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<blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3558846" data-attributes="member: 143"><p>Thanks for the post, Nephtys! I have to admit that those two are the most fun to write as well. </p><p></p><p>* * * * * </p><p></p><p>Chapter 179</p><p></p><p>WHEN YOU NEVER SEE IT COMING</p><p></p><p></p><p>Talen was a skilled blind-fighter, but in the <em>silence</em> field still emanating from the dead ogre, his hard-won skills were useless. Forcing himself to tamp down a swelling surge of panic, he stepped backward, slowly, one step at a time. </p><p></p><p>Sound returned to him at the same time that someone grabbed him; he had to restrain himself from lashing out reflexively. “Talen, are you all right?” Shay asked. </p><p></p><p>“I’ve been blinded,” he said, surprised at the calm in his own voice. “There’s a cleric beyond those doors.”</p><p></p><p>He heard a loud clanking noise move past—that had to be Dar—and then vanish as the fighter entered the <em>silence</em> field. </p><p></p><p>“Allera’s on her way,” Shay said. “Better stay put.” She guided him back to the nearby wall, then turned and hurried off to rejoin the battle. </p><p></p><p>All Talen could do was grit his teeth and wait. </p><p></p><p>Dar struck the heavy doors with his club. The portals were durable, but they’d already taken damage from the ogre’s impact, and they had not been designed to stand up to the damage that Dar could dish out. There would be no pulling them open, not with the ogre lying dead before them, so Dar simply smashed them inward, pulverizing heavy planks that had to have been brought into Grezneck from the surface world. It only took him a few powerful strokes to open a path wide enough for him to step through; the ogre, freed at last, slumped to the ground at his feet. </p><p></p><p>The fighter stepped forward into the room beyond just in time to be attacked by a rabid howler. </p><p></p><p>The others were arriving to join the fray. The first hobgoblin warrior joined Shay in attacking the second door, trying to widen the opening Dar had made enough for them to join the melee. They were interrupted by an <em>unholy blight</em> that exploded through the space before the doors. The goblinoids were not affected by the blast, but Shay sagged forward and voided her stomach upon the corpse of the ogre, sickened by the foul potency of the spell. Baraka came forward to help her, but the scout shook him off, and returned to the door. The second hobgoblin, which had been rescued from the edge of the bridge by Kalend and Varo, joined them, and they were quickly able to smash the door off its moorings. </p><p></p><p>They found themselves greeted by more summoned creatures, a quartet of monstrous spiders each nearly the size of a man. </p><p></p><p>The chamber beyond the doors was shaped like an uneven hexagon, and was spacious, a good sixty feet across. Another set of doors even larger than the first looked to be the only exit, on the far wall to the left. The only feature of note in the chamber was a small bronze statue atop a stone pedestal in the center of the room. The statue’s identity was instantly obvious to all of them; they had seen enough representations of Orcus in Rappan Athuk to recognize that unnatural visage. </p><p></p><p>In addition to the swarm of summoned monsters, the chamber was occupied by a pair of goblin clerics, clad in chainmail and black robes. One glowed with the fell aura of a <em>dispel good</em> spell, identifying it as a powerful practitioner of the dark arts. It cast another spell upon itself while its fellow laid a <em>hold</em> spell upon Dar. The fighter froze as the magic took effect, and the howler, already seriously injured from Dar’s club, eagerly seized and yanked down the helpless fighter. </p><p></p><p>Given a chance, the Abyssal monster would have torn the fighter apart, but Baraka Suhn leapt into the fray, forcing the howler back with a pair of violent swings of his sickles. His silver weapon bit deep into the gap where its skull met its neck, and the creature let out a silent scream of pain as it yanked back, leaving a good half foot strip of bloody flesh dangling from its head. It tried to recover, but a moment later a small arrow bit deep into its neck, and the creature keeled over, dissolving into mist as it returned to the pit where it had been spawned. </p><p></p><p>Baraka bent to help Dar, but the fighter was still caught in the grip of the paralysis, and could not move. He could not hear, but the veteran ranger sensed the threat coming, and he rose into a ready stance as one of the clerics charged forward. His eyes were on the goblin’s morningstar, but the cleric did not swing, instead reaching out with its other hand to touch him lightly on the leg. The <em>inflict wounds</em> spell it had cast stabbed through him like a hot knife, and he staggered, barely keeping his feet against this much smaller foe. </p><p></p><p>The two hobgoblins had laid into the monstrous spiders, hacking their fat bodies apart with powerful blows from their magical swords. Two were killed in the first exchange, and the second pair lasted only a few seconds longer. One of them managed to bite one of the warriors on the shoulder, but the hobgoblin ignored the pain, returning the hurt several times over as he buried his sword to the hilt in the monster’s hideous face. </p><p></p><p>Shay had shot through the spiders, leaving them to her allies, easily avoiding their rapid lunges. Her objective was the enemy high priest. The goblin waited for her, and as she slashed at it with her elvish blade, it too struck, stepping into her stroke to touch her with its stubby fingers. Shay had been expecting that, however, and she darted easily aside, avoiding the touch attack. She shot past it, and as her momentum carried her into the middle of the room, she leapt up and sprang off the bronze statue, kicking it over with a loud clang as she reversed her momentum and came back toward the enemy priest. The follower of Orcus snarled and summoned its power, no doubt readying another sinister spell to deal with this foe once and for all. </p><p></p><p>But the spell was never finished; abruptly the goblin’s lips moved without sound, as a broken piece of arrow skittered to a stop at its feet. Varo had found the arrow he’d enchanted sticking from the dead ogre’s back, and he’d broken it off, tossing it into the room to hinder the efforts of the enemy priests. </p><p></p><p>The battle was quickly starting to turn. Baraka was seriously hurt, but he was joined by Kalend and Filcher, who moved forward to help flank the priest. Even with its protective wards in place, it could not avoid painful blows that pierced its defenses, inflicting serious wounds. It tried to regroup, giving ground as it drew out a vial from its pouch. </p><p></p><p>It didn’t get a chance to consume the draught; Snaggletooth flew up, still <em>invisible</em>, and seized the healing potion, yanking it out of the surprised cleric’s grasp. </p><p></p><p>Things went rapidly downhill for the priest from there. </p><p></p><p>The other cleric held its ground as Shay came back. She had the advantage in melee; she was both larger and faster, and her sword had a superior reach to the goblin’s morningstar. But the goblin dodged aside as she swung at it again, her stroke turned by the shifting energies of its <em>dispel good</em> aura. In turn it smashed its morningstar into her right knee as she passed; Shay’s face twisted in pain, and she fell forward into a roll that brought her up again a few paces away, favoring the damaged joint. </p><p></p><p>The goblin looked around for the source of the <em>silence</em> aura, but it failed to see the fragment of arrow lying between its feet. It did, however, see the two hobgoblins charging toward it. The goblin seemed almost pathetic against the much larger and more heavily armored foes, but it took the first attack on its shield, turning the stroke before it brought its morningstar up hard into the hobgoblin’s gut. The fighter staggered back, gasping for air, blood oozing from the punctures where the weapon’s spikes had penetrated through his banded armor. </p><p></p><p>The rest of the companions had moved into the room, although most of them did not rush forward to join the melee. Allera was helping Talen; the healer’s innate ability to purge blindness had not yet returned, and she lacked other magic that could help him. Serah tried to <em>dispel</em> the <em>blindness</em>, but her spell slipped around the dark nugget of evil power gripping Talen like water sliding down an oilskin cloak. The goblin scouts moved cautiously forward, wary of other threats as they moved around the edges of the room into flanking positions. </p><p></p><p>Dar grunted as he slowly fought to his feet, his movements awkward as he struggled to fight off the lingering effects of the <em>hold person</em> spell. He staggered to the side as he drew <em>Valor</em> out of its sheath. “I am going to cut me some freaking clerics,” he muttered, as he adjusted his uneasy momentum forward, his mail clanking with each stumbling step. </p><p></p><p>For a moment, it looked as though he would not get his chance. The lesser priest had fought back against serious odds, giving ground as its foes continued to move to flank it. It was outside of the radius of the <em>silence</em> sphere, so it could freely cast spells. It focused on the already-injured ranger, hitting Baraka with another <em>inflict wounds spell</em>. The dark energies of the spell staggered him, but he held his position, distracting the goblin with blows from his sickles that failed to penetrate the goblin’s armored torso. The attacks allowed Kalend and Filcher to get into position again, and they were more successful, each stabbing the cleric with their short blades, the sneak attacks piercing its body from opposite sides. The cleric cursed them with its last breath, then collapsed, dying. </p><p></p><p>The other cleric was being similarly pressed. It too was giving ground, trying to escape the sphere of <em>silence</em>, but as it retreated it came under heavy attack from Shay and the hobgoblin warriors. The scout, trying to ignore the limp from her injured knee, still moved far more quickly than the heavily armored goblin, and her skirmish attacks forced it to attend to her. The hobgoblins went in for more straightforward assaults, lashing at the goblin with their heavy swords. The cleric staggered as one attack bit deeply into its shoulder, the heavy clang of metal indicating that they had finally left the <em>silence</em> behind. The cleric fell to one knee, but as the hobgoblin rushed in, eager to finish it, the servant of Orcus abruptly countered. Eschewing the morningstar, it reached up and pressed its fist into the hobgoblin’s gut, unleashing a powerful <em>inflict wounds</em> through the contact into its body. The hobgoblin let out a hollow shriek of pain and collapsed, his body twitching with terrible agonies as the spell wrought its course of destruction. The fighter’s kinsman did not falter in his own attack, despite the obvious danger, pressing the cleric with another series of potent attacks. His sword clipped the edge of the cleric’s helmet, and the goblin went down, stunned. </p><p></p><p>And then the massive doors on the far side of the room opened, and through the gap a horde of undead poured into the chamber. Dozens of skeletons and zombies came surging forward, arms extended as they sought the flesh of the living. </p><p></p><p>A skeleton on the leading edge of that rush leapt at Dar. The fighter had dropped his club, but he smashed the creature with <em>Valor</em>, hard enough to reduce a mundane skeleton to shards of bone. </p><p></p><p>The blow hit the skeleton square in the ribs. It staggered back a step, but instead of coming apart it leapt forward again, digging its claws into Dar’s weapon arm. </p><p></p><p>Behind it, over a hundred more skeletons and zombies charged forward to attack.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lazybones, post: 3558846, member: 143"] Thanks for the post, Nephtys! I have to admit that those two are the most fun to write as well. * * * * * Chapter 179 WHEN YOU NEVER SEE IT COMING Talen was a skilled blind-fighter, but in the [i]silence[/i] field still emanating from the dead ogre, his hard-won skills were useless. Forcing himself to tamp down a swelling surge of panic, he stepped backward, slowly, one step at a time. Sound returned to him at the same time that someone grabbed him; he had to restrain himself from lashing out reflexively. “Talen, are you all right?” Shay asked. “I’ve been blinded,” he said, surprised at the calm in his own voice. “There’s a cleric beyond those doors.” He heard a loud clanking noise move past—that had to be Dar—and then vanish as the fighter entered the [i]silence[/i] field. “Allera’s on her way,” Shay said. “Better stay put.” She guided him back to the nearby wall, then turned and hurried off to rejoin the battle. All Talen could do was grit his teeth and wait. Dar struck the heavy doors with his club. The portals were durable, but they’d already taken damage from the ogre’s impact, and they had not been designed to stand up to the damage that Dar could dish out. There would be no pulling them open, not with the ogre lying dead before them, so Dar simply smashed them inward, pulverizing heavy planks that had to have been brought into Grezneck from the surface world. It only took him a few powerful strokes to open a path wide enough for him to step through; the ogre, freed at last, slumped to the ground at his feet. The fighter stepped forward into the room beyond just in time to be attacked by a rabid howler. The others were arriving to join the fray. The first hobgoblin warrior joined Shay in attacking the second door, trying to widen the opening Dar had made enough for them to join the melee. They were interrupted by an [i]unholy blight[/i] that exploded through the space before the doors. The goblinoids were not affected by the blast, but Shay sagged forward and voided her stomach upon the corpse of the ogre, sickened by the foul potency of the spell. Baraka came forward to help her, but the scout shook him off, and returned to the door. The second hobgoblin, which had been rescued from the edge of the bridge by Kalend and Varo, joined them, and they were quickly able to smash the door off its moorings. They found themselves greeted by more summoned creatures, a quartet of monstrous spiders each nearly the size of a man. The chamber beyond the doors was shaped like an uneven hexagon, and was spacious, a good sixty feet across. Another set of doors even larger than the first looked to be the only exit, on the far wall to the left. The only feature of note in the chamber was a small bronze statue atop a stone pedestal in the center of the room. The statue’s identity was instantly obvious to all of them; they had seen enough representations of Orcus in Rappan Athuk to recognize that unnatural visage. In addition to the swarm of summoned monsters, the chamber was occupied by a pair of goblin clerics, clad in chainmail and black robes. One glowed with the fell aura of a [i]dispel good[/i] spell, identifying it as a powerful practitioner of the dark arts. It cast another spell upon itself while its fellow laid a [i]hold[/i] spell upon Dar. The fighter froze as the magic took effect, and the howler, already seriously injured from Dar’s club, eagerly seized and yanked down the helpless fighter. Given a chance, the Abyssal monster would have torn the fighter apart, but Baraka Suhn leapt into the fray, forcing the howler back with a pair of violent swings of his sickles. His silver weapon bit deep into the gap where its skull met its neck, and the creature let out a silent scream of pain as it yanked back, leaving a good half foot strip of bloody flesh dangling from its head. It tried to recover, but a moment later a small arrow bit deep into its neck, and the creature keeled over, dissolving into mist as it returned to the pit where it had been spawned. Baraka bent to help Dar, but the fighter was still caught in the grip of the paralysis, and could not move. He could not hear, but the veteran ranger sensed the threat coming, and he rose into a ready stance as one of the clerics charged forward. His eyes were on the goblin’s morningstar, but the cleric did not swing, instead reaching out with its other hand to touch him lightly on the leg. The [i]inflict wounds[/i] spell it had cast stabbed through him like a hot knife, and he staggered, barely keeping his feet against this much smaller foe. The two hobgoblins had laid into the monstrous spiders, hacking their fat bodies apart with powerful blows from their magical swords. Two were killed in the first exchange, and the second pair lasted only a few seconds longer. One of them managed to bite one of the warriors on the shoulder, but the hobgoblin ignored the pain, returning the hurt several times over as he buried his sword to the hilt in the monster’s hideous face. Shay had shot through the spiders, leaving them to her allies, easily avoiding their rapid lunges. Her objective was the enemy high priest. The goblin waited for her, and as she slashed at it with her elvish blade, it too struck, stepping into her stroke to touch her with its stubby fingers. Shay had been expecting that, however, and she darted easily aside, avoiding the touch attack. She shot past it, and as her momentum carried her into the middle of the room, she leapt up and sprang off the bronze statue, kicking it over with a loud clang as she reversed her momentum and came back toward the enemy priest. The follower of Orcus snarled and summoned its power, no doubt readying another sinister spell to deal with this foe once and for all. But the spell was never finished; abruptly the goblin’s lips moved without sound, as a broken piece of arrow skittered to a stop at its feet. Varo had found the arrow he’d enchanted sticking from the dead ogre’s back, and he’d broken it off, tossing it into the room to hinder the efforts of the enemy priests. The battle was quickly starting to turn. Baraka was seriously hurt, but he was joined by Kalend and Filcher, who moved forward to help flank the priest. Even with its protective wards in place, it could not avoid painful blows that pierced its defenses, inflicting serious wounds. It tried to regroup, giving ground as it drew out a vial from its pouch. It didn’t get a chance to consume the draught; Snaggletooth flew up, still [i]invisible[/i], and seized the healing potion, yanking it out of the surprised cleric’s grasp. Things went rapidly downhill for the priest from there. The other cleric held its ground as Shay came back. She had the advantage in melee; she was both larger and faster, and her sword had a superior reach to the goblin’s morningstar. But the goblin dodged aside as she swung at it again, her stroke turned by the shifting energies of its [i]dispel good[/i] aura. In turn it smashed its morningstar into her right knee as she passed; Shay’s face twisted in pain, and she fell forward into a roll that brought her up again a few paces away, favoring the damaged joint. The goblin looked around for the source of the [i]silence[/i] aura, but it failed to see the fragment of arrow lying between its feet. It did, however, see the two hobgoblins charging toward it. The goblin seemed almost pathetic against the much larger and more heavily armored foes, but it took the first attack on its shield, turning the stroke before it brought its morningstar up hard into the hobgoblin’s gut. The fighter staggered back, gasping for air, blood oozing from the punctures where the weapon’s spikes had penetrated through his banded armor. The rest of the companions had moved into the room, although most of them did not rush forward to join the melee. Allera was helping Talen; the healer’s innate ability to purge blindness had not yet returned, and she lacked other magic that could help him. Serah tried to [i]dispel[/i] the [i]blindness[/i], but her spell slipped around the dark nugget of evil power gripping Talen like water sliding down an oilskin cloak. The goblin scouts moved cautiously forward, wary of other threats as they moved around the edges of the room into flanking positions. Dar grunted as he slowly fought to his feet, his movements awkward as he struggled to fight off the lingering effects of the [i]hold person[/i] spell. He staggered to the side as he drew [i]Valor[/i] out of its sheath. “I am going to cut me some freaking clerics,” he muttered, as he adjusted his uneasy momentum forward, his mail clanking with each stumbling step. For a moment, it looked as though he would not get his chance. The lesser priest had fought back against serious odds, giving ground as its foes continued to move to flank it. It was outside of the radius of the [i]silence[/i] sphere, so it could freely cast spells. It focused on the already-injured ranger, hitting Baraka with another [i]inflict wounds spell[/i]. The dark energies of the spell staggered him, but he held his position, distracting the goblin with blows from his sickles that failed to penetrate the goblin’s armored torso. The attacks allowed Kalend and Filcher to get into position again, and they were more successful, each stabbing the cleric with their short blades, the sneak attacks piercing its body from opposite sides. The cleric cursed them with its last breath, then collapsed, dying. The other cleric was being similarly pressed. It too was giving ground, trying to escape the sphere of [i]silence[/i], but as it retreated it came under heavy attack from Shay and the hobgoblin warriors. The scout, trying to ignore the limp from her injured knee, still moved far more quickly than the heavily armored goblin, and her skirmish attacks forced it to attend to her. The hobgoblins went in for more straightforward assaults, lashing at the goblin with their heavy swords. The cleric staggered as one attack bit deeply into its shoulder, the heavy clang of metal indicating that they had finally left the [i]silence[/i] behind. The cleric fell to one knee, but as the hobgoblin rushed in, eager to finish it, the servant of Orcus abruptly countered. Eschewing the morningstar, it reached up and pressed its fist into the hobgoblin’s gut, unleashing a powerful [i]inflict wounds[/i] through the contact into its body. The hobgoblin let out a hollow shriek of pain and collapsed, his body twitching with terrible agonies as the spell wrought its course of destruction. The fighter’s kinsman did not falter in his own attack, despite the obvious danger, pressing the cleric with another series of potent attacks. His sword clipped the edge of the cleric’s helmet, and the goblin went down, stunned. And then the massive doors on the far side of the room opened, and through the gap a horde of undead poured into the chamber. Dozens of skeletons and zombies came surging forward, arms extended as they sought the flesh of the living. A skeleton on the leading edge of that rush leapt at Dar. The fighter had dropped his club, but he smashed the creature with [i]Valor[/i], hard enough to reduce a mundane skeleton to shards of bone. The blow hit the skeleton square in the ribs. It staggered back a step, but instead of coming apart it leapt forward again, digging its claws into Dar’s weapon arm. Behind it, over a hundred more skeletons and zombies charged forward to attack. [/QUOTE]
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