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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2308139" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 407Arun knew he only had one more attack left in him, and as he unleashed it, he felt a power surge within him.  In that heartbeat, a thousand miles away, the sacristans in the holy sanctuary of Moradin, deep within the Rift, uttered the blessing that marked the start of a new day.  Arun had stood within that place when he’d uttered his vows of lifetime service to the Soul Forger, and ever since that day, that ritual, unseen and unheard by the exiled dwarf, had signaled the restoration of the powers granted to him by his patron.  He called upon that power now, and drawing in every last bit of it he smote Alurad Sorizan with the divine power of his god.  The holy blade crushed armor plate and kept going, completing its circuit in a bloody path that bisected the blackguard’s torso, emerging in a spray of hot blood that covered the surrounding debris.  For a moment the Cagewright looked down in surprise, then he was falling, his upper half clattering to the rubble a full second ahead of his lower.  Arun stood there, gasping in agonized breaths, his body slick with his own blood, barely clinging to consciousness.  He awaited the last blow that would kill him—a common iron dagger would do it, now—and was vaguely surprised when it did not come. He heard the drow yelling, and looked up to see a silver dragon—Cal, it had to be—swarming over it, biting and scratching.  For all that Cal was no fighter, he seemed to be getting the better of his foe, at least for the moment.  Then he heard a familiar voice, and turned to see a welcome sight. Beorna looked as battered as he was; lying in the rubble, she’d been caught in a fireball and scorched by the flames that still ravaged the roadhouse.  Her armor was blackened, and she still moved swiftly, fighting off the lingering effects of the demon’s earlier blasphemy.  But she was no less beautiful to him for all that. “By Helm, you look a sight,” she said, coming over to him, channeling healing energy into him.  She looked down at Alurad’s two halves, and nodded in simple approval before turning back to him.  “Well?  What are you doing standing around here, when the battle rages on!  You’re not going to let a gnome finish off the foe?”Arun grinned, and lifted his weapon. Thifirane tried to get up, pulling away from the storm of fur and claws that was the wolverine, but she collapsed again as Mole tumbled through her legs and kicked the backs of her knees.  The gnome was looking battered now, with an arrow stabbing through her shoulder in addition to the multiple impacts she’d already taken, but she fought on with an almost insane determination.  As Thifirane fell the gnome stabbed her again with her magical dagger.  Her stoneskin was holding, but Mole seemed to be able to find vulnerabilities even through the spell’s protection, and the wizard felt another sharp pain twist her insides as something in her side gave way.  “Get her off of me!” Thifirane shouted, blasting the gnome with another volley of magic missiles that only seemed to drive her to a greater fury in her assault. Even before he saw Alurad’s demise, Viirdran was starting to think that the time was fast approaching for a quick withdrawal.  He quickly recovered from the surprise of a small dragon leaping onto him, tearing and slashing with claws, wings, and bite.  Small in a relative sense anyway; it was still bigger and heavier than he was.  But he was fast, and still augmented with magic, and within a few moments he’d inflicted several wounds upon it with his adamantine rapier.   When he saw the two dwarves coming, he did not panic, spinning away from the dragon’s continued assault while snapping a small globe at the two warriors.  The bead of force exploded as it struck the ground at their feet, knocking them roughly back.  The paladin was able to fall free, escaping the globe of force that resulted, but the woman was trapped inside, furiously but uselessly hacking at the sphere with her own adamantine weapon. The drow saw that the paladin got up only with difficulty, and for a moment he reconsidered; maybe this battle wasn’t hopeless after all?  No further help appeared to be forthcoming from the wreckage of the inn, and he thought he could take the dragon, which hadn’t been as impressive as he’d first thought.  But he glanced over his shoulder back at the forest fringe.  No more arrows had been coming from there, and with his darksight he detected violent movements within the brush.“Kyan!”  His decision made, the drow turned and dashed toward the wood. “Die already, you little bitch!” Thifirane shouted, hurling a lightning bolt at the gnome as she crawled backwards, trying to get free.  The gnome dodged the blast easily, but it slammed into the wolverine, vaporizing the little creature conjured from her bag of tricks.  Mole turned invisible—not a problem for Thifirane, who’d enchanted herself to see through that obscuration earlier—but then as another arrow from Kyan’s bow stabbed into the gnome’s thigh she tumbled around the bole of a nearby tree, disappearing from view. “That’s right, run away, you little pest!  It won’t save you, or your friends!” Thifirane said, favoring her side as she pulled herself up against another tree. “Time’s up for you, Thifirane,” came the return, from somewhere nearby.  “Thifirane, we’d better get out of here,” Kyan said.  The elf looked back toward the roadhouse, where the polymorphed wizard was just dispelling the sphere holding Beorna.  Viirdran was running toward them, with the paladin not far behind him.   “Behind you, my love!” Kyan cried, drawing her bow to fire.  But the elf screamed as a tiny crossbow bolt slammed into her neck from behind, causing her shot to go awry, bouncing harmlessly off the paladin’s shield. “Taste the kiss of shadow, dwarf!” Viirdran said, spinning and releasing an enervation that blasted into Arun.  But the elf had apparently not heeded the lesson learned earlier by Ssythar, for the paladin’s blazing sword intercepted the beam, dissolving it into nothingness.  Putting on a sudden and surprising burst of speed, Arun leapt forward, and unleashed his second smite of the day.  Viirdran screamed as the sword clove his torso, opening a great rent in his chest to reveal heart, lungs, and intestines, now a ruined mess.  The drow screamed and collapsed, falling back onto the turf in a bloody heap. Kyan screamed. Standing over the remains of the drow, Arun started forward again.  The paladin, covered in blood, looked more like some vengeful fiend than a holy knight, but the effect was the same.  “You’re next, archer,” he said, blood spraying from his lips as he spoke. Tears streaming down her eyes, not even feeling the pain from her injury, the elf just stood there, staring at the corpse of her beloved.  But as Arun approached, she reached up and grasped an amulet dangling around her neck.  “I will avenge you, my love!  Our salvation awaits… in Carceri!” And with that, she vanished in a cascade of streaming violet light.  Thifirane, too, had decided she’d had enough.  She had another teleport ready to whisk her out of this charnel mess, but as she spoke the word of power to activate the spell, a small crossbow bolt shot out from high above, catching her in the left eye.  Her stoneskin wasn’t enough to save her from an agonizing wave of pain as the missile struck true, and she screamed, her spell lost, as she fell back against the trunk of the tree at her back. Clawing at the bolt, mewling piteously, she never even saw the thrust that ended her life.  Arun withdrew his sword, his face twisted in a grimace of disgust as the limp form of the wizard collapsed in a heap.  He and his companions had been victorious, but he only felt exhaustion, and it took a supreme effort of will not to lie down next to the body of the dead woman and slip into the depths of sleep.  Mole reappeared, dropping down easily from the branches twenty feet above, at the same time that Beorna stepped forward through the brush.  “I think that’s the last of them,” the gnome said.  Arun looked down at her.  “You did well, Mole,” he said.  “Thank you.”She met his gaze, and nodded, somberly. “We must attend to the living,” Beorna said.  “Our friends are in danger, and some may yet live inside…”They turned to the roadhouse, which was now a raging inferno.  They could see Cal, still in dragon form, dragging their still-immobilized companions out of the wreckage, and they quickly moved to join him.  They had won, but the Cagewright assault had exacted a heavy cost.  Thirty-seven people lost their lives in The Lucky Monkey, including several of the clerics of Helm, and the most senior of Arun’s Hammers, Alowyn Tristane, who’d dared to stand before the balor with his spear.  The ceiling of the roadhouse had collapsed upon him, and they only recovered charred remains. Hodge too was dead, struck down by the balor’s blasphemy.And finally, Jenya Urikas, high priestess of Helm, was gone.  Disintegrated by Thifirane Rhiavati, caught in the destruction of the roadhouse, they found only a few fragments of burned cloth, and her silver holy symbol, the only thing to survive the flames undamaged.  Of the cleric herself, there was nothing, not even the bits of debris needed for a resurrection. Morning came to the camp at the edge of the Forest of Mir, and with it the flames that consumed the roadhouse died, leaving only a charred reminder of the power of the enemy.</blockquote>

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