Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3637763" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 207THE END OF THE END“Strike at the—” Varo yelled, but his order was cut short as the demon’s feral gaze shifted upon him, and it smote him with a power word.  The demon’s power smashed through the mental defenses of the cleric like a brick hurled through a glass window, and Varo crumpled, stunned.  Without exchanging words or looks, Dar and Talen moved together as one, lifting their weapons as they charged the demon.  Each sword had been crafted to slay creatures such as this, and the blades hummed with magical power.  Shay started to swing around Talen’s flank, to threaten and distract the monster from its rear, but Talen cut her off.  “Get the Sphere!” he yelled, gesturing with the tip of his sword. Shay hesitated only an instant, but in that blink of a moment a lot happened. The demon carried a terrible weapon, a huge, nasty war mace with flanges of black steel.  The length of the weapon and the demon’s own size gave it superior reach, and as Talen rushed forward to assault it with Beatus Incendia, it snapped the weapon down into the onrushing knight before he could get close enough to strike. Talen was caught off guard by the demon’s speed.  He tried to bring up his shield, but the mace sliced past the upper edge of the barrier, and crushed into Talen’s helm.  The helmet crumpled like paper, and the unholy mace pulverized the bone and flesh beneath it, crushing Talen’s skull like an egg. Dar roared and laid into Maphistal with Valor, swiping the axiomatic blade across the demon’s torso.  His stroke bit into its flesh, but the rotting flesh of its body was far tougher than it looked, and the wound inflicted was trivial, at best.  The demon was possessed of an incredible stamina that belied its unwholesome appearance. Allera rushed over to Talen, but one look was enough to tell her that there was nothing that could be done for him. Shay looked down at her chest.  Gobs of blood and tiny bits of gray matter were splattered across her armor; the demon’s blow had impacted with enough force to squirt out little bits of Talen’s brains out from under the edges of his helmet.  The scout looked down at the corpse of her beloved, and just... snapped.  She hurled herself at the demon, her sword slashing out wildly as she hacked at it.  The demon barely acknowledged her, and her attack had no effect upon it at all.Kalend’s hands shook wildly as he lifted his bow, and he could feel a chill trickle down his leg as he voided his bladder.  For a moment he pointed his arrow at the demon, but then the sheer insanity of it made him hold his shot.  Varo’s words echoed through his head, and he shifted his target, trying to pick out the Sphere of Souls from within the globe of chaos. He fired, but his shot came nowhere close to the scintillating orb.  The demon fixed its gaze upon Varo, still helpless from the power word.  It stepped forward, ignoring the enemies still attacking.  Dar let out a feral growl and lifted Valor for an all-out attack. Before he could strike, the demon spoke another word, a twisted syllable of blasphemy. The demon’s power was far stronger than that of the priest Theron, and the impact of Maphistal’s utterance was devastating.  Dar, Allera, and Shay collapsed, overcome.  Kalend was struck dead on the spot, and almost at once the gray substance of his soul seeped out of his body and was drawn into the chaotic surge of power that surrounded the Sphere of Souls.  Only Varo was not affected, but his mind was still clouded by the power word, and while he was aware of the demon, he could do nothing at all as the demon approached him.  It spoke, the words forming deep within its skull, echoing within the minds of those gathered. “You will be the final key in the Ritual, Licinius Varo.  I had hoped for a high priest of the Father, but the Creeper’s champion will do... perhaps in conjunction with this one.”  It reached down, and picked up Allera’s limp form in one huge claw.  The healer let out a pathetic whimper, but could not otherwise react, her muscles paralyzed by its blasphemy.  “You have failed, heroes of this world.  The time has come.  The hour of the Master’s coming has arrived.  Know in your last instants of life, that your souls are the mechanism by which your world shall be brought to an end.”The demon laughed, a terrible sound that echoed through the vast confines of the chamber.  The light of the Sphere seemed to pulse in tune to that sound, and currents of power flickered through the chamber, hammering at the senses of the Doomed Bastards of Rappan Athuk.</blockquote>

Verification