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: 3743648" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 244RUN, DAR, RUN!Dar, his mind clouded by magical confusion, sprinted toward certain death at the hands of dozens of incorporeal undead. Allera was right behind him.  The healer had not hesitated; she had recognized immediately what had happened, and before Dar had gotten a few steps she was rushing to catch him.  She yelled his name, but the fighter did not respond, caught up in the temporary madness of the unseen enemy wizard’s magic. With the fighter burdened by his heavy armor, Allera was faster, but the small lead he had was telling, and she realized that she would not reach him before he got to the edge of the repulsion field.  The undead, recognizing the same thing, crowded around the spot where Dar was heading. “No!” With a sudden flash of white and a surge of cold air a wall of ice materialized directly in front of the fighter’s path.  Dar hit it at a full run, smashing hard into the barrier and rebounding from it, falling hard onto his rear.  He looked up at the wall, dazed.  Above the top of the wall, ten feet up, several undead hovered above the curve of the repulsion field, hissing in frustration at their inability to get to their prey, so close and yet so far away. Allera rushed at Dar, who snarled as he detected her presence.  He lifted Valor, still clutched tightly in his grip, but before he could attack her, she poured a flood of restorative power into his mind, clearing away the mental cobwebs lingering from the spell.  The fighter blinked.  “Allera?”Mehlaraine’s clouded mind finally drew her attention back to her immediate environment.  Her companions had drawn back from her, wary of her slashing rapier as she spun about, but there was one foe standing close by, and her attention was further drawn by the screams coming from him.  Her mind failed to perceive her consort, instead fixing upon the deranged elf as a deadly foe.  She lunged at Selanthas, cutting with Avelis.  In turn, Selanthas countered with his ready bow, firing arrows into his beloved at point-blank range. Fortunately both were protected by stoneskin, and the attacks did little damage, at least in the initial exchange. Shay had her hands full just keeping Talen busy.  She was fortunate that her lover had not had Beatus Incendia out when he’d been confused, but even so her left wrist throbbed where he’d snapped it with his bow.  The bow was ruined as a weapon now, cracked from the force of his swings, but it was still intact enough to deliver painful hits when backed by Talen’s magically augmented strength. She was just trying to keep him occupied until the casters could intervene, when she saw another threat descending upon them.  Another wraith, arriving late to the party, had forced itself through the repulsion, and now it took advantage of the confused melee to drop upon Talen, its claws effortlessly penetrating his armor and raking his flesh.  Talen screamed and turned upon the wraith, battering with his ruined bow, but of course the weapon passed harmlessly through it, doing no damage to its insubstantial form.  The wraith seemed to swell as the knight’s life energy seeped into it, and a hollow cackle sounded from the dark points of light that formed its eyes. Alderis drew back from the violent battle between his daughter and her consort; he moved just a few steps, but the undead swarming around the edge of his repulsion sphere moved with him, and those he approached were able to draw just that much nearer to him.  He almost dispelled the confusion that gripped the other elves, before he realized that an area-effect casting of the spell would likely bring down the repulsion field as well.  Likewise, an antimagic shell would break the effect, but it would also let the undead in, as the repulsion originated from himself, and moved with him.He was about to cast the dispel on his daughter, when he felt a tremor pass into him through the active repulsion spell.  For a moment he felt a cold fear in his gut as the invisible sphere trembled, but it held.  He recognized the feeling as an attack on his magic; his own spell had come within a hairsbreath of being dispelled.  The elf looked up at the swarming mass above; there was still no sign of where the enemy spells were originating.  But then Letellia drew his attention with a shout. The sorceress had remained in the background during the initial exchanges with the undead horde.  Once Alderis had established his perimeter, she’d carefully scanned the domed ceiling, looking for the enemy she had expected to be there.  Even so, the confusion had caught her off guard, forcing her to use her magic to save Dar from running blindly out of the protected area.  But once she’d conjured the wall of ice, she resumed her search, and when the enemy made its failed attempt to dispel the repulsion field, she saw it. “Alderis!  I need a dispel!” she shouted, pointing once she’d gotten his attention. The spectre wizard was there, difficult to see near the shadowed apex of the dome.  Mirror images and a shield protected it, again, and its position gave it a commanding access to the entire battlefield.  The creature saw that it was observed, and it immediately began spellcasting again, its shifting images echoing the subtle movements of its transparent hands.  Alderis made his decision at once.  Turning from his afflicted daughter, he released his spell at the spectre before it could finish.  He was careful to focus the effect directly upon the creature, so that the backlash would not threaten the repulsion field.  The mirror images and shield vanished, and the real form of the spectre shifted slightly to the side as a displacement was likewise sundered.  Letellia immediately fired off her readied lightning bolt.  The electrical blast caught the spectre squarely in the center of its chest, ripping through its unholy substance.  The undead wizard once again sought to withdraw, floating up toward the ceiling and the promise of escape, just a few feet away.  But before it could find sanctuary within the cold stone, it was hit again.  Nelan too had heard Letellia’s warning, and as the spectre reached its goal a beam of searing light cut through its body.  With a screech that rapidly trailed off into nothing, the undead spellcaster dissolved and was no more. But the defeat of one threat only highlighted the precariousness of their position.  Shay was trying to keep the wraith off of Talen, whose violent swings grew weaker as the undead monster continued to siphon life from his body.  The scout thrust her spear up at the creature, but this time the weapon failed to gain purchase in its insubstantial form, and it almost mockingly moved behind Talen, putting the confused knight between it and her.  “Can you help him?” Dar asked, as he and Allera rushed back into the fray. “Yes,” she said, “But I only have two heals, and there’s three...”  She trailed off as a loud boom reverberated through the temple.  Selanthas, hit with a heavy blow from Mehlaraine’s thundering rapier, was blasted back a full step, and slumped to one knee, the arrow he’d been loading falling away to skitter across the floor. Allera instinctively started in that direction, but Dar forestalled her.  “First things first!  Get Talen, I’ll deal with the wraith.”The undead monster either heard him, or sensed him coming.  It obviously also sensed the potency in Valor, for it drew back from its victim, pulsing with the life energy it had stolen.  Dar followed it, and before it could get high enough to escape his reach he leapt and slashed his magical sword through its body.  The sword met resistance, but the wraith was not vulnerable to the axiomatic properties of the blade, and it wheeled away, trailing bits of vaporous substance behind it. Mehlaraine lunged forward at Selanthas, intent upon finishing off her consort, but she froze in mid-swing as Nelan hit her with his hold person spell.  Selanthas, staggering back to his feet, fumbled at his bow for a moment before dropping it and reaching for his sword.  He got half of the blade out of its scabbard before he paused, and blinked.  “What...” he said, looking up at Mehlaraine, standing there trembling with her rapier poised to thrust into his heart.  He shook his head, trying to clear it of the chaos that still pounded at him from the spectre’s spell. “Hold your ground!” Alderis warned the archer.  “The spell still fogs your mind, and you may lose control once more at any moment.”  He looked at Nelan. “Cleric, can you hold my daughter?”“She is fighting the spell with the full force of her will,” Nelan said.  “She may escape its grasp at any moment.”Alderis nodded, and cast his second dispel on Selanthas.  The spell burned through the confusion, and the archer nodded in thanks, pressing his hand against his side where Mehlaraine’s critical hit had injured him through his stoneskin. Allera rushed over, with Talen, Shay, and Dar trailing behind.  The wraith, critically injured, had withdrawn out of reach above them, and it lingered there, waiting.  Allera rushed over in front of Mehlaraine, and grasped her head with her hands.  Nelan’s spell held, and the afflicted elf did not move as the healer worked her magic. Talen glanced back over his shoulder at the wraith.  He knew what it was waiting for.  “How much longer?” he asked Alderis.The elf shook his head.  “Thirty, maybe forty seconds.”The companions, save for Allera and Mehlaraine, looked up as one, at the swirling wave of darkness above them.</blockquote>

Verification