Lazybones
Adventurer
Chapter 227
Faced with a clear enemy, the companions rushed into the chamber to meet the darting giant wasps.
The vermin were fast, and struck first, diving down at the warriors and stabbing at them with the long stingers that jutted from their abdomens. One thrust glanced off of a shoulder plate of Morgan’s armor, while the second avoided Hodge’s spear and narrowly missed taking the dwarf’s left eye. Hodge dropped his weapon and tried to shield his face, the stinger glancing off of the side of his helm, leaving a dripping trail of venom.
The wasps’ assault was fierce, but they faced veteran warriors who knew how to coordinate their attacks. Arun came to the aid of Hodge, drawing the wasp’s attention with a potent swipe of his holy sword while the latter dwarf unlimbered his huge axe. The blessed blade tore deeply into the wasp’s body, and its body seemed to deflate as the holy energies infused in the weapon tore mercilessly into its fiendish essence. It only took a single powerful stroke from Hodge to end it, the dying creature flopping to the ground before it dissolved into a streamer of noxious black smoke.
The second wasp came under similar heavy assault from Morgan and Dannel. The elf’s thrust with Alakast failed to connect, but Morgan laid into it with a heavy blow that sheared off half of its abdomen. Black ichor fell from the wound to sizzle on the stone floor at their feet, but unfortunately the stinger remained intact, and despite being crippled the wasp did not retreat, lunging at the knight and managing to drive the tip of its weapon into the man’s forearm just above his greave.
Farther back in the room, the air sizzled and hissed again, and a trio of hellish black hounds materialized.
“In the nexus!” Zenna warned. “Something’s summoning these creatures!” She fired a scorching ray at the nebulous outline she’d identified within the twisting black flames, but although the ray seemed to strike true, she could not tell if it had had any effect at all.
Arun had started toward the hell hounds, but at Zenna’s shout he diverted toward the nexus. The paladin reached the edge of the black flames but could go no further, staggering backward as eager tongues of the unholy fire reached out and painfully caressed his flesh. He could not get close enough to strike, and thought that he heard laughter from within the nexus.
Then flames washed over him, as the hell hounds unleashed their fiery breath upon him.
Morgan dispatched the wasp with another powerful swing of his sword that bisected the creature. Even as it began to dissolve, he was rushing to aid Arun, but before he could reach the embattled dwarf another disturbance behind him—close to where Zenna stood near the cavern entrance—resolved into a trio of massive, twisting centipedes, each at least ten feet in length.
“Go!” Dannel urged the knight, turning to aid the tiefling. “We have to destroy the source!”
Unable to get at the spellcaster hiding within the protective shield of the nexus, Arun turned toward the more immediate foes. The hell hounds leapt at him, their huge jaws snapping at his arms and legs in an attempt to drag him down and tear him to pieces.
Unfortunately for them, they underestimated the strength of the dwarf paladin.
The first hound went down with its head staved in, its skull split apart by a critical hit from the dwarf’s sword. A second hound leapt over the dissolving corpse in time to absorb Arun’s backswing, the sword tearing a foot-long gash in its shoulder, driving it roughly aside.
Into Hodge’s chopping blow, which severed its spine.
The third hound managed to seize Arun’s injured arm in its jaws, but before it could get a good grip the dwarf ripped the limb free, turning to bring his sword to bear once more.
Zenna had just enough time to get her mirror images up before the centipedes attacked. The mindless vermin had difficulty getting through the layered defenses she’d prepared, although she felt a hot stab of pain as a drop of venom splashed on her thigh, the bite narrowly defeated by her mage armor.
“Kaurophon!” she cried, although she could not see the invisible sorcerer. “We have to get that spellcaster out of the nexus!”
Kaurophon had not spent the first few moments of the battle idle. He’d turned himself invisible immediately, of course, although he suspected from the potency of the conjurations being worked that the spellcaster could likely detect him anyway. He drew himself away from the developing melees, careful not to do anything—yet—to focus the unidentified foe’s attention upon him. He saw Mole circle around before him, trying to keep to the shadows, and moved in her wake. Even before he saw Arun attempt to penetrate the nexus and fail, he knew that simple mundane means would not suffice here. It might not affect him—he could feel its pulsating power resonate to the demonic side of his nature—but that did not mean that he was about to move in to face the spellcaster alone. Nor did he want to highlight to his allies the difference separating him from them; they already had more than enough suspicion of him to threaten his objective.
While he studied the nexus and the spells coming from within he added to his magical defenses, adding wards from his reservoir of spells almost without conscious thought.
Arun let out a roar as he drove the hell hound roughly backward with a thrust of his injured arm, giving him enough space to bring his sword around. The sword caught the infernal canine solidly across the side of its head, cutting to the bone and ruining one eye. The creature did not relent, surging at the dwarf again. Hodge circled around and slashed at its body, seeking another killing blow like he’d managed earlier, but this time his blow was poorly aimed and it glanced off its thick hide without doing damage.
Arun heard Morgan approaching and glanced over at him. “The spear!” he said, indicating Hodge’s discarded weapon. The knight followed his gaze and nodded, turning to pick up the magical longspear before returning his focus to the nexus.
Even as he did so, the air rippled again, and a quartet of giant scorpions, each roughly the size of a man, materialized near him.
Zenna fought back a cry of pain as sharp fangs stabbed deep into her leg. She could feel the sting of poison that flushed through the wound into her bloodstream, and her muscles started to twitch uncontrollably as the venom worked its fell potency upon her. She pulled away from the centipede, trying to clear enough for her remaining two mirror images to confound the huge bug.
Dannel tried to reach her, but he had his own hands full with his own adversary. Alakast had been quite effective against the creatures, and he’d destroyed the first centipede with a pair of well-placed thrusts. But a second centipede had turned to face him, blocking him from Zenna with its long, twisting body, biting him in the side and slowing his reflexes with its poison. The thing quivered, damaged by another blow from the enchanted staff, but it continued pressing the elf, who narrowly avoided another lunging bite.
“Hold on, Zenna!” he cried in encouragement, as he struck it again.
“I can handle it!” she returned, reaching out to touch the centipede, unleashing a painful shocking grasp.
Kaurophon clucked as his bad luck reasserted itself. He could almost feel the enemy spellcaster’s latest conjuration spell falter before his counterspell, but at the last moment his dispel faltered, and the giant scorpions appeared near Morgan. He suspected that the nexus was fueling the conjurer’s magic in some way, and turned his thoughts to a way of getting it out of the black flames.
Unfortunately for him, his attempt to interfere with the unseen enemy’s spells had drawn its attention. The sorcerer felt a twinge of dread as the shape in the flames shifted to face him. He felt a power rising from within the nexus, and then a roiling, terrible cloud of pure darkness erupted around him, tearing at him with tendrils of negative energy.
Kaurophon nearly laughed. Of all the spells that could have been hurled at him, an unholy blight was probably the least effective! His choice of allies had served him yet again, as the enemy had judged his nature based on the company he kept...
Still, he thought, as the blight dissipated, he could not afford to be too confident. But an idea had occurred to him, how to draw the enemy out of the nexus, into the blades of his allies.
“Blasted bugs!” Hodge cursed, as a scorpion tried to seize him in its considerable claws. The vermin was strong, but not strong enough to grapple the dwarf, who took its entire claw off with a powerful chop of his axe. Likewise Arun, having finally put down the hell hound, slew the second scorpion with a powerful thrust of his sword. The two dwarves fought together well, keeping the scorpions back, out of Morgan’s path as he made his way toward the nexus, charging with his spear at the ready.
The magical steel head of the spear disappeared into the flames, striking square at the center of the shadowy form inside. A sound of metal striking metal echoed from within the nexus, and at that moment, as the dark figure stumbled back, off balance, one of the scorpions threatening Arun was suddenly hurled across the chamber by some invisible force. The vermin shot into the nexus like a stone kicked by a giant boot, colliding with the spellcaster, knocking him roughly backward, stumbling out of the flames to fall prone just a pace outside of the radius of the black fire.
The enemy was clad in plate armor in an archaic style, covered with ancient runes of secret power. Its head and hands were naked bone, that of a skeleton. As its head came up, it fixed Morgan with a terrible stare from twin points of dread fire within its cavernous eye sockets, hatred burning in those fiery orbs.
Even though Morgan no longer called himself a cleric of Helm, still he instantly recognized this foe. “A lich!” he breathed, fighting the doubt and terror that threatened to unman him at its dread stare, dropping the spear to draw his holy blade once more from its scabbard.
The lich pulled itself up, its armor clanking emptily about its skeletal form at its movements. It carried a slender wand of bone, its head surrounded by a red nimbus of light that promised pain and suffering. It evaluated the situation about it in a glance—clearly outnumbered, its summoned allies clearly on the losing end of the still-raging melee scattered throughout the chamber—and turned back toward the shelter of the nexus. The flames reached for him, as if to welcome his return.
But the undead thing did not reach its shelter. Even as it took its first step, a small form tumbled into its path, tripping it up, tangling herself in its bony limbs. The lich fell, but responded quickly, digging its bony fingers into Mole’s hair, pulling her away from its body. The gnome screamed at the evil touch, her body stiffening, and she fell away, blue trails marring her skin where the lich’s fingers had touched.
The lich stood again, but staggered as Morgan laid into it. The unholy creature, infused with the dread power of unlife, withstood a blow that would have torn a mortal enemy into pieces. But the lich was now just a step from the dark power of the nexus, promising recovery and succor.
“You cannot defeat me holy knight, not here,” it said, its voice an empty dirge sounding within the caverns of its empty skull.
It stepped toward the flames, but even as the dark fires started to envelop it, Arun came running around the far edge of the nexus, a giant scorpion right behind him still trying to grapple him with its claws. The lich released an evil screech and fixed its dark gaze upon the paladin, but Arun merely shouted a dwarvish invocation to his god and swung his sword. The blessed steel struck ancient bone with powerful force, and the latter gave way. As its skull disintegrated, the holy sword tore through the unholy glow of its eyes, unleashing a blinding flare of light that for a moment made the nexus pale in contrast.
When that momentary brilliance faded, the lich was gone, leaving behind an empty suit of armor and the other trinkets it had carried.
Faced with a clear enemy, the companions rushed into the chamber to meet the darting giant wasps.
The vermin were fast, and struck first, diving down at the warriors and stabbing at them with the long stingers that jutted from their abdomens. One thrust glanced off of a shoulder plate of Morgan’s armor, while the second avoided Hodge’s spear and narrowly missed taking the dwarf’s left eye. Hodge dropped his weapon and tried to shield his face, the stinger glancing off of the side of his helm, leaving a dripping trail of venom.
The wasps’ assault was fierce, but they faced veteran warriors who knew how to coordinate their attacks. Arun came to the aid of Hodge, drawing the wasp’s attention with a potent swipe of his holy sword while the latter dwarf unlimbered his huge axe. The blessed blade tore deeply into the wasp’s body, and its body seemed to deflate as the holy energies infused in the weapon tore mercilessly into its fiendish essence. It only took a single powerful stroke from Hodge to end it, the dying creature flopping to the ground before it dissolved into a streamer of noxious black smoke.
The second wasp came under similar heavy assault from Morgan and Dannel. The elf’s thrust with Alakast failed to connect, but Morgan laid into it with a heavy blow that sheared off half of its abdomen. Black ichor fell from the wound to sizzle on the stone floor at their feet, but unfortunately the stinger remained intact, and despite being crippled the wasp did not retreat, lunging at the knight and managing to drive the tip of its weapon into the man’s forearm just above his greave.
Farther back in the room, the air sizzled and hissed again, and a trio of hellish black hounds materialized.
“In the nexus!” Zenna warned. “Something’s summoning these creatures!” She fired a scorching ray at the nebulous outline she’d identified within the twisting black flames, but although the ray seemed to strike true, she could not tell if it had had any effect at all.
Arun had started toward the hell hounds, but at Zenna’s shout he diverted toward the nexus. The paladin reached the edge of the black flames but could go no further, staggering backward as eager tongues of the unholy fire reached out and painfully caressed his flesh. He could not get close enough to strike, and thought that he heard laughter from within the nexus.
Then flames washed over him, as the hell hounds unleashed their fiery breath upon him.
Morgan dispatched the wasp with another powerful swing of his sword that bisected the creature. Even as it began to dissolve, he was rushing to aid Arun, but before he could reach the embattled dwarf another disturbance behind him—close to where Zenna stood near the cavern entrance—resolved into a trio of massive, twisting centipedes, each at least ten feet in length.
“Go!” Dannel urged the knight, turning to aid the tiefling. “We have to destroy the source!”
Unable to get at the spellcaster hiding within the protective shield of the nexus, Arun turned toward the more immediate foes. The hell hounds leapt at him, their huge jaws snapping at his arms and legs in an attempt to drag him down and tear him to pieces.
Unfortunately for them, they underestimated the strength of the dwarf paladin.
The first hound went down with its head staved in, its skull split apart by a critical hit from the dwarf’s sword. A second hound leapt over the dissolving corpse in time to absorb Arun’s backswing, the sword tearing a foot-long gash in its shoulder, driving it roughly aside.
Into Hodge’s chopping blow, which severed its spine.
The third hound managed to seize Arun’s injured arm in its jaws, but before it could get a good grip the dwarf ripped the limb free, turning to bring his sword to bear once more.
Zenna had just enough time to get her mirror images up before the centipedes attacked. The mindless vermin had difficulty getting through the layered defenses she’d prepared, although she felt a hot stab of pain as a drop of venom splashed on her thigh, the bite narrowly defeated by her mage armor.
“Kaurophon!” she cried, although she could not see the invisible sorcerer. “We have to get that spellcaster out of the nexus!”
Kaurophon had not spent the first few moments of the battle idle. He’d turned himself invisible immediately, of course, although he suspected from the potency of the conjurations being worked that the spellcaster could likely detect him anyway. He drew himself away from the developing melees, careful not to do anything—yet—to focus the unidentified foe’s attention upon him. He saw Mole circle around before him, trying to keep to the shadows, and moved in her wake. Even before he saw Arun attempt to penetrate the nexus and fail, he knew that simple mundane means would not suffice here. It might not affect him—he could feel its pulsating power resonate to the demonic side of his nature—but that did not mean that he was about to move in to face the spellcaster alone. Nor did he want to highlight to his allies the difference separating him from them; they already had more than enough suspicion of him to threaten his objective.
While he studied the nexus and the spells coming from within he added to his magical defenses, adding wards from his reservoir of spells almost without conscious thought.
Arun let out a roar as he drove the hell hound roughly backward with a thrust of his injured arm, giving him enough space to bring his sword around. The sword caught the infernal canine solidly across the side of its head, cutting to the bone and ruining one eye. The creature did not relent, surging at the dwarf again. Hodge circled around and slashed at its body, seeking another killing blow like he’d managed earlier, but this time his blow was poorly aimed and it glanced off its thick hide without doing damage.
Arun heard Morgan approaching and glanced over at him. “The spear!” he said, indicating Hodge’s discarded weapon. The knight followed his gaze and nodded, turning to pick up the magical longspear before returning his focus to the nexus.
Even as he did so, the air rippled again, and a quartet of giant scorpions, each roughly the size of a man, materialized near him.
Zenna fought back a cry of pain as sharp fangs stabbed deep into her leg. She could feel the sting of poison that flushed through the wound into her bloodstream, and her muscles started to twitch uncontrollably as the venom worked its fell potency upon her. She pulled away from the centipede, trying to clear enough for her remaining two mirror images to confound the huge bug.
Dannel tried to reach her, but he had his own hands full with his own adversary. Alakast had been quite effective against the creatures, and he’d destroyed the first centipede with a pair of well-placed thrusts. But a second centipede had turned to face him, blocking him from Zenna with its long, twisting body, biting him in the side and slowing his reflexes with its poison. The thing quivered, damaged by another blow from the enchanted staff, but it continued pressing the elf, who narrowly avoided another lunging bite.
“Hold on, Zenna!” he cried in encouragement, as he struck it again.
“I can handle it!” she returned, reaching out to touch the centipede, unleashing a painful shocking grasp.
Kaurophon clucked as his bad luck reasserted itself. He could almost feel the enemy spellcaster’s latest conjuration spell falter before his counterspell, but at the last moment his dispel faltered, and the giant scorpions appeared near Morgan. He suspected that the nexus was fueling the conjurer’s magic in some way, and turned his thoughts to a way of getting it out of the black flames.
Unfortunately for him, his attempt to interfere with the unseen enemy’s spells had drawn its attention. The sorcerer felt a twinge of dread as the shape in the flames shifted to face him. He felt a power rising from within the nexus, and then a roiling, terrible cloud of pure darkness erupted around him, tearing at him with tendrils of negative energy.
Kaurophon nearly laughed. Of all the spells that could have been hurled at him, an unholy blight was probably the least effective! His choice of allies had served him yet again, as the enemy had judged his nature based on the company he kept...
Still, he thought, as the blight dissipated, he could not afford to be too confident. But an idea had occurred to him, how to draw the enemy out of the nexus, into the blades of his allies.
“Blasted bugs!” Hodge cursed, as a scorpion tried to seize him in its considerable claws. The vermin was strong, but not strong enough to grapple the dwarf, who took its entire claw off with a powerful chop of his axe. Likewise Arun, having finally put down the hell hound, slew the second scorpion with a powerful thrust of his sword. The two dwarves fought together well, keeping the scorpions back, out of Morgan’s path as he made his way toward the nexus, charging with his spear at the ready.
The magical steel head of the spear disappeared into the flames, striking square at the center of the shadowy form inside. A sound of metal striking metal echoed from within the nexus, and at that moment, as the dark figure stumbled back, off balance, one of the scorpions threatening Arun was suddenly hurled across the chamber by some invisible force. The vermin shot into the nexus like a stone kicked by a giant boot, colliding with the spellcaster, knocking him roughly backward, stumbling out of the flames to fall prone just a pace outside of the radius of the black fire.
The enemy was clad in plate armor in an archaic style, covered with ancient runes of secret power. Its head and hands were naked bone, that of a skeleton. As its head came up, it fixed Morgan with a terrible stare from twin points of dread fire within its cavernous eye sockets, hatred burning in those fiery orbs.
Even though Morgan no longer called himself a cleric of Helm, still he instantly recognized this foe. “A lich!” he breathed, fighting the doubt and terror that threatened to unman him at its dread stare, dropping the spear to draw his holy blade once more from its scabbard.
The lich pulled itself up, its armor clanking emptily about its skeletal form at its movements. It carried a slender wand of bone, its head surrounded by a red nimbus of light that promised pain and suffering. It evaluated the situation about it in a glance—clearly outnumbered, its summoned allies clearly on the losing end of the still-raging melee scattered throughout the chamber—and turned back toward the shelter of the nexus. The flames reached for him, as if to welcome his return.
But the undead thing did not reach its shelter. Even as it took its first step, a small form tumbled into its path, tripping it up, tangling herself in its bony limbs. The lich fell, but responded quickly, digging its bony fingers into Mole’s hair, pulling her away from its body. The gnome screamed at the evil touch, her body stiffening, and she fell away, blue trails marring her skin where the lich’s fingers had touched.
The lich stood again, but staggered as Morgan laid into it. The unholy creature, infused with the dread power of unlife, withstood a blow that would have torn a mortal enemy into pieces. But the lich was now just a step from the dark power of the nexus, promising recovery and succor.
“You cannot defeat me holy knight, not here,” it said, its voice an empty dirge sounding within the caverns of its empty skull.
It stepped toward the flames, but even as the dark fires started to envelop it, Arun came running around the far edge of the nexus, a giant scorpion right behind him still trying to grapple him with its claws. The lich released an evil screech and fixed its dark gaze upon the paladin, but Arun merely shouted a dwarvish invocation to his god and swung his sword. The blessed steel struck ancient bone with powerful force, and the latter gave way. As its skull disintegrated, the holy sword tore through the unholy glow of its eyes, unleashing a blinding flare of light that for a moment made the nexus pale in contrast.
When that momentary brilliance faded, the lich was gone, leaving behind an empty suit of armor and the other trinkets it had carried.
