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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1957577" data-attributes="member: 143">300 chapters, another milestone! Of course, this saga may go to 600 before we're done. * * * * * Chapter 300“Where is she?” Arun said, the light of his holy sword driving back the shadows, but failing to reveal the assassin.  The room wasn’t that big, and there didn’t appear to be many places to hide, with only a few assorted shelves and cabinets along the walls, and a bloody mess of a rack the dominant feature in the center.  Lashed to the rack lay the savaged corpse of Fellian Shard, his blood collecting in a red puddle on the floor beneath his slit throat.  “No... no!” Fario said, his body heaving with grief and weakness as the poison from the trap blades coursed through his system.  Despite the serious wounds, and the fact that he barely had the strength to stand, he drew himself up to his feet through sheer force of will, and staggered toward the rack. “Careful,” Dannel said as he entered the room behind Arun and Beorna, an arrow nocked and ready at his bow. “Damn you,” Fario said, as he tenderly touched the once golden, blood-matted hair of his friend.  “Damn you, why did you let Meerthan send you alone?  I should have been there!”  Beorna moved quickly to the half-elf’s side, but only a second’s examination was needed to tell her that they were too late; even the divine magic she commanded would be of no help here. “It wasn’t your fault,” Arun said, turning in a slow arc, shining the light of his sword into every corner.  “And that assassin may still be here.”“Invisible, maybe,” Dannel said, moving deeper into the room.  Mole, meanwhile, had faded back into the shadows herself, her keen gnomish ears listening intently for the faintest sound of movement.  It wasn’t easy, with the clanking made by her friends.  “Let us see,” Beorna said, her face tight with anger.  She spoke a command, demanding the power of her god.  And Helm heard her, and granted her that which she sought.  There was no dramatic flash of light, no obvious manifestation of the god’s power, but the effects were instantly clear as the halfling wizard abruptly appeared, high along the wall of the room above a pair of wide wooden cabinets. Dannel instantly drew and loosed, but the arrow sliced through an illusory image to shatter against the wall, a figment cast by the wizard’s displacement spell.  “Nice try, fool!” the halfing laughed, pointing his wand at the elf archer.  Dannel had resisted its effects once before, but this time the compulsion overcame his will, and his body froze into position.  Arun lunged at the halfling, but he stepped back out of reach, the paladin’s holy sword smashing one of the cabinets but not harming the wizard.  “Too slow, dwarf!” Finch cackled.  Beorna stepped around the rack, calling once more upon the power of Helm.  A dispel knifed into him, removing both his displacement and his magical shield, but the power holding him against the wall must have come from an item, for the wizard still clung to his perch, out of range of their melee weapons. But not out of the reach of their acrobatic gnome.  Mole appeared out of the shadows, leaping onto a nearby shelf, catapulting herself up into the air with smooth grace, kicking off of the fragments of the cabinet Arun had smashed, using the magical power of her boots to leap up directly at the surprised halfling.  Mole slammed into him and locked her arm around his body, the two of them suspended there as the wizard tried to fight off the gnome’s darting dagger.  Fario, overcome with weakness and grief, had staggered back, unable to bear looking at the ruined body of his friend.  With the distraction of the battle against the halfling sorcerer, he had no chance of detecting the shadow that disentangled itself from the wall behind the rack, stepping behind him. “Time to join your friend,” she whispered into his ear. The half-elf cried out in agony as the assassin’s blade plunged deep into his body, stabbing through his heart.  Darkness engulfed him like a flood, and the last thing he heard was Jil’s laugh as she released him to fall upon the cold, bloody floor.</blockquote>

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