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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1168098" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 56“Time for you to die, meddlers,” Tongueater croaked, his sick laugh sounding clearly even almost thirty feet down the hall. “You first, monster!” Dannel yelled back, drawing and firing his longbow across the barrier. The shot flew true, hitting the apeman squarely in the center of his chest.  The arrow clearly penetrated his armor, but Tongueater merely reached down and plucked the missile free, tossing it aside.  There was no blood.“You’ll have to do better than that, fools,” he hissed.  He reached into a pouch at his belt and drew forth a small vial.  Turning to his remaining warriors, he ordered, “Kill them!” before uncorking and draining the elixir.  Arrows shot out at the companions, but once again the poor light and the strong barrier—combined perhaps with the lingering effects of too much pilfered ale—resulted in the shots flying wide or sticking harmlessly in the tabletop.  The two warriors behind Tongueater rushed down the hall toward the barricade, holding torches and longswords in their hands.  Dannel, meanwhile, had turned away from his sniping position at the edge of the makeshift battlement, and was digging hurriedly in his pack.  “What are you doing?” Arun shouted at him.  “We need your bow, elf!”  He himself hurled his last throwing hammer down the hall at the charging warriors, but in his haste he missed his target.  Zenna and Mole both fired their crossbows, but they too were mostly ineffective, with the gnome scoring a glancing hit that stabbed into the arm of the charging warrior on the left, a squat, pug-nosed woman.  Even as the two women tried to reload, their enemies reached the barrier.  The woman lowered her shoulder and tried to push through the barrier on Zenna and Mole’s side.  Her plain appearance belied a considerable strength, and the table slid a foot back as she drove forward, kicking out the chair jammed beneath it as she came.  Zenna tried to push back against the table, but the woman thug saw her and lashed out with the arm holding her torch, hitting her across the face with her gauntlet and knocking her roughly against the adjacent wall.  Mole, however, had put the few seconds that her friend had bought to good use, lifting her bow and firing it point-blank into the woman’s gut.  The bolt penetrated the links of mail protecting her torso, and she cried out in pain as the shaft dug deep into her belly.  With a snarl she hefted her sword and forced through the opening she’d made in the barricade, staying on her feet through sheer grit.  But her eyes widened in surprise as Illewyn rushed forward from the shadows in the back of the room.  The cleric’s eyes shone in a mixture of anger and terror as she brought her mace down squarely in the center of the warrior’s helmeted head, and with a solid crunch the woman sagged down to the floor, unconscious. On the other side of the barricade, the other warrior, a blond-haired young man, tried likewise to force his way through the obstacle.  Unfortunately for him, that side of the barrier was garrisoned by a rather querulous dwarf paladin, who was not going to let just any bandit fighter through.  The thug, whose fair face belied the drunken, wastrel, and just plain mean story of his young life, let out a warcry as he hit the barrier, shoving his torch through the gap where the table curved from the wall.  He didn’t manage to push the table back like his female comrade on the far side had, and the flames of the torch did nothing to stop Arun, who knocked the brand aside with his shield before bringing his hammer down in an overhead strike that crushed the warrior’s extended bicep.  The warrior screamed as bone crunched under the impact.  He tried to counter with a thrust of his sword, but his aim was poor, and the sword stabbed awkwardly into the edge of the table.  Fortunately for him he had a moment of lucidity through the haze of pain that rushed into his body through his broken arm, and he drew back hastily before Arun could launch another assault over the barricade.  Even as the enemy fighters were driven back, a roar announced the arrival of Tongueater to the fray.  Having consumed his potion, the ferocious apeman flew into a rage, bounding down the hall in an inexorable rush, the walls of the hallway seeming to shake with the force of his passage.  Even as Illewyn struck down the first bandit fighter, and Arun drove back the second, the bandit leader crouched and sprung over the barricade, hurling his considerable body through the gap with amazing speed and strength.  His roar filled the lounge as he landed heavily, shaking the floor even as he whipped around his falchion, ready for blood. Arun answered its roar with a dwarven battle cry, surging at the monster from the side.  His hammer swept out and caught him on the side, but instead of crushing his ribs the blow seemed to only lightly faze him.  The half-orc, half-baboon monstrosity laughed as he ripped into Arun with his falchion.  The heavy steel blade connected with the paladin’s body, and while his armor held, keeping him from being carved into pieces, it was clear from the dwarf’s grunt that the stroke had hurt.  Just a few paces away, Dannel rose, hefting his bow.  He’d found what he was looking for in his pack, a cloth wrapping that had held four arrows.  A gift from a silversmith for aid against orcs that had assaulted his wagon, the elf had never thought to use the arrow that he now fitted to his string as a weapon.  But while he’d never faced one personally, he’d belatedly recognized their foe as a lyncanthrope, and knew the tales that spoke of their one weakness.  The shot could barely miss at that range, and the silver-tipped shaft drove deep into the apeman’s back.  Tongueater roared again, this time in pain, and he spun to face the elf, hatred burning in his eyes.  An ordinary man would have been lying on the floor with such a wound... but the lyncanthrope was no ordinary man.  Dannel did not retreat—there was nowhere to go—reaching for his second arrow even as Tongueater leapt at him.  The elf nimbly dodged the vicious stroke of the falchion, but was caught by surprise as the apeman suddenly lunged at him, his vicious jaws snapping around the elf’s shoulder.  Dannel cried out as pain erupted through his body as the cruel jaws tightened, and it was only through a desperate effort that he was able to tear free.  The elf’s companions rushed to his aid, trying to distract their enemy from his target.  Arun pressed it again from behind, but once more his hammer, even backed by his considerable strength, had little effect upon the apeman.  Mole drew her sword and charged him from the side, but she too found her thrust of little use, the sharp blade glancing off his preternaturally tough hide.  These attacks gave little respite to the beleaguered elf, but he pressed his attack regardless, dancing back a pace to give him room to draw and fire once more.  Again his arrow bit into his target, catching the apeman high in the shoulder.  Although the force of this shot was mostly absorbed by Tongueater’s heavy leather vest, the additional hit drove the creature’s rage even further.  It leapt forward at Dannel, and this time there was no place for the elf to run to as he swept his falchion around in a mighty arc, driving it with the full force of his monstrous strength into the elf’s body.   The force of the blow tore through the elf’s chain shirt, and the blade bit deep into his side, knocking him aside to fall in a crumpled heap a few feet away.</blockquote>

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