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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3961201" data-attributes="member: 143">Ah, the old team reunited once again.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> * * * * * Chapter 322VARO“Allera, are you all right?” Letellia asked.  “I’m fine.”  She looked at Varo.  “How... how did you get here?”Varo indicated the fragmented disk in Dar’s right hand.  “I placed a refuge spell upon that device.  When broken, it transported me here instantly.”Letellia frowned.  “There is an energy field around Rappan Athuk that disrupts long-distance magical transportation.  Your spell operates on a principle similar to the arcane teleport spell.  Why did it not block you?”“Because I was already here,” Varo said.  “I used a word of recall on a scroll penned by one of the high priests of Orcus to enter Rappan Athuk; I departed Camar shortly after you did, in fact.  The spell took me to a hidden chamber just off of the second temple.”  “So you knew about the barrier...”“There is much that...”The cleric was cut off as Dar suddenly surged forward, seizing the cleric bodily and hurling him into the wall with enough force to knock the air from his body even through his heavy armor.  “Corath!” Allera yelled.  But Dar did not loosen his grip. “You knew, you bastard,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.  “You knew that the priest would be killed, knew that we would be ambushed, you knew and did nothing to help us.”“I am not as omniscient as you...” Varo began, but Dar cut him off again, drawing him back a few inches and slamming him hard into the wall again.  “No.  I am sick to hell with your freaking distortions, cleric.”Varo’s mouth twisted into a sneer.  “I was not the one to reject you!” he returned, with surprising vehemence.  “It is only through my intervention that you and Camar’s leaders even know about the nature of the threat that looms over our entire world!  You may not like what I have said, or done, fighter, but you will not question my motives!  Were it not for Talen Karedes, and Velan Tiros, I would have been there with you, when Nelan was lost.”When Varo spoke the names, the fight seemed to drain out of Dar, and he released the cleric and stepped back.  He let out a grim chuckle.  “Well, Talen’s switched sides now; he’s playing for the other team.”“Yes, I heard about that.  It changes nothing; his fate will become that of many, if we fail.”Dar laughed again.  “Well. It’s a freaking reunion, then.  The Doomed Bastards together again once more.  Navev’s around here, somewhere, and the mad elf’s corpse; all we need is Tiros and we’d be set.”  He turned away; Allera laid a hand on his arm, but he barely seemed to notice.  He drew off his helm and ran a hand though his short-cropped, dirty shock of hair, pressing his fingers against his temples.  “I didn’t ask for this,” he muttered.  The statement wasn’t meant to carry, but Varo heard him, apparently.  “Do you think I wanted this?” the cleric of Dagos said, stepping forward from the wall.  “Do you think I wanted to sacrifice everything that I had, everything I was, to this cause?  Do you think I haven’t thought every single day about what my life would have been, if I hadn’t found that gods-damned book!”There was a long moment of silence between the four of them.  Then, finally, a noise intruded: a heavy scraping upon stone, coming from the corridor to the north.  The sound was of something large, coming their way; a red glow was visible around the corner in the mouth of the passage.  Varo sighed.  “They are coming.”  He incanted a spell.  Allera surrounded them all with a holy aura, while Letellia invoked a ward upon herself.The stink of brimstone washed over them before the creature arrived a few seconds later.  It was a monstrous abyssal hound, which filled the ten-foot passage almost completely.  Wicks of flame came from the jaws of its three heads, from which a deep growl emitted, a sound like rocks being crushed.  The center head wore a spiked collar of black metal, from which a laughably slender chain dangled.  The end of that chain was held by a mind flayer in a black robe, the milky orbs of its eyes fixed on the companions as it entered the room.  Dar lifted Valor, ready to charge, but the creature held its ground.  “What is it waiting for?” the fighter asked.  The answer came a moment later, as a soft clink of metal announced the arrival of other foes from the passage to the south.  One glance was enough to reveal that this cohort of foes were from the ranks of the undead.  Ranks of armored things that had once been men shambled forward, clad in heavy armor.  Enough of their raiment remained intact to identify what the creatures had been: priests of Orcus, men and women both, now drawn back to serve their master again in death.  Their sallow, waxen skin and the wounds covering their bodies suggested that they were zombies, but they moved with a speed and coordination not common to such beings, and something akin malevolence glowed in their eyes as they spotted their foes.  Each carried a heavy mace or morningstar.  They were led by a skeleton, a tall figure clad in archaic armor of black plate and chain.  The hollows of its eye sockets glowed with twin points of red fire, the glow reflecting off of the crown of gold that it wore upon its mailed brow.  It carried a greatsword, a single-edged blade of heavy folded steel that seemed to trail faint wisps of black smoke as it moved.  “So, Saracek, you have finally come at the bidding of your Master,” Varo said.  “Some oaths can be foresworn, but others cannot be escaped,” the skeleton said, its voice hollow and sepulchral.  Dar took a step forward and lifted Valor, so that their light gleamed blue off the length of the blade.  “Whoever the hell you are, you can tell your Master that...”But he never got a chance to finish his threat, as space twisted on the far side of the room, tendrils of black energy materializing in the air and coming together in a sudden storm between the two passages.  The disruption lasted only a fraction of a heartbeat, but in that interval something took form in that space.  Some of the black tendrils lingered, coalescing around the entity, an unholy aura that cloaked it in corruption and darkness. The creature’s warding spell shielded it somewhat from view, but the companions still recognized it at once.  The emaciated form of its body, the familiar stench of corruption, and above all the power within the stare that pierced the aura and penetrated into the core of the four humans that faced it. Maphistal had returned.</blockquote>

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