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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2453331" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for all the posts, guys!  And now, time for your regularly scheduled Friday cliffhanger... * * * * * Chapter 432Mole couldn’t do anything to help Dana as the golem bashed her with both fists, knocking her roughly across the room to land in a limp heap next to one of the processing vats.  From Dana’s reaction to the faceless body, she had a pretty good idea of who he was, but she had other problems right now, as the second golem attacked. She dove under the table, which sagged as a golem blow pounded into it.  For a moment she wondered if this was the best strategy—despite the nature of its construction, the thing looked damned heavy, and could likely crush her beneath it if it gave way—but then the sounds of battle filled the room, and she knew that her friends had arrived. She flicked a creature from her bag of tricks out into the room, to help distract the bad guys. A creak drew her attention to one of the far doors.  As it opened, she heard a buzzing noise that filled her with a strange lethargy.  She tried to fight it, knowing the danger as she saw the gray legs of the hag reappear, but it was hopeless as she sagged to the ground, falling into a deep magical sleep. Arun heard the buzzing too, but was able to shake off the somnolent effects of the drone, bolstered still by his earlier magic circle.  He saw the hag return, accompanied by a huge, grotesque fly-like fiend, the source of the buzzing.  But he could not focus on either just yet, as the golems pressed their attack.  A fist imprinted with a stretched humanoid face slammed hard into his shield, sending a jolt of pain up his arm.  He knew that his best option was to retreat, and try to draw these foes out into the larger room where his friends could bolster him.  But he’d seen Mole vanish under the table, and saw Dana’s limp form as he’d come in, and knew that if he fell back, that his companions were dead.  So he stood his ground, and stepped forward to attack the nearest golem. The annis seemed a bit more cautious now, content to let her allies focus on the foe.  The chasme, floating nearer but still well out of Arun’s reach, blasted the paladin with a ray of enfeeblement, which certainly did not help his situation any.  He’d already seen how much damage the golems were capable of inflicting, and knew that the time he could hold out was measured in the seconds.  And he’d already used most of his healing on Beorna, earlier. Ah, to the hells, he thought, and taking the hits he knew he would, he leapt forward, and smote the chasme.  That got its attention. A roar announced Beorna’s return as she burst through the open doorway, followed only a few paces later by Lok.  The templar’s body still moved awkwardly, as if her limbs didn’t quite know what her brain had in mind for them, but she ignored the pain as she rushed toward the nearest golem, slamming it with a mighty two-handed strike from her adamantine sword as it turned to meet her.  The blow carved through its body, knocking it back a step despite its huge size.  But it was incredibly tough, and quickly countered with a pair of blows that in turn drove Beorna back.  She’d healed herself, and Arun’s magic had likewise aided her, but she was quickly back on the brink of consciousness, another hit or two from joining Dana on the floor. Lok rushed into the fray a moment later, choosing as his target the same damaged golem.  He aimed for the gap it its body opened by Arun and Beorna, and his axe clove deeply into it, backed by his considerable strength.  A snap announced the severing of its spine, and it crumpled into two disparate halves, each trying uselessly to function. “Beorna… help Dana!” Lok urged, turning to face the second golem, turning to catch its fist on his shield.  The dwarf obeyed, falling back away from the melee; although she knew that Arun was in trouble, duty infused her, and she had to turn away. The chasme, meanwhile, disengaged from Arun, but not before lashing out with a foreclaw that stabbed through the visor of his helmet, opening a gash at the corner of his eye that oozed blood.  As Arun tore free, lifting his sword to strike, the demon buzzed higher into the air, lifting its grotesque body just out of the paladin’s reach.  With the holy warrior unable to intervene, it called upon its power, and a buzzing many times stronger than its own lulling drone filled the air. Beorna knelt beside Dana’s stricken form, battered but still alive.  Calling upon the power of Helm, she cast a powerful healing spell upon the priestess, who stirred, the positive energy channeled by the templar snatching her back from the brink of death.  “We need your power, priestess!” the templar urged, before a familiar voice drew her around. “Come back for more, did you?” Slouva cackled.  With the chasme distracting Arun, the hag had circled around the edge of the room, intent upon finishing Dana.  Seeing how seriously wounded Beorna was, the hag leapt at her, long claws outstretched. “EEEEeee!” she screamed, as a holy arrow blossomed in her side.  Electrical energy blasted through her as Dannel’s arrow buried itself deep into her, and she aborted her attack to leap instead toward the open doorway.  A storm of buzzing insects—locusts, each almost half a foot in length—filled the chamber, called by the power of the chasme.  The insect swarm surrounded the combatants in a blinding storm, slamming into them, crawling into gaps in their clothes and armor to bite and scratch.  Hundreds settled onto the golems, both the active one and the one already destroyed, feeding on the ruined flesh.  Others leapt eagerly upon Mole, who still slept, deep under the effects of the chasme’s buzz. Dannel held his ground as Slouva appeared in the doorway, just ten feet from where he stood.  The hag leapt at him, taking the arrow he fired into her chest.  She seized him with her powerful claws, tearing at his flesh even through his magical armor.  She was so incredibly strong; even as injured as she was, she flung the elf around like a rag doll, spinning him around before flinging him roughly into the nearby wall.  Dannel, stunned, could barely stand, fighting to get back the breath that had been dashed from his lungs. “Perhaps we will dance again later, pretty boy,” she cackled, turning toward the nearest stair. Her laughter became a scream as another ray from Cal blasted her in the torso, highlighting her in a green nimbus before she was disintegrated by the beam. “Thanks,” Dannel said to the gnome, who was clinging to the wall just above the side doorway. “Just taking out the trash,” the gnome said.  “We’d better get in there,” he added, gesturing toward the room where the chaos of battle and the noise of the insect swarm sounded yet from within. The warriors fought on, greatly bolstered by a mass cure critical wounds spell from Dana.  The chasme held its ground, but that only gave Arun and Lok a chance to double-team the remaining golem, hacking it to pieces with their powerful blades.  The demon used its power of telekinesis to hurl one of the heavy tables at Arun, knocking him roughly to the ground, his shield arm jutting at an unnatural angle from his side.  The demon sought to follow up its advantage by descending enough for its deadly claws to savage the crippled paladin, but before it could reach him several holy arrows darted through the still-raging storm of locusts to sink deeply into its body.  The chasme keened in protest, but its own distraction caused it to notice too late the bulk of Beorna, enlarged by the magic of Helm, approaching through the swarm.  The templar unleashed her own smite against the insectoid fiend, cleaving it in half with a single mighty blow of her adamantine sword. Lok got a hold of Mole and dragged her out from under the table, and the companions withdrew from the chamber.  Some of the locusts came with them, but most remained where the chasme had summoned them, feeding on the remains of the golems. “Gah, get them off!” Mole exclaimed, waking to find several yucky insects crawling around in her hair and under her clothes. “Good thing she didn’t wake up a minute ago,” Dannel said to Lok, as the genasi helped her.  Dana, meanwhile, started back inside the room, but Cal quickly moved to grab her.  “Dana, what are you doing?”“He’s in there… Benzan’s body!” the priestess cried.  “We have to get him out, before those bugs…”Cal nodded.  “Let me see what I can do.”  And indeed, a quick dispel magic cleared the swarms, sending the summoned insects back to wherever they had come from. They went back into the room, closing the door behind them, wary of more guards coming from the prison in response to the battle.  In the frenzy of the melee they had each almost tuned out the constant noise of the asylum, such that its return made them start, the screams of the mad prisoners tearing again at their senses. Dana knelt beside Benzan, holding his ruined body against her.  “I’ll help you, my love, I’ll bring you back,” she said, sobbing softly.  “Get his… his face, it’s attached to that golem,” she said, pointing, but not turning to look at the ravaged form of the creature that Lok and Arun had destroyed.  The paladin and genasi carefully removed the flayed skin of their friend, returning it to Dana, who laid it almost tenderly upon Benzan’s ruined face.  She then began chanting, calling upon the power of Selûne to return him to life. “We are still in danger here,” Beorna said, looking around.  “I do not believe that this is the sum total of Skullrot’s defenses.”“You are likely right,” Cal said, plying his healing wand upon his companions.  Nearly all of them had been heavily wounded in the running battle that had begun when they’d opened that first door, and only luck or fate had allowed them to avoid fatalities in this initial engagement.  Arun and Lok took up a warding position near the outer door, while Dannel and Mole checked the rest of the room.  Mole started toward the left door in the far wall, the one opposite the portal that Slouva and the chasme had used, but Cal forestalled her.  “Let’s wait until Dana finishes her spell,” he suggested.  Mole nodded, giving the door a quick examination for traps before returning to the center of the room.  Dana’s incantation continued, her voice all but drowned out by the ongoing cries of the asylum’s inmates, which passed through the porous walls as though they were not even there.  Cal drew out his lyre, and played a melody that created a dissonance between those horrible sounds, the tune filling the room and making the background cacophony seem to fade slightly.  It wasn’t much, but it helped their resolve as they waited for the priestess to finish her casting. It took only about a minute, but it seemed like longer, given the circumstances.  Dana abruptly stopped and rose, her expression betraying the outcome of her spell even before they looked down at Benzan’s immobile corpse. “It’s not working,” she said.  “His soul cannot return.”The companions shared a look; none of them wanted to say what they were all thinking.  But Dana herself put it into words, her voice empty, as though her own life had been drained away by her failure to restore Benzan’s.  “Graz’zt has him,” she said.  “It’s Delem, all over again.  Graz’zt has him…”</blockquote>

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