Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3411287" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 128FURY AND DESPAIRAs Talen and Shay held the rapidly collapsing door, Varo had completed a restoration spell, returning the strength that had been stolen from the cleric Serah.  As the cleric regained control over her muscles, he thrust her holy symbol into her hand.  “When the shadows come through that wall, use this,” he commanded.  The woman’s hands shook, and she barely maintained her grasp on the small silver torch.  “I... I cannot... before... failed...”“Use it, or you will become one of them, like your companions,” Varo said harshly, lifting his own divine focus as the door crashed open, and Talen and Shay staggered back into the room.  The shadows came, just as he had expected.  Varo raised his symbol, but before he could act, the brilliant light of the Father filled the room, and all three shadows fled, turned by the divine power channeled by His cleric. “Good,” Varo said, looking down at the woman, still sitting in the middle of the floor.  “There will be more, be ready.”She nodded, still pale. Talen and Shay met the skeletons surging into the room, joined a moment later by Galen, who still looked terrible, the lower half of his tunic drenched in his own blood.  The young knight had lost his axe outside, but he had drawn his dagger.  Neither Galen nor Shay were able to destroy a skeleton with their edged weapons, but Talen’s holy sword cut through them like a scythe through ripened wheat, and two had been shattered into fragments within a few seconds. Two more shadows came through the wall and fixed on Talen at once, but once again, before they could attack, Serah summoned the power of the Shining Father and drove them back. Varo had been chanting, holding his divine focus; now he opened his eyes, and pointed through the opening in the wall.  A loud roar sounded, and the noises of battle sounded from just outside the door.  Shay had seriously damaged the skeleton she’d been fighting, and now kicked it solidly in the pelvis, knocking it back into the doorway.  Talen’s sword clove through it a moment later, along with another one that was still trying to get in.  The commander turned to help Galen, but the injured knight had gotten a solid grasp on his foe, and drove it into the wall, smashing it to pieces.  Galen bore fresh scratch marks on his cheek and forearm from the skeleton’s violent resistance, but at Talen’s look said, “I’m all right.”Shay crept up to the doorway, but no further skeletons had appeared; the sounds of violence continued from the darkness outside.  “Fiendish apes?” she asked, turning to Varo.  The priest nodded.  The noises from the back room had ceased; Allera had gone back there during the battle for the front door.  “Sextus, Octavius, you all right?” Talen shouted back.  “We’re fine,” Sextus’s voice came back to them.  “They tried the window, but we’re holding it, for now.”“We should take the fight to them, while the summoned monsters are still there, distracting them,” Talen said, lifting Beatus Incendia.  Its light revealed the troll skeleton looming outside the doorway, its attentions, for the moment, focused elsewhere than on them. “Careful,” Shay said, holding him back with a hand on his arm.  “There’s a wizard out there.  He killed Medelia and Septimus with some kind of lightning bolt, and nearly hit me with another.”“No, not a wizard,” Varo said.  “That was an eldritch blast.  A warlock invocation.  I would not have recognized it, except for the fact that I knew such a caster before, who used a very similar power.”“The one sent into Rappan Athuk with you?” Talen asked.  “Nadev, was it?”“Zafir Navev.  Warlocks are very, very rare in Camar; he is the only one I have ever met.”“And now another.  Coincidence?”“I do not believe in coincidence, commander.”They were interrupted as the troll skeleton crashed hard into the threshold of the door.  The entire cottage, already heavily abused, shook heavily from the impact.  Talen was quick to take advantage of the opportunity, smashing Beatus Incendia into the creature’s body from behind.  The holy sword crashed through its thick thigh bone, and the skeleton collapsed to the side, nearly blocking the doorway.  Something big and dark and ugly fell on it from the opposite side, and for a moment a stench of brimstone washed over them as Varo’s summoned ape ripped apart the huge skeleton’s rib cage. “I think they’re beginning to run out of steam,” Shay said, looking out the doorway without exposing herself.  “Or at least numbers.”“I would not make that assumption,” Varo said.  The cleric was healing Galen with a wand as he spoke.  “The enemy may be bringing more undead forward as we speak.  Or this may have just been a holding force, sent to keep us bottled up here while the enemy moves up the road, attacking the refugee caravans.  Or they may have another plan that remains hidden to us.”“So what do you recommend we do, priest?”“What you had originally intended.  Fall back on the road.  Protect the rear of the refugee columns.  Return to Highbluff, and join up with the forces from Camar, and with the Border Legion.”Talen nodded.  “Armsmen!  Allera!  Get ready, we’re leaving!”  He turned to Shay.  “Keep an eye out for that wizard, warlock, whatever the hells he is.  If he makes an appearance, we have to be ready to hit him, hard and fast, with everything we’ve got.”The scout nodded.  A man-sized skeleton appeared at the smashed-open gap in the cottage wall, but Serah blasted it with holy power before it could crawl through, and it disintegrated, along with several others out in the courtyard behind it.  “How many more turnings do you have available?” Varo said to her.“Two more,” she replied. “What about Medelia?” Galen asked, looking at the body lying on the floor, covered by a cloak. “Shay, Allera, can you... the bag of holding,” Talen asked, as the healer and the armsmen came back into the room.  The two nodded, and went over to the body.  “What about Septimus?” Sextus asked.  “We left him, out there.”“And the other priests,” Serah said.  “They should be brought back, for the rites of passage, and proper burial.”“We cannot fit more bodies into the magic sack,” Shay said.  “The bodies should be burned,” Varo interjected.  “So they cannot be animated and used against us.”“It is not right,” Serah said, still trembling, but with a hint of her earlier force in her voice.  They all looked to Talen, who stood there, his face grim. “We cannot spent time on the dead, not while the living need our help,” the knight commander said.  “Shay, get the oil from the bag; we’ll form a pyre before we go.  Priestess, we will offer prayers for their spirits when we return safe to Camar.”“Don’t forget to collect any healing potions, scrolls, or other items that we may need from the bodies, first,” Varo said.  Serah looked at him with an expression of scarcely-concealed revulsion on her face, but she said nothing.  She still clutched her holy symbol, her fingers white with the pressure of her grasp.Having helped Allera put Medelia’s body into the bag of holding, Shay returned to the door, holding the pouch that contained their oil flasks.  The sounds of battle had faded, leaving nothing but an eerie stillness outside.  “The apes are gone,” she reported.  “It’s quiet out there, for now.”“They may be waiting for us to leave,” Galen said.  “Another ambush.”“If they had more forces, they would not have waited to use them,” Varo said.  “As you saw, knight, the incorporeal undead had no difficulty entering the structure.  The ambush was perfectly set to remove the greatest threat, our clerics.”“They didn’t attack you, not at first,” Serah said.  “I had warded myself from their sight,” Varo said.  “And from their touch.  A pity that the death ward was beyond the four of you.  At the very least, Gaius could have provided you with scrolls.”“How can you just... coldly, while they lie out there, they gave their lives...”“Serah,” Allera said, softly, putting a hand on the older woman’s shoulder.Talen drew Varo aside.  Putting his body between the priest and the others, he asked quietly, “What are you saying, Varo?  That they knew we would be here?  How?  Do they have spies in Camar, or are they tracking us with magic?”The priest frowned.  “It could be any of the above, commander, or something else entirely.  I was thinking, there is a passage in the Codex, that I may have misinterpreted before.  It refers to a crucial battle between the forces of Orcus and those seeking to stop them.  The passage is very cryptic, but there is reference to events that may refer to what we are doing here.  The fragment reads:And so the clash shall come at the bend of argent, Where the legion of the fallen shall face the scions of those who came beforeThe Darkness shall bring forth in answer the very shadow of the landTo blight all hope, and seal the doom of the world of man... He trailed off, a look of intense focus on his face.  “Are you saying that this book that you are so obsessed with, it predicts the future?  If it tells us what’s going to happen, why haven’t you shared the contents of it with us before?  Gods, man, if they have this information, and we do not...”Varo raised a hand to forestall him.  “It is not so simple as that, commander.  The Codex Thanara is not a work of prophecy, or at least not mainly so.  It chronicles events of the past, when the followers of Orcus first tried to take over this world, and deliver it into the hands of their foul master.”“So you’re saying that this... all of this, what we’re doing... it’s happened before?  The same as now?  I find it difficult to believe, Varo.”“It is not the same, but you are right, there are a large number of parallels.  It raises interesting questions about the metaphysics of what theologians refer to as ‘free will,’ but we have neither the time nor the leisure to ponder such things at the moment.”“But you are using the information in this book to guide you, are you not?  If you have information that can help us, you should be sharing it with the Council, with us.”Varo made a negative motion with a slash of his hand.  “You do not know of what you speak, commander, and if you really knew your Council and its politics, you would know that what you ask would be an unmitigated disaster for your cause, and for Camar.”“Perhaps you underestimate us, priest.” “And perhaps you forget that many swords have edges on both sides.  The book, or at least fragments of it, was held by your Holy Church for centuries, its warnings clear to those with the insight and the will to confront them.  Ask yourself, consecrated knight of Camar, why does it fall to an outcast cleric of a banned sect to lead the fight against the Demon?  Why has Gaius Annochus not marshaled the full power of the church, and called for a holy crusade to eradicate the evil blight of Rappan Athuk from the presence of this world?”“Camar faces many dire threats...”“As dire as what you have seen with your own eyes?  You have been in the Dungeon of Graves, commander.  You have seen what I have seen, for the most part.  What do you think?”Talen, troubled, did not reply.His voice more even, Varo continued, “The Codex is as much a weapon of the enemy as a potential boon; its words are thick with falsehoods and cloying whispers of hopelessness.  To read it, that can be dangerous; to know it, that leads inevitably to madness.”“You have said before that you are already mad,” Talen said.  “If so, how can we possibly trust you, Varo?”“I do not ask for your trust, commander.  But if you listen to nothing else I say, hear this, and know this; for all of Camar’s current troubles, and the many distractions you face, what we do here will determine the fate of this entire world.  And it will come down to Rappan Athuk, before all of this is finished.” Talen turned.  The others had all gathered near the door, and were watching him.  They hadn’t heard what he and Varo had been saying, but their feelings about the priest were clear in their faces, and their eyes.  The commander sighed.  “All right, we’re moving out.”The companions took up their gear, but as they moved out of the battered cottage, alert for any signs of the enemy warlock or any other undead, they could hear a faint noise in the distance, to the south.  A regular, deep thumping noise, a vibration in the earth as much as a sound.“What is it?” Talen asked.  “Something big, coming this way,” Shay said. Talen looked at Varo.  “It is coming,” Varo said.  “We’re out of time, commander.”</blockquote>

Verification