Padril said:
Just wanted to say the story is as excellent as always Lazybones. Hope you can keep up the pace.
That won't be a problem. I'm actually about a full module ahead at this point (summer's slow season at work)
Mimic said:
Your characters are so well developed that I find myself hoping that Zenna and Dannel get back together, plus I think a deeper relationship between Mole and Arun would be interesting.
Fear not, we have some interesting developments in terms of character interactions coming, once they get out of the Abyss and can start thinking about stuff besides surviving.
* * * * *
Chapter 206
The two vrock demons flew rapidly closer, their wings beating powerfully as they sped over the landscape, close to the ground to avoid drawing the attentions of the plasms above.
The companions prepared themselves. Kaurophon cast several spells, putting his defenses in place, and laid an enchantment upon Arun to enhance his already-considerable stamina.
Zenna renewed her
mage armor, bolstered it with a
shield, and then turned toward Dannel. He’d drawn out an arrow, and was judging the distance toward the demons. They were still fairly far off, but growing rapidly nearer.
“Hold a moment,” Zenna said. She looked in his quiver; there were six arrows left inside, not counting the one he’d just drawn. “Put it back.”
He replaced the arrow, and she cast an
align weapon spell upon them, drawing into them the power of good, anathema to the demons. “Make them count,” she said, drawing back. The elf nodded, and drew his arrow again.
The elf fired the first shot, his arrow lancing through the air, cutting the distance between them and the low-flying demons. One of them squawked, seeing it coming, and its fellow twisted to the side, the arrow knifing harmlessly between them. Dannel frowned and took aim for a second shot, altering his aim slightly. Beside him Hodge and Mole also opened fire with their crossbows, although there was little chance of doing damage with mundane weapons.
Again the demons dodged, but this time Dannel had adjusted, and the demon, fooled by the slight change in arc, darted to the same side only to have the arrow punch through its wing. The
aligned missile hurt it, and it let out a loud, angry cry. Both demons started pounding their wings, gaining some altitude, presumably in preparation of a diving attack. Hodge and Mole’s shots both missed, and the dwarf dropped his crossbow, focusing instead on lifting his heavy spear into position to brace for their rush.
The demons, after the speed of their initial approach, now seemed content to move gradually into position. Now about thirty feet above the ground, they both suddenly seemed to shimmer, and numerous shifting images sprung out into the air around them. More missiles rose up to meet them, Zenna adding a cautious shot from her own crossbow, holding her other spells in reserve for the moment. She was rewarded by connecting with a
mirror image, causing it to vanish. But still several remained around each demon.
One of the demons abruptly spread its wings wide to their full extension, and offered a loud, shrill cry. The ground beneath it began to shift and twist, a foul black cloud gathering out of the spongy turf. It took but seconds to form and then dissipate, leaving behind a pack of small, fat, slavering demons.
“Dretches!” Morgan warned them. Lesser demons, but there were nearly a dozen, and they immediately started rushing toward the companions.
The vrocks rose up yet higher, fifty, sixty, seventy feet high, now at risk from the roiling plasms above. But they only remained there a moment, hanging at apogee eighty feet above them, before winging over and diving at them. They screeched as a spell from below interrupted their defenses, and the
mirror images dissolved, revealing their true locations. Zenna glanced around her, but saw no sign of Kaurophon.
Invisible, she thought, adding that bit of knowledge to what she knew of his powers.
As if he’d been waiting for that moment, Dannel lifted his bow and fired, the arrow slicing up into the gut of the demon he’d wounded before. The demon let out a cry of pain, but continued its dive, taking aim at the elf with its outstretched talons.
“Remember the stunning screech!” Zenna warned, but it was too late to do anything about it. The demons had timed their dive to coincide with their summoned dretches meeting them, and battle was joined.
“I’ll hold the dretches!” Morgan cried, and he rushed out from their defensive ring to meet the small horde,
Alakast lifted to attack. He drove the magical staff almost literally
through one of the small demons, which erupted into a noxious heap of bone, gore, and black goo that quickly dissolved into nothingness. A second demon leapt at his arm, but he jammed the staff quickly back into its face, and it too fell, the putrid mess that passed for its brains leaking out from the gaps in its sundered skull.
Two were down almost immediately, but the other nine swarmed on Morgan from all sides, tearing with their ugly claws and biting with their protruding teeth.
The rest of the companions could offer little immediate aid, for the vrocks were upon them. Hodge kept his spear aimed at the first as it descended, and although it tried to veer aside at the last instant, the canny dwarf shifted in time to drive the magical shaft through an extended wing. The vrock tore free and landed hard on the ground, immediately tuning at the dwarf in a furious rage.
The second vrock assaulted Dannel, who drew his sword while keeping his bow close in his other hand. A claw clipped him across the shoulder, drawing long gashes down his arm even through his shirt of mail. He pulled free and lifted his sword, but too late realized that the weapon had almost no chance of harming the creature. Instead he stabbed it into the ground at his feet, and darted backward, trying to gain room to use his bow.
Arun roared one of his battle-invocations to Moradin as he laid into the demon threatening Hodge from behind. His holy blade tore through its thick hide, releasing a jet of black ichor, drawing an ear-shattering shriek from the creature. The other demon took up that cry and redoubled its force, their fury echoing across the plain.
The companions, their senses overwhelmed by that terrible sound, reeled. Even Arun, with his incredible fortitude, was momentarily overcome by that fell screech.
Morgan reeled, stunned by the vrock screech, and the demons facing him exploited that fact mercilessly. His armor, already ravaged by the bebilith, now had to withstand tearing claws and biting teeth, seeking gaps. Bloody wounds appeared in his arms and legs, and one demon even grabbed hold of
Alakast, its nearly-mindless expression twisting in pain from the very touch of the weapon, as it tried to pull the staff from his grasp.
That crude attempt to disarm him finally shook him from his daze. A flare of rage seemed to flow out of the weapon into him, and he swept the weapon in a violent arc, driving the demons back. Two fell, their bloated heads laid open by blows from the staff, but the others barely hesitated, leaping at him again.
The vrocks had not wasted the momentary advantage provided by their stunning screeches. The one that Arun had wounded in the paladin’s initial assault turned upon him, and unleashed a flurry of attacks upon him. It pumped its wings and lifted itself a few feet above the ground, so that its hind legs as well as its forelimbs could rake him with their claws. The dwarf’s armor kept him from being torn apart, but even so a claw tore several gashes in his jaw, while another crunched heavily into his hip, driving pain even through the armored plate protecting him there. Finally the creature darted its vulpine beak at his exposed face, but he managed to recover enough to lift his shield, deflecting the powerful blow.
The second vrock continued its attack upon the stunned Dannel. Like its fellow it flew up to unleash a full assault upon him. Without the ability to dodge, the hapless elf had no chance. By sheer chance one claw missed, turned by the chain links of his armor, but the other three all dug painfully into his flesh, and when it darted its beak down to finish him, only the fact that he was already falling kept the demon from taking half of his head off. The elf went down hard, blood gushing from the wounds in his arms, body, and face.
The companions were nearly overcome... but in that moment of near-defeat, a power filled them, a pulse of energy that flowed into the veins like a bracing mountain torrent. Their bodies responded, moving with great speed, and they took the attack back to their enemies.
Morgan laid about him with
Alakast, and every time he struck, a demon went down. One of the dretch tried to
scare the knight, but the spell faltered against the man’s mental focus, and the staff tore through them like a scythe cutting through a swath of ripened wheat. Soon the demons were intent only upon flight, but none got more than a few paces away before the white wood found them, and sent them back to the pits where they had originated.
Arun held nothing back, driving his sword into the body of the demon with thundering force,
smiting it with the divine power at his command. The demon reeled before the dwarf, humbled by his strength and skill, and it fell back, its body covered in its own blood. It came to the belated realization that coming to the aid of its comrade against these outsiders had been a bad, bad idea, and it drew back from the dwarf, preparing to call upon its power to
teleport from this place of death—its death, if it didn’t flee.
It never saw Hodge come up behind it, or the descending axe, until it was too late.
The demon saw that its crippled foe still stirred, although with the amount of blood jetting from his wounds, death would not be long coming. Even though it had foes remaining, however, it could not resist the killing stroke, and it flapped forward, a talon poised to strike.
Flames washed over it, knocking the vrock off-balance. Even though it was resistant to fire, these flames still hurt it, scorching its flesh, sending a tendril of hot pain through its hide before they flickered and died. The vrock turned, furious, to see a woman, unarmored, facing it only about fifteen feet away.
“Face me, coward,” she snarled at it.
The demon grinned, knowing that if the
scorching ray was the best she had, she would soon be joining her dying friend. It launched itself at her, a claw tearing at her head.
Zenna felt pain blossom through her skull as she was knocked roughly backward, the vrock ripping through all of her vaunted magical defenses as though they were not even there. It would tear her to pieces, she knew, but she had no choice; she’d seen it move to finish off Dannel, and could not let that happen.
The demon let out a sudden cry of pain, and while Zenna hadn’t seen the source of its distress, she knew what it had to be.
Mole! she thought, and indeed there was her friend, visible as the demon turned in mid-air, the gnome dangling from her knife buried deep in the back of its leathery thigh. The demon snarled and lashed out with its claws, scoring the rogue deeply, forcing her to drop off and roll away, bleeding.
The demon turned back toward Zenna, but now there was a dwarf standing there, holding a sword that burned its eyes painfully with its bright glow.
“You die, demon,” the dwarf said.
The vrock’s anger, and perhaps its success versus the first few foes, overrode its caution, and it lunged at the dwarf, its claws tearing and slashing.
It was its last mistake.
A few moments later the companions gathered over the broken bodies of their enemies. The dretches had dissolved into greasy black stains on the ground, but the vrocks lay in bloody heaps, bones jutting from their broken bodies. Zenna had run over to Dannel, stabilizing him with her magic, and he was slowly coming around.
It had been a close call. Dannel had been very close to death, and Arun and Morgan both bore serious wounds. But they were still alive, and all too soon they were marching forward again, leaving another bloody battlefield behind them to mark their passage.
