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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 113213" data-attributes="member: 143">Book III, Part 26A dozen arrows, along with several hurled spears, darted at Lok and at the companions still emerging from the narrow gap in the entry corridor.  The missiles bounced off Lok’s armor and shield, although at least one arrow found a gap and stuck, slightly injuring the nigh-unstoppable warrior.  The poison that coated the arrowhead barely fazed him, little proof against the genasi’s incredible fortitude.  Lok looked around at the dozens of adversaries that filled the room, hesitating for just a moment as he scanned out the nearest target for his battle-fury.  The pause did not last long, however, and soon he was charging again to meet the onrush of enemies from the center of the room.  Benzan felt a painful jab in his side as an arrow bit through his protective mail-links, and he fought a momentary surge of nausea as its poison entered his system.  Two more arrows flew past him, only to glance off the barrier of Delem’s shield.  Benzan recognized the situation immediately—they were flanked on all sides by foes, who had the high ground and the advantage of heavy missile fire—but before he could recommend a retreat, Lok was already charging into the nearest knot of enemies.  “Man oh man,” he said, keeping to the at least partial cover of the corridor as he nocked an arrow and let fly at a random enemy archer.  Cal followed Delem through the gap in the rubble to find himself at the edge of a veritable storm of battle.  Delem had darted to the side of the corridor entry opposite Benzan, as even his magical shield was not full proof against such a heavy attack.  Cal followed him, using the tall sorcerer and his shield as cover.  What they needed, he instantly recognized, was to even the odds.  For all his ferocity Lok could not stand against more than twenty fighters alone, and more warriors were charging down the stairs from the balconies, rushing to join in the melee while their companions kept up their barrage of fire from above.  “Ah, I haven’t yet had a chance to cast this one,” Cal said to himself, summoning the power of one of his new spells.  The result was immediate and successful, as a burst of magical webs erupted around the staircase that led up to the southern balcony.  The magical strands formed a dense tangle that ensnared all four of the muscled warriors, including the powerful chief, in their sticky grip.  While the web wouldn’t hold them forever, the spell bought them at least a brief respite from an attack from that direction.  Lok met the surging rush of half-naked tribesmen in the center of the room with a sweeping cut of his axe, cleaving the first attacker from shoulder to hip before the man could even raise his spear.  The others swarmed around him, however, urged on by the man in the bone armor that Lok had driven back from the rampart.  All of their weapons seemed to be made of bone and wood, apart from the armored man’s spearhead, which was fashioned of gleaming bronze.  Flanked on all sides, only brute strength kept Lok from falling under the rush.  He tore free from the grasp of two attackers—a man and a woman—that tried to drag him down, and shrugged off a pair of hits from clubs that hurt even through the protection of his armor.  He tried to keep one eye on the armored spearman, but failed to anticipate the thrust that finally slammed through the armored plate on his hip, digging deep into the softer flesh beneath.  Lok staggered from the impact, but grimly held his ground.  “Lok’s in trouble!” Dana cried, as she joined the others at the mouth of the corridor.  Before any of them could say anything to stop her, she charged boldly into the room, holding her kama raised in her good hand.  “Dana!” Delem cried, but it was too late to stop her.  A pair of archers on the north balcony shifted their aim toward her, but both shots missed—the first deflected by a sweep of her bandaged hand, and the second glancing off of her mage armor.  “She can take care of herself!” Benzan shouted.  “Just do something about those damned archers!”Delem nodded grimly and focused his power on the northern balcony, calling into being another flaming sphere that rolled down its length, burning archers as it went.  On the narrow confines of the balcony there was little room to dodge the rolling ball of fire, although several dangled themselves over the edge and let themselves fall to the floor of the chamber below, taking up their spears again and rushing quickly toward the melee that raged in the center of the room.  Ruath, meanwhile, had joined the embattled companions, and quickly sizing up the situation began casting a spell heedless of the arrows that were still falling into the corridor from the survivors along the balconies.  Benzan continued to fire with almost mechanical precision, drawing back arrow after arrow and scoring a hit with nearly every shot.  He saw a tall figure clad in what looked like colorful feathers appear from a door that opened onto the southern balcony, and trusting his instincts targeted that newcomer with an arrow.  The shot missed, as the feather-clad man was surprisingly nimble, and the man pointed at him, spouting some wild gibberish that seemed meaningless.  Only it clearly wasn’t meaningless, as a thick cloud of mist began to billow up out of the very stones of the floor around them.  While the obscuring mist covered them from the fire of the remaining enemy archers, it would also make it all but impossible for them to target the tribesmen with weapons or spells.  It looked as though the final part of the battle would be fought in close quarters, Benzan thought, as he dropped his bow and unlimbered his shield and sword.  Lok shrugged off blows as if he was made of the stone that he so resembled, and fought with unfettered fury.  Ringed by foes that sought to make up for their limited skill with sheer force of numbers, he simply let fly with wild but powerful strokes of his axe.  A tribesman fell back, his jaw shattered by one stroke, and the woman beside him went down as well as the continuing path of the weapon caught her weapon hand, sending the bone dagger she wielded flying along with the fist that clenched it.  Two others slammed their clubs into Lok’s head from behind, drawing a grunt of pain from the fighter but also a sweeping arc of his axe that slashed deep gashes in their torsos.  Only the bone-clad spearman was out of the range of that deadly axe, his own people serving as a shield as he thrust repeatedly at the gaps in the genasi’s defenses.  Finally he saw an opening, as Lok’s desperate slashes and parries left momentarily vulnerable the stony skin of his throat, warded only by a torn scrap of chainmail that had partially fallen away.  The spearman yelled a challenge and raised his weapon in both hands, calling upon the vengeance of his gods to guide his hand in slaying this mighty adversary.  “Yee-ah!” Dana cried out as she tore into the spearman from his flank, leaping into a snap kick that caught him hard on the shoulder.  The blow did little damage, but it was enough to drive him back, ruining his attack on the hard-pressed Lok.  Dana had little chance to follow up, however, as a pair of native warriors detached from the mob surrounding Lok and rushed at her with spears, forcing her into a quick series of dodges and parries.  Benzan appeared from the shrouding mist to find himself facing the tribal leader, who’d managed to tear himself free from the enfolding layers of Cal’s webs.  He was a massive figure of a man, his skin marked with dozens of tattoos, including one that covered his bald-shaven pate.  He too was clad in elaborate bone armor, and his weapon was a heavy sword, not unlike the one that Benzan himself bore, its blade formed of bronze and marked with arcane runes along its length.  “Geschmacktod, Ausländer!” he shouted, rushing at Benzan with a snarl crossing his already frightening features.  “Right back at you!” the tiefling responded, meeting the warrior’s first stroke with his own blade.  With the first exchange it became clear that this foe, though his strength was obvious, was no common fighter.  He pressed Benzan hard, taking his parry and then following with a vicious cut that came in low.  When Benzan brought his blade down to parry that stroke, the native chief suddenly switched direction, sliding the weapon in an upward stroke that ran the length of the blade across Benzan’s chest.  The tiefling managed to dodge back, and the mithral chainmail took most of the blow, but the tip of the blade drew a red line across his bicep as the two combatants parted.  He’d barely gotten his sword back up into defensive position when the chief came at him again.  Lok was still managing to hold his own, his remaining adversaries fighting with more caution after half a dozen of their peers were laid out bleeding on the ground.  Some of the pressure on his flank eased as a pair of Ruath-summoned badgers appeared and started tearing into the lightly-armored tribesmen threatening Lok from the rear.  Most of those left standing had spears, which they were using to pen him in and limit the number of attacks that he could make against them at any one time.  Still, he managed to lash out at one that got too close, and the man fell back, trying to hold his spilling entrails in with one hand while he used the broken haft of his spear as a crutch with the other.  Lok heard a laugh out on the periphery of the battle, and his attention shifted momentarily to a figure standing a short distance away, impossible to miss even in the swirling melee what with the brightly colored feathers that he wore in his tunic and the plumed headdress that obscured his features.  His eyes, however, locked onto the genasi’s, and Lok felt an indescribable fear fill him with that stare.  He didn’t know how, or why, but he had to flee from that stare, had to get away.  Ignoring the painful stabs that cut through his lowered defenses, he ran back in the direction of the entry, now hidden in thick, cloying mists.  Leaving Dana alone, surrounded by a dozen adversaries with a lot of fight left in them.  Cal emerged from the mists facing the northern balcony, and a half-dozen of the archers that were rushing down the stairs toward him, now holding spears that they trained immediately upon the diminutive gnome.   Cal was prepared, however, and before the first could thrust he fired a color spray from his wand into their ranks.  The first three staggered and collapsed, blasted into unconsciousness by the swirling colors, but ones behind barely hesitated, charging over their fallen comrades to attack.  Realizing that he was alone on this flank, Cal darted back for the cover offered by the mists, but before he could make it he felt a spearhead cut through his mage armor and jab painfully into his side.  The three tribesmen pressed in, flanking him as the darting spearpoints sought holes in his defenses.  Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the mists, Delem emerged to see battle on that flank as well.  He saw Benzan being hard pressed against the tribesmen’s leader, but more to the point he saw that the other three warriors entrapped in the webs were nearly free, the first two pausing only to help the last fight his way free of the last clinging strands.  With barely a pause to think, Delem sank into his magic and called forth a stream of fire, catching all three warriors in the blazing flames.  The first two dove reflexively to the side, leaving the last, still entangled, to struggle against the webs that now flared up in an inferno around him. He didn’t make it, but the two others—his brothers—drew bone daggers from their belts and, ignoring the burns that covered their upper bodies, charged at Delem with a raging scream that chilled the sorcerer’s blood.  Dana dodged back from the thrusting bone points of the two spearmen that she was facing.  The movement gave her some breathing space for the moment, but left her even farther away from the others.  To make matters worse, four other spearmen were heading her way, led by the same bone-armored leader she’d lightly injured earlier.  There was no time for thought, only action.  Dana called upon the power of Selûne, her heart freezing momentarily in her chest as she nearly botched the final gesture needed to complete the spell.  Even so, the delay caused by the distance between her and the source of her magic nearly cost her, as the nearest spearmen reached her and thrust at her exposed body with their crude but very functional weapons.  Luckily for Dana, the mage armor held them off, and she could finally feel the power of the magic filling her body.  Without hesitation she spun and darted off, mere steps ahead of the onrushing attackers.  Even so, she felt pain as a spearhead grazed her shoulder, drawing a line of blood that ran down her arm.  With the discipline she’d learned as an initiate of the Sun Soul she shrugged off the pain, and continued her charge, the spell she’d cast greatly increasing her speed so that the spearmen fell quickly behind.  The only problem was, there was no place for her to go.  The only route left open to her was toward the south wall, and access to the stair that led up to the balcony, to her right, was blocked by a pair of onrushing spearmen—and was still shrouded in webs, regardless.And to make matters worse, the enemy witchdoctor, whose fell magic had sent Lok fleeing in magical terror, was right in front of her, a sinister smile twisting his features as he watched her approach.  He timed his own magical response to the monk’s apparently suicidal charge well, and as she neared him a fan of flames erupted from his fingertips, forming a fiery wedge that Dana could not hope to dodge or duck.  Except that she was no longer running toward him.  The witchdoctor started in shocked surprise as Dana leapt over the flames, the enhanced speed granted by her spell adding to her leaping ability as well.  He grunted as she landed on his shoulders, and with the momentum added from her leap, she jumped again, catching the low stone railing of the balcony with her good hand and levering herself up atop it in one smooth motion.  Below her, the spearmen could only watch in stunned amazement as their quarry eluded their grasp.  Cal’s three opponents followed him into the mists, and soon he’d taken another hit, a shallow but painful cut that dug into his upper arm as he tried to twist away.  He knew that if he tried to cast a spell, the momentary lapse in his defenses while he summoned the magic would leave him wide open to a deadly attack.  He still held the wand of color spray, but his attackers had widely spread out, and he would only be able to catch one at most with its power.  Then a shadow came out of the mists to his aid.  One of the spearmen sensed it and turned to face the new arrival, only to stagger when Elly’s crossbow bolt caught him hard in the side.  The man thrust at her with his spear, but missed the young woman, who drew her cutlass for close combat.The distraction was only momentary, with two antagonists still facing him, but it was all Cal needed.  He reached down and took up the lute that rode on his hip, his fingers summoning a soft, lulling melody on its strands.  He focused the power of the music right where he was standing, knowing that he would not be affected by the spell.  The three warriors, however, stumbled and faltered, each finally collapsing in magically-induced slumber.  “Let’s help the others!” Cal immediately said to Elly, leaving the sleeping tribesmen for the moment as they charged toward the muffled sounds of battle that still echoed through the mists.  Benzan gave ground before the relentless attacks of his adversary, forcing him back almost to the edges of the mists.  He had already suffered two more wounds, a shallow cut to his left leg and a slight, but bloody cut across his forehead that had very nearly been much, much worse.  He’d managed at least one counter that had gotten through his enemy’s defenses, but the cut in the chieftain’s side didn’t seem to faze the man in the slightest as his sword kept tearing at Benzan’s defenses. Benzan nearly gave it up, retreating back into the mists that were so close behind him.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Delem, however, hard pressed against a pair of enemies, and knew that the sorcerer would not be able to stand against this attacker, despite the magic at his command.  So instead of backing up he came forward, the two bronze blades meeting again in another violent exchange.  The tribesman was incredibly strong, and Benzan suspected that his strength had somehow been augmented as the force of the parry sent tingles of pain surging through his arm muscles.  The tiefling managed to duck the inevitable counter, and then, as the chief began another sequence of attacks, he summoned a globe of darkness around them both.  Delem was being hard pressed.  The two young warriors he fought made a good team, flanking him so that his protective shield could not be used against both.  Both men were burned, both by his initial stream of flames and by a fan of burning hands he’d managed to call up as they’d charged him.  The two men fought on despite their burns, however, and Delem realized that nothing short of death would stop them. He tried to oblige them.  He focused on the one not warded by his shield, but when he tried to summon his magic the man behind him darted around the ruby barrier and stabbed him in the shoulder.  The wound wasn’t too serious, but it distracted him enough to ruin the spell he was trying to cast.  The man before him took advantage of his plight to stab his own dagger into Delem’s gut.  Delem’s mage armor caught the shaft of sharpened bone, but the point still poked several inches into his flesh, sending a fiery wave of pain through the young sorcerer’s body. The pain burned away conscious thought, and Delem gave himself over to the magic.  His eyes seemed to flare with an inner light as he lurched forward and clapped his hands together on the sides of the warrior’s head.  He didn’t even feel the pain of another thrust as the young man’s eyes widened in terror, moments before the flames exploded from Delem’s hands, engulfing the warrior’s head in a bright nimbus of fire that left behind a blackened stub of roasted flesh and bone.  The other warrior behind him screamed in pain and fury at the death of another brother, and came at Delem again, but this time his magical defenses turned the blow.  Delem calmly turned, until the young warrior could see the death that shone in his eyes.  Even then the warrior did not falter, stabbing at Delem at the same moment that the sorcerer brought the shield around to intercept the blow.  The warrior thrust repeatedly, trying vainly to circumvent the shield, until Delem sent a pair of fiery bolts into his chest at point blank range.  The crippled warrior, his entire upper body blackened by flames, tried one last time to hurl himself at the sorcerer, but another pair of magic missiles sent him down for good.  Dana’s heart caught in her chest as she watched Benzan battle the chief, taking hit after hit with little to show for it save bloody wounds.  She could do nothing to help him, however, forced herself to dodge several arrows and hurled spears that came up at her from below.  She’d dropped her own crossbow somewhere below, and could barely <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> it anyway, so all she could do was draw fire and hope that her companions, most of whom were still shrouded by the obscuring mist, could come to her aid.  Below her the witchdoctor started toward the battle between Benzan and the chief, but hesitated when a globe of darkness surrounded the two combatants.  Dana took advantage of the distraction to cast a spell, calling down a sphere of magical silence onto the spellcaster to disrupt any other spells he might have up his sleeve.Benzan stayed in the darkness as long as he could, using his sharpened senses to stay clear of the still-dangerous enemy warrior.  He swallowed one of his minor healing potions, but still felt weakened by the several wounds that he had suffered in his battle with the chief.  Knowing that he could not hide in the darkness long, however, he swallowed and darted for the edges of the spell.  Right into a seeming wall of a half-dozen spearmen, accompanied by the tribal witchdoctor and a tall warrior in bone armor with a bronze spear.  “All right then,” Benzan said.  “See you all in the hells, you bastards!”  He raised his sword in challenge, ready to charge into the knot of deadly shafts.  He paused, however, when a roar built from within the mists, drawing both his attention and that of the gathered native warriors.  “Oh boy, you guys are in trouble now,” Benzan said, his grim expression giving way to a dark grin just as Lok erupted from the mist and barreled into the spearmen.  His wounds partially healed by the divine power of Tymora channeled through Ruath, the tough warrior leapt heedless into the fray, his armor deflecting several strokes that tried to halt his unstoppable progress.  In his wake came Benzan, slashing at the witchdoctor.  The be-feathered spellcaster’s expression was quite amusing as his mouth twisted in several silent curses, his magic forestalled by Dana’s spell.  The man tried to retreat, but not before Benzan injured him with a serious cut to his side.  Cal and Elly came out of the mists as well, their appearance preceded by the sound of a rousing battle song by the gnome.  Elly fired her crossbow at a native spearman, dropping the already wounded warrior, and she reloaded, wary lest any others threaten her or Cal.But Lok was tearing through the enemy ranks once again, and this time there would be no spell to stop him.  His initial rush caught one spearman with a killing blow to the head, and as two others tried to flank him he swept his axe out in a wide arc, slicing one’s leg to the bone and sundering the second’s spear in two as he tried to thrust into him.   The bronze head of the leader’s spear thrust again at his exposed throat, but this time Lok was ready, bringing his shield up to deflect the attack.  The genasi growled and charged at the armored spearman, ignoring the few feeble thrusts that tried to penetrate his flanks.  “Benzan, look out!” Dana cried, as the cannibal chief rounded the sphere of darkness and charged at the tiefling’s back.  Benzan spun to met the determined attack, parrying the first stroke.  The warrior chief immediately launched into a full series of attacks, but Benzan held his ground, fighting on the defensive but taking another cut regardless of his efforts.  This time, however, his look of determination held a glint of confidence in his eyes that seemed to mock the enemy warrior.  “Too late for you,” he said, “you had your chance.”The warrior could not understand the words, although he wondered at why his adversary, clearly outmatched, did not give way this time.  His answer came a moment later, as Benzan’s friends, no longer fighting for their lives against the other tribesmen, came to his aid.  Delem sent a pair of magic missiles into the man’s back, which didn’t do much damage but added to the overall impact of his several wounds.  Cal added a spell of his own, a storm of illusory bats that appeared around the warrior’s head, distracting him and blocking his vision.  Ruath and Elly both came forward as well, wary of the warrior but forcing him to divide his attention between them and Benzan, giving the tiefling the opening he needed for his deadly sneak attacks.  Their remaining foes fought with furious determination, however.  The warriors still facing Lok kept up their attacks even as the genasi cut down their numbers.  The armored leader stood up against him the longest, stabbing with his spear until Lok hacked him to pieces.  The chief lashed out blindly at Benzan, and even managed a sudden spin and slash that nearly hit Elly as she tried to stab at the man’s exposed flank.  Delem sent another pair of magic missiles into him, followed by a series of attacks from Benzan that left deep gashes in his body.  Even then he refused to retreat, until finally Benzan took his head from his shoulders in a single powerful sweep.  And then, the battle was over.  Of the initial four-dozen men and women that had challenged them, only a handful had retreated, climbing the rope to the shaft above or slipping into the mists toward the exit corridor.  Hacked bodies lay all around them, leaving the stone floor of the chamber slick with their blood.“It’s like a slaughterhouse,” Elly said, her face pale.  “They fought like madmen,” Benzan said, looking down at the body of the native warrior that lay at his feet.  “Even when they were clearly beaten, they refused to retreat.”  The companions shared a look that signified the same thing—the tales of the villagers of Mantru had more credence, now.  “Maybe they made a bad choice, living here,” Cal said, putting the thoughts of several of them to words.  Behind them, Varrus crept tentatively out the mists.  Benzan looked about to challenge the man again, but he saw that the sailor’s cutlass was in his hand, and wet with blood.  At least he did something, the tiefling thought, unaware that the blood had come from those tribesmen that Cal had incapacitated, and whom Varrus had slain while helpless.  Exhausted, wounded, and sickened by the carnage—but glad to be alive—the companions retreated to a corner of the room where the violence had not reached to tend their injuries and clean their battle-parched throats of the taste of battle.  Though they had won the battle, somehow none of them felt that all of the challenges that waited here had been beaten.</blockquote>

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