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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4375234" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for posting, Oversight. I had the same problem with some of the classic early story hours, which is what led me to decide to try one of my own. * * * * * Chapter 70PURSUITDar dove toward the spawn, but his heavy armor slowed him, and the creature had a small but significant lead.  Within a few seconds, he saw that he would not catch it before it reached Maricela and the Camarian reinforcements. The priestess shouted orders, and the legionaries spread out across the trail, setting their long spears to take the spawn’s charge.  She fired a beam of searing light at the spawn, but while the bolt hit it squarely in the center of its chest, it did nothing to slow its rush.  The lillend archer kept pace easily, maintaining the fire from her magical bow.  The shafts stabbed deeper into its body than mundane arrows, and left bloody streaks trailing down its back, but the spawn, it appeared, would not be denied. The little black man on the flying rug had gotten ahead of the charging spawn, and dropped to within fifty feet of the canyon floor.  He leaned over and dropped a small black ball that plummeted to the rocky ground.  As the spawn charged forward, the rocky terrain around it came alive with stirring, grasping tendrils.  At first, they looked like the common black tentacles spell, but as he drew near, Dar could see that these tentacles were coated in a slick substance that left dark marks on the spawn’s skin where they struck, and each terminated in a gaping maw that snapped and hissed as they sought to gain purchase on its hide.  The spawn tore through them like a farmer’s scythe through wheat, but it cost it time, time that it no longer had. Dar lifted Justice and prepared to strike, but Letellia drifted into his path, her hand outstretched to bar him.  “Let me, general,” she said, her voice hollow from behind her mask.  He wasn’t about to argue with her; the spawn had been delayed by the black wizard’s spell, but it was close enough for one dedicated charge to take it into the ranks of the Camarians.  But even as he started to move around Letellia, she summoned her magic once more, and unleashed a final bolt of energy, once that stabbed into the back of the spawn’s skull like a knife.  The spawn, already critically wounded, collapsed in a twitching heap, even as the last flickering remnants of electricity danced around its ehad and died. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s dead,” Dar said, but the lillend was already descending, dropping to almost point-blank range as it continued to fire its bow into the creature’s head.  At that range, the entire length of the glowing shafts penetrated, and vanished into the interior of the spawn’s skull. Letellia started to drift back upward, forcing Dar to focus his thoughts on the fly spell to follow her.  “We thought you were dead,” he said, glancing back down at the path of destruction left by the ravager spawn through the canyon.  “I quite nearly was.  Fortunately the collapse weakened the barrier between planes that exists in the vault, so I was able to eventually plane shift to another reality.” “Why didn’t you let us know that you were alive?”“I knew that your failure—our failure—would result in the eventual release of the Ravager.  I had to take steps to address that eventuality.  I regret that it took as long as it did to recover and return.”He pointed down at the lillend, and the diminutive wizard floating below on his tiny square of carpet.  “Who are your friends?” “Members of the Mind’s Eye.  I would have rallied more aid, but Lyllalya and Dra Mak Mor were the only ones who could come on such short notice.  I have called in a number of favors, Corath Dar.  Let us hope that are resources are sufficient to the task.”  They had risen high enough to see over the ridge, and Dar could see the lights of the torches that surrounded the entrance to Rappan Athuk, popping into sight like distant fireflies.  There were other lights now on the hilltop where he’d left Kiron and the others, although at this range all Dar could make out were the outlines of men moving about.  There was one other thing as well.  A rumbling, distant, a vague sound on the edges of his perception.  Without the anchor of the ground beneath him, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. “What’s that?”“You know, Corath Dar.  It is time.”Concentrating on the magic, he shot forward, willing the spell to carry him faster.  He was moving as fast as a charging warhorse, but it still felt as though the air around him had thickened, tugging at his limbs, his sword, his cloak.  “Allera!” he shouted, knowing that he was probably too far away for her to hear over the evening breeze, which had started up again briskly, as if to spite him.  The rumbling grew louder, and he could see rocks dislodged from the hillsides ahead, bouncing as they tumbled down the steep slope. He could see Kiron and the others, now.  Kiron was shouting something, lost over the rising pitch of the trembling ground.  He saw a flash of white and saw Allera, running toward him.  He was still too far away. And then the hill exploded in a shower of rocks, dirt, and dust.  A stone the size of his head shot past him, close enough so that he could have reached out and touched it as it passed.  For a moment, the hilltop was obscured by a storm of debris that hung in the air, swirling in the wind.  “Allera!” he yelled, but there was no sign of her.  There was too much dust in the air to see anything for a few seconds.  He coughed as he entered the outer edge of the cloud, but kept on going, trying to see something, anything. And then the debris cleared, and he saw more than he wanted to see. It was huge.  It looked like the spawn, down to the black teeth and claws, but its crimson hide was a deeper, richer color, almost like congealed blood.  It was easily the size of a galleon, and he couldn’t even see all of it, its lower half still obstructed by the swirling dust and scattered dirt in the air.  Apparently it had burrowed up directly from below, drawn by something—the sense of prey, magic, whatever.  Even though it hadn’t sensed him, its presence was almost overpowering.  The Ravager was massive beyond its mere size, although that was more impressive than anything he’d ever faced before.  No, it was ancient, epic, a thing beyond mere human words.  It was a force of nature, destruction made manifest.  He’d been a fool, to think that mere men could face such a thing and defeat it.  But what he felt more than anything at that moment was a tight fear for Allera.  And then, as though summoned by the thought, he saw her, lying half-buried in a pile of rubble.  She’d been hurled over the edge of the crest by the explosion, and had made the violent passage down the steep cliffside that he’d made earlier.  He’d survived it, recovered to fight on, but his wife was not moving. “Allera!” he cried out, diving toward her.  But the Ravager had finally sensed him, even before he cried out.  As he dove, it lunged, its jaws opening to seize him and swallow him in a single gulp.  Desperation guided instinct, and he threw himself aside, lashing out blindly with Justice in what had to be vain effort to divert its attack.  The sword struck one of the Ravager’s teeth, and was almost wrenched out of his grip as he was buffeted roughly aside.  He started to fall, but a moment later he felt an agony as the creature’s jaws snapped shut, closing on his right wrist.  His arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket as he was yanked violently down, and then, with a sickening tearing feeling that he felt through his entire body, his right hand and much of his forearm tore free, and he was tumbling away from it.  For a moment, as he fell out of control, he caught a glimpse of the Ravager falling back, and saw the gleaming blade of Justice jutting from the right side of its jaw, protruding out from between its teeth like a toothpick.     But anything else, including recovering from his fall, proved beyond his abilities.  The ground rose up quickly to meet him, and he landed in a rough heap on the piled earth and stone that had sloughed off the sundered hillside, blood from his severed arm splattering on the rocks around him as he slid to a halt. Above him, the Ravager lifted its head toward the sky and unleashed a roar that shook the world.</blockquote>

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