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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3611177" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 196GOBLIN BASHThe goblin necromancer pointed at Dar, and summoned the dark powers of its calling once more. A black beam of negative energy shot from its finger and stabbed Dar in the chest.  Suddenly the fighter felt as though his strength had been drained from him like a tapped keg; his muscles felt weak, and he had to hold onto the passage wall to keep from falling down.  The goblin assassin, standing beside the wizard, smiled evilly, and shot its crossbow into the suffering fighter’s chest.  Once again the bolt penetrated his armor, and its head bit painfully into his flesh, though not far enough to pierce a vital organ.  But he could feel the numbness of the poison again working its way into his body.  Groaning, trying in vain to lift his sword, the fighter slumped down to the ground. The goblin line maintained formation, but stepped forward to finish him off.  The flanker he’d struck earlier raised its sword, intending to run him through, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stop it. But then a slight form stepped in front of him, blocking his attacker with her body.  Dar tried to grab Allera, to push her behind him, but his strength was that of a kitten.  The goblin adjusted smoothly, equally content to strike down an unarmored woman as a crippled fighter, and it lifted the point of its blade toward her heart as it lunged forward. The attack never landed.  As it began its attack motion, a puff of pink smoke appeared directly in front of its face.  The goblin drew back in alarm, but too late to avoid getting a good whiff of Snaggletooth’s breath weapon.  Its eyes grew unfocused as it turned and idled away from the battle, caught up in the distracting euphoria of the faerie dragon’s magic. There were more goblins, however, and as they drew within range, their line pivoted, closing on Dar and Allera.  Allera grabbed Dar’s outstretched arm and called upon her healing magic, but even with her mastery of her art, there seemed no way that she could treat him in time to avoid being overrun by that enemy surge. The bright glow of Beatus Incendia, accompanied by a Camaran cry of battle, announced the arrival of Talen Karedes to the melee.  The knight forced the goblins to shift to meet him as he attacked the fulcrum of the shifting line, blocking Allera and Dar with his shield even as he poked an armored goblin in the chest with his sword.  The attack was barely more than a feint, and did little damage, but it drew the attention of the goblins, who immediately thrust at him with their small blades under the edges of their locked shields.  The more lightly armored flankers came up around the ends of that front line, seeking to exploit the weaknesses in the human’s defenses. The corridor was filled with a violent clash of metal on metal as the knight held off the enemy line.  The goblins were expert fighters, taking good advantage of their heavy armor and their small size, getting in close to deliver strong attacks at Talen’s legs and lower body, their swords darting around his shield to seek out openings.  Talen gave as good as he got, but in the first full exchange neither side gave way, not even when one of the flankers got in behind him and thrust its longsword up into the gap between the armor plates covering his torso, penetrating the chain links underneath and drawing blood.  The knight grimaced, but held his ground. The wizard lifted both hands, the sleeves of his robe falling back to reveal arms covered with ritual scars hacked into his limbs from elbow to wrist.  “Feel the cold touch of your own deaths!” the creature screeched, following the threat with the words of a powerful necromantic spell.  It spread its arms as it spoke the final words of the spell, but instead of magical fear, only silence came from it as it worked its lips.  At the same moment, the sounds of the battle faded away, leaving an eerie stillness in the corridor.The effect of the silence did not appear to extend to Dar, who yelled out a stream of violent profanity as he pulled himself to his feet and charged back into the fray.  Allera had not stinted; her heal spell had completely purged his body of his wounds, including the effects of the poison from the assassin’s two crossbow bolts.  He surged forward beside Talen, targeting another of the skirmishers.  The creature lifted its sword to parry, but could not have expected the blow that came down hard onto its blade.  The goblin’s magical weapon held, but the force of the blow drove its own weapon down into its face, the sharp edge biting through the iron cap it wore, cutting its skin down to the bone of its skull.  The goblin staggered back, blood pouring down its face from the vicious wound.  Then Herzord arrived, the other companions close behind.  There was not enough room in the confines of the corridor for more combatants, but the big hobgoblin brought his greatsword down into the goblin that had come around Talen’s other flank, crashing through its chain armor and biting deep into the flesh beneath.  This far back the pair were outside of the silence spell, and the sound of the hit echoed disproportionately loudly through the corridor.  The goblin should have crumpled, but somehow was able to turn and stab at its foe, managing to score a flesh wound in the hobgoblin’s left leg just above the knee. The enemy necromancer was falling back, seeking the edges of the silence spell.  Varo had fixed the effect in space, and it soon withdrew enough for the sounds of its own breathing to become audible again.  The orb of magic blocked the tunnel, and through it the battlefield was just a muted dance of soundless movements, its true nature made obvious only by the occasional flutter of bright red droplets in the air from a particularly effective blow. The goblin had more destructive spells in its arsenal, but upon realizing it faced enemy spellcasters as well as warriors, it paused to surround itself with a lesser globe of invulnerability.   The goblins were tough, damned tough, but it was quickly becoming obvious that they were not quite as tough as their current foes.  Talen and Dar, side by side, were unleashing powerful attacks against which even the heavy plate and shields of the goblin fighters seemed of little avail.  Each hit was devastating, not just from the strength and skill of the pair, but from the unique magical powers invested in their blades.  Beatus Incendia blazed white each time it connected with a goblin, while Valor seemed to sizzle with blue energy each time that Dar struck, its axiomatic steel eagerly tearing into the chaotic bodies of the Orcus-followers. The assassin had reloaded its bow with another poisoned quarrel, but retreated into the shadows.  After failing to take down its first target with two shots, the monstrous little creature known as “the Executioner” to its peers in the slave pits was reconsidering the efficacy of a frontal assault.  It was about to cast a spell to cover its retreat when it suddenly froze, caught by a hold person spell. Dar kept hacking at his designated target, adding another pair of serious wounds to his opponent before the creature finally went down in a tangle of bloody arms and legs.  “I want the wizard!” he yelled to Talen.  The pair was on the very edge of the silence field, so the knight heard him, and responded.  “Go, I’ll take these!” he shouted back.  The goblin fighters, within the silence field, could not have heard the exchange, but  the seemed to have a sense of what the fighter had in mind.  Closing ranks as another of their number collapsed, they still started to shift their line to block him.  But there were not enough of them left to hold the full passage, and Dar shot past, ignoring an attack of opportunity from the rightmost fighter that cut a narrow gash under his breastplate.  He shot forward like a catapult stone toward the wizard.  Behind him, Shay took his place at Talen’s side, striking at the goblin that had wounded him.  Three of the five goblins still in place now bore serious wounds, but they refused to retreat, and still managed to get in the occasional hit that added to the tally of wounds born by their foes.  Unfortunately for the goblins, they did not have a healer standing behind them, healing their wounds as soon as they were inflicted. Dar’s face twisted into a snarl as he shot toward the wizard.  The necromancer answered with its own vicious expression, and it began casting once more, summoning protective magic.  Mirror images sprung out of its body, and it took several steps back, letting them shift and twist around it, confounding its location.  Within a few seconds, it was impossible to discern its location by sight. But Dar was no stranger to fighting magic-using foes.  Even as the images appeared, the fighter closed his eyes, and drove toward the spot he sensed the wizard to be.  Valor tingled in his fist, and as instinct replaced thought he planted his foot and thrust forward, holding nothing back. He felt resistance, and then a soft cough, followed by a gurgling noise of bloody death. Opening his eyes, Dar saw that he’d impaled the wizard through the chest.  The creature looked at him, the light already fading from its eyes.  It tried to say something, but only managed to cough up blood. The fighter leaned in.  “Tell your god that I’m coming for him,” he said.  Then he spun, launching the dead wizard from his blade.  The little creature flew across the passage, smacked into the wall, and fell in a bloody heap. Dar turned and returned to the battle, but the outcome had already been decided.  Only two goblin fighters were left standing, and Herzord and Talen were making short work of them.  As Dar passed the still-paralyzed assassin, he pushed it against the wall, and tore the bolt from its crossbow with his other hand.  The goblin trembled, trying to break free, but could not defend itself as Dar lifted his fist and punched the head of the bolt through its left eye.  The goblin collapsed, its limbs quivering for a moment before it slumped into death. A moment later Talen knocked the last standing goblin to the ground with a blow that cut under the front guard of its helmet.  Herzord made sure of a few that were still bleeding, and then the battle was over.  The corridor was awash with blood and thick with the stink of death.  Herzord wasted no time, pumping his fist and pointing down the tunnel, where it split into two passages ahead.  His scouts had taken heavy casualties from the wizard’s ice storm, but a half-dozen vanished into the darkness ahead to check for further threats.  “They did not go quietly,” Shay observed. “They are fanatics,” Varo said, coming up to join them.  Dar flicked the blood off his sword, and sheathed it.  “Fat lot of help you were,” the fighter said to the cleric.  “Where was the fire blast, the summons?”Varo’s gaze was chilly.  “This was just the preliminaries.  If you hadn’t foolishly rushed in, this battle would have been much less dangerous than you made it.” “Why you son of a...”“He’s right,” Talen said, lifting a hand to forestall him.  “And you know it.  Enough; it’s done and over with.  They know we’re here, and I don’t want to wait for the next group of guards to find us.  We take the fight to them, and we end this, right here, right now.”</blockquote>

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