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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cafu" data-source="post: 6636262" data-attributes="member: 6692807">The plan was brilliant! There was also no record of the Torch being used in that way before, so hopefully it would come as a complete surprise. Everyone was nodding and looking at John including Longhelim, who said: “Yes. That is a very good idea, John; although the creatures in the army would be unwilling and everyone is inborn with a resistance to magic but the Torch is very powerful and I should be able to take most of them with me to a very inconvenient location. A small remnant would resist the Torch’s power but still……it would severely weaken that army; in fact, it should be difficult to call it an army after the event.”John continued: “Then, if you returned, we would move our army up there to combat the remnant. That should cause enough confusion for us to slip inside the ship and deal with Pilus.”At this point, I added: “I still believe that we should at least remove the civilians from Seaquen. It is a great plan but we may still fail and if we do, then they are at the mercy of Pilus; please remember that what remains of my family is among them.”Taking a puff on his pipe, Longhelim explained: “I can do this mass move three times in a day before the Torch exhausts itself of that power; so once for the civilians; then when I return, I tackle the Ostaliner army and the third time would be to get our army up to the ship.”I was nodding, thoughfully: “Yes, that sounds feasible. Now we need to find the sacrifices; we won’t be able to take magically enhanced horses this time.”It took us some time put together our plan; or to detail our plan to be more exact. The general outline was based around John’s idea but we had to work out what magic to use and how to implement and time it correctly. Finally, we repeated the magic and its sequence several times to ourselves and were satisfied that, according to our current knowledge, it would succeed. After that, we went for some much needed rest but just before we did, I asked John: “That ring; the one we found in Damatarians tomb? Can I look at it for a moment please?”Wordlessly, the rogue gave me his newly acquired ring and I looked at it while magically casting my last spell of the day. I took out my little monocle, examined it while mouthing he spell and whistled once I realised what I held in my hand: “This is a powerful ring indeed. With it, you can attempt to command fire elementals. It seems as if Damatarian’s reputation as a pyromancer is well deserved. I have only read about these; they are almost legendary. Not only do you have power over elementals, they give you the ability to cast a variety of fire spells and strong defensive abilities against fire. Water elementals won’t like you a great deal. Good to see that our side trip into the tomb produced something at least.”The next morning, we begun studying or praying for our spells. Personally, I felt that I was able to remember more spells than previously; whether it was due to practice or the endless hours of study or a combination of both, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and began to study my book more intensely. I had been noting down some rough ideas about other spells I had envisaged and I took the opportunity to write them down in a coherent, thaumaturgical manner as opposed to short hand. This in turn helped me to memorise them. While I was doing this, I saw that Longhelim, Victor and Drudge were having intense conversations with Gohnaach and his staff. They all left in a hurry leaving us to our own devices until we were finally finished. John, Felix and I had a last discussion about which spells to memorise before we finished and after that we sat down to Felix’s usual magical breakfast. As we were eating, one of the young Lyceum wizards ran in with a sack, which he handled quite gingerly. He handed it over to Longhelim who took a quick look inside and nodded. He whispered something to Felix, who nodded. Then he put it down and continued eating. It was all very mysterious but I was willing to go along with it. As usual, I was reading some parchments with my rough notes while eating and not paying a great deal of attention to what the others were saying. I was just getting to an interesting annotation about the powers of a particularly rare water elemental when Felix clapped his hands and declared breakfast over. We ran through some minor adjustments to our plan and finally finished the meal.Moments later, we began to cast various spells on ourselves. It took a little longer than usual as we calculated that we were going to be facing an almighty battle. Those spells were going to be disappearing fairly quickly as soon as battle was joined and it was unlikely that we would have the time to cast them once that had happened so we would take full advantage of them when we could. So, spells finished we went outside, to find a huge crowd in front of us; not surprising as we had sent out the Lyceum wizards to collect as many people as possible. Without preamble, Longhelim spoke out. Subtly, I cast a little spell, allowing him to project his voice so that everyone could hear it: “No doubt you will have heard the rumours. The Khagan and an enormous Ostaliner army are on their way here on a giant flying ship. Yes, you heard aright; a giant flying ship! We plan to stop him but there is no guarantee that we will. Therefore, we offer a safe evacuation to everyone who wishes it. I plan to take those who are willing with me to Gate Pass. You will be safe there; or safer than here. So, those who want to go, stay in front of me; those who want to take the risk and stay here, get away from this gathering place.”Most people stayed; some made themselves scarce, but most stayed. Once we could be sure that all movement had ceased, we began the next phase of our plan. Emptying out the sack, Longhelim revealed three large centipedes. As soon as they appeared, Felix cast two fast spells; I recognised the spells the first made them aware. The next made them very large indeed. I realised what they were doing as soon as I saw the spells, and I immediately changed into a dragon and grabbed one in my talon. Longhelim flew up and I followed him, making sure that the other two were subdued. The one in my claw was slain by the Torch, fulfilling the obligation which ensured that Longhelim could employ its power for the evacuation. We arrived on the square that used to house Coaltongue’s statue in Gate Pass without mishap but we had to leave at once. I only made sure that my family, or my mother and sisters I should say, were among this group; then I grabbed another large centipede in my claw and this time Longhelim and the rest of us transported ourselves very near the ship. Amongst the spells we had cast were various invisibility spells including the most powerful one on Longhelim. Once we were under the ship, Longhelim and I flew up, with the centipede still clutched in my claw. Once above it, Longhelim slew it with the Torch yet again, but this time, he used the same power on the Khagan’s army, transporting most of it and himself to the far North of Ragesia, where he had fought Kreven. The effect was devastating! Most of the military personnel disappeared, leaving only a few hundred beings of all races and types. I had no doubts that the devils would be able to return but no one else. For all intents and purposes, that army ceased to exist as a viable unit on board of the ship. Now we would stand a chance! It was impossible to do so at this distance, but I would have dearly like to have seen the faces of the Khagan’s generals.As soon as we saw the results of our expedition, I flew back to the others and we transported ourselves next to our army in Seaquen. Moments later, Longhelim joined us and this time, as the last centipede was slain and we transported our army onto the deck of the ship. Although we had some idea of the size of the ship from afar, being actually on it literally took my breath away. It was truly enormous. The scale was extraordinary. It was able to make giants look just like large humans. As soon as we arrived, we saw that there were still formidable pockets of enemy dotted around the deck and there were also an unusual amount of invisible enemies which I could see with my magic. For a moment, I thought I saw Pilus but I couldn’t be sure because whoever that figure was, it moved out of sight before I could see it properly. After a quick look around I saw that the colour of the deck was a light green and it seemed to consist of interlocked tiles which moved, giving the deck an unexpected elasticity. The two large hillocks with their craters were of a darker green colour and fortunately, quite deserted so while our army made ready to battle the remnants of the Khagan’s, we made our way to them. Despite our determination to get to there as quickly as possible, the enemy began to form up in a disciplined manner almost immediately. They may have been decimated by the Torch but they were obviously willing to fight to the last man or beast or thing…..As I mentioned above, the amount of invisible creatures was also impressive; that was something else that would have to be investigated further; just how did they know when to make themselves unseen and more importantly, just when did learn about how the Torch functioned. Thankfully, our troops were also disciplined and even if they were not quite as fit as their opponents, they did outnumber them by roughly eight to one. Although all of these things flashed through my mind, I had to push them back as we quickly realised that unless we transported ourselves magically to the entrance points, we would be engaged and impeded before reaching the tunnels. Mentally, I caught a question from Longhelim: “Torch? To the hillocks?”Before I had a chance to reply in the affirmative, I heard John, again mentally: “Yes; everyone touch Longhelim!”I had just barely done so when we were above a tunnel, staring down. I could hear fighting all around me but my attention was on the tunnel. To put it bluntly, it was a dark orifice going down. In a horrid way, it was fascinating. The interior walls were pink and there were veins of darker material way running through them. The whole effect was as if we were going into some sort of fleshy aperture. As we flew down, it became noticeable that the walls glistened and moved slightly every so often as they pulsed; and then there was the stench; Gods that was repulsive. I even saw poor Felix retching as he was overcome by it. It was truly putrid. We landed in an opening full of a pool of green bile that had a strange fleshy bridge rising above it. The liquid bubbled gently but looked very dangerous to touch and as I looked around me, I saw that the walls had figures visible within them. Initially, they were difficult to discern but as I flew closer down, I could see humans, elves and even a satyr, distinctive due to its lower body; and towards the far part of the opening, there was another creature…….a poor sphinx. Ye gods, I hoped that we would be able to free these beings after we confronted Pilus. We waited at one end of the flesh bridge as Victor flew over to an obvious exit: “It’s not a door. It’s some kind of aperture though; looks like closed fist. No obvious ways to open though.”John flew up and said: “Let me try.”He took out his chime and sounded it. It had worked on all previous doors but this one was obviously different as there was no reaction. Victor said: “Shall I just hit it?”I nodded. There was nothing to lose. So Victor sliced it with his falchion. After his first blow, it didn’t open but there was a definite reaction as the fist convulsed and some liquid spurted out onto Victor’s armour. I suspected that if he had not been magically protected against acid, it would have been very unpleasant. Victor hit it again and this time the fist opened convulsively into a fleshy corridor. Victor stepped through but as we all attempted to move through, the fist convulsed again and closed. We managed a glimpse through though, seeing another fleshy corridor. With a growl, Longhelim moved up and smashed his axe into the fist and it squirted a liquid at him again but convulsively opened up. This time the paladin moved through as did everyone else except for me, who was not able to move up in time. Fortunately, a moment later, the fist opened up again and I was able to slip through. The corridor here was of the same substance as before but it seemed to be a little darker, with darker patches on the walls, as if they were bruises. There were also strange little polyps on the on the walls. The floor looked spongy although we were certainly not walking on it as I had a horrible feeling that it could sink and engulf us at the earliest opportunity. I flew up to the others who were healing Victor. “What happened?” I asked as I saw he some burns on him. He grimaces and replied: “I came through here and was met with a strange fleshy construct that looked like Pilus. Talked like him to. He gave me some speech about looking forward to seeing us but frankly, I was too busy trying to hit him to pay much attention. He was busy trying to dissolve my spells. I did manage to hit him a few times and he just turned into some disgusting gloop but he was still able to take some of my spells away.”He was pointing at a pool on the ground but I have to say, it didn’t look any different to any other pool of liquid although what was interesting was that Pilus was able to project himself onto different parts of the ship and more importantly, was able to cast spells through these constructs. This must have been some strange biomancy development. We had a choice of going up a couple of corridor, basically, left or right and we chose to go right. The corridor pulsed and heaved but did not touch us. Then it also twisted several times until it came to another aperture. We were still flying as the floor looked distinctly unappetizing. Victor moved up to the new fist and this hit it. This time, as it convulsed, there was a hiss as foul gas was expelled and as well as a squelch with the resulting convulsion as it opened. It revealed a large round room with another slight colour variation as the room had sections of dirty white, like old fat. However, before I was able to look at this any further, my attention was gripped by the large creatures that were looking at us. It was difficult to describe them. They were enormous, round and had no legs. They looked like large balls with long snouts or trunks. As Victor, Longhelim and Drudge moved in, they managed to hit one of them and it collapsed. Drudge also shot it and the arrow sank all the way into it. It was like huge pustule of fat. Unfortunately, another one raised its snout and white mucus sprayed out of it, like fine spider web, except that it glistened, it was wet and very strong, entangling the warriors. Several more of these creatures moved to the left side of this room and sprayed everyone with acid. Initially, these sprays were difficult to dodge because of the mucus but thankfully, most of it was burned away. Thankfully, we were protected from this so there was little effect on anyone, with the exception of Victor, who had had his protective spell dissolved. He suffered, badly. Then, just to add to the fun, a scalding shower of liquid mucus hit us from above; it just rained down into the room and there was nothing we could do to avoid it; poor Victor was beginning to smoke again, so it must have been acidic. John had cast a speed spell on everyone and then I flew into the room. I took one look and knew exactly what I was going to do as I cast an invisible wall which bisected the opening, sealing us from the creatures but still leaving part of the obvious fist on the other side of the opening free for us to open. I told the others mentally exactly what I was doing so everyone immediately moved up. I saw a couple of the creatures squash themselves against the barriers but by that point, Longhelim had already smashed the fist open and we all flew out. There was one last acid shower from the ceiling which affected poor Victor but then we all reached the corridor beyond.</blockquote>

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