---
It hadn’t been more than few days before a small racket was heard treading loudly on the path between Honor Hold’s central keep and the local inn. An ornery tornado of a woman stormed into the inn with much uncouth ceremony, and made a beeline for one of the rooms upstairs.
The door flung open, rudely slamming into the adjacent wall after swinging on its hinges in a graceful arc. It was more than enough of a jarring interruption to make the two men studying their various tomes and scrolls look up with a start at the woman standing in mock triumph in the open doorway, her hands on her hips in an akimbo pose. The woman remained as such for a moment, a wide smirk on her face, only barely acknowledging the mixed expressions on her audience’s faces.
“Good news, guys,” Tuan announced perkily to the Paladin and Priest. “Danath wants me to go inside the Citadel proper, and he’s given me permission to choose whatever aide I want. I hereby rope you two into covering my back while I snoop.”
Theluin and Eleazar only traded considering expressions before the Elf turned back to address the she-rogue. “Well, the Ambassador is currently presenting a sermon at the Temple of Telhamat, and he could stay there for another day or so—”
“Sounds to me like you’re in, Thel,” Tuan interrupted, almost too gleefully. Theluin could only reply with a slight, defeated smile. Satisfied, Tuan then turned her smug face toward the Paladin. “What about you, Lightbulb?”
Eli only looked Tuan in the eye, leaned back in his seat with folded arms, and returned the ornery rogue’s smirk.
“Fel. It’s about time.”
~||~
Red-skinned Orcs perked up like a pack of rabid wolves at the sight of a golden-armoured Paladin and a robed Night Elven Priest as they rounded the first unguarded corner of the ominous tower that overlooked the blood-stained ramparts of the Citadel. Some of the fiends were in the process of feeding off of the fel energies of captive Hellfire Imps, and these neophytes were none too pleased at the fact that their meal was in the process of being disrupted. One of the Fel Orc adepts took the initiative and began casting a Shadowbolt at the two intruders, only to be interrupted by a swift kick to the head and a deftly aimed dagger to the kidneys.
Eli charged in, arcs of light dancing across his armour and shield, and swung his light-imbued warhammer into the skulls of the adepts. Theluin cast a well-timed mass Silence on the Orcs, cutting off their voices before the brutes could sound any alarms. Within moments, all that remained of the adepts and their imp ‘lunches’ was a pile of corpses soaked in purple-black ichor.
Tuan kicked one of the corpses in the ribs, muttering something about the beasts almost ruining her new gear before she slinked back into the shadows to scout out what was beyond the rising stair case. Meanwhile, Eli and Theluin waited, the Paladin taking a moment to adjust his recently reforged armour – Tuan’s recently gained notoriety had earned them some favours from the Sons of Lothar, and those favours included fresh equipment. Just in time, too, given how delicate this latest mission was …
Tuan reappeared a few moments later, smirking slightly, the colour of Fel Orc blood staining her sword and dagger. “It’s clear,” she assured her companions. “Head on up.”
Eli gave a sharp nod and cautiously went up the stairs with Theluin and a hidden Tuan bringing up the rear. Most of the Orcs were either dead, or utterly incapacitated by deftly applied poisons – which was a good thing at this point, as Light alone knew what a mess the trio of would-be heroes would have gotten into if the population hadn’t been thinned out thoroughly.
They reached the top of the stairway and came into a viewing room, the incapacitated or dying forms of several Fel Orc adepts littering the floor as they approached the balcony’s end. Far below, six Fel Orc warlocks were focused on maintaining a massive spell circle. The latent fel energies were palpable even for those not trained to sense it.
“What the fel are they doing down there?” Tuan asked, coming out of the shadows long enough to peer down into the massive chamber.
“Hard t’ tell,” Eli replied first. “It ain’t no summonin’ ritual …”
Theluin took a moment to observe what the Orcs were up to. “It looks like they are maintaining a seal.”
This got the Rogue’s and Paladin’s attentions, prompting them to trade expressions of epiphany.
“A seal?” Tuan asked her Night Elf friend, more curious than surprised.
Eli peered back down into the massive chamber. “If it’s a seal, then they’re sealin’ up sumthin’ big.”
Tuan nodded and slinked back into the shadows. “I’m raring to find out just what that ‘something big’ is.”
~||~
“Ah … what have we here?”
A cybernetically enhanced Mo’arg demon towered over the trio of heroes, grinning madly as his mechanical arm’s built-in claw spun about in its socket. “Strange little creatures I have never seen before … perhaps I may have some use for you …”
They were surrounded by the Fel Orcs on the Mo’arg’s unspoken command. Worse, the trio had been backed into a cell filled with disturbingly despondent brown-skinned orcs, listless looks in their eyes; it was as if though these orcs had had their very souls drained out of them. Given the number of warlocks they had seen in these wretched halls thus far made it a small surprise to see these victims in such a state.
“This was a bust …” Eli muttered, gripping his warhammer and shield tightly.
“Your own fault for trying to take on so many at once,” Tuan quipped back.
Eli shot the she-rogue a look, and opened his mouth to retort that she had gone too far ahead for him to help her – when Theluin interrupted the exchange.
“This is no time for arguing, you two,” Theluin calmly reminded his companions.
Tuan took a deep breath. “Right. We got us into this mess …”
“… gotta find a way out,” Eli finished.
There wasn’t much to work with. The whole chamber appeared to be some sort of holding facility, the walls lined with disturbingly organic-looking cells all the way to the high-vaulted ceiling, and each one was crammed full of brown-skinned orcs. To add to the profoundly disconcerting view, there were several fairly grisly remains of gruesome experiments to be seen all around the chamber, either chained to and squirming on examination tables, surrounded by Fel Orc Engineers sporting various demonic cybernetics, or hanging lifeless from fel iron meathooks.
A group of Fel Orc Shadowcasters were focused on one cell, taking a pound of flesh from one of the chained brown orcs and literally growing a fully developed orc from that pound of flesh using some intensely alarming magic … and with the way things were looking, it didn’t seem too far-fetched that this Mo’arg wanted to do the same thing with the intrepid infiltrators.
What a fine time to forget bringing some working smoke bombs.
There were too many Fel Orc skulls for Eli to bash in, and Theluin could only keep the Paladin alive for so long in such a situation … not to mention, the Mo’arg was getting a little too close with that buzz-saw attachment on his claw arm. Gripping her dagger tightly, Tuan grimly realized what she had to do, and she hated it … but time and options were getting precious. This was going to be messy – literally.
In one swift motion, the she-rogue grabbed one of the listless brown orcs, pointed him at the Fel Orc enforcers blocking off the cell, and slit the captive’s throat deep enough for blood to spurt all over the guards. This was enough to whip the Fel Orcs into a maddened frenzy – exactly what Tuan was counting on. She shoved the convulsing body at the suddenly churning mass of muscled frames, and they immediately began tearing at the flesh of the unfortunate one, jostling each other for a pick of the fresh meat.
“Now!”
Eli nodded sharply at the command and charged into the milling pack of blood-gorging Orcs, all of them too worked up to be effective – much less listen to a now rather shocked and incensed Mo’arg shouting orders at them.
The other Fel Orcs stationed in the room came rushing in on cue, only to be thwarted by the crafty she-rogue, nicking the Engineers’ explosives from their belts and setting them off in their midst, giving Eli enough breathing room to dispose of the aggressors at a manageable pace. The Shadowcasters found themselves with surreptitious, poisoned gashes in their backs and arms, the specially crafted venom slurring their speech and disrupting their incantations, and then they were definitely shut down by a precise application of Mass Silence from Theluin.
Finally, every last Fel Orc lay dead, forcing the Mo’arg to take direct action. The demon brought down his buzz-saw and would have nailed the armoured paladin if it weren’t for Tuan shouting a warning to him at the last moment. The jagged metal saw plate struck the floor in a shower of sparks, leaving a deep and rather intimidating gash in the stone floor.
“Foolish mortal fleshlings!” the enraged Mo’arg bellowed, raising his mechanical arm again. “You meddle in the work of The Maker! You will only meet your slow and painful fate challenging me!”
He swung the buzz-saw at the heroes, Eli just barely blocking the weapon with his shield. The whirling blade would have certainly cut through the sanctified armament if not for a timely barrier of divine magic bolstering the Paladin’s defences, Light dancing around Theluin’s hands. While the Mo’arg was locked down on Eli, Tuan stepped off to the side and deftly made a move for The Maker’s exposed hydraulics lines. By the time the demon realized what the she-rogue was doing on his back, Tuan had severed the lines and thoroughly jammed up the gyros, rendering the mechanical limb useless. Finally given an opening, Eli bashed his warhammer into the demon’s face. The Maker reeled backwards, momentarily dazed, allowing Tuan to finalize the kill – by ramming her dagger into the back of the Mo’arg’s head.
With little fanfare, The Maker crumpled to the blood-stained floor, lifeless.
~||~
After assessing and dealing with the damage they had sustained in fighting the Mo’arg (beyond a rather deep scour from the buzz-saw blade in Eli’s shield, there wasn’t much to patch up), Tuan slipped into the shadows to scout out the room the demon had been barring entry to. It didn’t take long for the she-rogue to reappear, an expression of revulsion and disbelief twisting her face.
“Sick. These monsters are sick,” she muttered through clenched teeth. The she-rogue inhaled as if to say more, but her expression only hardened as she forced herself to exhale.
“How bad is it?” Eleazar asked, ending the silence.
Tuan only jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the door. “Have a look yourself.”
Eleazar and Theluin carefully made their way to the door and peered into what was essentially a manufacturing facility stretching throughout a tall, gruesome corridor. Orcs in various stages of transformation and processing were seen floating in eldritch contraptions, their exposed bodies molested by tubes and hoses jammed into several artificial orifices implanted into their hides, a fel green ichor being pumped into their veins. Some were missing limbs, weapons being affixed were hands or legs once were, and black-green ooze bled from where bony spikes had begun to grow rapidly through the skin of the embryonic Fel Orcs. Some of the captives that had displayed the most resistance to this transformation were being held down on cold metal tables and force-fed this green ooze by red-skinned Orc technicians, accelerating the transformation exponentially and all the more painfully. By the time a nascent Fel Orc reached the end of the corridor, he was a cold, soulless, manufactured freak of nature, programmed with shadow magic to do the bidding of their dark lord.
“Fel,” Eli breathed. “It’s a flesh factory …”
Theluin could only agree in silence.
After a moment of stunned observation, Tuan joined her companions at the door, and it was clear they shared in her disgust. “Obviously there’s too many Orcs in here for us to safely fight our way through to the other side,” she stated quietly, grimly assessing the situation. “And I know that sneaking around in full-metal plate doesn’t exactly work.”
“Nope,” the paladin sighed, pulling away from the door and wearily leaning his back to the massive felsteel columns that framed the doorway. “What d’ya think we should do, then, Miss Tuan?”
The she-rogue only rubbed her temples with both hands in response. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking …”
Theluin observed his younger companions as they bantered. At least at the moment, they were on mutual terms. Assured that he wouldn’t need to step in again, the Night Elf simply gave Eleazar an assuring look before slipping into a state of light meditation.
Eli, while grateful for Theluin’s silent assurance, sighed and folded his armour-plated arms. He leaned around the door post for another look at the grisly factory still churning out its ghastly products. “They all look so busy in thar,” he muttered off-handedly. “I’m startin’ t’ think they wouldn’ think twice ‘bout an outta-place crate or two here or there, y’know?”
Tuan’s eyes snapped open, and she lowered her hands from her temples. “Eli. You’re a genius.”
“Say what?”
Tuan responded by scrambling back inside the room they had left. Theluin blinked slowly, raising his head and glancing quizzically at the Paladin, who could do little else but shrug his pauldroned shoulders in perplexity. A scant minute later, the she-rogue returned and thrust a large, fel-iron-reinforced crate into Eli’s hands, a turd-eating grin plastered on her face. It took Eleazar a second or two to realize just what Tuan had gotten into her mind.
“… aw, fel, no.”
“Suck it in, Lightbulb,” Tuan teased the Paladin. “It was your idea.”
~||~
“Fel … I can’t believe that worked …” Eli whispered as the crate finally edged into the room beyond the factory area. “Still think it’s a bit cramped in here …”
“Pipe down,” the she-rogue whispered back. “We’re not in the clear just yet.” Tuan took a moment to glance out of one of the small holes that riddled the rusted shell of the crate they were hiding in. As their mobile hiding place inched along the wall of this new room, Tuan noticed that it was nearly identical to the room where they had slain the Mo’arg demon not too long ago. There was one major difference, though: where those chambers had been stocked with listless brown-skinned orcs, here red-skinned and positively feral monstrosities were being penned up in the stacks of cells that lined the walls, howling for blood and rattling the bars of their cages. Every now and then, a more lucid Fel Orc would walk by a cell, carrying some sort of iron rod with energy arcing along its pronged tip, and promptly insert it between the tooth-like bars of the cages … an action that was followed by screams and howls of pain before the cell fell silent for another five minutes or so.
The she-rogue did her best not to grimace at what she kept seeing, but reported to her friends quietly just where they were. “Be careful, you guys.” she whispered. “I think we’re where these sadistic maniacs are storing their reinforcements.”
“Dreadful,” Theluin whispered laconically.
“That’s an understatement,” Eli corrected absent-mindedly, edging the crate forward along the wall a few more inches.
Another couple feet of sneaking around in a box passed without incident and without further conversation, all three companions almost holding their collective breaths in the hope they would pass by this room unnoticed … and they would have if it weren’t for one small detail.
“INTRUDERS. KILL THEM.”
There was a many-eyed Beholder demon in the room as well.
Excited Orcish roars could be heard, accompanied by the sound of several cage doors sliding open with distinct hydraulic hisses. The trio only had a split second to scramble out of their hiding place before a small horde of feral Fel Orcs swarmed the box and smashed it to pieces.
“KILL THEM ALL. LET NONE ESCAPE,” the Beholder bellowed again. “THIS IS THE WORD OF BROGGOK. SLAY THE INTRUDERS FOR THE GLORY OF OUR LORD.”
Eli quickly consecrated a wide swath of the floor he and his companions stood upon and raised sacred shields of Light to ward off the demonically charged Orcs that nearly mindlessly swarmed around the room.
“I can’t hold ‘em off like this fer long, friends,” the Paladin panted, grasping his shield and hammer in preparation for the inevitable confrontation of the beasts that waited hungrily beyond the safety of the purified ground.
Theluin simply raised a few wards of his own and replied, “You won’t hold them off alone, Eleazar.” The Paladin smiled gratefully, and then focused on the frothing Orcs howling beyond the barriers of the sacred shields.
Tuan looked around the room again, trying to find some way to instil the Orcs into enough of a frenzy that they would turn on each other, and make clearing them out that much easier. The feral Orcs craved blood, as was apparent in their howled invectives, and Tuan had certainly decided that the blood they screamed after wasn’t going to be hers or that of her friends … but where was she going to get enough blood to distract and confound the beasts?
As it turned out, she didn’t have to do much … if anything at all. So riled up by the intrusion were these feral Orcs that they began to fight amongst themselves in their thirst for battle. One of the weaker Orcs challenged a much larger individual and was torn apart, limb from limb. The resulting carnage whipped the feral Orcs into the frenzy the trio was waiting for, and it didn’t take much to subsequently make short work of the collapsing swarm.
Slightly worn out, the trio steadied themselves on the blood-slicked ground and noted that they had made a rather sizable dent in the Fel Orcs’ reserves of manufactured soldiers … but they still had to deal with the Beholder.
“FOOLS. YOU HAVE INVOKED THE WRATH OF BROGGOK,” the Beholder bellowed. “SOON YOU WILL BOW, SUBJUGATED BEFORE THE SCIONS OF THE FEL HORDE.” The tentacled head with its many eyes flew down from its perch near the high-vaulted ceiling; the poisonous aura surrounding the demonic monstrosity instantly made it that much more difficult to breathe in the now empty room. The demon’s maw was lined with rows upon rows of sharp, needle-like teeth, all of them stained with a sickly green ichor that also dribbled from the corners of the Beholder’s blasphemous mouth. “THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDERS SEE ALL. NOTHING IS HIDDEN FROM OUR SIGHT—”
“‘See’ this, windbag,” Eli snarled, shutting up the Beholder with a well-timed blast of Light squarely in the Beholder’s gigantic central eye. Broggok screamed in pain, and then responded by spitting a blob of poisonous ichor at the Paladin. Eli managed to block most of it, but the acidic nature of the ichor made itself abundantly clear as it instantly started to eat through the floor, sloughing off of the sacred steel Eli was clad in. If it weren’t for Theluin’s timely use of a protective ward, Eli would have been reduced to a puddle of metal and blood within moments.
“DEATH’S CALL AWAITS YOU,” Broggok taunted the trio, the demon’s many-eyed gaze eerily affixed on the paladin. “MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH THIS PRECIOUS LIGHT YOU HOLD SO DEAR BEFORE ITS VOICE IS FINALLY SILENCED.”
“The Light never abandons its champions, demon!” Eli shouted back, stepping into a steady stance once again. “We will send you back into the Nether for your blasphemy!”
“BLASPHEMY?” Broggok laughed, clouds of foul green gas escaping the beast’s maw. “THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER SEE ALL, MORTAL. IN TIME, YOU WILL SEE WHAT WE HAVE SEEN.”
While Broggok remained distracted by the Paladin, Tuan had been busy fiddling with the controls of one of the mechanical meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. Just keep him talking, Eli, she thought as she frantically crossed a wire here and modified a circuit there. Just a bit longer …
“OUR EYES SEE ALL. WE ARE THE ORACLES OF OUR LORD, AND HIS SUCCESS IS ASSURED AS LONG AS WE SEE, AND WE SEE FOREVER.”
Theluin glanced up as one of the meathooks descended from the ceiling and discreetly lowered far enough to nestle beneath the blustering demon.
“SIGHT, FOR YOU, WILL SOON BE A LUXURY—ACK!!” The demon’s tirade was duly interrupted by a thick, blood-caked and barbed hook being yanked into its underside, and Broggok suddenly found himself hanging upside down in a rather undignified fashion from the end of the jangling, spiked chain.
“Hey, Eli! Thel! Look! I caught us a big one!” Tuan laughed heartily, holding her sides together.
“FOOLISH MORTALS!” Broggok yelled, squirming upside down and obviously in pain from the hook in its fleshy backside. “YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR IRREVERENCE! YOU WILL ONLY KNOW ANGUISH—AUGGGH!!”
Tuan flung one of her throwing knives into the helpless demon’s main eye. “I’m more interested in playing piñata than listening to our futures from you, buddy.”
“DEATH AWAITS ALL OF YOU, FOOLS! YOU ONLY DELAY WHAT IS INEVITABL—”
~||~
“I think you had a little too much fun with him, Eli,” Tuan said off-handedly as she flayed open the demon’s acidic corpse with a spare throwing dagger, instinctively inspecting the body for anything interesting.
Eli was busy nullifying the green ichor that was still clinging to his light-infused armour. “I guess I did,” he replied with a smirk. “Then again, he had it comin’ t’ him fer talkin’ so much. He shoulda seen that one comin’.”
Tuan stood up and kicked the corpse where she supposed the ribs would have been if a giant head had ribs. “Looks like he didn’t have enough eyes for a demon so full of himself.” She paused, and then lit up with a slightly too light-hearted grin. “I guess you could say that what could have happened if he did notice would have been in the eye of the behol—”
“—don’t start that up again,” Eli groaned.
“Deal with it, Eli,” Tuan teased back.
Theluin could only chuckle at the exchange.
Soon enough, the trio resumed their furtive advancement through the grim citadel, proceeding down empty corridors with little incident, save for the occasional easily dispatched patrol. The group quickly noticed that they were going down; descending towards the large chamber they had peered into shortly after they had first entered the fouled halls. Groups of warlocks stood in conversation in the antechamber just outside of the ritual area, presumably waiting for their shifts in maintaining the massive and mysterious seal that had been drawn onto the floor of the gargantuan chamber. Tuan would either discreetly slit the throats of stragglers too far away to be noticed or cut them with the tip of her poisoned dagger, watching them flinch and fall down comatose before they would even realize what had happened to them. Her companions followed close behind in the shadows, though it was a touch more difficult for them … but the path had been cleared enough for both Priest and Paladin to edge by the demoniac throng without notice or incident.
Safely (relatively speaking, of course) within the ritual chamber, the group observed from the eaves the six warlocks that were focusing their powers into the enormous pentagram etched into the wire-mesh floor. A low roar could be heard from below the seal, followed by angered threats in Demonic. Another intimidation by the same bellowing voice was shouted in Orcish, prompting sadistic laughter from the warlocks maintaining the seal. The next few lines, however, were uttered in perfectly understandable Common.
“VERMIN. LEECHES. TAKE MY BLOOD AND CHOKE ON IT. IT WILL BE THE END OF YOU … THAT ILLIDAN IS AN ARROGANT FOOL. SOON, I WILL BE FREE, AND I WILL CRUSH HIM. OUTLAND WILL ONCE AGAIN BE MY OWN. SO, REVEL IN THIS SHALLOW VICTORY, PIGS. SOON, I WILL HEAR YOUR SQUEALS FOR MERCY. HOW LONG? HOW LONG DO YOU PEA-BRAINED PRIMITIVES THINK YOUR PATHETIC SORCERY WILL HOLD ME HERE?! THE WRATH OF MAGTHERIDON WILL NOT BE CONTAINED FOREVER!!”
“Magtheridon …?” Tuan whispered. She noticed her Paladin companion tense up. “Eli?”
“Light alive … they’ve got a Pit Lord.” he whispered to himself, almost breathless.
“… Pit Lord?!” Tuan whispered harshly. It was all she could do not to make a sudden move and grab Eli by the shoulders. She took a breath and asked as calmly as she could manage: “What do you know, Eli? There’s got to be a reason why you’ve decided to seize up just now.”
The Paladin swallowed and began to explain. “Pit Lords are among the most powerful demons of the Legion, Miss Tuan. One by itself is equivalent to an army of thousands. To think they’ve managed to trap a Pit Lord of all things down here …”
The she-rogue sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I get it’s a big deal, Eli, but something tells me that the name Magtheridon is an even bigger deal.”
Eli glanced at Tuan with an expression that seemed to say what he always said. Do you really want to know?
Tuan simply glanced back with a calm, yet prying, expression. “Don’t say it, Eli. You already know my answer.”
“I figgered as much,” Eli sighed, composing himself enough to begin explaining. “From what I’ve read up in Honor Hold, Magtheridon was one of the strongest Pit Lords after Mannoroth the Destructor, the same demon whose blood the first Dark Horde drank from an’ turned them into blood-thirsty monsters. Magtheridon ruled Outland an’ the Fel Orcs around here fer a long time, before Illidan arrived an’ took over. As far as history knows, Magtheridon was killed when Illidan challenged him.”
“… but, apparently, Illidan kept him alive instead,” Tuan finished.
“That’s what it looks like,” the Paladin confirmed with a nod.
The group peered through the wire-mesh, watching green-skinned orcs cut open the trapped silhouette of the Pit Lord and walk away with crude buckets sloshing of fel-green ichor … the very same ichor that the group had seen get pumped into the veins of the ‘conscripts’ in the factory facility earlier. The realization was almost enough to make them all sick to their stomachs.
“Illidan is using Magtheridon to manufacture soldiers,” Tuan hissed, swallowing the bile in her throat. “Fel … Danath is going to be thrilled when he hears about this.”
“Is that sarcasm?” Eli asked, failing to mask a smirk in his voice.
“You should not be asking that question,” Theluin interjected in a timely manner. Eli nodded, taking the hint.
Tuan drew out one of her blades and thumbed the edge of the hilt’s hand guard thoughtfully. Her companions noticed the she-rogue’s rare moment of contemplation, and she noticed their concern in turn.
“I believe we need to throw a major spanner into the works of this war machine, guys,” Tuan finally spoke up.
The Priest and the Paladin exchanged glances of trepidation before Eli dared to ask, “… just how, Miss Tuan?”
Tuan didn’t even give the Paladin a cursory glance. “Two guesses, Eli.”
“Aw, fel, no.”
~||~
“Lord Keli’dan! Intruders—urk!”
“Who dares interrupt—no! No!! What have you done?!” the Orcish warlock gasped as he saw the delicate ritual seal get marred with the blood of his fellow practitioners. “You’ll set him loose!! He’ll kill us all!! You’ll ruin EVERYTHING!!”
“That’s the idea, Keli,” Tuan said, almost mockingly. “… I can call you Keli, right?”
“Cheeky little witch …” Keli’dan snarled, his hands grasping at the strands of dark magic that had been severed by the trio’s intrusion. “You will pay for your insolence. Come closer, if you wish to cut at me. Come closer … AND BURN!”
The insidious strands lit up into unearthly flame, filling the room with incinerating heat. A great tornado of fire rose to the full height of the massive chamber, consuming everything in its path. Had it not been for Eli and Theluin reacting quickly and raising up protective barriers of Light, all three heroes would have been burned to ash and oblivion. Once the pillar of fire abated, Keli’dan immediately began pelting the trio with a nigh never-ending stream of Shadowbolts.
“Die!” the Orcish warlock screamed, sending barrage upon barrage of dark energy against the group’s mystical defences with all his ill-begotten might. “All of you, DIE! Your corpses will make fine food for our pups!!”
Eli winced visibly with each volley impacting his side of the wards, and every time Tuan tried to make a move outside the safe zone her companions had created, she would almost get nailed by a re-directed spray of Shadowbolts. The she-rogue spat out an invective and glanced at her companions in concern. The resistance this lone orc was putting up was surprisingly monumental, as even Theluin was showing signs of strain. Neither the Priest nor the Paladin would last very much longer at this rate.
“Come closer, vermin! Come and make your peace!” Dark tendrils of fel magic wrapped themselves around the room, creating a terrible vacuum that began to drag the trio toward the center of the chamber where Keli’dan waited with a gloating grin. Eli desperately dug his armour-shod heels into the wire-mesh floor in response, a vain attempt to slow down their unwilling approach. His companions had a similar idea, taking up stable stances with little effect against the otherworldly force drawing them closer to the enraged warlock. Keli’dan chuckled cruelly, some of the dark tendrils returning to his hands, dancing like black flames in his palms, his eyes affixed upon his prey. Tuan tried to take a step back in another effort to gain some distance, but that step was lost as the vacuum only pulled on her all the more. She had to think of something, and fast.
That’s when it dawned upon her, and her look of desperation transformed into a dark smirk. “Oh, yeah. I’m coming … and you’re going to regret it.” She stepped forward, releasing her tension, and dashed forward, using the vacuum’s momentum to propel her towards a supremely surprised Keli’dan. Before the Orcish warlock realized what was going on, his tusked face had been smashed in by Tuan’s elbow.
In the same split second Tuan’s arm connected with the orc’s face, the vacuum ceased, allowing Theluin and Eli a stable footing at last. The Paladin likewise let the lingering momentum of the warlock’s broken spell carry him forward as he broke into a run to join Tuan in the fray, ramming into the Orcish warlock’s gut with his shield and narrowly interrupting the start of another salvo of Shadowbolts, the wind thoroughly knocked out of the orc’s lungs. Theluin, from a safe distance, quickly applied a Silence while Tuan and Eli kept Keli’dan dazed, rendering the warlock helpless once he broke free.
Now rightly terrified, the silenced warlock fell to his knees and voicelessly begged for the three interlopers to spare his life.
“I don’t think you have anything to offer us, Keli,” Tuan growled, her eyes flashing from a mixture of adrenaline and the ghastly experiences of the past few hours. “And even if we did have the heart to spare your life, you’re too much trouble to drag back to the Hold. I’m not keen on getting cooped up for another half a week … so make your peace, you sadistic, demon-loving bastard.”
Keli’dan’s eyes widened in fear and defeat as the she-rogue brandished her blades, the Priest and Paladin behind her grimly turning their backs to the orc’s wordless pleas.
---
Originally written by TheKittyLizard
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