Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)

Who is your favorite character in "The Shackled City"?

  • Zenna

    Votes: 27 29.7%
  • Mole

    Votes: 17 18.7%
  • Arun

    Votes: 31 34.1%
  • Dannel

    Votes: 10 11.0%
  • Other (note in a post)

    Votes: 6 6.6%

Nice description in there... Especially Morgan.

It might just be the way you described it for dramatic effect, but it sounds to me like they detected the illusion, KNEW he was an enemy, and the glass-creature STILL got a surprise round.

Or am I reading too much in the way of mechanics into a story? Heh.

Great reading, LB, as always.
 

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Polynike said:
excellent as usual LB

(am i the only one who dislikes Zenna and Mole, Arun and Hodge rule!!)

It's not so much that I dislike Zenna, but she does get under my skin from time to time. Now THAT is a telltale sign of great writing LB. Good stuff!
 

wolff96 said:
It might just be the way you described it for dramatic effect, but it sounds to me like they detected the illusion, KNEW he was an enemy, and the glass-creature STILL got a surprise round.
No, I only added the removal of the nerra's disguise self as a free action for effect. The companions will actually get the jump on someone for once...

And yes, Zenna even annoys me sometimes (although at other times I agree with her that she's the only one with any sense in the group!). But Mole... c'mon, how can you not like Mole? Every group needs a player who won't leave any lever unpulled, or any button unpushed... :D

* * * * *

Chapter 182

Arun wasn’t possessed of the fastest reflexes among them, but nor was he one to hesitate when a clear enemy presented itself. Thus, even as the creature released its magical disguise to take its true form, and hefted its mirror-like sword, the dwarf growled and charged, swinging his sword at its body.

The bastard sword clove into its torso, releasing a sound that resembled the noise of shattering glass. Its “blood” was dozens of tiny shards that tinkled as they struck the stone floor, before dissolving into silvery globules that formed tiny bubbles at their feet.

The rest of them turned to face four more of the creatures, slightly smaller versions of the one Arun had struck, but which each carried two of the wicked-looking shard-blades. They moved with the smoothness of liquid as they entered the room and swept ahead to the attack, spreading out to flank their foes. Morgan cried out as one slashed him with his sword, tearing through a gap in his armor and slicing a deep gash in his muscled side. A piece of the sword seemed to sheer off with the hit, jutting from the wound, which fountained bright red blood.

Too close to effectively use his bow, Dannel drew his sword, pushing Zenna behind him as he faced another of the creatures. The monster facing him held both of its blades in a ready position, but instead of attacking, its form suddenly shifted, and several identical images of itself formed out of it, blurring and distorting its location in a way that the companions were already familiar with, from their exposure to Zenna’s magic.

The others, including the one Arun had injured, likewise conjured up mirror images, except for the one that had chosen instead to press its assault upon Morgan.

The cleric, in turn, lifted Alakast with both hands, and driving the long white shaft down, smashed it through the body of his foe. The creature’s chest exploded with the force of the impact, and it crumpled in a shower of broken glass that soon became a hundred tiny globes of liquid scattered across the floor.

Morgan looked down at his handiwork in amazement, surprised with the strength that had filled his muscles with the attack.

But the rest of the nerra pressed their assault, the mirror images concealing their movements as they darted in among the companions. Hodge cursed as his axe clove through an image, and Dannel likewise thrust harmlessly through another on the opposite flank. Mole dodged nimbly through a swarm of blades, some real, some duplicative, although she was unable to successfully counter with the still-awkward oversized mace she bore.

Before the stone chair, Arun and imposter Alek faced off with full fury, trading blows. The dwarf’s assault was stronger, but the mirror images turned the favor to the nerra, as two powerful strokes of the sword clove through empty figments. Its attack, on the other hand, managed a glancing blow on the side of the dwarf’s helmet, the uncannily sharp mirror shard shivering and driving an inch-long segment into the dwarf’s temple. Arun ignored the blood pouring from the wound, lifting his sword to strike again. Two illusory images yet remained, forming a mélange of three enemies who shifted and separated in a blur.

“Your false friends won’t hide you for long,” the dwarf growled.

Zenna twisted around Dannel and fired a spray of burning hands into the ranks of the nerra. Mole was on the edge of the effect, but Zenna trusted to her friend’s nimbleness to help her avoid the blast. Mole did tumble out of the way, but as the flames hit the lead creature, there was a flare of light and suddenly a wave of heat as the fan of fire surged back into the faces of Dannel and Zenna. The tiefling was not harmed, her innate resistance protecting her, but Dannel drew back in alarm, his face scorched some by the spell.

“Hey, watch it!” he cautioned.

“They have some sort of reflective spell resistance!” she returned.

“Looks like we do it the old fashioned way then!”

He parried a slash from a darting shard that turned out to be real, but before he could riposte, one of the nerra drew its arms close to its body and... shuddered. A spray of razor-sharp shards erupted from its body, lancing into the elf and tiefling. Dannel staggered back, bleeding from a number of cuts, and Zenna was scarcely better off, clutching at a painful, bleeding cut from a shard that had only narrowly missed her eye. What was worse, the shards stuck in the wounds they caused, digging deeper into their flesh and widening the wounds as they went.

Seeing the injuries wrought upon his allies, Morgan waded boldly into the midst of the nerra and their false images, swinging Alakast in a powerful, sweeping arc. Images popped and vanished as the magical staff swept through them, and one of the nerra went flying as the weapon clipped its shoulder, blasting shards of its body free in an explosive rush.

Hodge managed for once to avoid being hit, his shield darting back and forth to absorb repeated blows from the two shard-swords wielded by the nerra facing him. He’d stayed close to the wall, and Morgan’s charge had removed the threat of being flanked, so he was able to keep all of the various images surrounding his foe safely in front of him. Conversely, however, his own strikes were notably ineffectual, although he did manage to destroy another image, leaving a mere three shifting forms facing him.

As Morgan knocked back the nerra closest to her, Mole turned to help Dannel and Zenna. The creature ignored her—ah, your mistake, she thought—and thrust its weapons at the elf, scoring a long bleeding gash in Dannel’s right leg. But Dannel held his ground, and while his own counter punctured an image, that made it easier for Mole as she brought her new mace squarely into the back of the nerra. The blow wasn’t especially powerful, but was perfectly placed, and with a loud glassine snap the creature collapsed forward, shattering as it hit the hard stone floor.

Arun’s foe was now giving ground, the dwarf following him step for step, his sword tearing through the last remaining mirror images. Desperate, the nerra thrust his sword at the paladin’s face, but Arun batted the thrust aside, and with a mighty two-handed stroke shattered the creature in twain.

The battle quickly ended. The last surviving nerra tried to retreat to the mirror, but with Hodge and Morgan right behind them, and Dannel and Mole converging from the other flank, they were cut down, the last shattering into its component shards within a pace of the opalescent surface.

“Damn,” Morgan said, pausing to draw a length of shard out of the vicious wound in his side, pressing his hand against the blood that continued to well from the deep gash.

“We have to treat those cuts quickly, before you bleed to death,” Zenna said, drawing out her wand. Dannel followed with his own device, and after painfully drawing out the wounding shards, the two of them quickly closed the bleeding wounds that Zenna, Dannel, and Morgan had suffered in the brief but violent melee.

“What were those things?” Mole asked no one in particular.

“I don’t know, but they were nasty,” Dannel said, feeling his leg to verify that he’d fully stopped the seeping blood from the wound.

“I dunna believe it,” Hodge said.

“What is it?” Mole asked him. The dwarf was examining himself, looking for something.

The dwarf spat and grinned. “We made it through a battle, and I ain’t bleedin’ out!”

The others couldn’t help but laugh.

With the guardians of the mirror defeated, the companions turned to examine their prize.

The starry mirror was a plane of rippling translucence imprisoned within the barrier of the pentagram threshold. Mole walked right up to it, drawing a cautionary warning from Zenna. The gnome looked back her with a grin and a slight shrug, as if to suggest, Hey, it’s my nature, then she turned back to examination of the portal.

“Look, there’s stuff in there,” she said, drawing their attention toward the shifting patterns that drifted in and out of focus through the blurry surface.

They all stepped closer, wary of another intrusion by more of the mirror-creatures, until they could make out what Mole had seen. There were a number of images floating within the surface of the mirror, mostly small chambers fashioned from slab rock with unobtrusive features. But in one...

“The paladin!” Dannel said, pointing to a form in the depths of the mirror. The others followed his direction to see the armored figure that had to be Alek Tercival, slumped in the corner of a rocky vault, his blonde hair hanging down about his temples in a chaotic tumble, his face turned away from them, a glowing sword laying on the dusty stone at his feet. And then the image drifted out of focus and was gone.

“Are you certain it was him?” Zenna asked.

“It was him,” Morgan said. “I saw the symbol of Helm, on his shield.”

Trapped between glass and stone,” Mole said.

“Eh? What?” Hodge asked.

“One of the lines in Jenya’s divination, Mole explained. The rest of it went, “He weeps where many can see him, But he can see only himself.

“How do we get him out of there?” Dannel asked. “Alek Tercival!” he shouted into the mirror, but there was no reply.

Arun cautiously reached out and probed the surface of the mirror with his sword. The blade sank into the shimmering pool, and was drawn out unaffected a moment later.

“We already know it’s a portal,” Mole said. “Those creatures came out of it, earlier. But there were other places than the vault with the paladin in those images. How do we know which destination we will get?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Morgan said, squaring his shoulders toward the mirror.

“Wait,” Zenna said. “I bet there’s a pattern in these colored sigils...”

But the cleric did not hesitate, striding boldly into the mirror, vanishing into its depths.

“Well, now what do we do?” Mole asked.

“There’s Alek Tercival, again,” Dannel said, pointing toward a particular spot in the Starry Mirror. “I don’t see Morgan, however.”

“Like as nay he stepp’d into the flamin’ pits o’ Hades,” Hodge grumbled.

Arun looked up at Zenna. “The knight has presented us with a difficult choice,” he said.

The tiefling nodded. “Yes. He had his faith...” Is that enough? she added, in her own thoughts.

“If we go through, we should go through together,” Dannel said.

“Yer all crazy,” Hodge said. “But I ain’t stayin’ here in this demon-damned place alone.”

“Wait,” Zenna said, turning back to the ring of six colored tiles in the floor. Drawing out her notebook and a well-worn quill, she quickly noted down the order and placement of the design. The others watched her as she carefully slid the quill back into its holder, and rejoined them.

“All right?” Dannel said, looking at all of them.

Mole grinned, and looked as though she was barely keeping herself from hopping in anticipation.

“Yer all crazy,” Hodge repeated, under his breath. But when Arun looked at him, the dwarf nodded.

The five stepped forward, into the Starry Mirror, and vanished.
 

Great writing, Lazy!!

Zenna's attitude towards Morgan was fabulous!!
And I don't know what you folks dislike so much in her, she's my favorite character ... (Oh, there's Hodge too, but... :heh: )
 

We're getting close...

* * * * *

Chapter 183

Zenna looked around at her new surroundings. Her first thought was of Morgan.

What have you gotten us into now, priest?.

The room was small, fashioned of seamless blocks of perfectly smooth stone. There was a decided yellowish tint to the diffuse light that seemed to shine from everywhere at once. The only feature were the five portals set into each of the room’s five walls.

There was no sign of the others. She was alone. As far as she could tell, she’d just materialized in the center of the room.

She studied the five portals. Each had an opening shrouded in vague mists that bore a slight coloration. They matched the colors on the floor of the chamber of the Starry Mirror, she realized.

There has to be a pattern here, she thought.

“Zenna?”

The voice was Dannel’s, and it sounded faint, distant, as if echoing through a dozen twisting tunnels to reach her.

“I’m here!” she shouted.

“It looks like we’re all in different rooms,” the elf replied.

“I told yer this be foolish!” Hodge’s distant yell came.

“Morgan? Are you there?” Mole’s voice came.

There was a delay of a few seconds, then they all could hear the cleric’s words. “Yes, I am here as well. I am... sorry. I have tried several portals, but they all lead back to these rooms.”

“Maybe we can meet up,” Dannel suggested. “What color rooms are you all in?”

They discussed the situation further, but from what they revealed, and what Morgan told him of his own experiments, it seemed as though each of their rooms were unique and apart from the others. Morgan had started in a blue room, and had left a coin lying on the floor. Later, when he returned through another blue portal, the place was again empty.

“An endless maze,” Mole said.

“There must be a pattern,” Zenna insisted. “Alek found it, even if by accident.”

“With six colors, the number of permutations is very, very high,” Dannel reminded her. “We could be here for some time.”

Zenna considered it intently. “Perhaps not. I wrote down the color pattern from the exterior room, remember?”

She read off the colors in order, and they decided to follow the order, stepping through the proper sequence of portals. But the experiment failed, and they found themselves in empty rooms again, no closer to an exit.

“What about magic?” Arun asked.

“The entire complex radiates magic,” Zenna said, having already thought to use detect magic. “But I have no spell that can give us an easy answer.”

“What about you, Morgan?” Dannel asked. But the cleric had grown silent, and did not respond.

“Well, if anyone else has any ideas...” the elf began.

A distant sound of metal crashing on stone became audible to all of them. It took Zenna only a moment to figure out the source.

“Hodge, I don’t think that bashing down the walls will be a solution.”

The dwarf’s voice was tinged with a bit of exertion. “Well, blast! I’ll be damned if I’m gunna be trapped in here fer’ever now! What kind o’ crazies would build a place like this?”

Dannel said something dry in response, but Zenna barely heard him. Her mind was whirling, following something Hodge had said...

“Dannel,” she finally interrupted. “You still have that silver plate, right?”

A pause. “Yes, it’s right here. Did you have an idea?”

“Those six-armed skeletons, that odd chair-sculpture... I think that the creature on the plate is the race that build the Voice, at least the complex where we found the hags and the mirror.”

Dannel’s voice came back marked with excitement. “Yes, and there’s a five-sided figure here, and some markings!”

“What are the markings, again?”

The elf described them, a series of ovals with dots or bars beneath them.” Zenna drew out her notebook again, and wrote them down as he spoke. For a long minute she studied them.

“Zenna?” Mole asked.

“I think I have something,” she said. “These symbols could be numbers... if I had a guess, I’d say they form a sequence: four, five, six, one, two, three.”

“All well and good,” Arun said. “But what does it mean?”

But Zenna had already turned to the notes she’d taken in the room with the starry mirror. “The ring in the floor,” she told them. “It forms a progression; from the carving it was clear that there was one intended route around the circle.”

“Ah, and the numbers tell you which color to choose,” Dannel said. “Brilliant, Zenna!”

“This is all just theory,” Morgan said.

“Well, I can think of one way to test it,” Mole said. “Zenna, I’m in an orange room. What door do I choose?”

Zenna read her the correct pattern, using the numbers and the color-circle. Mole’s voice followed as the walked through the path of doors, and finally her voice came to them, excited. “I’m in a room with only one exit! I can see the vault, and Alek!”

“Great job!” Dannel said. “Zenna, you have the key, you’ll have to walk us each through...”

As the others followed her directions, the echoing voices of her companions disappeared, one by one. Finally, she was alone. Taking a deep breath, Zenna followed the pattern herself, passing through empty rooms and selecting the right portal in the order that she had deciphered from Dannel’s silver plate.

Finally, she reached the last one. She could see the vault, her friends visible together on the far side. Pausing to take a deep breath, she stepped through...
 


Lazybones said:
A distant sound of metal crashing on stone became audible to all of them. It took Zenna only a moment to figure out the source.

“Hodge, I don’t think that bashing down the walls will be a solution.”

The dwarf’s voice was tinged with a bit of exertion. “Well, blast! I’ll be damned if I’m gunna be trapped in here fer’ever now! What kind o’ crazies would build a place like this?”

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read this. Hodge is such a good character!
 

Thanks to chars like Mole ive been repeatedly flame struck, poisoned, petrified, dropped down a pit, possessed by a ghost, hit by i dont know how many darts and arrows, level drained and charmed. so inquisitive annoying gnomes and rouge types should be kept in a bag of holding until a trapped needs disarmin or door unlocked then once the task is done be manacled and thrown back into the bog of holding. my cousin got a real life ass kicking for being responsible for some of the above, he played a very similar car to mole but was a halfling instead
 

Black Bard said:
AARRRGGHHH!!!!
Cliffhanger!!!!!!!!!
Nah, that's not a cliffhanger.

THIS is a cliffhanger...
:D

* * * * *

Chapter 184

After directing the others through the maze, Zenna was the last to step through the final portal, passing through another mirror-doorway into the small stone vault where Alek Tercival was imprisoned.

Morgan and Dannel were crouched over the paladin, with Arun and Hodge close enough behind to block a clear view. Instead, she turned her attention to the rest of the vault.

The place was fairly cramped, a cube of empty space perhaps fifteen feet on each side, surrounded by seamless heavy stones. A heavy iron door, its frame marred by hundreds of shallow gouges—no doubt inflicted by Alek, in his desire to escape—was the only means of exit apart from the mirror-doorway. She turned back to the portal, knowing already what she would find, even before Mole said it.

“The portal’s one-way only from this side. No going back,” the gnome said. She went to take a look at the door, but Zenna could already see that it was similar to the slab portals in Vaprak’s Voice, with no keyhole or other apparently mechanism that might grant them easy egress. Well, if it came to that, she figured that Arun and Hodge would be able to figure out a way to force it open.

She walked over to where she could get a clearer look at their reason for coming. Morgan was speaking to the paladin, but he seemed insensitive to their presence, and when Zenna got a clear look at his face, she saw that his eyes were vague and distant, lost in some private abyss. The paladin was older than most of them, maybe thirty, and while he was still ruggedly handsome, it was clear that he’d suffered a great deal of abuse. How he’d survived here, without food and water, Zenna had no idea. In fact, if it wasn’t for a small crack visible at the base of the iron door, she suspected he would have suffocated. Even so, with seven of them now here, she wondered whether that vent alone would suffice.

“How long have you been here?” Dannel prodded, to no avail.

Morgan placed his hand on the paladin’s shoulder. “We have come for you, brother. We have slain the evil hags and their servants, and will find a way to get you out of here. Do not fear, your shadowed journey has come to an end.”

“Bah, he’s gone daft,” Hodge said. Morgan looked up and shot him a dark look, but Arun drew his cohort aside. “We’d better take a look at that door,” he said to his fellow dwarf.

Morgan, however, did not give up on his colleague, fighting to reach through whatever trauma had disengaged his conscious mind. Zenna, looking around the bleak emptiness of the vault, thought she could understand the root causes of his despair; all that he’d believed in had come crashing down around him, leaving him bereft of the lifeline that had anchored his life. How long had he spent in this place, sealed in, awaiting death?

The cleric had taken up Alakast, and placed it standing on the floor between them. He took up the paladin’s limp hands, and drawing off the man’s gauntlets wrapped them around the smooth white bore of the blessed weapon. “An angel has guided us to this ancient weapon,” he said, earnestly, his hands embracing Alek’s, holding them to the staff. “Feel the power within it, a power that also flows within your veins, my friend...”

Alek Tercival’s eyes seemed to flicker, and he blinked. “Angels... my angels... they... they...”

“Yes, what is it, my friend?” Morgan encouraged him.

The paladin’s body was wracked by a terrible sob. “They betrayed me! The three archons... my angels... they told me I was worthy! Their false promises were a test... and I failed!”

“Angels, hah,” Hodge snorted. Dannel elbowed him.

“I understand,” Morgan said, and although Zenna could not see his face, she could hear the depth of pain in the cleric’s voice.

“We have to get out of here,” Mole said, softly so that her words would not disturb the fragile connection between Morgan and Alek. “And that door’s not coming off unless forced.”

Arun had already taken up position at the door, running his thick fingers along the cracks in the threshold. “I’ll need a lever,” he said.

“I left all me tools behind,” Hodge said. “Me pry-bar would’a made short work o’ that door, gods be damned!”

Morgan and Alek both turned to look at the dwarf, the cleric’s face disapproving, the paladin’s stricken.

“Um... yeah, I think I gots a spike or two in ‘ere...” the dwarf said, digging in his pack.

“So, the ha—um, angels, they sent you into the portal maze?” Dannel said to Alek.

But the paladin’s gaze had fallen back to the white shaft between his hands. He ran his calloused, weather-cracked fingers up its smooth surface. “When the final cage is shackled, the burning doom shall rise,” he said, his voice so low that they had to lean in to her him.

“What’s that?” Mole asked. She’d been “helping” with the door, and turned to make sure she hadn’t missed something interesting.

Dannel looked at Zenna. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

Zenna shook her head, but she felt a strong sense of unease, along with a tickle at the edge of her memory. Something...

A loud banging noise made her jump, and Alek Tercival drew back, his hands leaping from the bore of the staff as if burned by it. The sound was Arun, driving a spike into the frame of the door with one of his light hammers, while Hodge, using his dagger as a wedge, tried to widen the gap below it.

Morgan was still talking earnestly to Alek in a low voice, but it appeared as though the paladin had withdrawn inside himself again.

The noise redoubled as the dwarves intensified their efforts upon the door, driving larger the crack in the threshold, then using their larger weapons to lever the portal open further. Finally Arun was able to get his fingers into the crack, and he and Hodge combined their strength to slide the door into its jam, the metal protesting loudly with each inch.

Mole, of course, hopped through the instant that the opening was wide enough to accommodate her. Behind the door was a steep staircase that led upward; they could see light that appeared to be natural daylight filtering down from above. The fresh air was hot, and dry.

The dwarves finished open the door, and recovering their weapons, started up the stairs. The others followed behind, Dannel helping Morgan lift Alek to his feet. The paladin complied woodenly, but leaned heavily against Morgan as the cleric directed him toward the stairs. Dannel took up Alek’s glowing sword from the floor of the vault, and slid it back into the paladin’s scabbard. Zenna was the last to leave, taking one last look about the vault before following them up the steps.

They emerged into a larger chamber at the top of the stairs. Four thick stone pillars supported a vaulted ceiling almost twenty feet high above them. The opposite wall was breached, leading outdoors, and a wide landscape of rolling sand dunes that extended as far as they could see. A pile of sand gathered by the wind had collected at the base of the opening, spreading out across the floor of the room. A bleached skeleton lay on the floor, its lower body buried under the sand, a rusted pick-axe lying beside one outstretched hand.

“This doesn’t look like anywhere near Cauldron that I’m aware of,” Dannel said, regarding the vista through the gap in the wall. The others had already moved out into the room; Mole standing near the doorway, the dwarves a short distance behind her, near the skeletal remains at the edge of the pile of sand.

Zenna stepped out from the staircase into the room, but suddenly felt an oppressive feeling descend over her. It was a feeling she recognized, as he eyes were drawn to a high corner of the chamber. Something’s scryingus...

She opened her mouth to shout a warning, but before she could speak, there was a loud noise directly to her left, a sudden bang accompanied by an eruption of noxious wisps of cloying gray smoke that appeared out of nothingness. The gray pall persisted only for a heartbeat, dissolving to reveal a monstrosity.

Zenna’s eyes lifted up... and up... to look into the face of the horror that loomed over her. It was huge, easily fifteen feet tall, its body roughly humanoid, a pastiche of bulging musculature and bony ridges. It had four arms, two massive limbs that ended in pincers big enough to slice her in twain, with two small arms with articulated hands that jutted from its chest. And its face... its face was a horror, looking at first glance like that of a hound, but with huge, slathering jaws, and eyes that burned red with a fearsome, malevolent intelligence.

The demon regarded them with a look of hateful contempt. Its voice filled the vault with an echoing roar.

“YOU SHALL NOT SAVE YOUR FRIEND, MORTALS! THIS TIME OF PEACE IS AT AN END!”
 

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