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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3617873" data-attributes="member: 143">We're approaching the end of Book 3; we should hit it in two weeks (on a Friday, naturally). But we have a few cliffhangers to go to get there. Here's the first...* * * * * Chapter 199THE HIGH PRIESTS OF ORCUSDar saw what was coming, but there was nothing he could do about it.  Herzord brought his sword back down again, hacking into the back of Phesor’s neck, almost taking the cleric’s head off in the process.  Dar finally tore free from the dead cleric and nearly fell, but managed to stagger in the general direction of Relnek, knowing that he would not reach the cleric in time. But as the cleric of Orcus finished his spell, he screamed and fell back, clutching at his head.  Relnek’s flame strike blasted down at an angle, smashing into the dome high above them, filling the room with a blast of heat but not harming anyone on the floor below.  The cleric staggered back against the shelf formed by the next-highest bronze tier, and as he turned back, Dar could see that an arrow jutted from the left side of his face, buried into the eye socket.  The shaft was too big to be a goblin arrow, and while it hadn’t come in straight enough to penetrate the brain and kill him, it had done a thorough piece of work on the cleric’s eye. “Nice shot, Kalend!” Dar yelled.  He felt stronger, recognizing the life pouring back into him from Allera’s mass cure serious wounds spell.  He leapt at the cleric, intending to take him down quickly. On the far side of the stairs, Talen had slipped and fallen on his side, as the cleric Tibor continued to pull at his ankle.  Twisting onto his back, the knight thrust down with Beatus Incendia.  He’d intended to drive the blade through the man’s skull, but the cleric twisted aside, and he only managed to open a deep gash in his shoulder.  That was enough to force him to loosen his grip, but it was only a momentary respite, as Tibor came back at him, a red glow forming around his bloody fingers.  Allera’s healing spell was very timely, but Talen’s foe seemed impervious to wounds.  Tibor ignored his burning robe, the blackened flesh from Serah’s searing light and Varo’s flame strike, and the injuries that Talen and the hobgoblin lieutenant had inflicted on him, focusing on taking down his still gravely injured foe.  Talen did not know that Theron had bolstered his allies with a mass cure critical wounds spell moments before; to him, the cleric seemed to have a vitality beyond that of any mortal man.  His mouth twisting into a grim frown, Talen drew himself into a crouch and lifted Beatus Incendia, waiting for the cleric to close. But before he could strike, Tibor suddenly came to an abrupt halt.  Bright red blood cascaded down his nostrils and out his ears, and an unintelligible cascade of gibberish hissed from his lips, before he collapsed.  Talen rose, and saw Varo standing there.  The cleric pointed toward the top of the dais.  “Those two are the largest threat; we need to take them out, quickly.”Talen looked up and saw Shay flying backward through the air.  His heart clenched in his chest before he realized that she’d jumped, rather than been thrown.  Shay had never seen a fiendish girallon before, but she could tell enough from looking at it that there was no way she could stand up to it head on, especially not with her strength drained to that of a child.  The scout landed in a crouch at the bottom of the stairs.  The girallon, angered as its claws swept empty air, roared again and charged down the stairs, using its lower set of arms for balance. Dar laid into Relnek, ripping open the cleric’s shoulder from behind.  The cleric staggered back, but he reached up and yanked the arrow from his eye, and as he turned back Dar could see that the wound had stopped bleeding, and that the cleric was not quite yet finished. “You are persistent,” the cleric said, echoing Dar’s thoughts exactly.  A moment later, Varo’s inflict serious wounds spell hit him, however, undoing the benefits of Theron’s healing spell.  Dar leapt forward, but the cleric recovered quickly, reaching out and stabbing a hand into the fighter’s side.  Once again Dar screamed as another harm spell ripped through him.  The cleric chuckled and drew back, but Dar wasn’t done; he took the pain, lifted his sword, and impaled Valor through the cleric’s chest.  The fighter, on the brink of death once more, nearly followed the priest down to the ground, and he knelt there on his knees for a few seconds, breathing heavily. “Freaking clerics...” he wheezed, holding onto the hilt of his sword, jutting from the dead priest’s chest, for support. The high priests atop the dais had not been idle while their companions were being hacked to pieces.  After summoning the girallon, Celleen cast spell resistance, aware that a high-level priest was among their enemies.  That proved a timely choice, as Varo’s mass inflict bounded off the shield a moment later, fizzing with a mere tingle on her skin.  The priestess had taken serious injuries from the flame strike that had opened the battle, but as Theron’s mass cure critical wounds eased the pain of those wounds, she aborted her healing spell and instead protected herself with a death ward.  Those necessary tasks complete, she started looking for something to kill. Theron followed his mass cure with a summons, reaching across the barrier between worlds and conjuring a trio of fiendish tigers to his will.  He felt the sting of Varo’s mass inflict as he finished the spell, but his concentration held, and he turned to his own defenses, protecting himself with both an unholy aura and spell resistance.  “Where is the enemy priest?” he shouted to Celleen, over the chaos of the battle.  Between the incense floating in the air and the smoke from the multiple flame strikes, it was becoming difficult to see.  Celleen did not respond; she had already spotted Varo, and was spellcasting.  Herzord met the summoned girallon’s charge on the stairs.  The hobgoblin, a veteran of hundreds of battles, let the monster come to him.  It had reach, and the high ground, both advantages that the commander took into account as the creature closed, until it was near enough to lash out at him with a single muscled claw.  The impact hit, hit hard, but Herzord merely grunted and took it.  The monster’s other arms lifted to engulf him, but before they could strike the hobgoblin stepped forward, close enough for him to bring his greatsword down in a vicious arc that split the huge ape’s chest wide open.  Blood and organs gushed from the terrible wound, and the hobgoblin sidestepped as the huge creature fell past him, dissolving even as it slid to the base of the stairs.Waves of positive energy continued to surge through the room, as Allera continued bolstering her companions.  She did not stir lying on her side in a fetal position, her eyes tightly closed, her hands moving in the complex gestures of spellcasting in her lap.  She could feel the life energies of her friends, waxing and waning under the enemy assault and her own magic, but ebbing ever closer toward death.  Her own pain had receeded to a dull throb; she just kept casting, healing, channeling mass cure after mass cure into the room, toward the bright points of light that flickered in the darkness.  A soft moan shook her out of her reverie.  Opening her eyes, she lifted her head and saw Serah lying on the ground, shaking, just a few feet away.  The priestess was still gripped firmly within the paralysis caused by Theron’s earlier blasphemy.  The sight stirred Allera’s instincts enough to shake her out of her grief, and she crept forward, extending her arm to touch the other woman on the ankle.  Dar felt his strength returning as another cure spell took hold.  He was beginning to feel like some mongrel’s chew toy with the repeated battering his body had taken, but he was all too aware that the battle was not over.  As he straightened and yanked his sword free of the cleric’s chest, a huge tiger leapt onto him, knocking him over backwards. Varo healed Talen, purging him of the wounds he had suffered thus far, and of the lingering weakness of the blasphemy.  The knight nodded gratefully and started at once back toward the dais, clambering up the bronze platforms.  He made it only up to the second tier before a black tiger padded forward to the edge of the dais, growling before it crouched and leapt at him. The last tiger bounded down at Herzord, pouncing onto the hobgoblin fighter before he could set to take its charge.  Somehow, the hobgoblin kept his footing on the slick steps even with five hundred pounds of fiendish cat tearing and slashing at him.  The tiger’s claws opened deep gashes in his arms and legs, but then Herzord got his chance, tearing his arms free and bringing down his sword in a decisive blow that severed the cat’s spine in one fell chop.  The tiger joined the girallon and dissolved as it expired upon the stairs.  Herzord, breathing heavily, paused only a few seconds before he started up the stairs once more. Dar yelled out as he fell onto his back, the tiger lashing out and snapping in what felt like a hundred places at once.  His magical breastplate kept him from being torn apart at once, and with a heave he thrust the creature off him, rolling it off the edge of the bronze tier.  The cat landed on its feet and came at him again, but Dar got Valor up this time, and stabbed the axiomatic sword deep into its shoulder.  The cat hissed in pain but kept pressing its attack. Talen fared better against his tiger, but then again he was at full strength, restored by Varo’ intervention of a moment ago.  The cat’s claws failed to find purchase on the smooth metal plates covering his torso, and Beatus Incendia blazed with purpose as he carved deep gashes in its body, ending with a stroke that sliced through half of its skull.  Talen looked up again to see one of the priests, the woman, pointing at him.  The knight tried to dodge, but as a green beam shot from her fingertips, it became clear that he was not the target of the attack. The disintegrate struck Varo square in the chest.  The priest of Dagos did not move as the green energy of the beam spread across his body, seeping into him.  He closed his eyes, drawing all of his focus and determination into a barrier against the spell.  Flesh sizzled as the green glow ate away at it, but when it died, he was still there, smoking rising from his chest from where the beam had struck.  “Dagos is my shield, foul bitch of Orcus!” he shouted.  But the attack had disrupted his latest summoning spell, and he was rapidly running out of effective counters.  He hurled another mass inflict spell at the two enemy priests left standing, but the attack faltered against their spell resistance.  Dar couldn’t see much except for black fur and blood as the tiger leapt up and wrapped its claws around his upper body.  It tried to bite him, but the huge jaws snagged on the front of his helmet.  He smelled brimstone. “Get!  Off!  Of!  Me!” he yelled, but weakened as he was, he could not break the tiger’s ferocious leverage.  Then the cat screamed and suddenly he was free; he immediately took advantage and drove Valor to the hilt in the monster’s side.  As it fell, he saw Kalend, the thief’s sword edged in red, and beside him Serah.  The cleric’s clothes were an utter mess, charred from the flame strike, but she rushed over to him, treating his own injuries with a cure serious wounds spell. “Thanks,” he said, grimacing as he tried to get up for yet another time.  He felt a cold chill, some instinct warning him as he looked up toward the top of the dais. Talen and Herzord were converging on that destination, but the two clerics were waiting for them.  Behind them the statue of Orcus loomed huge, somehow clearly visible even through the haze of smoke and chaos. “They’re running into a trap,” Dar said, forcing his wobbly legs to support his weight.  “Stay here,” he told Kalend and Serah, turning back to the foe.  But the clerics were ready.  Theron raised a hand into the air, the sleeve of his robe falling to reveal the fire-blackend limb beneath.  “Lo, and as the Codex declares, so shall the fate of all who oppose the True God be sealed in blood!” The two clerics released their spells spontaneously, Theron’s flame strike cascading down at the same instant that Celleen’s mass inflict serious wounds scoured through the companions in its wake.</blockquote>

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