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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3223488" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 58RAGE AND VALORThe demon stood triumphant over its battered adversaries, seemingly unstoppable. The last cleric still standing on the battlefield—save for the high priest still atop the pedestal in the center of the room—came at Talen even as Dar charged toward his doom.  Talen had seen Allera and Varo go down, and knew that the demon would make short work of the mercenary.  Not even trying to avoid the cleric’s attack, which caromed hard into his side, he ran past the man, slashing out low with his sword.  The blow hit the cleric’s right knee with precision, all but tearing through the joint.  The cleric screamed and fell, clutching at the limb, now held to his body by only a few strips of flesh and ligament.  Talen was already charging at the demon, but the momentary delay meant that he was too late to stop it from delivering the bone-jarring hit that sent the mercenary to his knees. Talen yelled in defiance and stabbed at the demon’s leathery back.  His sword cut through empty air, sundering another mirror image.  The captain’s heart sank as the demon, belatedly noticing his presence, swiveled its monstrous head almost full around, fixing that horrible, malevolent stare upon him.  He was a dead man, he knew. Dar slid Valor from its sheath.  The cold tingle of life seeping from his body was almost too much for him, battered and broken as he was.  But something, whether instinct, or some other mysterious agency, took over, and almost before he realized what he was doing, he was driving the axiomatic blade into the demon’s gut.  The vrock screamed, the sound a thousand times worse than any sound any of them had heard before in their lives.  The demon beat its wings furiously—almost knocking down Talen—and it tore itself off the blade, leaving its entrails behind it in a trail.  The demon fixed a furious look upon the mercenary... ...and disappeared.  Valor fell to the ground, and as it did, Dar felt some clarity cut through the fog that had fallen over his senses.  He felt like he’d been wrung out, and every muscle in his body seemed to have its own distinctive and particular tingle of pain.  He felt most like falling down in a nice heap and sleeping for the next decade or so, but it was not to be, as Talen turned to the center of the room and pointed.  “The head cleric—he’s coming!”Zehn had watched the battle unfold with a dispassionate sense of separation; it was as if his consciousness was outside of him, watching his scene through the eyes of his soldiers.  He had not been idle; if anything, his magic had unleashed powerful spell-surges through the melee that should have left their foes bewildered and weakened.  But if anything, the foe seemed to grow stronger as the melee progressed, with the lesser clerics battered into unconsciousness or death.  He felt a tingle on the third finger of his right hand, and knew that the Sphere of Souls was drinking deeply of the carnage being wrought here.  The underpriests, aware perhaps that their sacrifice was aiding the cause of their dark Master, fought with desperate ferocity. But they were losing, nevertheless.  Even Gudmund’s fresh levies, which had included the hulking bruiser-priest Acheros, had been as wheat to the farmer’s scythe.  The vrock should have been an end to it, but to Zehn’s surprise, the warriors had driven it off.So be it.  He could still feel the power of the True God pounding in his skull like the beating of a great eternal drum.  He was not a warrior, but death was his to use as a weapon, and he would bring these intruders low himself.   He started down the stairs, careful of where he put his feet.  In his usual robes, ascending the steep staircases was tricky.  In plate armor, it was dangerous.  His earlier weakness had passed, and in fact he felt nothing from his body at all.  It was as if his armored body was that of a golem, subject to the strength of his Will.  The warriors saw him, but instead of turning to face him, tried to help their fallen companions.  It would be of no avail; from the look of them, the power of death granted by his patron would make short work of the fighters, and then the others would be his to offer to the glory of the True God. He paused, however, as he passed the captive bound to the stairs.  Something—he was not sure what—caused him to hesitate.  He was not afraid of death, and despite his calm confidence, he knew that his foes might somehow overcome him.  But the creature here could not be allowed to fall into the hands of those opposed to the True God. The prisoner dangled from the ropes, seemingly insensate to his surroundings.  But as Zehn lifted his mace, ready to finish the wretch, the tortured creature lifted his head, and fixed his eyes upon the dread cleric.  The cleric of Orcus had participated in rituals that would have driven most minds over the brink of insanity.  He had calmly suffered violations of his body and soul, and risen out of them with more power.  But in that stare, Zehn saw something that utterly unnerved him. His reaction was not much, a mere step back before he recovered enough to know that he had been wrong before, that this prisoner must die, that he should have killed him the moment that the creature had fallen into his hands. But as he shifted his weight, his boot slipped on the step.  Zehn tried to recover, but the weight of his armor kept him from regaining his balance.  He did not cry out as he started to fall, invoking the power of his ring.  That power, bound to the potency of the True God on this plane, was connected to the Sphere of Souls, and it had the ability to transport him magically to any of the other temples within Rappan Athuk.  Nothing happened. Zehn spread his arms wide, whispering a prayer to Orcus even as he plummeted into the pit of burning lava.  “By the gods,” Talen whispered, watching as the enemy cleric fell to his doom.  The captain looked down at the limp form of Licinius Varo.  The cleric’s body had been mangled, and yet somehow clung tenaciously to life.  Talen saw that hundreds of tiny, fibrous growths had sprouted from his arms, neck, and the good side of his face, flitting as his breath rattled from his cracked and bloody lips. Talen had seen death numerous times, but somehow, this was... unnatural, terribly worse than the savagery wrought by sword and arrow by man upon man. “He’s dying!” he yelled to Dar.  “That demon... it did something to him... it’s killing him!”Dar was crouched over the motionless form of Allera.  He splashed some water over her face, wiping away the blood with a clean piece of her cloak.  “Come on, princess... wake up!” he whispered harshly.  “She needs healing!” he yelled in response to Talen. “We all had healing potions, but used them all,” he said.  “Look in her bag!” Dar was already tearing through her satchel, dropping handfuls of bandages, herbal poultices, and tiny jars of powder here and there.  Finally, at the bottom of the container, he found a vial half-full of blue liquid.  “What if it’s a poison or something?” Dar said. “Then she wouldn’t have it... Your friend’s not going to last much longer, mercenary.”Ripping off the cork of the vial with his teeth, he lifted Allera’s head gently, and poured the liquid directly down her throat.  She didn’t cough, or even stir, and for a moment he felt a cold feeling press in his chest. Then she opened her eyes. “What... what happened...”“No time,” Dar said.  “Heal yourself.”She looked left and right, but did not otherwise move.  “Others?”“Talen’s all right, but Varo’s not so good.  Heal yourself first, and then you can help him.”“No,” she said, each word clearly a significant effort on her part.  “My powers are nearly depleted.  Take me over to him.”Her words brooked no argument, so he lifted her—gods, she was light—and took her over to Varo.  The cleric was covered in what looked like a coat of ugly gray-green fur, growths from the vrock spores.  The entire left side of his face looked like a gruesome wasteland.  Talen had cleared his nose and mouth, but even Dar could see that the man was fading fast. “Put me down beside him,” Allera whispered.  Her eyes were closed, but as she was placed down, she reached out and laid her hand upon his.  “He is almost gone,” she said. A blue glow started to form where their fingers touched, but at that moment a roar drew Dar and Talen’s eyes around.  The sound came from the cleric, as he lifted his body up out of the lava pit.  His armor and helmet were a cherry red, fused to his blackened flesh.  His screams were pure agony, and there could be no way that he could see, yet somehow he clung to life and continued to lift himself up out of the pit.  “Aaarrr!” Dar yelled, whipping up his throwing axe, and launching it in a powerful end-over-end arc that snapped across the room, burying half of the blade squarely into the brow of the cleric’s helmet.  The magically keen steel cracked the superheated armor, and the blade bit deep into the man’s skull.  Still screaming, the cleric fell back into the lava.  “Nice shot,” Talen said, turning back to Allera and Varo. The blue glow had faded.  The growths covering Varo had withered, turning white and crumbling into powder.  Allera, having completed her spell, had lost consciousness once more.  The cleric still looked terrible, and there was nothing that could be done for his eye, but he was breathing easily, and as they watched, his good eye blinked and looked up at them with something approaching lucidity behind.“We were victorious?” he wheezed. “Yeah, something like that,” Dar said, looking around.  The place was a charnel house.  Ravaged bodies lay everywhere, and the black stones of the floor were covered in slicks of blood that gathered in pools wherever the surface dipped lower than the surrouding stones.  “Help me up,” Varo said.  “You’d better take it easy,” Talen began, but the cleric waved his caution away with a hand.“We may have overcome the defenses of this place, but more foes may be here at any moment,” the cleric said, his voice getting stronger with each word.  “Help me up.”“Can you heal Allera?” Dar said.  Varo shook his head.  “My powers... are depleted,” he said.  With Dar’s help, he knelt beside her briefly.  “She is stable, for the moment.  Did you find any potions, or wands, among her possessions?”“Only one potion, which we used to bring her around to save you,” Dar said. “Maybe on the enemy clerics?” Talen asked.  “A good idea.  Please check, if you would, captain,” Varo said.  “Well, you won’t find anything on the leader,” Dar said.  “He took a hot bath.  A very hot bath.”Still unsteady, Varo made his way toward the platform in the center of the room.  He stared up at the captive bound between the staircases.  He was masked by wisps of smoke and the sheen of heat that rose off the lava, but Varo’s intent stare looked as though it could have penetrated solid stone.  “The mad elf,” he whispered.</blockquote>

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