NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 688694" data-attributes="member: 143">Book VII, Part 47Finally overcoming his shock, Benzan opened his mouth to shout an alarm, but Delem cut him off.  “Stay where you are, and do not call out to the others.”  Benzan hesitated, his mouth still hanging open, but no sounds came out despite his obvious efforts.  He shook his head, and fixed the sorcerer with a baleful look.  “What did... you... do to me?” he grunted, shaking with the effort of trying to fight off the spell.  Delem laughed.  “Ah, Benzan, you were always a weak-minded fool.”The tiefling’s shoulders sagged, but his eyes had narrowed to wary darts that followed the other as he came closer.  “Why—how can you be here, Delem?  You were trapped in the Abyss, we have been trying...”“Yes, I know,” Delem cut him off, and his voice dripped bitterness.  “Your efforts have been noble, I’m sure, but they haven’t amounted to a whole lot now, have they?  Face it, you abandoned me to my fate, and now I begin to see why...”  His gaze traveled meaningfully toward the stockade, where Dana had disappeared just a few minutes ago.  “Delem, you don’t understand, we thought you were dead...”“Oh, I was dead.  But I have been reborn, forged by the fires of a darker pit than even you can imagine, Benzan.  You barely look older than I remember you, but in that time, I have lived a lifetime.  An eternity, in the reckoning of where I was...”Benzan shook his head.  He swayed, still unable to move.  The sorcerer had closed the distance between them, but remained far enough so that Benzan could not reach him, even with the length of his blade.  “We can help you,” the tiefling said earnestly.  “We’re your friends, Delem...”The sorcerer laughed.  “I neither want nor need your help, and even if I did, I am far beyond your reach now.  And as for friends...”  For a moment his cold façade cracked, and a hint of the old Delem showed in his eyes, a hint of desperation tinged by an overarching madness.  “I have no friends, only a Master whose will is the very blood that pounds in my veins...”  With an angry swipe of his hand, the sorcerer spun in a tight arc, his cloak swirling out behind him.  Benzan saw that under the cloak Delem’s torso was bare, and for an instant he caught sight of flesh that was puckered and textured, as if diseased.  But before he could say anything in response Delem focused his hard gaze on Benzan once again, and the tiefling felt another chill as magical power flowed through the man’s words.“Give me the statue, Benzan.”  At the tiefling’s look of confusion, he added, “The black statue of the six-fingered man.  I know you carry it, secure in the bottom of your pouch.  I can feel it on you—a prized possession that you never let out of your grasp, even if your conscious mind has all but forgotten its presence.  Give it to me.”Before he realized it Benzan had reached down and opened the leather script that hung at his side.  Sure enough, the statuette was there, roughly wrapped in a strip of burlap.  True to Delem’s words, he had not even thought about it in a long time, yet it had always been there, close at hand, through all his travels.  “Give it to me!”Delem’s voice shattered his reverie—Benzan realized that he was standing there, holding the statuette in his hands, the world around him faded into the background.  Delem’s face shone with an eager expression, and his hands reached out for the object, although he still had not come close enough to be within the tiefling’s reach.  Benzan hesitated.  The statue felt warm in his hands, even through the layer of burlap shrouding it from view.  He could feel a competing tug of sensations inside him, could feel the wash of Delem’s magic urging him to comply, and a counterbalancing tug whose source he could not identify.And then he heard a shout to his left, up the slope away from the stockade, followed a moment later by a loud cry, and then by another.  The sound seemed to shatter the conflicting strains pulling at him, and he turned back to Delem, who also had drawn back, caution flaring in his expression.  “What...  what’s happening?” Benzan muttered.A shout came from the direction of the stockade, closer.  “Benzan!” came Dana’s voice, and in a moment he could see the light of her magical brand, drawing nearer.  The tiefling felt a cold touch of fear clutch in his chest, and he turned back toward Delem, his expression darkening.  The sorcerer had already retreated back to the edge of the boulders.  “Very well, it looks like we will have to do this the hard way.  You will have to come to me...  I do not hate you, Benzan.  Hate is too costly an emotion, where I have come from.  But I will enjoy our next meeting!”“Delem...”“Go to her, ‘friend,’ but you will remember nothing of our encounter here.  Go!”  Benzan felt the familiar tingle of another magical suggestion, and even as he tried to hold onto his memory, it vanished even as the sorcerer faded away from sight.  He shook his head, confused, looking down at the object in his hand as if wondering how it had gotten there.  Then the voice came again, shaking him back into awareness of the present. “Benzan!”  She had drawn close enough to see him, but he had already shoved the wrapped bundle back into his script, and even as he turned he was stringing his bow.  “What’s happening?” he said.  She was breathless from running, the flickering light of the illusory flame outlining her features.  “An attack...”</blockquote>

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