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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4282365" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for the posts, everyone. This should be an interesting week in Doomed Bastards-ville.  <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 56SOURCES OF POWERThe red beam filled the chamber with a bright crimson glow.  The room was an almost perfect hemisphere, with the floor slanting down slightly to form a shallow bowl.  In the center of the floor a tall pedestal that seemed to rise out of the substance of the ground, the only feature of the place other than the source of the beam.  That source seemed to hover above the top of the pedestal rather than be supported by it, a translucent sphere of brilliant red energy with a diameter that approached five feet.Ghazaran held the dagger-key tightly as he stepped out of the beam.  Even with the protection of that device, he’d felt a penetrating sensation during his brief transit down the tunnel from the prison chamber, and he had a deep conviction that without the key, that beam would have torn the very flesh from his bones.  His eyes were drawn to the sphere.  If Ozmad was right, the key was the only thing that could damage that sphere, and bring down the energy beam.  He took a step forward, but before he could approach the sphere, there was a flare of power, accompanied by a stinging explosion of ash and flames, and a sudden odor of brimstone.  Ghazaran barely had time to fling up an arm to protect his face before the pit fiend stepped into the room. The devil did not mess around, immediately hitting him with a meteor swarm.  Ghazaran staggered back against the wall as the streaking spheres struck.  Two of them clipped his arm and shoulder respectively, but he fared decently well against the explosion of fire.  The attack penetrated his spell resistance—a pit fiend was no trivial caster—but his warding against fire absorbed almost all of the damage from the swarm.  The fiend, immune to the flames that swirled back from the blasts around it, grunted slightly as its foe absorbed its attack.  It started toward him, preparing a greater dispel as it came. Ghazaran did not wait for the devil to come within reach.  Unrolling another scroll from the Camarian church’s cache, he held it up so that the fiend could see the sunburst etched into the back of the parchment.  He held the depleted chrysalium crystal he had used in the battle with the mummies and their lich master, but he felt barely a flicker of power from it.  Still he channeled that flicker into his casting, and drew as well upon the might of his own patron, the chaos that was anaethema to lawful beings such as the pit fiend.  It was a close thing, very close, but the banishment spell took hold, and the devil was cast screaming back into the Hells.  After taking a deep breath to steady himself, the cleric stepped toward the radiant sphere.* * * * * Ozmad stepped warily out of the blue beam into a room that seemed to be a smaller version of the vast hemisphere that housed the pyramidal prison of the Ravager.  The ogre’s skin still tingled; the dagger had protected him personally from any ill effects, but the beam had nevertheless completely suppressed all of his magic items.  It was similar to what his own antimagic field spell did, yet the feeling had been... alien. He held the mithral dagger with the star sapphire in the hilt in one hand, and lugged his huge mattock with the other.  He looked at the glowing sphere in the center of the room, the source of the beam, but made no move toward it, not yet.  Only a faint shimmer in the air announced the arrival of the guardian.  The thing that appeared, floating above the floor, was familiar, if massive for its breed.  Ten eyes on twisting stalks quickly swiveled to focus on him, and as its body turned, Ozmad could see the last already opening, a big orb that bulged so wide that the ogre could have spread both hands across and still not fully covered it.  The ogre didn’t wait for that eye to face him.  He summoned his magic, held at the ready for just this confrontation.  His antimagic field erupted not an instant too soon, as several beams lanced out from the beholder’s eyestalks, vanishing as they struck his barrier.  The invisible cone of antimagic that issued from the creature’s central eye filled the space between them, but the two auras simply met without further effect.  The blue beam was completely unaffected by the clashing fields, and the blue sphere did not so much as flicker, even though it was within the effect of both.       Ozmad tucked the dagger into his belt and charged, lifting his huge mattock.  Even with its magic nullified, it was a considerable weapon, and the room, though large, was not big enough so that the beholder could escape its long reach.  The creature seemed to recognize that as well, for it stopped firing off its beams, and slid toward him, rows of long teeth appearing as a big chunk of its lower body split open into a truly fearsome set of jaws.  The beholder was an impressive combatant, but its main potency lay in its magical abilities, and it could not overcome the ogre in a solely physical confrontation.  Less than a minute after his arrival, Ozmad stepped forward over the deflated corpse of the thing, and approached the blue sphere.  * * * * * Zafir Navev seemed utterly unfazed by the yellow beam as it stepped out of the tunnel into the smaller domed chamber.  A golden sphere hovered atop a pedestal in the center of the room, radiant with light that gathered into the beam of energy that departed through the passage it had just navigated.  The mithral dagger shone brightly in that light, especially the small globe of yellow topaz set into its hilt; that glowed like a small sun.  The mummy looked around; it had grown wary.  Part of the thing wanted destruction, craved it, but another part clung to existence like lichen on a rock, unable to break free.  Power flared around it, a cloak that it wore constantly now, enough power to have already sundered the grip of sanity, had the creature been mortal. The guardian appeared from behind the pedestal.  Navev faced it without concern, although the thing was the strongest yet of the three entities bound to the power sources.  The skull hovered in the air, flashes of light coming from it as the gems set into its eye sockets and jaws caught the glow of the golden sphere.  The demilich drew upon its powerful magic and unleashed a green ray intended to disintegrate the mummy. The spell was potent, unbelievably so, but as the beam struck the mummy, it flared against a frisson of red energies that flared bright against the emerald lance of the demilich’s spell.  Navev’s entropic warding invocation deflected the energies of the spell, which flashed in a bright cascade around it, causing no harm to the creature within the bright display.Navev countered immediately with an eldritch blast that arced a black line that slashed into the glowing skull like a whip.  But the demilich’s defenses were far more potent than those of the mummy, and the dark bolt merely dissolved into nothing as it struck. The demilich tried again with an empowered fireball that unleashed a blazing fury of heat and eager flames throughout the small chamber.  The spell was appropriately selected against the typical weakness of a mummy, but Navev’s amulet offered a strong defense against fire, and while the undead warlock did not escape unscathed, the flames failed to consume it.  Navev stepped forward as the fire of the spell died.  The demilich drifted back, wary of a physical confrontation, but the warlock’s focus was not upon the guardian.  Instead, it lifted the mithral dagger-key, and lunged forward to strike at the sphere of golden energy in the center of the room.  The noise of the impact was terrible, like the crash of a dozen glass windows being smashed in all at once.  The sphere withstood the blow, the dagger rebounding from its surface as though it had been made of stone rather than light.  But as the mummy drew back, a narrow crack was visible in the sphere, and tiny filaments of golden substance trailed from the tiny opening, like hints of fog leaking out from within. The demilich pressed its attack, hitting Navev with a lightning bolt that blasted solidly into the mummy’s back, passing through it to flash against the sphere.  The spell had no effect upon the translucent orb, but Navev was staggered by the impact.  Its wrappings hung from its body in blackened streaks, now, revealing the corrupt flesh beneath, scabrous strips of flesh trailing in long swathes from its frame to reveal the stark white of bone beneath.  It created the horrible image of ribbons trailing from the coat of a reveler on Harvestide, the grim spectacle making a mockery of everything that was wholesome and good in life. Navev did not turn to face the demilich.  Driven now by something beyond even the unlife that sustained it, it lifted the dagger, and lunged forward again to assault the sphere.  The trailing wisps of fog coming out of the damaged globe spun around his body as he moved, and another resounding crash of power filled the chamber as magics collided once more.</blockquote>

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