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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1707870" data-attributes="member: 143">Okay, this was supposed to be last Friday's cliffhanger, postponed due to the board outage. * * * * * Chapter 199Morgan was sometimes brave to the point of recklessness, but despite what Zenna thought, he was no fool.  As he rushed toward the salamander he drew out one of the small vials that they’d won in Vaprak’s Voice, doffing the cap and downing the contents in a single draught.  The powerful healing potion eased his wounds, but he knew that he was far from at his best.  He could also feel the lingering effects of the succubus’s kiss, the weakness from the life energy she’d drawn out of him. But what he had left would have to do. Hodge half-ran, half-hobbled forward, a few paces behind the taller human.  His face felt as though it had been cut by a thousand tiny pixies with daggers dipped in salt.  Looking upon the salamander, he saw a creature beyond his comprehension.  A year ago, he’d have run, no question.  But now, he’d been changed somehow, had undergone a transformation into someone or something new.  Whatever it was, it seemed to involve him charging into sudden death repeatedly...  But each time he’d come out alive, and he knew the reason, knew it in the form of the man who’d rushed alone ahead of them against a terrible foe, greater than all of them.  And so he ran once more at Death. “Hodge, wait!” Zenna’s voice drew him around.  To be honest, he’d been nearly about to collapse anyway, and he fought not to show her how weak he was as she ran toward him. “Canna wait, girl!” she said, gesturing with his axe at the salamander.“Go then,” she said, touching her hand to his scorched face.  It was a tender gesture, one that caught him off-guard, but he understood an instant later as healing energy poured into him.  Feeling restored, he nodded at her, and ran toward the fray. The salamander’s long body shook as an arrow caught it in the shoulder.  Arun could see, however, that Dannel’s shot hadn’t penetrated far, and even as the missile stopped quivering its long wooden shaft was consumed in a blast of flame.  The shot was followed by a series of pale blue darts, magic missiles that smoked briefly as each was absorbed by the burning monster. Dannel came walking deliberately down the center aisle of the cathedral hall, drawing and firing as he came.  His second shot narrowly missed as the salamander reared up and laid into Arun, slashing him across the body with its spear.  Although designed as a thrusting weapon, the spear nonetheless tore through his layered armor, opening a gash in his belly that was instantly cauterized by the heat of the steel.  Arun grimaced but did not cry out.  But the salamander struck again, tearing the dwarf’s helmet from his head by another expert slice from the spear that left him a smoking, three-inch gash in his temple that laid the white bone of his skull out bare.  Arun staggered, and suddenly the salamander swung its body around with surprising quickness, slamming its tail into his chest.  The dwarf went flying, and landed a few feet away on his back, smoke rising from him, unconscious or dead. “Arun!” Zenna cried, already starting toward the dwarf.  But her allies—friends, too, of the fallen man—responded to the defeat of the paladin not with fear, but with rage, rushing forward into a blind assault upon the salamander. Morgan ducked a powerful sweep of the spear as he entered the deadly radius of the salamander’s reach.  By some miracle the steel head failed to connect with his head, although he could feel the heat as it passed inches above him.  He swarmed in, driving Alakast ahead in a sweeping arc.  The staff, created to destroy evil outsiders, seemed to sing as it carved the air, striking the creature with a reverberating bang.  The salamander, clearly hurt by the blow, let out a foul curse in its alien language, its eyes promising death to the warrior as it recentered itself and drew its spear back for another combination assault.  It paid no heed at all to Hodge, whose rush, though brave, ended in a wide swing that missed its torso entirely.  Another arrow slammed into its body, but it likewise ignored that assault, focused entirely upon the knight of Helm. Morgan, knowing what was coming, stood his ground.  The spear came down in violent fury.  He somehow caught the first thrust on Alakast, narrowly deflecting the weapon.  But with an almost insane speed the salamander drew the longspear back and stabbed again, and this time the cleric could not withstand it.  Pain blossomed in his chest as the spear drove through his armor and into his lung, and he was falling, backward, his lifeblood pouring down over his body from the terrible wound, even as it smoked and bubbled from the heat.  He looked up at the monster, which as an almost casual afterthought swept its tail out at Hodge, knocking the doughty dwarf to his knees.  They were done, he thought, defeated.   Consciousness, mercifully, fled.</blockquote>

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