Jeff LaSala - The Darkwood Mask

Tallis kept on rolling, and the bugbear moved to follow with his chain spinning through the air. His lower shin pressed against the floating rod, keeping him in place for just a few seconds.

That was all Tallis had needed. He gained his feet when he heard the bugbear’s roar of frustration, then he looked to back to see his handiwork.

The amber substance connecting Rhazan’s foot to the ground had solidified into a mass harder than the bugbear’s own bones-sovereign glue, a magical adhesive far stronger than any tanglefoot bag. Expensive, but worth it. Rhazan wasn’t going anywhere.

Sovereign glue? Tallis thought. Lenrik would have made a pun from that.

The bladed weight at the end of Rhazan’s chain whistled past his head. Damn, the bugbear was good with that thing! Soneste’s poison hadn’t even slowed him.

“Coward!” Rhazan shouted.

Moving in a half circle around the bugbear and dodging a second swing, Tallis reached the brick-walled tank. Just as Soneste had said, there was erosion in the brickwork, an imperfection yet to be fully repaired.

Tallis gripped his hammer in two hands and struck. He felt the brick crumble under the impact. Adamantine was the hardest metal on Eberron. A few more blows like that and he could break through!

He raised the hooked hammer again. Metal slapped against metal as Rhazan’s chain encircled the shaft and wrenched the hammer from Tallis’s grip. The barbs on the chain cut into his hand and the weapon spun away, the sheer strength of the bugbear’s pull sending the weapon clanging to the ground fifty feet away.

Blunted!

Tallis knew staying a moving target was his only way to survive Rhazan. The sheer force of those spiked weights could break bone-yet Tallis couldn’t breach the wall without a weapon.

Then the idea hit him fast, and he had no time to reconsider it.

Staying right where he was, Tallis called out. “Rhaz-bag!”

Rhazan, trying in vain to pull his foot free from the ground, looked up. He set his chain spinning again. The spiked weight lashed out-perfect aim, as always.

Tallis danced aside only a step aside, ducking as fast as he was able. The heavy weight whistled just above him and sank its spike into the brick wall of the tank. When the bugbear yanked it free, Tallis stepped back again.

“By the Six, Rhaz-bag!” he laughed. “That was terrible aim.”

The spiked weight came in at him again, and Tallis dodged. He felt the weight clip his arm then heard it smash against the wall again, scattering chunks of brick. Intense heat washed over Tallis from where he crouched on the ground. He looked up to see a leak of bright yellow fluid from the wall’s sleight breach.

That will have to do, he thought. He leapt to his feet, glancing at Rhazan only long enough to note the next attack.

Tallis threw up both arms as he tried to dodge and felt the concussive force of the spiked chain glance away. Were it not for the magic of his vambraces, he knew he’d be dead by now.

As the chain was pulled back for another rotation, Tallis looked to the tank again, aimed with his right fist, and looked at the dragon-headed ring he wore.

“Telchanak,” he said, willing as much power as the ring could expend at one time. The ghostly manifestation of the ramlike dragon’s head surged out from the ring and struck the wall of the massive bricked cylinder.

The wall broke under the impact. The magical force dispersed, and Tallis felt a wave of caustic heat roll over him, along with the yellow-white glow of molten glass as it spilled out in a torrent of burning death. With a stab of fear, Tallis knew that he was too close to escape the deadly flood. He started to turn, but the liquid glass moved like water. Rhazan’s scream came first and Tallis understood that he was only a second or two behind.

All shadows receded as light and heat surged around him.

In a desperate move, Tallis reached for the only thing that could save him and jumped without direction as high as he could.

Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

The air rippled above the yellow liquid as it spilled out onto the floor in a frightening deluge. Soneste’s idea had worked, but in effecting it Tallis might have doomed himself. She lost all sight of him through the rippling air and the chaos of the ghoulish horde. Her stomach lurched as she imagined the Karrn swallowed by the burning tide.

“Aegis, get back up the stairs!” she shouted.

The warforged had kept the undead from gaining the higher ground, but he’d paid a heavy price for it. The polished metal plating was scored all across his body. Half of the slavering creatures had been hewn down by his blade or knocked aside by his thick shield, but to keep them down he’d had to remain at the bottom of the stairs.

“What in Khyber?” she heard Halix shout. She looked up.

The liquid glass flowed across the ground, destroying everything in its path as easily as volcanic lava. The bugbear Rhazan, stuck fast to the ground by Tallis’s trick, had been unable to move in the sleightest. He let out an agonized wail as the glass burned away the lower half of his body. The rest of him caught fire.

Soneste prayed that Tallis was not suffering the same fate. All she could hear was the monstrous scream.

The burning yellow liquid spread out across the factory floor, engulfing the legs of the ghoulish crowd. The creatures shrieked and cavorted in a parody of pain, but Soneste couldn’t tell if it was from real agony or some unnatural semblance of self-preservation. They were already dead-but the molten glass was destroying them.

All of them.

Aegis wasn’t fast enough. Still under assault from the ghouls, he’d stepped back up to the lowest stair, but the hateful creatures pulled back at him. The heated liquid washed over his feet. His head swiveled back and forth in astonishment as he watched the wooden components of his legs burn away. The stone liquefied, the metal became white-hot.

“Mistress!” The warforged panicked, dropping the gore-spattered sword and reaching wildly with his hands to find the railing behind him. “Soneste! Please … help …”

“Aegis, no!” she cried.

Soneste and Halix both stepped down and tried to pull him up, but the metal plating of his arms became unbearably hot in mere seconds. They fell away, skin blistered from the contact. Halix cursed and pulled Soneste up, lifting her bodily away from the dying warforged.

The molten pool rose no higher. It had spread itself out as far as it could, a wide radius forty feet or more around the ruptured vat. The undead creatures had become blackened, human-shaped lumps. They were still burning, their bodies glistening with slowly-cooling glass.

At the base of the stairs, Aegis lay still, the lower half of his body ruined.

Soneste was weary, spent. As much as she wanted to weep for Aegis, she couldn’t. Yet enduring anger coursed through her limbs as she thought about the cost of Lord Charoth’s deeds. The bastard was just behind them in his office. She’d make certain he paid.

The air thinned somewhat as the molten glass began to cool. It had become viscous but was far from being solid again.

There, hanging mere feet above the yellow pool, was Tallis. With two hands he clung to one of his floating metal rods. The Karrn looked exhausted, his skin slicked with sweat and blood and his clothes scorched by the heat.

“Tallis!” she shouted to him.

He coughed, gasping for air, and looked over his shoulder at Soneste. He looked down at the cooling but still deadly mass of heated glass.

“It was … a great plan!” he said hoarsely and offered a weary smile.