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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 1274962" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #250] Knight Takes Queen. Checkmate![/PLAIN]Windstryder worked her way out of the dark earthen tunnel and blinked in the relative brilliance of the chamber. She made an immediate assessment and stepped back into the bolthole."Retreat," she hissed, but she saw at once that Morier had other ideas."Arwold!" the albino growled, gesturing with his left hand at the bound man. In his right, he gripped the Wand of Burning Hands. He glared at the two bug men laboring up the earth mound and his intentions were plain. "We cannot leave him like this!"Windstryder disagreed. "Leave him," she said. "We... no, I cannot jeopardize the original mission. I must see the girl back to Barnacus.""Then you go!" the albino spat and took a few awkward steps toward the advancing bug men. The mound of dirt shifted and collapsed beneath his feet, but he gracefully maintained his balance even as one of the bug men below him lost its own and rolled fifteen feet to the floor. Morier pointed his wand at the one target that remained within range of his wand and turned it into a thrashing pillar of fire with a word, "Irakulos!" The bug man squealed and then went tumbling down the mound to join its fellow at the bottom.Ixin raised her own wand and went to join Morier farther down the slope, but the earth fell away beneath her boots and she was forced to pinwheel her arms in order to avoid falling down the mound entirely. She wavered there, but made no progress."He is lost, Morier! Let us go!" Windstryder grumbled even as she threaded an arrow into her composite longbow, drew and fired. Her shaft sank fletchings-deep into the remaining bug man's groin, ripping a scream of pain from its inhuman throat. A second arrow pierced its outstretched hand and pinned the limb palm-up to the thing's armored chest. It fell over dead atop the smoldering remains of its fellow. "Now!" the ranger urged. "Move!"Morier turned to shout back, but never got the chance for at that moment, the disgusting queen raised her swollen egg sack and ejaculated a noxious gout of wriggling larvae and amniotic fluid onto the flat-footed eldritch warrior. He didn't vomit from exposure to the foul-smelling stuff, but it was a near thing, and he was retching visibly as he clawed ropes of cloudy mucous off his face. The larvae were on him and moving, seeking openings in his armor through which they could get to the meat beneath. Their bites were like bee stings and the albino dropped his wand in order to slap at them. Two of the revolting things burst like boils beneath his fingers.Ixin, meanwhile had finally regained her balance, but it was short-lived. No sooner had she taken another step than her feet went out from under her and she went somersaulting to the bottom of the earthen mound. She landed, predictably, on her back and lay dazed there, gasping for air."We should retreat!" Windstryder reiterated from the top of the mound. But even as she was shouting it, she was sending arrows at the queen. One struck the throbbing egg sack while a second nicked her left bicep. She keened in pain and anger and with a tremendous slurping sound began to detach herself from the sack.Morier neither saw nor heard anything but the squirming larvae that were working their way toward his unarmored flesh. He worked feverishly to get them off. He clawed and beat at them with both hands, but he couldn't seem to kill them fast enough. They seemed to be everywhere. And once they got beneath his mail...Ixin got to her feet, surprised to hear the seemingly fearless eldritch warrior whining with horror a dozen or so paces above her on the mound. The look on his face told her he was near to panic and she dashed upwards as quickly as she could. She slashed two of the larvae on Morier's back to bloody ribbons with her claws.Behind the mage, the queen finally slucked free of her egg sack, which lay, deflated on the cave floor like a discarded piece of rotten fruit. Her mucous-slicked lower body was armored like a huge black millipede; her belly bristled with numerous tiny legs that pawed at the air as her tail uncoiled. A black stinger easily as long and sharp as a scythe blade snapped to attention at the end of the queen's thorax, glistening with a wet sheen of poison. The smell was horrible.Windstryder fired at the queen again, but now, free of her encumbering egg sack, she avoided both arrows sent at her with ease. Her wicked tail lashed out at Ixin, but managed to miss her, despite the mage's preoccupation with Morier's situation. She and the albino succeeded in destroying the last of the larvae just as the queen lurched forward, with her jaws unhinged impossibly wide. Rather than bite them, however, she vomited a cloud of noisome vapors on the pair that immediately sent Ixin into paroxysms of gagging.The mage doubled over, her eyes streaming uncontrollably, her gorge seething. Whether because his experience with the larvae had inured him to nausea or because he was made of sterner stuff than Ixin, Morier resisted the effects of the queen's breath weapon and drew his greatsword. He stepped forward and swung the silver blade at the creature that swayed before him like some strange cobra. His sword, which crackled with impotent electrical energy, found only air as the queen writhed to the side, dodging the attack.She couldn't avoid Windstryder's arrows at the same time, and one buried itself between her withered breasts. She wailed and jerked toward the ranger. The elf took a chunk of meat from the queen's left arm as she turned. In retaliation, the abomination lashed at the helpless Ixin with her stinger. The massive barb transfixed the mage's left thigh and Ixin screamed and clutched at the bloody wound with both hands. She fell on her side against the mound of dirt, grinding her teeth as her already weakened constitution sought to fight off the poison that burned in her blood.Morier roared a challenge to the queen, dodging her filthy claws and snapping fangs, even as he brought his greatsword to bear. Sparks of lightning danced along the length of the blade as he drove it into the queen's writhing thorax all the way to the weapon's ricasso. Electricity arced back and forth between the weapon and the queen's spasming body for a moment before she sagged and slumped to the side. She let out a last coughing sigh before she lay, still and smoking on the cavern floor.Morier turned and looked grimly up at Windstryder. "Now we can leave," he told the ranger before turning to check on the health of Arwold Wyverneye.</blockquote>

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