The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 31

THE ELEVATOR


The metal frame struck the floor with a cacophonous noise, shaking the walls around them as the force of the impact was distributed outward from the floor. The Seer and Falah had fallen to the ground; the falling frame had passed along the very edge of the archway threshold, and if they’d been leaning forward just a bit, both would have likely been struck by it, with obvious unpleasant consequences.

Parzad turned to look at the others waiting in the archway. His body was insubstantial, but as he stepped up, onto the grate that was now embedded in the floor, his shed body power faded, and he took on solidity again.

“A useful trait,” Duke Aerim commented. He had barely flinched when the grate had plummeted through the ceiling, and he offered a hand to help Falah back to his feet.

There was a loud grinding noise, and the floor started to sink. Not just the floor; the ceiling was descending as well, and within a few seconds they could see it start to cover the archway from above.

“It is an elevator!” Ghazaran exclaimed. “Quickly, into the chamber, before the entry is closed!”

“And if the goal is to seal us within?” the Seer shot back, but he followed the others as they obeyed the cleric’s command. Ozmad was the last to make it, and by then he had to duck to avoid the descending ceiling. He hopped down onto the grate, already five feet below its original level, and slowly building up speed as it continued to drop. The grate provided uncertain footing, but the spaces between the thick bars were not wide enough for them to stand on the stone floor, so they had to make do.

The elevator continued to descend, grinding on unseen gears. The mechanism seemed to reach a terminal velocity; at least it did not appear that it would reach a speed that would prove hazardous upon a sudden stop. Striations on the walls allowed them to judge their approximate speed; it looked as though it took about a minute to cover roughly twenty feet.

“How deep does this go?” the Seer asked, after about five minutes had passed.

“It looks like we are about to find out,” Ghazaran said. The cleric had given up trying to stand on the vibrating grate, and had sat down. He now pointed at the wall, where another archway had become visible. The others readied themselves as the opening expanded, revealing another passageway beyond.

“How far down, do you think?” the cleric asked Jasek.

“About a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty feet,” the thief said, moving lightly over the grate to the tunnel mouth. The elevator came to a halt with a grinding thud; once it had stopped, Ghazaran got up, and walked over to the arch, with Ozmad as his shadow behind him. Jasek saw that the new floor lined up with that inside the elevator, with less than a finger’s thickness separating the two. “Impressive construction,” he said, checking the archway for traps before proceeding.

“It would appear that this was a one-way trip,” the Seer said. “Even if the elevator is designed to reset, I see no mechanism for lifting the grate back up into the ceiling.”

“If necessary, we will follow the Ravager out,” Ghazaran said. The cleric had recovered some of his confidence, it seemed, and he did not stop to check with his companion before gesturing Jasek forward. They fell into their usual formation, with Jasek scouting in the lead, and Navev shuffling along in the rear.

The passage ran straight ahead for about forty feet, then opened onto an irregular chamber through yet another broad stone arch. This room, unlike most of the others through which they had traveled, had been done up in a remarkable decoration. The walls were covered with reliefs that depicted a forest scene, supplemented by a series of stone carvings in the shape of tall, ancient oaks arranged around the perimeter of the chamber. Those statues rose up to brush the tiled ceiling some thirty feet above. Another of the now-familiar mithral vault doors, recessed into a deep alcove in the center of the opposite wall some forty feet away, appeared to be the only means of egress.

“Well now, if this isn’t a trap, I don’t know what is,” Jasek said.

Navev lifted a hand and blasted one of the stone trees flanking the entry. Stone chips went flying as the eldritch blast tore across the trunk of the statue, but nothing else happened.

“All right. Cautiously, but quickly,” Ghazaran said. The cleric nodded at Jasek, who took the lead. His sword was a black gleam in his hand, and he scanned the floor before every step, alert for hidden triggers or other traps.

He had reached the middle of the room when the response finally came.

The noise was surprisingly gentle, more like the whistling of wind through a forest than the cracking of breaking stone that he’d expected. Jasek shifted into a defensive stance and fell back as six of the stone trees came alive, their thick branches sweeping down like long arms. Their carved roots became legs that lifted the huge trunks off the floor.

Once animated, the stone guardians stepped forward to attack.

 

[Lazybones]

I'm traveling for business tomorrow, so consider this the weekend cliffhanger.

* * * * *

Chapter 32

TREADING NEW GROUND


It was not especially cold, but Allera could not suppress a shiver.

They had come by express invitation, this time, but the vault still felt like an alien and unwelcome place. The colored striations in the walls flickered oddly in the light of their torches, and the noises they made were either muted by the pressing weight of all that strange rock, or caught by some strange acoustic quirk and echoed back at them, distorted until they sounded like the wail of some tormented soul. As a result, there had not been much conversation, beyond the information that they needed as they pushed deeper into the complex.

Thus far, they had had a relatively easy time of it. The sudden opening of the vault hatch had nearly caught them off guard, but Dar had quickly ordered their companions to take hold of something solid. When the hatch had opened, and the gathered water had sloughed down through the opening, Secundus had slipped and would have fallen through, but for a quick action by Kiron. The young knight had ended up as mud-slicked and soaked through as the rest of them, by the time they all made it down to the floor of the cavern below, but he looked no less determined for it. They all knew what was at stake.

They all had an idea, but only Allera truly grasped the magnitude of what awaited them. Only she had confronted the Ravager, and even within its prison she had gotten a glimpse of its reality. Only a glimpse, but she still had nightmares about that which Amurru had shown her.

She shivered again. Maricela saw, and said, “Are you all right, healer?”

Allera nodded. “I’m fine.” She turned her attention back to the chamber that Dar and the others were searching. Behind them, the stone along the left wall was knitting slowly back together, and Allera knew that as soon as it was fully restored, the hissing barrier of brilliant energy would come back to life. This was as far as they had gotten into the complex, last time. During that visit, a pair of illusory demiliches had emerged from the walls and attacked them, knocking most of her companions into a catatonic state. Amurru had appeared to her for the first time, then. The memory of that encounter was still not a pleasant one.

This time, there had been no illusions to threaten them. Thus far they had encountered no guardians at all, although they had found some dark smears in the room of steel pillars. The smears could have been anything, but Allera remembered their desperate battle against dread wraiths in that room on their first visit here. Apparently the wraiths, if they had in fact been restored, had not been enough to stop the raiders that they tracked.

Their had been no other traces of their quarry, but there was only one way that they could have gone. The open vault doors indicated the way, but the trail had come to an apparent dead-end in this room. The only distinctive feature of the room—other than the energy field—was a set of three stone biers set into deep niches in the walls ahead and to either side. The remains of the long-dead warriors that had rested on those biers lay on the floor amidst a tumble of ancient armor and weapons, as if hastily searched and then discarded.

Zethas, the scout, spoke up from the far alcove. “I think there’s something under this stone block,” he said to the others. “And there’s some scrapes here that suggest it was moved recently.” Qatarn gestured, and the three guardsmen hastened to assist the wiry Elemite.

There was a flare of blue light behind them, as the walls completed their self-repair and the energy barrier erupted back into light. “Our escape is cut off,” Selaht commented. Allera glanced at the monk; their newest ally was still an enigmatic figure, who spoke little. Her eyes were continually drawn to the intricate tattoos that covered his hands and wrists, the patterns vanishing up into the sleeves of his loose robe. When he clenched his fists, the drawings moved and twisted almost like actual flames.

Maricela was staring back at the barrier. “How long has this all been here?” she asked. “Thousands of years?”

“This whole place is one big trap,” Allera found herself saying. “To keep the Ravager in.”

Dar and Kiron had joined the guardsmen, and together they were able to move the heavy stone slab. As the stone ground forward, it revealed a shaft that descended into another chamber below. An odd radiance of shifting colors could be seen glinting off the walls, but they could not discern its source from their current location.

Dar shone his torch on the walls of the shaft; there were no footholds or rungs to facilitate descent. He nodded at Zethras, who was already digging out his ropes, knotted at regular intervals to allow for an easier climb. The heavy stone slab made for a convenient anchor, and he looped the rope around it, tossing both ends down into the shaft.

Letellia rose up off the ground, and drifted through the air toward the shaft. For a moment it looked like she intended to go on ahead of them, as she had before, but Dar stood and moved to block her. “Scouts first,” he said.

Allera came forward to join them. She looked at Letellia, hovering beside the opening. For a moment, she thought that the sorceress would defy her husband, and push forward despite him. But finally, Letellia nodded incrementally, and drifted back a few paces.

While Dar and the others attended to the shaft, the healer followed the sorceress. For a moment, there was an awkward silence between them; Allera had many questions, but it was obvious that Letellia was in no mood to discuss what had happened to her. “Once we rest, I can heal the injury done to your throat,” she finally said.

“Do not bother. It is part of what I am, now.”

“Why... why didn’t you contact us earlier, Letellia? We tried repeatedly to find you... after, but even discern location did not reveal your location. We had feared you dead.”

“I was dead. My rebirth was... unpleasant, but it allowed me to find a new purpose.” She hesitated, and an almost human empathy passed across her face. “I do not blame you, Allera, none of you, for what happened to me. I made the choice that brought me to my fate.”

Allera’s response was interrupted by Dar. “We’re going down,” he said. Most of the soldiers had already descended on the ropes, and Aldos was helping Petronia as the knight lowered herself into the shaft. Allera looked back up at Letellia, but the sorceress was already moving, drifting quickly over the shaft before dropping like a stone, narrowly avoiding the descending knight.

“Are you all right?” Dar asked her, as she came over to him. He glanced at the mouth of the shaft. “Did she reveal anything more?”

“She has been through a lot. If we had more time, I would try to help her...”

Dar nodded in understanding. “After.” He handed one of the ropes to Allera, and took the other end himself. The two of them, the last to descend, dropped into the shaft, moving down quickly hand-over-hand to where the others waited below.

The shaft deposited them into a wide hall that extended to their left and right. The walls of the hall glimmered with reflected light in a range of colors, making them seem almost alive.

“What is that?” Allera asked, stepping away from the rope to look down the hall to the right. There was a glow shining there , almost blinding, a mélange of colors that was too bright to look at directly.

“Trouble,” Dar said. Gesturing to Kiron to watch their backs, he and Allera headed down the hall to the right.

“Look at the walls,” Allera said. They had been etched, faintly, with letters in a runic script, forming words no more than a few inches high. They covered the walls in long marches, from a few feet off the floor almost to the vaulted ceiling above.

“They are names,” Letellia said. “This place is a memorial of a civilization long dead.” She drifted forward above them, her feet a good three feet off the ground.

“How do you know that?” Dar growled.

“I can hear their silent cries,” Letellia replied, her voice distant, her eyes fixed on some place far ahead.

Several of the soldiers shared grim looks, but no one spoke.

Zethas and Selaht, scouting ahead, were approaching the end of the passage ahead. Allera could now distinguish the source of the bright lights as a pair of scintillating globes. Before them, the scout and monk were just vague black outlines. Zethas approached one of the spheres with caution, a hand raised to shelter his eyes, the other probing ahead of him like a blind man seeking the edge of a wall.

“Do not touch them, on your lives,” Letellia’s voice sounded clearly. The Elemite drew back his hand as if he’d been scalded. She looked down at Dar. “They are prismatic spheres, soverign barriers against all but the most powerful of magics. Even a casual contact with the colors is almost certain death.”

“I wonder what they are hiding?” Kiron asked.

“It’s not our concern,” Dar said. “I doubt that our friends are inside them, so we keep going.” He gestured to Zethas, who turned away from the globe and pressed on. Allera could see that the corridor turned to the left and continued; she hadn’t noticed earlier with the light from the spheres blinding her.

“Stay close, nobody touch anything,” Qatarn cautioned his men. From the looks on the faces of the guardsmen, the warning was unnecessary.

The passage continued for another twenty paces, the scrawl of names continuing around them, until they encountered another pair of alcoves, another two spheres. There was a narrow space between them, and they could see an archway ahead that might have been an exit, so after a brief hesitation Dar gestured them forward. Each of them passed warily through the gap, keeping their hands and weapons pressed close against their bodies, as far from the shifting lights as possible. But the static barriers did not stir from their places, and within a few moments they were all through safely.

“A dead end,” Kiron said, looking at the arch. Once beyond the prismatic spheres they could see that it was blocked from top to bottom by a massive slab of stone.

“Zethas, check it out,” Dar said. The scout started forward, but before he reached the arch there was a flicker in the air, a shimmering as though a bit of dust had gotten frozen in the light. The scout drew back suddenly, and several of the others lifted weapons, but the flicker was gone as swiftly as it had come. But for the barest instant, the outline of something had been there.

“This place is cursed,” Tertius said, holding his sword in white-fingered hands.

“When I want your opinion, soldier, I will ask for it,” Qatarn barked. “You are a man of the Watch, not a soothsayer or priest.” But even though the centurion’s voice was level, all of them could feel the unease that radiated from this place like heat from a fire.

Zethas looked back at Dar, who nodded back toward the arch. Swallowing, the Elemite started forward again. But he’d barely made it three steps when a grinding noise began, a sound like the world below them coming alive.

“It’s moving,” Kiron said, pointing with his sword at the stone within the arch. They could all see it, the slab slowly moving upward. It revealed only more stone below, but kept rising. Maricela moved to his side, her own eyes wide with expectation.

“The way is being opened for us,” Letellia said.

“Or it’s a trap,” Aldos said.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Dar said. He faced the slab, which kept rising, slowly but continuously. “All we can do now is wait.”

And so they waited.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 33

THE STONE FOREST


Jasek fell back as the six stone trees, three on each side of the room, came to life and started forward.

But his companions had been ready for something like this, and were quick to act. The Seer invoked a wall of force, cutting off the entire left side of the chamber, and trapping three of the trees behind it. The stone trees battered at the barrier, but their efforts had no effect.

The three trees on the right moved forward ponderously, their long limbs giving them a considerable reach. Navev hit one of them with an eldritch blast, but the streaking black energies merely vanished into the thing, absorbed without inflicting damage. “Golems, resistant to magic,” Parzad suggested.

But the Seer frowned. “I do not believe so,” he said. He hurled a lightning bolt that clipped two of the trees in its arc, but like Navev’s attack, his magic merely flashed harmlessly around their trunks, doing no damage. “Elementals of some sort, I believe. But their spell resistance is considerable, and possibly beyond my ability to penetrate.”

Ozmad said nothing, and merely made a gesture that invoked an unholy aura around himself. The black radiance spread outward, its protection coalescing around each of the elf’s companions, offering protection.

That assistance proved very timely as Jasek leapt back, the closest tree slamming its long branches down into the ground where he’d been standing. Falah rushed forward to engage the creatures and keep them away from the casters, unslinging his khopesh as he ran. But he was still a good five paces away from the trunk of the nearest when a branch snapped down into his side, knocking him flying across the room. He hit the wall next to the archway hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, and as he fell to his feet he slumped against the stone, gasping for breath.

Aerim surged into battle in the Razhuri fighter’s wake. Another branch tore down at him, but the veteran warrior shifted subtly to the left, surging forward as the jagged ends of the stone limbs raked the air behind him. But before he could draw close enough to its trunk to attack, the second tree moved to block him. A pair of huge branches came down, smashing into him from each side like a pair of sledges. Stone branches jabbed into his armored torso like a dozen spearheads, while a forest of limbs formed a dense web around him, holding him fast while the branches continued to grind away at him.

Jasek, still evading, glanced over his shoulder to see the last tree bearing down on him. He dove forward as it swept a huge branch down toward him. While his maneuver allowed him to slip under the thick bole of the branch, he was snagged by the thinner trailing branches that jutted from the limb like a hundred trailing fingers. The tree scooped him off the ground like a heap of dirt caught by a shovel, and before he could attempt to slip free it twisted and hurled him across the room. He narrowly missed being brained by the capstone in the entry arch, but went a good fifteen feet further down the tunnel beyond before he finally hit the ground. The thief remained aware enough to roll with the impact, but he was almost back to the elevator before he finally came to a halt, battered and dazed from the rough treatment.

Ghazaran looked at Parzad. “Tend to Falah,” the cleric said. He drew out his mace-like rod as he turned back to face the seemingly invincible tree-golems, and invoked a righteous might spell. His stature grew to twice his original size, but the trees still loomed over him by a considerable margin. Stepping forward, he engaged the tree that had struck down Falah, delivering a powerful blow to its trunk that hit hard enough to crack the stone. The tree, however, countered with a series of titanic impacts that knocked the cleric roughly to the side. Ghazaran fell against the slick wall of force, recovering in time to turn into another series of powerful attacks.

In the meantime, the tree that had hurled Jasek away had made its way forward to engage the spellcasters in the second rank. The Seer completed a haste spell, bolstering his allies, but then was quick to use his enhanced speed to beat a hasty retreat. He fell back into the entryway, where he vanished under the cover of an invisibility spell. Ozmad held his ground, and seemed almost careless of the danger, an unperturbed look on his face as he looked up at the massive thing bearing down on him. The tree lifted several of its massive branches as it came within reach of the elf, and with its next “step” it drove them down, clearly intending to reduce its foe to a bloody smear on the chamber floor.

But in the sparest instant before the blow landed, Ozmad summoned his magical power to his defense. A globe of transparent blue energy appeared around him, and the stone tree’s assault was rebuffed as solidly as if it had been a real tree’s branches hitting an iron wall. The tree hit the resilient sphere a second time, and then a third, but within the globe Ozmad merely stood unaffected, casting more buffing spells. The golem could not harm him within the protection of the barrier, but as long as it was up, neither could he do anything to affect the course of the battle outside.

With a roar and a cracking of stone, Duke Aerim exploded through the crushing branches holding him. The tree lashed him with a long protruding root as he stepped up to the massive trunk, but he took the hit across his armored torso without flinching. The fighter, armed with strength augmented beyond that of any common man, smote the tree solidly across the bole with his greatsword. The ancient weapon, forged by dwarven smiths in a time far beyond living memory, rang as it smashed into the thing’s solid substance, but the steel held, and the stone gave way. A crack opened in its trunk, and a hissing noise issued from within. Aerim recovered his swing and brought the sword up to follow up with another strike.

But as the tree reared back, and the crack Aerim had opened grew wider, a gout of pustulent ochre substance issued from the wound, spraying over the face and body of the armored warrior. Wisps of smoke rose from his golden robe and mithral armor as the caustic substance burned him, and the man’s scream echoed from within the depths of his helmet, filling the chamber with a discordant noise of burning agony.

 

[Faren]

Interesting elementals. Are those your creation, Lazybones?

 

[Lazybones]

Interesting elementals. Are those your creation, Lazybones?

They are from the module, and VERY tough. Remember that this entire area was built for characters around L20. This is not an encounter that's going to go swiftly.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 34

TIMBER!


Ghazaran and his companions were finding themselves hard-pressed by the stone treants, which thus far had dished out considerable damage without being seriously harmed in return. The sheer size of the guardians made them difficult to engage, for they could toss their diminutive foes about with little effort, as Falah and Jasek had already learned.

But the invaders of the vault had their own surprises in store. Ghazaran held his ground against his foe, his righteous might spell giving him the size and strength needed to go toe-to-toe against one of the stone trees. The thing still had a considerable advantage, but the spell protected him against the worst of its blows, allowing him to stay engaged long enough to buy time for his allies to regain the initiative.

Thus far, the allies weren’t having much luck with that.

Aerim’s foe had taken a powerful blow, but that in turn only raised a new danger, the deadly acidic properties of the things’ “blood”. The warrior, more cautious now, leapt over a twisting root and delivered another strike that opened another crack in the tree’s knotted trunk. This time the Duke was able to avoid the gusher of caustic fluid, but he could not avoid being struck by another sweeping branch, which smacked hard into his left hip, lifting him into the air and sending him flying across the room toward the far door. He smashed into a carving of creeping vines, shattering them in a crash of shattered fragments and stone dust.

He fell forward and landed on his feet, winded but intact.

The last of the stone trees continued to batter at Ozmad’s resilient sphere, but it was clear that the elf was not coming out from his shelter until good and ready. The elf continued to layer magical wards upon himself, and his form began to shift and blur within the confines of his barrier as a displacement spell took effect.

The tree failed to detect Zafir Navev until the mummy was standing directly beside it. The warlock lifted a withered claw, and blasted the tree with another eldritch blast.

This time, the magic pierced the thing’s spell resistance, and a long swath of dark stone exploded from its side as the black energies tore into it. The injury seemed like little more than a scratch, though, the blackened stretch covering only a tiny fraction of the thing’s huge trunk. The impact had unbalanced it, however, and as another branch came crashing down on the elf’s sphere it leaned far over, crashing down onto another limb as it struggled to right itself. Navev hit it again, but its attacks had only gained a brief advantage, as the tree swept out another branch and snagged the mummy up, lifting it into the air in a crushing grip. The warlock struggled, but it did not have anything close to the strength needed to break free.

Falah returned to the fray, bolstered by a healing potion and by a jolt of energizing psionic power from Parzad. The fighter rushed back into the melee, coming to the aid of Ghazaran. Fortunately his charge coincided with Navev’s initial attack on the tree between him and his goal, so he was able to avoid an attack of opportunity as he circled that melee and closed on the second foe. That tree crashed against the wall of force as the cleric continued to press it, but for each hit that the priest delivered with his rod, the tree was doubling that with powerful slams from its branches. Ghazaran was clearly starting to show the effects of that pounding, and his own counters were coming slower with each hit he absorbed.

His situation looked about to get a whole lot worse, as the tree that had tossed aside Aerim lumbered forward to join in the beating. Falah saw it coming, and moved to block its advance, but the human fighter looked almost pathetic as he lifted his khopesh against the oncoming monstrosity. It swatted him almost casually, but this time the Razhuri rolled with the hit, coming up next to one of the massive roots. He struck it hard, his blade cutting a gash that spilled a jet of that ugly yellow ichor. Falah fell back, trying to avoid that toxic plume, but the distraction cost him another hit that knocked him onto his back. He slid to a stop ten feet from where he’d been struck, coughing from the vapors that he’d inhaled.

Unfortunately for him, that was still within reach of the creature.

Navev continued to lash out at the tree even as the stone monster tightened its grip, firing an eldritch blast at the branch that held it. The treant was not impressed, and hurled its prisoner in a hard arc upward. Navev slammed first against the vaulted ceiling, then the far wall, and finally caromed off the floor, spinning to a stop not far from where he’d launched his initial attack at the thing some fifteen seconds before. The tree lurched forward, lifting its cumbersome frame on its roots, obviously intending to simply crush the undead warlock beneath its bulk.

Its advance took it past Ozmad, who had been forgotten in the face of a more immediate threat. But as it continued past the elf, his resilient sphere flickered and vanished. The elf drew out the little mattock from his belt, and began to change. He grew rapidly, his body swelling as his statue expanded, until he was eight feet, ten, twelve, and still he grew. The tree, sensing perhaps that something was amiss, took a backwards swipe at him with a branch, but the blow passed harmlessly through him, fooled by his displacement spell. His weapon, its true nature revealed now as a mattock of the titans, grew with him, and if anything transformed faster, until the elf—now possessed of the size and form of a cloud giant—had to hold it in two hands.

The tree aborted its trampling of Navev and turned to face Ozmad. The now-huge arcanist went to work with his weapon, smashing it into the tree, which was now about the same size as he. The mattock delivered crushing blows, and the tree shook with the force of the impacts. It tried to counter, but Ozmad’s earlier delay stood him in good stead now, as his wards either deflected or absorbed most of its strikes. Even the one solid hit that the tree landed barely seemed to faze him; his bear’s endurance and greater heroism spells had enhanced his physical stamina until he was almost unstoppable.

The same could not be said for Ghazaran, who fell to one knee as his foe delivered a series of punishing blows to his head and body. The cleric, his face bloodied from a hit that had crushed against the front of his helmet, staggered to his feet in time to take a solid shot across the front of his body that drove him back against the wall of force. The three treants behind the barrier continued to pound against it, waiting for the spell to dissipate.

Ghazaran’s foe surged forward to finish him off, but before it could resume its assault, the priest cast a heal spell. He gave ground before its rush, moving slowly back along the wall, protecting his flank and preempting a full attack from the stone tree. But the room was not that big, even considering the portion cut off by the Seer’s barrier, and there was not much room for him to retreat.

Falah struggled to get up as his tree bore down on him, but the heel of his boot slipped on a patch of yellow ichor, and he fell. The tree surged forward to trample him, but in the instant before he would have been crushed, the fighter shot out of its path, sliding to the side along the floor, coming to a stop a good fifteen feet away, just out of its reach. The respite was temporary, as the tree shifted to follow, but it found itself confronted once again by Aerim, who had recovered enough to return to the fray. The Duke seemed intent on another charge, but as the tree started to attack he aborted his rush, and fell into a defensive stance. The branch was still long enough to strike him, but it was a glancing blow instead of another devastating impact, and as it drew back the limb the warrior hacked at it with his blade, severing a six-foot length of protruding stone that fell to the ground, hissing as more of the yellow gunk was released into the air.

The tree, of course, did not feel pain, but Aerim was able to draw it after him as it broke off from Falah to engage him. He did not have much room to retreat either, but he led it slowly back toward the mithral door recessed in the far wall, dodging sweeping branches and occasionally lunging out with his sword to deliver a minor hit.

Black tendrils of power flared in the front of the room, where Navev was continuing to support Ozmad in laying waste to the first of the stone treants. The giant was wielding the mattock of the titans with great efficiency against the thing, delivering crushing blows that oozed rather than jetted the poisonous yellow substance from its body. He hewed at it with a calm precision, almost more like a lumberjack than a fighter in his singleminded focus upon the task. The tree continued to attack him, but his wards held, and even the hits that pierced his defenses failed to do enough damage to seriously hurt him.

The same could not be said for the tree, and the abuse finally became too much for it as Ozmad delivered a final vicious blow that snapped its trunk with a loud and terrible crack. The tree crumbled as it fell to the ground, disgorging a plume of noxious spray that spread out across the floor around its remains.

Ozmad paid it no heed, striding back across the room toward where a desperate battle was still being raged.

The Seer’s voice, magically enhanced to fill the chamber, echoed near the entrance. “The wall of force will not last much longer! We must withdraw!”

“No!” Ghazaran shouted, grunting as a sweeping branch clipped his shoulder. “Forward, to the far door! We must make it through!” He ducked under another branch and pushed forward, coming around the tree and putting it between him and the wall of force. The maneuver cost him, as the tree slashed its branches across his face and chest. Red sprayed out from under his helmet; one of the long stone juts had sliced open his jaw to the bone.

Aerim had avoided serious damage as he’d run the treant in a zig-zagging course back across the room, but he was quickly running out of room to maneuver as the alcove and its door drew nearer behind him. But as he drew within ten paces of the recessed door, the mithral portal groaned and swung ponderously open. The Duke, alerted by the noise, shifted slightly, wary of another threat, but the only thing there was a black shadow, which resolved into Jasek as the thief drew back his cowl and shouted a warning to the others.

“Quick, everyone through!”

Aerim turned to hold off the treant on his back, but as he pivoted he saw that he was already too late. He managed to get his sword up, but the blow that crashed into him was far stronger than his parry, and as something hard slammed into the front of his helmet he felt only a vague sensation of flying, and then... nothing.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 35

NARROW ESCAPES


Jasek started to shout a warning, but he was too late, as Aerim went down under the stone treant’s attack. He vascilated in the doorway for an instant, just an instant, as the creature lumbered forward to crush the fallen Duke. Jasek was no fighter; he’d seen more than enough of the battle as he’d snuck around to the mithral door to know that he would barely slow the thing.

He sensed rather than saw someone approaching fast from his left; he stepped aside in time to avoid the Seer, who darted through the doorway, still shrouded by invisibility. He saw Parzad, approaching along the wall to his left. Falah was still over by Ghazaran, behind the nearer of the treants, still a good fifteen paces distant. They were still fighting the other creature, giving ground, and Jasek could see that they risked being caught between the two monsters, which would open them up to a world of hurt.

But the equalizer in that equation was already moving to intercept. Ozmad had come around Ghazaran’s foe, and was rushing with giant-sized strides toward the second. But Jasek could tell with a glance that there was no way that the giant would reach the treant before it crushed Aerim.

“So long, chum,” the thief said, as the treant lifted the mass of roots that would put an end to the short return of Duke Aerim.

And then, as Jasek’s eyes widened in surprise, the prone form of the Duke shot forward toward him, sliding along the floor as if dragged by an invisible team of horses. He came to a stop almost at the thief’s feet, and Jasek was even more surprised to see that the man was already coming around, groaning as he shook his head and tried to get up. Jasek helped him, uncomfortably aware of the huge figure that was looming very tall indeed over them as it approached.

“Get through the door!” he hissed, all but dragging the semi-conscious fighter after him. A huge branch lifted and came sweeping down toward them; reflexively Jasek dropped his companion and leapt straight back. A sudden pain greeted him as his shoulder clipped the metal threshold of the doorway, and he fell into an awkward crouch in the narrow opening. He heard a grunting noise and realized that the Seer was trying to push the door shut.

The swinging branch passed close enough to fill the gap with a gust of wind. Aerim fell down, but the crushing impact Jasek had expected never reached him. As he watched the treant was flung roughly back and to the side, and as it left the focus of his gaze he could see the long shaft of Ozmad’s mattock of the titans hooked under one of its branches. The giant stepped into position in front of the door, blood streaking his face where one of the branches had slashed him.

“Get through the door!” he boomed. Jasek saw Ghazaran, already starting to shrink back to his normal size, charging toward him, Falah a shadow behind him. There was no sign of Zafir Navev, but Jasek did not spare a moment’s instant for the mummy; the creature clearly had no problems with surviving. What he focused on was getting out of the way. Aerim had gotten up again, moving under his own power despite what was obviously a number of grievous wounds. Parzad passed through the slowly closing gap of the doorway just a step behind the Duke. Ghazaran and Falah ran between Ozmad’s legs and were through just a few heartbeats behind him.

“Quickly, we must seal the door!” the Seer exclaimed, still pushing at the heavy mithral portal. It was more physical exertion than Jasek had ever seen the mage engage in during the entirety of their admittedly brief time together. Parzad was standing nearby, neither helping nor hindering, and now Jasek saw Navev as well, hovering silently in the shadows a short distance away.

“We have to wait for Ozmad!” Ghazaran returned. Jasek could no longer see out into the chamber, but he could hear the loud crash of blows as the giant held off both of the remaining treants. The thief wasn’t sure who to give the edge to in that confrontation, but having felt the strength of the massive trees first hand, he wasn’t going to put a bet on his companion, either.

But the door was almost completely shut, now, and there was no way that the elf would make it through, let alone in his giant-sized form. Ghazaran nodded to Falah, who started toward the door, but even as he reached for it, a sudden gust of yellow smoke drifted through the closing crack. Falah drew back reflexively as more of the stuff poured around the edges of the door, coalescing on the near side of the mithral slab.

“Now, close it!” Ghazaran said, pushing forward. Jasek joined them, and the door slammed shut with a loud click, a noise that was echoed several times as whatever mechanism operated the portal sealed it in place. As the chaos of their escape faded, they all became aware of a whirring sound that filled the corridor.

The gaseous cloud was already forming back into Ozmad, who had once again returned to his elf-form. He seemed little the worse for his experience, although it was difficult to see him clearly with the still-shifting auras of his displacement and unholy aura spells lingering about his body.

Ghazaran looked at Jasek. “Well done, getting the door open.”

The thief nodded. “These round doors seem to have been intended to keep something in, rather than to keep the likes of us out.”

The Seer had become visible again; either his spell had lapsed, or he had dismissed it. “And if there had been another vacuum beyond?” he asked.

“Then we would have been sucked into that,” Jasek said, drawing his everburning torch out from under his cloak, and lifting it to shine down the passage behind them.

They all looked in that direction, and saw the source of the whirring noise.

The corridor formed an uneven course, with deep alcoves flanking the center of the tunnel, forming nooks that alternated between the right and the left. Where those nooks intersected tall pillars jutted out into the corridor. At first, it looked as though some odd distortion surrounded those pillars, a blurring in the air around them, but as they continued to stare, they could see that the pillars were in fact spinning, and the noise they made came from long blades that were buried in the stone, blades that were cutting the air so fast that they formed a blur. The blades were long enough that they almost touched in the center of the corridor, forming a deadly arc of spinning steel that quite effectively barred their path forward.

 

[Vurt]

Dang! Is it so wrong of me to have been rooting for the trees?

Thanks for keeping the story alive, Lazybones! Getting myself caught up is something I look forward to every weekday.

 

[Lazybones]

Dang! Is it so wrong of me to have been rooting for the trees?

Thanks for keeping the story alive, Lazybones! Getting myself caught up is something I look forward to every weekday.

Glad you're enjoying the story, Vurt!

* * * * *

Chapter 36

CONVICTION


The spinning pillars and their attached blades continued their constant whirr, blocking the passage as effectively as a solid stone wall.

Aerim removed his helmet. There was a long shard of stone, a part of one of the stone treants’ branches, jutting from his neck. The vicious puncture trailed a line of bright red blood down his chest. He reached up and groped at it, yanking it out as soon as he got a decent grip. His hands were slick with blood, and more oozed out of the wound as he withdrew the shard. Ghazaran started toward him, another of his healing wands in his hands, but the Duke held him at bay with a raised hand.

As they watched, the long trail of blood... moved, with fat drops of the red liquid flowing back up into the deep wound. The opening in his neck seemed to drink up the blood, closing as the last of it was reabsorbed back into the Duke’s body.

Aerim could not see what happened, but he could see the reaction on the faces of the others. He drew off his left glove. There was a deep cut on the back of his hand that ran from the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, back down almost to his wrist. Blood was smeared around it, but as he watched, all of the crimson fluid seeped back into the slash, which closed back up, leaving his skin unmarred.

“What did you do to me?” he said, staring at his hand.

“I brought you back from an eternity of torment,” Ghazaran said simply. “But the Bloodways are still a part of you. I told you that, when I brought you back to life.”

“And this,” the Duke said, clenching his fist, “This, you call life?”

“This is not the time to address this,” the cleric said. “But should we complete our mission, I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to purge the taint you bear from you. And then I will grant you the other reward that I promised.”

The Duke’s stare was cold and penetrating, but he said nothing. Ghazaran did not wilt under that scrutiny, and just stood there, the two connected by an invisible line.

“Um... we’ve got bigger problems here, guys,” Jasek said. The thief had moved cautiously up almost to the very edge of the reach of the spinning blades. Their passage caused his cloak to flare up around his body, and he was very careful not to let its flapping ends anywhere near to the blurring steel tips. “There is a pattern here, but the gaps are almost imperceptible. And the pillars are interconnected, and spin in different directions; one screw up and you get stuck in between them, and carved into pieces.”

Ghazaran broke the contact between him and Aerim, and looked at the Seer. “You can transport us across?”

The wizard’s expression was dubious. “I can take five, no more. The warlock can obviously handle itself, but that still leaves six.”

Ozmad started to say something, but Aerim was already walking forward. Ghazaran opened his mouth to shout something, but the words were lost as the Duke stepped into the reach of the spinning blades. For a moment, the knight moved in a blur that seemed to echo the passage of the deadly steel, and then he was through the first gap, darting ahead out of the reach of the first gauntlet of pillars.

The others watched, transfixed by the scene, as the Duke made his way to the second set of deadly blades. He slowed for the barest instant, studying the pattern of spinning blades, and then he was diving through, against twisting his armored body to avoid the slashing blades.

For a moment, it looked as though he had a chance to escape the deadly circuit unscathed. But even as he dove forward through the deadly gap between the second pair of pillars, steel flashed, slicing hard into his right shoulder. They could see droplets of blood flicker in the air as they caught the light. Aerim turned and avoided being hurled back into the deadly zone betwixt the pillars, and staggered to the side, into one of the alcoves. He was drawn up short as another blade clipped his breastplate, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to knock him down. He took a step back and remained there in the nook, standing perfectly still in one of the narrow gaps between the blade arcs.

Ghazaran turned to the Seer. “Aid him.”

The wizard’s lips twisted into a faint sneer. “Give me one of the Tears, and I will consider it.”

Ghazaran looked back at Ozmad, but the elf looked slightly amused, if anything. “It would seem that our Duke has plans of his own,” he said.

Aerim crouched and darted forward again. He made his way past the third set of pillars, taking another hit, but getting past. He did not pause this time, and leapt forward into the last circuit of spinning blades.

“He’s going to make it,” Jasek said. But the Duke’s luck had been used up. A blade clipped his shoulder, hard, and then another caught him solidly across the body, knocking him back. Aerim was flung roughly into the deadly matrix between the sets of pillars. He hung there in the air, caught within a flashing storm of blades that rained down on him from multiple directions, holding him in place as they slammed hard into his body, twisting him around in a violent circle like some hapless child’s toy.

“Well, so much for the Duke,” the Seer drawled.

 

[Faren]

Wow, sure stinks to be Aerim. Start out a noble knight, then:
Get killed by Orcus, raised to be an undead wraith, then thousands of years later you get raised by some crazy priest who tricks you into being his undying, constantly bloodied meatshield so that he can try and end the world. And if I were Aerim, I'd be pretty sure Ghaz won't keep either of those two promises made to me, but probably too desperate to care.
Fun to read though. Wonder how the DBS are doing at this point, and I wonder how a match between Dar and Aerim would start and turn out.