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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2200228" data-attributes="member: 143">Yeah, I've never posted the character alignments, although I suspect readers have a pretty good idea where everyone falls. And Benzan's actions do provoke a response, as we'll learn today:* * * * * Chapter 377“Benzan!” Cal yelled, even as the tiefling unleashed a deadly thrust with his keen sword at their prisoner.  Wiejeron had clearly been expecting an attack, however, for even as the point darted toward his eye he threw himself backward across the slab.  He could not avoid a long cut across his jaw as Benzan lunged after him, but then he flipped backward, rolling into a smooth crouch.  He spoke words of magic, and even as Arun tried to grab him, he vanished from view. “Stop him!” Dana said, even as Cal added, “Damn it, Benzan!” The companions fanned out around the altar, with the spellcasters inside a ring formed by the warriors.  But the assassin seemed bent more on escape than combat, at least until Cal gestured and conjured from webs of shadow a black-tinged wall of ice that blocked the corridor about twenty feet down the tunnel.  Benzan followed with a glitterdustt that filled the passage and a portion of the room with a blinding fog of flickering motes, but the spell did not reveal the outline of the invisible assassin. “Is he still here?” Lok asked, scanning alertly for any sign of the Cagewright. “Give me a moment to sort out the auras in this place,” Cal said, focusing upon his detect magic spell. “You broke your word,” came a deep voice, pitched to echo off the smooth volcanic walls of the chamber, making it hard to determine their source.  Cal, however, was a gnome, with ears specifically adapted to discerning fine gradations in sound, and he quietly focused his concentration in a far corner of the room, near the open lava pits.  “So much for the honor of a paladin.”“Show yourself, and I’ll give you the gift of a quick death,” Benzan snarled, sweeping his sword in wide, blind arcs that had little chance of revealing the canny assassin’s position. Arun’s expression betrayed a barely-contained fury, but he did nothing to intervene as his companions swept the room.  Hodge, intent on detecting a telltale sound that would reveal their foe’s location, did not notice when his dagger slid from its scabbard at his belt and vanished into thin air behind him.  Dana, however, suddenly turned, firing a ray of searing light that knifed through the air maybe a foot in front of the dwarf’s face.  Hodge cursed in surprise and staggered back, and so he didn’t see the beam suddenly flare out as it struck something solid.  Wiejeron’s only response was a muffled curse, quickly controlled as he tried to shift away to another location. But Mole had been waiting for one of her companions to reveal Wiejeron’s location, and even as Dana fired her spell she threw a small cloth parcel to the ground at Hodge’s feet.  The bag broke open with the impact, dislodging a small cloud of brown dust—finely ground coffee from the gnome’s extensive stores in her bag of holding.  Most of the grounds quickly settled to the ground, or stuck in Hodge’s leggings, but a thin film of dust hung in the air about a foot off the ground, quickly moving away toward the far side of the room.  Lok moved to intercept the assassin, but as he lifted his axe to strike Wierjeron suddenly shifted and darted smoothly past him, driving his stolen dagger deep into the crease where Lok’s heavily armored leg met his torso.  The blade slid with precision under a plate and through the chain links beneath, opening a serious wound.  The blow was designed to cripple him, and Wiejeron was quick to dart away, leaving little opportunity to counter. But Lok was a master fighter, and little opportunity was enough.  Even as Wiejeron slipped around the genasi, Lok spun around, shifting his weight to his uninjured side as he spun around, his axe humming as it sliced the air.  Droplets of blood exploded out of the air as the thundering blade cut leather—they’d divested him of his shadowed silent chain shirt—and flesh.  Even then the Cagewright quickly adjusted, accepting the momentum of the blow and tumbling forward to regain his footing.  The maneuver left an ugly red splotch on the ground where his injured back had pressed against the ground momentarily, and that was enough for Dannel to deliver a nearly-blind arrow that stabbed through his arm, the bloody head and feathered end hovering in mid-air about six inches apart. “Damn you all to the hells!” Wiejeron exclaimed, leaping toward Dana.  The mystic wanderer darted back, but not fast enough to avoid the knife that grazed her ribs.  She wasn’t hurt too badly, and the attack opened Wiejeron to a final counter, as Benzan ran him through with his sword.  As he died his greater invisibility faded, revealing a bloody corpse with a frozen look of rage lingering on his features. “That was stupid,” Cal said.  Benzan shot a final dark look at the body and turned around to see Arun standing before him, his sword held up so that its point hovered a few inches from the tiefling’s chest. “I’m not the sort of man who appreciates threats,” the tiefling growled.  “I’m not bound by your narrow moralism, paladin, so spare me your sermon about honor.”Arun did not waver.  “I’ll not defend the likes of that,” he said, with barely a nod to the dead man.  “And I understand that you are distraught about your daughter.”“But mark me, for I will only say this once.  You are not the only one who has lost here; I considered Zenna to be one of my closest friends, and I felt the pain caused by this man’s words.  But we will not prevail here as eight individuals.  The Cagewrights, for all their selfish evil and stupid infighting, still functioned together well enough as a unit to unleash this storm of destruction upon our world.  I will not stand beside a man whom I cannot trust to be there when I need his strength, nor would I offer my aid to one to whom I could not offer all of the fight that I possess.  His fate—“ Arun again indicated the corpse—“was ours to decide… but your action threatened us all, and through that the thousands who yet depend upon our victory over the Cagewrights.”Without waiting for a reply, he turned, and sheathing his sword, crossed over to the exit where the glitterdust was already fading into nothingness.  Hodge followed him, and after a moment, Lok and Dannel followed. “Well, for once I didn’t have to say it,” Cal said, sheathing one of his wands and moving to join the others.  Benzan turned to Dana.  “I was wrong,” he said quietly, so that only she could hear.  “But I’m not sad that bastard’s dead.”“I know, honey,” she said, taking his arm, leaning her head against his shoulder as they followed after the others.</blockquote>

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