Chapter 65
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
As the elemental moved across the room toward them, the companions felt a sudden lethargy settle upon them. Varo and Allera were able to resist the effect, but both fighters felt their movements slowed as they finished off the remaining zombies.
“What’s happening?” Dar shouted over his shoulder.
“An arcane spell,” Varo replied. “The enemy wizard is here somewhere, likely behind the elemental, and likely invisible to boot.”
“Well, do something about her!” the fighter shot back, but Varo had already stepped back into the relative shelter of the corridor, and begun spellcasting. The four zombies he’d controlled shuffled off to engage the elemental. They looked almost pathetic in comparison to the incredible, monstrous pillar of raging fire, as as they drew within its reach, it swatted one with a burning paw, turning it into a pyre. The zombie staggered around as a sick stench of roasting flesh filled the room, then it collapsed in a heap as the flames continued to consume it. The other zombies closed to attack, but their slams only succeeded in setting themselves on fire. Still, they mindlessly pressed their assault, smashing at the elemental’s semi-substantial core.
“What are we supposed to do against that thing?” Dar asked, as Talen fired one of his magical arrows at the creature. The captain’s shaft vanished into its body, but whether it had an effect was impossible to discern.
“They can be killed!” Talen replied, drawing out another arrow. Dar looked between the captain and the elemental dubiously, but it was clear that the zombies weren’t going to last much longer. Grimacing, the fighter started forward to engage the creature.
Dar moved barely quicker than the shuffling zombies, and the monster saw him coming. As he entered its reach it swept around one of its long arms of flame around to meet him, splashing his body with eager tongues of fire. Grunting as the hot flames seared his skin and burned away his facial hair, he kept pushing forward into the inferno.
“Even he won’t stand up long against that,” Talen said. Allera had come to the same conclusion, and the healer started toward him, an unarmed human against a monster made out of living fire. This time, Talen did not call out for her to stop; somewhere deep inside him, he knew that this battle might take everything that all of them had.
And maybe, even that wouldn’t be enough.
Talen looked around for the enemy wizard, but true to Varo’s warning, the gray-robed woman was hidden from his view. He dropped his bow and unslung his shield, cursing the lingering effects of the slow spell as he slid his sword out of its scabbard. The maneuver which should have taken a second took several, and by the time that he started toward the elemental, Allera was already almost to the edge of its reach.
From Dar’s perspective, the world around him was all fire and smoke. Within the elemental’s reach, everything was dominated by the roaring pillar of flame that sent waves of crushing heat over him. He knew he couldn’t stand up long against it, but still swiped at it body with his sword. Valor bit into something substantial, but Dar could immediately tell that this thing, whatever it was, could absorb a lot of damage.
So be it. Sliding the sword into its scabbard with his right hand, he unslung his club with his left. The maneuver left him open to another attack, and he staggered backwards as twin surges of fire battered him, almost blinding him. He could smell his own burning flesh, and thought that he was finished.
Then, so familiar now that it was like being doused in cool water, the healing touch of Allera cleansed him, clearing away the pain and weariness of his wounds. Blackened char flaked off his dead skin, revealing healthy pink flesh beneath it. He saw the healer there beside him, the left side of her own face scored by the elemental’s flames. As usual, she had ignored her own injuries to tend to him.
“Fight the good fight,” she told him, as he looked down at her calm face in amazement.
He turned back to the elemental, which had been momentarily distracted by the appearance of a pair of huge centipedes that had joined the melee. The fiendish creatures summoned by Varo had an innate resistance to fire, which at least kept them from being transformed to blackened char in a few seconds, like the zombies. The elemental in turn was immune to their toxins, but the sheer force of their slam attacks forced it to pay attention to them.
Talen, following Allera into the melee, had not rushed directly in to engage the elemental. Instead, the captain slipped around the perimeter of the battle, hoping to flank the creature. It took him longer than he’d hoped, and once again he cursed the magic that had slowed him. Varo’s centipedes joined the battle in mid-maneuver, and he had to stagger out of the way to avoid being overrun by one rushing to engage the elemental. But he eventually got around behind the left line of statues, and turned inward, willing his legs to move faster.
He was caught completely by surprise as a sudden wracking sensation twisted through his guts. He looked down at his hands, which had started to shimmer, as if he was watching them through a heat haze.
No! his mind yelled, as he fought the spell that was trying to do something bad—that much he could guess—to him.
The feeling faded in a second or two, and his perceptions returned to normal.
Looking up, he saw another shimmer, this one in the air about twenty feet ahead of him.
The enemy wizard.
Dar smashed at the elemental’s body from below, while the centipedes continued to tear at the huge monster from above. The elemental swept its arms around and seized one of the giant vermin, the hot flames of its grasp burning through its fiendish resistance and leaving its segmented body scorched black. The centipede twisted and stabbed its mandibles into the spongy substance of its body, and in response the elemental drove it down to the ground, fire exploding out from the point of impact. The centipede, battered beyond its ability to absorb damage, stopped moving and began to dissolve, returning to whatever dark pit from whence it had come.
The elemental shifted its attention from the second centipede, which hadn’t managed to significantly damage it as of yet, to the tiny human that was battering its lower body. But as it turned to Dar, it detected another foe entering the melee. Its reflexes were such that a fiery probe was crashing toward the newcomer even as it drew close enough to be struck, but like the others it had struck, this enemy simply absorbed the attack, even as flames spread eagerly over its upper body.
But Licinius Varo had a surprise in store, and as the substance of the elemental impacted him, he unleashed his inflict critical wounds spell into it.
The elemental drew back as negative energy ravaged it. The limb it had formed to strike the cleric dissolved, and great black striations could be seen traveling through its fiery body as the spell wrought its destructive course. The elemental’s distress left an opening for Dar, who grasped tightly onto his club, and swung it in an all-out power attack upon what looked like the core of the elemental’s body.
Or at least the part he could reach.
Talen did not hesitate, slowed or not. Lifting his sword, he rushed toward the invisible spellcaster. She’d already tried to cast one spell on him, and he steeled himself for another destructive assault, or maybe another attempt to flee. But the telltale shimmer in the air did not move.
Suddenly it felt like he’d hit a brick wall. The slight distortion was still there, just about ten feet away from him, but he couldn’t move any closer to it, no matter how much he mentally urged his body forward. It was as if he’d struck an invisible barrier that held him back.
He heard a laugh, a man’s laugh. And then the worst thing he’d ever seen in his life materialized in front of him.
Later, he wouldn’t be able to describe what it had been, just that it had been more frightening than anything he’d ever experienced. It came at him, a monstrosity that grew larger with each foot that it drew nearer, until he thought that he would be engulfed by it.
Screaming, Talen fell to his knees, clutching his skull as the phantasmal killer wrought terror upon his mind.
The elemental seemed to falter, the flames that made up its body flaring out in random directions. And then, so suddenly that it seemed almost accidental, the creature just came apart, dissolving into wisps of bright flame that themselves were gone within a second.
From within the fire, Corath Dar staggered forward, followed by Allera and Varo. The healer touched Dar again, continuing to counteract the terrible effects of his injuries. His helmet and greaves looked as though they had been laquered black, so thoroughly had they been blasted by the fire. His new robe, and most of his other clothes, clung to his body in charred strips. Some of it was still on fire.
Talen looked up, saw them coming. Blood trailed from his lips; he clenched his jaws tight enough to split the flesh. “He’s there...” he managed to say. “The wizard! He’s there!”
“You are stronger than you look,” came a strong male voice from somewhere ahead of them. “You walked through the fire... but can you survive the cold?”
The question was apparently rhetorical, as the still unidentified spellcaster summoned his magic again, and hit them all with a cone of cold.
