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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3554468" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 177THE COLD TOUCH OF THE GRAVEShay was the first to react, and she shot past the wraith so fast that she seemed almost a blur, her torch bobbing in one hand, her magical elf-forged longsword streaking past in the other.  The attack cut through the wraith, but the enchanted steel failed to bite into its insubstantial form.  She did not stop, rushing past it before hitting the cavern wall behind, kicking off it and spinning in mid-air to hit the ground running, coming back for another pass. Dar and Talen followed her by only a few heartbeats.  The came at the wraith, which loomed over its victim like smoke over a fire.  The goblin, seriously drained by the monster’s touch, had fallen to the ground, clutching his hands over his head in a futile gesture of self-protection.  “Hands off our gobbos!” Dar yelled, swiping Valor through the wraith’s body, followed a second later by Talen with Beatus Incendia.  Once again, both attacks passed through it harmlessly.  “Damn it!” Dar shouted. “Keep at it, as long as it remains present, we can hurt it!” Talen replied.  The wraith turned to confront him, touching the knight with an insubstantial claw.  The knight felt the icy touch penetrate the skin of his arm to his bone, but his considerable fortitude enabled him to resist the draining effects of its attack.  The hobgoblin fighters joined the melee, coming around Dar and Talen to attack the wraith with their swords.  Their weapons were magical, although certainly not as potent as though wielded by the human warriors.  Still, one managed to affect the wraith, slicing through its substance, trailing streamers of roiling black substance from its body with the stroke.  The hobgoblin let out an exclamation in its own tongue. “Yeah, yeah, you got lucky, punk,” Dar said.  The clerics had come forward to assist, but they could not make it in close enough to strike, with the warriors forming a ring around it.  Varo fired off a pulse of negative energy, but once again the power of Dagos failed to cow the undead monster.  The wraith was more potent than most such creatures, and the cleric’s rebuke met an almost tangible wall of resistance that absorbed a degree of his power.  But the wraith was still surrounded, and its luck in avoiding the magical attacks of its opponents had to run out at some point.  Filcher shot in between Talen’s legs, but his goal was not to assault the wraith; rather he grabbed his injured compatriot, and dragged him clear of the battle.  The wraith persisted in attacking Talen, perhaps recognizing that the knight’s holy sword was the greatest threat to its existence.  But as it reached out to attack him again Valor flashed through its body, severing the probing limb from its body.  The wraith turned on the fighter, but Talen took advantage of the distraction to bring Beatus Incendia up in an glittering arc that intersected the sinister red points of the wraith’s eyes, and it disintegrated.  “Damn,” Dar said, sliding his sword back into its scabbard.  “Tough bastard.”Allera was tending to the injured goblin.  “How is he?” Talen asked.  “Drained, but he should recover, in time,” the healer said.  “I will use a lesser restoration to return some of the vitality stolen by the wraith.”“So now we’re using up our more potent spells on gobbos,” Dar said.  “They are our allies,” Talen said, nodding to Allera.  Dar turned away and looked at Varo.  “Your god hasn’t been that helpful of late against these undead,” he said. The cleric did not appear to be offended by the statement.  “There is a power working against us,” he said.  “It is likely that it is a consequence of the ritual being worked by the cult of Orcus.  I would surmise that the backlash caused by the vrock demon’s teleport power is likewise connected.”“Is there any way of telling how close they are to completing the ritual?” Talen asked. “I suspect we will know when they get close,” Varo said. “All right, we’d better...”But Talen did not get a chance to finish, for at that moment one of the goblin scouts let out a hiss of warning.  The meaning was clear, but Filcher translated anyway.  “Something is coming!” “Take cover!” Talen whispered, but the goblinoids and his companions were already moving.  The warning had been directed to the north, and as they tried to conceal their light sources and the sounds of their movement they could hear what had set off the scout, the sound of footsteps, loud enough to suggest that its origin was someone or something of considerable size. Shay gestured to Baraka, and the ranger nodded, taking his everburning torch and withdrawing back to the room they’d entered via earlier.  The others had doused their own lights, causing the ranger’s features to be eerily highlighted in the glow of the unnatural flame in his hand.  They did not have to wait very long.  A few seconds after the goblin’s warning, the source of it stepped into view.  With Baraka’s light withdrawn into the adjacent chamber, it was just a vague form to the humans, but even they could see that it was a bruising hulk of a thing, an ogre clad in armor and shield, and bearing a huge spear in its meaty fist.  It paused, sniffed the air, and let out a loud grumble from somewhere deep within its body.  Then it started forward.</blockquote>

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