The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[3V1L_N3CR0]

wow

so

• insanely powerful Battle Scion without his legacy weapon

• Healer who is unable to regain her spells

• Cleric who is in the same boat of both awesomeness and spell deprivation and just a little emotional scarring

• Archmage without magic or decent HP

• and a Sorceress who is generally out of here league

vs.


Undead Demon Prince (who's CR is insane) with army of demons and undead on home turf..... Someone call the "Travels" guys for backup!

 

[Canaan]

I think Varo's is the coolest sacrifice of all. This feels like Sepulchrave's weird metaphysical stuff. Awesome work.

Long time lurker through Shackled City and The DBs here. Just gotta say I love screwing with the priest's faith. It's my favorite gaming story line. Nice work

 

[Lazybones]

Undead Demon Prince (who's CR is insane) with army of demons and undead on home turf.....

Well, he doesn't have as much backup as you might expect (I will address that in the story), but yeah, they're screwed.

Long time lurker through Shackled City and The DBs here. Just gotta say I love screwing with the priest's faith. It's my favorite gaming story line. Nice work

Thanks for delurking to post. I enjoy that plot device as well, and it fit particularly well with where the story ended up going.

Next week we finally meet the Big Guy. But for this Friday cliffhanger, a bit more tenderization is on the menu first for the DBs:

* * * * *

Chapter 354

THROUGH THE GAPING MAW OF UTTER DESTRUCTION


“How long have we been here?” Letellia asked. The sorceress’s face had a bleak look, but she kept on moving, pushing one foot after another to keep up with Dar’s steady and unrelenting pace.

“Ten, twelve hours?” Allera ventured. “Not a full day... I think.” The healer looked up at the sky, but the chaos-scape offered no clues, and there had been no change in the intensity of the light that diffused through the air here.

Which was not to say that they had not encountered changes in their environment. The place was suffused with chaos, eddies of which had found them in their journey through the maze. Unpredictable changes in temperature, sudden gusts of wind, even a mini-tornado that had nearly swept up Alderis before they could stagger out of it, Dar all but dragging them forward as a group. And there had been enemies. No sudden onslaught of demons, as Dar had feared, but they’d already battled three groups of shadows, including an assault from five of the stronger, bigger variety that rose up out of the dark pits flanking the path, attacking them before they even realized they were there. Fortunately Allera had still had a stronger mass cure available to her, or that encounter might have been devastating.

There had been corporeal foes as well; a knot of dretch that they met on one of the paths, and which had surged forward to destruction at the blade of Beatus Incendia. A vrock that had appeared out of nowhere. Luckily the demon had seemed as surprised as they were, and they were able to blast it before it could marshal its magical powers against them. At one point they saw a glabrezu, deeper in the maze, but the creature did not appear to detect them. At least it did not come their way. Varo had suggested that the chaos in the maze interfered with the demons’ natural teleportation abilities. But he could offer no explanation of what this place was, or what recourse they had save to go forward, and seek out the end.

Allera had treated each of them with her wand, easing their exhaustion. There was no talk of stopping to rest, not here. She used it twice on Alderis, depleting the wand’s power completely. The elf was flagging, but Dar had refused to slow, moving forward with a dire certainty of purpose, Beatus Incendia a beacon in his hands.

“We need to rest,” Allera finally said. Dar stopped, but Alderis kept going for a moment, until he was adjacent to the fighter. “There is something ahead,” the elf said, the first words he’d uttered in hours.

“Is there anything else you can do for them, Allera?” Dar asked. When Allera shook her head, he said, “Five minutes for food and drink.”

They mechanically consumed victuals from their supplies. Everything they carried had taken on a bland, empty taste, but they ate to keep their bodies sustained. When they were done, and Dar had tossed the empty wrappings into the abyss, they pressed forward again, toward that which the elf had spotted.

As they drew nearer, they could all see it, a gaping opening that rose up ahead of them on the path. It was like a cave mouth, suspended in mid-air upon the path. It bore more than a passing similarity to a gaping mouth, complete to the jagged rocks that might have served as teeth. The path vanished down its gullet, fully twenty feet wide.

Dar glanced at Varo. “This is the first likely route we have seen,” the cleric said.

The fighter turned back to the lead. “Stay alert,” he told the others, needlessly.

The tunnel proceeded forward for about fifty feet before it opened onto a ledge that overlooked a large chamber. The place extended for over two hundred feet square, and looked to be hewn from a dull black rock that drank up the light from their torches. Bones were strewn about the floor, and clung to the walls in random patterns, affixed by some sort of resin that filled the place with a sick stink of rot. The ledge stood some thirty feet above the level of the floor below, toward which a staircase descended along the wall to their right. They could see vague details by the light that filtered down through the tunnel behind them, but most of the chamber was sunk within deep shadows that became utter blackness that gathered in the place’s corners. The only sound was the quiet clink of their gear and the raspy noises of Alderis’s breathing.

“It’s quiet,” Letellia said.

Varo took his torch, shining with a continual flame, and tossed it out over the ledge. The brand flickered as it arced across the chamber, landing in the approximate middle of the place. The torch formed a lonely circle of light, and the shadows shifted in response, but the edges of the room remained deep within shadow.

“All right, let’s go,” Dar said, starting toward the stairs.

They descended slowly. The rough stone was slightly sticky, and faint sucking noises accompanied their steps. The stairs were broad enough to ride horses down two abreast, but they lingered near the wall, close enough to touch the ancient bones that jutted from the pitted stone.

“There’s nothing here,” Allera said quietly, as they reached the bottom of the steps.

“There could be anything in those shadows,” Dar pointed out. “Stay close; I don’t like the feel of this place.”

He started forward, but had barely covered three paces when Alderis staggered and nearly fell. Letellia held him up as his fingers clawed at his chest, his expression a mask of agony.

“What is it?” Allera asked, starting back toward him. Varo held his ground, peering into the darkness that enfolded them.

“They... are... coming...” the elf hissed.

Dar lifted Beatus Incendia into a ready stance, just as two mariliths teleported into the chamber.

The demons materialized at the far edge of the circle of light cast by Varo’s torch, in the middle of the chamber. The half-light only intensified their terrible, alien features, an amalgam of feminine humanity and demonic potency that bespoke their great power. Each was over twenty feet long from head to tail, and gold and jewels sparkled on their arms and torsos. That finery was matched equally by the deadliness of the six swords they carried, long hacking blades that glowed faintly with crimson energy.

The demons were clearly prepared for battle; the dark energies of unholy auras protected them, and they were quick to unleash their spell powers upon the companions.

Varo actually struck first, but while his flame strike bracketed the demons, blasting both with divine fire, the demons seemed barely injured by the potent display. One conjured a blade barrier that stretched across the chamber at the foot of the stairs. Letellia let out a shriek as the blades started cutting into her and Alderis, who were standing in the midst of the barrier at it appeared.

Dar snarled and started toward the demons, but the second lifted a hand and with a desultory gesture snared the fighter with telekinesis. Dar was flung up into the air and roughly backward. Allera reached for him as he shot past, but could do nothing to stop him as he flew into the raging storm of the blade barrier. The effects were predictable, even before he hit with a grinding crash and a spray of red droplets that hung in the air for a moment, before splattering to the ground. Dar kept on going, hitting the wall fifteen feet above the floor, and hung there for a moment before he toppled forward and landed hard face-down at the base of the stairs.

 

[Neverwinter Knight]

Nope, these guys don't get off quite that easy.

You don't say.

 

[Burningspear]

You don't say.

would rather say, (and pardon my french) they get F-ed left right and centre....

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 355

THE HANDMAIDS OF ORCUS


Allera had gone after Dar, but she could not reach him through the blade barrier, and a more immediate need confronted her as Letellia staggered forward out of the wall of spinning blades. Her stoneskin spell had protected her from being torn to pieces, but blood seeped from numerous rents in her arms, legs, and face, staining her clothes with bright spots of red.

The sorceress, half-dazed, turned away from Allera. “Alderis... he’s still in there!”

Allera could see the elf’s lean form, half-obscured by the blades. He was upright, but appeared stunned or confused, and he didn’t respond to their calls to escape the stationary barrier. Allera realized that he would be shredded in seconds, and she had two choices: try to heal him faster than the blades killed him, or go in and drag him free herself. The latter option, of course, would expose her to the devastating effects of the spell.

She did not hesitate, and rushed forward. But before she could reach Alderis, something happened.

Within the storm of blades, Alderis stood shock-still. He could no longer distinguish the pulsing in his chest from the beating of his own heart. Razor-sharp lines of force blurred all around him. He could feel them slicing into his robe, but he felt only an odd tingling as they touched his flesh.

Is this what dying feels like? he thought.

He heard someone yell his name, and he looked up. Allera was there, clearly coming toward him, but before he could yell for her to stay back, something happened.

Varo hit the mariliths again. His summoning spells were of no use here, so he channeled the power of one into a mass inflict serious wounds spell. His potent magic pierced their unholy auras like a hot knife through butter, but he cursed silently as the negative energy of the spell faltered against the innate resistance of one of them. The other one shrieked as the spell’s power ripped into her, but even a hundred feet away Varo could tell that the creature was far from crippled. One of them tried to hit him with a spell, but his will was an armor that protected him far more securely than any suit of steel plate. The other demon, the one that he had hurt, lifted its swords and started forward. Varo glanced back but saw that his companions were in no position to help. He started to turn back to face the oncoming demon, but then something happened, and he stood there, surprised.

Allera and Letellia staggered back as the pitch and speed of the blade barrier suddenly changed. The wall of deadly knives started to collapse upon Alderis, the magical blades mere blurs as they sliced in a violent, collapsing orbit around the elf. Alderis stood there, his face frozen into a scream, his arms stretched out and behind him, as thousands of tiny swords of arcane force tore into him. The blades cut his robe as they converged upon his chest, but there was no blood, nothing at all as they vanished into him. It took a fraction of a second, and then it was done; the barrier was gone, and the elf sagged, dropping his arms to his side.

As the blade barrier collapsed, Dar pulled himself to his feet, leaving splatters of blood splayed upon the cold floor from the dozens of gashes that the magical blades had torn in his body in his hasty passage through it. A low growl built within him as he strode forward, picking up speed as he approached the oncoming marilith. The demon turned from Varo and shifted to face him, dragging several of her swords along the floor, scraping up rows of sparks and filling the room with a din like the scream of a doomed soul. The second demon was approaching behind it, a grim echo to the first, overkill in the face of their sheer power and deadliness.

Allera and Letellia cast spells, imbuing themselves and their companions with power. Allera’s mass cure closed the wounds that Dar and Letellia had suffered from the blade barrier, while the sorceress’s haste spell infused them all with supernatural speed.

Dar put that added boost to good use. As he approached the first demon, it gathered its long body underneath it, rising up to its full height. One of the black swords lashed out, and Dar caught it on Beatus Incendia, deflecting it to the side, the edge glancing off the side of his helm as it passed above him. The blow failed to penetrate the hard steel of his helm, but his head felt at though it had been struck by a ram; the creature was phenomenally strong.

The marilith’s other arms converged upon him, but Dar was already surging forward, the holy sword blazing a trail through the air. He slammed it into the marilith’s torso, the blessed steel biting deep into the leathery substance of its body. Black blood sprayed across his body, his clothes hissing as the caustic substance burned the fabric.

The blow was telling, but he paid for it.

The last time he’d faced a marilith’s full attack, he’d been left bleeding out his lifeblood upon another cold floor, looking at the severed wreckage of one of his arms lying a few feet away. Since then he had fought and learned, but even the skill of one of the foremost masters of arms ever to have lived in Camar could not withstand the fury of the demon’s assault.

Steel whistled through the air as the demon carved him with its blades. The weapons, forged with dark power and infused with the potency of demon magic, found every gap in his armor, and only his desperate evasions kept serious wounds from becoming mortal. The demon was putting a considerable part of its strength behind each attack, eschewing defense to hit harder, to make certain that this foe would go down.

And yet, somehow, Dar did not go down. Blood poured down his arms and legs, and pulsed out from under his breastplate where a steel edge had pierced through and opened a deep gash between two ribs. The marilith’s hissing filled his helmet, and swords seemed to fill the air around him. He almost didn’t see the demon’s long tail coming around as it twisted its body, coiling around him to come at him from behind, snapping down like a thick whip to trap him. But some sixth sense, some instinct, warned him at the last instant, and he spun and brought Beatus Incendia around in a blur. Once again holy steel carved demon flesh, and the marilith screamed again as the last four feet of its tail went flying across the chamber, leaving a bloody trail as it bounced across the ground to a stop. Driven to a mad fury by this human that had stung it so, the demon surged forward to finish him with another devastating full attack.

But Dar met it with a fury of his own. Its first stroke went wild astray, its sword falling to the ground, its severed fist still clenched around the hilt. He brought the sword up to block another pair of strokes, then down into another, caroming off the clash of steel on steel to drag his sword once more across the mottled scales of its body. This wound was not as serious as the first, but Beatus Incendia flared with holy power, and the marilith felt that energy pierce into the core of its being.

Now it was the demon that gave ground, as it tried to fall back before the fury of this madman’s assault. But it was too late; Dar followed it back, and before it could summon its magic for either flight or defense, Dar smashed through its guard, and slammed Beatus Incendia down through its body, cutting from left to right, severing it from just above its left shoulder down under the pit of its lowest arm on the right. The demon deflated like a wineskin hit by an arrow, the two halves of its body shearing away in a vile, bloody mess.

Dar staggered back from it, splashing in the blood that poured from the marilith’s remains. He was already looking for the second one, but his companions had rallied, and as he watched, the demon, standing near Varo about ten paces distant, teleported away.

Allera was at his side a moment later, touching him with a healing spell at the ready to seal the bloody wounds that covered his body. “Are you all right?”

Dar sighed and stretched his arms as the potent heal spell completed its work. “I am now, angel. Thanks.”

Varo glanced down at the dead marilith. “You fared better against this one than the last such creature we faced,” he said.

“What happened with the other one?”

“It attempted another spell without effect, and then closed to join the other in melee. I was able to delay it with the threat of a harm spell; I had already penetrated its spell resistance once, so it could not dismiss me as a threat. It was quick to withdraw; I suppose that it had been placed here as another factor to wear down our strength, and to get us to deplete our resources.”

“You’re hurt.”

Varo glanced down at a fresh trail of blood that seeped from the gaps in the armor at his left hip. “It is not serious. I elected not to get close enough to open myself to a full attack.” Allera started toward him, but he shook his head, drawing out a slender wand from a pocket in his cloak.

“Yeah, well, sometimes there’s no substitute for an old fashioned brawl.”

Alderis and Letellia came forward, the elf leaning heavily upon the slender sorceress. “What in the hells is wrong with him?” Dar asked.

Alderis lifted his head, that small gesture alone seeming to drain a huge amount of energy from his reserves. His face looked shrunken, deep hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes, and for a moment even Dar was taken aback. Then their eyes were drawn down to his chest. His robe of the archmagi had been all but shredded across his breast, and hung from his body in tatters. They could all see the angular shape protruding from his body, bulging out from his skin like a crude breastplate.

Allera came to his aid at once, but once again her healing magic gave no succor to the elf, who hung between the two women like an old coat on a rack.

“What is happening to him?” Dar said to Varo.

“The thing that is buried in his body is reacting in some way to the demon magic, to this place. It is growing. I suspect that it disrupted or absorbed that marilith’s magic, earlier.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t feel all that disrupted when that bitch tossed me through those razors.” Dar walked forward to join the others. “Is he all right?”

Allera’s look told him all he needed to know. “Nothing I do seems to help him. He needs to rest.”

“We cannot stop here,” Varo said. The cleric walked out to the center of the room, and recovered his everburning torch from where it lay sputtering upon the floor. They watched him as he returned, the glow forming a bright halo around him in the near-darkness. “We are close, very close. He knows we are here.”

“Why aren’t we being swarmed by demons, then?” Dar asked.

Varo’s eyes, deep within the recesses of his helmet, blazed with an inner fire. “We are through with the preliminaries.” He shifted his stare to each of them in turn, ending with Alderis, who was shaking like a tree in a storm. “Now it is time for each of us to confront our destiny.”

The cleric’s companions shared a long look. Varo did not wait for comment, but headed toward a dark alcove in the corner under the ledge above. As he walked in that direction, his torch drove back the shadows, ultimately revealing a broad tunnel that descended into utter darkness. Each of them, staring at that opening, felt a cold, terrible feeling stir in the depths of their souls.

Varo stopped a short distance from the tunnel mouth, and waited for them.

“I cannot believe we are doing this,” Allera breathed. She leaned into Dar, who looked at the tunnel with a dark look on his face. Beatus Incendia flared brightly in his hand, as if the sword were eager to proceed.

It was a sentiment echoed by none of those present.

Letellia touched a hand to a small amulet at her throat, and whispered soft words that none of them could distinguish.

Alderis just stood there, staring. An incoherent noise bubbled in the back of his throat, and he kept rubbing his chest, his nails scratching on the hard crystal.

Finally, one by one, they moved to join the priest. They stared into the darkness together for a long moment, and then Dar led them forward, until the tunnel swallowed them up within its depths.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 356

INTO THE LAIR OF THE MASTER


The tunnel continued straight ahead without notable features, the floor and walls worn smooth. The darkness seemed to press in around them, their torches dimming until they seemed barely as strong as candles. Even Beatus Incendia’s white flames began to flicker, the glow of the holy sword struggling against the dark. By the time they had taken fifty steps into the tunnel, they could barely see ten feet ahead of them, and they pressed closer together within the narrowing ring of light.

They did not falter, and pressed on. Through some unknown agency, as the light withdrew some facility of vision began to extend, and things began to take on shape within the black, vague outlines that shifted and crept across the walls ahead of them. They clutched their weapons and magical devices, alert for an ambush, but when the light finally caught up to their perceptions, it revealed only bare stone, and more empty tunnel.

They began to hear things as well, faint whispers that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Letellia, bringing up the rear, spun several times and lifted her magical torch to illuminate the way behind them, but each time the light revealed nothing. The sorceress seemed to glow, and as they kept moving forward they could all see pale outlines around all of them, visible reflections of the various magical wards that protected them.

“Is this... real?” Allera asked, waving a hand in front of her. The thin, pale flesh of her fingers left faint trails in the air before fading away.

“It is the reality as conceived by the Demon,” Varo said, his voice a hollow dirge as it sounded within his helm. “Remember who you are, what you are.”

“The tunnel opens up ahead,” Dar warned. “A room, maybe... tough to tell.” He lifted his sword, willing it to brighten, but the darkness persistently resisted his efforts, and if anything, tightened around them.

“It is time,” Varo said quietly.

Allera began spellcasting, touching each of them in turn, imparting a magical ward that flickered slightly around their bodies as it took hold. Letellia refreshed her own defenses, while Varo cast a potent defensive spell of his own. A look of doubt briefly passed across his face as he touched his divine focus, but the magic came at his call, and faint runes flickered around him in twirling bands for a moment, hovering protectively around him as though unrolled from a long, invisible scroll.

Once she was done protecting the others, Allera closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She uttered a word of simple, pure clarity, one that for a moment burned away the confusion that hung over them like a cloak. When she opened her eyes, there was a glow within them, a deep flickering like the light of a dozen stars.

“Are you all right?” Dar asked her. “What did you do?”

She looked at him, and while there was something distant in her eyes, the love she had for him was still there as well. “It is a protective ward, a power that gives me insight into the immediate future. It is... strange,” she said. “I have never felt anything like it.” She looked at Varo, who nodded meaningfully. The cleric had drawn out a pair of scrolls from his bag, which he removed from their cases and tucked into his belt for easy access.

Alderis was now out in front of them; while they had made their final preparations the elf had taken a few halting steps toward the end of the tunnel, as if drawn forward by an invisible tether. Dar shot a wary look at him, but the elf had finally stopped, and did not seem inclined to wander further ahead for the moment.

“Why does he not take action against us?” Letellia asked.

“He is waiting for us,” Varo said, moving forward to stand beside Alderis.

“Let the bastard wait,” Dar said. He turned to Allera, and for a moment the pair embraced, saying what needed to be said without words. When they were done, they joined the others, and the five moved forward into the chamber at the end of the tunnel.

The walls drew back around them as they left the confines of the passage. The place was massive, and the tread of their boots upon the stone vanished into the distance, without a returning echo. With each step, their perceptions expanded, until they could begin to grasp the nature of the reality of this place.

It was grim.

The floor began to crunch under their tread, and as they looked down, they saw bones embedded in the rock, ancient shards smashed and cracked by the passage of time. As their perceptions extended to the walls, and the ceiling that rose up high above them, unsupported by any pillar or bastion that they could see, they realized that it was all bones, thousands, millions of them, an architectural sculpture of death and ruin. The empty eye sockets of skulls of all sizes and shapes gaped empty at them. Whole forests of long leg and arm bones ran up the lengths of the walls, broken by small mounds of intact rib cages, the dangling fingers of whole hands. Bones were crushed together in weird and unpredictable combinations, forming entire new species of creatures, and there were some so odd that they could not even guess what manner of thing their owner had been in life. The entire chamber was a graveyard, given shape and substance by the will of the dark master of this place.

“Gods,” Letellia whispered, her face paler than the white dust and cracked shards that they trod beneath their boots.

The wall of darkness ahead of them continued to retreat as they moved forward, and the chamber kept getting larger, the walls spreading farther apart with each step they took. By the time they had counted a hundred paces into the chamber, the place stretched almost a hundred and fifty feet across, and the ceiling had risen to almost fifty feet above them. And everywhere, still, bones, both intact and in fragments. They could see an almost intact skeleton of some massive creature embedded in the wall to their left, a thing that would have rivaled the Ravager, or an adult dragon perhaps, in life. Bones crunched under their feet as they walked, and gray-white dust clung to their legs almost up to their knees from the dust they’d disturbed.

“There is only death here,” Allera said.

“Perhaps with my arcane sight,” Letellia began, but Varo interrupted her with a raised hand.

“I would not recommend it. The power concentrated here is overwhelming, stronger tenfold than what we felt out in the maze.”

“It’s here, it’s here, it’s here, it’s here,” Alderis began to chant, his limbs shaking. They could see that his fingers were bloody, where he had dug into the crystals encrusted upon his chest. The elf was staring into the darkness, and no longer seemed to realize that they were there. Allera tried to calm him, but he ignored her.

Dar stepped forward, and lifted Beatus Incendia high above his head. “Orcus! We have come for you! Show yourself, demon!”

Dar’s shout vanished into the darkness. There was no echo.

Something stirred. They could feel it, a current that rose up and crept across their skin, piercing their bodies and chilling them to the core. A terror that threatened their sanity swept over them, threatening even through the magical protections of their wards and Allera’s heroes’ feast consumed that morning.

“Remember who you are,” Varo’s voice came, steadying them.

They still could not see into the darkness, but there was something, a tremor in that part of the mind where nightmares begin. And then a pair of red embers appeared within the darkness.

SO. AT LAST, YOU HAVE COME.

The darkness fell away like a shroud pulled back from a coffin. The entirety of the chamber was revealed to them, extending for hundreds of feet into the distance, an almost endless mausoleum.

And ahead of them, the objective of their quest waited for them.

Orcus sat upon a throne composed of thousands and thousands of bones, built massive to withstand the weight of its bloated frame. The throne shifted continuously under the demon lord, the bones grinding ponderously together, and as the demon revealed itself, the skulls set into the great chair began to moan, a terrible noise of misery and suffering.

The demon was huge, even seated; standing it would have been over fifteen feet tall. Its body was fat, bloated, but its thick arms and legs were also muscled, and none of them doubted the considerable physical strength bespoken by the demon’s size. In its right hand it clutched its terrible rod, a black shaft topped by a huge skull, surrounded by a palpable aura of destructive power. Its face, known to them from the hundreds of depictions that they had seen in Rappan Athuk, was a hundred times worse in person, a hideous amalgam of goat and demon and man. Worst of all were those eyes, red flares from the deepest pits of the Abyss, which held them with a grim promise of their fate.

They were ready for it, had expected it, but even so the reality of Orcus’s presence blinded them for several moments to the presence of the others. Oddly it was Dar who recovered first, blinking and lifting his sword; he did not remember dropping it to his side.

A marilith stood to the side of the Prince’s throne, its long tail coiled around its squat base. The demon looked little the worse for wear from their earlier encounter, although black scorch marks covered one side of her torso where Varo’s flame strike had seared her.

And behind the throne... undead.

Dozens, Dar thought at first. But then, as his gaze spread wider, he revised the assessment. There were arrays of corporeal undead gathered in chaotic masses around and behind the thone, skeletons and zombies and ghouls and ghasts, the least of the undead, creatures that the Doomed Bastards had faced and destroyed by the thousands. But then Dar’s stare traveled upward, to what he thought had been wisps of fog hovering about the Prince like a plume of smoke caught in the wind. But no... they were undead monsters, shadows and wraiths and spectres, orbiting their Master, bound to its slightest whim.

But all of it, the handmaid, the undead, the creepy throne, the massed death gathered in this place, all of it paled before the sheer power that resided in the center of this place. Objectively, they knew that the avatar of Orcus had been weakened, that their destruction of the three temples in Rappan Athuk had diminished it. They knew what Varo and Honoratius had told them, that Orcus still lacked the power to effect a physical translation into their world. They knew little of the demon lord’s hidden agendas, the politics of the Abyss, the dark litany of events that had ended with this creature poised to invade and destroy their world. They only knew that they stood in the presence of a being that was, if not a god, the closest thing to one that any mortal of Camar had ever faced in the flesh.

Orcus let the moment of realization and revelation stretch on for moments, minutes; time no longer seemed to matter. The mortals that had come here to confront the demon felt frozen, as though the slightest action would collapse this détente and begin the chaos that they knew had to come. The demon seemed to swell as it drank in their fear, and then, finally, it spoke again.

LONG HAVE I WAITED. I HAVE DRUNK DEEP OF YOUR WORLD, BUT YOU FIVE ARE SPECIAL. I HAVE MARKED YOU, MARKED YOU EVEN BEFORE YOU FIRST ENTERED MY DEMESNE, MY RAPPAN ATHUK. YOU MORTALS, SO POWERFUL, SO RICH WITH LIFE. I WILL FEED, AND YOUR POWER, YOUR SOULS WILL OPEN THE WAY. I WILL CONSUME YOUR WORLD, AND THANATOS WILL RISE AGAIN.

“A nice little plan, goat-face, but there’s one little problem,” Dar said, brandishing Beatus Incendia.

“We will never allow you to destroy our world!” Allera shouted.

Alderis let out a terrible, mewling noise.

Orcus let out a grumbling noise of laughter. YOU HAVE CARVED A SWATH THROUGH MY MINIONS, AND GAINED POWER. YOUR ASCENDENCY HAS BEEN IMPRESSIVE, BUT ULTIMATELY FUTILE. YOU ARE MINE, NOW.

Without further warning, Orcus hit them with a devastating wave of power. The blackness came rushing back in, but this time it brought with it a suffocating potency that smothered them with dark claws of mental energy. Several of them screamed as the darkness enveloped them, but the sounds faded into the black, leaving only the malevolent laughter of Orcus, which escorted them into oblivion.

 

[Burningspear]

Whow, nice of you to indulge us with 2 posts, but hmmz, an epic cliffhanger to leave us with

 

[Fimmtiu]

Pity it's not April 1st, because this would be the perfect place for an April Fool's post. "And they all died and were never heard from again! THE END!"

 

[Lazybones]

Pity it's not April 1st, because this would be the perfect place for an April Fool's post. "And they all died and were never heard from again! THE END!"

Who's to say that's not the ending?

* * * * *

Chapter 357

WEARING DOWN


The darkness was all encompassing, swathing them and muting their lights, their voices, and their life energies all at once. The power was incredible, stronger than anything the had faced before in Rappan Athuk, for now they faced the source of the corruption within the Dungeon of Graves, dark energy in its purest form.

And yet, within that enfolding black, there was a flicker of light, a pulse that slowly brightened. That faint glow brightened, shone until it became discrete, separating into five spheres of illumination around which the darkness roiled. In the center, a white spear of light flared and stabbed out into the dark, cutting it away like a knife.

And then, as suddenly as it had come, the darkness vanished, and the five companions from Camar stood once more in the chamber of bones, wavering and dazed, but intact.

The Demon watched them from its throne. Something that might have been anger smoldered in its eyes. YOUR RESISTANCE IS IMPRESSIVE, BUT YOU ONLY DELAY THE INEVITABLE.

Orcus made a small gesture, barely a shift of a finger. The marilith lifted her swords and let out a sibilant hiss, and the undead gathered around Orcus surged forward as one, their focus upon the five mortals that defied their master.

Allera and Varo threw up layered repulsion auras almost at the same instant. Here, the normally-invisible barriers appeared as pale, translucent globes of green energy, one embedded within the other, their surfaces crawling with a shifting skein like that of a soap bubble.

The charging undead splayed against those barriers, their phalanx splitting around it as it struck, seeking in vain for a way inside. Fully half of the undead were halted by the outer barrier, almost a hundred feet out from the five companions. The second barrier was much closer, less than thirty feet across, and the undead descended upon it, the flying undead diving down from above as their corporeal comrades surged forward on foot. Most of the weakest undead lingered at the outer barrier, but many of the others, including ghouls, ghasts, wraiths, and spectres, were able to push through, their own will augmented by the terrible power that radiated from their patron and its grim throne.

More of the undead were arrested upon the inner barrier, hissing and shrieking in frustration as they clawed in vain upon the shimmering green obstruction. But twenty incorporeal undead and twice as many physical creatures pierced this one as well, their cries forming a wall of sound ahead of them as they rushed at the defenders.

Orcus seemed content to watch, for now. The Prince’s handmaid and general slithered forward behind the legion of undead, penetrating the outer repulsion aura with ease. The marilith hurled magic into the center of the circle of defenders, but nothing happened.

The companions formed a ring around Alderis, who remained lost in some reverie, seemingly unaware of what was going on around him. He stood stiffly, bits of crystal protruding from the gaps in his shredded robe, jutting out from under his collar and the tears where his arms met his body.

Dar glanced back at Allera, but the healer was looking at Varo. The cleric stood calmly ready, holding his divine focus tightly in a mailed fist.

Dar spun to meet the charging undead horde. The leading wedge of the charge, comprised almost entirely of ghouls and ghasts, were almost upon him when a brilliant white plane of ice materialized ahead of him. Letellia’s spell delayed the physical undead, but the incorporeal ones simply drifted over it, coming down on the companions from above. A pair of wraiths dove at Dar, but most of them focused upon the spellcasters, their claws extended eagerly to suck away their life energies at the behest of their Master.

Allera felt a slight pressure against her defenses as three shadows swarmed over her. Fortunately her death ward still held, and their attacks had no effect upon her. She glanced again over at Varo, who was being swarmed by half a dozen undead creatures, which likewise appeared stymied thus far. The cleric could not see her from within the chaotic swirl of dark forms, but she could see enough to realize that he had not lost the iron control that had characterized the man ever since she had first met him, deep within the bowels of Rappan Athuk.

She felt a twinge of awareness, as her foresight spell gave her an instant’s warning before Orcus acted.

Watching the developing fray atop his throne, the Prince of the Undead was clearly not pleased. Orcus waved a hand and dug a fraction of its power from deep within, hurling it into the midst of the companions. The power visualized as a spear of black energies that materialized and stabbed forward from the demon. As it penetrated the repulsion auras, they popped as though they were soap bubbles. The undead gathered along their borders surged ahead. Orcus’s greater dispel also tore through Letellia’s wall of ice, and as the barrier dissolved, the companions looked up to see hundreds of undead rushing toward them in a wave.