Sundered Visions
Twenty-Fifth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Before the fiend's threat is even spoken in full, you run towards it sword in hand, as though meaning to face him thus, silently apologizing to Dark Sister for using her for a ruse once more. The wards you had woven forbid any from commanding time to their whims, but only for a short span around where you stand, and so you play the vainglorious youth. You have had plenty of practice in the part, after all.
Siduri's voice is rising in a blessing of
strength and valor upon Ser Richard's shoulders, the knight racing for the door almost swifter than the spell already upon your lips. Dark Sister cuts not flesh but the fabric of the world itself, a line of blood-red light spanning the short distance to your foe to strike him in the chest. The fiend spasms painfully, bones cracking, flesh tearing, and black bile leaking from six fiery eyes
Then Ser Richard falls upon the reeling fiend, his first flow is deflected by one of it's stolen blades acting seemingly without their master's will, but then the knight does what he has ever done when faced with strange and arcane powers, with foes who think themselves beyond mortal ken to face. He adapts and strikes once more with renewed fury. Spellsteel clangs and hisses in Oathkeeper's flames as enchanted weapons are swept aside and telling blows begin to land, one ripping through a shoulder, another almost slicing off a hand at the wrist, and a third sinking deep into it's armored stomach, parting gilded scales as easily as parchment. The look in the archfiend's eyes is almost the same as that which you had seen moments before in its servant's eyes... almost.
Something shatters
inside your enemy's flesh, not broken bone or ruptured organs, nor anything that might have a place inside a living thing. It almost sounds like glass,
a potion you realize, impressed in spite of yourself at how far this thing had gone to ensure it would not perish. Wounds knit, not all nor fully, but enough that when the final blow lands it is able to twist out of the way of the worst of the blow, leaving it with a bleeding gash across its jaw rather than a head flying from its shoulders.
"You cannot slay me! I... see... all!" the thing hisses, narrowly dodging a spell from one of Xor's eyes. It's blades lock in a circle of steel and sorcery, moving so swiftly they blur and befuddle the eye, but not quite too fast for Ser Richard. The knight almost seems to move with whatever strange rhythm the blades possess, martial skill matching accursed seer's vision.
The warding blades reap their toll upon the knight as he reaches through them, finding every weakness, prying past the shield and cutting through the thinnest gaps in armor until blood seeps over sanctified steel. But Oathkeeper too finds its mark, slicing off the fiend's jaw and you suppose it's tongue just as it was about to make another pronouncement of doom.
Ser Richard Loses 24 Temporary Hit Points
Ser Richard Takes 51 Damage
"What the Hells was that?" Siduri shakes her head wonderingly.
"A greater fiend, now the corpse of one," Dany quips as she flies over to heal Ser Richard with a gentle touch and a whispered word.
"Did you really have to get in the thing's face, Your Grace?" he asks, turning to you.
"That is how the ward works, I'm afraid. Without it, the thing could have moved where it willed before striking and casting whatever spells it pleased in that time."
"And you can't cast those wards on anyone else?" he sighs.
The words are barely a question, but you choose to treat them as such shaking your head. "I'm afraid not, Ser. It is at the very limits of my magic to cast the spell at all. Such proclamations of what magic may or may not be worked are usually the domain of..." you trail off, not sure how to finish. 'Idol of Fire' the fiends called you, but the last thing you would wish to be thought of is a god.
"Gods," Siduri is more than happy to finish for you. "Them or sorcerers skilled enough to substitute skill for power."
Meanwhile, you collect the fiend's corpse in your cloak together with its weapons. From the way they twist and rattle you suspect some fel power is still upon them.
One way or another you will find a use for them.
"Do we continue on to hunt the mage or attempt to aid in the boarding?" Xor interjects pragmatically.
What do you do?
[] Help with the fight against the rest of the convoy
[] Hunt the mage
[] Split up
-[] Write in how
[] Write in
OOC: The strategy with Ser Richard was a near perfect counter, because I planned the asura getting a +10 to his AC as he put his swords into defensive posture, so one full attack with PA and one without got you maximum damage. The previous vote is too close to call so it stays open.
