R. Salvatore - Archmage

In came the second pincer and Connerad had to throw himself backward and to the side, executing a perfect shoulder roll to come back to his feet just in time to spin and duck behind the shield as the pincer came in once more.

A familiar voice sounded then, a magical call from above. “Get to the landing area! Now!”

The dwarves didn’t know what to make of it, and weren’t sure the call was even aimed at them, or from where it had come.

Connerad couldn’t begin to react to the command anyway. The demon pressed him hard, pincers snapping all around him. He got his shield up to block one, but the powerful demon pressed in with the claw anyway, and Connerad winced as the shield cracked ominously under the great weight of the press.

The demon held on and twisted and the young dwarf king found himself easily yanked off balance, and thought his life at its end as the second pincer came across for his midsection.

A living missile intercepted it as Bungalow Thump flew into the glabrezu, knocking aside the arm and driving the beast backward. It let go of Connerad’s shield, and the overbalanced dwarf king tumbled back and to the ground.

Bungalow’s cry of pain had Connerad back up immediately, though, and seeing Bungalow Thump hugged in close, the demon’s maw chewing at the dwarf’s neck, he fearlessly charged in.

Connerad Brawnanvil leaped high, both hands gripping his sword for a mighty two-hand chop aimed at the glabrezu’s neck. At the last moment, the demon stood taller, though, and so the cut came in low, driving just below the shoulder.

Not a mortal blow, perhaps, but a vicious one, so much so that the glabrezu’s top left arm fell free, cleanly severed.

The demon’s howl echoed across the cavern, and many combatants- dwarf, goblin, demon, and even drow-paused to consider the sheer horror of that shriek.

The glabrezu threw Bungalow Thump at Connerad, the dwarves colliding and tumbling in a heap.

But Connerad went up and hauled the bleeding Bungalow Thump up beside him. Before the Gutbuster could argue or resist, Connerad shoved him hard and sent him stumbling back to the landing area.

“Ye heared Kenneally Harpell!” Connerad called to all the dwarves. “To the landing area, I say!”

Easier said than done for Connerad, though. The wounded, outraged glabrezu leaped in at him.

“Go! Go!” he roared at Bungalow Thump even as the demon began knocking him back. He knew the Gutbuster wouldn’t leave him. “I am right behind! Form the defenses!”

But Connerad Brawnanvil wasn’t right behind. The glabrezu’s pincer caught him by the shield again, and this time the compromised buckler folded under the tremendous pressure.

Connerad grimaced and growled as the pincer came in hard across his forearm, pressing in through his fine mail. He tried to bring his sword to bear, but the demon caught his arm and held him at bay.

In came the biting maw, and Connerad timed his headbutt perfectly to intercept the toothy jaws with the crown of his helmet.

The glabrezu staggered, and Connerad wriggled free his sword arm and stabbed straight ahead. He felt his fine blade sink into demon flesh, and felt the hot Abyssal blood spurting out over his arm.

Not far from the floor, Kenneally Harpell watched the dwarves scrambling, trying to get back to the landing area-which was easy to locate with nearly thirty broken dwarves lying in a tangled heap.

The woman forced the gruesome image out of her thoughts and looked up, trying to see if Tuckernuck and the others were in position, and with their spell enacted once more.

But to no avail, for they were in darkness too complete. But Kenneally knew she couldn’t wait. She began casting her spell, a powerful dweomer known to only a few at the Ivy Mansion, aiming it right at the dwarves clustered about their fallen kin.

“No, you hold!” Tuckernuck shouted at the dwarves on the landing. He had figured out Kenneally’s desperate plan and knew what would soon be coming his way. “They’re coming back, all of them, and you need to be ready to catch them and pull them to safety! Grapnels, I say! Ropes and grapnels!”

Many dwarves shouted questions back at the flying wizard, and many more shouted curses.

Tuckernuck ignored them. He had to lead the ritual-nothing else mattered. He understood the carnage that would ensue should he fail Kenneally, should he fail the dwarves now.

The other three Harpells returned to him, and he motioned them into place. Clearly injured, Toliver barely managed to get near to his spot diagonally across from the leading wizard, and Tuckernuck wasn’t sure that one could bring forth his part of the ritual.

The dweomer needed four participants.

With no options available, Tuckernuck continued his casting, then reached his arms out left and right, forming his corner of the square. From his fingertips shot tiny filaments of light streaming out to be caught by the casters at those corners, the two of them then redirecting the energy to Toliver.

But Toliver only had one arm up to receive the light. He remained lurched over to his left. There was nothing Tuckernuck could do-he couldn’t even shout out for Toliver or he would ruin his own casting.

But how he wanted to, and even more so when he heard the sudden commotion below him, and glanced down to see the tumbling, spinning charge of a score of dwarves flying up at him.

No, falling up at him, he realized, for they were caught in Kenneally’s spell of inversion, where up was down and down was up.

“Flip!” he did yell at the other wizards when the dweomer reached them, and they did, except for Toliver, righting themselves upside down, which was now upright!

The falling dwarves drew near, but the Field of Feather Fall wasn’t complete, and the ceiling, now the floor, loomed just above.

“Toliver!” Tuckernuck and the other two shouted, for now their spells were complete.

And from the landing, which was not in the area of effect, the dwarves began to scream and curse.

Dead dwarves tumbled upward beside living dwarves. Pursuing goblins were caught in the spell and went falling upward in the line. More dwarves came in, leaping, then flailing as they were caught in a free fall as surely as if they had leaped off a cliff.

But many other dwarves weren’t going to make it, Kenneally realized. Nearly a hundred and fifty of the sturdy folk had leaped down, the last three groups falling to their deaths almost to a dwarf. But the Harpell wizard realized that of the six-score who were already on the floor, less than half were going to find their way back. Yet another group of several Gutbusters were pulled down by the goblin horde, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Kenneally spotted King Connerad of Mithral Hall staggering away from a skewered demon, the beast spouting blood from its gut but still stubbornly pursuing.

And more monsters-like great bipedal vultures-swept in from the sides, cutting off the young dwarf’s retreat.

Connerad fought valiantly, but Kenneally shook her head in despair. She began casting a spell, a fireball, thinking to put it high enough to catch the heads of the tall monsters. She took hope when one of those vulture-like demons screeched and staggered back, its beak shattered by a mighty stroke of Connerad’s sword.

But the four-armed behemoth leaped in, pincers leading, and Kenneally lost the spell in her throat as the beast extracted Connerad from the commotion and lifted him up into the air, both pincers grasping tightly around the poor dwarf’s midsection.

“Bah, ye dog!” she heard Connerad cry, and he lashed out with his blade and managed to clip the huge beast’s canine muzzle.

With a yelp of protest and rage, the demon thrust its arms out wide, and Connerad Brawnanvil, the Twelfth King of Mithral Hall, was ripped in half at the waist.