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: 3511932" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 163THE DRAGON’S LAIRFour wispy, insubstantial forms drifted out of the trailing edges of the thinning steam cloud, out over the chasm.  The rising air from the chasm rapidly dissipated the steam from the cavern to the south, but these four clusters of mist remained intact, drifting down to the far side of the chasm.  The cavern on the north side of the chasm was dark and cold, but a soft glow radiated from the lead figure, barely enough for the travelers to see their way forward. The four figures drifted northward, deeper into the cavern.  The place was so huge that their pale light failed to reach the walls or ceiling of the place.Finally, the group of wind walkers came to a stop, and sank to the ground.  Slowly the misty outlines took on solid form, until Varo, Dar, Allera, and Kalend stood within the bubble of light that shone from the cleric’s holy symbol.   “I don’t like this,” Dar said.  “Why not keep flying until we get to the lair?”“I told you before,” Varo replied.  “The spell requires too long to change from insubstantial to material form.  I can dismiss it at once, but then we would not be able to return until I rested and regained the spell again.”“The dragon will know we are coming,” Kalend said, indicating the light. “She already knows that we are coming,” came a voice from the darkness behind him, causing the rogue to jump slightly.  Drakha materialized out of the black, his gray skin and garments blending with the shadows until he was almost upon them.  “She remains to defend her eggs, and her hoard.”“So it’s just waiting for us to show up and put it down?” Dar asked, skeptically.  “I am certain that she will have a few surprises left for us,” the outsider responded.  “We would be well advised to be wary.”“The time for subtlety is past,” Varo said.  “Ware your eyes.”  He lifted his mace, and summoned a brilliant globe of daylight, focused on the head of the weapon.  The companions shied back, the bright light hurting their dark-sensitive eyes.  “Allera, ward Kalend and yourself against the dragon’s breath.  I will likewise treat myself, Dar, and Drakha.”  As he began casting his death wards, touching his companions to impart the magical protections of the spell, he said, “Once the wards are placed, we must move swiftly.  The spell will only function for a few minutes.”“So we just rush in, and kill it?”“Correct.  If Drakha is right, it will not abandon its nest; we can use that to our advantage.  If it is utilizing magical protections, wait until I can dispel them before you strike.”Dar tested the string of his bow.  “Cleric, this is a new side of you.”  He grinned.  “I like it.”  Varo finished his castings.  He looked at Allera, who nodded.  “Ready.”“All right then, let’s go kick some dragon ass,” Dar said.  The companions started out at a jog.  Between the light of the daylight spell and the clank of Dar’s heavy armor as he ran, there was no way that their foe could have failed to sense their approach.  But nothing stirred out of the darkness to threaten them.  The cavern floor was unremarkable, a barren expanse of flat, cracked stone, with only the occasional scattered boulder or rock formation to obstruct their charge.  They ran for a minute that stretched into two without event.  The cavern continued unabated; the place was truly huge.  The others had to slow their pace to match Dar, and all of them were in good shape, so they did not flag.  Drakha paced them, floating a few inches off the ground, his expression mysterious as they neared battle.  And then they saw it.  A huge mound of white, easily sixty feet across, and upwards of ten feet high.  “It’s made of bones,” Allera said.  “Thousands and thousands of bones...”Dar came to a stop, breathing a little heavy.  Despite his excellent conditioning and his incredible strength, augmented by his magic belt, running in fifty pounds of metal armor and another fifty pounds of arms and other gear was not a trivial undertaking.  But his eyes were sharp as he fitted an arrow to his bow.  Varo had enchanted their arrows again; the cleric of Dagos had depleted nearly all of his higher-order spells in preparing for this assault, selecting those magics that would give them the most advantage in the coming confrontation.  Allera, too, had used up most her most potent magic, both on the death wards and the restorations that had been necessary to bring the others back to full strength after the dragon battle. “Getting up there is going to be a challenge,” Kalend observed.  “If the dragon’s waiting in there, it can strike as we’re climbing up.”“Then we must give it an incentive to come out,” Varo said.  He nodded to Drakha, who lifted a hand almost casually toward the nest. At once, the huge mound of bones seemed to come alive.  They clattered together as the outsider’s animate objects spell caused the nest to twist together, the uppermost layer of bones snapping and cracking in a false semblance of life. The response was immediate; a massive roar echoed through the cavern, sounding loudly off the distant walls of the place. “Well, that got its attention,” Dar said.  “There!” Kalend yelled, pointing up to the left, where the dragon swept down out of the darkness.  Surrounded again with mirror images and another shield, it opened its mouth and breathed, engulfing all of the attackers with a cone of negative energy. Protected by death wards, none of them were affected by the blast. Dar lifted his bow but held his fire, waiting for Varo.  The cleric had been ready, and responded quickly, hitting the dragon with a dispel magic that tore its magical defenses away.  The dragon, driven into a rage, descended upon them.  It targeted Drakha, seizing the outsider in its jaws as it landed, biting down hard and then flinging it roughly aside.  Varo’s planar ally withstood the rough treatment, although gray blood darkened its tunic, and an angry yellow glow appeared in its eyes as it slowly picked itself up off the cavern floor, brushing off dust from its legs and arms.  Kalend lifted his bow and fired, backpedaling out of the dragon’s reach.  The dragon lashed its tail at him, smashing him hard in the left thigh.  The rogue went down but rolled with the force of the blow, coming up limping a few feet away.  He hung onto his bow, but continued to retreat, putting a safe distance between him and the raging monster.Allera narrowly avoided being crushed by the dragon as it landed, and she raised her arms above her head as its wing buffeted her.  Staggering back, she tried to get clear, the sounds of Snaggletooth’s wings flapping around her as the invisible dragon accompanied her.  Dar aborted his shot and dropped his bow, snapping Valor out of its scabbard at his hip.  The dragon, perhaps sensing that he was the greatest remaining threat, turned on him at once.  The beast clearly showed the effects of its wounds from the earlier combat; streaks of dried blood covered its head and torso, and one eye was a milky white, crippled and unseeing.  But it did not hesitate as it leapt upon the fighter, biting and clawing.  Valor bit deep into the dragon’s torso.  Dar had learned his lesson from the first confrontation with the shadow dragons, and eschewed all-out power attacks for more precise strikes that had a better chance of penetrating its scaled hide.  His first blow bit deeply into its body, but the second glanced off the armored scales, failing to widen the oozing wound.  Dar lifted the sword to strike again, but the dragon shot in like a crossbow bolt, its head locking onto his swordarm, its jaws crushing the limb from elbow to wrist.  Dar let out a cry of pain and tried to break free, using his other hand to try to pry the dragon’s jaws open.  He may as well have been trying to pry up a boulder; the dragon was incredibly strong.  Without releasing its grip, the dragon crouched and spread its wings, leaping into the air with its captive still locked within its grasp.  Dar’s eyes widened as the ground dropped away under him.  The dragon flew up over the nest and past it, then began to bank around for a return, still gaining altitude.  His shoulder had been dislocated by the rough treatment, and his arm felt like it was on fire. Drakha hit it with a lightning bolt, but the spell dissipated against its spell resistance. And then Varo called down a flame strike. The spell slammed down into the dragon like a blow from a giant’s maul, hitting it square in the back.  The dragon staggered in mid-flight, although it refused to drop its prisoner.  Blood both black and red trailed down its body, splattering on the cavern floor below, as it came toward the companions again for one last desperate charge. Dar roared and slammed his free hand up into bottom of the dragon’s jaw.  His magical punching dagger drove deep into its head, only narrowly missing his own arm inside its mouth.  The wedge-shaped head of the weapon pierced a narrow gap between the dragon’s skull and its uppermost vertebrae, severing the precious brown cord inside. The dragon’s wings abruptly stopped flapping, and it dropped like a stone.  The creature smashed into the center of its nest, shattering bones by the hundreds, scattering fragments out in a radius of nearly a hundred feet.  Dar, free at last, shot forward like a steel-encased missile.  He hit the edge of the nest and blasted through, spinning in mid air before he landed hard on his back on the ground below.  Valor clattered to the ground at his feet; he’d kept his grip on the sword throughout almost the entire misadventure. Allera was there in a few seconds, a look of concern on her face.  Dar’s arm was a mangled wreck, his shoulder had been pulled out of its socket, one of his legs was bent back at what had to be a painful angle, and there was a wide grin on his face. “Ouch,” he said.</blockquote>

Verification