Lazybones
Adventurer
I'm also traveling for business this Friday, but I should be able to get a post up in the evening (assuming my hotel has a free Internet hookup somewhere for guests).
* * * * *
Chapter 263
BACKBLAST
Navev’s eldritch blast slammed into Honoratius’s chest, flaring in a cascade of black energy run through with bright flashes of yellow and orange.
And then it flashed back along its course, striking the revenant warlock squarely in the center of his torso. Navev was blasted off his feet, and flew backward about fifteen feet, landing hard near the far wall of the temple.
The archmage shot a desultory look at his fallen adversary. “Warlock, I was fighting mage duels when your grandfather was bleating for his mother’s teat.”
But the battle directly in front of him was still raging, and Honoratius could not spare Navev more attention. He gestured to Alderis, who had witnessed the exchange, and who nodded. Honoratius resumed his spell as though there had been no interruption, his concentration fixed perfectly upon the fragile weavings of his magic.
Dar, rushing toward the enemy cleric, was caught off guard by the sudden intervention of the jarilith to intercept him. The leonine demon had seemed idle, even bored, as it had watched him come around the blood pool. But that changed in an instant, the demon crouching and springing forward in a blink of an eye. Dar tried to strike with Valor, but the demon was far too quick for him. It struck him with the force of a runaway wagon, seizing his arms with its massive claws. Rivets of pain exploded in his gut as the jarilith’s hind claws bit into his belly, the sharp nails piercing his armor and the tender flesh beneath. He spat blood as his wind was blasted out of him. He could do nothing as the demon slammed its jaws down at the juncture of his neck and left shoulder, dragging him down to the ground in a feral embrace.
Just like that, the demon had taken down their strongest fighter in a matter of seconds.
Shay tore free from the blood golem as it shuddered from the impact of several arrows from Selanthas’s bow. She felt faint as she staggered back from the creature, which recovered quickly and lunged at her again. Facing it head-on had been a mistake, and she now just tried to evade it, using feints with her sword only to keep its attacks at bay. The construct had swollen with the blood it had absorbed from her body, and as it scored another glancing hit on her thigh, it began to quiver. With a sickening sucking sound the creature tore down the center of its body, coming apart into two pieces that fell over in bulbous heaps upon the floor. Shay stared down at it in surprise, but that turned to alarm immediately as the two sundered halves of the creature rose up, and now two of the golems, each smaller but otherwise identical to the original creature, surged forward to attack.
The scout looked up and realized that her situation was about to get even worse. The second golem had been thwarted in its assault upon the mages, and it now hovered at the edge of the pool, held at bay by the potency of Alderis’s repulsion spell. Thus stymied, the thing cast about for another victim.
Turning, it started moving to join the attack upon Shay.
The enemy high priest had not been long discomfited by Nelan’s silence spell. His face twisted in anger as he reached down and snapped off the shaft of the arrow, tossing it across the room. Sound returned, but the first thing that Hesperix heard was the surging roar of flames as Nelan’s flame strike returned the favor of the evil priest’s opening spell. The warrior standing beside the cleric staggered back, scorched by the flames, but Hesperix had warded himself against fire, and his layered defenses protected him against most of the divine energy that got through that ward.
Mehlaraine shot up into the air, Avelis quivering in her hand. She flew like a dart over the stone font, bypassing both the golem and the desperate battle between Dar and the jarilith, focused on the evil high priest. Hesperix glanced up as she reached the apogee of her ascent and dove at him, her blade flashing as she fixed upon his neck.
The blow never landed. The elf woman’s dive suddenly ended, as suddenly as if she’d struck a stone wall. Dazed, she floated back, trying to recover her bearings.
Hesperix, protected within his anti-life shell, smiled.
Allera poured healing energy into the room, infusing them with the power of a mass cure critical wounds spell. Navev’s own eldritch blast had knocked him out of the spell’s range, but Allera had recognized the true nature of Hesperix’s warrior ally, and she focused a stream of the spell’s positive energy into him. Thus far he had not attacked, but had suffered grievous damage from the various spells that had been hurled through the chamber. A tortured howl of pain came from within his full helm.
Shay, fleeing for her life from the blood golems, suddenly turned as if struck. Her face pale, she barely heeded the creatures that eagerly lunged at her exposed back.
Honoratius’s evocation, a sonically-substituted delayed blast fireball, exploded throughout the center of the chamber. The cascading bubble of sound expanded into a globe forty feet across, enveloping not only the cleric and his servants, but Dar, Shay, and Mehlaraine. For a moment, everyone within the orb was obscured by the distortion effect caused by the pulse, which reverberated off of the walls and ceiling with enough power to crack the ancient, weathered stone.
The spell’s effect had been intense and devastating. Hesperix staggered back, blood pouring from his ears and nose. The warrior at his side had fallen to his knees, his axe forgotten as he clutched at the sides of his head. The smaller blood golems were discorporated, collapsing into puddles of sticky goo, while the last quivered as huge chunks of its substance sloughed off from its body.
And yet the archmage’s allies remained unharmed. Somehow, through his mastery of arcane magic, Honoratius had shaped the wild power of the spell, forming bubbles within the blast within which Mehlaraine, Dar, and Shay had remained unharmed. Even the jarilith, in close quarters with the fighter, had not been spared, as the spell had enveloped its lower half, sending pulses of pain through it as the sonics ravaged its insides.
Dar knew he was in dire circumstances. Allera’s healing spell had dragged him back from the brink of death, but he knew he could not face another full attack from the demonic lion. Honoratius’s spell distracted it, just enough for him to pull free and stagger out from under it before it could tear him apart with those deadly claws. His limbs felt like lead weights, and he knew that he’d lost a lot of blood. He made it only a few steps, falling back against the edge of the pool, before the jarilith’s growl drew his attention back around.
He turned to see the lion leaping at him again, its jaws as wide as the mouth of a chasm.
Hesperix realized that he was outmatched. His golems and the jarilith had absorbed most of the enemy’s fighting strength, but there was no way he could withstand the spell power of the other side’s spellcasters. And thus far both his vaunted creation and his warlock ally had proven useless except as damage sponges. But there was still one gambit he could hurl into the fray.
“Back!” he hissed at his warrior companion. “To the sanctuary of the Great Lord!”
An arrow bit deep into the cleric’s shoulder. Above him, the elven woman had recovered, and had retreated from the extended reach of Dacris. With his antilife shell keeping her at bay, she dove down to assist the human fighter against the jarilith.
Hoping to buy time, Hesperix spoke a word of blasphemy.
The unholy syllable filled the chamber. In all honesty, the cleric had doubted that the spell was powerful enough to stop these foes, but he was gratified to see a number of his enemies, including the elven woman, the archer, and the opposing cleric, visibly suffer from the weakening effects of the foul utterance. He retreated across the chamber toward the statue; behind him his undead warrior followed, staggering to his feet.
Shay had started toward them, but she’d gotten only one step before the blood golem behind her smashed a viscid tentacle across her back, knocking her sprawling. She struggled to rise, but she’d lost too much blood, and there was nothing she could do as the golem swept forward to finish her off.
On the far side of the chamber, Navev and Alderis had faced off in another direct confrontation. The elf conjured a wall of fire over the prone warlock, immolating the revenant within the flames. The flames crinkled its undead flesh, and Navev screamed as it rolled out of the fire. Coming to its feet, the warlock blasted Alderis with an eldritch blast. But Alderis, like Honoratius, had surrounded himself with an aura of spell turning, and once again the warlock’s power rebounded, knocking it back through the flames once more, smashing against the far wall with a loud smack.
Alderis came forward, lifting his wand of magic missiles to finish off the crippled foe. But nothing came through the wall of fire. Wary of a trap, the elf waved a hand and dismissed the evocation. He saw only empty stone beyond, scorched black from the heat of the flames. The warlock was gone.
Shay rolled over on her back, looking up at the red death descending upon her. But before the golem could strike, a green light flashed around its body. Shay blinked, and just like that half of the creature’s body was just gone. She lifted her hands as its remains splashed to the floor around her.
Dar had somehow managed to keep hold of Valor, and instinct brought the blade up as the jarilith slammed into him. Its claws smashed into the stone rim of the font, flanking his head, and he felt something hard rip into the left side of his neck, opening up a warm trickle of blood down his back. The demon’s jaws closed on his helmet, and for a moment all he could sense was the overwhelming smell of brimstone; everything else was darkness. Even his body was numb, the pain of his earlier wounds fading with the blood that continued to stream from his body.
And then the light returned, and he felt his sense of feeling return—and along with it, a whole hell of a lot of pain. He looked up and saw Allera there, gently lifting his buckled helmet from his head.
“Did we...” he began, coughing blood. “Win?”
“Quiet,” she said, her expression betraying the gravity of his condition. She grasped his neck firmly with both hands, and a moment later Dar felt the purging flow of a heal spell course through his body.
He looked up and saw Mehlaraine leaning against the edge of the font. “Help me up,” he said. The elf looked at him, and he could almost see the weariness in her eyes.
“The effects of the blasphemy will fade in a few moments,” Allera said to the elf. “Here,” she said to Dar, “Lean on me.”
With the healer’s help, Dar was able to get up. It took a lot of effort; the jarilith’s body had fallen across his legs, pinning them. Valor was buried to the hilt in its chest, where it had impaled itself on the sword. For the moment, he left it there; he wasn’t sure he could get it out at the moment. Allera’s spell had restored his strength, but he still felt overwhelmed.
He looked around. Nelan was tending to Shay; everyone else was present, although Selanthas looked barely able to stand, let alone ply his bow. Since Allera wasn’t worried about it, he decided he wasn’t going to be, either.
“Where’s the cleric?”
“He fled behind the statue,” Allera said.
“And that fighter... that was Talen, wasn’t it?” he added, in a low voice.
“It sounded like him,” Allera said. “He went with the cleric. He’s undead, now.”
“Great,” Dar said. It looked like it wasn’t time to rest after all; reaching down he put a boot on the dead demon’s shoulder, and with a mighty heave pulled Valor free.
“The warlock escaped,” Honoratius said. “But I doubt that we have seen the last of him, or the cleric.”
“Of couse not,” Dar said. “Everyone all right?”
They all nodded; the lingering effects of the blasphemy on Nelan and the elves were already beginning to fade. Shay was on her feet, restored by another heal spell from Nelan, but she was pale, her eyes haunted.
“All right then,” Dar said, a grim look fixed on his face, “Let’s get this bastard and get our man back.”
* * * * *
Chapter 263
BACKBLAST
Navev’s eldritch blast slammed into Honoratius’s chest, flaring in a cascade of black energy run through with bright flashes of yellow and orange.
And then it flashed back along its course, striking the revenant warlock squarely in the center of his torso. Navev was blasted off his feet, and flew backward about fifteen feet, landing hard near the far wall of the temple.
The archmage shot a desultory look at his fallen adversary. “Warlock, I was fighting mage duels when your grandfather was bleating for his mother’s teat.”
But the battle directly in front of him was still raging, and Honoratius could not spare Navev more attention. He gestured to Alderis, who had witnessed the exchange, and who nodded. Honoratius resumed his spell as though there had been no interruption, his concentration fixed perfectly upon the fragile weavings of his magic.
Dar, rushing toward the enemy cleric, was caught off guard by the sudden intervention of the jarilith to intercept him. The leonine demon had seemed idle, even bored, as it had watched him come around the blood pool. But that changed in an instant, the demon crouching and springing forward in a blink of an eye. Dar tried to strike with Valor, but the demon was far too quick for him. It struck him with the force of a runaway wagon, seizing his arms with its massive claws. Rivets of pain exploded in his gut as the jarilith’s hind claws bit into his belly, the sharp nails piercing his armor and the tender flesh beneath. He spat blood as his wind was blasted out of him. He could do nothing as the demon slammed its jaws down at the juncture of his neck and left shoulder, dragging him down to the ground in a feral embrace.
Just like that, the demon had taken down their strongest fighter in a matter of seconds.
Shay tore free from the blood golem as it shuddered from the impact of several arrows from Selanthas’s bow. She felt faint as she staggered back from the creature, which recovered quickly and lunged at her again. Facing it head-on had been a mistake, and she now just tried to evade it, using feints with her sword only to keep its attacks at bay. The construct had swollen with the blood it had absorbed from her body, and as it scored another glancing hit on her thigh, it began to quiver. With a sickening sucking sound the creature tore down the center of its body, coming apart into two pieces that fell over in bulbous heaps upon the floor. Shay stared down at it in surprise, but that turned to alarm immediately as the two sundered halves of the creature rose up, and now two of the golems, each smaller but otherwise identical to the original creature, surged forward to attack.
The scout looked up and realized that her situation was about to get even worse. The second golem had been thwarted in its assault upon the mages, and it now hovered at the edge of the pool, held at bay by the potency of Alderis’s repulsion spell. Thus stymied, the thing cast about for another victim.
Turning, it started moving to join the attack upon Shay.
The enemy high priest had not been long discomfited by Nelan’s silence spell. His face twisted in anger as he reached down and snapped off the shaft of the arrow, tossing it across the room. Sound returned, but the first thing that Hesperix heard was the surging roar of flames as Nelan’s flame strike returned the favor of the evil priest’s opening spell. The warrior standing beside the cleric staggered back, scorched by the flames, but Hesperix had warded himself against fire, and his layered defenses protected him against most of the divine energy that got through that ward.
Mehlaraine shot up into the air, Avelis quivering in her hand. She flew like a dart over the stone font, bypassing both the golem and the desperate battle between Dar and the jarilith, focused on the evil high priest. Hesperix glanced up as she reached the apogee of her ascent and dove at him, her blade flashing as she fixed upon his neck.
The blow never landed. The elf woman’s dive suddenly ended, as suddenly as if she’d struck a stone wall. Dazed, she floated back, trying to recover her bearings.
Hesperix, protected within his anti-life shell, smiled.
Allera poured healing energy into the room, infusing them with the power of a mass cure critical wounds spell. Navev’s own eldritch blast had knocked him out of the spell’s range, but Allera had recognized the true nature of Hesperix’s warrior ally, and she focused a stream of the spell’s positive energy into him. Thus far he had not attacked, but had suffered grievous damage from the various spells that had been hurled through the chamber. A tortured howl of pain came from within his full helm.
Shay, fleeing for her life from the blood golems, suddenly turned as if struck. Her face pale, she barely heeded the creatures that eagerly lunged at her exposed back.
Honoratius’s evocation, a sonically-substituted delayed blast fireball, exploded throughout the center of the chamber. The cascading bubble of sound expanded into a globe forty feet across, enveloping not only the cleric and his servants, but Dar, Shay, and Mehlaraine. For a moment, everyone within the orb was obscured by the distortion effect caused by the pulse, which reverberated off of the walls and ceiling with enough power to crack the ancient, weathered stone.
The spell’s effect had been intense and devastating. Hesperix staggered back, blood pouring from his ears and nose. The warrior at his side had fallen to his knees, his axe forgotten as he clutched at the sides of his head. The smaller blood golems were discorporated, collapsing into puddles of sticky goo, while the last quivered as huge chunks of its substance sloughed off from its body.
And yet the archmage’s allies remained unharmed. Somehow, through his mastery of arcane magic, Honoratius had shaped the wild power of the spell, forming bubbles within the blast within which Mehlaraine, Dar, and Shay had remained unharmed. Even the jarilith, in close quarters with the fighter, had not been spared, as the spell had enveloped its lower half, sending pulses of pain through it as the sonics ravaged its insides.
Dar knew he was in dire circumstances. Allera’s healing spell had dragged him back from the brink of death, but he knew he could not face another full attack from the demonic lion. Honoratius’s spell distracted it, just enough for him to pull free and stagger out from under it before it could tear him apart with those deadly claws. His limbs felt like lead weights, and he knew that he’d lost a lot of blood. He made it only a few steps, falling back against the edge of the pool, before the jarilith’s growl drew his attention back around.
He turned to see the lion leaping at him again, its jaws as wide as the mouth of a chasm.
Hesperix realized that he was outmatched. His golems and the jarilith had absorbed most of the enemy’s fighting strength, but there was no way he could withstand the spell power of the other side’s spellcasters. And thus far both his vaunted creation and his warlock ally had proven useless except as damage sponges. But there was still one gambit he could hurl into the fray.
“Back!” he hissed at his warrior companion. “To the sanctuary of the Great Lord!”
An arrow bit deep into the cleric’s shoulder. Above him, the elven woman had recovered, and had retreated from the extended reach of Dacris. With his antilife shell keeping her at bay, she dove down to assist the human fighter against the jarilith.
Hoping to buy time, Hesperix spoke a word of blasphemy.
The unholy syllable filled the chamber. In all honesty, the cleric had doubted that the spell was powerful enough to stop these foes, but he was gratified to see a number of his enemies, including the elven woman, the archer, and the opposing cleric, visibly suffer from the weakening effects of the foul utterance. He retreated across the chamber toward the statue; behind him his undead warrior followed, staggering to his feet.
Shay had started toward them, but she’d gotten only one step before the blood golem behind her smashed a viscid tentacle across her back, knocking her sprawling. She struggled to rise, but she’d lost too much blood, and there was nothing she could do as the golem swept forward to finish her off.
On the far side of the chamber, Navev and Alderis had faced off in another direct confrontation. The elf conjured a wall of fire over the prone warlock, immolating the revenant within the flames. The flames crinkled its undead flesh, and Navev screamed as it rolled out of the fire. Coming to its feet, the warlock blasted Alderis with an eldritch blast. But Alderis, like Honoratius, had surrounded himself with an aura of spell turning, and once again the warlock’s power rebounded, knocking it back through the flames once more, smashing against the far wall with a loud smack.
Alderis came forward, lifting his wand of magic missiles to finish off the crippled foe. But nothing came through the wall of fire. Wary of a trap, the elf waved a hand and dismissed the evocation. He saw only empty stone beyond, scorched black from the heat of the flames. The warlock was gone.
Shay rolled over on her back, looking up at the red death descending upon her. But before the golem could strike, a green light flashed around its body. Shay blinked, and just like that half of the creature’s body was just gone. She lifted her hands as its remains splashed to the floor around her.
Dar had somehow managed to keep hold of Valor, and instinct brought the blade up as the jarilith slammed into him. Its claws smashed into the stone rim of the font, flanking his head, and he felt something hard rip into the left side of his neck, opening up a warm trickle of blood down his back. The demon’s jaws closed on his helmet, and for a moment all he could sense was the overwhelming smell of brimstone; everything else was darkness. Even his body was numb, the pain of his earlier wounds fading with the blood that continued to stream from his body.
And then the light returned, and he felt his sense of feeling return—and along with it, a whole hell of a lot of pain. He looked up and saw Allera there, gently lifting his buckled helmet from his head.
“Did we...” he began, coughing blood. “Win?”
“Quiet,” she said, her expression betraying the gravity of his condition. She grasped his neck firmly with both hands, and a moment later Dar felt the purging flow of a heal spell course through his body.
He looked up and saw Mehlaraine leaning against the edge of the font. “Help me up,” he said. The elf looked at him, and he could almost see the weariness in her eyes.
“The effects of the blasphemy will fade in a few moments,” Allera said to the elf. “Here,” she said to Dar, “Lean on me.”
With the healer’s help, Dar was able to get up. It took a lot of effort; the jarilith’s body had fallen across his legs, pinning them. Valor was buried to the hilt in its chest, where it had impaled itself on the sword. For the moment, he left it there; he wasn’t sure he could get it out at the moment. Allera’s spell had restored his strength, but he still felt overwhelmed.
He looked around. Nelan was tending to Shay; everyone else was present, although Selanthas looked barely able to stand, let alone ply his bow. Since Allera wasn’t worried about it, he decided he wasn’t going to be, either.
“Where’s the cleric?”
“He fled behind the statue,” Allera said.
“And that fighter... that was Talen, wasn’t it?” he added, in a low voice.
“It sounded like him,” Allera said. “He went with the cleric. He’s undead, now.”
“Great,” Dar said. It looked like it wasn’t time to rest after all; reaching down he put a boot on the dead demon’s shoulder, and with a mighty heave pulled Valor free.
“The warlock escaped,” Honoratius said. “But I doubt that we have seen the last of him, or the cleric.”
“Of couse not,” Dar said. “Everyone all right?”
They all nodded; the lingering effects of the blasphemy on Nelan and the elves were already beginning to fade. Shay was on her feet, restored by another heal spell from Nelan, but she was pale, her eyes haunted.
“All right then,” Dar said, a grim look fixed on his face, “Let’s get this bastard and get our man back.”
