Bruce Cordell - Lady of Poison

If he could overcome his reluctance, Marrec wondered if his ability to turn flesh to stone would have any effect on the unliving tissue of night walkers. Maybe a true gift of Lurue, one he had not depleted in the long decline of his connection with his goddess, might be called.

Bringing his spear up in a guarding position, Marrec bellowed, “Lurue commands that you give way, unholy creatures. Turn your faces and be destroyed!” His spear head, its shape that of a stylized unicorn horn, blazed with golden light for a moment, briefly shining brighter than the magical light that Ususi had cast upon it.

Damanda merely narrowed her eyes and hissed. The large one faltered, vibrating with its desire to resist. Marrec didn’t turn his head to see how the one facing Elowen was responding, but he could feel its resistance, too.

Something wasn’t right. The power of the ritual, which he always imagined as gentle hands on his shoulders, was anemic. If, in truth, Lurue stood behind him bolstering him with her strength, then it was as if she only lightly touched him. Worse, she was backing away, her touch growing ever lighter, until he couldn’t feel it at all.

The resistance peaked; his power broke. None of the vampires turned away. All smiled the wider. The large, hammer-wielding nightwalker croaked, “Your god is weak.” Marrec groaned, giving ground. The vampire was right.

Damanda commanded, “Lex, spell them, will you?”

The purple-haired woman standing near Fallon began to incant. Elowen closed with the incanter, bringing her blade around in an arc sure to separate head from body, but a thaumaturgic field shimmered into visibility, deflecting the blade. Lex finished her spell, and a wave of violet light expanded from her, washing over everyone in the room.

Marrec felt his joints begin to lock up but shook off the effect. He saw that Gunggari also resisted the magical hold. Not so Elowenthe elf hunter stood rooted in place, struggling, but unable to command her body into motion.

Gunggari made to dash to Elowen’s side, but his corpse-white opponent was too near, swinging his great hammer in deadly parabolas, promising death to Gunggari if the Oslander’s attention wavered.

Marrec was pressed by the blightlord Damanda. She moved in, the noise of her insect aura growing maddeningly loud. Recovering more quickly from his failed attempt to turn back the vampires than Damanda expected, he thrust forward with Justlance.

The tip bit deep, momentarily dimming the light in the room, then it was nearly torn from Marrec’s hand as Damanda twisted back. She swiped at him with one handno, it was some sort of clawed or bladed gauntlet composed of darkness itself. The blade caught him along the side, scoring his flesh, but not mortally. Both combatants staggered back a pace. Marrec observed Damanda’s wound begin to knit in a way that his own did not.

The blightlord grinned, her teeth again prominent. She pointed at him. The insect mass swarming around her bulged, sending a filament of biting mosquitoes his way. Marrec expected that the insects, like their master, were vampiric.

The mosquitoes would suck him dry in seconds if he didn’t do something…

He called upon his secret heritage. He found it lurking just behind his eyes like a hound eager to be let out. Marrec complied, focusing his attention on the swarm as if a single entity. For a moment, he felt a connection between himself and the tiny points of hunger, but in the very instant the connection was made, it was transformed and snuffed out. A hail of tiny stones fell as one from the air, shattering into so much dust. Damanda’s insect aura was stripped from her with Marrec’s glance. A pain lanced Marrec’s eyes like before. A weakness suffused him; he knew that his ability to call on his deplorable heritage was depleted for now.

Despite the pain and the blood trickling from the corners of his eyes, Marrec smiled at Damanda.

Not so the blightlord. She yelled, “What’s this? A medusa posing as a human?”

A shadow occluded the doorwayUsusi. She appeared mid-spell and with a flourish, released a cascade of brilliant electrical arcs, stabbing full into Damanda and Gunggari’s foe. Both staggered and flailed, as the flesh smoked and boiled under the intense magical assault.

Damanda spoke, tiny sparks flashing across the gap of her opened mouth, “Lex! Stop gawking; kill the one you’ve immobilized.”

Marrec tried to get to Lex, the vampire mage standing next to Elowen, but Damanda, still smoking, was on him again. Gunggari grunted with a similar exertion, beating back his foe. They were both pinned.

In a fluid single motion, Lex extruded spindly white hands, claw tipped, from the folds of her black cloak, and grabbed Elowen as if to embrace her. Lex opened her mouth wide, creating a gap larger than any mere human could accomplish, and brought her head toward Elowen’s unprotected neck.

The vampire shuddered, pausing. “Huh,” grunted Lex, releasing her hold on Elowen. She bent her head to look down at her chest. From it protruded the broken end of a wooden branch, darkly slick with pooling blood.

Fallon stood behind Lex. It was he who had thrust the branch through the vampire’s chest.

Marrec blinkedFallon saved Elowen’s life.

Already shriveling and smoking, Lex turned and slashed Fallon with her razor sharp claws. In a spray of blood, both went down, Lex crumbling and Fallon grasping at his neck.

Marrec’s gaze, Ususi’s unexpected assault, Fallon’s betrayal, and Lex’s destruction was enough for the blightlord. She pulled a rolled parchment from her belt with one hand while reaching out to tap her last remaining follower with the other. She began uttering the arcane words inscribed upon the parchment in short, clipped breaths.

Marrec threw Justlance. The spear screamed through the empty air that a moment earlier contained its intended target. Damanda was gone, likely back to the court of the Rotting Man.

On the ground where he’d fallen, Fallon struggled, gasping. Marrec and Gunggari rushed across the chamber, Marrec to Ash’s side, Gunggari to kneel next to Fallon. Ususi stepped tentatively into the chamber, looking around suspiciously. Elowen, still standing stiffly, groaned and tried to move her arms. She managed to do so, if somewhat clumsily. The compulsion was apparently lifting.

“Are you ok, girl?” Marrec asked Ash, inspecting her for bruise, blemish, or other sign of poor treatment. Ash was unmarked. He hugged her close.

Gunggari inspected Fallon’s bleeding neck wound. He said, “Marrec, his wounds are beyond simple tending, and the Nentyarch’s satchel is empty of healing balms.”

Marrec knew that Gunggari, in speaking of his satchel, was actually asking if Marrec retained any healing grace. Marrec met his friend’s eyes, shaking his head. The cleric remembered seeing named vials in the satchel, one of which contained his own name, but none had contained Fallon’s name. Disengaging from Ash, he bent, too, at Fallon’s side.

Fallon looked up at Marrec, whispered, “I should never have taken the girl. I am sorry…” He stopped, coughing blood.

The unicorn warrior said, “It was a brave thing you did, just now. In the end, you chose right.”

Fallon, breathing shallowly, smiled then said, “I know.”

He breathed his last, a smile frozen on his unmoving lips.

Marrec gently closed the elfs staring eyes. “May Lurue grant you redemption.”

Damanda and Bonehammer fell from a height of over ten feet. Damanda corrected, landing on her feet with perfect grace, though Bonehammer stumbled and fell heavily onto a pile of crumbled brick.

She had panicked. She had used her emergency escape scroll, as unreliable as it was, when things turned sour. Luck was with them. Despite the scroll having been scribed by Lex years earlier, and Damanda’s only passing facility with the arts of wizardry, both she and Bonehammer made the uncertain transit and in’ full possession of their limbs.