I do not own Dungeons and Dragons or any of the characters.
Escape
"There is evil here," Xenk said.
"Thayans," Jasper growled, drawing his family's rapier, watching the six Thayan assassins standing atop the stairs back the way they'd come. "Wish you'd attuned to that sword, now?"
As the assassins advanced, one of them, likely the leader, addressed Xenk in Thayan. Xenk responded in kind, calling him Dralas, Jasper was pretty sure, but Jasper didn't speak Thayan.
"Leave them to me," Xenk said, striding forward and passing the Holy Avenger to Jasper as he passed.
Jasper sighed, narrowing his eyes and keeping himself ready to fight. The fight began with an almost dismissive wave of Dralas's hand, but Xenk finished off the first five almost as quickly. The first was dead in seconds, as was the second. He deflected the third and sent the blade and crossguard of his sword flashing across the distance between himself and the fourth, impaling them and leaving him with a thin dagger blade attached to the hilt of his sword. He quickly killed the third with the dagger, then shoved it back into his sword's hilt before slashing the fifth with the sword before finally finishing the fourth. The entire engagement took about three or four seconds. Dralas drew his sword, and it ignited with poison-green flames. Xenk chanted a short incantation and glowing white-gold runes spread down his sword's blade before he and Dralas clashed. Their battle was fierce, vicious, and fast. For a moment, Xenk had the upper hand. Then Dralas drew a dagger and began to force Xenk back, Xenk fighting his way up the stairs the assassins had come from. Dralas slashed Xenk's bicep, then Xenk was forced to trap the burning blade under his arm. Dralas tried to knock Xenk's sword from his hand, only for the blade and guard to detach, leaving Xenk with the dagger once again. Xenk quickly stripped Dralas of his sword, and he and Dralas began to slash and stab at each other, blocking and deflecting each other's arms. Except, Xenk was faster. He slashed Dralas's arm, his shoulder, stabbed his gut, then caught his arm and knocked his dagger from his hand. He stabbed across his body up at Dralas's head, but Dralas caught his arm with his own free one. Finally, Xenk spun, twisting Dralas's arm and forcing him to turn with Xenk, the two ending up back-to-back with Xenk holding his dagger to Dralas's neck. Then, he cut his throat as he lowered his arms, Dralas collapsing.
"I'm glad he's on our side," Holga commented.
"We need to go," Jasper said as Xenk retrieved his sword's blade, reassembled his weapon, and sheathed it.
"Why?" Holga asked. "He killed them all."
"They were already dead," Jasper said. "He just knocked them down."
"'Tis no simple feat to kill that which is already dead," Xenk confirmed.
Everyone turned to watch Xenk, Jasper and Mia speedwalking away, but they all stopped when the assassins began to rise. Dralas said something, probably asking if Xenk was ready to go again, and the assassins began to raise their weapons again.
"Quickly!" Xenk yelled, everyone sprinting away from the assassins.
They began to run in the only direction available, but Jasper doubted that was a great idea. The hill they were climbing was made out of as many bones as dirt. The assassins closed in quickly, but at the last second before the cave they were heading through, a blast of blisteringly hot air slammed into them, hurling them backward over the assassins. Jasper groaned, scraping himself up and retrieving his rapier just as the new, much larger threat emerged from the cave. A massive, red dragon. It roared, then started forward. The caught on something. It backed up, then rammed forward, smashing its right foreleg and wing free of the cave, then had to repeat the process for its left side. Jasper gaped at it. It was fat. It was so fat, in fact, that he doubted it could walk. Its entire body was dragging along the ground.
"That's one pudgy dragon!" Holga commented.
"Maybe don't piss off the dragon until we're out of range of being burned to death," Mia suggested.
"It's Themberchaud!" Xenk informed them. "He must have found a new den!"
"Did he eat the last one?" Edgin asked.
Themberchaud roared again, then lunged forward, slamming to the ground and sliding down the hill.
"Run!" Jasper shouted, all of his new companions, along with all of the Thayan Assassins, complying.
"We survived a swarm of Sinspawn and a Purple Worm!" Mia shouted. "I am not getting killed by an overweight dragon!"
As they sprinted across the first of the hanging platforms they'd have to cross, Themberchaud slammed into it, breaking it loose of the ground before his cave, making it start to swing and the roof of the cavern above them begin to collapse. Debris and Themberchaud himself quickly whittled down the number of Assassins around them, and when Dralas stopped to try and fight them again, Themberchaud skidded past them, biting into Dralas and swallowing him as Themberchaud slammed into one of the chains holding up the platform. The chain broke free of the ceiling almost instantly and began to fall, all of them turning and fleeing. Themberchaud pursued them relentlessly, despite his massively overweight body slowing him down. And when he tried to climb over the chain and got caught, he simply turned and began to roll after them like a log. Jasper shook his head.
"He's trying too hard to be that fat!" Jasper shouted.
"No kidding!" Mia agreed.
As they reached the bridge away from the hanging platform, which was tilting under Themberchaud's weight, the obese dragon was just behind them and shattered the end of the bridge. Mia and Doric began to fall, only for Simon and Jasper to catch them, pulling them back up onto the bridge, where they began to run again. Themberchaud waddled after them beside the bridge, trying to burn them, but aimed too far back, allowing them to escape. They realized that the bridge they were on ended in a cliff face, but Simon quickly used the Hither-Thither Staff to open a portal to a hanging bridge above them. They all jumped through, Themberchaud snapping at them close enough that Jasper had to transform into a fly in order to slip between its teeth into the portal, then into a hummingbird to catch up before returning to his normal form. Themberchaud tried to fly, failing for a moment before catching the end of the bridge behind them, breaking the end they were heading for loose and starting to tilt it toward him. Edgin began to slide down the bridge, Xenk trying to catch him but missing. Then, as Edgin skidded closer and closer to Themberchaud, Xenk leapt off the bridge, driving his sword down into Themberchaud's head, forcing it to close its mouth. Then, just as Xenk helped Edgin upright, Jasper shot down the bridge as a Naga, circling over the top of Themberchaud's head, allowing them both to leap onto his back before racing back up the bridge and across the gap the bridge tilting had caused, then shifted back once the others had jumped to the ground with the others, Themberchaud falling off of the end of the bridge.
"Thanks for that," Edgin said to Xenk, mildly hesitantly. "You too, Jasper."
"No problem," Jasper said.
"You'd have done the same for me," Xenk assured Edgin.
"Yeah," Edgin lied unconvincingly.
Jasper smirked, then froze as a deafening crash echoed behind them. His head fell forward before he began to sprint with the others.
"Bastard won't quit!" Holga complained.
Behind them, he could hear a sound likes sparks jumping, but no flames consumed them, meaning that Themberchaud was having trouble getting his breath to ignite. Finally, they slowed to a stop as Themberchaud stopped roaring angrily, but once again failing to incinerate them, sparks jumping in the back of his throat.
"Come on!" Edgin shouted. "He's stuck!"
He turned, only to see what Jasper and Mia had already found. Themberchaud wasn't stuck. He was blocking their only exit. The opposite side of the small, room-sized chamber from him was a statue of a cloaked figure holding a pan of glowing blue crystals.
"So are we," Doric breathed.
Themberchaud rammed forward, making no progress but slamming his nose and the small horn there into the roof of the cavern, sending cracks spiderwebbing through it, water beginning to pour in rapidly, the chamber flooding as Themberchaud blocked its exit.
"We're gonna drown!" Holga warned.
"I'm not going out like this!" Jasper growled, drawing his rapier. "Hey Paladin, maybe you want to attune to the sword now?"
"It would do us no good in this situation," Xenk said. "We can't kill a dragon fast enough to escape the water, even if we tunnel through him to make our escape."
"Then what do we do?" Jasper asked.
"Hey!" Edgin yelled. "It's salt water!" He looked to Simon. "Do you remember that trick you did in Triboar!?"
"Fresh-cut grass smell!?" Simon almost yelped.
"Wha...No!" Edgin shouted. "Th-The...The flame finger one!"
"Holga, hit him!" Edgin shouted, gesturing to Themberchaud.
"You want to make him angrier!?" Doric demanded.
Holga ignored her, pulling her axe off of her back, heading for the oversized dragon.
"When I say so, everybody goes underwater!" Edgin continued, spinning toward Simon. "And that'll be your cue, Simon, alright!?" He looked to Xenk, who was smirking. "What are you looking at!?"
"A Harper," Xenk smirked, Jasper sheathing his rapier, "shaking off his slumber."
Edgin groaned. "Go, Holga!"
Holga slammed the hilt of her axe into the side of Themberchaud's head. Themberchaud slammed his head into the wall, deepening the cracks.
"Again!" Edgin shouted.
"We're not going to make it to the surface!" Jasper warned everyone as Holga struck again. "I'll turn into something to swim! Everyone grab on!"
"Now!" Edgin shouted.
Everyone dove underwater just as the dragon released a cloud of gas to incinerate them. Instead, Simon's hand extended from the water just long enough to ignite the gas before retracting just ahead of the explosion. The salt water protected them from the blast, and they all swam upward. Jasper shifted into a Giant Octopus, grabbing all of the others before racing upward. Despite his expectations, they had, in fact, escaped the Underdark directly, so within a couple minutes, just before everyone ran out of air, he breached the surface, holding everyone out of the water so that they could gasp and pant for breath as he swam toward shore. Then, finally, he deposited them all and transformed back, crawling out of range of the waves before flopping onto his back.
"I can't believe we almost got killed by an overweight dragon," Jasper groaned.
"How did you swim up so fast?" Simon asked. "We were miles below the surface!"
"The pressure was greater below than above, speeding us up," Jasper said, waving a hand. "I lived in the ocean for about a year, so I got good at swimming. And hiding from monsters."
"You okay?" Mia asked.
"I should be asking you that," Jasper smiled. "I had the easy job. I didn't even have to hold my breath."
Mia smiled, shaking her head, and kissed him.
"I have given you the tools," Xenk said. "You must utilize them."
"Can't you utilize them for us?" Simon asked. "You're better at fighting, and strategizing, and-"
"Pretty much everything but talking," Edgin finished. "Talking to you isn't great."
Xenk smiled. "In those instances where faith wanes and doubt waxes, I recall the tenets of the Ancients-"
"Okay, see you later," Edgin interrupted.
Xenk merely smirked knowingly, shook Edgin's hand, nodded to Jasper and Mia, and turned, walking away. They watched him walk away, following the beach in a pointlessly straight line, making it a point to go over a boulder sitting in his way than around it.
"Right over the rock," Edgin was commentating with Holga on Xenk's ridiculously straight departure path.
"What happens when he reaches that cliff?" Jasper asked.
"I don't really care that much," Edgin said, turning away from Xenk, who immediately flashed Jasper a smirk and turned, heading inland.
Jasper snorted just as Simon sailed through the air, the Helmet of Disjunction flying off of his head before he crashed down in the sand.
"What happened?" Edgin asked, helping him up.
"I...uh...I spoke to someone," Simon said.
"Yeah?" Edgin asked.
"My great-great grandfather," Simon explained. "He was...unhelpful."
"You spoke to him?" Edgin asked. "From here, it looked like the helmet flew off the second you put it on."
"Well, time moves differently there," Simon said. "Okay, I'll try a different approach."
"Great," Edgin nodded. "New approach. Try it." He nodded as Simon took a deep breath, preparing himself. "You got this. You got this."
The helmet burst off of Simon's head, launching him again. Jasper sighed. He couldn't do it. Maybe he could if he had months or more to try it, but right now, they had about six hours. There wasn't enough time. Jasper sighed, moving away from the water to where the others had started a fire and lay down, yawning. He was so tired. First the Purple Worm, then the Kruthik, the Sinspawn, and then the chase with Themberchaud. He was so tired. he felt like he could sleep for weeks. Six hours would have to do. As he closed his eyes, Mia lay along his side, resting her head on his shoulder, and within minutes, both of them were asleep.
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