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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2813592" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 546Faced with what seemed like a neverending horde of demons, the companions looked to be in an untenable position.  Thus far they’d held out against the sheer force of the demonic rush, but even though none of them had suffered serious injuries yet, all bore wounds from tearing claws and evil spells. Now, as the latest horde of reinforcements surged at them, they knew that their situation was becoming increasingly dire.  “We’d better think about getting out of here!” Cal shouted, as the warriors hurled back another snarling horde of demons.  Up above, he saw that the vrocks had immediately started several new circles, at least four separate groups, all within range to strike them with the terrible power of the dance of ruin.  The nalfeshnee he’s spotted earlier seemed content to hang back for now, calling down stinging lightning bolts onto them from a distance, but Cal had no doubt that the demon was just waiting for the other demons to soften them up some before unleashing some nasty surprise of its own.“We can handle them!” Umbar yelled, smiting a stray vrock that had dove within the extended reach of his enlarged hammer.  The demon shrieked, and darted back long enough to surround itself with a bevy of mirror images.  Four babaus were tearing at his legs, and another dove between them, nearly broking through to grab Dannel from behind before Mole suddenly appeared, tripping it and sending it sprawling to the ground. “There’s too many!  In a few seconds those vrocks will hit us with a deluge that will kill us all!  On my signal… fall back on me, and I’ll plane shift us out of here!”An unholy blight crashed over them, followed a split-second later by a chaos hammer. “Do it!” Arun said, crushing a bar-lgura’s skull with his hammer before the demon could grab onto him with its claws.  But the gnome never got a chance to execute his plan.  For it was at that moment, halfway across Occipitus, that Graz’zt unleashed his power upon the plane.  With the distance and the distraction of the demon horde, none of them witnessed the event, but all of them felt the reverberations across the plane as the Prince’s magic shook Occipitus.  The vibration through the ground reached them as a tremor nearly strong enough to knock them down; only the strong stances of the dwarves allowed them to keep the defensive line intact.  The quaking was accompanied by the violent sounds that reached them even forty miles away from the transformation of the skull.  “What’s happening?” Dannel shouted over the din.  But the others were too overwhelmed by the sudden rush of sensory information, and the battle to keep their own equilibrium, to answer.  Even as that first pulse faded, they felt the surge of Graz’zt’s lock spreading outward, tinting the soft golden glow of the sky above with a shading of sinister green.  Of the entire group of mortal heroes Cal was the only one who recognized the significance of what had just happened, and even as his mind tried to grasp the reality of it, the demon prince’s epic magic took hold, sealing off their retreat, their way home. As the wave of sorcery faded, the chaos of the melee returned, the noise and the screeches of demons all around them. But if the effects of Graz’zt’s magic had disrupted the senses of the companions, it had made a much more significant impact upon the demons.  All of the eighty or so demons engaged in the battle were reeling, stunned by the backlash of their master’s efforts.  Graz’zt had drawn deeply from all of his sources of power to fuel his twin incantations, and that included his minions.  Babaus and bar-lgura staggered about, blinded, while the vrock circles came apart as the vulture demons fluttered to the ground in a daze.  Even the nalfeshnee, Nevuuz, reeled, spinning in the air as explosions of dark energy filled his vision. “They’re caught in some sort of feedback surge!” Cal shouted.  “Hit them hard!” Lok yelled, putting his words into action as he chopped a stunned babau in two with his axe.  The dwarves were just a moment behind him, laying into the hapless demons with full attacks that cut a deadly swath through their ranks.  Arun paused long enough to tug his backup axe from the loops across his back, tossing it to Beorna.  The templar immediately put the weapon to good use, carving a pair of babau into wreckage.  The ground shook as Umbar pounded several demons into the ground with his warhammer.  Dannel continued his barrage, targeting the two hezrous that had been hitting them with unholy blights and chaos hammers, dropping the first with six arrows embedded deep in its chest.  Mole leapt upon onto the piled corpses of a pair of dead bar-lgura, using the perch as platform from which to rapid-fire a series of crossbow bolts at nearby demons.  In one hand she held three bolts spread between her fingers, slapping the string of her weapon back with her palm and dropping a bolt into place one after another so quickly that it seemed that the weapon must be magical.  The bolts themselves were not ensorcelled, and appeared too puny to affect the demons through their considerable damage resistance, but each struck a vulnerable spot, driving pain through the haze that clouded the minds of the attacking fiends.   Cal cast a greater shadow conjuration, intending to bring in a few lantern archons to start blasting demons, but although the spell was completed without interruption, the influx of shadow-substance normally drawn by the spell did not materialize.  Cal quickly realized the significance of that failure, and he grimaced as his assessment of their situation grew yet more bleak. But there was no time for him to ruminate more upon the big picture, for the demons were starting to recover from the backblast from Graz’zt’s release of energy across Occipitus.  The companions had slain a good fifteen demons during that brief interlude, but that left dozens more, including the vrocks which shook their heads as they rose, getting their bearings before lifting back into the air on powerful beats of their wings.  Several paused to summon mirror images, while others only bothered to gain ten or fifteen feet of altitude before they dove over their ground-based fellows at the ring of defenders, claws extended.  Four of them ascended to renew their arial circle, beginning the creation of another dance of ruin.  Nevuuz threw a slow spell into the defenders’ circle, counter Cal’s haste.  The nalfeshnee began to drift closer to the melee, still surrounded by the protective halo of its unholy aura. The warriors withstood a renewed surge as the demons pressed their attack once more.  Umbar staggered and nearly fell, as a babau savaged his left knee with its claws; opposite him, Beorna was nearly taken down by a bar-lgura that leapt onto her back, seizing her armored neck with its powerful claws.  Lok and Arun continued to hew with their weapons against row after row of attackers, but both of the veteran warriors was now cautious of the damage wrought upon their powerful weapons by the slimy coating that covered the hides of the babaus.  Lok dropped his axe and shield and drew Coldburn, sweeping it in a broad arc that decapitated two babaus, but he barely ducked in time to avoid the charge of a screaming vrock, its claw catching on his shoulder plate long enough to painfully wrench the joint.  As the vrocks dove at the companions, they unleashed terrible screeches laden with fiendish power.  The warriors withstood those potent cries, but Mole, Cal, and Dannel were all knocked reeling, stunned.  One of the vrocks took advantage, flying over the center of the circle.  Hovering briefly, it used its telekinesis power to seize hold of Mole, drawing the helpless gnome up into its waiting claws.  Meanwhile, Nevuuz dropped to a hover sixty feet above the battle.  A weave of rainbow-colred lights began to take form around its misshapen form, as the nalfeshnee gathered its power to smite these mortals, and take their lives as its prize.   Chapter 547Mole, stunned by a vrock’s screech, only hung limply as one of the flying demons lifted her through the air into its grasp. With Cal and Dannel momentarily unaware of their surroundings, only Lok, already turning to face the vrock hovering over him, noticed the maneuver.  “Mole!” Lok yelled, staggering as his distraction cost him a painful bite to his left ankle from a babau near the bottom of the heap of bodies before him that wasn’t quite dead yet.  Arun glanced over his shoulder, saw Dannel lying on his rear, shaking his head.  He didn’t see Cal; the archmage was still shrouded by his greater invisibility.  But he did see Mole, through the shrieking chaos of a half-dozen vrocks weaving overhead.  Unfortunately, without a fly spell, there wasn’t a lot that he could do to intervene.  A pair of babau came at him from behind, their claws tearing at the creases in his armor.  Ignoring them, he swept his hammer around in a wide swipe that achieved maximum velocity right as it intersected the face of the demon splayed across Beorna’s back.  The demon went flying, taking one of the templar’s shoulder greaves with it.  As the dwarf woman straightened, Arun caught her gaze and pointed upward.  The vrock had gotten both of its claws around Mole’s body, and while the gnome had started to struggle, she could not immediately break free as the demon started to fly off with its prize. Beorna at once called down a flame strike that engulfed both the fleeing demon and an additional pair of nearby vrocks, but when the blazing column evaporated the demon, still clutching its prize, continued its retreat.A second vrock evidently wanted its own trophy, as it too hovered over the melee, trying to snare Dannel with its telekinesis.  But the arcane archer, taking up his bow again as he recovered his wits, resisted the tug of the spell.  He started to aim at the demon, before spotting the one making off with Mole.  He shifted smoothly, but before he could release, Cal shouted a warning. “Dannel, nalfeshnee!” The elf spun again, releasing as soon as he planted his foot, the huge demon looming large even sixty feet away.  Arrows erupted in a rapid sequence from his bow, the third already in the air by the time that the first penetrated through the demon’s unholy aura and its ugly hide into its torso.  Cal hesitated for a fraction of a second.  The demon carrying away Mole would be out of range within seconds, but he was all too familiar with the smite power of the nalfeshnee, and his brain immediately calculated that statistically, at least three of them would fall victim to the effects of the demon’s chaotic burst, with the warriors particularly vulnerable.  That conclusion did not ease his worry as he drew his magic again through his rod, firing a green beam of energy that lanced into the nalfeshnee, piercing both its spell resistance and the unholy aura.  The demon had an instant to look surprised before the green glow enveloped it, and it was reduced to ashes. Cal let out the breath he’d been holding.  He’d been damned lucky with that shot.  But the destruction of the greater demon did not ease the gravity of their situation.  Vrocks surrounded by a confusing welter of mirror images dove down at them from above, tearing with their claws, releasing puffs of corrupt spores that drifted down through the gaps in armor in clothes to burrow into the flesh of the adventurers.  Dannel was clipped by on the side of the head, tearing a bloody gash across his forehead.  Two vrocks descended upon Umbar’s head, darting their claws under the lip of the cleric’s helmet, and drawing them back wet with blood.  Another unholy blight hit them, the work of the last remaining hezrou, which hovered just beyond the ring of lesser demons surging at the warriors.  Beorna went down to one knee as another three babaus dogpiled onto her, their claws knifing through her armor like little daggers.  Arun shifted his position enough to help her, but that let another babau through the gap in their line, the demon stumbling over the invisible Cal on its way to Dannel.  The demon, cackling, paused to empower itself to see invisibility, before reaching down to grab at the spellcaster with eager claws. A hundred feet above, three succubi flew over the battlefield, content to watch, for now. Mole regained her senses in time to realize that she was being carried off by a very big flying demon.  Her first instinct was to use her magical cape to transport her back down to the ground, but as she drew the garment around her, nothing happened!  Somewhat irate at that, she then looked down to realize that the ground was rapidly falling away; already she and her captor were nearly sixty feet up and still gaining altitude.  Oh well, she thought, and with a twist of her body, slipped out of the demon’s grasp. It was a long way down, and nothing to grab onto to slow her fall.  Still, she did what she could, spreading her limbs to catch the air, and then collapsing into a forward roll as she hit, her legs absorbing some of the shock and redirecting her interia as she spun across the ground.  The spongy turf soaked up some of her momentum, but she still felt like a child’s ball that had been kicked hard when she finally snapped back up onto her feet.  Still, falling from that kind of height and still being able to walk after it was no small feat, and the first thing she did was turn around to see if any of her friends had seen it. But not only could she not even see any of them over the ring of slain fiends and the ones still attacking, but her momentum had carried her within spitting distance of a hulking hezrou, which turned around to regard her with a nasty look in its bulbous eyes.  Its long tongue shot out, as if to taste the scent of her on the air. Above her she heard the shriek of the vrock, which was already diving to reclaim its lost prize. Uh oh, she thought. Meanwhile, another surge of energy formed above the battlefield, as the vrocks finally completed a successful dance of ruin.  A crackling blast of energy stabbed outward from the nexus of their ritual, passing through the demons harmlessly, but tearing into mortal flesh with terrible fierceness.  Arun’s magic circle helped the companions withstand the full force of the blast, but Beorna, already heavily damaged, collapsed, and Umbar, already shrinking back to his normal size as his righteous might spell faded, fell to his knees as eager tendrils of energy lanced through his armor.  For a moment it looked as though he would shrug off even that powerful assault, and he started to stagger to his feet.  But then his divine power expired, and he too fell, as eager demons surged forward to tear him to pieces. Chapter 548The battle raged on, until only sheer will kept the warriors swinging weapons that felt like leaden weights at the nearest charging demon.  There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them. The vrocks fell dance had finally broken the defenders’ line, and it looked as though a total collapse was imminent.  Arun, who’d simply absorbed the blast of fiendish energy, ignoring it through sheer stubbornness, took in the situation quickly.  “Lok… cover Umbar!” he yelled, as he himself rushed to stand over Beorna.  Ignoring the painful gouging he felt in his back, as several demons tried unsuccessfully to bring him down, the paladin bent over the fallen templar, driving back a babau that was trying to rip off her gorget and sink its claws into her throat.  Her helmet had fallen half off her head, and she was pale, with blood trickling down the side of her mouth.  Arun placed his hammer down and laid his hand upon her neck, unleashing a surge of positive energy into the broken woman as he laid on hands. The effect was immediate; Beorna’s eyes popped open, and she started to get up. “Heal yourself the rest of the way,” Arun told her, but any further discussion was immediately curtailed as a bar-lgura leapt onto her chest, clawing at her.  Arun reached for his hammer, but even as his fingers touched the haft a babau yanked it out of his reach.  Another two were still hanging on him, and one got a good grip on his shield, pulling it—along with the paladin—down on top of it. Cal’s attention was distracted by the babau that had seized him in its claws.  It did little damage through his stoneskin, but the demon lifted him up and tucked him under an arm, clearly intent on darting off somewhere quiet to dismember its catch at its leisure.  Realizing that neither his maze spell nor his remaining shadow evocation would likely work, given Graz’zt’s sealing of Occipitus from extraplanar channels, the gnome contented himself with polymorphing the babau attacking him into a slug.  Dannel, threatened by a storm of vrocks, barely resisted another stunning screech as he fired his bow up at the dizzying array of attackers.  Every shot hit, but most of his targets simply vanished as the arrow struck, merely a mirror image of a demon.  Already his skin felt like it was on fire, as the vrocks’ toxic spores burrowed deeper into the flesh of his face, neck, and arms.  As Umbar went down, the elf staggered over to him, narrowly avoiding another vrock that almost managed to tear his bow out of his grasp.  Lok was already standing over the unconscious cleric, knocking off demons as they tried to finish off the stricken dwarf. Dannel no longer used his bardic magic much; in most cases the song was much more useful in channeling the power that he used to transform his bow into a devastating weapon.  But now he used it to heal, bending over Umbar, infusing him with a cure moderate wounds spell.  The magic didn’t do much against the dwarf’s terrible wounds, but it did bring him back to consciousness.  Unfortunately, it also left him open, as a vrock dove down and seized him in its claws.  Pumping its wings, it lifted him several feet up into the air, kicking and struggling, while several of its fellows dove in, tearing at his body with their claws. Mole darted forward as the hezrou tried to snare her with its claws, tumbling between its legs and coming up behind it.  It turned quickly, so it did not notice the small furry ball she’d left lying on the ground behind her.  The ball expanded into a boar, which immediately set about stabbing its tusks into the demon’s leg.  The attack was utterly ineffectual, of course, but it did distract the demon slightly, enough for Mole to whip her rapier up into a vulnerable spot in its lower body.  The vrock flew overhead, screeching in anger at the loss of its prey.  It turned around in mid-air and flew back around.  It tried to grab the gnome again with telekinesis, but this time the gnome was able to resist the insubstantial grasp, darting forward a moment before the hezrou’s claws tore deep gouges in the earth where it had been standing.  The demon uttered a word of blasphemy, intending to stun this elusive foe, but while the spell reduced Mole’s boar to a black smear, it had no effect on her as she darted away, careful to avoid its lengthy reach.  “Hoo, boy,” she said as she ran, the hezrou and vrock both following her as she ran.  The demons were much faster than she was, and both converged on her at the same moment, shrieking at each other as much as at her as they fought to be the first to snag the prize. At the last moment, as both demons lunged, she disappeared. Dannel was in bad shape.  Not only had he taken damage from the series of blights that had washed over him, but the burrowing vrock spores from several of the vulture demons continued to dig deeper into his flesh, until a dense beard of furry growths jutted from his face and neck.  He’d avoided the worst of the energy blast from the dance of ruin, but as more of the vrocks tore at him with their claws, more attacks were getting through his magical armor and the protection offered by his magical ring.  It was obvious that within a few seconds, he would be torn to pieces. Cal had his final disintegrate ready, but in the swirling medley of vrocks, most surrounded by mirror images, he could not get a clear fix on the demon holding Dannel.  “Damn it,” he said, knowing that there weren’t a lot of options left.  Arun’s foes leapt at the paladin with a renewed vigor, encouraged by the absence of the terrible weapon that had destroyed so many of their fellows.  Arun slipped his arm out of the loops of his shield, relinquishing it to the babau that had dragged him down as he pushed himself back up to his feet.  Another babau was crawling away with his hammer, but he ignored it, instead charging at the bar-lgura atop Beorna, slamming into it with enough force to knock it off the templar.  He helped her to her feet, shielding her with his body as she cast a cure serious wounds to restore some of the vigor taken in the beating she’d received.  That need attended to, she quickly smashed the bar-lgura with the axe she’d borrowed from Arun, cleaving it with a pair of massive blows that laid it out upon the turf.  Umbar drew upon the power of Moradin to heal his own grievous wounds, taking up his own weapon again as Lok fended off a surge of babaus, bar-lgura, and diving vrocks.  The genasi had abandoned his defensive stance to come to Umbar’s aid, but even though he had to be exhausted, he still fought like a machine, his blows tearing demonic flesh asunder with every strike.  He focused on the demons on the ground, not wanting to waste a swing on a vrock’s mirror image.  Coldburn was beginning to hiss now from the acidic babau ooze covering it, so when he ran through a leaping bar-lgura he let the weapon lodged in its body as it fell, drawing out his third weapon, one of the adamantine battleaxes taken from Shatterhorn.  Two babus came at him from opposite sides, and the genasi swung around in a complete circle, chopping both demons down with terrible gashes to their torsos. Surprised, Lok looked around for the next foe, only to see that he was alone.  It was a momentary sensation, as a vrock’s screech drew his attention around in time to face a pair of tearing claws. “Hold on, Dannel!” Cal said, flying into the air after the struggling elf.  He reached Dannel moments before a trio of vrocks did, spraying the contents of a pouch across his body as he touched him and infused him with a stoneskin spell.  The spell did not render him immune to the demons’ attacks, especially their powerful claws, but it gave him a moment’s breather as Cal seized hold of the elf’s cloak with one hand, and jabbed his rod up into the body of the vrock holding him with the other.  Several of the vrocks, recognizing that there was another spellcaster here, lashed out at Cal, seeking him through his invisibility, but even though a slashing claw and a sharp beak nipped him, he was still in fairly good shape and he ignored what little damage got through his own stoneskin. “Get… out… of here…” Dannel coughed, his lips red with his own blood, his face a garish mask from the wounds he’d taken and the growths covering his exposed flesh.  “Hold on!” he said, as he felt his rod touch solid flesh, and he fired off his last disintegrate. Gnome and elf fell like stones as the vrock holding Dannel evaporated, dropping out of the flapping ring of demons.  Dannel landed hard on his left leg and went down, that last blow finally pushing him over the border into unconsciousness.  Cal recovered quickly, and stood in time to see the vrocks diving down at them.  “Need some help here!” he yelled, hurling a greater dispel into the knot of vrocks, shearing away some of their mirror images and heroism buffs, but doing little to ease the violence of their attack. Umbar pushed forward, covering the elf with an upraised arm as a vrock tried to seize him again with its claws.  The cleric tore free before the fiend could get a hold on him, and he quickly channeled a cure critical wounds into the battered elf.  Dannel stirred, and Umbar shoved his bow, which had fallen nearby, into his hands.  “Shoot demons,” he instructed calmly, lifting his hammer as he stood to face the vrocks once more.  Without more reinforcements coming in, the tide of the battle began to turn.  Arun and Beorna appeared again as they slew the last of the demons threatening them.  The vrocks began to fall as they pressed their attack, and Lok joined Umbar in shielding Dannel and Cal.  Cal used one of his wands to enlarge both warriors, given them the same reach as the demons, making their swooping attacks less effective and opening them to full counterattacks that left them shredded.  Arun and Beorna dealt with the hezrou that had been threatening Mole, and moved to join them.  The babau holding Arun’s hammer had tried to slip away, but before it could build up enough of a lead it suddenly tripped, screaming as Mole’s rapier appeared jutting from its left eye socket.  The demon snarled and tried to grab the gnome, but a pair of arrows from Dannel put an end to it. And then, it was over.  The companions stood in an exhausted circle above the wreckage of dozens upon dozens of demons.  The only demons to escape were the three succubi, which had started to flee as soon as the battle had started to turn, and were now just tiny specks in the distance.  All of them—except perhaps for Mole—were covered in blood and gore, at least some of it their own.  A foul stench already permeated the ground like a living entity, and each of them knew from past experience that it would not soon fade from their own bodies as well.  “We should consider retreating back to the Prime, to recover our strength,” Beorna said.  “Those three bitch-demons will soon bring reinforcements.  Our weapons are damaged, and need repair.”Cal shook his head, his voice grim as he related what he’d learned during the battle.  “There is no retreat.  That backblast we felt… the green glow spreading over the plane… Somehow, Graz’zt has sealed all of Occipitus with a dimensional lock.  The demons cannot teleport either, it would seem, which is some help, but neither will any of our summoning spells function.”“Then we will take the fight to him.  We will be triumphant,” Umbar said. “Well, for now, we should find some place less exposed,” Cal suggested.  “Perhaps the cathedral… if the demons haven’t overrun it, we may find aid there.”They started reaching for healing potions and wands, knowing that this was just the beginning. “I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea,” Dannel said.</blockquote>

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