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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 1255073" data-attributes="member: 41">97—“Yet they, in the gentle war-dance, / One by one escape their fetters”Goethe, The Magic NetThe spell-assault of New Ithor has already begun; earthquakes and storms of vengeance rock the landscape, shattering stone and burying the drow where they seek to hide.  Helm charges at Lathander just as several bolts of lightning arc down from the skies to sweep the rooftop of the Champion’s stronghold, sending fragments of stone bursting in all directions.  The party finds themselves unhurt; sheltered by a mothers’ touch. Without realizing it, the Champions of the Risen Goddess have been gathered within a protective sphere of divine goodwill.  The sheltering force protects them from the terrible energies playing across the sky over New Ithor. Lathander strikes Helm once down the center of his being, and the armored knight crumbles beneath the Dawn Lord’s staff, impossibly crushed from such a light blow.  In an instant—or perhaps an eternity—Helm is destroyed, removed from this and all worlds of which he is a part.In the skies above, at the vanguard of the Celestial Hosts, more Faerunian gods are making their presence felt.  The Red Knight raises her sword, gesturing nobly to hearten her allies.  In a return gesture, Torm and Tyr salute from the flanks.  Illmater and Kelemvor are seen standing plainly at the front of huge columns of angels.  As the angelic horns signal the charge, the heroes’ unseen protectors reveal themselves.  Arunshee stands next to Gorquen, absentmindedly stroking the fighter’s ebony wings as she coolly stares skyward at the assembled host.  On Gorquen’s other side, Ilwe has come into the presence of his god without even realizing it.  Arunshee points, and Solonor Thelandira fires three arrows in a blink of an eye.  Three angelic generals die.Lathander is regarding the two elven deities with a warm and radiant smile.  After a moment, he bows his head, and his gesture is repeated by both Arunshee and Solonor Thelandira.  A slight and wispish dark-elven woman has appeared—she is here and not here at the same time; ghostlike and translucent.  Ishlok has arrived. -----There are times, usually just before or just after sleep, where Taran fancies that he was chosen to fight for the cause of Ishlok because, at the core of Herself, she is just like him; that despite the high philosophy and grand experiment of the pasoun, the former war-goddess of the elven pantheon is only good at one thing.He might be right.The Champions of the Risen Goddess witness the immortal struggle within the sanctuary of the force-bubble.  As their perceptual reality begins to shudder and fail due to the combined presence of so many points of divine power, they make out only flashes of the battle.  But this much is clear—Ishlok can kill with a glance.Illmater is the first to fall before her gaze.  The Suffering God is compressed and broken under her will, and quietly plummets to the ground below.  There is no fanfare, no corresponding flash of light or sound, but all the same, the god is gone.  In the killing, Ishlok has grown more solid—more present, and Illmatter’s death focuses his allies’ attention fully upon the Risen Goddess.The angelic army dives on New Ithor, but their deific leaders go for the assembled divinity standing next to the heroes.  Lathander and Arunshee move forward, giving battle to angels and near-gods alike as Solonor fires volley after volley into his enemies with deadly effect.“The sorrow you thought to inflict upon my followers will be upon you threefold,” Ishlok whispers, and as she does so, Tempus is turned inside-out.With the act, Ishlok has become fully solid, and the remaining gods fall upon her, a general melee erupting just outside of the force-bubble protecting the Champions.  Gorquen cries out, and makes to charge into the fray, but she is restrained by Taran.“Don’t be f-cking stupid,” he growls into her ear.  “I mean, stupider than usual,” he adds.  “We’re worthless here.”Below, sun and moon devas are among the drow, killing those that muster to give battle with flaming swords and lances of light and love.  A day passes, perhaps more—the drow rally around Mother Talendiira, but are defeated.  The prophetess is killed, and her drow scattered.  A lucky few escape the town and make for the safety of the nearest Underdark bolt-hole.Atop the stronghold at New Ithor, the assembled Faerunian gods have struck a blow—Ishlok is wounded, gravely hurt to mortal perception, and the goddess falls to one knee before her enemies.  The Red Knight, Torm, Tyr and Kelemvor stand before her, and the Red Knight demands her surrender.Taran regards the event with a crazed and thoroughly unsettled look in his eye.  He has long since passed from disturbed to terrified, through terror to become overwhelmed and then through that to a state that feels like . . . clarity.  He does not know the will of his ghostly goddess, but he knows what he would want.“Gorquen, you have the sword,” he says.  “And you’ve been to her corpse—you’ve seen the wound.  Now you finish her.”Gorquen is stunned.  “But she can . . .”“No,” Taran interrupts.  “Better by your hand than theirs.  No surrender.”  Taran wraps his hands over Gorquen’s around the hilt of Soludrun, and begins to pull her toward her goddess.Ishlok gazes into Gorquen then, and Gorquen suddenly knows.  “Show them our will.”With Taran’s hands around her own, Gorquen returns Soludrun to its home—the wound in Palatin Eremath’s side, the brother’s blow, still open after all this time.Run through by her Divine Champion, Ishlok stiffens, smiles and dies— her corpse turns instantly to stone.  Arunshee, Lathander and Solonor stop fighting for a moment, and all is still.  Taran strikes a lock of hair from Ishlok’s corpse with the hilt of Arunshee’s Kiss, and places it within a hidden pocket.  Arunshee disappears, and after a moment, Solonor and Lathander follow suit. “To me!” Thelbar cries through the telepathic bond.  He has opened a gate, and one by one the Champions of a dead goddess flee through it.  From Faerun they fly to a ring of standing stones on the outer plane of Concordant Opposition, and from there through a portal to safety—the multiverse’s lone refuge against the vengeance of angry gods, Sigil.</blockquote>

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