of exhilaration.

Cal let them fall about a hundred feet before he invoked his feather fall. Their rate of decline abruptly eased, and they could hear Dana’s invocation to her goddess as she drew open the veil between worlds.

Even as he sensed the magic building around them, Cal chanced to glance upward, back at the spire. He saw Adimarchus, still in his angelic form, emerge from the opening in the prison, his wings spreading as he burst out into the open air. Cal imagined that he could feel the multiverse tremble as the demon prince hovered there, drinking in the liberty that had so long been denied.

He wasn’t sure, but as the bright glow of Dana’s spell enveloped them, taking them home, he thought he heard one wondrous and terrible word echo out across Carceri.

“FREEDOM!”

 

[Elemental]

“FREEDOM!”

I cannot be the only reader who heard that in the voice of Mel Gibson doing a Scottish accent.

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

I cannot be the only reader who heard that in the voice of Mel Gibson doing a Scottish accent.

Most certainly not. As the picture of A in angelic form from Dungeon is wearing a kind of 'skirt', it is far too easy for the mind to add a tartan pattern to the thing.

After all, the Demonic Lord of Madness dressed in the kilt of those who brought us golf, curling, and haggis seems far too correct.

Please Lazybones, change Big A's demonic form weapon to a Claymore. We'll all feel better that way.

 

[Neverwinter Knight]

I guess this takes care of the smokey-eyed helmling and his little band...

 

[Lazybones]

I cannot be the only reader who heard that in the voice of Mel Gibson doing a Scottish accent.

Gah, I knew I should have picked a different word there.

* * * * *

Chapter 447

It was deep in the night in the Western Heartlands of Faerûn, but one would not have known it from the crowded, windowless space of the study, separated off from the rest of the world by thick stone walls and potent magical wards. The bookshelves on each of the walls made the place seem even smaller than it was; most were overflowing not only with books, but with scrolls, boxes of polished wood and handwoven wicker, and dozens of other assorted items ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary. The dominant feature of the chamber was a low desk and matching chair, the former likewise burdened with miscellany, the latter occupied by a small figure clad in a soft robe of faded blue silk. He was bent over a book, his pen making a constant scritch, scritch as it darted over the parchment, pausing only for a refill from the adjacent bottle of ink. The two candles burning brightly atop the desk—no danger to the books and scrolls, these were continual flames—highlighted the writer’s features; he was a gnome, fixed with an incredible look of concentration and gravity undermined slightly by the large smudge of ink above his right eyebrow.

The door to the room opened, but the gnome did not even look up.

“You need to rest, Cal,” Dana said.

The quill stopped its steady progression across the page. Cal looked up.

“Did Selûne refresh your spells?”

Dana nodded.

“I can tell from your expression that you’ve already tried to find Benzan, without success.”

“Yes.”

“And Adimarchus?”

“I did not even try. You know where he’s going, Cal.”

“Yes, I suppose that I do.”

Dana came more fully into the room. There really wasn’t anywhere else to sit, but she carefully pushed back a stack of books from the corner of the desk, and situated herself there, just a few feet from her friend.

“Is Dannel all right?”

The priestess nodded. “Weakened somewhat, but that is normal. Mole is keeping an eye on him.”

“Good. Coming back from Beyond… it is not an easy experience.”

“Arun and Beorna are chomping at the bit,” she said.

Cal sat back in his chair, folding his hands together in his lap over his belly. It had become more ample, over the years, but he could still walk the average laborer into the ground, even without all of the magical augmentories that each of them carried in abundance. “And what do you feel?” he asked.

“I think that Adimarchus will quickly regain much of his power, if he is not stopped.”

“I did not ask what you think,” Cal said. “I asked what you feel.”

She met his gaze for a moment, then turned away. “My heart tells me to find Benzan, whatever the cost.” She looked up again. “I will do what is necessary.”

“We need you, to get to Occipitus, and to make our way back safely.”

“And in between?”

Cal laid a sheet of blotting paper into the fold, and then closed the book. He had not mastered any of the spells of the highest valence that had just opened to him, or any of the other spells from the bundle of scrolls that rested in the small but sturdy iron box attached to the underside of the desk. If only he could have twenty-four uninterrupted hours… but there was no time, not now.

He stood, and stepped away from the desk and the power that would have to wait.

“In between, we knock a Prince off his throne.”

 

[Solarious]

Big showdown time. Cliffies from here on out to the very end! Deaths every other update! LET THE CRUELTY POUR FORTH AND WASH AWAY THE LIFE THE AURN!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 448

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Mole asked.

“It does look… different,” Dannel said, turning as he took in the full panorama of their surroundings.

“Better, or worse?” Dana said, her expression indicating her own feelings about the matter.

Dannel, Arun, and Mole, the three who had been to Occipitus before, turned to the others. “Better, I’d say,” Mole noted.

Occipitus had changed, although its underlying core remained recognizable. The deadly plasms that had filled the sky on their initial visit were gone, replaced by a low-hanging golden sky that resembled the interior of a great domed cathedral, with a soft glow that added a faint metallic tinge to their skin. The surrounding ring of mountains were there, but they no longer looked like jagged teeth; indeed, they were almost like pillars holding up the huge dome. The ground was still soft, giving slightly beneath their feet, and the landscape was still marked by blighted ruins and odd forests. There were none of the oozing red pools that they’d encountered the last time, at least not within visual range, and the odor had improved as well, although only in comparison to what it had been before. And in the center of the plane…

“There’s a storm over that mountain,” Lok said.

“Not a mountain,” Arun said. “It’s a great skull… the center of power in this place. Our last visit was… unpleasant.”

“But Morgan’s in charge, now,” Mole said.

“I wouldn’t put a large wager upon that,” Cal said. They all stared at the distant mound, where occasional flickers of energy were visible darting in and around the place. There was a disturbance above it; not quite a cloud, but something not unlike the vortex that had appeared above Cauldron during the Ritual of Planar Joining.

“It doesn’t look very far,” Dana said.

“Distances can be deceiving here,” Arun pointed out.

“No horizon,” Cal said, grasping what was “wrong” about the geography of the plane. “Occipitus is flat, unlike the surface of our Toril. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a hundred miles from here to that skull-fortress.”

“Whatever’s going on here, it looks like that’s the place where it is happening,” Dana said. “We could teleport directly there…”

“We have already covered this. It may not be wise to hurl ourselves blindly into a situation with which we are unfamiliar,” Cal said. “We must be cautious. While we can see the skull, we have no idea what the situation is there; the place could be quiet, or it could be crawling with demons.”

“Let us hope that you are right,” the priestess said, turning away and busying herself with the straps of her pack.

Lok was already unrolling the flying carpet; as soon as it was ready they embarked and set off. They had already discussed their plans, and so did not need further conversation as they made efficient preparations. Mole, Dannel, Arun, and Cal rode upon the carpet, while Dana cast her wind walk spell, transforming herself along with Lok and Beorna into insubstantial wisps of pale white cloud. The two groups lifted off into the air together, moving quickly across the landscape. Despite her impatience, Dana remained close by the carpet, pacing the magical conveyance. They were not looking for trouble.

As it happened, trouble found them first.

 

[Solarious]

Nuuu! Cliffie without a death! Whaaa!

So... what's your next move in teasing us all to death?