Chapter 594
One of the five Servitors had been slain, the lamia sorceress L’haxia hewn by the earth genasi’s axe. But the other four were still very much in the fight, and with two strong adversaries down, and most of the rest separated from the battle by magical barriers, the outcome of the confrontation with the last champions of Good on Occipitus still teetered upon a stark precipice. Under different circumstances, these diverse creatures, brought together only by the fact of their service, would have slunk off into the shadows, to regather their strength and strike again at their enemies’ weakness. But their mandate this time was clear; none were to pass this chamber to the Great Hall above, on pain of torments far worse than simple expurgation. And so they attacked, unleashing all of the considerable magical and physical arsenal they possessed upon the foe.
The tiefling cleric cast another spell, adding the potency of divine power to the multiple protections that she already wore. With wards now layering her in protection, she unclasped a light mace from her belt. With a twist of her wrist, wicked steel spikes snapped out from the head of the weapon, each smeared with a deadly toxin extracted from the venomous fauna of the Abyss. Jahaela was a creature of intrigues, deception, and sensuality, but sometimes more direct means were necessary, and when those times came she did not shy away from the occasional blood and gore of violent melee.
The fog confounded her darkvision, but she could hear the sounds of battle to her right. She started toward the warrior that had confronted L’haxia, but was interrupted by a stabbing pain that erupted in the joint of her right knee. The priestess staggered, but recovered in time to avoid a fall, and turned to see a diminutive creature standing before her. It was the same gnome thief who had fallen victim to her symbol of persuasion, earlier.
“Your sting is sharp, little thief… but mine has claimed many more!” She feinted with the spiked mace, but that was just a cover for her real attack, as she summoned the dark energies of her patron. A faint black glow began to shine around the fingers of her left hand. She waited for the gnome to attack, and it came almost at once, the little creature offering a feint of her own that was followed by a sudden leap high into the air. The girl moved fast, there was no denying that, and there would have been no chance to bring her mace around in time to catch her.
But using her weapon was not Jahaela’s plan. She let the gnome get her strike—somehow, she found a weakness, and her little blade painfully pierced her shoulder—and quickly shot out her hand. All she needed was the slightest touch… but somehow the gnome managed to twist in mid-air, narrowly avoiding her hand. Jahaela followed her as she fell, thrusting at her again, again just missing as the gnome suddenly bent over backwards, the back of her head brushing the iron floor as the extended fingers swept a spare inch over her body. Before the cleric could adjust and strike again, the gnome had sprung back, just out of reach. The cleric waited, but this time, the gnome made no attempt to rush in.
“You are wise to be so wary, little thief,” Jahaela hissed. “For my touch is death…”
Scyla, the water genasi duelist, rose to her feet in a barely-contained rage as the steam cloud washed over her. She did not need to see to know where that paladin was; she could hear him, from the clank of his armor to his labored breathing. Vrin’kaa had him, but she was damned if she was going to let that bitch fiend take her kill…
But she was not so focused on her prey to ignore more immediate threats. The foes on the far side of the Jahaela’s blade barrier and L’haxia’s wall of fire were coming through, heedless of the damage wrought upon them. Calyxia’s weavings hadn’t held them… but then again, Scyla was one of the few of Graz’zt’s favored servants to specialize in enchantments, and she held little above scorn for spellcasters in general.
A broad shadow materialized out of the fog, and Scyla did not wait for it, darting in, lashing out with her twin sais. The foe—excellent, a celestial—did not falter before the blazing speed of her assault, and soon she had it bleeding from a number of nasty punctures.
The celestial spoke the words of a spell, and Scyla chuckled inwardly; resisting magic was something she was very good at. But the spell turned out to merely be healing magic, closing most of the archon’s wounds.
“I can kill you faster than you can heal, celestial,” she said, launching another full attack that led her in a tight circle around it, her sais darting in and out in a blur. Within seconds, the holy creature sported a whole new set of wounds, including deep, draining punctures from her wounding sai.
The archon merely nodded, and summoned forth its hovering sword. Disarming it would be a challenge, at the very least.
Scyla smiled in anticipation of the dance.
The half-fey creature Calyxia rose above the melee on her gossamer wings. Her lips pursed into a frown as the hot steam swirled around her, scalding her delicate flesh. Without making any apparent effort she drifted over the battle. The fog held no secrets from her; to her senses, each of the living creatures in the room shone like a beacon. So many of those flickering flames she’d snuffed out in her terrible life, both in service to Graz’zt and in satisfaction of her own corrupted lusts.
She drifted over the genasi warrior, the one that had slain L’haxia. This one was strong… incredibly so, with a lifeline that extended outward beyond her ability to sense. He would give even Vrin’kaa trouble, she sensed.
Well, that was easy enough to handle. Drifting over him, she summoned her power, and enveloped him in a weave of whispers that seeped into his thoughts, building a wall of inaction around his conscious mind.
Held, Lok couldn’t even look up as the creature flew over him and ascended up into the center of the room. The blade barrier had gone down, she saw, and as she watched the wall of fire joined it, sundered by magic. She could see the source of that as well, the gnome archmage that had disrupted her song earlier.
Well. Her whispers would not call to him, but there were other ways of dealing with such.
Her musings were interrupted as a driving pain pierced her. Calyxia released a terrible scream as the seeker arrow tore at the very fabric of her, a vicious, nasty arrow infused with hatred of all that she was. The half-fey shifted her attention to the archer… or rather, two of them, although the first was much stronger, she saw. He had been the one who had fired the arrow, although it seemed he had lost her, now, his aim shifting through the cloud. There was something else about him… a song to match her own, but shining with a soft light, a contrast to the dark energies that fueled her own sinister melody.
The pain of her wound energized her, and she dragged that song into a place of agony and discordance. The harmonies of the whispers that she used to insinuate her control into the minds of others shattered, replaced by a terrible pulse of sound that exploded out of her like a stream of bile.
The greater shout hit the three with an obvious impact, knocking them back, the shining light of their life-force disrupted by the terrible disruption of the sound. Content that they were at least temporarily removed as a threat, she spread her wings and rose higher, almost brushing the ceiling as she brought her will to bear once again, rebuilding her harmonies into a song of discord.
All of these events swirled around the center of the room, where the succubus Vrin’kaa stood triumphant over the battered form of Arun Goldenshield, unable to save himself from the blackguard’s victory.
“Go back to the pit, you evil bitch!” Umbar yelled, leaping forward over Arun’s prone form to enage the fiend with Alakast. The staff shot out and clipped her on the forearm, knocking the handle of her whip from her hand. But the succubus was quick to respond, slashing out with her shortsword, the weapon crunching into his armored side, hurting him even through the layers of plate and padding that he wore.
“Your faith is weak, dwarf. Kneel before me, and yield to my dark Master!”
The command was backed by another suggestion, but this time the cleric’s willpower was strong enough to resist, and he answered only with another sweeping strike from Alakast.
“I’ll give your Master your head, when I see him!” the dwarf said, swinging the staff around again. But this time the end of the staff glanced off one of the curved adamantine plates that protected at least part of her body, and inflicted no damage.
The succubus snarled and met him again in a violent exchange of blows. It was hard to determine who had been hurt worse, but it was clear that the cleric, already damaged by passing through the blade barrier and the wall of fire, was in increasingly dire shape.
“You cannot stand before me alone, holy man,” the succubus said, taunting him, her sword’s point dancing in her hand as they circled.
“Perhaps you are right,” the cleric said. He turned and knelt, opening himself up to the demon’s thrust. He took the hit, which crunched hard through the armor covering the back of his right shoulder, but it did not stop him from unleashing a powerful healing spell into the prone form of Arun.
The paladin stirred, his hand finding, and tightening, around the haft of his warhammer.
The Herald’s Voice healed itself again, drawing a contemptuous snicker from its adversary. Thus far, the archon had not been able to land even a single hit upon the darting form of Scyla. The duelist, on the other hand, even fighting defensively, had been able to inflict a number of additional wounds upon her foe. Long trails of blood ran down its body, and its movements now left bloody prints upon the iron floor.
“At least the paladin was a worthy foe,” she said. “It is time to finish this farce.” She shifted her stance as she came in again, lifting her earlier cautious advance, and focusing now on the attack as she came in with both sais diving in ahead of her.
The Voice did not retreat. It took several devastating hits, with droplets of blood spraying out around it as the sais worked their deadly work. But it got what had been waiting for; with the duelist no longer fighting defensively, she was at least slighty vulnerable. Scyla kept a close eye on the hovering sword, but the blade did not move, did not even flinch.
By the time she realized that something was wrong, it was too late.
The archon sighed, and dropped its wings down across its body. One brushed the duelist’s shoulder, just slightly…
As it spoke a word of dread power, calling upon the power of Destruction to unleash a harm spell into the genasi.
Scyla screamed and staggered backward. Her body wrenched painfully, and blood exploded from her ears, nostrils, and mouth as the terrible spell wracked her form. Speed and skill were her weapons, not durability, and the spell took her to the brink of death.
The Voice looked up, fearsome with blood running down its perfect body, its wings unfolding to reveal a stern expression that brooked no mercy.
The celestial started forward.
The duelist ran, or at least tried to.
As the first discordant sounds of the half-fey’s song of discord began to echo through the chamber, Dannel looked over at Cal.
“We’ve got to stop her!”
“Counter the song!” Cal said, already calling upon his arcane sight to find the source of the magic through the concealing fog. He saw the creature almost immediately; she was a beacon of magical auras, her very nature infused with magic, and layered with wards both recognizable and unfamiliar. The tug of her song impacted his consciousness, prodding him toward violence, threatening to steal away his volition. But Dannel’s voice cut through that haze, the elf’s sharp harmonies clashing with the discordance of that other song. She would quickly realize that Dannel was blocking her, and would counter. They did not have much time.
But Cal only needed a few seconds, as he lifted his rod, and disintegrated her.
Mole fell back as the tiefling cleric pursued her relentlessly, her charged slay living spell needing only the slightest touch for release. The gnome could have easily lost the priestess in the obscuring fog, but she knew that her friends were very, very busy right at the moment, and that the sudden reappearance of the thrall in the fray could turn the balance against them. She had narrowly avoided a sweep of that hand that had been so close she could feel the air from its passage against her cheek. Now, as she backed away from that near miss, the iron walls of the room closed in around her, and she realized that the nook she’d been chased into had only one exit.
And the tiefling stood in the middle of it.
“A merry chase, little thief, but it ends now… my sisters will require my aid.”
Mole heard something in the fog, and whistled loudly.
“What…”
She too heard the clank a moment later, and turned just in time to take a solid blow from Lok’s axe to the center of her torso. The blow was partially absorbed by her armor, but it clearly hurt her. She touched Lok on the face, unleashing her spell; but against Lok’s fortitude, she may as well have tried to slay a brick wall. Seeing that the spell wasn’t stopping him, she brought up her mace, and smashed it against his shoulder. One of the spikes jabbed under his shoulder plate and drew blood. Jahaela’s confidence started to return as she yanked the mace free and saw that; the poison on the weapon was strong enough to lay a dire elephant mewling upon the ground.
But Lok merely grunted, and brought his axe up one more time.
“Ah, you see, he’s really, really tough to kill,” Mole said, walking forward as the genasi unleashed a full attack into the priestess. The gnome was ready to add in a sneak attack to finish her, but it wasn’t necessary.
Vin’kaa staggered as another blow from Arun’s hammer came crashing down into her body. The succubus was the one falling back now, her body already battered and bruised from the hits she’d taken. Her sword was slick with his blood, but with each exchange it seemed as though the holy warrior got stronger, and the demon got weaker. Finally, the succubus snarled, “The Master will destroy you!” and lifted her sword for one more desperate strike.
Arun cut her off with a swing that stove in her skull.
The room grew quiet. The steam was already beginning to dissipate, revealing a scene of utter carnage. The blood spattered liberally about the place was in good part that of the companions, but it was the five Servitors—well, four in any case, as the half-fey was just motes of dust floating in the air—that lay slain. The lamia and tiefling lay in hacked up heaps, the succubus’s skull was a bloody mess, and the water genasi lay in a pool of spreading blood, an arrow from Callendes’s bow buried in her back.
Arun and Lok turned to help Beorna from the iron bands; without knowing the command word for the device, they had to destroy it to free her. They had taken an incredible beating; this time none of them had escaped serious injury. Beorna’s face was a mask of blood, the white of her skull showing where the lamia’s knife had cut away her scalp. The other warriors had taken serious damage; Umbar could barely stand on his own, and as the surge of battle faded Arun had to prop himself up with his hammer to avoid falling. The Voice’s wounds still trailed blood, even after an initial healing; all of his more powerful spells had been drained. Dannel, Cal, and Callendes had avoided the melee, but their hides were scorched by their proximity to the wall of fire, and blood trailed from the nostrils of all three, the effects of the fey creature’s great shout. Even Mole was covered in gashes from the blade barrier.
“One more room,” Arun said, taking up his hammer. His own healing was expended, but Beorna touched him and channeled positive energy into him, helping him even before addressing the terrible wound she herself bore.
“I’m completely out,” Dannel said, as he used his song to weave a minor healing spell around the heavily battered Lok.
Cal nodded. “Don’t hold anything back,” he told the others. “Heal what you can, then let’s go.”
Mole had started looting the bodies. “We don’t have time for that,” Umbar frowned, as he went through his remaining spells, converting them into healing for himself and the others.
“I will be done by the time you are,” Mole said simply. “And better that we have this stuff, than the demons that will come after us.” She went on efficiently divesting the slain of their items, putting them into her bag of holding after only a cursory evaluation.
With the Voice adding his strength to Beorna and Umbar, they were able to heal the worst of their injuries. But as Cal had said, they didn’t hold anything back, and so their powers were depleted as they companions gathered again, lifted their weapons with tired arms, and ascended the spiral staircase at the far end of the room.
Toward the Great Hall, and their final confronation with Graz’zt.
