Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2556701" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 450The knight of Helm regarded them with a tired but determined expression.  “I am glad you have come.  I’d feared that you had not gotten my message.”“We did not get any message,” Arun said.  “What happened?”Morgan did not answer for a moment.  “I’d feared that my sending did not get through… it is as I suspected; his arrival immediately began to interfere with my grasp upon Occipitus, already tenuous…”“You encountered the demon prince, I take it,” Dannel said. But again Morgan seemed not to have heard.  “Already tenuous…” he repeated, cupping his chin in his remaining hand in a strangely mundane gesture, ruined by the wisp of smoke rising from his left eye socket, where the Smoking Eye flickered.  For a moment it seemed like he’d forgotten their presence.“Morgan?” Mole gently prodded. The divine agent looked up.  “If you are not here at my summons, then your arrival here is merely happenstance?”“Not quite,” Cal said.  He briefly related their experiences on Carceri, culminating in their visit to Skullrot.  Morgan’s earlier vacuous mood seemed to have finally shifted, and he paid close attention to their words.  “We were present when the Prince was freed, although we were not the agents of his release.  Vhalantru, restored again, somehow followed us to the asylum, and opened his cage.”Morgan nodded.  “It makes sense; the beholder was given new life through Adimarchus’s madness; it would have been drawn to him, much as the Cagewrights had been.”“So now the demon lord has returned to his home,” Dana prodded, glancing at the distant skull mountain and its surrounding nimbus of violent energies. “He already works to reform Occipitus,” Morgan said, spitting the words with contempt.  “All my work here will be undone in short order.”“What happened?” Arun asked again. “He came upon us very quickly; I can sense in a general way what happens here, but I had very little warning.  He descended upon the Great Hall of the Flame like a hurricane, sweeping away all opposition with a wave of his hand.”“We would have sent warning, if we could have,” Cal said.  “As it was, we were pretty battered and depleted of magic when we left Carceri, and we came here as soon as we could recover our spells and utilize the key you had left for us.”Morgan nodded, some of the drive in his expression softening to mere weariness.  “I do not blame you, friends.  Long had I feared this, ever since the buildup of power I sensed growing here in the very fabric of the plane.  I spoke of this to you, on our last encounter?”  At their nods he went on, “All my efforts were to naught.  His power is beyond anything I have ever encountered.”“He came nearly alone; there were a few minor demons, babaus, mostly, which my forces engaged at the base of the Skull.  Adimarchus came directly to the Hall of the Flame, accompanied by a marilith.”The companions shared a look, but did not interrupt. “We met him with our full strength; everything I’d been able to prepare.  He shrugged off the full power of Helm, including the Crushing Hand of Righteousness, the greatest gift granted by the Vigilant One to his mortal servants.  He smote through my allies with a single word of blasphemy.  I was somehow not affected…”“Perhaps your power grows greater than you realize,” Beorna said.  “Do not question your own commitment, knight of Helm.”But the cleric-turned-master of an Abyssal layer waved his hand dismissively.  “I believe was Occipitus itself that sheltered me, through the touch of the Smoking Eye.  It touches all with a slick of Taint, despite all of my efforts to redeem this place from the depths of the shadow in which it lies.” “I stood nearly alone against the Prince of Madness, with only Saureya still at my side.  I should have drawn some conclusion from the fact that he was not harmed by the demon’s power either, but my attention was fully absorbed by my enemy.”“I brandished Aludrial’s Shard, the mighty blade that I found and recovered through the grace of Helm.  Calling upon the power in that long-lost artifact, and the righteous might of the Vigilant One, I smote the Prince.  He was injured already, it seemed; at close quarters I could see black marks upon his cursed hide.  The blessed blade harmed him, and I drew faith as he recoiled from the divine power of the Shard.”“I prepared to press my advantage, but in that moment I realized my error.  Saureya betrayed me, striking from behind, wresting the holy blade from my grasp.  The Prince… changed, his false aspect of angelic purity shifting to a monstrous form of utter demonic depravity.  The wounds I had seen earlier, and the hurt I had inflicted upon him with the Shard were alike gone; it was as if a new creature entire faced me.  Tentacles jutting from his back tore at my flesh, stealing my life energy, and he drove a sword of smoke and ash into my arm, consuming it in a searing blast of flame…”“I do not know how I survived.  When next I could perceive my surroundings I was looking up into the eyes of madness.  The Prince regarded me as a man might regard an insect that had managed to sting him.  He spoke… I cannot repeat his words, even now, though they are seared into my soul!”  Even the thought of it seemed to stagger the man; he flailed with his remaining arm, as though trying to fight off an invisible attacker. “Morgan!” Arun exclaimed, coming to the man’s side, taking his arm in both of his muscled hands, steadying him.  Slowly the knight seemed to come to his senses.  “I… I will be all right,” he said, gulping breaths of air.  “You’ve been through an incredible trauma,” Dana said.  “You need to rest; once I recover spells I can pray for magic to restore your arm.”Morgan shook his head.  “There is no time!  Already Adimarchus is bending Occipitus to his will, regaining the power that had been sapped from him in his captivity.  I have no choice… I must face him again now, or he will become unstoppable!”“But from what you said, and what we ourselves saw on Carceri, he’s virtually invulnerable now,” Dannel said.  “What chance do we have against a demon prince, even one freshly released from captivity?”“We knew that the odds were long when we agreed to come here,” Beorna reminded the elf. “But if he can blaspheme, to give just one example, then how can stand against it?  That magic cannot be resisted.  I remind you of our encounter with the balor, in case you have forgotten.”“I do not think that his power is unlimited,” Morgan said.  “And Aludrial’s Shard harmed him, although it is lost to me, now.”  He reached around and drew a bastard sword from the scabbard across his back.  The weapon was clearly old, with small pits and other imperfections visible in its blade, and it looked dull, as though its forging had been completed with cheap metal rather than fine steel.“Cold iron,” Lok said.Cal slapped his forehead.  “Damn it, I am a fool!  I should have had us reequip before coming here.”“Arun’s sword will do well enough,” Beorna said.  “And my blade can hack through anything, given enough muscle and spirit.”“I don’t doubt your conviction, templar” Cal said, “But the Prince is not a mere demon.  He will be stronger by far than even a balor.  His damage resistance will be a problem.”“I have a few of the cold iron arrows we found in Shatterhorn,” Dannel reported. “And we still have the rapier we took from the drow warrior in one of the bags of holding,” Mole said.  “That was cold iron as well, I remember Arun saying something about it.”“Give it to Lok,” Cal said.  “Dana can align it; that should be sufficient to penetrate his damage resistance.”“So we’re doing this, then?” Dannel asked.  “Attacking a demon prince, on his own turf.”“It’s not so bad,” Dana said.  “We’ve done it once before.”  But despite her easy words, her hands were shaking; she clenched the shaft of her longspear tightly to still them. “We will be victorious,” Morgan breathed.  “There is no other option.”Cal turned toward the center of Occipitus.  “The other problem is how to get there.  I can greater teleport directly to the Skull, but Dana has already spent her magic…”“We can resume wind walking,” the priestess suggested.  “Or, I have my remaining teleport.”“It is over a hundred miles, although it may not look it,” Morgan said.  “That’s not the difficulty,” Cal said.  “The difficulty is that one cannot use a regular teleport to journey to a place one has not visited.”“How about transporting directly on top of the skull?” Mole suggested.  “I mean, you can teleport wherever you can see, right?”“In a sense,” Cal said.  “But at this range, it is impossible to clearly mark the destination.  It would be a huge risk; the chance of a mishap or false destination would be at its greatest.  Dana and everyone accompanying her could end up teleporting into the mountain, suffering injury or possibly even death.”“I think we’re beyond the point of balking at risks,” Dana said.  “We will all have to do whatever we can.”“I will accompany the priestess, then,” Morgan said.  “We will share the risk.  How many can you transport, together?”“Five each,” Cal said, “In addition to the caster.”“You take your other companions, then,” he replied.  “I will go with the priestess, and bring what allies that I have…”  He turned back to the interior of the cathedral, and raised his hand.  Immediately they could hear a loud clanking noise, more like the bellow and creak of machinery than the clatter of armor.  “I have begged Lord Helm for aid against this enemy,” he said, as two figures strode forward from the shelter of the cathedral into view.  The first had the shape of a centaur, a half-man, half-horse melding, while the second was a massive brute the size of an ogre.  But it was immediately obvious that neither of them were living creatures, even before they could clearly mark the nature of the flesh that lay beneath the suits of heavy armor that each wore. “Inevitables,” Cal said.  “As inevitable as Adimarchus’s doom,” Morgan said. “I have to wonder which side is more insane,” Dannel whispered to Mole. “Yeah… but you have to admit, it’s pretty damned exciting.”</blockquote>

Verification