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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1438060" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 120“Mole!” Dannel cried.  The elf started forward, but came up short as Margh-Michto turned to face him, the evil priest bleeding slightly from a gash in the side of its neck, but otherwise quite intact—and dangerous.  It was at that point that Dannel remembered that he didn’t have a weapon. A clank of metal behind him startled him, before he remembered Arun.  The dwarf paladin drew himself up in cumbersome motions to his feet, pausing only to close his fingers around the haft of his warhammer, pressed up against the base of the door where the rushing waters had cast it.  The kuo-toa regarded them with clear hatred in its eyes as the battered paladin stepped forward, sagging a bit with each stride.  His shield had been torn away in the chaos of the flooded chamber, and he held his weapon tightly in both hands. “I believe you were about to die,” Arun said, lifting his weapon with a clear effort, pointing its head at the chest of Margh-Michto.The kuo-toa cleric let out a roar and came forward to meet them, calling upon the power of its fell goddess.  It did... something to Arun, calling down a curse upon the holy warrior, but the dwarf’s innate resistances and the dedication of his calling allowed him to shrug off the baleful effect of the spell.  The dwarf, in turn, lashed out with his hammer, striking the kuo-toa a two-handed blow to the side that it clearly felt, even through its nearly invincible armor. Dannel knew that he could do little against the creature unarmed, but he also knew that despite his initial success, Arun couldn’t take much more of a beating.  He cast about for a weapon, and his eyes alighted upon the creature’s staff, torn free by the escaping waters and now lying apart toward the far side of the room.  Dannel was there quickly, and scooping up the weapon darted toward the melee.  The weapon was ungainly and awkward, and he didn’t even bother with the pincer-construction at its business end, instead holding the blunt end like a quarterstaff as he came at Margh-Michto from the kuo-toa’s flank.  He thrust the improvised weapon at the creature’s side, trying to force it back from Mole unmoving form.  The evil high priest refused to give ground, taking the blow against its side and turning to the paladin.  Calling upon its patron yet again, it called upon the dark energies of a spell and reached out to touch the paladin.  Arun did not flinch, even when dark energies ripped into him, pushing him even closer to the brink between life and death.  He took the full force of the inflict wounds spell—thankfully, the cleric’s greater magics had been expended, and the spell was only of lesser effect—and with a roar brought his hammer down in a two-handed, overhead strike that sank with a mighty plop into the moist skin of the cleric’s head.  The blow struck with such force that the flanges of the mithral half-helm it wore over its ungainly skull were driven deep into its shoulders, and the remaining contents of its head squished outward around the edges of the impact, one bulbous eye popping with a sick sucking sound.  The evil cleric, clearly dying, remained standing for a full second, a terrible sound coming from the compressed slit of its jaw.  To his horror, Dannel realized that the sound was laughter, a sound that persisted even as the creature collapsed in a heap on the floor.  A moment later, Arun joined him, the dwarf finally pushed beyond even his remarkable endurance by the abuse he’d suffered, slipping down into unconsciousness. Zenna appeared in the doorway, a sight with her clothes soaked and torn about her, her face a pale death’s-mask.  Dannel was already crouching beside Mole, singing a magical song infused with urgency, his wand of healing already glowing blue in resonance with the tune.   “She’s not breathing...” he said, turning her over to reveal a face that was white, still.Zenna half-ran, half staggered over to her friend.  She pulled one of the kuo-toa scrolls she’d confiscated earlier from her pouch; falling to her knees with a splash beside the fallen gnome, she read the words scribed therein, calling upon the power stored upon the parchment.  The source of that power had originally been the dark goddess whose servants had caused the suffering she now battled, but the healing energy nonetheless responded at her call, and she focused it into the small, frail form now lying before her. Mole stirred, and her mouth opened as she sucked in a gasp of air, before coughing out a flood of gray water upon the stones.  Dannel held her, helped her as she cleared her drowned lungs. “Help Arun,” he told her.She nodded and turned to the paladin.  She did not have much of her own power left to her, but she called upon what she could through the muddled and exhausted frame of her mind, channeling positive energy into the paladin.  Hodge appeared in the doorway.  “Check the other clerics we battled, they might have more scrolls,” Dannel told him.  The dwarf took in the scene inside the chamber in a weary look, and nodded.  “Oh man, oh man,” Mole said, finally recovered enough to speak, looking utterly miserable.   “Arun, I expect to go rushing off blindly into a trap,” Zenna said, as she emptied the last of her divine magic into the paladin, who stirred groggily.  “But I expect you to be more careful, Mole!”  The worry and strain written on her face, however, took some of the sting off of her words.“Zenna, it wasn’t her fault,” Dannel said, gently, continuing his soft melody, the soft blue glow flowing into Mole’s body until the nimbus around the forked end of the wand faded.  Zenna saw it too, and didn’t have to ask the elf what it portended.  That was that; no more magical healing. Meanwhile, outside, Hodge rifled the corpses of the two dead kuo-toa priests they’d battled earlier out on the platform in the temple chamber.  He’d come across Dannel’s longbow, precariously balanced on the edge of the platform near the stairs where the rushing waters had deposited it.  The floor of the room was now a small lake, one that no doubt contained his precious axe, Betsy.  Yeah, that was fair, he thought, the elf’s pansy bow stays up here, while my axe is washed away down there.... With a grunt, he picked up the longbow and turned to the bodies.  He found a scroll on one and pocketed it; crossing to the second, he bent to examine its pouches but was distracted by a faint crack followed by a hissing sound that came from the air above him, before the ugly statue of the lobster-woman.  The dwarf’s eyes widened in amazement, and his mouth fell open as he regarded a strange and wondrous sight.  There, hanging in the air twenty feet above him, was a woman—or at least a creature with the look of a woman.  Her features were exotic, her olive skin offset by the brilliant red of her hair, which flowed down in a wave over her shoulders and down her back.  Throngs of leather covered her body in a less-than-decent fashion that caused even the vulgar dwarf to color slightly.  Wings of long white feathers speckled in red spots the color of blood jutted from her back, but she was not using them to keep her aloft; she just... floated there, hanging in space.  The newcomer looked down at him.  “That’s it?  I’m brought here for a single filthy dwarf?”“Hey, this dwarf’s more than enough man fer ya, lady...” Hodge began, but he trailed off as he saw... something... in the flying woman’s eyes that gave him pause.  It was only then that he noticed that the woman was carrying a huge longbow, which she loaded with an arrow from the quiver at her hip, and in a smooth, effortless motion drew and aimed down at him.  As the head of the arrow touched the shaft of the bow, it burst into eager red flames, which cast an unholy glow upon the sinister features of the woman, their flicker reflected in the dark orbs of her eyes.  “Um... on second thought...”</blockquote>

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