The Hunt for the Vestige (Conclusion)
It’s the sort of battle that, if only there were someone to see it, would start legends.
The Vestige presses its massive vaporous form forward, its tendrils drifting lazily out to caress our heroes, sucking at their essences, attempting to steal their very souls into its substance. Within it, the faces of those already caught scream in eternal torment. Thrush is there.
Fear- the metallic taste of fear. It sits heavily on the party as Sybele, Bartholomew of Cassis and Sir Maxwell flee the battle.* Bart’s summoned creatures flee as well, leaving our party suddenly without the overwhelming numbers they were kinda sorta counting on.
Patyn grits his teeth as vapors reach for him, but instead of fleeing he unleashes a positive energy burst. White light flares outward in all directions, tearing gouges in the Vestige’s cloud-like form.
It’s too big, though, and healing too fast. He can see that- saw it when they fought it before. Grimly, Patyn begins to wonder whether they’ll be able to defeat this damned thing after all.
Angelfire and Londo hang side-by-side in the air,
far striking again and again as the Vestige moves up on them. Then they’re close enough that they don’t need to
far strike any more- it’s nearly on top of them! Tendrils of fog elicit a groan as they dissipate yet more of Angel’s mind, almost tearing it free of its moorings in her brain! Shakily, she
dimension doors back, behind Patyn. The hunter of the dead scowls fiercely but has no time to speak as he strikes again and again with his sun blade, but misses with shot after shot! He grunts in frustration as the blade passes harmlessly through the Vestige as if it weren’t even there. Even with a bestowed
true strike from Orbius he can’t seem to connect!** Ten Buck Tom flies up behind him and tries to cast a healing spell on him, but the Vestige strikes him and disrupts his spell. He’s badly wounded and feels his brain numb, as if he’d filled his head with cotton.
Drelvin, meanwhile, fires arrow after arrow at the Vestige. Most miss, either deflecting away from it as if turned aside by some unseen force or simply passing through it completely. Still, enough shots are landing that he thinks he’s doing some good.
It’s hard to tell, though, he thinks.
How can you tell if you’re hurting a bank of clouds? Grimly, he keeps firing, a steady stream of damage, even if not much.
Horbin appears, flying in and buzzing around the monster, and he casts
lower resistance at it. There’s a moment, illuminated by a flash of silent lightning in the eerie sky of Moil, when the entire Vestige seems to flicker for a second.
Got it! Horbin exults.
Now let’s see how it does when I unleash my most powerful mass healing!
But even as he prepares to cast a
mass heal, the Vestige darts in ruthlessly, moving entirely over Patyn, Londo and Angel. All three swing at it as it rushes in, both Patyn and Angelfire landing massive blows, but then its chill fingers are inside them, tearing at their souls. All three feel themselves deadening, their minds slowing. Too stupid to think to get out, all three of them swing at the mist around them, screaming as it sucks their essences away. They slash at the screaming faces all around- and Patyn starts in horror as he sees Thrush’s face stream by!
Then Horbin casts his
mass heal, and though it does not help with the rather urgent issue of the sucking of their essences, it does repair our heroes’ physical damage. Better still, the positive energy deals obvious, horrendous damage to the Vestige.
The warriors are still screaming in agony, and their struggles are becoming weaker and weaker.
They’re dying, Orbius thinks sickly. He casts a
mass teleport, using his arcane reach to touch them without entering the Vestige, and teleports them away to safety.
Then the Vestige engulfs him.
Orbius screams as he gets a taste of the Vestige’s terrible hunger. It sucks at his mind, his most important attribute! He staggers under the weight of its terrible, voracious need for his soul, and weakly
teleports to the nearby, relatively safe bridge he and Horbin went to before, this time taking Drelvin with him. Gasping for breath, he shakes his head to clear it.
“What did you do that for?” Drelvin cries.
“You were next, if I didn’t take you with me,” Orbius replies. “You’re actually hurting it. I don’t think you want to be inside it.” He takes a breath and casts
seeker missiles.
Drelvin nods, already looking in the direction of the battle. “Maybe I can hit it from here.” He knocks an arrow. After all, his mom always said he had keen eyes.
Twang!
A pause for a couple of seconds. Then- “Yep,” says Drelvin, drawing another arrow to the string.
***
Meanwhile, as Ten Buck Tom looks on in ineffectual horror, the Vestige engulfs Horbin. That’s kind of okay; that makes it really easy to
heal it. Unfortunately for Horbin, even with its resistance lowered, his spell still slides off it like water off oiled whale hide.
Crap, he thinks, flying up and out of it and suffering another deadly blow on the way. His mind it growing so dim that he’s starting to have trouble ‘membring what this thing is. Bad thing... vesij?
Brutally, the Vestige hits Horbin with its cold, cold tendrils, and the cleric’s soul flees his body. His physical form starts dropping towards the Void below.
***
Patyn’s already flying forward full-tilt, but Londo’s staying at Angel’s side. She hesitates for a long moment before realizing what she should do.
A
dimension door opens.
“Kill!” Angel barks, and launches herself through the door. Londo springs through after her, and after a split-second of hesitation, so does Orbius- just in time to see Horbin falling.
Orbius casts
time stop. His first priority is the cleric, and he flies over to where he now hangs motionless and head down in the air. Orbius casts another
seeker missiles, then draws out a trump and makes contact with the castle in Var. As time starts moving he pulls Horbin through the trump with him.
A maid is walking by and stops, startled, as Orbius appears and Horbin collapsing onto the ground. “Oh my!” she exclaims.
“This is Horbin the Holy, friend to the King,” says Orbius rapidly. “I am one of the King’s adventuring companions. Keep Horbin safe, we’ll be back soon.” Without another word he
teleports to the Great Green Face in the Tomb of Horrors. Another deep breath and he steps through, wincing (as he does every time) at the thought of Lester.
Moil, then. Precious seconds tick by as he incants yet another
teleport and returns to the bridge near the battle, just in time to see Drelvin fire another arrow and grin.
He must still be hitting it, Orbius realizes.
Drelvin glances at him. “Hi.” Then he fires again.
***
Horbin vanishes through a burst of sudden prismatic light.
That’s enough for Ten Buck Tom; he flees towards the bridge that Drelvin’s on. However, neither Angel, Londo nor Patyn are intelligent enough, at this point, to care.
All three move in and unleash the deadly martial skills they have developed. They don’t
need intelligence.
Except, of course, that the Vestige devours it, and you might think of it as ensuring that you have enough to take a hit or two. None of them do, and Angel falls in another pair of blows. Her spirit shrieks as it is visibly torn from her body and sucked into the Vestige.
“No!” cries Londo, catching her body. He flies off towards the bridge where everyone else is, hoping someone can help. As he moves, the Vestige strikes him, reducing his intelligence to less than a dog’s. Wobbily, he keeps going.
The Vestige flows over Patyn.
He puts all he’s got into one last series of attacks, but it’s not enough. The
seeker missiles flash by, impacting the creature, but it’s not enough.
Patyn starts to drop.
An air elemental, conjured earlier by Orbius, catches him. Orbius himself appears as he flies overhead and casts
disintegrate at it. The beam blasts into the Vestige, tearing a huge hole in it, but then it flows forward towards him.
Orbius looks around for a moment as he flees back and it strikes at him.
Drelvin, way over there... still shooting, still hitting. And Londo, and Ten Buck Tom, also way over there... and the elemental, too far away to hear him now as it moves with Patyn towards that same damn way over there!
That leaves, er,
him against the Vestige.
Orbius alone.
No way, he thinks.
I’m a wizard, not a fighter. As he moves away he opens a
gate. For an instant he hesitates, not quite sure what his best bet is as far as getting something that might actually be able to help fight this, but then he realizes that there’s only one choice, and he connects to the plane of Positive Energy. The
gate opens and a group of weird things that look almost like spheres of energy with tendrils of their own emerge.
Xag-ya, Orbius thinks in disgust.
They’re not very powerful. I may have just wasted a spell of the ninth circle.
Indeed, the energons swarm in on the Vestige and are destroyed before they even reach it; but in death they aid our heroes, for each one detonates in a powerful explosion of positive energy!
Not so bad, after all, Orbius thinks in wonder. He’s flying towards the bridge where the others are, and he casts another
disintegrate at the Vestige as he goes, but fails to penetrate its spell resistance.
“How’s it looking?” Drelvin shouts as Orbius approaches.
Hard to tell, when you’re talking about a cloud; so Orbius ignores the question and stays focused. Arrows whiz by, still plugging the Vestige time and again, but it’s
still coming, still hungry for more essence. For an instant, Orbius catches a glimpse of Horbin’s face in there. Ten Buck Tom is ashen, on the verge of flight.
It comes for Orbius, moving up and through a
whirlwind of teeth that the Eye casts from a scroll. Then the Vestige is upon them all, destroying the elemental, striking both Orbius and Ten Buck Tom. Tom shrieks a
greater shout at it, but to no avail. It slides off its spell resistance ineffectually.
“You know,” Orbius says conversationally, “maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe we
can’t just kill all our enemies.” He sighs and shakes his head, then casts
prismatic spray. Beams of brilliant color shoot out, glancing off and through the Vestige and sparkling futilely against the night sky of Moil. As if in acknowledgement of the attempt, there’s a flash of lightning.
Drelvin snarls, quick draws Patyn’s blade from his sheath and attacks the Vestige. A daring move, and perhaps the best chance in a very, very bad situation. He strikes hard, dealing a pair of powerful blows to the Vestige successfully, and it looks badly tattered, like a fog about to burn off in the light of morning; but then Londo strikes and misses, and the thing gathers itself to strike again. One last blow is all it will take to drop the blackguard.
Ten Buck Tom, in total desperation, casts a
greater shout. The sound punctuates the silence of Moil dramatically, and the Vestige shivers and dies.
Ten Buck Tom gapes as the vapors churn and dissolve, and the spirits trapped within howl and scream as they fly free. Suddenly Angelfire’s eyes focus and she shakily stands up. “What...?” she gasps.
Unsteadily our heroes look around.
Could it be...?
”We did it,” Orbius whispers.
A distant shout and Sybele appears on the horizon, silhouetted in an electric flash. She’s finally recovered her courage. “Where is it?” she shouts.
“I think,” Drelvin says cautiously, “that we killed it.”
“I... I...” Ten Buck Tom is still agape at what he did.
“Let’s get the hell back to Var,” Orbius suggests, his voice still unsteady, and they trump out.
*This battle took two sessions to finish up; Maxwell’s player couldn’t make the second one, so that was the easy way to explain his absence, even though- as a paladin- he’s immune to fear.
**I let Orbius take a new metamagic feat we worked out, Bestow Spell, that (for a +2 level adjust) lets him cast a spell with a target of ‘You’ as a touch spell. Combined with his arcane reach (he also now has an archmage level) this let him give a
true strike to Patyn from a distance!
Next Time: A little nibble of church politics before our heroes return to Moil!
