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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3090382" data-attributes="member: 143">All true, all true! Blasted Websense! I generally try to post as soon as I get home on "posting days", usually around 5 p.m. Pacific Time. On the plus side, the story is REALLY rocketing along. I'm way ahead at the moment, so no shortage of posts to come for at least the near future. Who knows, if the stuff keeps pouring out of my keyboard the way it has been lately, I may eventually even go to M-F updates.     * * * * *Chapter 14REMATCH“We’re trapped between them!” Navev exclaimed.  “Yeah, we know that,” Dar said, picking up Valor and straightening.  “I guess we do this the hard way, then.”Tiros turned away from the wall, wheezing.  He looked like death, with pale skin and blood caking his jaw.  “Need... distraction...”“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work here, marshal,” Dar said.  “Those rats have the exit covered, and I don’t think that the dung monster is going to want to chat.”Tiros shook his head.  “Enemy... of... enemy...”Varo nodded.  “Wait... I think I see what he has in mind.  I think there was a flask of lamp oil in one of the packs...”  He slung off his burden and hastily dug through it. “Hurry, I can smell it!” Navev said.  “I don’t know what you have in mind, marshal, but this is going to be really grim,” Dar said.  Tiros didn’t respond, but he managed to stand, still clinging to the bloody wall.  He didn’t ask for his sword back, but instead drew his dagger.  He looked as though he would collapse at any moment. Varo found what he was looking for in Navev’s pack; a clay jug that smelled of oil.  He opened the flask, and looked around for a moment before pointing at the dead wererat.  “Drag him over here,” he said to Dar. “Something tells me I’m not going to like this,” the fighter said, darting out into the open for a moment and seizing the dead man by his ankle.  No arrows shot out at him, and a few seconds later he had the wererat’s corpse in the shelter of the corridor mouth. Varo poured the oil liberally over the man’s back, soaking his ragged shirt.  Almost off-handedly, Dar plucked the man’s purse from his belt.  “Now what?” he asked.  “The archers appear to be placed in cave mouths a good ten or more feet off the floor of the main cavern,” Varo said.  “But they are all on the far side of the barrier, in the passage.  That means that they have a limited field of view of the far side of the cavern.”“Yeah, but they got a nice clean line of fire for everything up to that point,” Dar said. “That, my friend, is where you come in.”“I knew I wasn’t going to like this.”Navev, who had been positioned deeper in the corridor, came back to them in a rush.  “It’s here... it’s coming, I can see it!”Ten seconds later, the companions burst out into the cavern.  Dar carried the dead wererat on his shoulder, the creature’s back alive with flames.  A greasy plume of gray smoke trailed behind him, sick with the stench of burning flesh.  The fighter ran toward the stone barrier with his passenger. Arrows erupted from the tunnel, where dark forms could just be seen on ledges high above the ground.  One stabbed into the center of the wererat’s back, while a second grazed Dar’s helmet, causing the fighter to stagger and nearly lose his momentum.  From behind the warrior, an eldritch blast from Navev shot up into the passage.  They couldn’t see if it scored a hit, but it certainly drew a response, as an arrow came streaking out toward the warlock.  The missile came dead-on toward the center of Navev’s chest, but at the last instant the arrow impacted the shifting red aura that surrounded him, and glanced aside as if it had hit a steel shield.  Varo and Tiros, the latter keeping up through pure will alone, rushed across the room, using the fighter’s charge as a distraction.  The marshal carried Valor again, and he seemed to draw some strength from the weapon’s blue shine.  Navev was only a few steps behind.  Another arrow missed him outright, and he hurled another bolt of energy before he joined the cleric and marshal in the cover offered by the far wall of the corridor, out of the line of sight of the archers in the passageway. Dar ran forward to the edge of the mound of rubble.  With a loud cry he hurled the burning corpse of the wererat forward onto the berm.  He staggered back, a few licks of flame clinging to his arms and shoulders, the left side of his face stained with soot.  He saw his sword where he’d dropped it earlier, and picked it up just in time to see a familiar sight: the giant rats, surging down toward him.  This time, Dar didn’t stick around; he turned and ran toward the others.  His luck finally broke, however, when an arrow slammed into his left leg with enough force to penetrate the limb fully, the bloody head jutting from the far side of the limb. “Son of a bitch!” the fighter exclaimed, limping toward where the others waited.  Navev spotted the archer, a wererat in hybrid form leaning out from a ledge just inside the mouth of the passage.  The warlock fired a blast at him, catching the archer by surprise.  The bolt of energy caught it just below its right knee, and knocked it off balance.  The creature let out a cry as it toppled forward, and fell out of sight to the ground beyond the stone barrier. The dire rats, meanwhile, charged down the rampart and in pursuit of Dar, moving far faster than the critically injured fighter. And then, the dung monster appeared. The massive blob of taint swept forward over the stone into the chamber.  It immediately turned to its right, absorbing the corpses of the nearest slain rats as it came.  The dead bodies formed a trail that led right toward the mound of stones, where the body of the wererat continued to burn.“There...” Tiros said, pointing.  From the light of Varo’s torch they could now see the stream that bisected the chamber, running swiftly from their right to left, emerging from a dark opening and vanishing through another in the far wall.  The stream was only about ten feet across, but in their current condition, it looked like a lot farther. Dar was still coming toward them, hacking rats as he came.  The dung monster was halfway to the barrier, and drawing closer.  There were no more wererats visible, although none of them could see what was going on in the passageway from their current vantage. “We’ve got to get across,” Tiros said. “We’ve got to help Dar,” the cleric said.  He lifted his mace and ran forward, smashing one of the rats clinging to the fighter’s legs.  Dar, his face a mask of agony, lifted his sword to kill another, but the rats suddenly broke and fled, screeching as they sped out of the vicinity of the approaching dung monster. “They’ve got the right idea,” Dar gasped, as Varo helped him to where the others waited on the edge of the stream.  “You’ll never make it like this,” Varo said, laying him down.  “This will hurt.”The fighter gasped as the cleric straightened his wounded leg.  “Why must you always... belabor... the obvious.”  He clenched his jaw, but still let out a cry of pain as Varo grabbed both ends of the arrow, snapped off the end, and pulled it through the wound.  He immediately followed with a cure moderate wounds that closed the wound and restored some color to the fighter’s cheeks.  “That’s the last of my higher-order spells,” he announced.  “Best to avoid getting seriously injured.”“Words of wisdom,” Dar said.  The dung monster had reached the barrier, and surged up it, enveloping the smoking form of the dead wererat.  “Time’s up.  If we give it a choice, it’ll go for the easy prey.”Without further discussion, the companions waded into the stream.  The current was strong, pulling at them, but the bracing chill of the water shocked them into an added burst of vigor.  They made their way across—all save Navev, who started to falter, dragged down by the current.  The warlock was shunted toward the far exit despite his frantic struggles, and his story would have likely ended there, had not Dar rushed along the far bank and seized his tunic before he could disappear from view. “There’s not time for a pleasure swim, wizard,” he said, dragging the soaked man onto the shore.The companions gathered, and looked around.  This side of the cavern was smaller than the far side, but it still extended for a good fifty or so feet back from the stream’s edge.  There were no obvious exits, except for a few small tunnel openings too small to accommodate them.  They gave those obvious rat-holes a careful look, but nothing stirred to threaten them. “The dung monster’s gone across the barrier,” Varo noted. “I hope it enjoys rat,” Dar muttered. The companions were exhausted, but they knew that this position was too exposed to risk rest.  They drank from the stream and washed the blood and filth from their garments.  Tiros collapsed on the ground and did not stir. “He’s been poisoned, badly,” Varo said to Dar.  “Both from the arrow he took, and the effects of that dust.”“Can you help him, like you helped me before?” “Yes, but I need to rest first, and regain my spells.”“Well, I don’t think this is...”“There!” Navev said, pointing.  They all turned to see the dung monster, returning across the barrier.  The stone rise gave it no hindrance whatsoever.  It came down to the bank of the stream, absorbing the last few rat corpses.  The companions drew back, ready to flee again.  But the monster merely hesitated a moment at the edge of the water, then turned and headed back to the corridor toward its lair.  “You were right, marshal,” Dar said.  “It won’t cross running water.”“It may just be sated,” Tiros said.  “I wouldn’t wager on it being incapable of surmounting that obstacle as well; if nothing else it could climb the walls and get across that way.”“The rats may be back at any moment,” Varo said.  “We should see if we can get past, while they are still at bay.”Working together, the four men made their way back across the stream.  They carefully approached the stone rampart, but there was no sign of the wererats.  They crossed over, eyes on the empty ledges above.  The passageway beyond led to a set of broad stone steps that led downward into darkness. Beaten, battered, and blooded, the Doomed Bastards moved down to the second level of the dungeons of Rappan Athuk.</blockquote>

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