The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 55

LOST


“Light,” Jasek said.

The small stone in the thief’s hand flared, casting a steady illumination that fully revealed the small chamber. There wasn’t much to reveal; the entire place was maybe six paces across, the irregular stone walls crowding close to a ceiling that was too low for a man to stand without brushing it in most places. Walls, floor, and ceiling alike were all of that odd banded stone that repaired itself when damaged. There was one exit, a low tunnel that was really little more than a crawlspace.

Falah was on his knees, coughing. Jasek touched the necklace he wore under his tunic; with it he could breath easily, but he could still taste the taint on the air.

“The air is bad here,” he said. “We need to find a way out.”

Falah could not reply, but he nodded. Jasek led the way, fitting into the low tunnel easily. He glanced back at Falah, but the Razhuri followed without comment, his sword scraping on the floor behind him. The man could be single-minded in his actions.

The tunnel continued on, curving slightly to the left. There was one particularly close spot where he feared that Falah would get stuck, but the man merely shifted his sword and then dragged himself through, using his strong arms and legs to navigate the tight squeeze. And then they were through into a larger space. The tunnel opened onto a ledge that ran along the edge of the cavern, which was large enough that Jasek’s light failed to illuminate the floor below. The air was thick and moist; likely there was water below. The toxin in the air was also strong, as Falah’s distress continued.

“It looks like there’s another tunnel at the far end of the ledge,” Jasek said. “Let me check it out. If necessary, I’ll find us a way to get down to the floor of this room.”

Falah managed a grunt between coughs that Jasek accepted as agreement. The ledge was tight, ranging from a scant foot to almost three, but he was used to negotiating such obstacles, and he felt little danger of falling. Behind him, he heard Falah moving forward along the ledge, not really following him, but just trying to find a place where he could maneuver.

Some primal sense warned him, even as a sudden chill filled the air.

He looked down to see a massive form emerge from the darkness below. It was a huge worm, its black hide glistening, sucking the light into it. It moved with silence, and as Jasek looked at it, he felt as though someone had stabbed an icicle into his chest. His heart froze, clenched in sudden terror.

A noise came from Falah, and the thief realized that the monster’s long head was rising toward the fighter, not him. And then a blast of pure, unrelenting cold hit him, swallowing sight and sound and everything except for the feeling of being frozen. He was surprised when it passed, but before he could see clearly again he heard a potent THUMP that nearly caused him to plummet off the ledge.

Stumbling forward, he looked back, and wished he hadn’t.

The ledge was covered with slicks of ice all the way back to the mouth of the low tunnel from which they’d emerged. Falah was no longer there, but where he’d been standing Jasek could see gobs of red clinging to the ice-streaked stone. His gaze shifted to the chamber below, where he could see the black worm, its body rippling at the edges of his light. Its head had turned away, panning a leisurely course away from him, but as he watched it continued full around until it was starting to come closer again.

He didn’t hesitate further, and dove forward. Reckless, his boots just starting to slide on the slick rock with each step, he nearly toppled off the ledge a dozen times. His focus was on the tunnel opening on the far side of the chamber, where the ledge came to an end. It had looked like a tunnel, anyway, when he’d entered the room; if it was just a niche that came to an end, he was dead.

Of course, he might be dead in any case. He could feel the cold of the creature again, somehow piercing even the chill that had suffused him from its cone of cold. A lassitude seeped into him, but he fought it off, knowing that to falter, even for a moment, would end him.

He didn’t have to look back to know that the monster’s head was surging forward to engulf him. An involuntary shriek was torn from his lips as he leapt forward, diving for the tunnel mouth.

 

[Richard Rawen]

...

Aldos did not feel the impact. He was only dimly aware of the body of the Drusian under his. His vision was already growing dim, but he could just feel the man’s body, convulsing. The knight’s lips twisted into a faint smile; the man’s neck was broken.

And then, everything dissolved into black.

That was inspired LB
thanks
M

 

[Nightbreeze]

Nice job on Aldos.

Also, I regret the death of Falah. I will miss him

 

[Burningspear]

still here and enjoying the read, and now i will lurk again...

 

[Lazybones]

Thanks for the posts, everyone. This should be an interesting week in Doomed Bastards-ville.

* * * * *

Chapter 56

SOURCES OF POWER


The red beam filled the chamber with a bright crimson glow. The room was an almost perfect hemisphere, with the floor slanting down slightly to form a shallow bowl. In the center of the floor a tall pedestal that seemed to rise out of the substance of the ground, the only feature of the place other than the source of the beam. That source seemed to hover above the top of the pedestal rather than be supported by it, a translucent sphere of brilliant red energy with a diameter that approached five feet.

Ghazaran held the dagger-key tightly as he stepped out of the beam. Even with the protection of that device, he’d felt a penetrating sensation during his brief transit down the tunnel from the prison chamber, and he had a deep conviction that without the key, that beam would have torn the very flesh from his bones. His eyes were drawn to the sphere. If Ozmad was right, the key was the only thing that could damage that sphere, and bring down the energy beam.

He took a step forward, but before he could approach the sphere, there was a flare of power, accompanied by a stinging explosion of ash and flames, and a sudden odor of brimstone. Ghazaran barely had time to fling up an arm to protect his face before the pit fiend stepped into the room.

The devil did not mess around, immediately hitting him with a meteor swarm.

Ghazaran staggered back against the wall as the streaking spheres struck. Two of them clipped his arm and shoulder respectively, but he fared decently well against the explosion of fire. The attack penetrated his spell resistance—a pit fiend was no trivial caster—but his warding against fire absorbed almost all of the damage from the swarm.

The fiend, immune to the flames that swirled back from the blasts around it, grunted slightly as its foe absorbed its attack. It started toward him, preparing a greater dispel as it came.

Ghazaran did not wait for the devil to come within reach. Unrolling another scroll from the Camarian church’s cache, he held it up so that the fiend could see the sunburst etched into the back of the parchment. He held the depleted chrysalium crystal he had used in the battle with the mummies and their lich master, but he felt barely a flicker of power from it. Still he channeled that flicker into his casting, and drew as well upon the might of his own patron, the chaos that was anaethema to lawful beings such as the pit fiend.

It was a close thing, very close, but the banishment spell took hold, and the devil was cast screaming back into the Hells.

After taking a deep breath to steady himself, the cleric stepped toward the radiant sphere.

* * * * *

Ozmad stepped warily out of the blue beam into a room that seemed to be a smaller version of the vast hemisphere that housed the pyramidal prison of the Ravager. The ogre’s skin still tingled; the dagger had protected him personally from any ill effects, but the beam had nevertheless completely suppressed all of his magic items. It was similar to what his own antimagic field spell did, yet the feeling had been... alien.

He held the mithral dagger with the star sapphire in the hilt in one hand, and lugged his huge mattock with the other. He looked at the glowing sphere in the center of the room, the source of the beam, but made no move toward it, not yet.

Only a faint shimmer in the air announced the arrival of the guardian. The thing that appeared, floating above the floor, was familiar, if massive for its breed. Ten eyes on twisting stalks quickly swiveled to focus on him, and as its body turned, Ozmad could see the last already opening, a big orb that bulged so wide that the ogre could have spread both hands across and still not fully covered it.

The ogre didn’t wait for that eye to face him. He summoned his magic, held at the ready for just this confrontation. His antimagic field erupted not an instant too soon, as several beams lanced out from the beholder’s eyestalks, vanishing as they struck his barrier. The invisible cone of antimagic that issued from the creature’s central eye filled the space between them, but the two auras simply met without further effect. The blue beam was completely unaffected by the clashing fields, and the blue sphere did not so much as flicker, even though it was within the effect of both.

Ozmad tucked the dagger into his belt and charged, lifting his huge mattock. Even with its magic nullified, it was a considerable weapon, and the room, though large, was not big enough so that the beholder could escape its long reach. The creature seemed to recognize that as well, for it stopped firing off its beams, and slid toward him, rows of long teeth appearing as a big chunk of its lower body split open into a truly fearsome set of jaws.

The beholder was an impressive combatant, but its main potency lay in its magical abilities, and it could not overcome the ogre in a solely physical confrontation. Less than a minute after his arrival, Ozmad stepped forward over the deflated corpse of the thing, and approached the blue sphere.

* * * * *

Zafir Navev seemed utterly unfazed by the yellow beam as it stepped out of the tunnel into the smaller domed chamber. A golden sphere hovered atop a pedestal in the center of the room, radiant with light that gathered into the beam of energy that departed through the passage it had just navigated. The mithral dagger shone brightly in that light, especially the small globe of yellow topaz set into its hilt; that glowed like a small sun.

The mummy looked around; it had grown wary. Part of the thing wanted destruction, craved it, but another part clung to existence like lichen on a rock, unable to break free. Power flared around it, a cloak that it wore constantly now, enough power to have already sundered the grip of sanity, had the creature been mortal.

The guardian appeared from behind the pedestal. Navev faced it without concern, although the thing was the strongest yet of the three entities bound to the power sources. The skull hovered in the air, flashes of light coming from it as the gems set into its eye sockets and jaws caught the glow of the golden sphere. The demilich drew upon its powerful magic and unleashed a green ray intended to disintegrate the mummy.

The spell was potent, unbelievably so, but as the beam struck the mummy, it flared against a frisson of red energies that flared bright against the emerald lance of the demilich’s spell. Navev’s entropic warding invocation deflected the energies of the spell, which flashed in a bright cascade around it, causing no harm to the creature within the bright display.

Navev countered immediately with an eldritch blast that arced a black line that slashed into the glowing skull like a whip. But the demilich’s defenses were far more potent than those of the mummy, and the dark bolt merely dissolved into nothing as it struck.

The demilich tried again with an empowered fireball that unleashed a blazing fury of heat and eager flames throughout the small chamber. The spell was appropriately selected against the typical weakness of a mummy, but Navev’s amulet offered a strong defense against fire, and while the undead warlock did not escape unscathed, the flames failed to consume it.

Navev stepped forward as the fire of the spell died. The demilich drifted back, wary of a physical confrontation, but the warlock’s focus was not upon the guardian. Instead, it lifted the mithral dagger-key, and lunged forward to strike at the sphere of golden energy in the center of the room.

The noise of the impact was terrible, like the crash of a dozen glass windows being smashed in all at once. The sphere withstood the blow, the dagger rebounding from its surface as though it had been made of stone rather than light. But as the mummy drew back, a narrow crack was visible in the sphere, and tiny filaments of golden substance trailed from the tiny opening, like hints of fog leaking out from within.

The demilich pressed its attack, hitting Navev with a lightning bolt that blasted solidly into the mummy’s back, passing through it to flash against the sphere. The spell had no effect upon the translucent orb, but Navev was staggered by the impact. Its wrappings hung from its body in blackened streaks, now, revealing the corrupt flesh beneath, scabrous strips of flesh trailing in long swathes from its frame to reveal the stark white of bone beneath. It created the horrible image of ribbons trailing from the coat of a reveler on Harvestide, the grim spectacle making a mockery of everything that was wholesome and good in life.

Navev did not turn to face the demilich. Driven now by something beyond even the unlife that sustained it, it lifted the dagger, and lunged forward again to assault the sphere. The trailing wisps of fog coming out of the damaged globe spun around his body as he moved, and another resounding crash of power filled the chamber as magics collided once more.

 

[Faren]

Bastards-ville
I'm confused though. I thought Ghazaran died with Aldos on the railing. Or was that Jasek? To echo, that was a great death scene with Aldos.
Also, Oh Noes!! Again!! Teh ward iz brokenz! Or allmost!

 

[Lazybones]

Bastards-ville
I'm confused though. I thought Ghazaran died with Aldos on the railing. Or was that Jasek? To echo, that was a great death scene with Aldos.
Also, Oh Noes!! Again!! Teh ward iz brokenz! Or allmost!

It was Parzad, Ghazaran's psionicist flunky/henchman.

* * * * *

Chapter 57

AN END IN BATTLE


Looking into the eyes of the ravager spawn, Dar saw the certainty of death staring back at him. The creatures were not intelligent, at least not in any way more than a cunning beast, but it had marked him and his blade, and recognized him as the foe most capable of harming it.

There was naught to do but to press his charge, and meet it in a last confrontation.

But as the monster lunged, it suddenly screamed out in pain. Dar saw Kiron, his huge sword blazing with holy power, draw back from the powerful stroke he’d just delivered to the juncture where its foremost leg met its body. His sword trailed droplets of the creature’s blood, but there was far more trailing from the knight’s armor

Dar knew what the man had done, what he’d sacrificed to give him an opening, even before the creature’s head snapped back. The wedge-shaped head slammed into the knight with the force of a battering ram, and he went flying back, twisting into a spin as one of his legs clipped the hindquarters of the beast. His flight ended only when he struck the ruined threshold of the vault door at the chamber entrance, and he fell hard, motionless. Maricela was running toward him even before he stopped moving, but Dar could not guess if he still lived after accepting a blow like that.

The spawn had gotten revenge for the painful wound it had taken, but it still remembered Dar. But as it swiveled its head back around, the veteran fighter was already moving. Everything seemed to slow down around him. He felt the jarring of his boots on the hard stone, each long stride sending a painful jolt up through his battered body. He had not been healed, but he no longer wondered at what gave him the strength to keep going. The sword in his hand blazed with a power that seemed to pour into him, and he felt a surge from it, something so familiar that it just seemed right. He and the sword were one.

The dragon’s head came down to meet his charge, its jaws opening so wide that for a moment it was as though those huge teeth were all that there was in the world. Yet it seemed almost trivial for him to duck under that sweeping lunge. The creature’s foul breath washed over him in a flood, and something hard grazed his back, but then it was past.

He planted his feet. One of the monster’s feet was already coming forward. The foot-long claws were like daggers; they would tear into his guts and spread his organs all over the ground. His armor would be of no use against a foe that could dig through solid rock the way that a child tore through sand. It was coming, but that inevitable contact was just a distraction; it meant nothing.

A hum filled his head as he thrust upward with Justice. Upward through the leathery flesh under the creature’s jaw, flesh that parted before his sword like taut cloth before the tailor’s shears. Blood spouted down onto his hands, burning as it hissed against his flesh. It meant nothing. The creature, its dim brain feeling pain, started to jerk away, but Corath Dar would not be denied. His hands tightened around the hilt of his sword, and he thrust deeper, penetrating through the back of the creature’s mouth, and then again into hard, muscled flesh. The sword penetrated the roof of its mouth and into the cavernous gap within the interior of its skull. Dar thrust still deeper, the crossguard and hilt of the sword vanishing along with his fists into the opening he had cut in the base of its jaw. He somehow knew when the tip of the blade entered its brain, and he cried out as the power flowed out of him, or through him, into the creature. Order flared where nothing but chaos had existed, and he felt the link binding the creature to life abruptly severed.

But momentum could not simply be destroyed so easily. Everything returned to normal speed even as the claws pierced his gut, and then he was spinning away, his hands empty, clutching at the air trying to regain what he’d lost. By the time he hit the floor, his lower body slick with his own blood, he’d already lost everything but a vague sensation of quiet, and then that too faded into gray as he slipped into unconsciousness.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 58

FIRST INTERVENTION


A reverberation that was part sound, part echo of raw power, filled the small chamber as Ghazaran struck the red sphere with the dagger-key. The glowing orb withstood the impact, but as the cleric drew back a faint wisp of crimson fog trailed after him, oozing slowly out of a crack in the surface of the sphere. The red beam continued unabated through the shaft that led to the great vault that was the Ravager’s prison, but flickers of light began to play about the interior of the sphere.

Ghazaran stepped forward to continue his destruction of the sphere, but before he could strike it again another entered the chamber, exploding in a sudden flurry of motion from the round tunnel. Letellia darted to the side and spun to a stop as she emerged from that passage. Fresh blood, garish in the red light that filled the room, spread across her body, seeping through her robes. She had not been able to escape the red beam in her navigation of the tunnel, and while her overland flight spell had enabled her to move through it quickly, she had not escaped the painful effects of that deadly ray. She was pale, and had to be weak from the blood she was losing, but the silver staff in her hands did not quake as she focused her attentions on Ghazaran.

“I had hoped to confront Zhunxa here, but his lackey will do,” Letellia said, her voice tightly focused, the antipathy there barely contained.

“Chaos will not be denied,” the cleric said, uttering a word of blasphemy. But when the echoes that dread syllable faded, the sorceress stood there utterly unaffected.

“My soul is not so weak,” she said, lifting her staff. Ghazaran took a step toward her, as if to attack her, or draw close enough to deliver a touch spell. The dagger in his hand looked menacing, but Letellia knew enough to recognize that it was among the least dangerous of the cleric’s weapons. The sorceress drifted back and up, toward the domed ceiling. The chamber was not especially large, but the ceiling was high enough so that she could easily ascend out of his reach. An unarmored man might have been able to leap up and seize her, but it looked like a dubious feat for the armored cleric.

But Ghazaran’s threat had been a feint, for he suddenly reversed course and lunged again at the sphere, the dagger flashing in his hand. But Letellia merely gestured and invoked her magic, and a wall of force sprang into being, cutting the room in half, with her and the cleric on one side, and the glowing sphere on the other. The priest bounced off of the barrier, the mithral dagger scraping harmlessly off its surface.

“It ends here, cleric,” she said. She extended her staff, and bright tendrils of electrical energy began to flicker down its length.

“Yes, it ends here!” Ghazaran shrieked. Lowering the dagger, he drew his other hand from a pouch at his throat, his fingers clenching into a fist around something small in his hand. He fell into a crouch even as Letellia blasted him with a chain lightning spell, the magic empowered by her staff. But the cleric had already called upon his own magic, and even as the last syllable of his incantation were torn from his lips in a scream of pain, he smashed his fist into the floor with what had to be enough force to break bones in his hand. Letellia could feel the power that erupted from that contact, a power augmented by a sudden surge that she could feel but not identify. Something in that surge of power felt... familiar.

The power traveled outward through the surrounding stone, amplifying several times over as the energy from a shattered Tear of the Gods took Ghazaran’s earthquake spell and transformed it into something greater. The chamber buckled as that power seized it, and the magical stone buckled under its grip. The wall of force could not stop the ceiling on both sides of it from collapsing. Letellia darted back in alarm, but she could not escape the sudden deluge of falling stone. The last things she heard were the laughter of the cleric, and a noise that sounded like a million glass crystals being shattered all at once.

 

[Faren]

Parzad! That was his name! Thanks.
A couple of questions if you don't mind.
1.The final scene with Dar and the spawn was well-written, but I got the impression that he was somehow bonding with his new weapon. Was something going on other than a really effective attack roll in that scene?

2. Did Ghazaran just use his last Tear there with that earthquake, breaking his promise with Aerim? I seem to recall him saying he had only one left, but I guess he could be lying.
Again, fun read!

 

[Lazybones]

Parzad! That was his name! Thanks.
A couple of questions if you don't mind.
1.The final scene with Dar and the spawn was well-written, but I got the impression that he was somehow bonding with his new weapon. Was something going on other than a really effective attack roll in that scene?

Well, remember that Dar had 9 levels of the Battle Scion prestige class, levels that were specifically tied to the sword Valor. The chapter above represented Justice (which included pieces of Valor, after all) awakening to him, so that he could fully draw upon that nascent connection.

In game terms, there wasn't much real effect, since the ravager spawn aren't technically fiends, which most of Dar's custom PrC was geared toward facing. However, I also allowed the re-bonded sword to penetrate the ravager spawn's DR.

2. Did Ghazaran just use his last Tear there with that earthquake, breaking his promise with Aerim? I seem to recall him saying he had only one left, but I guess he could be lying.
Again, fun read!

Heh, pretty much every time Ghazaran opens his mouth, he's lying to someone. Lying when he said that he was out of tears, in the Bloodways, lying again when he told the Seer that he had one more tear, but it wasn't with him (after the first confrontation with Amurru) and lying again when he'd said that he was going to save a tear for Aerim.

Those CE priests, can't trust them at all.

* * * * *

Chapter 59

SECOND INTERVENTION


Even as the crumpled form of the beholder trembled its last at his feet, Ozmad stepped over it and approached the brilliant blue orb that floated over the low pedestal in the center of the chamber. He dropped the oversized mattock, knowing that it would be of no use against the seemingly fragile globe that powered the sapphire beam. The dagger with its blue gem was still tucked into his belt, and he drew it out, savoring the cold feel of the bare mithral against his fingers. All of his years of planning were finally coming to fruition. The power contained in this place was vast beyond comparison, and he would soon have possession of it. The release of the Ravager was almost incidental to that goal, but unleashing it should give him time to collect the prizes contained within these spheres, including first of all the one that was now literally within his reach.

But even as he lifted the dagger to destroy the warding sphere, he paused. It was not any remorse or doubt that stayed his hand, but a sudden awareness of power. The ogre mage turned back toward the tunnel, just in time to greet the newcomer that stepped out of the blue beam into the chamber.

“You are persistent, guardian,” he said.

“The Ravager must not be unleashed upon the world again,” the lich said, its voice sounding hollow from within the depths of its skull.

“You grow repetitive,” Ozmad replied. “You cannot defeat me; your sorceries cannot harm me.”

The lich took a step forward, but paused at the edge of the antimagic field, as though it could see the invisible threshold of the effect. The ogre let out a small chuckle.

“A wise decision. Neither your magic nor the fell properties of your undead state will have any effect within my ward.”

But then Amurru said, “I wish that your ability to use antimagic not function for the next sixty seconds.”

Ozmad’s eyes widened in surprise, even as he felt the lich’s invocation take hold. Inside his defensive field, no magic should have worked, yet something tore at his spell from within, and he could feel the familiar tingles as his dormant wards took hold as their normal function returned. Some of them, anyway; most of the shorter-term protections he typically wore had expired since he had originally created the antimagic field.

Ozmad knew that the guardian’s power far exceeded his own; the wish confirmed it if nothing else had. But with the power inside the blue sphere within his grasp, he could not bring himself to flee.

To buy himself a moment’s respite, he invoked a resilient sphere around himself.

But even as the magic flowed at his call, he felt an invisible knife rip through it, sundering the spell. Ozmad’s surprise deepened into a sudden fear... how could the lich have reacted so quickly, so soon after casting another spell?

He realized, too late, that the lich’s dispel magic had been quickened. The ogre tried to teleport away, knowing it was too late, even before the lich invoked a power word that slammed through his spell resistance as though it were not even there, knocking him reeling. Stunned, he desperately tried to clear his mind enough to summon his magic. He was strong enough so that the spell’s effect would last only a few seconds, but the small part of his brain that was not befogged was shouting that the lich would not spend those few moments idle.

Just as the wisps of mental fog were beginning to clear, Ozmad felt a cold chill that stabbed through his body like a knife. Looking down, he saw the lich standing before him, careless of the huge arms that had crushed it once before. Ozmad realized now that he’d critically underestimated this foe, even as the paralysis took hold, and his muscles clenched into frozen immobility. He knew enough of the undead to know that his fate was sealed now, even as gravity took hold of him, and he toppled over, hitting the ground with a loud thump.

He could only see what was directly ahead of him, the chamber floor and a slice of the wall. His senses told him of the lich’s presence, even before he felt its cold hands, prying the blue dagger from his grasp.

“I must attend to your allies,” it said. “But I will return for you. You belong to this place, now.”

Ozmad tried to struggle against the paralysis that held him, but he could only quiver slightly, helpless even to speak a word against the fate that awaited him.