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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 26080" data-attributes="member: 143">Slow day at work today... let's make it a double-post day!LB* * * * * * Part 27 “It’s been easy thus far,” Benzan said, as he checked the knots again before standing.  “Too easy.”They were in a small guardroom that adjoined the rear wing of the manor house.  The bound and gagged forms of three guards in studded leather armor lie flat on the floor, struggling futilely against their bonds.  Well, two of them struggled, anyway—the one that Benzan had knocked unconscious just lay there, unmoving.  “Let’s just find out what we can and get out of here,” Cal said.  Getting inside had not been difficult, for all of their wariness.  There had been no traps or alarms that Benzan could detect, and they hadn’t even had to work the back door, as Benzan had spotted a guard walking the perimeter of the building and waited for him to open the door before knocking him out with the hilt of his dagger.  They found two other guards in this room, half-asleep already before Delem’s wand sent them to join their companion in unconsciousness.  By the time they woke, Benzan had already secured them.They hadn’t even needed to use Delem’s charm spell, as the guards had readily revealed what little they knew with only a little prodding.  After getting what information they could from them, Benzan gagged them.“Not very loyal to their employer,” Delem remarked about the guards as they crept quietly back out into the main hall that bisected the wing.  From what they had learned, this part of the building was deserted at night save for the guards, and the servants and the lord generally slept on opposite ends of the main wing.  If they were careful, they should be able to find the lord, surprise him, and confront him with what they knew.  If necessary, Delem’s charm could be used to help persuade him to be forthcoming.“Loyalty and foolishness aren’t always the same thing,” Cal said.  “Those guards will—Benzan, what’s wrong?”They all turned as the tiefling staggered, leaning against a nearby wall for support.  His breath came in sudden gasps, and he shuddered as if a sudden chill had come over him.   “I… I don’t know,” he said.  “Something… like a tear in the world, I could feel it…”  He glanced down at the large pouch that he wore at his belt, the pouch where a carefully wrapped item had rested, all but forgotten for some time.  He wrenched his gaze back up to his companions with an effort, and after a moment the confusion in his eyes began to clear.  “It’s below us, here, beneath the house, close.”“Let’s find the stairs to the cellar,” Cal said, and they moved out with determination.None of them looked back into the guardroom as they left, so they didn’t see the dark shadow that rose up out of the floorboards, and hovered greedily over one of the bound guards.  * * * * * The very air around him seemed to roil with dark energy as the cleric continued reading from the scroll.  His voice became a hoarse shout as he reached the crescendo of his incantation, and released the power of the spell stored in the writing.  A dark rent opened in the air in front of him, and a thing stepped through it into the room.  A choking, charnel smell followed it, and wisps of smoke rose from its body.  It looked like a giant ape of some sort, like the powerful orangutans that trappers sometimes brought out of the jungles of faraway Chult.  One look at its face, however, was enough to reveal that this creature was no ordinary animal.  Its massive jaws slavered hungrily, dripping hot beads of ichor that steamed and sizzled as they hit the stone floor.  Its features were beyond bestial, unnatural and vile, with splotched, unhealthy flesh covered by thick hairs that bristled like tough wire.  But it was its eyes that were truly unnatural, eyes that possessed an intelligence that was otherworldly, alien, deadly.  Before the creature, the cleric seemed a pathetic nothing, only moments from becoming its first victim.It opened its jaws to snap at the air, and then, improbably, it spoke.  “Hoo-man,” it said, its voice like iron nails dragged over stone.  “Call you me why?”If the priest was affected by the thing’s horrid appearance, he gave no sign.  His voice was calm and in command as he replied, “I have summoned you to complete a task for me, demon.  There are intruders approaching this stronghold, servants of the forces of good in this world.  You will aid me in destroying them.”The demon seemed to mull this over.  “You call Bar-lgura, bring to this world.  What give Bar-lgura, kill these for you?”The cleric stepped slightly to the side, and indicated the prisoner.  “I offer this man, a powerful member of my own order.  A fitting sacrifice, for one such as yourself.  His soul is yours, if you do this for me.”The demon shuffled forward, its nails digging gouges in the stone floor as it walked.  It hovered over the prisoner, who mercifully could not see it—he had passed out just moments after it had appeared, and a foul odor wafted from the chair in which he was seated—as it sniffed at him.  The demon’s otherworldly senses weighed the offering, penetrating beyond what mortals could detect into the very essence of the unconscious man.  It turned back to the cleric, and nodded.  “Very well, then,” the cleric said.  “They will be here soon—let us make preparations.”</blockquote>

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