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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4014725" data-attributes="member: 143">I do try and cut down on the more glaring examples of this, but I'm sure a few sneak in here and there. In many ways dialog is the toughest part of writing, and is one area that I've tried hard to work on in the course of my work. There have been a few places in past stories where I've done accents and other funky speech patterns and they always seem a bit... odd, so I stick to a mostly "modern" style in most of my works. Next week, things really start to get crazy for the DBs.  <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 344 FORWARD THE RECKONINGThe remaining glabrezu summoned its power and conjured a ring of reverse gravity around it.  Talen’s vampires went flying up to the ceiling, smacking into the smooth white stone.  They weren’t really hurt by the suuden ascent, but the glabrezu had cleared the space around it, and protected itself from further encroachment. Or at least that was what it had assumed.  It was caught off guard as Shay charged it, her longsword glowing in her hand.  She shot upward as she entered the reverse gravity field, but her momentum carried her forward, and as she shot past the glabrezu’s head she sliced out with the blade.  The sword clipped the dog-demon hard, shearing off one of its ears.  The demon roared and tried to grab her, but the reverse gravity still held her, and she landed easily in a crouch on the ceiling, upside down.  She was twenty-five feet off the floor, but that wasn’t enough to take her out of the demon’s long reach.  The glabrezu snarled and lunged up at her, careful not to blunder into the effect of its own magic. Talen growled in frustration as he sword passed through Nelan again without effect.  The ghost cleric had been distracted to cast his flame strike, but now he turned back to face Talen again, and the vampire knew that another blast of holy energy of the magnitude of the first might destroy him.  Or at least render him helpless, which may as well have been the same thing.  He wasn’t going to get another chance at Orcus.  Nelan saw it, too.  The cleric drifted forward again, power flaring around his extended hand, a mélange of black tendrils and the familiar blue glow of healing magic.  Did the use of healing spells injure the ghost as well?  Talen did not know, but he did know that the cleric’s touch was going to be a world of pain.  He darted back, cursing himself for being too slow as Nelan closed the gap between them. And then blue fire exploded around the ghost, and with a soft shriek the ghost of Nelan came apart.  Talen turned to see who had aided him, but it wasn’t immediately obvious who had cast the spell.  Vrocks were everywhere, although he recognized that most of them were images cast from the pair that the glabrezu had summoned.  Varo was fighting off another ghost... Marcus Felix, it appeared, although Talen couldn’t clearly distinguish him from behind.  Talen would have put money on the inevitable outcome of that clash, but as he watched Marcus laid into the priest with his sword, and it was Varo who staggered back; the ghost was stronger than it looked, and their weapons seemed to have no difficulty affecting corporeal opponents. He glanced back and saw the glabrezu battling his vampires, most of whom were on the ceiling, caught up in a reverse gravity field.  He watched as the demon delivered a crushing blow to Shay, who narrowly tore free before it could seize her in its pincer.  The scout was still in the fray, darting forward like a snake into the hole in the gravitic aura, falling directly onto the demon’s shoulders.  It tried first to knock her free, then snapped at her with its jaws, but she was quicker, smashing her fist into its left eye.  The demon roared and staggered back, and then both of them, demon and vampire, were flung up to the ceiling, where they continued to struggle. Well, Shay seemed to have matters well in hand there.  Talen turned and leapt into the shifting mess of illusory vrocks.  Allera felt as though she’d fallen into a tornado; the vrock bashed and buffeted her.  Thus far the stoneskin that Letellia had placed on her had protected her from both the vrock’s mundane attacks and the burrowing spores that tried to penetrate her flesh.  But there was nothing she could do to defend herself, but try to get away.  She slipped out of the vrock’s grasp as it tried to grasp her and draw in against its body.  Staggering back, she hurled another wave of positive energy out from her: not an attack at the demon, but rather directed at her allies, and against the ghosts she could sense like spots of black against her perceptions.  Fortunately she could distinguish them from the vampires, although at the moment she felt well tempted to destroy them as well, as Nelan’s warning echoed in her thoughts.  She couldn’t see the results of her spell, as the vrock rushed in and seized her again.  This time its claws locked onto her upper arms, and it yanked her roughly into its embrace, its beak locking on her throat.  The thing was very strong, and she thought she could feel Letellia’s magic weakening.  Once the ward was depleted, she knew that the creature could tear her apart in a matter of moments.  Then the creature shrieked and dropped her.  The healer hit the ground rolling, ignoring a stabbing pain through her right arm as the fall smashed her elbow.  She looked up to see Talen and Dar double-teaming the demon.  She wasn’t sure which one had struck it down, but its images were all but done, and as it tried to leap into the air, its wings beating furiously, Dar sliced his blade across its lower torso, eviscerating the thing.The other vrock had enjoyed a brief moment of advantage against Letellia and Alderis, smashing the stunned spellcasters with its claws and knocking both roughly to the ground.  But both were likewise protected with stoneskins, and as they recovered they quickly countered the vrock with potent attacks of their own.  Alderis sheared away its mirror images with a dispel magic, and Letellia hit it hard with a disintegrate.  The beam failed to vaporize the creature, but it certainly got its attention, and it adjudged the sorceress the greater threat, leaping onto her and crushing her arms against her body as it enfolded her in its muscular grip.  The vrock started to pound its wings and rose into the air, perhaps intent on taking its prize somewhere quieter for private consideration.  But it underestimated the powers of its victim, and a moment later Letellia successfully dimension doored out of its grasp, materializing on the far side of the room by the doors.  That left it open to Alderis’s cone of cold, which blasted it with devastating effect.    The glabrezu had finally gotten a good grip on Shay, and it hurled her from it, tossing her halfway across the room.  But as the demon tried to rise it found itself assailed from all directions by hungry vampires.  For the most part their attacks failed to penetrate its heavy protection, but it took another hit that drained yet more life energy from its faltering body.  The demon, deciding enough was enough, tried to teleport away, but its magic, drained along with its life, faltered and failed.  It tried to get up and away, knocking vampires off it with its still-potent claws.  But before it could escape the effect of its own reverse gravity Shaylara reappeared below, clutching her longspear once again.  The highly-enchanted head of the weapon bit into the demon’s head just above the armored carapace that covered its back, sliding deep into the muscled flesh.  The glabrezu thrashed wildly, sending vampires flying in every direction, and then it tumbled forward, plummeting hard to the ground below, narrowly missing crushing Varo as it struck. The battle was already over by the time that the demon landed.  Varo had destroyed Marcus’s ghost with a final pulse of healing energy, and the last vrock failed to escape as Letellia hit it with a barrage of magic missiles that cut through its spell resistance like small knives through fabric.  As a summoned creature, the vrock dissolved into greasy black smoke as it expired, unlike the two massive glabrezu that lay like mounds of rubble in the center of the room.  Black ichor spread across the white floor like slicks of tar, and as the rush of battle departed it left the stink of death and destruction in its wake.</blockquote>

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