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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2076817" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 340The sounds from within the ruined shop grew louder, drawing their attention back to earth.  But a few moments later one of the plummeting demodands impacted the roof of a three-story structure less than a block up the avenue, sliding off to land painfully on a smaller shed attached to the side of the building.  Its landing crushed the small structure, but the fall clearly hadn’t killed it, from the way that the wreckage started shifting violently a few moments later. “Go ahead,” Beorna said to Arun.  “I’ll finish this one off,” she said, indicating the building in front of them, “and catch up to you.”But even as they spoke, fresh screams became audible just behind them, their source revealed as several panicked townsfolk appeared at the mouth of one of the side-streets that connected Ash and Magma Avenues.  One of them caught sight of the adventurers, and screamed, “Fiends!  Fiends!  They’re everywhere!”“On second thought, perhaps we’d better stay together,” Dannel said. “Over here!” Arun said, already moving to help the frightened townsfolk.  More were still coming onto the broader avenue from the side-street, but as the last appeared, an older woman of maybe sixty years, hobbling painfully with obvious difficulty, a pair of farastus exploded into view behind her, reaching for her with their sludge-covered claws.  Arun yelled a battle cry and rushed at them in a full charge, but he could not reach the woman in time.  Dannel sent an arrow flying into the first, but its infernal resistances protected it from injury.  The old woman screamed as the demodand bore her down, tearing her torso open with tearing gashes of its claws, splaying her lifeblood across the street in a miasma of gore.  The sight drove Arun into a fury, and he rushed into the farastu with sword raised, smiting it with a powerful downward stroke.  The demodand was already injured from its fall into Cauldron from the vortex above, and Arun’s holy blade bit deep, driving it to its knees.  But its companion was quick to leap upon Arun from the flank, tearing at him with its claws and bite.  One claw dug through his armor, inflicting a painful but largely superficial wound upon the paladin.  Arun found himself in difficulty, his sword stuck to his dying foe by the tenacious grip of the farastu’s slimy coating.  But Hodge rushed to his friend’s aid, distracting the second farastu with a sweep of his burning axe. Even as the demodands had appeared, assaulting the helpless woman, the damaged front doors of the adjacent storefront had erupted outward, disgorging the farastu that had fallen within.  The creature was a mess, covered with glass, pottery, and other debris that had clung to its adhesive slime, but that did not hinder its fury as it staggered toward Beorna.  The templar lifted her sword and shouted and invocation to Helm, but before she could strike the farastu gestured and blasted a ray of enfeeblement into her chest.  Grimacing as her already-depleted strength was further drained, she nonetheless rushed at the demodand, sweeping at its body in a broad cut intended to separate the upper half of its body from the lower.  Weakened as she was, the blow merely knocked it sideways and did some miscellaneous damage to its innards; not enough to stop it. The remaining townsfolk, driven to panic by the fear power of the demodands, rushed blindly past the companions, seeking safety.  Mole dodged out of the way of an overweight teamster, and turned to glance up the block where the last demodand—of this batch, anyway—had fallen into the shed.  The wreckage of the shed was clearly visible, but there was no sign of the fiend.  Her face deepened into a frown—what remained of the shed didn’t look like enough to conceal the bulk of a farastu. “Dannel, I think there’s one invisible behind us,” she said, moving to the side of the street to get a better view as the fleeing citizens obscured her line of sight to the shed. The elf turned even as screams erupted at the leading edge of the fleeing mass of townsfolk, confirming Mole’s suspicions.  The gnome had already disappeared, so Dannel grimaced and slid his bow back into the magical space within his quiver, drawing out Alakast as he ran at the backs of the terrified citizens of the stricken city. Arun braced his boot against the face of the crippled demodand he’d struck down, yanking his sword free of its sludge-encrusted body through simple strength and will. The second demodand had turned on Hodge, and laid into him with violent bashes of its slender, clawed hands.  The dwarf replied with a powerful stroke of his axe, but the weapon, lacking the holy empowerment of Arun and Beorna’s swords, merely grazed its leathery hide. Arun’s attack, however, encountered no such difficulty, and his sword clove through the fiend with alacrity, finally coming to a halt as it lodged in its spine.  The demodand staggered back, drawing Arun and his sword with it.  Too late it attempted escape, turning itself invisible even as Arun, still grasping his sword, yanked the weapon loose and ripped it out from the farastu’s body, laying open half of its torso as he did so.  A spray of blood and guts revealing its position clearly, the demodand collapsed to the paving stones, gasping out the last of its pathetic existence. It took Beorna’s opponent a moment to recover from the glancing put painful blow she’d landed in its side, and she used that respite to call upon the divine strength of Helm, offsetting to some degree the losses she’d suffered earlier. Thus reinforced, she was able to withstand a furious assault as the demodand leapt at her, clawing and biting.  One claw clipped her painfully on the side of the head, although her helmet protected her from serious damage.  She tried to run it through but fumbled her weapon, the sword dislodged from her grasp as the demodand seized at her arms, trying to pin her.  In her currently weakened state, she found it difficult to break the attempted hold, and had to spend all of her effort to avoid being firmly grappled, placed at the fiend’s mercy.  This close, its breath was a noxious plume, and its sticky layers of exuded slime clung to her armor, impeding her movements.  Fortunately, her own innate toughness and the excellent protection offered by her armor made it difficult for the demodand to really hurt her, and it too seemed to grow frustrated as its victim continued to defy its efforts.  Beorna’s legs were like tree trunks rooted in the street as the farastu clung to her body, trying to find a vulnerability in this determined enemy.  Meanwhile, Beorna struggled in its grasp, bending as her hand stretched slowly but inexorably toward the hilt of the brightly glowing sword at her feet. A woman screamed as a demodand materialized from thin air in front of her in the middle of the street.  It seemed to cackle in glee as it lashed out with its claws, knocking the woman off her feet with a terrible gash to the face, and sending a gnome merchant flying with an impact that left him dazed and bleeding.  The panicked townsfolk drew back in horror, just trying to get away from the terrible creature, which reached out for a teenaged girl whose scream shook the very stones with its intensity.  But before the fiend could grasp its latest foe, a slender elf leapt between it and its victim.  This adversary was clearly no easy prey, although the farastu laughed at the stick that the elf waved at him threateningly. It wasn’t laughing a moment later, as Alakast slammed into its chest. Roaring in pain, the demodand leapt at the elf, trying to tear that fearsome weapon from its enemy’s grasp.  But the elf was fast, pulling the staff out of its reach before it could close its claws around the polished shaft.  With a sneer the farastu shifted its efforts to the elf’s face, but before it could strike a fierce and terrible pain exploded through its lower body from behind.  It never even saw the source of the attack, for the elf shifted his stance and drove the staff into it once more, and the fiend’s world exploded in a white web of agony as the outsider-bane weapon send a hot lance of power through its skull into its brain. The farastu loosened its grim incrementally as Beorna drove a mailed fist into its face.  The creature snapped at her with its huge maw, intending to take her entire head, helm at all, into that fetid gap.  The templar did not try to avoid the attack, for even as its jaws clamped down across her helmet, her probing fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword. But before she could strike, she felt a shuddering impact through the body of the fiend, which screamed as it was torn from her.  Her helmet, still locked in its jaws, was ripped from her head, and she could see Arun and Hodge hacking at it as though it were a stubborn tree under assault by a pair of fanatical lumberjacks.  The farastu had no chance, choking on its adamantine prize even as the dwarves drove it to the paving stones in a gory mess of rent flesh and steaming ichor. Ignoring the stinging pains that her enemy had left at various points across her body, Beorna walked over to the slain demodand.  Arun had already turned toward the last of the four fiends, but it seemed that Dannel and Mole had handled it and were now assisting the terrified survivors.  Hodge bent to help her recover her helmet from the slain demodand’s jaws, but she shrugged him off, a bit too roughly, perhaps.  The defender shrugged and drew back, hefting his axe as he looked about for more adversaries. “Are you all right?” Arun asked. “I had it handled,” Beorna said, shamed as a wave of weakness overcame her.  Her limbs felt leaden under her heavy armor, and she could not work her helmet free from the locked jaws of the dead fiend. “I know you did,” the paladin replied, “But we were there, and the fiend was focused upon you, and did not see us approach.  Would you have had us simply watch, while you defeated it?”“You could have helped the others against the last creature,” she replied, finally drawing back and giving the farastu’s head a frustrated kick. “I’d cut its jaws open,” Hodge suggested.  “Once a giant lizard took o’ me pack mules, was the same thing.  Hadda just ‘bout carve the thing open to get me best sifting pan back from that beast.”Beorna shot the other dwarf a venomous look, but Arun continued, “Look, we’re all tired, and worn out.”  He placed a hand on her shoulder.  “Look, you’re the one who told me that even people like us need someone else every now and again, right?  We’re part of a team, here; we’ve got to stay together if we’re going to get out of this city alive.”Beorna took a deep breath and nodded.  “I apologize, Hodge,” she said.  “I am not accustomed to... needing... help.”“No problem,” the dwarf said.  To be helpful, he knelt and went at the farastu’s head with his dagger, finally producing Beorna’s slime- and blood-encrusted helmet, which he offered with a grin. She took a moment to clean off the worst of the encrusted filth before settling the helmet back on her head.  As she did so, Mole and Dannel came over to the three dwarves.  Behind them the survivors of the latest attack huddled in a mass in the center of the street. “We’re getting close to the square in front of the town hall,” the elf said.  “From there it’s pretty much a straight shot down Obsidian to the west gate.  We’ve calmed down the remaining townsfolk, and I’ve treated those with serious wounds.  But we’d better get going.”Beorna adjusted the helmet to its proper place, then nodded.  From within the cavernous interior of the adamantine shroud, her voice was hollow and deep. “I am ready.”</blockquote>

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