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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2183977" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 373Dana cried out as the merciless tiefling monk slammed a punishing blow into her gut.  The priestess felt pain twist her insides as the blow pulverized tissue and ripped muscles hard from training.  The monk was locked to her in a deadly embrace, and all of her attempts to escape were proving futile thus far.  The legs locked around her torso may as well have been steel bars for all her struggles did to loosen their hold. “I would make it last longer, my sweet,” hissed a voice close to her ear… close enough for her to feel the monk’s hot breath.  Her voice was soft, a deadly whisper.  “But your friends, they need my tender ministrations.”“They’ll kill you… bitch…” Dana hissed before a sharp, snapping pain in her body cut off her breath.  There was nothing she could do; she could not even draw breath to cast a spell. No.  There was one thing she could do, realization that stabbed through the pain.  It took only a thought to become action, as she dove straight toward the ground below, Ardeth Webb still locked to her. It took less than a second for them to descend, but that was enough time for the monk to react.  Just before they would have impacted the hard stone below, Dana felt herself flung wildly aside as the tiefling snapped their link, driving her back to land heavily and awkwardly on the ground a few paces away.  Benzan, caught off guard by the sudden movement, drew his sword; but before he could strike Webb had already regained her footing, and swiveled gracefully into a defensive stance. “Let us dance then, brother,” she hissed. Her senses detected the danger an instant before it struck.  She could feel rather than see the looming form behind her, for when she darted aside, turning to view the corridor behind, she saw nothing there but Regidin’s still-spinning blade barrier blocking the passage.  But she felt the massive claw that grabbed her by the arm, crushing the limb with incredible strength. “Good timing, Cal,” Benzan said, moving behind the still-struggling monk into a position to deliver a critical blow.  He felt a welcome surge of positive energy as Dana unleashed a mass cure serious wounds spell, easing some of the pain from the still-burning kelubar acid searing his arm.  But that’s when Regidin’s flame strike hit. Benzan was standing right where the blast of divine fire hit.  There was nowhere for him to escape, no clever dodge he could undertake to avoid the force of the blast.  His innate resistance to fire was of little help against the screaming rage of the evil spell, and even with Dana’s healing he found himself fighting through a wave of dizziness and nausea as the smell of his own burned flesh filled his nostrils. But he was better off than most.  Dannel and Dana both lay prone, dead or unconscious, wisps of smoke rising from their flame-ravaged forms.  Benzan could make out the outlines of Cal, polymorphed into the shape of a gray render, by the wisps of gray smoke that framed his nine-foot body in silhouette.  Clearly the monk could too, for she twisted in the render’s grasp to deliver a powerful kick to Cal’s torso.  The blow was enough to loosen his grip, and the monk dropped free to the ground, landing in a wide spider-like stance.  For all that she’d been held stationary a few feet from the impact zone of the flame strike, she somehow did not seem to be seriously burned. Benzan tore his eyes from Dana’s immobile form.  Suddenly he didn’t feel quite so secure about his ability to handle this deadly adversary.  “You are not alone,” a voice came from behind him.  Arun Goldenshield stepped forward, holding his old holy sword, his armor splattered with farastu slime and the greasy stains of kelubar acid.  The dwarf looked like he could barely hold his weapon up, but his eyes were pinpoints of iron determination.  Benzan spared a look down the corridor, where the sounds of battle continued as Lok engaged the two kelubars in a violent melee forty feet away.  As he turned back toward the monk, he saw a cloud of ugly yellow smoke issue out from the gap leading to the side tunnel.  Even before it drifted to the ground and began to take on a solid form, he knew that this was Not Good. Just a few feet away from where Ardeth Webb stood outnumbered but undaunted against three seriously hurt foes, another drama played out.  Freija Doorgan looked up at Regidin, who regarded her with an icy, calm expression.  “The enemy has been dealt a serious blow, but fights on,” he said.  “Inflict a cloudkill upon them; I will conjure another barrier to block their escape and channel them toward us.”He started forward toward the opening, but Freija’s expression had not changed; a intense stare of fury, agony, and madness that was fixed upon Regidin like an aimed crossbow.  Regidin saw it and paused.  “Do not be a fool.  We draw near to what we have worked for, the hour of Rebirth, when worlds will be transformed.”What little remaining threads of sanity that Freija Doorgan possessed abruptly snapped.  She spat the words of a spell, hurling a wedge of magic upon the mind of Shebelith Regidin.  Regidin’s mind was a complex maze of potencies.  He was not the warped genius that Freija was, but his will was like a stone castle built to withstand any siege.  His spell resistance was not enough to stop Freija’s spell, but the force of who and what he was shielded him against almost any mental assault upon him.  He had once slain a mind flayer with his own hands, and had traveled to planes where most mortals would have been reduced to gibbering idiocy in the space of seconds.  He was insane, true, in the sense that all of the Cagewrights were, but that did not detract from the gifts that he possessed.  Even with her vaunted intellect and spellpower, Freija’s sudden attack could have been hurled at him twenty times, and nineteen of those times he would have laughed at the futility of her betrayal before he crushed her beneath the power of his divinely-granted might. Nineteen times out of twenty, that would have happened. Unfortunately for Shebelith Regidin, fate took a hand, as Freija’s spell knifed through a split-second’s window of surprise, and she feebleminded him.</blockquote>

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