Grasping Shadows
Eighteenth Day of the Third Month 294 AC
At Azirah's words the air rippled with the will of five briar watchers and a web of pale green spun out towards Balerion to prevent the tanar'ri from taking its new mount elsewhere by sorcery. Alarms would be going off all over the Stepsones, Companions would be here soon, but here and now the forces In and around the Snare would have to deal with the beast that had been the terror of two continents. Fortunately, the one in command of the forces assembled between stone and sea was not touched by mortal fears, nor likely to be deceived by demonic treachery.
Mereth gave the order for the darkenbeasts and black knights to close and subdue the dragon as they could, but it soon became clear that the creature that rode the beast's flesh had no interest in becoming entangled in such battles. Vast black wings carried it south, towards the Snare. Only one of the knights chanced to be close enough to tear through the membrane of its right wing in the hopes of slowing it. Though the beast roared in pain the thing that rode it drove it on.
"Do not break the perimeter," Mereth's mind voice rang like iron into the minds of her nearer sisters, the thought carried from one fury to the next down a chain as sure as it was flexible.
A moment later she had willed herself above the roaring waves, well clear of the possessed beast, but close enough to coordinate a response.
Still she might have missed the enemy's next move in the moment of vertigo had one of of the watchmoles not sounded the alarm just as it and two of its fellows were struck by thin tendrils of Darkness that forced themselves into their noses and mouths,
shadow demons. They knew that the gambit had failed at once and this time there was no time to bind them in place by magic.
Three Erinyes fired on their mind-shackled allies, hoping to break the demons' concentration before they could flee. Only one of them succeeded.
Two possessed watchmoles kidnapped
"Fill in that gap," Mereth commanded even as the dragon reached the dome of the Snare and started to tear at the stone with claw and fang, even buffeting it with his tail.
As the stone began to crack and reveals the dull layer of lead underneath the darkenbeasts caught up with it and at their riders' command leapt upon it.
They were brave, the king's legionaries, Mereth admitted to herself.
To a fault, perhaps, but worthy of regard just the same. The sheer weight of the dragon beasts dragged Balerion down, sliding alongside the side of the Snare and into the waters below as the dragon turned on them. One of them somehow managed to keep his saddle, for the moment at least, the other was crushed among the flailing bodies.
One Darkenbeast rider killed
Just as Mereth was pondering if she could send one of her sisters to extricate the surviving rider before he too perished, another dragon manifested above the Snare, bright crimson and crowned in familiar magic.
"Be Free," the king commanded, and the dragon shuddered in its fall as it spewed out dark smoke that flowed into an ephemeral cowled figure. No longer bound by the unseen shackles that bound the dragon, it sought to flee.
Faster than the mortal eye could follow the king withdrew a blood red gem from his robes and sought to
bind the apparition, but it's will would not fail, even when fate was twisted into a curse upon it. A moment later it was gone.
What next?
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OOC: This felt like a good moment for a break since Viserys is here to take charge in person. Not yet edited.
] Get into the Shadow Tower communication device and bitchslap Abraxxas into submission. Bad demon lord! Bad!
