Kate Novak - Masquerades

"Looking for your mistress?" Kimbel taunted, lowering the crossbow. "I'm sorry, but she's occupied right now." He motioned for two men in guardsmen uniforms to collect the saurial's body.

On the main floor, a tight knot of halflings surrounded Lady Nettel as Olive Ruskettle tried with limited success to keep any approaching golems from turning their attention on the matriarch. Lady Nettel was leaning heavily on a spear, which she had plucked from a fallen guardsmen. Just when it seemed as if Olive had managed to send one golem off to seek easier prey, Lady Nettel shrieked, "Thistle!"

Olive spotted the young noblewoman collapsed on the floor with a golem hovering uncertainly over her.

Olive dashed forward, but Lady Nettel was faster. The head of House Thalavar barged through her ring of bodyguards and stepped right between the iron colossus and her granddaughter. The old lady swung her spear to ward off the monster, but the shaft snapped like a twig against the creature's iron arms. As Olive dragged Thistle back to the uncertain safety of the ring of halfling bodyguards, the golem lifted Lady Nettel in both arms and squeezed. Even above the din, Olive swore she could hear the sound of the old woman's back breaking. Then the monster, disinterested in the dead, dropped Nettel Thalavar's crushed, mangled body and wandered off.

Olive dashed over to Lady Nettel's broken form; Thistle followed directly behind her, ignoring the bodyguards who tried to hold her back by tugging on the skirt of her gown. Astonishingly, the old woman still breathed, but she was twisted in an odd, inhuman fashion, and Olive could tell she was fading before their eyes. The dying woman called for Thistle.

Thistle bent close to her grandmother's face. "You are… my heir," Nettel Thalavar wheezed. "Take… the feather pin."

Thistle began to cry, but Lady Nettel pushed her aside and grabbed Olive by the tabard. She gasped once, then whispered vehemently, "Protect… my… granddaughter!" The noblewoman never drew another breath. Her face spasmed into a contortion that looked anything but peaceful and froze.

Thistle Thalavar, new leader of House Thalavar, gently unpinned her grandmother's copper brooch. As her tears splashed on her grandmother's corpse, she fastened the brooch to her own gown. Then she and Olive fled to the halflings' last defensive position, under a buffet table.

Ultimately it was a mild-mannered gate crasher who managed to turn the j tide. Yielding to Dragonbait's request,) Mintassan had been keeping an eye on the proceedings at the ball. Cloaked in an invisibility spell, he had slipped past the seneschal and stood quietly in the corner, wearing the mask of a bearded, graying wizard witn pipe clenched between his teeth. The paladin had not been able to even guess what might go wrong at the ball, but once the golems had arrived, the sage knew exactly how to bring the situation under control.

Magic being nearly useless against such monsters, Mintassan teleported back to his home. There, on his desk, tucked in box full of straw, was the remedy for iron golems. He had prepared it this morning after realizing the Faceless still controlled a troop of the creatures. Arriving in the back of his workroom, the sage dashed to his desk, prepared to scoop up his secret weapons and teleport back immediately. He halted before the desk and nearly froze in panic. The objects he sought were missing.

Fortunately, Mintassan was far more levelheaded than his reputation credited him. He also was not so old that he could not remember being a boy and the sorts of things boys enjoyed doing.

"Kel!" he hollered, dashing up the stairs two at a time. He threw open the door to the boy's room and gave a great sigh of relief. The box lay on the bed, three glass globes packed within. Kel sat on the floor, waving a nail in front of a fourth glass globe. Within the globe a tiny insectlike creature pawed frantically at the glass ball, causing it to roll after the nail almost as if the ball were magnetically attracted to the iron. "I was just playing," the boy insisted.

Mintassan snatched up the box and the fourth globe and hissed, "Silver path, tower stair." Before Kel's astonished eyes, the sage vanished.

Mintassan reappeared in the Tower on one of the staircases. Grimly he assessed the battlefield. Only one golem had actually been felled, lying in two twitching halves on the floor. Durgar was hammering on a second golem's legs with such determination that the creature was limping noticeably, but then so was the old priest.

With an uncanny aim, Mintassan threw one ball each at the remaining four unscathed golems. The glass smashed against the iron monsters, releasing the tiny creatures within. They grew as they fell, so that by the time they hit the floor they were five feet in length, each sporting four insectlike legs, an armor-plated back, a long, bony tail with a paddle-shaped tip, and, most importantly, long mobile antennae. They were easily recognizable by the few experienced adventurers present as rust monsters-normally docile animals with a voracious appetite for all things iron.

The first freed rust monster struck its antennae against the legs of the iron golem looming over it. The golem's legs turned brown and crumbled beneath it, so that it toppled to the floor, crippled.

The second rust monster took a moment longer to get its bearings, giving the golem beside it time to reach down and grab it-a serious error on the golem's part. The rust monster's antennae wrapped around both arms like whips. The golem's arms crumbled to rust, freeing the rust monster it had just grasped. The golem stumbled off as the rust monster chomped on the rusted remains of its arms. Though able to move, the golem was now unable to continue grappling or punching at the guests, though it continued to chase them.

One rust monster was slain by a powerful strike of a golem's fist, but as the iron behemoth pulled away, it lost its hand at the wrist, struck by one of the dying animal's antennae. The fourth and final rust monster scrambled on top of its golem, rusting it from the head down to the shoulders and arms, through the torso, and down to the knees. The ferrous-loving animal rolled about in the huge pile of rust as it chomped on it like a cat in a field of catnip.

Having thrown all his weapons, Mintassan looked about for Dragonbait. Just before he'd teleported to his workshop to fetch the rust monsters, the sage had seen the paladin slashing at one of the golems. Now, however, the saurial was nowhere to be seen. There had to be nearly fifty people dead and dying on the Tower floor, but the saurial was not among them.

As the watch, under Durgar's direction, dragged a rust monster in the direction of one of the remaining mobile golems, some other members of Durgar's forces had man-aged to raise the portcullis to the outside. Nobles streamed out of the Tower like ants from a flooded nest. The sage was just about to teleport to the temple of Ilmater to fetch some priests to heal the wounded, when he spied Kimbel exiting through the portcullis.

The Dhostar manservant looked not only uninjured, but completely unruffled, as did the two guards in Dhostar livery who followed him carrying a lumpy, rolled up tapestry. With a suspicious frown, the sage reached in his pocket for a spell component and whispered, "Light-pass." His large form went translucent, then transparent, then invisible. Once transformed, the mage hurried after the former assassin, his minions, and whatever it was they found necessary to cart off.

Upstairs, isolated from the noise of the attack by the massiveness of the Tower's construction, Alias lay with Victor Dhostar before the fireplace of the conference room. Shaking off the elegant torpor that enthralled her, she raised her head from Victor's chest and looked up at him. "I love you," she whispered. "I love you, too," the nobleman replied, "but now that you have your proof of that, we really should be getting back to the ball."