Snippet #1532716

"Mmm...yes, my lovely little trollop..." beneath the covers the harpy giggled, making a smacking sound with her lips before resuming a light snore. The clamor outside of her tent did not even phase her, and it took the gentle prodding of two figures standing inside the tent to rouse her. Phaze arose with a slow, languid grace that was very out of place within the screams of alarm and flashes going on outside. The harpy--born of owl stock and therefore slightly shorter than most--allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness and turned her wide eyes on the closest of her attendants. "Beryl. Why do you wake me?"

Forgive me, True One Most High, but there seems to be a disturbance in the camp. a soothing mental voice replied. The woman draped in crimson robes spoke with a minor spell, as her mouth had long ago been sewn shut. Her eyes bespoke a calm and calculating intelligence that gnolls did not normally posess nowadays. The second Silenced nodded in agreement, his hands already aglow with eldritch energy.

Phaze scowled and listened to the din. She heaved a melodramatic sigh and drew herself up, snatching the pristine white robes that the male Silenced Nunnsam had been holding while she slept. Slipping it on, the Thane and her two arcane slaves stepped out into the rain. "Find out where the best sport is...and any wenches that can be spared, I want brought to me."

---

Wrath's breaths came swiftly, but did not burn with the physical exertion. The boon of the pendant gave him such control over the body that most things that the average soldier was encumbered by was no more than a thought away from being dealt with. Two of the normal soldiers within the dragon army came at him with polearms, and Wrath met their charge without so much as even sliding in the mud. When the foremost of the lances was drawn back to strike, Wrath braced his front foot on the wet earth, spun on it and brought around the tiger hooks which had been interlinked for maximum range to decapitate the man. Continuing the movement, the general grasped the returning hilt of his second blade and locked the crescent guard with the axe of his next opponent's halberd.

The second soldier cursed when he realized that his foe had the advantage in not only skill, but the exotic weaponry he wielded. Too late though, as the man's entrails were already being tugged out by Wrath's second weapon. Wrath swept the blades outward to clear the gore off of them and glanced at Sarish, who seemed to be having trouble wielding a small-arms weapon. This brought a smile, however small, to the general's face before he turned to investigate the rest of the field. The camp was in full alarm now and almost every able man was mobilized. Unfortunately for them, more than half of the force had been drugged or slain within the first minutes of the confrontation.

He was about to walk off when the fingers of one of the soldiers he had slain moments ago wrapped themselves around Wrath's boot. A tiger hook immediately buried itself within the side of the man's head, and Wrath pulled his foot...to find the digits still clamped down firmly. Eyes wide with alarm, Wrath squinted in the rain and cried out in uncharacteristic disgust. The soldier, dragging himself awkwardly and blood trickling from his temple, was grey-skinned and sallow as if all of the life had been drained from him. So it had, for the man also had the dimly glowing eyes of a Shell...a lesser undead. Indeed, the first slain armsman arose shakily and raised his lance once again despite having no head. All across the camp that the legionnaires had covered, the dead were rising back up and systematically killing their sleeping--and therefore useless--comrades. In seconds, they rose in undeath and became contributing members of the army once more.

Wrath brought his swords around in a powerful sweeping slash that neatly severed the not-so-dead man's hand and a chunk of his skull. The abomination shuddered once, then began moving towards him again. Wrath cursed aloud and called out to Sarish.

"Forget the damned dagger! We need magic, now! This is your field of expertise isn't it?" this last part was punctuated with a jab at the undead creatures jogging towards any living man or woman they could find. The shells seemed to be drawn to them, so it seemed, for even in the low-visibility conditions they unerringly found thier marks. Even worse, the wagons on the side of camp the Sid's team was gunning down, skeletal undead burst forth to engage in the melee. This new regiment of undying troops bolstered the dragon army by over forty men. Wrath was beginning to regret his decision when the cold sentience within the pendant vied for dominance in his psyche.

Without a word Wrath Liu-Wen began twirling his twin hooks in unison, swiftly creating a blur of spinning steel that sung as the air passed through. A supernatural gale picked up and strong winds began whipping about the general, made visible by the rain. Suddenly he lashed out with the maelstrom directly at the advancing troops. Half of them were whisked away in a gust of air and cracking bone. With a level stare, Wrath indicated that the rest were Sarish's responsiblity. Seven undead should be nothing for a holy-man. Then, gathering the winds again, Wrath pushed himself on with great speed to pass through the center of camp and meet the skeleton horde with an explosion of arcane wind and force.

Ten feet from Sarish, Thanaros materialized out of the rain and levelled his halberd at the zombies. He nodded at Sarish. "You do not stand alone, cleric."

---

At the head of the camp, Phaze sneered in contempt as a hail of slicing ice-shards rained down around her and her servants. They bounced harmlessly off of a barrier of unseen force and the Thane's chant continued unabated. Dark syllables poured from the dragon-chosen's mouth in a stream of unnaturally potent words that carried a palpable weight to them. The dead rose to do her bidding, a gift from the Black Dragon herself, and turned the tide of what could have been a catastrophic loss. As the last of the chant faded away Phaze sighed and pouted at the Silenced. "Is it sad that my only reliable minions are either mute or undead?"

The Silenced did not smile, or respond and any way. Phaze shrugged and cocked her head in an oddly owl-like manner. She supposed it wouldn't be funny to them since they had their lips sewn together. Yet, they wanted to serve the dragons to the best of their ability, and magic-users had to make sacrifices in order to protect the sanctity of the dragon army.

Banishing the thoughts Phaze walked to the edge of the grass and peered into the rain and black of the newly fallen night. Her vision was further enchance by the dragon's gifts, and she practically stared at a halfling who was looking back at her through some cumbersome contraption of a weapon. Faintly, Phaze heard a click and had only a second to raise her hand to swat away the large projectile the little pest had fired. There was no need though, for the barrier protected her. The harpy grinned at the sight of a lovely halfling just past the first. "I want the taller halfling. She's cute." as an afterthought, Phaze included orders to kill the ranged unit.

Beryl and Nunnsam nodded and sped out into the rain, the latter running at speeds far beyond what a deep human could possibly generate with the former flying with the assistance of a spell. Eyesight going unhindered by the rain, Beryl oriented on a dark elf panting in a tree and sent a pea-sized ball of heat flying towards her. As soon as it came within a few paces of the tree the orb detonated in a flash of roaring fire and death.

Nunnsam, the more physical of the two, drew a broadsword and swept it around in a wide arc. A red crescent of force manifested with the swing and sliced through the grass towards Sid. The halfling commander made a quick gesture and vanished before the arcane slash could rend her in two. Nunnsam skidded to a halt in the grass, drawing his blade up into a guard and creating a shimmering veil of protective force over his shoulders. Just in time too, for a pair of great-bolts slammed into his shoulders from above, jolting the Silenced into a kneeling position. Sid landed with a muted thud as the leaping enchantment inside her armor wore off. The halfling, no longer a halfling, rose up from the grass. Sid stood a full three feet taller and displayed a good amount of muscle, hefting her wallarmbrust with ease.

"You made me use up my last polymorph scroll, fuck-face." Sid, now in the form of an orcish woman, loaded her crossbow and trained it on Nunnsam. The Silenced smacked away the first bolt with his blade and had to cast a spell of dexterity to deflect the next two. How did she shoot so quickly? Sid bared her fangs in a feral grin. "Made me waste my Lightning-Loader scroll too."

In front of Faera at the base of the tree, Beelzes stood with hands outstretched. The last of the flames fled into her palms as the spell guttered out. The deep human shook her steaming palms and rubbed them over her scalp, savoring the heat. "Always have to pull you out of the hot-seat, eh Faera? Oops! I called you by your name...that's a problem..."

She lost interest in the conversation when the female Silenced clapped her hands together and summoned a thunderclap of force that sent Beelzes crashing into the tree, splintering a large portion of the trunk's exterior. The deep human peeled herself from the wood and sighed. The sound was oddly distant, and as the mud and splinters cleared, Beryl saw that Beelzes was encase head to toe in frosty ebon armor. "Plate of Cania. Always good for defense." the deep human sketched an elaborate bow, and conjured a score of ghostly axes. "Care to dance?"

Above them in the stinging rain Qinn was already lashing at the Thane with whips of verdant flame. Phaze laughed and cackled in the thundering sky, returning her foe's fire with fire of her own. The gouts of flame were massive in scope, lighting up the night-sky for a brief moment. Qinn only barely kept ahead of the heated death and futily attacked the opponent that so clearly outmatched her. It was not the harp way to back down, and even less so to realize when to back off.

---

Castle of Nihalistrix the Black

"Gods damn this, Hood! Take them out!" Helm roared over the clang of metal and the halfling mage raised a pair of wands. The mercenary party immediately withdrew from the hallway, Mercy being pulled back by Geera, the female lamia ranger. A moment later the confined space ahead of them erupted with blue flames. When they died down, the path ahead was choked with the frozen corpses of twenty or so Children of Fire. The halfling blasted some apart with another wand while Helm smashed the rest with his maul. The captain waved his men on.

They came upon an inconspicuous door and slipper inside with as much stealth as possible. Inside, the dusky elf felt along the cellar wall behind a few crates while the others stood watch. Helm laid a hand on Mercy's shoulder.

"We're almost out. There should be an old teleportation ring just inside here. Should take us somewhere beyond the Terra mountains...we'll have legionnaires waiting for us, if all goes well." he smiled disarmingly. "Just hang tight."

"Found it." Kael slipped a dagger in the crack and found a more defined opening in the stone. A few seconds later the mercenaries were staring into the ritual chamber of Nihalistrix's Cabal. Six black-robed men and women that had been kneeling before the blood-soaked teleportation ring stared at the mercenaries in shock. The first two died with arrows sticking from their chests, as three more fell to Hood's lightning blasts. The closest had his head pulped by Helm.

"What's with the dragon-freaks and robes?" the others merely smirked and Hood reconfigured the arcane settings in the ring. With a slight nod, he indicated he was as ready as possible. "Let's go then."

A blinding light flashed as the magic tore them through space towards their destination.