Al'xios let out a small grunt as Ayrkin's levitate deposited him just inside the cavern mouth, the opening of which sat a hundred feet down a cliff face. Too exhausted to do little more than watch as the others made their way down by rope, the paladin of Clovis reflected on the day's events. It was inevitable they'd meet again with the blue women—everyone had been waiting for it to happen, eyes on the sky and raking the enemy encampments in the distance for the first signs of their approach. In preparation, Al'Xios had even instructed Delom on how to use the bronze bell, should the women come with any reinforcements.
Al'Xios' memories skipped forward and he smiled at how well the bell had worked. Or perhaps it had to do with the mind controlling it? He would have to ask Delom, but not now. She had just scrambled inside the cavern and taken a seat next to him, his body between her and the opening and the long drop to the bottom of the cliff.
How had it begun? Al'xios' thoughts drifted back as he put a tired arm around the little girl. They'd been riding hard and fast to get to Tel'ura and had had luck avoiding the Minh troops.
Al'xios paused again in his recollections to consciously offer up to Clovis the appropriate invectives against the schismatics. It never hurt to be on the right side of your god, particularly when it was due to a deity that you were lucky to wipe your…nose…without assistance. Thufark nimbly, and so enthusiastically it made Al'xios even more tired, swung himself into the cavern. Was he posing? Well, Thufark was always one to make an entrance, and his acrobatics were always entertaining in a fight, if of dubious efficacy. Still, Al'xios would sooner see others fall than the strangely manic monk. After all, it was Thufark who first spotted what they'd all been dreading — and straining — to see since they'd left Monarch of the Mines: four blue women approaching at speed. The party had rested the previous night in the Hills and, when the streaks of blue in the sky heralded the fight to come, were perhaps two hours from Tel'ura. As though the women were not enought to handle, particularly when they had Delom to protect, off to the southwest a large cloud of dust was advancing with swiftly sinister intent. The sun pierced the dust here and there to shine off metal, portending more of those hideous monstrosities. Al'xios had seen enough death to know how bodies could bloat and rot, causing leather and armor to sink into putrid flesh, creating what seemed a diseased hybrid of man and metal. But these were worse. They were abominations in every way: man and beast, man and metal, metal and beast. Worse still, all alive. At least a decaying carcass did little other than threaten with the miasma of its fumes, but these…things…had some form of life, an animating spirit that skipped past threatening to terrorize instead.
And so the party faced a decision: blue women from one direction, glittering hoards from the other. There was nowhere to run to, no real defense to be had. And so, pausing only to review the sad state of the options, they had turned off the road and entered among the trees. There was no time to discuss tactics, but, Al'xios reflected with a hint of pride given how the battle had turned out, the party had gotten the hang of fighting these things.
The blue women were on them first, but there had been time enought to dismount and prepare. Delom was safely behind a tree with the bell. J'nan was up another with her black metal crossbow, black bolts at the ready. Indeed, anyone with a bow of one sort or another had it out, hoping, with the aid of Jayden's Prayer, to pick off the blue women before the metal beasties were upon them. And then they were in range and everyone fired, and Thufark flew at them, and the austere warrior leapt into the air astride his horse, lance leveled.
The first engagement was over quickly; too quickly. If he had known…
But it was a good fight. Rook took out a blue woman with a single hit and Al'xios caught sight of her spiraling to the ground and imagined he had felt the thud when her body hit. One of the remaining blue women set the trees on fire. Another retaliated at Rook, her beam crushing his arm, leaving it a bloodly, boney, useless mass until he could find time to heal it. The thrid woman disappeared into the trees as she and the austere warrior fell to the earth. Al'xios had not seen who hit whom, but he felt more than saw the explosion of black light, which staggered him backward a foot or two.
It was mid-day, but it could have been midnight and still the forest would have shone brightly from the burning of the trees. J'nan had scrambled otu of hers before it, too, lit up. Perhaps the light was too much for the women? Certainly they did not seem as formidable as before. One had turned her ire on himself and Mort, but clipped the top of a tree as she flew lower to aim and, momentarily entangled, fell to the ground, her beam whooshing above their heads. Mort wasted little time in taking advantage of her indisposition. Al'xios missed much of the rest of the combat as he ran off to find the fallen austere warriro and the blue woman, hoping that the falls had only broken one of them. But he heard Ayrkin's glee and triumph as his fist punched entrails out the backof one of the women, then emerged from her abdomen covered in gore. And he heard and saw over his shoulder as Jayden created water over another blue woman, only to have it instantly become a burst of scalding steam.
Soon, the final two blue women were done in—one by Ayrkin, the other by the austere warrior.
J'nan and Jayden had joined Ayrkin, Delom, Thufark, and Al'xios in the cavern by now. Outside, Al'xios could see the rope twisting and writing as another of the companions started their descent. They'd all made it through a fight with four blue women. Amazing. Of course, then there had been the creatures.
Luck had been their friend that day, Al'xios decided, for the moment choosing to forget Ayrkin dropping his bow, Gd'zang's cold arrow whizzing off through the trees, Rook's attempting to jump onto one of the creatures only to hit the side hard and slide slowly down to the ground, and of course Al'xios' own folly of summoning Divine Confidence only to not have needed it and now sitting on the cavern floor, too exhausted to even stand, as he would be for several more hours.
Still, they had defeated the blue women with time to spare before the final trees fell to the on-slaught of the creatures. Time enough to loot the bodies and discuss once again the possibility of running away. It was worth a try and so they mounted up and started off, but ere long the trees to their right crashed to the ground and five huge monsters could be made out in the cloud of dust and debris. Twenty feet high at the shoulder, some were riden as mounts by "men" another eight to ten feet in height. There was no escaping.
The battle was engaged, though unbeknownst to Al'xios until the very end, two battles truly raged. One was between the abominations and the party, and it was a bloody, brusing fight, with the beasts and their riders slamming into first J'nan, then Rook, then Mort, knocking each aside or fully off their feet. Thufark was struck in the leg. The party hit back just as hard, with the austere warrior carving hunks of rotting flesh off the beasts, Thufark ripping out pieces of putrescence, and all the others hitting, slicing, and striking. But even with the toll of the bronze bell squeezing the metal into the flesh, forcing out a foul ooze of bodily fluids and pulped flesh, the creatures would not stop until they were absolutely pulverized.
That was the fight all saw.
And then there was the battle that seethed inside Jayden as he tried but was not fast enough to prevent Gd'zang from casting an ice storm at the outset of the fight, destroying a precious scroll in the process. As the party panted, recovering from what should have been the easier of the two attacks, Jayden marched over to the mage and tried to buy her remaining magical scrolls, so such a sacrilege to Cyrin would not happen again. The conversaton grew heated quickly, however. Gd'zang dismissed Jayden's concerns, claiming she didn't need scrolls and could cast directly, making Jayden's request moot. Other words must have passed, Al'xios thought, for why else would the cleric retort that Erea was dead and it was time for Gd'zang to move on? That struck the paladin as a little uncalled for. Everyone could get touchy about their god, but wasn't respect for the dead a fundemental component of civilization? Surely Jayden could read about that somewhere in one of the many books he collected. Thankfully, Gd'zang did not take the bait and walked away, inspiring the party to turn to the more pressing matter of what to do next.
Al'xios shut his eyes. He knew he couldn't afford to sleep, but the thought was so inviting. The party had decided to press on in spite of his exhaustion, though it had meant lashing him to the mount. But, he know, there was little choice. Within an hour the ghouls Mort had summoned would be attacking the city and they needed to be on their way to this cavern when that happened. So here they were.
SMACK
Al'xios jerked awake, confused. A moment later, a bruised Gd'zang was lowered onto the lip of the cavern mouth. A few minutes later and Rook and Mort were there as well, the former's front still streaked with dirt and grass, the latter standing a bit sheepishly as she answered the questioning looks: "The rope slipped."
