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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2574394" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 452“This may be a distraction,” Dannel hissed as the others parlayed with the demoness, scanning the dark corners of the chamber with his keen eyes.  But the room appeared to be empty, save for the marilith, the companions and their allies, and the stone sculptures.  Morgan had empowered himself with true sight, so he should have been able to penetrate any ruse or illusion, but none of them would take anything for granted as far as the demon lord was concerned.  “If you stand with Adimarchus, then you have sealed your own doom,” Morgan said.  Pronouncing the might of Helm through a brief invocation, he began to swell in size, drawing upon his god’s righteous might until he dwarfed even the marut, standing over twelve feet in height.     “Let her come to us, do not allow her to set for a full attack!” Arun urged his companions.  But Morgan was beyond reason, infused with power and the madness of Occipitus, and he screamed something incomprehensible as he leapt at the demoness, his borrowed sword a gleaming arbiter of destruction in his hand. The others could do naught but follow him into melee.  Morgan’s expanded size gave him considerable reach and allowed him to strike before the marilith’s extended blades could touch him.  He rose high into the air in an unnaturally arcing leap, driving his sword down into her body with incredible force.  The blow crushed into the left side of her body, driving deep through a lung, releasing a spray of black blood from the devastating wound that splattered over the shining armor of the knight.  Behind him the others were rushing forward, although a direct charge was blocked by the enlarged form of the knight, delaying them for a precious second or two. But even as she screamed in pain, Byakala unleashed a storm of death upon Morgan.  Her blades sliced through the air and into the knight’s body from every direction, driving through his armor and cutting deep into the flesh beneath.  Morgan staggered backward, his blood flashing out from his wounds, brought from full health to the brink of death in a flash of an instant.  Nor was the marilith finished; with surprising speed she suddenly reared up, snapping her long tail around.  The agile member clove through a nearby statue, sundering it into fragments, before smashing into Morgan’s head, knocking him aside like a child’s discarded doll.  The ground around him shook as he hit the floor hard, dislodging another statute that fell beside him.  The stricken knight did not stir, oozing blood that formed a sticky pool around his unmoving body.     “Heeeaaaa!” Byakala keened, exulting in the defeat of her adversary. But her moment of triumph was very short lived, interrupted first by a long shaft that slammed into her torso, driving a hot wedge of pure pain through her body.  The zelekhut flew overhead, lashing her with its spiked chains, but those nasty weapons did little damage through her potent resistances, and she was completely immune to the jolts of electricity that shot through her with each hit.  She slashed at its underside with one of her swords, but the creature was just out of her reach as it flew past. She turned back as the diminutive—to her scale—enemy warriors charged at her, two spreading to come at her from the flanks while the last rushed straight on into the position just vacated by the fallen knight.  Byakala focused on that one, for he bore a brilliantly glowing sword that she instantly recognized as a holy weapon.  Her long reach allowed her to strike him solidly across the body before he could reach her, but despite what had to be a painful hit he continued his charge, that deadly blade coming down in an arc that she knew was final even before she felt it intersect with her body.  That pain overwhelmed the sensation of the two other attacks that drove into her sides, and with a final cry of agony she collapsed into a twitching heap, her body almost severed in two by the deep cuts opened by the weapons of the companions. Dana had flown down immediately on seeing Morgan fall, and she was relieved to see him stir as she poured the pure restorative energies of a heal spell into him.  Arun, she saw, was being attended by Beorna, although the one hit he’d taken could not have been that serious for the durable paladin. “Where is Adimarchus?” Morgan asked, as he struggled to get up. “He’s not here,” Arun said, looking around.  “He abandoned his minion to be destroyed.”“No,” Morgan said, toppling another statue as he struggled to his feet.  “He is here...”They turned, as one, as the feeling that had animated Morgan became obvious to all of them.  The intensity of the light that filtered down from the crack above, and the pulsing flow of the plasma pillar, did not change, but it was as if a shadow had been passed over the room, filling the place with a miasma of dread. Adimarchus stepped forward out of the roaring column of fire into the chamber.  He was in his demon form, carrying the smoldering length of his greatsword, the deadly artifact called the Ashen Blade, easily in one hand.   “I knew that you would bring them all to me,” he said to Morgan, his voice soft, even, yet somehow filling both the expanse of the chamber and the hollow of their minds together.  Shifting his attention to all of them, he said, “Yours is the first installment in the measure of my vengeance.  First I will repay you… and then I will extract my revenge upon my six-fingered adversary!”</blockquote>

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