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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2118930" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 353Uncommonly, Arun was the first to act; through the gifts provided via his spiritual link to Moradin he’d detected the taint of the fiends even as Mole had begun her warning, and as the curtain came back his holy blade hissed from its sheath, filling the corridor with its pure gleaming radiance.  The paladin did not hesitate, leaping at the creature even as he noted the two others hovering behind it.  He felt the surge of battle pounding in his veins, but he resisted the urge to unleash his final smite evil… there were others for whom he intended that final retribution.  Even without that added holy power, however, the sword struck true, opening a terrific gash in the creature’s chest that spewed forth an ugly spout of black ichor. But unfortunately for Arun, his sword stuck in the wound, the adhesive black slime that covered it folding around the blade and wrenching it from his grip as the demodand flailed back.  It drew the curtain back with it, showing a dank chamber beyond, as well as clearly revealing the other two fiends. Dannel’s first arrow knifed through the air, slamming into the chest of one of the demodands, but his arrows, despite their magical potency, were not aligned to Good, and the steel-tipped shaft did little damage.  While the elf considered Alakast, Hodge and Nidrama were already coming forward, their weapons raised to strike. But before they could close to melee, the demodands unleashed their own fell powers. A wave of fear swept through the tunnel.  This tactic had proven effective in the past, but this time, fortified by Arun’s protective aura of courage, all of the companions resisted the driving wave of incipient panic.  Another blasted Nidrama with a ray of enfeeblement, but the beam of energy dissipated against the deva’s spell resistance.  The last demodand, the one that Arun had grievously wounded, recovered enough to add a final defensive effort, conjuring a billowing fog cloud of sickly gray vapors into the corridor that had quickly engulfed the entire melee in a concealing murk. The cloud turned all of the combatants into vague dark outlines within the gray, with even Nidrama’s flaming sword and Arun’s holy weapon doing little to drive back the clinging mists.  But the warriors at the fore did not pause, driving into the ranks of the demodands.  Nidrama’s voice sang out a clarion cry to battle in the Celestial tongue, a note that sent a tremor of fear through the demodands even as she materialized from the fog and laid into one of the creatures with a powerful two-handed strike.  The great blade, infused with her holy power, tore through its defenses easily, cleaving deep into its shoulder and nearly taking off its left arm.  The demodand tried to counter with a claw and bite combination, but its assault merely flailed harmlessly against the shining lines of her breastplate, and the agility of her defense. Hodge met the next demodand, the one that Dannel had lightly injured with his arrow.  The dwarf’s weapon had no holy properties, but he more than made up for that with a critical strike that dug deep into its side, staggering it.  But like his fellow dwarf he had difficulties keeping ahold of the weapon, as it adhered to the farastu’s slimy hide.  The two creatures twisted about in an odd tug-of-war, the dwarf holding onto the haft of his weapon, the farastu trying to pull away, all the while hacking at the dwarf with its vicious long-fingered claws.  Dannel’s first instinct was to move forward through the fog to join his companions, but he hesitated; there was a faint buzz of warning in the back of his mind that caused him to draw back, toward the mouth of the corridor.  As the fog thinned, he peered back down the passageway.  The darkness was nearly absolute; the fog effectively blocked the faint light from the warriors’ weapons.  But there was nothing wrong with his ears, and the sick sticking plop of a farastu demodand’s tread upon stone was all too familiar. “More of them, from behind!” he yelled, summoning his song as he withdrew Alakast from his Efficient Quiver, focusing the power of a light spell upon the quarterstaff.  The weapon seemed to thrum in his hand as he faced a trio of farastus that appeared in the mouth of the side tunnel from the corridor beyond.  The quarterstaff had been created to destroy evil outsiders, and maybe somehow it could sense that it had been brought forth to further that purpose.  But there was no time for further musings on that, for even as the light exploded from the staff, the farastus spotted him and charged eagerly forward, claws extended.  Dannel was no coward, but he also knew that he alone would last mere seconds in a close melee with three demodands.  Hoping that his friends would be able to come quickly to his aid, he withdrew back into the relative shelter of the fog cloud. The demodands followed him inside. Just a few paces away, the elf’s companions continued their struggle against the first cohort of demodands.  With an angry cry, Arun ripped his sword from his injured foe’s body, fighting off its flailing claws before thrusting half the length of the blade through its throat.  The demodand fell, ichor bubbling up from its jaws, nearly ripping the sword from the paladin’s grasp once again.  He turned to help Hodge, but then Dannel’s warning carried, muted, through the fog. “Go on, we’ll finish off this lot!” Hodge said, although at the moment it was taking his full effort just to keep his grip on his axe.  The demodand took advantage of his distraction to blast the dwarf with a ray of enfeeblement, and as Hodge weakened it finally yanked itself free, the dwarf’s primary weapon firmly attached to its body. “Gimme that back, ye bloomin’ bloody bastard!” Hodge cried, hurling himself against the demodand.  This might not have been the best strategy, for the creature’s sticky hide caught on the dwarf’s armor and stuck the two combatants together.  Fiend and dwarf crashed together to the ground in a tangled heap, limbs jutting awkwardly out in every direction.  Arun, however, had already vanished back into the fog.  Nidrama had taken her first hit, a solid blow that drew a bright line of red across her shoulder from one of her opponent’s claws.  But the farastu was far worse off, and its situation continued to deteriorate as the deva brought her heavy greatsword around and crashed it into the demodand’s other side, giving it now two serious wounds that continued to drip trails of hot ichor down its body. The three reinforcement demodands snarled and slowed as the fog cloud engulfed them.  Spreading out, lashing the tendrils of mist as they sought out the elf, one sensed a hint of movement along the wall to its right.  Turning, it caught the long shaft of Alakast in the side of its head as Dannel whipped it up in a quick snapping gesture that knocked it roughly off-balance.  But the demodand was quick to recover, leaping at the elf, trying to wrest the deadly staff out of his grasp.  It got another solid hit for its trouble, but still managed to lay its sticky claws upon the wooden shaft, wrestling with Dannel for control of the weapon.Its two fellows took advantage of Dannel’s plight to spread out and take him from the flanks.  Dannel saw them coming and released Alakast suddenly, darting along the wall back down the corridor before he could be fully surrounded.  The nearest farastu ran him down, tearing with its claws, but the nimble elf avoided its grasp with only a few minor scratches for his trouble.  As he retreated the fog faded with surprising suddenness, and he turned to see all three demodands following him, the first snarling as it tossed Dannel’s brightly-glowing quarterstaff over its shoulder.    “Great,” he said, to no one in particular. His hand had dropped reflexively to the hilt of his sword, the one he hadn’t drawn in anger for… how many months now?  But even as his fingers tightened on the hilt, he knew that he’d have no chance to even hinder the farastus with that weapon, not with the kind of damage resistance that the fiends possessed. His other hand had already reached back, to his magical quiver, and he spoke the command that caused his longbow, strung and ready, to slide out of the extradimensional space within.  But before he could draw out an arrow, the farastus were upon him.  It was all he could do to keep from being surrounded in the initial rush.  One of the farastus took a moment to shoot him with a ray of enfeeblement, but Dannel had been expecting something like that, and he was able to narrowly dodge the thin stream of negative energy. The other two farastus reached for him with their claws, but before they could strike the faint clink of metal from within the fog alerted Dannel a moment before Arun appeared suddenly, charging full-speed toward the melee.  Ignoring the one standing to the side, that had fired the ray, the paladin caromed into the one that Dannel had struck earlier with Alakast.  Arun’s shield hit the farastu in the back, sticking with a sick sucking sound, shifting his momentum to lift the demodand up off its feet.  For a split second the paladin was actually holding the monstrous creature up above him, the fiend struggling in surprise, and then Arun’s holy blade clove through its neck, flaring with bright white light as it tore into the tainted fabric of the farastu.  Its cries were cut off abruptly, and as its head fell limply to the ground a few feet away, Arun tossed its body—his shield still stuck to it—to the side. The two remaining fiends turned to face the paladin, the elf temporarily forgotten in the face of this obviously more dangerous foe.  Arun’s charge had put him in a disadvantageous position, with the fiends able to flank him easily, tearing at him with their claws. Dannel lifted his bow to fire, but a huge sound from behind suddenly filled the corridor.  Back behind them, at the intersection of the two passages, something new had arrived.  The north wall there, seemingly solid when they’d passed it before, had exploded outward, revealing a hulking form that was almost lost in shadow at the edges of the light cast by Arun’s dancing sword. It was… big.  Muscles the size of tree trunks knotted in its arms and legs as it stepped out into the corridor from the secret passage that had concealed it.  Silvery links of flowing mail covered its torso, stretched across a chest broad enough to use as a banquet table.  The echoes of light danced upon the length of a long, curving falchion, six feet of flawless gray steel within which a miasma of wavering lines seemed to flow and intersect, trapped within the metal.  And its face…The face of the newcomer was that of no normal creature.  It was a bestial face, with bovine features that terminated in powerful jaws and a pair of jutting ivory horns.  The face of a minotaur, but this monstrosity resembled an ordinary minotaur in the way that Arun resembled an elderly dwarven merchant.  Its eyes were twin points of rage that seemed to glow as they drank in the scene before them. Gau had arrived, and she was not pleased.</blockquote>

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