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...
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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.