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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3585005" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 187THE IDOLVaro moved through the press of undead.  Moving covertly along the right wall of the tunnel, shielded by his mislead spell, he moved cautiously but quickly forward.  The way that the undead were packed in the tunnel, it was almost impossible to make it through their ranks without being detected.  He’d already bumped into several creatures, and despite his efforts at silence, his armor and other gear clanked softly at his movements.  Thus far he’d been fortunate, and none of them had been able to get a hold of the living thing they could sense but not see, but his luck could not last long, he knew.  Already his left arm smarted where a zombie had delivered a wild but powerful blow in response to being jostled by the passing cleric.  The moans of the dead were drowned out, to a degree, by the wild chaos of the melee still just a short distance behind him.  Varo pressed forward, noting that the ranks of the undead were starting to thin out ahead.  Objectively he’d known that they could not be endless, but he’d started to wonder at that, as they had continued to press row upon row against his companions. He had not been caught completely off guard by the potency of the undead legion.  That morning, when they’d prepared to enter Grezneck, he’d cast a divination spell, seeking the guidance of Dagos.  That casting had cost him one of his summons, but it had given him information—couched in cryptic hints, as always—that might be their only chance to escape this encounter alive.  The flame strike caught him off guard for a second, almost long enough to undo him as a pair of zombies, sensing his presence, grabbed at him with outstretched arms.  He only narrowly dodged between them.  The spell had flooded the tunnel with light for an instant, and he’d seen... there!  A glint of metal, within the mass of undead.  Logic had said he would find the goblin priest here, even before the deadly spell had been unleashed.  Varo had realized earlier that the effect that was enhancing the undead was mobile, likely something borne by the cleric of Orcus.  Guided by his divination, he’d prepared to deal with it... but the flame strike also revealed that this foe was powerful, possibly even more powerful than he.  And, of course, Varo didn’t have a hundred enhanced undead on his side, either. But the hesitation of the priest of Dagos lasted less than a heartbeat; Varo had already committed himself fully to this course, and he was not about to falter in the face of mere death.  The cleric reached into his pouch and tossed something out into the tunnel, clattering off undead as it skipped noisily down the floor.  It was a silver coin, covered with a light spell that blazed out in a glory of bright illumination. The light revealed what Varo had been looking for, if not precisely what he’d expected.  The glint he’d seen before came not off the cleric’s armor, but off a golden idol, instantly recognizable as the image of the demon god.  The thing was almost five feet tall, carried by a pair of zombies that bent heavily with the weight of it.  Varo could almost see the waves of power that radiated off from it, and he was so distracted by it that he almost didn’t spot the cleric.  Tribitz was off to the side, a small shadow beside the much larger undead.  The goblin was clad in heavy armor of blackened plate, and Varo did not need a detect magic to recognize the layered wards it wore about itself like a thick cloak.  The undead barely responded to his light, but the goblin had instantly recognized that an invisible enemy was nearby, and it began spellcasting.  Varo knew he had to act quickly.  Summoning his own magic, he cast one of his few remaining higher-order spells, focusing the power of Dagos upon the golden idol.  His spell was powerful, and the will of his god flowed through him in response to his call, but the power surrounding the idol was the like the blaze of a black sun, furious and invincible.  Almost instantly Varo realized that he could not overcome it through brute force, and he began to feel the potency of his greater dispel falter against it.  He made a change born of instinct, and sharpened the power of the spell into a wedge, using his own will as the hammer to drive it not into the power of the idol itself, but into the invisible tendril that fueled it, drawing deep from another, exterior source.  That power was like a black slick of pure corruption, and he felt something cold twist in his gut as he touched it, even through the artificial connection of the spell. A flood of negative energy exploded through the tunnel.  Varo felt a cold pressure against his soul, and he staggered forward.  For an instant, he thought he would lose consciousness. But then his mind cleared.  Looking up, Varo saw that he was surrounded by zombies.  He was visible again; either the backlash from his casting had negated the improved invisibility granted by the mislead spell, or the goblin cleric had defeated the magic.  He reached for his dagger. Before he could touch the hilt of the weapon, the undead fell upon him, overcoming him, driving him to the ground.</blockquote>

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