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: 3726125" data-attributes="member: 143">Heh, I don't know what was going through my mind when I did the chapter titles for this week's updates.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> * * * * * Chapter 239SAVE THE CLERIC, SAVE THE WORLD“Protect Nelan!” Talen yelled, breaking away from his charge toward the battle with the wights to engage the spectres.  He made barely two steps, however, before a burst of sticky magical webs exploded around him.  The dense webbing was anchored between the statue of Orcus and the base of the nearest stair over the lava pit, and it quite neatly engulfed him, Nelan, Letellia, Allera, and Selanthas in their clinging grasp.  Only Alderis and the three battling the wights had been outside of the burst radius of the spell.The spectres, of course, were not hindered by the webs in the least.  Three of them drifted forward over them like dark clouds on a starry night, their objective obvious.  Nelan was finally coming around, stirring from the depths of his ritual, but with the webs covering his body he could barely stand, let alone fight.  Talen looked at the sword in his hands.  The webs had flared away from the burning blade, but he knew that if he used it to cut himself free, then fire would rage through the web, burning his friends. To the hells with it, the knight thought, sweeping his blade across his path.  The webs disintegrated, flaring with white flames, but Talen could see that he would not reach Nelan in time; the spectres were moving too quickly.  But before they could strike, the spectres halted in mid-air, spasming as flashes of blue energy tore through their bodies.  Talen felt the effects of Allera’s mass cure as a gentle, soothing warmth, but he was not injured, and felt no other benefit. She certainly had gotten the attention of the spectres, however, which turned and dove at her, their insubstantial claws extended toward her body.  Dar, Mehlaraine, and Shay continued to struggle against the surging wight horde.  Over a dozen of the creatures were now lying shattered on the stone floor of the chamber, but there were still at least that many still up and fighting.  Dar cleared a space around him with Valor, a dead zone within which no wight could stand for more than a few seconds.  One of them had gotten in a lucky hit that had pierced his defenses, but even with the drain upon his life force he was still virtually unstoppable against such mundane foes.  A few wights remained near him, hissing in frustrated fury but wary of entering his reach.  Mehlaraine and Shay were rather worse off.  The elven woman, in particular, was beginning to flag, having suffered another pair of draining hits that had left her pale and somewhat unsteady.  She continued to fight, however, darting in and around the four wights that were still harrying her, stabbing with Avellis.  These wights, however, among the last to emerge from the doorway, were not as burned as the others had been, and they could take considerably more damage before falling.  Shay was having the same problem as she led three wights away from the battle, using her superior mobility to keep them from ganging up on her.  She had not escaped their life-draining touch either, although she had suffered far less than Mehlaraine on that score. None of the three observed the final creature that emerged from the dark staircase, hovering there in the deep shadows of the doorway. The first spectre that lunged at Allera dissolved as Selanthas’s arrow bisected the dark substance between the twin pinpoints of its glowing eyes.  The other two surged in in its wake, eager to feed upon the healer’s life energy.  The first came apart in the face of a barrage of magic missiles from Alderis, but the second drew its claws through her body, siphoning off her life.  The trailing rents torn in its body by Allera’s spell were restored somewhat by that stolen energy, and it seemed revitalized as it swept around and came at her again, eager for more.  Unfortunately for it the undead monstrosity never got a chance, as Talen caught up to it and carved a brilliant swath through its body with Beatus Incendia.  The last spectre, the spellcaster, left with one parting shot, a pair of scorching rays that struck Talen and Allera, burning both of them.  Letellia hit it with a lightning bolt that ripped through all five of its mirror images, the bright tendrils of electrical energy scorching the dark stone of the Orcus statue as it blasted past.  The spell was not enough to destroy the undead wizard, but the destruction of its allies was apparently enough to convince it not to linger.  It drifted back into the alcove behind the statue, chased by several of Selanthas’s arrows, which punctured mirror images but did no harm to the creature.  Within a few moments it was gone. The companions turned at once to aid their companions against the lingering remnants of the wight army, but it looked as though that battle would be over before they could join the fray.  There were only about a half-dozen wights still standing, and that number was depleted further as Dar stepped forward and clove a reluctant creature in twain before it could back out of his reach.  But then, as so often happened in the chaos of melee, the tide of battle abruptly changed. The shadowed creature that had remained in the open doorway following the charge of the wight horde now stepped forward, into the light.  It was a wight, clad in a suit of plate armor in an archaic style, apparently crafted from bronze rather than steel.  Even a glance told that it was in a distinct class from its brethren lying sundered upon the floor; it stood taller even than Dar, and its sunken eyes blazed with an unholy malevolence as they scanned the room.  It let out a keening cry as it came forward into the light.  Dar glanced up, and met the creature’s dark stare.  There was a madness in that gaze, and in that brief moment of connection it invaded Dar’s mind, driving him insane.  Mehlaraine, turning at the noise, was affected as well by the grim power of that stare.  Her body tensed, and she started screaming, even as the two wights still hazarding her leapt eagerly onto her, tearing her body with their claws.  Shay looked at the creature as well, but as the grim terror of that stare washed over her, some instinct allowed her to tear her eyes free before the full force of its gaze could infect her.  She staggered back, disoriented for just a moment, a vulnerability that allowed the two wights chasing her to seize her.  One held her, trying to drag her down to the floor, while the second delivered a powerful blow across her back, using its gnarled fists as a hammer.  The scout cried out as life energy was ripped from her body, and the wights cackled in glee. Talen watched with horror at the sudden turn, although he did not fully comprehend what he had seen.  He and the others were far enough away that the barrowwight’s sweeping gaze had passed through them with merely a cold chill.  Alderis, however, had comprehended at once the significance of what had happened.  “Its gaze is madness, do not meet its stare!” he shouted in warning, even as he drew out a wand and leveled it at the sinister creature. But before the elf could unleash an attack, he was distracted by a rumbling noise that emitted from the lava pit.  The companions turned as one just to witness a sudden explosion of boiling magma, as a skeleton rose up out of the lava.  The newcomer was a massive creature, standing easily twelve feet tall.  Its bones were blackened but apparently otherwise undamaged by the molten rock it had been immersed in, and which trickled down its body in glowing gobs as it stepped forward, and grabbing onto one of the stone staircases pulled itself up out of the pit.</blockquote>

Verification