The Journey of a Thousand Miles…
It paid to be careful, walking across the plain. There were many pitfalls – crevasses would come up out of nowhere; giant monsters flew by overhead and sometimes could be seen off in the distance. I assumed they were the gehreleth's of legend, but I didn't want to get close enough to find out for sure. At some point, I'm sure we'll meet one. That will be soon enough for me.
We'd been slinking our way across the plain for hours. I was hot, hungry and tired. I called out for a rest. The nearest convenient spot was a rock outcropping topped with a few of what passed for trees out here. We found a way to be relatively unseen and sat down, sharing out rations of what was left of the travel bread we had.
"Those mountains don't look any closer," Bishop said, crunching down on the hard bread.
"I know. And I don't think we'll be as lucky as we were the last time and find a hill with a cave. Where are we going to spend the night out here, exposed on this plain?"
He shrugged. Magrith had loped off ahead; doing whatever it is that animal companions do for their rangers. I didn't know. Things weren't looking promising, that was for sure. The mountains were still a day or two away; there was no shelter in sight and we were beginning to grow tired enough to stop and sleep for a while.
We ate our rations silently, each of us thinking of the situation. The air grew still and heavy: all sound ceased. I crouched down low, as did Bishop. Something was coming. Something unpleasant. Magrith was nowhere to be seen, and perhaps that was for the best.
Then we heard it: a squelching sound. I remembered the tarry creature I'd seen before arriving at the town, a few days earlier. It had sounded just like that. I expanded my senses and smelled it: the faint odor of sulfur clung to it, along with the petrochemical reek of the tar it produced. It was close. I knew it would find us. Bishop's smell might be disguisable, but mine would not. That thing would smell the lower planar taint on me as surely as I was a tiefling. Our only chance would be to teleport away before it found us.
I began the incantation as quietly as I could; pulling Bishop close to me so he could travel with me. The runes were traced, the words were said, but nothing happened. The magic had just fizzled away into the air. Panic filled me. The gehreleth was closer now – every moment we stayed here was another closer to our doom.
My spell had failed. Our only option was to fight. I looked at Bishop and saw understanding dawning in his eyes. He pulled his long sword and knife free, preparing himself for a fight. I began casting the protective spells that had saved me time and time again against stronger foes.
Bishop slowly rose to his feet, squatting just enough so his head was above the rocks high enough to see. I touched his back, conferring invisibility on him. I didn't know if it would help, but it couldn't hurt. He looked at me and silently mouthed logistics to me. The gehreleth was 25 meters away, coming towards us. It had spotted us, or smelled us, and was coming directly for us. It had no weapons, but that didn't really mean anything. We knew nothing about it.
It was saying something, but I couldn't make out the words.
As soon as it finished what it was saying, it looked directly at us. Obviously my invisibility spells weren't working, or it had just made us visible. Either way, the element of surprise was lost.
I pulled my rapier out of its scabbard. I saw Bishop exchanging his swords for his bow. He nocked an arrow, pulled back on the bowstring and let the arrow fly. Another arrow followed that, and then another. The gehreleth was shrieking.
I stood beside him. The monster was now only 15 meters away. I drew the magical energy into myself and shaped it into a fireball, hurling it out at the gehreleth. It barely damaged it. Damn that infernal resistance!
The demon was about 7 feet tall and slender. It had two arms and two legs attached to a torso and an egg shaped head, like every other humanoid I'd ever seen. Its arms were long and sinewy, and the body exuded that tarry substance. Its skin was gray where it wasn't covered in tar. There was a pair of wings sticking out of its back, and they were long and leathery like a bat's wings. Its most prominent feature was a mouth full of sharp looking teeth.
It marched toward us, rage burning in its eyes. I readied another spell, bringing down a hail of ice this time. Same as the fireball – not much effect. Bishop kept shooting arrows at it, until its proximity made that a poor idea.
With a cry, the ranger leapt over the rock and ran at the demodand, his long sword out in front of him. He raised his arm to strike at it, bringing down the sword with all of his strength. The sword stuck in the creature; the tar it exuded holding the weapon fast. I stared in shock. That little revelation just made this fight a whole lot harder.
I began slinging my entire arsenal of spells at it: more fireballs, instant death spells, despair, fear, I even tried summoning spells. They all bounced off its' tarry body. Each one did a little damage, but it wasn't enough. Meanwhile, Bishop had run back to me, grabbing his bow. He now circled the gehreleth, staying out of reach and shooting it full of arrows.
The demon reached out, scratching Bishop with its claws. They ripped his armor where they struck, leaving behind bloody welts. Still Bishop fired his arrows into the body of the gehreleth, each one hitting its mark but not seeming to affect the creature at all.
The fight wasn't going well. My spells were almost exhausted and Bishop was running low on arrows. He had taken some damage from the thing's claws and was bleeding from several different places. In a panic, I dug through my pack, looking for anything that might damage that demon out there.
My hands clasped around a staff. I pulled it from the bag and stared at it in wonderment. It was a negative energy staff. I climbed up on the rocks, pointed the staff at the demodand and began the activation chant. Just as I let the first charge go, the creature hit Bishop, wrapping him up in the tarry substance it oozed. Part of the charge hit Bishop, and part of it slammed into the gehreleth.
Bishop wasn't moving, and the gehreleth was coming towards me, the ranger stuck to its side like some weird appendage. I let another charge blast into the monster, and another. It stumbled, falling to the ground. I jumped down in front of it, slashing at it with my rapier. Every time I connected with it, the rapier stuck. Through sheer force of will I pulled it out. I leveled two more blasts from the staff into the creature, and with a burble it died.
Within a minute after its death, the tarry substance dissipated into nothingness. I looked down at my armor – the tar that had been stuck there ate holes in the leather. There were a few acid burns on my exposed forearms as well. But I was more worried about Bishop.
His wounds looked grave, mostly from the acid damage of the tar. I pulled a healing potion out of my pack and poured it over him. Normally, pouring a potion over a wound caused it to begin closing up and healing. This time, however, all it did was wash the tar away. No healing – no wound closure, nothing. It wasn't working. I uncorked another potion, taking a sip for myself. There was a minor effect, but not what it should have been.
In frustration I threw the bottle across the plain. It skittered away as it hit the sandy soil, sliding into a rock and bursting open. All those damn potions were worthless. Might as well throw them out onto the plain for all the good they were doing us. I did have healing kits in my pack and they would have to do. Hopefully Bishop's wounds weren't too serious.
I dragged him back to the spot in the rocks, trying not to bang his head on anything. I propped his head on my cloak and began dressing his wounds. They didn't look bad, but he was still unconscious and I didn't know if the tar had any poisonous effects.
Magrith came loping back 30 minutes after the gehreleth died. She looked forlornly at Bishop and licked his face. He groaned and reached up to wipe off his cheek. I sat back and let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My knees were up and my forearms rested on them with my head hanging down. He was going to be ok.
"Is it dead?" he croaked.
"Yeah, it is," I replied, moving over to check his wounds again.
He sat up, rubbing his head. Then he meticulously checked his body for injuries.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
"Like I got hit by a large boar, but I think I'll be fine. Do we have any healing potions to speed up my recovery?"
I sighed. "They don't work very well."
"Damn." That was all he said. Then he lurched to his feet and began to climb up the rock.
"Whoa, where are you going?" I asked, grabbing the back of his jerkin and pulling him back down. "I'll get your gear. You rest." He glared at me as I scrambled over the rock out onto the scene of our battle. I grabbed his bow and all the arrows I could find, as well as his longsword.
Once all of our gear was accounted for and the gehreleth had been searched, I climbed back into the lee of the rock. Wordlessly I handed him his weapons and the intact arrows I found. "What do we do now?" I asked.
"We can't stay here. It's too exposed. We'll have to find someplace safer to spend the night."
"How are we going to do that? There's nothing obvious out there for kilometers! And now you're in no shape to go scouting."
"I'll send Magrith out. She might be able to find something. Meanwhile, we start walking." He paused and looked me in the eye. "Think for a minute, Kelina. We've only seen two of those things the whole time we've been out here. And they could have been the same one. Whatever that was, I don't think there are too many of them around. We're probably safe enough for now."
I realized he was right. We gathered our gear and began walking. Magrith went out ahead of us and within minutes she was gone from sight.