Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)
- Thread starter Lazybones
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Lazybones
Adventurer
Chapter 468
A massive arm at least six feet thick and thirty feet long detached from the amorphous mass of the Terror and descended toward the stunned adventurers. Gaera shrieked in fright, but Lok grabbed her and rolled, hurling the cleric free as he himself twisted out of the path of the huge hammer-shaped fist that smashed into the ground where they’d been lying. The impact shook the cavern, and both Lok and Gaera were knocked roughly back by the concussive force of the blow, shards of stone zinging off of their armor.
Mole, of course, was well away, darting back into a crevice in the wall about ten feet away, wondering just what in the heck she could do against such a… monstrosity.
Ignoring the smarting pains already starting in his limbs from being battered about, Lok pulled himself up and rushed at the Terror, uttering a deep-throated cry to meet the rumbling potency of the elemental monster. The genasi barely kept his feet as he rushed into the surging, uneven mass of stone around its lower body, but he came close enough to drive his axe into the broad expanse of the wave. The metal sang oddly as it clove the stone, and rather than shatter the liquid rock into fragments, as might be expected, the stone tore, opening bloodless gashes like meat carved by a butcher. But despite the strength and fury of the genasi’s assault, the effects were like an assault upon a great ancient oak by a child wielding a kitchen knife. The Terror was just so huge that there seemed no way that Lok could do enough damage to hinder it.
Even so, Lok’s attack seemed to have gotten its attention. Twin arms of rock descended upon Lok like battering rams, clearly meant to simply smash him to a pulp. The genasi glanced up and saw death coming, and shifted into a defensive position, his heavy shield coming up, his body tensing to withstand impacts that could have pierced a castle wall. There was a woman’s cry, but whether it came from Gaera or Mole he could not tell; everything was the rumbling and then the pain that drove through even his nearly indestructible adamantine shell and the only slightly less hard flesh and muscle beneath.
No mere man could have survived those twin blows. And yet when the terrible fists, each almost twice the size of the warrior’s entire body, drew back, Lok rose to his feet and charged again, that axe of his cleaving through the Terror once more, opening gashes several feet long, hewing at it with an almost fatalist fury. He’s stood against an inexorable force and fought on, but it was obvious that even Lok could not take much more of the creature’s might and live.
But the genasi did not stand alone, and his companions now came to his aid. An electrically-charged bolt shot up into the creature’s “head”, but Mole’s shot merely vanished against its bulk, less significant even than a mosquito’s annoying bite. Gaera came forward toward Lok, enveloped in a white glow of divine power. The Terror brought down a long arm that would have crushed her into gory ooze had it connected. The priestess cried out and threw herself desperately forward, even so taking a glancing hit across her back that knocked her sprawling. With Lok hewing at it with desperate ferocity the injured cleric drew herself up and staggered close enough to touch its “body,” unleashing her dispel evil spell against it.
The spell was potent, and the Terror was certainly evil, but the entity’s ancient malevolence was far greater than the priestess’s magic. The surge of light vanished into the Terror’s monstrous form, and Gaera drew only violence as a response as the body of the creature seemed to rear up before her, the cavern floor rising up like a rug that was lifted up and snapped to dislodge dust. The power of the surge sent both Gaera and Lok flying across the room toward the entry, as though the two armored dwarves were insignificant ants.
And then, as they reached the apogee of their arc and started to fall, the Terror slammed a fist down into Lok in mid-air, driving him down twenty feet into the ground with enough force to crack the stone.
A massive arm at least six feet thick and thirty feet long detached from the amorphous mass of the Terror and descended toward the stunned adventurers. Gaera shrieked in fright, but Lok grabbed her and rolled, hurling the cleric free as he himself twisted out of the path of the huge hammer-shaped fist that smashed into the ground where they’d been lying. The impact shook the cavern, and both Lok and Gaera were knocked roughly back by the concussive force of the blow, shards of stone zinging off of their armor.
Mole, of course, was well away, darting back into a crevice in the wall about ten feet away, wondering just what in the heck she could do against such a… monstrosity.
Ignoring the smarting pains already starting in his limbs from being battered about, Lok pulled himself up and rushed at the Terror, uttering a deep-throated cry to meet the rumbling potency of the elemental monster. The genasi barely kept his feet as he rushed into the surging, uneven mass of stone around its lower body, but he came close enough to drive his axe into the broad expanse of the wave. The metal sang oddly as it clove the stone, and rather than shatter the liquid rock into fragments, as might be expected, the stone tore, opening bloodless gashes like meat carved by a butcher. But despite the strength and fury of the genasi’s assault, the effects were like an assault upon a great ancient oak by a child wielding a kitchen knife. The Terror was just so huge that there seemed no way that Lok could do enough damage to hinder it.
Even so, Lok’s attack seemed to have gotten its attention. Twin arms of rock descended upon Lok like battering rams, clearly meant to simply smash him to a pulp. The genasi glanced up and saw death coming, and shifted into a defensive position, his heavy shield coming up, his body tensing to withstand impacts that could have pierced a castle wall. There was a woman’s cry, but whether it came from Gaera or Mole he could not tell; everything was the rumbling and then the pain that drove through even his nearly indestructible adamantine shell and the only slightly less hard flesh and muscle beneath.
No mere man could have survived those twin blows. And yet when the terrible fists, each almost twice the size of the warrior’s entire body, drew back, Lok rose to his feet and charged again, that axe of his cleaving through the Terror once more, opening gashes several feet long, hewing at it with an almost fatalist fury. He’s stood against an inexorable force and fought on, but it was obvious that even Lok could not take much more of the creature’s might and live.
But the genasi did not stand alone, and his companions now came to his aid. An electrically-charged bolt shot up into the creature’s “head”, but Mole’s shot merely vanished against its bulk, less significant even than a mosquito’s annoying bite. Gaera came forward toward Lok, enveloped in a white glow of divine power. The Terror brought down a long arm that would have crushed her into gory ooze had it connected. The priestess cried out and threw herself desperately forward, even so taking a glancing hit across her back that knocked her sprawling. With Lok hewing at it with desperate ferocity the injured cleric drew herself up and staggered close enough to touch its “body,” unleashing her dispel evil spell against it.
The spell was potent, and the Terror was certainly evil, but the entity’s ancient malevolence was far greater than the priestess’s magic. The surge of light vanished into the Terror’s monstrous form, and Gaera drew only violence as a response as the body of the creature seemed to rear up before her, the cavern floor rising up like a rug that was lifted up and snapped to dislodge dust. The power of the surge sent both Gaera and Lok flying across the room toward the entry, as though the two armored dwarves were insignificant ants.
And then, as they reached the apogee of their arc and started to fall, the Terror slammed a fist down into Lok in mid-air, driving him down twenty feet into the ground with enough force to crack the stone.
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
Will Lok be raised by his old god again?Neverwinter Knight said:
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Sorry, I realize that quoting ones own post is only slightly less annoying than saying "I told you so"...
Anyway, Lazybones, you can always prove me wrong! 
Richard Rawen
First Post
Solarious said:Will we hear more screams for mercy?
I doubt there will be any screams for mercy.
Although, so far it looks as though they wouldn't have time to do so even if it were their choice of responses!
Lazybones
Adventurer
Gnomes to the rescue! Eh... sorta.
* * * * *
Chapter 469
This is crazy, crazy, crazy! that little voice in Mole’s head screamed. The voice usually only came out at times like this, when the sensible course was just too blatantly obvious to miss. Yet somehow, she always seemed to miss it, nevertheless…
When she’d seen the Terror strike down Lok, she’d just acted, letting her instincts hurl her into a desperate maneuver in just the way that the old urdunnir had critiqued. As the elemental monster drew back its arm, already shifting its other forward for another attack against Gaera, Mole was running up its length, following its curving course toward the Terror’s shoulder and its upper body. She was still at a loss for how she was going to affect it; if Lok’s strikes didn’t do anything, then what could she hope to accomplish? But she knew as clearly as she knew her own name that it was going to kill Lok and Gaera, and while she might be able to avoid it, she could not return to Uncle Cal and tell him she’d stood by while his best friend was murdered by an animated mountain.
“Yaaaa!” she screamed, running across the creature’s form, rapid-firing her crossbow into what she took to be its head, the lump across the cresting wave where a twisting spiral of utter blackness was focused. The shots did nothing, as far as she could tell; the thing did not appear to even acknowledge her. She heard a desperate cry from below; Gaera’s voice, and sensed the creature shifting its weight, the big arm coming around to squash her, and Lok. If Lok wasn’t already dead; could anyone have survived that slam?
In frustration she threw her crossbow at it, feeling incredibly useless. The weapon bounced off its head and vanished into the dark below, and she slipped, bouncing onto her chest in surprise, barely keeping from plummeting off of her perch to the ground far—very far!—below.
She felt a stabbing pain in her right breast. What now? she thought, pulling herself up quickly, shifting her motion to match the movement of the creature. Even in all the chaos and grief and fear of the moment, she was glad that no one had seen her almost fall like that.
She found the source of what had hurt her—the pebble that the old urdunnir had given her, dropped into her pocket.
It was at that moment that she finally came to the realization of what “Lord Liggett” had meant. Stunned, she almost fell—again!—but Gaera’s second scream shook her back to reality.
This time, she thought first, a crowded insane jumble of thoughts that raced through her mind in the course of a single heartbeat.
Then she acted.
The Terror’s movements had turned its “face”, if that’s what the black-spiral thingee was, away from her. So she sprang forward and leapt, twisting her body as she passed before it, snapping the stone square into the middle of the dark pattern. Then she was falling, and falling fast, and had to attend to not breaking her neck. She spread her limbs wide to slow her descent slightly, and then as she reached the ground she tucked into a roll, absorbing some of the force of her fall with her legs before tumbling forward. She detected a jutting, sharp-edged ledge that rose about a foot above the ground surface just before she would have slammed into it, and expended the last of her momentum in coming up into an easy somersault before landing on her feet.
She turned and looked up. She’d expected something at least moderately dramatic, maybe a smoking ruin where the Terror’s head had been.
But the elemental monstrosity was still intact. It just loomed there, quivering, an earthquake in place. Mole could see that gray cracks stretched out from where she’d hit it with the magic stone, but even as she stared it seemed as though the creature was recovering, the disruption or damage or whatever she’d done to it being absorbed, overcome.
“Damn, you could at least have given me a few more rocks,” she muttered under her breath. She turned and saw Gaera bent over Lok. The genasi was moving, now, although he was bent over on his knees and forearms. Mole frowned—she’d give Gaera plenty of time to heal the warrior, and in terms of distractions, she’d used up her best, and apparently only, gambit that was going to work.
“Gaera, look out!” Mole warned, as the Terror lurched forward once again, as if the priestess could not sense the massive form and the huge rumbling that accompanied the resumption of its assault.
The priestess turned from Lok, and rose. She called upon the power of her goddess, firing a lance of white-hot energy into its damaged face. But like her earlier dispel evil, the beam of searing light was merely absorbed by the creature, with little apparent harm done to it.
Gaera looked determined, resigned, as she lifted her mace, standing in defiance of the Terror. But rather than attack, the black spiral twisted, and a gray beam exploded from it, sweeping over the woman, surrounding her with a soft aura that faded within just a few seconds. And when it had disappeared, it left her changed.
Turned to stone.
* * * * *
Chapter 469
This is crazy, crazy, crazy! that little voice in Mole’s head screamed. The voice usually only came out at times like this, when the sensible course was just too blatantly obvious to miss. Yet somehow, she always seemed to miss it, nevertheless…
When she’d seen the Terror strike down Lok, she’d just acted, letting her instincts hurl her into a desperate maneuver in just the way that the old urdunnir had critiqued. As the elemental monster drew back its arm, already shifting its other forward for another attack against Gaera, Mole was running up its length, following its curving course toward the Terror’s shoulder and its upper body. She was still at a loss for how she was going to affect it; if Lok’s strikes didn’t do anything, then what could she hope to accomplish? But she knew as clearly as she knew her own name that it was going to kill Lok and Gaera, and while she might be able to avoid it, she could not return to Uncle Cal and tell him she’d stood by while his best friend was murdered by an animated mountain.
“Yaaaa!” she screamed, running across the creature’s form, rapid-firing her crossbow into what she took to be its head, the lump across the cresting wave where a twisting spiral of utter blackness was focused. The shots did nothing, as far as she could tell; the thing did not appear to even acknowledge her. She heard a desperate cry from below; Gaera’s voice, and sensed the creature shifting its weight, the big arm coming around to squash her, and Lok. If Lok wasn’t already dead; could anyone have survived that slam?
In frustration she threw her crossbow at it, feeling incredibly useless. The weapon bounced off its head and vanished into the dark below, and she slipped, bouncing onto her chest in surprise, barely keeping from plummeting off of her perch to the ground far—very far!—below.
She felt a stabbing pain in her right breast. What now? she thought, pulling herself up quickly, shifting her motion to match the movement of the creature. Even in all the chaos and grief and fear of the moment, she was glad that no one had seen her almost fall like that.
She found the source of what had hurt her—the pebble that the old urdunnir had given her, dropped into her pocket.
It was at that moment that she finally came to the realization of what “Lord Liggett” had meant. Stunned, she almost fell—again!—but Gaera’s second scream shook her back to reality.
This time, she thought first, a crowded insane jumble of thoughts that raced through her mind in the course of a single heartbeat.
Then she acted.
The Terror’s movements had turned its “face”, if that’s what the black-spiral thingee was, away from her. So she sprang forward and leapt, twisting her body as she passed before it, snapping the stone square into the middle of the dark pattern. Then she was falling, and falling fast, and had to attend to not breaking her neck. She spread her limbs wide to slow her descent slightly, and then as she reached the ground she tucked into a roll, absorbing some of the force of her fall with her legs before tumbling forward. She detected a jutting, sharp-edged ledge that rose about a foot above the ground surface just before she would have slammed into it, and expended the last of her momentum in coming up into an easy somersault before landing on her feet.
She turned and looked up. She’d expected something at least moderately dramatic, maybe a smoking ruin where the Terror’s head had been.
But the elemental monstrosity was still intact. It just loomed there, quivering, an earthquake in place. Mole could see that gray cracks stretched out from where she’d hit it with the magic stone, but even as she stared it seemed as though the creature was recovering, the disruption or damage or whatever she’d done to it being absorbed, overcome.
“Damn, you could at least have given me a few more rocks,” she muttered under her breath. She turned and saw Gaera bent over Lok. The genasi was moving, now, although he was bent over on his knees and forearms. Mole frowned—she’d give Gaera plenty of time to heal the warrior, and in terms of distractions, she’d used up her best, and apparently only, gambit that was going to work.
“Gaera, look out!” Mole warned, as the Terror lurched forward once again, as if the priestess could not sense the massive form and the huge rumbling that accompanied the resumption of its assault.
The priestess turned from Lok, and rose. She called upon the power of her goddess, firing a lance of white-hot energy into its damaged face. But like her earlier dispel evil, the beam of searing light was merely absorbed by the creature, with little apparent harm done to it.
Gaera looked determined, resigned, as she lifted her mace, standing in defiance of the Terror. But rather than attack, the black spiral twisted, and a gray beam exploded from it, sweeping over the woman, surrounding her with a soft aura that faded within just a few seconds. And when it had disappeared, it left her changed.
Turned to stone.
Lok is alive, but crawling none the less. DSC-EricPrice
First Post
Once again LB has started down his sadistic path of inflicting all manner of horrors on the clergy of the world... I think his first character was sent off on a suicide mission by a good cleric of Pelor, and he secretly resents it to this day...
Just the same, it's great writing LB, and I come here on a regular basis to follow your writing.
Just the same, it's great writing LB, and I come here on a regular basis to follow your writing.
Lazybones
Adventurer
Heh, there was no Pelor (or any other gods, oddly enough; I don't think Basic even had them as far as I can recall) when I started playing D&D, and my 2nd character was a cleric, ended up at around 18th level (back in the days when artifacts were as common on character sheets as magical potionsDSC-EricPrice said:
). I didn't set out with a mission to target clerics when I started writing, but after a while the "red shirts of Helm" thing sort of took on some steam. And come on, how can you not enjoy it when those stuffed shirts get the smack? 
Of course, we're at the level now where stone to flesh is readily available... if, of course, Lok and Mole can survive the next few seconds:
* * * * *
Chapter 470
Lok hovered in the gray border between consciousness and the dark void that threatened to simply absorb him. His body felt like a burden dragging him down, and his breath rattled in his chest as his crushed lungs struggled to draw in life-preserving air. The part of him that struggled against the inevitable urged him to keep fighting, for if he faltered now, then it meant death for him, his friends, and ultimately, his people.
But that narrow wedge of the cavern visible through his helmet visor blurred and faded, and Lok knew that he had lost this fight.
He did not hear Gaera cry out to him, or feel the surge of healing energy that tore into him. The heal spell from the priestess restored his broken body, but it did not penetrate the gray veil that had surrounded him, nor did her desperate cries reach him as the Horror loomed over them to put an end to the hopes of the urdunnir.
In that moment, as events passed quickly on the Prime Material, Lok found himself lying on a bare stone floor in a familiar stone room. The place was warm, and cozy, and safe. The genasi could do no more than raise his head, which alone took an insurmountable effort, enough to see the figure seated in the ancient stone chair, regarding him with a sad look on his face. The dwarf seemed as old as the world, his face lined with troubles.
“Father,” he managed, his voice rasping.
“It is time, my son,” the elder dwarf said.
“Father,” he repeated, unable to say more. He tried to shake his head, but only managed a shivering quake.
“I name you my Chosen,” the dwarf said, and with that word he seemed to… diminish. The last thing that Lok saw was his eyes, points of light in the darkness as everything else went gray around him once more.
Reality returned, and with it action. The sound of battle and the incessant rumbling of the Terror was everywhere around him, in him, as he tore free from the last lingering threads of unreality that had held him. He drew himself up, his wounds mostly memories. He saw Gaera, froze into stone, but turned the rage at that sight against his enemy. The Terror had been hurt by his friends, he could immediately see, but it was still coming, still a deadly force.
His axe was gone, knocked away when he had been sent flying by the monster. There was no time to search for it now; he instead hurled aside his shield and drew out Coldburn, rushing past Gaera to meet the Terror. He saw the inevitable strike coming and hurled himself aside, his boots skidding on the uneven surface of the ground complicated by the still-roiling effects of the elemental entity’s presence upon the surrounding stone. He felt something hard carom off his armored torso from the side, but his attention was focused wholly forward. He rushed up a slope of rippling stone that trembled beneath his hard boots until he could unleash his assault upon the body of the Terror. The wounds he had opened before with his axe had vanished into its body, enveloped by its shifting mass, leaving no indication of whether they still hindered it, or had been simply repaired. But the massive two-handed sword opened a fresh gap four feet long lined with blackened char on one side, and crystals of ice on the other, as the odd magical effects of the sword inflicted their damage upon the entity.
Lok expected a counterattack, and it came swiftly, powerful blows that rained upon him from the Terror’s massive fists. Healed by Gaera, infused with the power that had been imparted into him by Dumathoin, he nevertheless felt the hits shake his body; for all of what he was, he was still mortal, and this foe seemed to be beyond the power of mere weapons to defeat.
He felt a momentary calm settle over him, as the huge stone fists lifted up to continue battering him down. He felt… different, and part of that was a new perception, something inexplicable that he felt through the body of the monstrosity that confronted him. He could sense its link to the surrounding stone, the creature both of and against the fabric of this world that was not its own, and he could feel the tendrils of energy that infused it, leeching strength from without to restore itself from the damage being inflicted upon it.
Releasing one hand from the grip of his sword, he reached out and plunged it into the body of the Terror. The stony surface gave way at his touch, rippling out like a pool of water around the point where the limb vanished into the depths. Lok leaned forward, until the entity had absorbed his arm up to the elbow. Through that connection, he felt an odd synergism with the elemental, and a rage that made him shake with the overwhelming strength of the emotion.
The Terror was shaking too, now, clearly not happy with what was being done to it. Its upper body was looming over Lok, now, and its fists came together from the sides to crush the warrior between them. But an instant before the impact, Lok plunged forward, his body sinking into the elemental’s form entirely. The stone fists smashed together with incredible force, but when they drew back there was nothing there to be seen.
But whatever Lok was doing, it was obviously having an effect. The creature drew back, receding away from the spot where it had engaged Gaera and Lok. But as it fell back, its body began to split apart, like a cloth being torn from its base upward. In that opening, Lok became visible, still holding Coldburn, dropping away from the grasp of the creature as its substance retreated from him. Looking up, he saw that the stone of the Terror’s body had crumbled away enough to reveal a great black lump, right where the heart would have been had the elemental been a living, mortal creature.
Above that, the black spiral, now twisting in agitation, of the monster’s “face” had focused upon him. It unleashed another pulse of energy at its tormenter, enveloping him in gray light that threatened to swallow up the genasi. Lok struggled within that enveloping glow, his movements slowed as though he’d been dropped into a vat of molasses.
And then Mole shot into view. She’d recovered her crossbow, and fired a tiny bolt into the thick of that black mass, the monster’s “heart”.
The Terror shuddered, and the gray beam faltered—only slightly, and only for a span of time measured in fractions of a second. But in that instant Lok surged forward, thrusting through the enveloping field of energy, and he drove Coldburn upward, through the black heart, the flames and frost engulfing the corrupted knob as the steel slid deeper into its substance.
The gray beam of energy vanished, and with a roar Lok twisted his body, tearing his weapon and half of the matter of the black orb free.
The cavern was filled with another violent tremor, but this time the pulse was the death-throes of the intruder, as the substance of the Terror began to dissolve. Great chunks of it broke free and crashed to the ground, and finally the hulking mass of its body collapsed backward, filling the cavern with a surge of pulverized stone and shards of debris that gradually settled to the ground. Lok and Mole staggered free of the radius of destruction, the gnome coughing for breath, until they stood at the point where Gaera’s petrified form stood, her mace still lifted in bold defiance.
“Well, that was something,” Mole said, looking back at the ruins, clapping her hands to clear them of dust.
“We must take Gaera back… the elders should be able to restore her,” Lok was saying, but he stopped as Mole turned toward him and her jaw dropped in surprise. “What is the matter?”
“You look… different.” And indeed, the genasi’s appearance had changed. The stone-like coloration and texture of his flesh was as before, although now it was smudged with dust and dirt. But where his dark eyes had been, now twin sparkles of pale white light shone, like lonely stars witnessed through the haze of clouds on the deepest of nights in the world above.
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