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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3532587" data-attributes="member: 143">Carnage?   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> * * * * * Chapter 170THE TUNNEL OF WOE“Well, they know we’re here,” Dar said, as the echoes of the screech faded down the long tunnel. “That cry belonged to a vrock demon,” Varo said.  “We must destroy it quickly, along with any spellcasters on the other side.”“I’m sure they feel the same way about you,” Dar returned, as the eight companions, accompanied by their goblin guide, hastened down the tunnel.  Up ahead it bent to the left, and they could hear the sounds of activity from that direction, even as the first undead began to appear.  Again the foes were skeletons and ghouls, but this time there were a few of the latter as tall as men, looming over their more diminutive kin.  It was almost impossible to discern what race they had been in life, so dramatic was the change wrought upon them in the transition to undeath. Dar started forward to meet them, but Talen held them up.  “Let us not rush blindly in this time,” he said.  “In addition to the demon, there will likely be more of those clerics about.  You don’t want to get paralyzed and cut off from the rest of the group.”The others were already launching missile attacks at the oncoming foe.  The bend in the tunnel was only about forty feet ahead of them, and the undead closed the distance quickly.  There were over a score already in view, and the initial volley of arrows did little harm, scoring several hits on the gray-skinned ghouls without bringing any of them down. Serah raised her holy symbol and invoked the divine light of the Father.  The brilliant rays washed over the front rank of the charging undead, but only a single ghoul fell back, overcome by that power. “Something is bolstering them!” the priestess warned. Varo had already seen that, and instead of attempting a rebuke, he began spellcasting. Dar and Talen met the undead charge, tearing into the onrushing ghouls and skeletons with a devastating surge of violence.  Each fighter cut a ghoul in twain with the first readied strike, their magical swords surging with power as they did what they had been created to do.  Their fellows in turn leapt upon the pair, clawing and biting, but they were unable to penetrate the steel skins of the defenders.  A moment later the two fighters countered with full attacks that cleared the space around them, leaving undead creatures, skeletons and ghouls alike, lying crushed upon the stone floor.  Three ghouls and a skeleton had rushed past the embattled fighters, and hurled themselves at Baraka and Shay.  The scouts dropped their bows and met the foe with melee weapons.  Baraka gutted one of the ghouls with his sickles, while Shay caved in the head of a goblin ghoul with her sword before it could touch her.  The last ghoul managed to inflict a minor wound on Baraka’s leg before he could turn to face it, but the hardy ranger resisted the cloying grip of paralysis that threatened to undo him. The first surge of undead had been devastated, but more were coming, this time slow-moving zombies that lurched unevenly forward.  And behind them, marching with the more nimble movements of the living, came a rank of armored hobgoblins, bearing swords and javelins.  A sudden explosion of smoke in the middle of the tunnel marked the arrival of a summoned ally, a vicious-looking black tiger, its hide covered with slashes of deep crimson.  The fiendish beast immediately leapt upon the nearest foe, a goblin-sized zombie, and bore it to the ground, taking its head off with an almost casual snap of its jaws.  Several of the hobgoblins behind threw javelins at it, but they glanced off its hide, and it snarled at them in contempt. Dar and Talen moved forward together, batting aside the few surviving undead from the first rush as they came.  The hobgoblins had come together in a disciplined wedge, centered on a tall figure clad in full plate, with a greathelm that bore a half-dozen jutting spires of metal shaped into the fashion of grim horns.  Varo’s fiendish tiger essayed that formation, ignoring the shambling zombies around it to leap upon the nearest of the hobgoblins.  The hobgoblin brought up its shield, but that proved of little defense as the weight of the tiger landed full upon it.  The warrior cried out as the summoned monster dug its hind claws deep into his legs, while it snapped its foreclaws into its shoulders.  The hobgoblin staggered and nearly fell, only narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws that sought its neck.  The other hobgoblins fell upon the creature, stabbing with their swords.  The creature’s fiendish hide turned most of the blows, but then the armored leader stepped forward, its blade a dark wedge of steel in its hand.  The tiger sensed the threat and snarled, but that angry cry was cut off as the fighter thrust the length of its blade into the creature’s mouth, driving it up through the roof of its mouth into its brain.  The tiger immediately fell limp, dissolving into nothing as it slid off the hobgoblin’s deadly blade.  Dar drew up, wary of that ordered formation and its commander.  The hobgoblin was an obvious veteran, to have put down a powerful creature like that in a single blow.  Hobgoblin javelins flew at him and Talen behind him, but they failed to penetrate his magical armor.  Zombies lumbered forward, forcing him to pay at least some heed to defense, hacking the animated corpses apart like rotted timbers.  Talen was doing the same; none of the things could stand against Beatus Incendia, and the holy blade transformed each ruined corpse into a pyre, the flames that consumed the corpses casting long, dancing shadows upon the walls of the tunnel. The hobgoblins were holding their position, waiting for the foe to come to then.  Dar realized this at the same time that he grasped the reason for their delay.  A shriek announced the arrival of the vrock as it poured around the bend, covered in a dizzying mélange of mirror images, and accompanied by the foul stench of the Abyss.  At the demon’s arrival the hobgoblin leader lifted his sword, and his company surged forward, shrieking with fanatic cries as they descended upon Talen and Dar.</blockquote>

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