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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2813686" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 582Graz’zt’s Iron Skull dominated the center of Occipitus like a boil upon a scabrous hunk of flesh.  In just a few days of subjective time, the slow progress of the plane away from corruption had been undone, at least here, where the power of the Demon Prince reigned supreme.  The once-golden sky had been completely obscured by a permanent storm of red and black clouds that spiraled in a wide halo over the pace.  Blue lightning flashed within that mass, accompanied by rumblings that sounded like the tremors of a building earthquake.  Black specks filled the sky, wings of flying demons that included vrocks, chasmes, succubi, quasits, and fiendish humanoids mounted upon winged creatures that looked like a combination of dragons and giant dire bats.  Altogether, it was a scene out of a nightmare.  The citadel itself was a terrible, garish pillar that still bore a rough proximity to its original shape, augmented now by jagged edges, sharp spikes, and leering fiendish faces cast in iron.  Some of those decorations were not merely ornamental, as occasionally a fearsome-looking figure that appeared to be cast in black metal would shift position, staring out over the plain below with eyes that glowed an evil red.  Every inch of the fortress was covered by the abyssal iron that Graz’zt had conjured with his epic spell, and no means of entrance were visible anywhere, save for the massive doors set deep within its base, surrounded by murder holes and dark slits beyond which shadowy figures occasionally moved.  As if that were not enough, a pair of massive glabrezu, each standing nearly twenty feet tall, stood before the doors.  The chiseled bodies of these fiends were covered in runes that glowed a feral red, and each wore an open-faced helm of black iron that sprouted a forest of bristling spikes.  Spreading outward from the spire in a chaotic mélange was a massive camp; or rather series of camps, for there was no overarching order or sense to the arrangement of gatherings that covered the plain, nothing other than the presence of the spire in the center to give them any sense of common alignment at all.  The camps ranged from small clusters of demons that appeared to have simply stopped at a random point upon the plain, to a more substantial enclosure walled in by a stockade of iron longspears driven deep into the spongy turf of Occipitus.  These gatherings combined features of military outposts and refugee camps, and collectively contained over ten thousand fiends, nearly all demons, although a sprinkling of hordelings, yugoloths, daemons, half-fiends, tieflings, and others rounded out the anarchy.  Only one thing kept this host together, one thing bound it to this unfamiliar and unforgiving place.  That one thing was the resident of the metal spire, the once-lord of Azzagrat, here to make his bid for a return to the ranks of the great masters of the Abyss. Demons were what they were, however, and the camp was roiled with a constant din as the pure chaos and evil of its inhabitants played out.  Every hour dozens of beings met their end in the camps, as old rivalries exploded and new ones were born, sometimes out of something as casual and stupid as a stray look or a slight bump in passing.  Graz’zt’s enforcers were out in the camp, a trio of hulking Nalfeshnees that each commanded a dozen hulking half-fiends encased from head to toe in dark red plate. Their task was to ensure that none of these conflicts exploded into a general conflagration.  But these lords of demonkind were nevertheless of a kind with their fellows, and bribes occasionally passed to ensure that the patrol would be elsewhere, when the time for revenge came at hand.  The companions watched it all with stares of horrified amazement.  They hovered high above the scene, about a mile out from the citadel, just outside the edge of the huge cloud.  This was far enough away from the orbiting fliers so that their insubstantial forms made them virtually undetectable, but that did not give any of them any sense of security.  The spell did not give them the power to speak, but no words could have expressed the diverse feelings that passed through them at this point.  Each of them, mortal and celestial alike, battled a surge of feeling that combined fear and anger, hatred and resignation.  One of the ten, one of the smallest among them, drifted a bit ahead of the others.  Deception and sneaking had brought them this far; from here on out, their approach would be… different. Cal lifted his hand.  The air around the wind walkers stirred, gathering in anticipation. The gnome lowered his hand, and the ten of them shot forward, heading directly for the skull.  Chapter 583Seconds passed, each one ticking off loudly in Cal’s mind, like the rattle of the broken Lantanese clock that his aunt had insisted on keeping on the mantle of the Calloran home in Waterdeep.  Tick… tick… tick….  At about a mile distant, he figured it would take about a minute for them to cover the distance from their initial vantage to their destination.It would be the longest minute he’d ever experienced in his life.  Fully ten ticks of the clock had passed, almost enough to give him a giddy hope that they might beat the odds, when the cry of a vrock shattered that musing.  None of the companions shifted from their tight formation, two phalanxes centered around Umbar and the Voice.  Well, the formation was mostly intact, Cal saw, as he glanced back and saw that Mole was pacing him, her grin evident even through the wind walk.  More seconds passed, as the companions streaked at high speed toward their destination.  Several demons had changed course to intercept them, although the vrock that had first spotted them was already behind, and trailing further, unable to keep up with their rapid flight.  An unholy blight exploded ahead of them; gritting his teeth Cal shot through it, followed immediately by the others.  None of them had flinched, and most of them, warded by layered magical protections, including circles of protection from evil, resisted the worst of the blast’s effects.  Looking down, Cal scanned the massive camp below.  They were still almost three hundred feet above the ground, out of range of most forms of attack, and likely impossible to see against the backdrop of the roiling storm above.  With the chaos of the demonic horde, there was no way to tell if they were responding to the general alarm, or if they were even aware yet that an incursion was taking place. He looked back up to see a pair of succubi swooping down from up ahead.  He grimaced, bracing himself for an attack, but instead of assaulting the wind walkers, they drew up just close enough to fire off charms at several of them as they shot past.  Cal felt a moment of uncertainty; if one or more of them succumbed, it could throw a wrench in their plan.  But again the willpower of the companions, bolstered with magic, prevailed.  By the time that the succubi were ready to strike again, they were past. Another blight erupted, but this one was slightly off to the left, and they easily avoided it.  Cal let himself hope that this was because the caster was getting farther away, and could not easily mark their position with the speed with which they were traveling.  The iron mountain was now looming up ahead of them, its jagged spires filling Cal’s vision as they dove straight toward it.  Several forms had detached from the structure, lifting into the air on metallic wings, red eyes gleaming as they fixed upon the intruders.  Gargoyles, Cal thought.  Bad news; their claws can cut through our damage reduction.But the incredible speed granted by the wind walk came at the price of maneuverability.  And slowing down was not an option; if they eased their speed, then the demons would be on them in moments.  And if the mass of ground-based demons mobilized before they were in…Then there was no more time to think; the gargoyles were upon them. The companions shot through them in a flash, but not without being blooded.  A claw slammed into Cal, penetrating his wispy form as though he were solid, but he was wearing a stoneskin, and the blow had no effect.  But Avellos and Umbar were hit hard, the archon slowed momentarily as the impact from the gargoyle knocked it out of formation.  But despite their efforts the gargoyle attack could not disrupt their passage, and they were through, with nothing ahead but the sharp spikes jutting from the summit of the skull. Cal turned the lead position over to Mole, who led them down.  Their course shifted into a steep arc as they sped into a powered dive, straightening out into an angled descent that took them within a stone’s throw of the citadel walls.  Mole led them into a narrow gap between a jutting tower and the main bulk of the citadel, the others slicing through the space toward the ground that was very rapidly coming up to greet them.  They knew where they were going; the lower entrance to the citadel was the same one they had used to access the place long before, when Arun, Dannel, and Mole had come here to confront the Test of the Smoking Eye.   The ground in front of the recessed entry was clear of demons; the nearest camp was a healthy hundred yards or so away from that key location.  The demons in the camp were starting to stir, now, although there still wasn’t any clear sign of organization, or an obvious response to the threat.  One of the nalfeshnee wardens, accompanied by its ring of armored guards, was moving toward the entry, although it was still a good distance off.  Cal had lost his count, but he knew that only a tick or two remained.  He prepared himself…And saw the two glabrezu guardians step out from the recessed entry, their gazes coming up as one to fix the diving heroes with cold malevolence.  Oh, crap…Chapter 584The unexpected appearance of two advanced glabrezu guards threw a twist into Cal’s plan, but with the wind walking companions descending toward the ground at sixty miles per hour, there was no time for anything other than gut reaction. Within the tiniest fraction of a heartbeat, Umbar and the Voice released their wind walk spells.  With a sudden, jarring lurch, the companions materialized fully, still diving directly toward the ground—and the waiting guards—at an extremely rapid pace. It was up to Cal now, and everything seemed to slow down around him as his magic flowed through him.  The plan was for him to invoke the spell immediately after the wind walk ended, but with the glabrezu already starting to react, it was time to take a chance. He heard a scream behind him, but his brain didn’t have time to register the identity of its source as he invoked the feather fall, barely twenty feet from the head of the first glabrezu.  The uncontrolled dive instantly became an easy descent, and Cal slid past the nearer of the two glabrezu to land in an easy crouch upon the turf. The warriors followed only a second later, and unlike Cal, they had focused their dive directly upon the demon guardian.  Arun hit first, although the demon’s longer reach let it slam him with a long pincer-claw that should have sent the paladin flying.  Instead, the gold dwarf twisted and took the hit on his shield, shooting past close enough to deliver a solid blow to the demon’s shoulder as he fell.  The demon roared as the holy avenger warhammer send a pulse of driving pain through it, but that hurt became all the more intense a moment later as Beorna drove Aludrial’s Shard into its chest, opening a long, terrible gash down its left breast.  Lok and Umbar landed behind it, the genasi failing to connect with a swing at the edge of his reach, the cleric striking it across the back with Alakast as he fell.  The group accompanying the Herald’s Voice came down upon the second glabrezu.  Dannel and Callendes were firing as they fell, and Mole unfolded her cloak, controlling her descent to swoop down behind it for a sneak attack.  Avellos fell too far away to get in an intial attack, but the Voice dove directly at it, its sword materializing in the air before it. For a moment it looked like they had secured a victory, but then, as it so often did, the initiative shifted against them.  The first glabrezu invoked a reverse gravity, the potent magic overwhelming the spell resistance provided by Arun’s hammer as both the paladin and Beorna went streaking back up into the air.   And five paces away, the Voice was likewise overcome as the second guardian hit the archon with a power word.  The celestial plummeted hard into the ground at the glabrezu’s feet, stunned.</blockquote>

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