Well, last chapter set the mood, and this one will not dissapoint in
action. In response to a reveiw; The Necromancer's seemingly amazing feat
of 'corpse explosion' was accomplished using not one, but several different
corpses as targets. It still seems a bit unrealistic by the game's
standards; but hey; allow me some creativity here! Anyway, thanks for the
suggestion and I'll try to keep the powers within reason. Also, I'll have
to look up some of the Paladin's powers, because I've only played using the
Necromancer so far.
-J. Diabolico-
Durag awoke early, and sat up in his bed; still wearing his loose garb from the previous evening. He had perhaps had too much to drink, and it had taken it's toll. However, this did not stop him from making his way to the dresser to quickly re-dress and comb back his growing hair. Still as white as a ghost. . .he thought, and scratched at his scraggly beard and moustache. He did'nt want to risk shaving with his kris; he somehow hated being cut on the face more than anywhere else. . .
The two holy men and Marie were both awaiting him in the bar, sitting by the window and waiting for sunrise. It was still an hour of or so.
"Good Morning, company." He grumbled in his dizziness; way too much ale. . .
"Slept well, my pale headed comrade?" asked Damathodor kindly, a hand reaching up to wipe the sleep from his groggy face. He was still tired as well.
"Good morning, Mr. Lithin'thuar, I see the ale left you as well as my brother." Marie smiled up at him. He smirked.
"Please, my lady; call me Durag; for my culture permits close freinds to do so." He said cordially. It had been a long time since he had been so polite to anyone, much less a beautiful damsel. His reward was a broad grin and the wary, angry glance of Bometh.
"So we are close freinds, you and I?" she flirted.
"So we are, I say, if you would but allow me the pleasure. . .?"
"Indeed I would!" she exclaimed happily, jumping of to fetch some breakfast meal or other.
"She is a nice woman." He affirmed, sitting opposite of the knight. It was then did he happen to see the shadowy figure next to the knight. "Who is this strange shade?" he asked, frowning in the gloom.
"This," replied Damathodor, "Is the knight Galbad'jihadri of the royal gaurd of York. He is our knowledgable traveller."
"I've never yet laid eyes upon a true Necromancer before in my life," spoke the awed knight, "But my father has told me tales; dreadful, horrible tales of the cult of Rathma. . ."
"I assure you, I will do you no harm, young knight of York. I am here to but help further your cause."
"And what cause is that, preist of Rathma? The retaking of York, no doubt!" The man scoffed. "It is a hopeless quest, to go into battle against her. The Sorceress. It would be wiser to seek refuge in the east."
"We will do no such thing. But we need your help to undertake such a precarious task; please tell us all you know of this demon witch in the city." Requested the Paladin.
"Yes; how may we defeat her?" seconded Bometh eagerly. He received a withering, hateful look from the knight of York.
"You cannot defeat her, my young, stupid freind. She will destroy you as she destroys everything. Her powers are grave, and she shows no mercy. Fire, Ice, death surrounds her." He shuddered. "and hate. When you step near her, you feel cold and hateful, like you are nothing; a writhing, meaningless worm to her power. Many of my comrades died in the fight against her; her powerful spells immolating and burning whole columns into ashes, think of it!" he cried now, staring terrified into the faces of the other men. "Dreadful spells of ice enveloped but more, and hundreds fell in gasping freeze, the cold snuffing out the heat of life in their poor souls. And beasts! What horrible, ghastly creatures she commanded! Tearing and ripping our troops like so many helpless dolls."
"Try to stay calm," ventured the Paladin, reaching to comfort the fellow knight.
"No!" screamed the other, "I will NOT! I will not calm down untill you see! You will fall! You CANNOT defeat her! HUNDREDS of us died to learn this dreadful lesson! Must you good men waste your lives? To ask how to defeat her. To ask ME, the creation of her evil force, and malignant will, to ask ME of all the men on earth how to overpower this fell monster! She is horrible, and inevitable. Let yourselves not fall beneath her gaze, for I promise you; she will KILL you all!"
The room was quiet except for the occasional sob from the defeated knight. He was absolutely terrified of this thing, so foul as he had made it to be. After a while the Paladin stood, and te preist and the Sorcerer followed suit.
"Brave knight, we will combat this evil; for we have no fear of it." He said to the pitious man. "Let the spells come, for we shall have our own, before the end." And with that he left the poor man, sitting with his tears, and headed towards the door. Bometh followed and Durag made to go after them. He was stopped by Marie on the way out. The sobbing man still crying his prophecies of doom and helplessness; of fleeing to the east.
"Durag, please do not let yourself be fooled by my brother's word-play; he is still in training, and has not yet mastered his skills with the blade; he is strong, but young. Watch over him, for he will not let me come." She begged, her eyes pleading, "And also watch for yourself; for although your powers are more impressive than I have ever seen or heard of, I fear for your safety as I would for my own. Return to me."
He stared long into her eyes, so deep and brown they were, and they caught him offgaurd, for he had never respected nor admired a woman so; his upbringing had been favoring of the male sex, and women were not allowed to learn the full art of the undead were he had come from. This woman was no weakling, however, and she possesed within her more wisdom than she made obvious in her appearance.
"I will return, my lady." He managed softly, his expression not changing from one of resolute manliness. "I will come back. . .to you." He added.
She kissed him. Not long, but quickly and hastily. She blushed afterwards, but retained her gracefulness.
"Go, brave Durag of the Rathma; my brother and the preist await you." She told him, looking away quickly. He still looked upon her, but was drawn away by the calls of the knight outside. He stepped away. "Wait!" came the woman's voice behind him, and he whirled again, anxious. She grabbed his hand, and, once again pressed her lips to his, longer and more gently this time, and when she pulled away, the amulet of stregnth reated in his palm. "You will need this, no doubt."
He thanked her and then left, her hand rolling off of his as he pulled regrettably away from this brave, beautiful, wise woman, and walked out into the strange, red dawn of the cold town. The quest now stood before them. His face was solid; ready, and he started off without looking back, holding his course next to the brave, strong Paladin, and the heavy, nervous preist. They walked on into danger.
The knight of York sat still upon the chair at the Inn, peering up loathingly at the maiden standing in the doorway. "They are going to die, you know." He whispered. The girl turned slowly upon him and then, tossing up her pretty chin, walked pridefully away from the lonely and destroyed man. He let his head fall back into hs arms, and was silent.
The demon hoards had been attacking their flanks all the day long, jetting in for quick, vicious jabs, but nothing long term or heavy came, and no clear strategy was evident.
The preist, Bometh had fought quite well, thought the Sorcerer to himself; he had not expected the man to do anything but faint upon sight of the first monsters, which had appeared quickly upon thier departure from the main road into the forest once again. Bometh hit with precision and accuracy using a cracked old bow and a plentiful supply of arrows.
"Bometh here," said the Paladin at one point, slicing easily through the disorganized and uncoordinated demons, "Once won an archer's award at the old Monastary, do you remember, Bometh?"
The Preist nodded, but concntrated hard and let loose a shaft which lodged itself with a heavy thunk into the skull of a far-off creature. The Necromancer was impressed, as he fired away with his seemingly unending supply of boneish spears, tearing and rending the green and red flesh as they shot, gleaming and white, through the disarrayed masses. Indeed, this holy friar may yet prove himself worthy. . .
With their emergence from the dark forest, the team confronted quickly a mass of undead. The sky had suddenly taken a dark hue, and the hordes became notably thicker, and more organized, leaders screaming orders in their horrible, brute language. The Necromancer used his basic knowledge of this to try to help ease the assaults.
"The creatures plan to come from the left, hard and suddenly, hold too, Bometh, fire your shafts at that tall creature, over there!" Bometh, although doubting the validity of the Sorcerer's arguments, promptly pierced the tall monster's armor and down fell the sole leader of the left flank. The attack fell apart when no new orders came.
"This is too easy!" exclaimed the Paladin; he slashed out hard to his right, then spun a dashed another creeping minion on his left. With each blow struck he seemed to murmer a silent phrase, but the Necromancer could hear it not. He was too busy pointing out targets for the eager Bometh. The battle went well, the Sorcerer feeling somehow warm and clear as he fought harder and harder, he had never endured the stress of battle so well nor long. It was then that he sensed the power at work over him. The Paladin was whispering prayers and protectons over the group as they fought, and the heavens of his religion shone down upon them. Even the deathly Necromancer felt light in heart and drove on with tenacity and bravery, aligning himself temporarily with this holy aura.
Soon, however, the hordes thickened ever more and new, hideous creatures expelled forth from steaming holes in the terrain; tall, dark eyed beasts roared out and smashed viciously through the crowd in their way to the group of men. The Behemouths grunted hoarsly as yet more of their kind and others poured suddenly from the caves dotting the earth. The numbers of the undead tripled and surrounded the group, and the Necromancer felt his stregnth ebbing. . .
"A GIGHAD! ELBERE A GIGHAD!" he cried in desperation, the heavenly stregnth leaving him as the Paladin took a mighty blow on his helmet. Bometh staggered back as if he too had been struck. But a vast white wall had sealed the entrance to one of the large caves; the gleaming bone cutting off the passage of monsters from beneath. Another whole was stopped, then two more, and one remained. This the Necromancer had to wait upon; for he was exhausted from the magical exhertions, and he retrned wearily to his swordplay, spinning and ducking wildly and seemingly at randomn, but demons all about him had fallen. He felt not the stregnth to summon anything of masterful skill, and thus settled to rest himself through battle. He knew without the amulet he would have fallen long ago. . .
"Durag!" grunted the Knight to his back, "A spell! A spell of evil!" and the Sorcerer turned, just in time to witness the rise of a slain beast, ghastly and cold it stood and life filled it's eyes again. The began to concentrate, hard, and the foul corpse warrior dropped yet again, but immeadiatly began to raise itself, of some other powerful will.
"JANGA!" he bellowed at last, and splintered the creature's skull with a spear of enchanted bone. It did not raise itself again. But other began to revive themselves. Many others. Exhausted, the Ncromancer quickly took a long and thirsty drink from a mysterious black bottle, and felt the aura flow back into him. The demons came, and he but smiled. . .
"O those both on heaven in my prayers, yet be them not thy Holy guide, deliver us from this foul evil, and grant us stregnth to do your bidding. . ." the Paladin was praying rapidly, while still swinging angrily over the oncoming creatures. He felt some power creep through his veins, but it was ephemeral, fleeting, this would not last long. . .
Suddenly the horrible cry came up; and the hordes trembled, terrified in their extremity; and began falling back from themselves; for the mighty host of revived creatures, brought forth by the dark hand of their own sorceress leader, had begun to wildly attack the demons themselves. Skeletal warriors exploded forth from the corpes they slew, and soon the army was in terrible disarray; the Paladin screaming holy, scalding phrases at them as he; glowing with heavenly light, drove through them as a fish would through water, his form surrounded in light, a holy beam on one side of the feild, and the other fellow, foul and dark, had somehow defeated the magic of their own master; had stolen away the dead from their service, and was crying out in a horrible language and coaxing forth curses of dreadful effect upon them. The demon hordes fled. The walls of bone covering the caves ceased to break from blows beneath, and the unassuming Bometh took such a stance and picked off at least twelve more demons as the group fled, back into the wood, in the oppossite direction the men were heading. There was soon a clear path to the city.
-J. Diabolico-
Durag awoke early, and sat up in his bed; still wearing his loose garb from the previous evening. He had perhaps had too much to drink, and it had taken it's toll. However, this did not stop him from making his way to the dresser to quickly re-dress and comb back his growing hair. Still as white as a ghost. . .he thought, and scratched at his scraggly beard and moustache. He did'nt want to risk shaving with his kris; he somehow hated being cut on the face more than anywhere else. . .
The two holy men and Marie were both awaiting him in the bar, sitting by the window and waiting for sunrise. It was still an hour of or so.
"Good Morning, company." He grumbled in his dizziness; way too much ale. . .
"Slept well, my pale headed comrade?" asked Damathodor kindly, a hand reaching up to wipe the sleep from his groggy face. He was still tired as well.
"Good morning, Mr. Lithin'thuar, I see the ale left you as well as my brother." Marie smiled up at him. He smirked.
"Please, my lady; call me Durag; for my culture permits close freinds to do so." He said cordially. It had been a long time since he had been so polite to anyone, much less a beautiful damsel. His reward was a broad grin and the wary, angry glance of Bometh.
"So we are close freinds, you and I?" she flirted.
"So we are, I say, if you would but allow me the pleasure. . .?"
"Indeed I would!" she exclaimed happily, jumping of to fetch some breakfast meal or other.
"She is a nice woman." He affirmed, sitting opposite of the knight. It was then did he happen to see the shadowy figure next to the knight. "Who is this strange shade?" he asked, frowning in the gloom.
"This," replied Damathodor, "Is the knight Galbad'jihadri of the royal gaurd of York. He is our knowledgable traveller."
"I've never yet laid eyes upon a true Necromancer before in my life," spoke the awed knight, "But my father has told me tales; dreadful, horrible tales of the cult of Rathma. . ."
"I assure you, I will do you no harm, young knight of York. I am here to but help further your cause."
"And what cause is that, preist of Rathma? The retaking of York, no doubt!" The man scoffed. "It is a hopeless quest, to go into battle against her. The Sorceress. It would be wiser to seek refuge in the east."
"We will do no such thing. But we need your help to undertake such a precarious task; please tell us all you know of this demon witch in the city." Requested the Paladin.
"Yes; how may we defeat her?" seconded Bometh eagerly. He received a withering, hateful look from the knight of York.
"You cannot defeat her, my young, stupid freind. She will destroy you as she destroys everything. Her powers are grave, and she shows no mercy. Fire, Ice, death surrounds her." He shuddered. "and hate. When you step near her, you feel cold and hateful, like you are nothing; a writhing, meaningless worm to her power. Many of my comrades died in the fight against her; her powerful spells immolating and burning whole columns into ashes, think of it!" he cried now, staring terrified into the faces of the other men. "Dreadful spells of ice enveloped but more, and hundreds fell in gasping freeze, the cold snuffing out the heat of life in their poor souls. And beasts! What horrible, ghastly creatures she commanded! Tearing and ripping our troops like so many helpless dolls."
"Try to stay calm," ventured the Paladin, reaching to comfort the fellow knight.
"No!" screamed the other, "I will NOT! I will not calm down untill you see! You will fall! You CANNOT defeat her! HUNDREDS of us died to learn this dreadful lesson! Must you good men waste your lives? To ask how to defeat her. To ask ME, the creation of her evil force, and malignant will, to ask ME of all the men on earth how to overpower this fell monster! She is horrible, and inevitable. Let yourselves not fall beneath her gaze, for I promise you; she will KILL you all!"
The room was quiet except for the occasional sob from the defeated knight. He was absolutely terrified of this thing, so foul as he had made it to be. After a while the Paladin stood, and te preist and the Sorcerer followed suit.
"Brave knight, we will combat this evil; for we have no fear of it." He said to the pitious man. "Let the spells come, for we shall have our own, before the end." And with that he left the poor man, sitting with his tears, and headed towards the door. Bometh followed and Durag made to go after them. He was stopped by Marie on the way out. The sobbing man still crying his prophecies of doom and helplessness; of fleeing to the east.
"Durag, please do not let yourself be fooled by my brother's word-play; he is still in training, and has not yet mastered his skills with the blade; he is strong, but young. Watch over him, for he will not let me come." She begged, her eyes pleading, "And also watch for yourself; for although your powers are more impressive than I have ever seen or heard of, I fear for your safety as I would for my own. Return to me."
He stared long into her eyes, so deep and brown they were, and they caught him offgaurd, for he had never respected nor admired a woman so; his upbringing had been favoring of the male sex, and women were not allowed to learn the full art of the undead were he had come from. This woman was no weakling, however, and she possesed within her more wisdom than she made obvious in her appearance.
"I will return, my lady." He managed softly, his expression not changing from one of resolute manliness. "I will come back. . .to you." He added.
She kissed him. Not long, but quickly and hastily. She blushed afterwards, but retained her gracefulness.
"Go, brave Durag of the Rathma; my brother and the preist await you." She told him, looking away quickly. He still looked upon her, but was drawn away by the calls of the knight outside. He stepped away. "Wait!" came the woman's voice behind him, and he whirled again, anxious. She grabbed his hand, and, once again pressed her lips to his, longer and more gently this time, and when she pulled away, the amulet of stregnth reated in his palm. "You will need this, no doubt."
He thanked her and then left, her hand rolling off of his as he pulled regrettably away from this brave, beautiful, wise woman, and walked out into the strange, red dawn of the cold town. The quest now stood before them. His face was solid; ready, and he started off without looking back, holding his course next to the brave, strong Paladin, and the heavy, nervous preist. They walked on into danger.
The knight of York sat still upon the chair at the Inn, peering up loathingly at the maiden standing in the doorway. "They are going to die, you know." He whispered. The girl turned slowly upon him and then, tossing up her pretty chin, walked pridefully away from the lonely and destroyed man. He let his head fall back into hs arms, and was silent.
The demon hoards had been attacking their flanks all the day long, jetting in for quick, vicious jabs, but nothing long term or heavy came, and no clear strategy was evident.
The preist, Bometh had fought quite well, thought the Sorcerer to himself; he had not expected the man to do anything but faint upon sight of the first monsters, which had appeared quickly upon thier departure from the main road into the forest once again. Bometh hit with precision and accuracy using a cracked old bow and a plentiful supply of arrows.
"Bometh here," said the Paladin at one point, slicing easily through the disorganized and uncoordinated demons, "Once won an archer's award at the old Monastary, do you remember, Bometh?"
The Preist nodded, but concntrated hard and let loose a shaft which lodged itself with a heavy thunk into the skull of a far-off creature. The Necromancer was impressed, as he fired away with his seemingly unending supply of boneish spears, tearing and rending the green and red flesh as they shot, gleaming and white, through the disarrayed masses. Indeed, this holy friar may yet prove himself worthy. . .
With their emergence from the dark forest, the team confronted quickly a mass of undead. The sky had suddenly taken a dark hue, and the hordes became notably thicker, and more organized, leaders screaming orders in their horrible, brute language. The Necromancer used his basic knowledge of this to try to help ease the assaults.
"The creatures plan to come from the left, hard and suddenly, hold too, Bometh, fire your shafts at that tall creature, over there!" Bometh, although doubting the validity of the Sorcerer's arguments, promptly pierced the tall monster's armor and down fell the sole leader of the left flank. The attack fell apart when no new orders came.
"This is too easy!" exclaimed the Paladin; he slashed out hard to his right, then spun a dashed another creeping minion on his left. With each blow struck he seemed to murmer a silent phrase, but the Necromancer could hear it not. He was too busy pointing out targets for the eager Bometh. The battle went well, the Sorcerer feeling somehow warm and clear as he fought harder and harder, he had never endured the stress of battle so well nor long. It was then that he sensed the power at work over him. The Paladin was whispering prayers and protectons over the group as they fought, and the heavens of his religion shone down upon them. Even the deathly Necromancer felt light in heart and drove on with tenacity and bravery, aligning himself temporarily with this holy aura.
Soon, however, the hordes thickened ever more and new, hideous creatures expelled forth from steaming holes in the terrain; tall, dark eyed beasts roared out and smashed viciously through the crowd in their way to the group of men. The Behemouths grunted hoarsly as yet more of their kind and others poured suddenly from the caves dotting the earth. The numbers of the undead tripled and surrounded the group, and the Necromancer felt his stregnth ebbing. . .
"A GIGHAD! ELBERE A GIGHAD!" he cried in desperation, the heavenly stregnth leaving him as the Paladin took a mighty blow on his helmet. Bometh staggered back as if he too had been struck. But a vast white wall had sealed the entrance to one of the large caves; the gleaming bone cutting off the passage of monsters from beneath. Another whole was stopped, then two more, and one remained. This the Necromancer had to wait upon; for he was exhausted from the magical exhertions, and he retrned wearily to his swordplay, spinning and ducking wildly and seemingly at randomn, but demons all about him had fallen. He felt not the stregnth to summon anything of masterful skill, and thus settled to rest himself through battle. He knew without the amulet he would have fallen long ago. . .
"Durag!" grunted the Knight to his back, "A spell! A spell of evil!" and the Sorcerer turned, just in time to witness the rise of a slain beast, ghastly and cold it stood and life filled it's eyes again. The began to concentrate, hard, and the foul corpse warrior dropped yet again, but immeadiatly began to raise itself, of some other powerful will.
"JANGA!" he bellowed at last, and splintered the creature's skull with a spear of enchanted bone. It did not raise itself again. But other began to revive themselves. Many others. Exhausted, the Ncromancer quickly took a long and thirsty drink from a mysterious black bottle, and felt the aura flow back into him. The demons came, and he but smiled. . .
"O those both on heaven in my prayers, yet be them not thy Holy guide, deliver us from this foul evil, and grant us stregnth to do your bidding. . ." the Paladin was praying rapidly, while still swinging angrily over the oncoming creatures. He felt some power creep through his veins, but it was ephemeral, fleeting, this would not last long. . .
Suddenly the horrible cry came up; and the hordes trembled, terrified in their extremity; and began falling back from themselves; for the mighty host of revived creatures, brought forth by the dark hand of their own sorceress leader, had begun to wildly attack the demons themselves. Skeletal warriors exploded forth from the corpes they slew, and soon the army was in terrible disarray; the Paladin screaming holy, scalding phrases at them as he; glowing with heavenly light, drove through them as a fish would through water, his form surrounded in light, a holy beam on one side of the feild, and the other fellow, foul and dark, had somehow defeated the magic of their own master; had stolen away the dead from their service, and was crying out in a horrible language and coaxing forth curses of dreadful effect upon them. The demon hordes fled. The walls of bone covering the caves ceased to break from blows beneath, and the unassuming Bometh took such a stance and picked off at least twelve more demons as the group fled, back into the wood, in the oppossite direction the men were heading. There was soon a clear path to the city.