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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2875632" data-attributes="member: 143">D'oh!  Ah, well, maybe I was just bluffing with that earlier house rule comment... Yeah, that's it, classic misdirection!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I prefer the way that the update turns out now, actually.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" />  * * * * * Chapter 600Dana uttered a holy word. The power of the blessed syllable blasted outward from the priestess.  But none of the hezrous fell, although the spell should have struck them dead at once.  At first Dana could not understand the failure of the magic, but then she saw the ugly, oozing scars that trailed black ichor down the sides of the demons’ heads. The demons had been deliberately deafened, unable to hear the holy word, or anything else. The succubus could hear perfectly, but was not fazed at all by the potency of the word, which did not bode well. The succubus’s eyes glowed with an almost feral intensity as she regarded the priestess.  “The Great Lord is quite familiar with your tactics, blessed of Selûne.”  The way she said it, the appellation sounded like a slur.  “Your fate was set the moment you decided to come for your little pet there.”Something flashed in Dana’s eyes.  “You are not the only one to know your enemy,” Dana said.  She made a small gesture with her left hand.  There was a noise in the clearing behind her, accompanied by a slight rush of air as something filled that space.  The succubus was the only one to have seen the other invisible figure that had come through the gate with Dana; a diminutive creature, smaller even than a Halfling, clad in a simple cloth tunic, carrying a hammer somewhat too large for him, tucked through his belt.  The demoness had watched the creature intently, expecting some sort of surprise from it.  But even she was not prepared for the little thing to suddenly grow to over twenty-five feet tall, putting it almost on eye-level with the demons atop the cliff.  It became visible as it lifted a muscled hand and uttered a cry that shattered the mottled sky of Achaeron.  The titan Corumbos was ready for battle. “Destroy them!” the demoness snarled, but her minions were already rushing to attack.  Most of the hezrous leapt forward, several of them hurling chaos hammers and unholy blights at their foes.  The energy surges unleashed confusing storms of energy that filled the clearing, but did little real damage against their heavily warded enemies.  Benzan lacked such protection, and while the hammer failed to affect him, the blight was enough to nearly do him in.  But then the pain of his wounds suddenly fled, and he looked up to see Dana kneeling beside him.  She had a sword in her hand, which she thrust into his. “Can you fight?”“You’d better believe it,” he said.  Although getting up proved a bit more challenging that he’d expected, he was still on his feet when one of the hezrous leapt at him, reaching for him with its huge claws. The clearing exploded into a chaotic melee as the demons and their enemies engaged with every spell and weapon they had at their disposal.  The succubus tried to sunder the enchantment that had brought the titan here, but despite her considerable magical abilities, those paled before those of Dana.  The titan completed his spell as the demons atop the bluff blasted him with arrows and energy beams.  Two hezrous leapt onto his legs, tearing and clawing.  But Corumbos was one of the Ancient Scions, an entity of surpassing power, and not likely to fall to the initial attack of a few demons.  Laertes Leonidas tried to charge the succubus, but was forced to defend himself as the fiendish hound, its matted hide covered in slashes from its encounter with the iron bush, leapt back into the fray.  The werelion ripped his arm free of the hound’s jaws before it could get a solid grip, and in turn seized it around the throat, and twisted.  The hound struggled and thrashed for a few moments, before a loud snap announced the end of that confrontation.  Several of the hezrous had hung back, watching for an attempt at escape.  Likewise, the flying demons above had orders to remain vigilant, to maintain the anchors on Benzan and Dana lest they try to dispel the enchantments and flee.  But escape was not on Dana’s mind, as she unleashed her own magic upon their enemies.  Demons all around her screamed as her inflict critical wounds spell tore into them.  Three hezrous crowded forward and surged over her from the front and sides.  As they pressed her, however, a glow that surrounded her like a halo began to brighten, building in intensity until the demons howled in pain.  Two managed to hit her despite the holy aura, although both immediately fell back, blinded by the intensity of the light.  The succubus hit her with a spell, and Dana felt wracking pains erupt in her lower body, threatening her equilibrium.  But the priestess had passed through trials of agony and terror to get to this point, and she merely ignored the pain, pushing it to the side like an unwelcome thought.  Stepping away from the hezrous attacking her, she turned to Benzan.  Her husband was giving as good as he got with the hezrou he was fighting.  The sword he had was a decent magical weapon she’d picked up in the household of Barrat Ghur, but with the align weapon she’d laid upon it shortly before opening the gate, it sliced open the demon’s flesh as effectively as a normal blade might that of your typical ogre or orc.  Thus far, she’d kept herself walled up within an iron wall of discipline.  She could not let herself accept the reality of Benzan being right next to her, close enough to touch.  If she did, the hard shell she had constructed around herself might break, and if that happened, then they would all be lost. So she touched him, but only to deliver a spell. “It’s going to get real hot in a moment, love,” she said, then shouted, “INFERNUS!”Corumbos heard the shouted word, and nodded.  A streak of blackened char marred his tunic across the breast, and a half-dozen arrows jutted from his upper body, including one that had pierced his cheek.  But the two rocs he had summoned had snared the flying demons and flown off with them, and the retriever listed perilously, two of its legs smashed in from a devastating blow from the titan’s massive hammer.  The two archers he’d recognized as merely half-fiends, rather than truebloods, and the quickened chain lightning he’d hit them with had been more than payback for the arrows they’d shot him with.  The hezrous tearing at his legs he had ignored; neither had managed to hurt him yet. At Dana’s command, though, he summoned his magic, and called down a fire storm.  The succubus Brajia staggered back through the inferno, her earlier certainty shattered.  Her demons were being torn apart, and Dana Ilgarten had been far from the easy prey she’d expected.  In a part of her mind, she was already anticipating the terrors that her Master would inflict upon her for failure.  While should could imagine her own failure, conceptualizing the defeat of Graz’zt, even with the example of the Disaster fresh in the minds of all who served the once-Argent Lord, was beyond her grasp.  Such was the power of the being known as the Lord of Shadows to shape the realities of those around him.  But Brajia was not without resources.  Even as he flesh began to crinkle from the raging flames all around her, she reached into her pouch and drew out a scroll.  The parchment was flayed from the hide of a devil, but even so it almost immediately began to smoke as the heat hit it.  But she only needed a few seconds to read the incantation scribed upon the scroll. A shadowy form emerged through the flames.  Brajia did not need to see her clearly to know it was Dana Ilgarten.  She was untouched by the flames.  A pair of nunchaku dangled from her right hand. “Time to end this, demon.”Brajia laughed, a cruel sound that changed as the spell took hold.  Her body began to shift, her limbs contorting in unimaginable pain as the magic coursed through her.  The spell that had been upon the scroll was similar to the transformation spell practiced by mages upon Faerûn, but this incantation had been born deep within the bowels of the Abyss, where incanters did not feel the need to spare the caster the price of invoking powers beyond their ken.  The flesh covering the succubus’s arms, legs, and back split open, revealing armored plates of chitin that oozed an ugly black slime.  The bones of her hands grew and burst from her fingertips, forming jagged claws that formed razor-sharp blades at their ends.  Her muscled swelled until the skin covering them began to snap under the strain.  And her face… the once-beautiful face of Brajia, that became the monstrous visage of… something else. As Dana Ilgarten looked up in horror at what her foe had become, the demon-thing started forward, logical thought replaced by a feral desire to taste the flesh and blood of the woman standing before it.</blockquote>

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