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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2813650" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 570The demons that had been cowering among the massive stone teeth of the battlements surged forward, eager for blood as the antipathy aura of the Warder collapsed along with the statue.  With the defense of the Bastion in utter disarray, there was little standing in their way. But that little included four in particular who were not going to do down without a fight. Arun, Lok, Beorna, and Umbar met the first wave of charging demons, holding their ground, and for the first few seconds it was the latter who gave way, collapsing backwards to flail out the last instants of their lives upon the cold stone.  Arun’s hammer crashed left and right like the regular workings of a machine, and with each blow, a demon was crushed.  Lok’s sonic axe let out its thunder only occasionally, as the genasi scored a critical hit, but even the lesser blows left demons deeply gashed, or sent a limb flying.  Beorna, calling upon the power of Helm, slew fiends with grim abandon, while Umbar swelled with righteous might, becoming a giant who crushed lesser fiends beneath his boot. Yet even those incredible four could not hold long against the onslaught, and were soon falling back.  Of all things it was a dretch that brought Lok low, seizing the genasi’s ankle even as it died, putting him off balance for just a fraction of a second.  That tiny interval was just enough to keep him from dodging out of the charging rush of a goristo, which slammed a heavy fist into the warrior’s face.  Lok, already beaten, battered, blasted by fiendish energies, crumpled.  Arun quickly stepped in to defend the fallen genasi, slamming the goristo with a series of powerful blows that forced it to turn aside and engage him.  A babau leapt at the paladin’s unprotected back, but Beorna was there to meet it, cleaving it in half with a single powerful blow of her sword.  But the assault cost her as well, as the adamantine blade, too heavily damaged by the many engagements with the acidic slime covering those demons, snapped off just above the hilt as she completed her stroke.  She barely had time to draw her dagger before a pair of demons, a jovoc and a slavering rutterkin, were upon her. Umbar’s greater size made him a prime target for arial demons, including a quartet of vrocks that dove eagerly at him, too impatient to continue their assignment of shuttling demons from the canyon floor to atop the battlements.  The cleric held his ground, using his enhanced reach to smite the first demon with a two-handed blow with his axiomatic hammer.  The vrock was knocked roughly backward, stunned by the force of the blow, and the other three quickly became much more wary, circling above as they summoned mirror images. Cal pulled himself up, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it of the ringing that seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside his skull.  One glance at the ruins of the Warder—now just broken stone, with nothing remaining above the statue’s knees—and at the onrushing demonic horde, was enough to reveal the tactical impossibility of their position.  “Fall back!” he shouted.  “To the tunnel!”  There was little chance they could hold, but at least the corridor offered a fairly defensible position. A rumbling announced the approach of another goristo, which loomed large as it charged straight for him, picking up speed as it came.  Behind it was a small cluster of demons, babau, jovocs, rutterkin, and dretch, surging forward eager for blood.  Cal saw that the demons would reach the entrance long before the dwarves and Lok, even if his friends could instantly disengage and fall back. “And so here we are, my friend,” came a voice from beside him.  Cal looked up to see Dannel, an arrow fitted to his bow.  Behind him, the hound archon with the burning sword lay the unconscious Callendes gently upon the stone, before taking up his blade, and coming forward to stand before the two mortals.  The only other celestial still standing, the second warden archon, came barreling into the scene, letting out a guttural roar as its charge intersected that of the onrushing goristo.  The bear-like creature was clearly seriously hurt, with one arm dangling uselessly at its side, but the sheer ferocity of its attack unbalanced the larger demon, with both falling to the side, rolling over each other as they struggled for an advantage.  The hound archon tried to rush to its aid, but it was forced to defend itself against a pair of leaping babau.  One dug a gash in the archon’s side with a sweep of its claws, but it quickly fell, an arrow jutting from its skull, while the second had barely lifted its own claws to attack before the archon took its head off with a powerful two-handed sweep of its blade. More demons came rushing forward, but several of them were distracted by a diving phalanx of winged men, shining sword archons.  The archons split and dove in a sweeping arc around the onrushing demons, drawing off several, including two of the three vrocks hovering around Umbar.  The archons refused engagement, instead flying furiously just ahead of the pursuing demons, both the vrocks and those afoot.  By the time one actually got ahold of one, its claws passing harmlessly through the insubstantial fabric of the creature, Cal’s illusion had done its work, buying a few precious moments of time. “Take him!” Arun commanded, spinning to crush a charging rutterkin even as his second goristo fell with a loud crash to the ground.  Umbar turned from the vrock he’d been fighting to lift the unconscious Lok with his free hand, using the other with the hammer to keep the vulture-demon at bay.  Beorna, holding off her own attackers mostly by virtue of her heavy armor and the considerable resistances granted her by her templar status, took up Lok’s dropped axe, and used it to kill the babau threatening her.  The axe smoked, but fortunately held together against the caustic acid covering the creature.  She avoided attacking the jovoc, which could only scratch uselessly at her armor.  Still, as she turned to cover Umbar’s back as he retreated, she spared it a quick kick that sent it flying.  She felt a brief stabbing pain in her shoulder as her boot connected, but she judged it worth the cost as the little black demon splayed out on the stone, momentarily stunned. The dwarves fell back, the demons threatening them with every step, but wary of the devastating attacks of Arun and Beorna.  Cal aided them with a haste spell.  Dannel kept up a steady barrage of arrows, dropping demons as they closed to leap upon his companions.  The hound archon tried to move to the assistance of the embattled warden archon, ignoring a handful of dretch that tried unsuccessfully to block him.  But before he could reach the celestial, the goristo pulled itself up, and seized its smaller foe in both meaty claws.  The bear demon still fought on, smashing the bull-demon across the face with its fist.  The goristo roared in fury, and lifted the struggling celestial above its head, likely intending to smash it upon the stone at its feet.  But before it could finish its foe, the hound archon Avellos leapt in, drawing his blazing sword across the demon’s gut.  The archon’s blessed nature empowered its weapon, allowing it to penetrate the demon’s foul resistances, and a great gout of black ichor erupted from the wound, a gash three feet across from which its entrails bulged sick and bloated.  The goristo staggered and dropped its victim, which fell awkwardly to the ground, still dazed from the beating it had taken.  Dretch and a rutterkin bearing a dire axe set upon both celestials, but Avellos ignored all, grabbing the injured celestial by the shoulder and drawing it up, using his own strength to bolster the ailing warden.  He paid for that, as demons cut into his muscled body, the rutterkin tearing a bloody wound in the archon’s swordarm before the distracted celestial could counter. And then the goristo reared up, furious and eager for revenge.  Eschewing any subtlety, it lowered its head and barreled forward toward them, crushing a dretch that was too slow to get out of its way. The warden archon tried to pull away from the hound, but it could not stand on its own.  Avellos lifted his sword in salute, and took up a ready position. Arrows slid past the hound archon, whistling mere inches past its ragged and bloodied fur on their way to the charging goristo.  One slammed into its shoulder, followed by a second that grazed its left eye, opening the bulb in a gush of white fluid.  The demon, now critically wounded, did not falter in its charge, and even as the flaming sword of Avellos slammed down into it, it crushed the archon’s chest with the bony ridge of its forehead, knocking the valiant celestial backward a full fifteen feet, landing half-conscious upon the stone floor of the cavern.  The goristo staggered forward and then fell, stumbling as the warden archon seized its ankle in passing.  It tried to get up, but another arrow buried itself to the feathers in its throat, and it finally collapsed in a gurgle of blood as it drowned on its own fluids. The dretch had been scattered by their huge cousin’s assault, but the rutterkin now came forward eagerly, lifting its heavy and awkward weapon to deliver a finishing blow to the helpless warden archon.  Focused on its prey, it never saw the hulking shadow that loomed over it, or the hammer that came crushing down into its body, knocking it aside like a discarded rag doll. The dretch cowered as Umbar shifted the unconscious Lok over his shoulder, then bent to tuck the crippled celestial under his arm.  Even with his strength augmented by the righteous might of Moradin, the burden of carrying both was almost too much for him, and he struggled with the weight as he made his way back toward the relative safety of the tunnel entrance.  A vrock dove down toward him, but within a range of two seconds it was hit by both an arrow and a ray of searing light from Beorna, convincing it to pause long enough to summon mirror images. With the shielding aura of the Warder gone, demons continued to surge over the battlements of the Bastion.  Another two goristo climbers cleared the barrier, loaded down so heavily with passenger demons that they’d been slowed to a crawl in their ascent.  As the huge demons struggled over the barrier, babaus that had clung to the larger demons for the ride up leapt off and rushed eagerly forward.  Vrocks flew over, each dumping a few smaller demons on the stone; a few returned for additional passengers, but most, sensing that the battle was coming to an end, screeched and surged forward to join the attack.  Dretch, rutterkin, babau, bar-lgura, and jovocs, along with the occasional hordeling or fiendish creature, continued to land atop the wall, hurled by the trebuchet, the reverse gravity surge of the glabrezu, or even by simple virtue of having climbed the sheer face of the Bastion’s shield wall.  Most of those arrived in disarray, especially those flung by the trebuchet, and more than a few were killed by the impact of their arrival.  But that still left dozens to press the attack.  Three gaseous plumes slid through the crenels and took on solid shape; hezrou demons, eager to be in on the kill.  Over it all flew a pair of chasmes, their hatred evenly divided between their celestial enemies and the other demons, which they despised.  Only one thing united this discordant, chaotic horde: a lust for the destruction of their enemies.  Thus motivated, the demons surged forward in a wave, running, leaping, flying, and even crawling forward to the attack. With their allies almost entirely wiped out, and their own strength depleted, already battered and exhausted, it was the companions from Faerûn upon which this Abyssal tide descended. Chapter 571The wave of demons crashed into the defenders hard.  Arun and Beorna were at the forefront, and they were nearly overwhelmed by at least two dozen demons, mostly the smaller and weaker sort, but no less ferocious for it.  The babaus in particular were cunning, setting up for sneak attacks, moving around their fellows to gain flanking positions.  A bar-lgura leapt over the two dwarves and tried to assail the weakened and incapacitated foes in the second rank, but was momentarily held at bay by Dannel, who fired two shots into it at point-blank range, before ducking back out of its reach.  Umbar’s oversized form shimmered and shrank back to its normal size, his righteous might cancelled by a miscellaneous dispel from within the demonic press.  He saw Dannel pressed, but paused long enough to put down his two burdens, and to channel a heal spell into Lok.  The hound archon Avellos had regained consciousness, but could barely hold his sword, let alone rush back into the fray.  The celestial tried to revive the crippled warden archon, using an aid spell to bring the battered warrior around.  A loud crashing noise announced the arrival of the goristos, accompanied by the shriek of a half-dozen diving vrocks, the leaping hezrous, and at least a score of other demons.  It would have ended right there; even with the power that the companions had accumulated, they had taken too much of a beating to hold out against such overwhelming odds. A clarion command issued from the passageway, and a grid of bright blue energy appeared that filled a perfect cube before the great doors.  The unleashed power of order’s wrath tore into the demons, slaying the lesser breeds, and briefly dazing the stronger.  Several vrocks caromed off the cavern ceiling as their dives went off course, and they fell into the mass of demons below, causing more confusion.  A goristo that managed to shake off the power of the blast surged forward, intent on simply overrunning the defenders.  But another figure emerged from the tunnel, a tall, scarred figure with black wings, holding a silver bastard sword that shone with a bright inner light.  Saureya met the demon’s charge, driving the sword named Aludrial’s Shard into the fiend, darting nimbly under the powerful but clumsy swing of its claws.  The sword erupted with holy power as it smote the demon, and it staggered back, staring down at the smoking hole in its chest.  Saureya looked back over his shoulder at the companions.  “Back!  Now!” he shouted, his voice full of the tenor of command.  The companions needed no additional urging.  The demons were already coming forward again, those recovering from the dazing effects of the wrath joined by newcomers that had not been affected by it.  Saureya held his ground for a few seconds, slaying fiends with the blessed sword.  None could stand before him; for a moment it was as though the fallen deva and the blade were one, a storm of silver that formed a weave through which the demons could not pass. But the companions knew that was only an illusion, one confirmed as Saureya was hit by a rapid-fire barrage of spells and other attacks.  Two unholy blights enveloped him, and a pair of vrocks and a babau fell upon him, tearing at him with their claws.  The injured goristo, followed by its companion, now recovered from its daze, lurched in as well, and while the gleaming sword took off one demonic limb at the elbow, a second tore long gashes in the angel’s chest, driving him back.  “Saureya!” Arun urged, from the doorway.  The others had fallen back, bringing with them Callendes, Avellos, and the injured warden archon.  Lok, restored to health by Umbar’s magic, stood beside the paladin, holding his backup axe in a ready stance.  The Herald’s Voice started forward to join his master, but Saureya, as if sensing the sword archon’s intent, shot him a gaze that froze him in place.  The deva smiled to himself, ignoring the demons tearing at his limbs.  He rose up in the air, and spun, the Shard cleaving one of the goristos across the face, shattering its skull and driving back into the bodies of the lesser demons behind.  Only then did the deva fall back, swooping into the corridor. The demons were right behind him.  The quickest found their way blocked by Arun and Lok, who laid into them with devastating effect.  Then the deva turned, and conjured a blade barrier that filled the entry.  Lok and Arun, surprised, staggered back just in time to avoid being caught by the blades.  The charging demons were less fortunate, and a half-dozen were sliced to ribbons before they could arrest their rush.  “Through the tunnel, swiftly!” Saureya urged.  “That will not hold them…”  And indeed, the air around the blades rippled, as multiple dispels hit the magical barrier.  The tunnel was about thirty feet long, a cylinder that appeared to be simply blasted through the surrounding rock.  Gouges lined the walls and ceiling, dark shadows that might have been irregularities in the construction, or part of the defenses.  At the far end stood a pair of doors that were clearly built to last; three feet of stone covered in bronze plates several inches thick, set into the surrounding threshold on massive stone pivots recessed deep into the lintel.  The doors were only narrowly open, and the companions headed for that opening now, and the safety if promised.  Saureya drifted behind Lok and Arun, bringing up the rear of their retreat.  They’d barely made it halfway down the passage when the blades abruptly vanished, replaced by a wall of demons that surged after them.  A chaos hammer exploded around them, but all of them resisted being slowed by the blast.  “Go!” Saureya urged the warriors, turning to meet a bar-lgura’s hop, the demon’s arms spread to swallow the deva up in its embrace.  Aludrial’s Shard danced, and the demon fell, its left arm gone up to the shoulder.  A vrock came up instantly on its heels, and Saureya gave it the same treatment, cutting into its body with a deep gash.  It shrieked, but the deva was not affected by the stunning effect of that cry.  “Saureya, come on!” Arun shouted, holding position at the doors.  The deva glanced over his shoulder, and smiled a cold smile at them.  The angel fell back, but slowly, as more and more demons filled the corridor.  Even a goristo squeezed into the tunnel, although its bulk barely fit into the passageway.  Behind it, over a hundred demons queued up to be next.  A babau leapt onto the deva’s back, tearing with its long claws.  Arun started forward at once, but the deva stopped him with an outstretched hand.  Ignoring the fiend, the fallen angel fluttered to the ground, where several demons immediately seized hold of him.  “Saureya!” Arun cried.  He would have gone forward regardless of the angel’s orders, but several demons had slipped past the deva, and were now rushing toward him, and the door beyond.  He lifted his hammer, ready to defend himself. Saureya’s head came up.  The deva smiled again, and this time there was something grim in that look, even without the gashes that marred the creature’s face.  A babau tried to claw his eyes out, but even as it tore long red lines across his skull, Saureya’s eyes flashed with something unfathomable to the paladin.  ”Neya!” he shouted, a command in Celestial that sounded clearly over the noise of the demonic surge. Instantly at that call, sprays of liquid exploded out of the narrow slits in the walls and ceiling.  Arun flinched as the cold fluid splashed across his face, but it was only water, pure and cleansing.  For him, at least.  The demons screamed as the holy water burned their corrupted flesh, sloughing off flesh and muscles, and even etching the black bones beneath.  The demons holding Saureya simply evaporated into ruined hulks, and those behind let out a terrible wail as they tried to get back out.  Unfortunately, the goristo was blocking the corridor, and while it tried to back up, splashes of holy water seared its legs and arms, inflicting a terrible agony upon it.  A few of the demons tried to squeeze past it, only to be crushed by the larger demon’s struggles against the stone.  Arun lowered his hammer as he looked upon a scene of total carnage.  Even with all that he had seen, he felt sick.  Saureya stood, shaking off bits of demonic hide from his body.  Covered in blood and bile, his face streaked with garish red lines from his wounds, he walked toward Arun, his face expressionless. “Come,” he said. The two passed through the door, which swung ponderously shut, sealing with an iron clang. Chapter 572Benzan half-staggered, half-ran through a warped landscape of iron trees and dark shadows.  His breath rattled in his chest like a coin in a glass jug, and with each step his stride grew more uncertain, as if his body was just waiting for the right moment to surrender its efforts, and embrace oblivion. He saw a fallen tree ahead, a long gray log stretching nearly horizontal across the path.  Wary, he ducked under it, careful of the razor-sharp edges that pervaded everything in this place.  He found a spot bare of dagger-like needles and jagged ridges and paused to recover his breath.  He felt at the crude bandage at his side, and was not surprised to feel a fresh wetness there.  He didn’t want to look at the wound, worried about what he might see.  He could not stay here.  The only thing that had kept him alive thus far was the fact that his adversaries did not work together.  He’d seen at least four different demons that he could recognize, but that meant nothing; one babau or vrock looked much the same as another to his eyes.  The forest at least offered some modicum of cover, but against demons that could teleport at will across the landscape, no place could be considered safe for even a few seconds. He didn’t know why he kept running; there was no place to go, and he already knew that Graz’zt’s citadel was perched on the side of a huge metal cube floating in space, massive but finite.  There was no way to get to any of the other cubes he could occasionally see floating in the sky, and short of encountering a convenient planar gate just sitting around unguarded, no way off of this plane, which he now knew to be Acheron. But even though his body cried for relief, he couldn’t just give up; it was not within his nature.  The demons would likely capture him again, or maybe just kill him.  Benzan was not sure which outcome he preferred. He clutched the weapon he’d liberated from one of the many battlefields that littered the cubes of Acheron; a rusty shortsword, with a single-edged blade about two feet in length.  He still had Yeela’s hooked knife, as well, but even though the sword was pitted and probably useless against even a lesser demon’s damage resistance, he felt better holding it. He started to put his hand against the nearby trunk of the fallen tree, but stopped himself.  Even a moment’s carelessness here could be lethal, he knew. He was lucky to be alive at all.  When he’d looked up at the monstrosity holding the corpse of Kareen, he’d thought that he was dead as well.  The retriever had almost casually tossed the ruined body of the succubus aside, then had turned its full attention on the tiefling.  One of its multifaceted, colored eyes had focused on him… Benzan shuddered at the memory.  He’d thrown himself aside a split second before the fiery beam had raked the stone where he’d fallen.  The beam tracked him, but instead of intersecting with his defenseless flesh, it had struck the winch mechanism that had continued its slow lifting of the twin portcullises.  Benzan had just kept on running, hadn’t looked back even as he’d heard the Abyssal construct drop to the ground and follow him.  Maybe he’d been due some luck.  In any case, he’d heard rather than seen the winch give way, and even before he saw the second portcullis falling toward him, he leapt forward and dove.  The noise that had followed was cataclysmic, and he’d finally turned around to see the retriever pinned under the first portcullis, the black iron spikes piercing its body across the line of its torso.  Its limbs flailed against the surrounding walls, but it could not get enough leverage to lift itself free. For some reason, he’d stood there dumbly, watching it.  The mistake in that was brought home an instant later as a blast of electrical energy shot from one of the construct’s eyes, twisting through the second portcullis directly at him.  He’d thrown himself to the side, avoiding the worst of the blast, but he’d landed on a rock with a sharp protrusion, which had pierced his side and left him with the oozing wound that continued to seep the life out of him.  But there had been no time to ponder the rude twists of his fate.  Leaving the retriever to thrash against its prison, he’d run fast and far.  The demons had started appearing right after he’d reached the borders of the iron forest, and since then they’d been everywhere, teleporting through the sky and through the woods in search of him.  So far he’d managed to stay a pace ahead of his pursuers, but he knew that he would not be able to keep it up for much longer.  His body was worn down, even without his wounds.  Kireen had not offered him food or drink when she’d released him, and there was no apparent source of either in this place.  Nor was there any sign of the succubus’s mysterious contact, although Benzan would have been leery of pursuing him, her, or it even if it came down to it being his only option out of this place. A sizzling noise cut through his musings like a knife, and he immediately ducked down low behind his rough shelter.  He heard rather than saw the demon, and waited only until he could confirm that it was not moving toward him before he crouched low and quickly slipped off in the other direction.  He went about another fifty yards further before the path he was following opened onto a clearing, maybe twenty paces across.  A metal spire with numerous spear-like branches rose up in the center, decorated by a fringe of rusted armor, assorted bones, and broken weapons lying around its base.  The outer ring of the clearing was marked by over a dozen of the smaller metal trees, forming a dense and hazardous web for the traveler. Benzan spotted what looked like another trail, and headed immediately in that direction.  He didn’t get more than a few steps, however, before another sizzling noise drew his attention up.  When he saw the source of the sound, his heart froze in his chest. The babau demon looked down at him from its perch atop the spire, and twisted its ugly features into an evil smile.</blockquote>

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