NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3136471" data-attributes="member: 143">I'm having a lot of fun writing Dar.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Well, keep in mind that not everything is represented in the story. For example, the marshal's greater aura is soaking up 1 point of damage from virtually every non-surprise attack against him and his companions. That adds up, over time.   Thanks! I have spent a very long time refining my writing style, so I'm glad it's coming across well. * * * * * Chapter 25THE LOST LEGIONThe door burst open.  Beyond lay a large room, but they could only see part of it due to the angle of the door.  But their vantage was enough to see a horde of ghouls, their leathery hides foul with dirt and old blood, clambering over each other to be the first to get their hands on the living flesh that they could smell from the corruption of their dank lair. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a stronger, sickening stench that came with the rush, suggesting that at least some of the creatures were ghasts. Dar lifted his sword, but Tiros held him back.  Even as the two men waited, Varo finished his incantation, and a pair of oblong insects, each almost six feet long, materialized in the tight confines of the corridor in front of them.  They were beetles, their gray carapaces marked with spots of white that seemed to glow uncannily bright in the light of their torches. The beetles immediately attacked.  The first seized the first charging ghoul, seizing its left leg at the knee with its mandibles.  With a crushing squeeze, the beetle took off the creature’s leg.  The ghoul fell forward onto it, trying to claw past its armored carapace, but for the moment, it was unsuccessful. The second beetle lifted its body and fired a spray of acidic droplets into the gathered mass of undead.  The stuff started burning the flesh of the undead creatures that it touched, but the majority were still beyond the door’s threshold, and were not affected. “Damn it, I could really use a bow right about now,” Dar said.  “Just watch for any that get past the bugs!” Tiros returned. The ghouls surged forward again, leaping at the beetles.  One tried to bypass them entirely, jumping between them, snarling at the humans behind.  But the distance was too great, and the monster stumbled on a beetle as it landed, pitching it forward to fall at Dar’s feet. “Happy birthday to me,” the fighter said, stabbing the monster in the back.  But not only did his thrust not kill it, but the ghast surged forward, seizing Dar’s ankle in its jaws.  Dar yelled as it bit through his boot.  He pulled free before the creature could do more than superficial damage, but to his horror Dar felt the familiar icy cold chill spread upward through his body from the abused limb, and his muscles tightened, freezing him in place.  The ghast snarled and seized onto the fighter with its claws, pulling itself up.  It opened its jaws wide, eager to tear open its helpless foe’s throat.  But before it could finish him, Tiros laid into the creature with Valor.  The ghast shrieked and turned on the marshal, but before it could attack again, Varo lifted his sigil and unleashed a wave of crackling violet energy through the hall. The ghast froze, and the two closest ghouls did as well.  But more were coming; one of the beetles was already down, with a ghoul ripping its head off with a noisy sound of crunching hide, and the second was oozing pale liquid from a number of ugly wounds.  Tiros knew that he had to buy Varo some more time.  Ignoring the cowering ghast, which was temporarily reduced as a threat, he stepped in front of Dar and raised Valor in a high defensive stance.  He did not have to wait long, as a pair of ghouls surged forward around the still-struggling beetle and came at him.  He stabbed the first in the throat, seriously damaging it, but not enough to stop it.  He paid for that a moment later as both creatures laid into him.  The one he’d hurt drew its claws along his arms, opening long but shallow gashes in the skin, while the second lowered its head and tried to take him down, biting at his side just above the hip.  He felt the dark power of the ghouls’ touch surging through him, but with duty and desperation fortifying him, he was able to resist their paralysis.  Letting out an uncharacteristic shout, he thrust Valor up with both hands through the injured ghoul’s body.  The undead  monster was knocked back as the sword transfixed it, and it fell to the ground, destroyed.  Once again, the cleric’s power surged, and once again ghouls and ghasts were caught within the unholy web of energy.  The second ghoul that Tiros was fighting mewled and fell back, while two ghasts that had been poised to leap upon the hard-pressed fighter likewise retreated.  The number of rebuked creatures choking the hallway now worked to their advantage, as it made it increasingly difficult for the others to get to them.  But thus far, there seemed to be an unending supply of them, and more still crowded in the doorway to the chamber.  The beetles were gone, torn to pieces and dissolving into nothing as their bodies returned to whence they came.  Another ghoul, its face scarred with acid burns, came at Tiros.  He met its charge, avoiding a sweeping claw, but then another came at him from the left, the sickening stench declaring it a ghast.  It moved with incredible quickness, and it briefly snared the old marshal’s off-arm in its slavering jaws.  Tiros screamed and tore free, and once again barely resisted succumbing to its paralysis.  A third creature tried to get past him, to get at Dar or Varo, but Tiros blocked it with his body, taking yet another hit in the process.  The aged warrior’s limbs were now covered in streaks of scarlet, and the strokes of his sword were becoming wild as blood loss began to take its effect upon him. Dar’s angry shout announced the fighter’s return to the fray.  He ran a ghoul through, driving it before him to the ground.  His follow-up sliced through the ghast’s body, opening a wound that would have disemboweled a normal man.  Tiros took advantage, taking off its left arm at the elbow with a wild swing from Valor. But somehow, it fought on, driven to a frenzy by the press of battle.  The other creatures were crawling over the bodies of their cowed peers, knocking them down in their haste to rend warm flesh.  Varo rebuked them a third time, but it was clear that the cleric’s strength was beginning to fade.  This time, the ghasts snarled and resisted the surge of negative energy, although several of the remaining ghouls succumbed.  There were only a few left that were still attacking, including a pair of ghasts that were engaged in close quarters with Dar and Tiros. The ghast that Tiros had “disarmed” shrieked and leapt for the marshal’s throat.  He tried to get away from it, but it still managed to seize his shoulder, biting down with enough fury to penetrate the shoulder plate of his armor.  Driven back by the violence of the attack, the old general finally succumbed to the icy chill of paralysis, and he fell to the ground, the ghast on top of him. The other ghast came at Dar with an all-out attack.  Its claws dug into the fighter’s torso, and even as the hapless warrior’s body began to tighten, it caught his wrist in its jaws, biting down hard.  Dar, paralyzed, couldn’t even scream as his sword was wrenched from his grip, and he too fell hard. The ghasts had their victims under their control, but for all their bloodlust, they had an even greater hatred for the one that had rebuked their kin.  Both creatures, their jaws trailing gobs of bright red, looked up, and fixed their hateful eyes on Varo, now standing alone in the corridor.</blockquote>

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