The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 43

STONE, STEEL, AND FLESH


Dar’s sweeping gaze locked onto his sword, its bare blade glittering faintly as it caught up the light of his torch, which had fallen not far from where the weapon had finally come to rest. Unfortunately, there was the small matter of the charging stone treant between him and it.

Still, he growled a challenge as he pushed himself back up to his feet, trying to ignore the agony in his battered body, and the weight of his heavy armor that tried to drag him back down to the floor. There was no way he was going to stand up to the treant’s charge, not based on the pounding he’d already absorbed from it, but at least he was going to die on his feet.

But then a flood of healing power flowed into him, banishing the pain and tilting the odds—not quite in his favor, but at least a bit more towards balance.

A fast-approaching form seen out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. It was the monk, Selaht, his robe fluttering to the ground behind him as he slipped out of it on the run. The monk’s body was like iron covered in leather, his skin marked with a half-dozen intricate tattoos that ran across his chest and down his long arms to his fists. Dar wasn’t sure how he’d gotten past the violent exchange taking place near the entrance of the chamber; he could see bodies flying, and hear the shouts of his companions as they took the fight to the second treant. But there was no time to see more; his foe was almost upon him.

“The sword!” he yelled, but Selaht was already bending down in mid-stride, and without breaking the pace of his charge he seized the hilt of Justice and snapped the sword up, shooting it across the room toward him in a broad arc. Dar had to rush to the side to have a chance of catching it, which he realized was deliberate, so as to minimize the chance of the sword’s arc being deflected by the treant.

For all the monk’s efforts, though, the treant was closer, and it had reach. Dar saw the branch coming, and tried to duck under it, but a forest of tiny spines jutted from the end of the limb, and a dozen or more crackled loudly against his armor, knocking him back again even as they snapped off from the force of the impact. He felt a sharp wedge of pain in his side and realized that one of the spines had probably penetrated through a gap in the metal plates protecting his torso. Still, he was able to stay on his feet, and he forced his body to keep going, toward the approaching sword. He heard the sound of it rebounding off the wall of force, and when it hit the ground he was only a few paces away, still running, the treant shifting to pursue.

In the entryway, the rest of the companions were having a difficult time with the second treant. Kiron continued to dance in and out of the protruding tangle of roots around its legs, but while the knight had narrowly avoided several counterattacks, his reflexes and heavy armor turning devastating blows into glancing near-misses, his own strikes had made little impact upon it. Petronia had had more success with her axe, the hard adamantine of the blade strong enough to pierce the thing’s thick hide. She had seen what had happened to Aldos when he’d hurt it in the initial charge, and had thus far avoided the jets of acidic fluid that issued from the wounds in its body. Unfortunately, her attacks had also drawn the monstrosity’s full attention, and as she leapt forward to deliver another strike a sweeping branch caught her from behind, hitting her across the back of her helmet with enough force to knock her sprawling, unconscious.

On the opposite side of the creature, Qatarn had rallied Primus and Secundus to try to carve wounds in its right flank, but thus far their attacks had been ineffective. Maricela had rushed in to pull the fallen Tertius out of the thing’s reach, intending to drag him back from death’s door with magical healing, but Allera’s mass heal beat her to it, and the guardsman was already recovering his feet, surprised to suddenly find all of his injuries just... gone. The cleric pressed the soldier’s sword back into his hand, and invoked a blessing upon her companions, trying to think of a way that she could hurt these seemingly invincible foes with her own apparently insufficient magic.

Zethas remained in the corridor beyond the archway, plying his bow. While the Eremite had yet to miss his target, there was no indication that the shafts sticking out of the treant’s body had made any impression upon it, as none had penetrated deeper than an inch into its trunk.

Letellia had somewhat more success with her magic. The sorceress, still hovering above the ground, rose effortlessly into the air just outside the arch. She lifted her silver staff and incanted briefly. A flaring lightning bolt traveled from her hands and down the length of the staff, arcing into the body of the treant. Her placement had clearly been carefully intentioned, for the bolt kept on going, striking the second treant even as it lunged toward Dar for a second time. Her magic, augmented by the power of her staff, overcame the treants’ spell resistance, and left blackened traces covering their pale gray trunks.

Her attack did not go unanswered. The stone treant lifted its branches, ignoring the warriors around it, and lunged at her, almost crushing Kiron under one of its gnarled feet. Letellia calmly tried to dart under the arch to escape, but the thing caught her with a thrusting branch. Tightening its grip so that she could barely squirm, it drew back with its prize. There was a moment of hesitation that was quiet save for the noises of the warriors trying in vain to hack at its legs.

Then it lifted the branch holding the sorceress, and with its full weight behind the swing, drove her head-first toward the wall above the arch.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 44

IMPACTS


The companions redoubled their efforts to distract the treant or otherwise stop it from killing Letellia, but it ignored them as it drove the sorceress head-first toward the adjacent wall.

Letellia had stopped trying to break free of its grasp; the branches twisted around her body held her like iron manacles. Instead, in the last second before her brains would have been splashed across the wall, she summoned her magic, and opened a dimension door that transported her to the relative safety of the corridor below. Zethas almost dropped his bow as she materialized beside him, only slightly the worse for the experience.

The warriors were starting to have some effect against the treant through sheer determination and persistence. Kiron had kept hewing at a spot on the thing’s left leg until the stone finally split open, spraying him with foul yellow ichor. The stuff sizzled as it seared his flesh, but his cry of pain turned into an angry roar, and he redoubled the fury of his assault. The treant smashed down at him with a branch, but he merely took the hit and kept fighting, hacking at its thick trunk as though his sword was a woodsman’s axe.

Selaht, still chasing after the treant that had been pounding on Dar, ducked under a sweeping branch, then leapt over another that came in almost in the shadow of the first. He flipped forward almost on top of the roots that surrounded the treant’s right leg, and slammed a fist into its body. Red flames erupted from the point of impact, and as he drew back, they remained, a bright nimbus of fire around each of his hands, somehow burning hot without harming him.

Dar gagged as toxic fumes burned in his nostrils. He’d kept pressing the attack, flanking the treant in conjunction with Selaht, trying to hurt it without getting crushed in the process. Another healing spell had infused him with fresh energy, but it seemed that he’d barely had time to take a swing before the branches were smashing at him again, delivering blows that each hit like the club of a giant. The wound in his side had healed, but he had fresh ones in his neck, arms, and back, and he could feel blood trickling down the left side of his face where a glancing hit had bent the inside of his faceguard against his temple.

He’d hurt the thing; long gashes covered the treant’s legs now, which continued to ooze that nasty yellow gunk. But he’d fought enough battles against bigger enemies to know when he couldn’t stand up to a full-on, head-to-head smackdown.

“We’ve got to move!” he yelled at Selaht, and started running backwards, along the line of the wall of force. He was dimly aware of the pounding on the other side, and wondered just how long Letellia’s magic was going to last. If it goes down soon, I’m screwed, he thought. He almost lost it as the tree gave him a going-away present, a blow that crashed against his right hip, and drove him into the wall. But then he was away, and trying to get position for the inevitable chase. Glancing up, he saw that the treant was already following. Selaht had moved back out of its reach as well, but Dar wasn’t really that surprised that it was coming after him.

Trouble just seemed to follow him around, it seemed.

The other treant was showing just as much damage as the first, but the warriors surrounding it were taking wounds faster than Allera could treat them. Primus had gotten a good hit against the thing, sliding his sword up into one of the gaps in its trunk opened by the others. The soldier thrust his blade deeper even as the yellow ochre spilled out over his sword arm, and he did not relinquish his weapon even as the stuff started to sizzle against his skin. But a moment later the treant swept down a branch that caught him solidly at the point where his neck met his body. There was a loud and terrible crack, and when the warrior finally settled to the ground, the angle at which his head lay told of his fate. Allera sent another pulse of healing energy through them just a moment later, but the young man did not stir.

The young soldier’s death drove the others as they continued to press their assault. It was becoming difficult to see now with the yellow vapors rising up off the floor and out of the treant’s wounds, but the warriors kept on diving into that miasma, unleashing attacks. Petronia got up off the ground for the second time, drawn back again by Allera’s healing magic, and cut off a length of root the thickness of her forearm. The treant responded predictably, lunging down at her, but Aldos was there to provide cover, setting his glaive to meet the descending branch. The impact tore half of the limb away, but both knights were knocked sprawling.

The treant shifted a step closer to the fallen pair, but before it could finish them Kiron launched another attack against its damaged leg. His first blow rang off the stone as it glanced off its armored body, but some fortune must have guided his backswing, as the blessed weapon struck a weak point, and there was a rumbling cascade as half the limb gave way, shearing off of the creature’s body. The treant tottered, and for a moment, it looked as though it would collapse. Kiron sought to take advantage, and lifted his sword to finish it.

But the moment passed, and the treant recovered in time to defend itself. Leaning on its damaged limb, it smashed a branch down upon the knight, driving him into the ground with the force of a sledgehammer. The treant could not rise, but it did not have to, and instead used its weight as a weapon, crushing the man beneath it. Kiron tried to fight free, but he could only cry out in pain as metal plates groaned, and blood spurted out from his mouth as his innards were reduced to paste.

 

[Faren]

oh noes! Hang in there Kiron!! Use your Lay on Hands or last stand ability!!

Seriously though, this is a great fight scene. Through tactics and positioning, the characters are doing an excellent job against extremely powerful creatures,fighting smart to make up for the power difference. They need to get to that door quick though .Rock on Lazy!

 

[Richard Rawen]

Oh Noes is right! It is quickly looking dire as the red-shirts begin dropping and Allera is burning through her spells pretty darn fast! Great combat descripts.
I began reading this SH to my family the other day, first time I've read from the 'net, but they are hooked =o)

 

[Lazybones]

I began reading this SH to my family the other day, first time I've read from the 'net, but they are hooked =o)

Heh, in that case, I'm glad I edited out the cursing!

* * * * *

CHAPTER 45

INTERCESSION


“GET OFF OF HIM!” Maricela yelled, her voice transformed into a bellow as her righteous might spell doubled her height. On top of the divine power spell she’d just cast not six seconds past, her own physical power, modest before the infusion of holy energies, was suddenly greater than any of her companions, even the indomitable Corath Dar. Her mace, now a slab of steel almost five feet long, erupted in blazing flames as she stepped forward and slammed it into the treant’s body. The thing staggered backward, again off balance, but still it fought, a branch flailing around into the cleric’s face. She shrugged off clawing stone juts that tore wounds in the flesh under her helmet, and lifted the mace to strike again. But before the blow could land, a glowing streak shot out from the corridor, and caught the treant a solid blow. The crushing fist was finally too much for the treant, and as it fell over backward it came apart, shattering even before it hit the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces.

Maricela started to bend over the broken body of Kiron, but the knight, somehow, was still conscious, and he pointed toward the far end of the room. “Help... Dar!” he managed to get out, before he collapsed. Allera was there at once, her hands glowing with a bright blue glow, ready to help him.

The priestess looked up, and saw that Dar needed all the help he could get.

Dar was getting a rough refresher in fighting against an opponent that had him outmatched in size, strength, reach, and the sheer ability to absorb punishment. He’d gotten in a few solid hits, and the cracks in the creature’s trunk continued to trail streaks of yellow vapor, but it seemed hardly affected by its injuries. It had been too long since he’d been in a violent, desperate melee like this, and he was no longer the man of living steel that had been forged from raw iron in those last desperate missions to Rappan Athuk. He was anything but frail, but the years... well, they had a way of creeping up on you.

But he was still Corath Dar, and as he absorbed another punishing strike, the long branches slapping him across the face and chest like whips, he was able to keep his focus, and his head.

“That the freaking best you got, you freaking tree? he shouted. Lifting Justice, he feinted as though he was going to leap forward to attack, but even as a pair of branches swept down toward him, he leapt back into one of the vacated alcoves along the wall. He did not hesitate there long, waiting only until it had completed its swing and lifted its branches again. Then he charged forward again before the treant could trap him in the confined space. Selaht was still trying to harry the creature from behind, leaping in to attack and then springing away before it could effectively counter. But thus far the monk had not managed to hurt it seriously, although black streaks marked its legs where his burning fists had impacted.

Dar knew that his best chance was staying away from the treant, to not give it a chance to deliver a full attack like that first one that had sent him flying across the room. But there just wasn’t enough room in the chamber for nimble evasions, and the treant was just too damned big. Those facts were reinforced again as he tried to run past it, to get out of the corner formed by the stone chamber wall and the straight plane of Letellia’s wall of force. The treant swatted him almost casually, and even though he saw the blow coming, there was no room to escape it. He yelled as he hurled himself forward, willing his armored body to move faster, but then he was flying again, his limbs splaying outward as the branch connected solidly with the small of his back. The floor rose up to greet him, and he landed hard, his breath smashed out of his lungs.

He did not have to turn over to know that the treant would be bearing down on him. He tried to get up, but his body had decided it had taken enough of a beating for the moment; his muscles refused to obey. He couldn’t even lift his head enough to see out of his helmet; all that was there was the smooth grain of the stone and the smell of his own sweat and blood in his nostrils. He could hear it coming though; the ground all but shook with the noise of its charge.

Well, damn, he thought, waiting for the inevitable.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 46

REINFORCEMENTS


Dar could only wait for his companions to do something to intervene; while he doggedly clung to consciousness, he may as well have been a sack of grain for all that he could do to affect the ongoing course of the battle.

The ground trembled under his feet, and he heard a noise that sounded like a pair of elephants colliding. He heard a battle cry... female, but other than that, he could not quite place it. Then he detected a faint smell, familiar, reassuring. He did not feel the touch of her hands on his neck, but the flood of healing energy that followed was like a geyser of cool water. Hands grasped him, helped him up, but he no longer needed the aid; Allera’s potent spell had restored him like a month of rest.

He looked up to see the treant under heavy assault, its long branches flailing not five paces away. Maricela, suddenly transformed into a giant, was doing the bulk of the beating on it, but Dar could see the way she favored her left side, and blood splattered the top of her breastplate where the creature’s branches had gotten in under her guard and torn through the chain protecting her neck. Allera was already casting another mass cure, but the priestess did not withdraw, pressing her attack even as another pair of branches battered her hard, staggering her. Dar could see how close she’d come to falling; she’d never withstand another full series of attacks.

Secundus and Qatarn were beside him; the soldiers had been the one to help him up, and the centurion offered him the hilt of Justice. Now that the surge of healing had worked its course, he felt his nascent exhaustion creeping back in, but he squelched it ruthlessly as he accepted his weapon.

“For Camar!” he shouted, charging once more into the battle.

The treant had taken significantly more punishment in the brief moments that he’d been down, and he took advantage, targeting a long crevice that had been opened where its left leg met its body. The treant obviously remembered him, for it lowered a branch to knock him away again before he could close enough to strike. But Allera’s heal spell had been very thorough, and he was able to push through the strike, lifting his arms to protect his face as the stone branches raked him. He planted a foot and delivered a blow that rang like a clapper striking a bell. Yellow acid sprayed across his face, but he hardly heeded it, roaring as he drove his sword deeper into the gash, yanking at it as though the axiomatic steel was a prybar. The caustic fog had gotten into his eyes, and he couldn’t even see the enemy any more, but he could feel it when the limb popped, and the treant started to fall. Someone grabbed him and pulled him back, and bits of stone pinged against his armor as the creature exploded into rubble.

Yanking off his helmet, he tried to blink his eyes clear. “Are you all right?” Allera’s voice, close to him. “Hold still,” she said, and a moment later, a flood of water washed across his face. Blinking madly, he started to wipe a hand across his eyes, but Allera grabbed him and stopped him, making an annoying click with her tongue. “Just give it a moment,” she said, and then he felt a soft cloth wiping away the water and what was left of the noxious fluid.

The others stood around him, forming a wedge. Or most of them; he glanced back to see Primus lying where he’d fallen, his body splayed out upon the stone. The floor was littered with debris from the two destroyed guardians, making footing treacherous.

Letellia floated forward, her feet drifting a few feet above the floor. “How long?” Dar asked. His eyes turned back to what everyone else was looking at, the shimmering barrier behind which three more of the treants waited. They had not left up, and while they could not hear the sound of their blows against the wall of force, they could feel the faint vibrations of their movements traveling through the floor.

Letellia’s expression was placid, unrevealing. “Approximately twenty seconds,” she replied, as though he had asked about whether she thought it might rain today.

“Back, everyone back to the corridor!” he yelled, putting his own words into action. “Can you put up another of those walls?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, still cool. “But it will only postpone the inevitable. We need to get past them, any my resources are not unlimited.”

Dar growled something unintelligible; there was a solution here, he could feel it, but it remained just out of his reach.

Qatarn had paused next to him, after ordering his men forward. Secundus and Tertius took hold of Primus’s body, dragging the slain soldier back into the relative security of the corridor. “We cannot hold the line against three of them, sir,” the centurion said, his voice pitched low so that it would not carry.

Dar glanced back at the treants, and then at the corridor. They would be hard pressed to fit into that confined space, he thought; it depended on how aggressively the things would pursue them.

A sudden noise alerted him to the collapse of the wall of force behind him; he resisted the urge to look back as he followed the others out of the room. The others had taken up defensive positions in the passageway, the knights in front a good twenty feet back from the arch. Maricela’s spell had expired, and she had returned to her usual size, standing next to Allera behind the warriors. Letellia floated above them, her head almost brushing the ceiling above. Dar turned to see the treants approaching fast, then Letellia gestured, and a glistening white wall of ice, thick enough to be almost opaque, appeared within the archway.

“That may delay them a few mo—" she began, but as the first of the trees reached the barrier, it winked out of existence. “Their spell resistance is... problematic,” she said, clucking her tongue in frustration.

Dar didn’t get a chance to respond, as the lead treant bent low, almost doubled over, and surged into the passage toward them. It thrust two of its branches ahead of it, the long finger-like twigs splaying from their ends like a knot of spearheads. Letellia drifted back, behind the row of warriors, who formed an overlapping screen, the knights in front, Aldos lifting his glaive over Petronia’s shoulder, while in the rear the soldiers unlimbered their heavy crossbows and begun winding the mechanisms. Zethas, in the back of the column near Allera, had kept up a desultory barrage of fire since the start of the battle, pausing only to refill his quiver from one of the bundles he kept stored in his pack.

Dar roared a challenge as the long branches stabbed into the front rank of defenders. Bits of stone broke off against his breastplate, and he felt others poking into the gaps where chain and leather lay under the magical plates. The creature was at a disadvantage in these close quarters, but its sheer strength and momentum still allowed it to hurt them. In turn, the fringe of branches made it tough for the companions to get close enough to inflict serious damage against its trunk.

There was naught to do but keep fighting, however. The second treant had crowded into the passage behind the first, unable to progress further beyond the bulk of its companion. Their branches dug gouges in the walls as they pressed slowly ahead, like a cork being forced deeper into the neck of a bottle. The lead treant had only enough space now to poke two of its branches forward, jabbing at the enemies in front of it. That alone was considerable; Kiron took a hard hit that smacked right into the center of his pelvis, knocking him roughly against the wall. Despite the armor protecting his torso, the blow had to have hurt. Maricela forced her way past the soldiers and reached out to him, imparting a healing spell with her touch.

Petronia hewed at the branches with her axe, the adamantine blade shearing through stone as though the treant’s limbs had indeed been merely wood. Standing beside her, Dar tore away half a forking length of branch that shattered like kindling as it fell to the ground. Between them, Aldos wielded his glaive like a spear, delivering sharp, chopping thrusts against the treant’s thick body. The knight was strong, but it was like trying to hew through a door with a dinner knife, and slow going.

For a dozen heartbeats the battle raged in the confines of the corridor, with the companions dealing damage, while the treant continued to pound at them in return. The soldiers lifted their heavy arbalests and fired shots into the treant’s upper body, over the shoulders of their companions engaged in melee. Letellia fired a series of scorching rays that inflicted minor damage; the majority of the fiery beams dissolved as soon as they touched the creature, and those that got through seemed to do little more than darken its trunk. Of all of them, it was only Petronia and Dar who inflicted serious damage, hacking their way through the screen of branches to where they could start hewing at its legs. Pinned as it was within the corridor, the treant could do little more than take the hits, although it continued to twist its body and bring new branches into play. Slicks of vile yellow substance covered the floor where the fluid had jetted from the monster’s wounds, the fumes rising from them foul and toxic.

When an end to it came, it was swift enough to be surprising. Cracks and gashes covered the treant’s legs, and more than half of its branches had been hewn away, but the suddenness of its collapse was unexpected. The stone treants seemed to just lose cohesiveness once they had absorbed a certain amount of damage, and it crumbled into debris, bits of stone bouncing off the warriors’ helmets and breastplates as they fell.

“Watch out!” Dar yelled, but the shout was lost in the clatter, not only of the falling debris, but the noise of the second treant thrusting its branches through the remnants of its destroyed cousin. Petronia and Dar were thrust aside, and Aldos was hit hard enough to be knocked off his feet, landing awkwardly on his side. A stone tendril twisted around the knight’s ankle, and he yelled as he started to slide forward, back toward the arch and the hulk waiting there.

“Aldos!” Petronia yelled, pushing off the wall as she lifted her axe in both hands. The adamantine blade bit hard into the branch, cutting it a scant foot above the fallen knight’s entangled leg. Dar was cutting at it from the opposite side, but a web of branches pressed at him, and each one he hewed away left another one between him and the embattled pair.

Kiron rushed forward, healed by Maricela. Crossbow bolts flashed above his head, passing scant inches from the crest of his helmet as they slammed hard into the treant’s upper body. More fiery beams followed them, flaring as they hit the treant’s body.

Dar lunged through the screen of branches, extending Justice out fully, targeting the gap where one of the treant’s legs met its body. The tip of the sword flashed as it bit deep, the jet of yellow indicating that the fighter had scored, and scored deeply. The treant drew back, but as it retreated, a branch caught on one of the straps of Petronia’s armor. The knight was dragged roughly back with the treant, snagged like a fish on a trawler’s line.

“Petronia!” Kiron yelled. He rushed after her, leaping to grab her hand, but a sudden yank by the treant pulled her out of reach, and his caught only empty air. The woman knight cried out as the treant swept her back out of the passage. It did not bother to hold her, merely thrusting its captive behind it, out into the room, where they could distantly hear her armor rattling as it hit the stone floor. Her axe lay where she’d dropped it amidst a pile of stone rubble at their feet.

“Forward!” Kiron yelled, driving ahead even as the treant turned back to block the passage, lowering a fresh set of branches to attack. Kiron took a hit that shook his entire body, but he forced his way through it, laying into the treant’s body with his sword. He barely had room to swing the weapon, hewing at it as though the blade was a lumberjack’s saw, working it deeper into the shallow crack he’d opened with his initial blow. The treant brought up a branch and smashed it down into the knight’s face. Kiron was tough, but the blow might have well been from a battering ram. He staggered backward and fell onto his back, blood seeping from the front of his helmet.

Aldos and Dar were in his place before the treant could follow up on its attack. Their weapons flashed, just as a flurry of bolts and arrows thudded into its body above. Their assault was followed by another lightning bolt from Letellia, bolstered by the power of her staff, that blasted through the treant’s spell resistance and tore a black swath across its body. But the thing was insanely durable, and even with yellow pustulence oozing from the deep cracks all over its body it continued to press its attack. Thrusting its branches into the mouth of the corridor like a maid churning butter, it battered the defenders, who withstood the onslaught with grim determination. That fortitude was bolstered a moment later by another mass cure from Allera, which closed wounds and dissolved bruises even as they formed. Maricela had rushed forward to shield Kiron from the thrusting branches, and Qatarn joined her to help drag the injured knight back from the battle line and back to his feet. No sooner had Allera’s spell taken hold than he was rushing forward again to rejoin the battle, although there was little space for him alongside Dar and Aldos.

As the branches came sweeping back, Dar let himself be dragged forward with them, until he was right in front of the treant’s body. He swept Justice up in a two-handed swing with much of his augmented strength behind it. The blade sang off of the stone of the treant’s body as it clove through and kept going, and then the treant was crumbling like the others. Dar staggered through the falling rubble, already looking for the last of the creatures. Gray dust coated him as he emerged in the mouth of the archway.

He didn’t have to look long; the last treant found him, smiting him with a solid blow that knocked him backward, stumbling over the piled rubble that cluttered the arch. He did not go all the way down, pushing off against the remnants of destroyed treants, lifting his sword in a defiance stance, waiting for the next attack, looking for Petronia.

He saw her, or rather what was left of her. There was nothing left of the woman knight but a few scattered heaps of bloody matter, here and there covered by what had once been clothes and armor. Dar, who had seen battle and violence wrought on a scale few living men could match, felt a sudden surge of bile rise in his throat at the sight. But there was no time to spare in retching; the treant loomed over him, its branches glistening sickly with fresh blood that fell in splatters around it as it lunged forward to continue the attack.

 

[Faren]

another one bites the dust. Which is to be expected, and much more.
These rooms appear to be crazy-huge challenges for a group of mostly mid-levels (Dar, Let and allera excluded), and one can only hope Maricela and Allera can hold out with the bandages. No idea how they're going to make it past the next two rooms, with the whirling blades and golems. Very interesting!

 

[Kaodi]

Well, at least their souls do not get sucked up by the Orcuvac Deluxe like before, I think.

 

[Lazybones]

Three day weekend!

* * * * *


Chapter 47

SACRIFICES FOR THE CAUSE


A guttural roar rose from Dar’s throat as he lurched forward to meet the treant’s attack. Behind him, he was dimly aware of answering yells, of Kiron and Aldos charging at his flanks, at Qatarn and his soldiers following behind. There was fire, and lightning, and in the end at last even a series of blazing pulses, magic missiles that left tiny black pocks in the treant’s body. He took more wounds, and Allera and Maricela healed them almost as quickly. Everything else was battle and chaos, a blur that did not end until the last of the guardians hit the ground and shattered, bits and pieces of it scattering across the room almost to the far door in the opposite wall.

Allera was at his side at once, a look of concern on her face, but she only lingered for an instant before rushing off to help someone more in need of her aid. Looking around, Dar saw that everyone else was on their feet, although some of them barely. But for Primus and Petrellia, it was too late.

Aldos bent over one of the larger pieces of Petronia, his body shaking in what might have been rage, grief, or a part of both. “Why?” he said, rising quickly, turning away from the carcass. “We came with the guardian’s blessing... why did it hurl these... these... things at us?”

“These were not constructs, but elementals, sentient things, but bound to this place,” Letellia said. Dar noticed that her voice was as cool as a bank of snow. The woman he remembered would have paled at the sight before them, even as she drew upon her inner strength to get past it. But this person, it was as if what she saw was just pieces of meat, no longer connected to the living woman who had been their companion just a few moments ago. “The magic infusing this place is ancient; I can still feel it now, seeping into my thoughts like the warmth of a flame.” There was none of that warmth in her eyes, however. “I imagine that they were compelled to attack anyone or anything that attempted to pass through this chamber. It is likely that Amurru had no power over them, and she did warn us of that, if you recall.”

Anger flashed in Aldos’s face for a moment, but Kiron caught his gaze, sending a silent message. The knight turned away from them, drawing his emotions back into the private confines of his mind.

“I can bring them back, across the veil,” Allera said. “Petronia and Primus both.” Her hand fell to the pouch at her hip, where a double-wrapped bag of diamonds rested, a fortune sufficient to buy a palace—or in her case, sufficient to resurrect a full half-dozen people, even a corpse as violated as Petronia’s. She commanded an even greater power, one that she had only used once before, in the battle with Orcus twelve years ago. She had not spoken often of that experience, not even with Dar, but there were times when she looked at things blankly, and her fingers trembled with the force of unbidden memories. “I just need a little time.”

“Time is one thing we do not have,” Dar said. “Wrap the bodies; we’ll be back for them when we can. Anyone who’s still hurt, talk to Allera or Maricela, even if it’s a freaking splinter. I want everyone to be at full strength.”

Aldos had turned back at Allera’s words, and at Dar’s statement he turned back to the carcass of Petronia, unfastening his cloak. The brief look that they’d gotten of his face said that his anger was not going to soon fade.

Kiron brought something that might have been an arm over to the pile of Petronia’s remains. After placing it down, he came over to Dar. “I am sorry for Aldos’s outburst,” he said quietly. “He... he cared for her greatly.”

Yeah, while everyone knows that Corath Dar doesn’t give a crap, Dar thought. But he only said, “Make sure everyone’s ready. Don’t leave anything behind that we might need.”

It took less than a minute to complete their preparations, and continue ahead. The vault door at the far end of the chamber yielded to Dar and Kiron’s strength, but as they drew it open another hazard was revealed.

“What in the hells...” Dar began, and Kiron echoed his sentiments with a muttered invocation to the Father. Stepping forward to allow the others to move past the open vault door, Dar held up his torch to get a better look.

“You have got to be freaking kidding me.”

The whistling blades were moving so fast as to be barely visible as a line of shimmering blurs in the corridor. They sent a faint breeze toward the companions, who gathered at a safe distance, looking in vain for a way past.

“Maybe there’s a way we can jam the mechanisms,” Kiron began, but Dar shook his head. “The bad guys bypassed this somehow, so can we. Zethas, any secret doors or panels on our side?”

The scout was already looking, with the soldiers providing what help they could, tapping the walls with the hilts of their daggers. “Nothing, general,” the wiry Eremite said, his eyes returning frequently to the whirling storm of blades that blocked their way.

“They used magic to move past this,” Letellia said suddenly.

“Can you transport us past it?” Dar asked her.

She held his gaze squarely for a few heartbeats before nodding slightly. “It will require the use of several successive dimension doors, but it should work. Form two groups of five, close together, touching hands. Do not do anything else unless I direct it.”

There was a slight shuffle as the companions complied with the sorceress’s directions, but Dar hardly heard it. A flare had gone off in his mind, and his thoughts flew back to the confrontation with the stone trees in the last chamber. Letellia and her impassible barriers, and her ability to dimension door, an ability, Dar knew from experience, that allowed one to bypass a wall of force.

“Are you all right?”

He shook his head, looking down at Allera as he came out of his reverie. Too late, for Primus and Petronia. But was it too late for the rest of them as well.

“I’m fine,” he replied, watching as Letellia took hold of the circle of Kiron, Maricela, Selaht, Zethas, and Aldos. Her magic wasn’t flashy; one moment the six of them were there, the next they were at the end of the passage, just beyond the last of the deadly blades. She pulled away from the others as soon as the spell was completed, and lingered only a few seconds before her magic surrounded her again, and she returned to them. The three remaining soldiers pressed in close around Dar and Allera, joining hands. Dar’s expression remained fixed on Letellia, trying to read the depths in her dark eyes. Her power had already been critical to moving them forward, but he recognized something in her stare, an intensity that he had seen in men on the battlefield, men who had lost everything but the single-minded focus on the objective. When a man reached that point, even survival became secondary, unimportant. It was a feeling he understood, but as a leader responsible for the lives of those under him, and for many more lives beyond that, he knew that sometimes, that kind of focus could be dangerous.

He did not turn his eyes away as Letellia drifted down and extended a hand, touching Allera on the shoulder. Power flared, and there was a brief moment of disorientation as reality shifted around them.

 

[Richard Rawen]

Wow. I know I've used that a Lot, but... really great writing LB, thanks. Have a good weekend, and for those of us in the U.S.A., enjoy your Freedom, and Remember Why you are Free, this holiday.