Tales of Fantasy, Fables, and Fiction

by Thomas H. Tribble

  The fight then took another turn for the worse as Venpuezo managed another successful strike, this time on Bourne's left thigh. This wound was deep and would certainly slow the larger man down some. Bourne performed a counter-repose and managed to slice partway through his opponent's breastplate though it seemed to not actually harm Venpuezo. Bourne was disappointed to realize that his armor was rather better constructed than he had thought it would be. The Easterner then struck at Bourne twice who parried with his shield and retaliated with a crushing overhead thrust that might have ended the battle had it not been dodged just in time.

  There are often slight lulls in duels where the participants either get or take a moment to center themselves and reinitiate action. There was a slight breath in the battle then Venpuezo lunged forward, sword first, and caught the bigger man in the chest. The foul blade just stuck there. Bourne felt it and made to pull away from it but he could not as Venpuezo kept pushing forward and the blade seemed to be seeking his heart. Then, the black sword seemed to start glowing with a sickening half-light. Bourne felt himself, his very essence, beginning to fade. The room seemed to start spinning and began to grow dark. Bourne tried again to retreat but then found himself just standing there letting the peace of non-existence come over him. All of his troubles with Lolth and all of his pains were fading from him. For a moment, he almost felt like he was floating above the din of sorrow the world was to Men.

  It would have been very easy for Bourne to just give up. But, he knew who he was and giving up was not something Bourne did! With that thought he stopped retreating and actually pushed forward towards the Easterner. Then, in one motion, he put his shield's edge onto the black sword's hilt and shoved away from it. The sword left his body with a sickening shriek. Bourne spun with his shield and sword extended and leapt back away from the black sword. He continued to spin as he slipped his arm out of the shield straps and threw the shield directly at Venpuezo who had to take a moment to dodge it.

  Bourne took up his sword in both hands and said, "Let's see how thick that armor is now!" He realized that he had been fighting a far too defensive battle and it had almost destroyed him for all eternity. "Make the gods weep and the maidens swoon with every stroke you make, large or miniscule," his first fencing instructor had said. Not for the first time, he understood what that meant.

  The air was again filled with swords striking one another and armor being rent. Venpuezo could only wield his sword with one hand against the heavier and now faster blade. He started to realize that the fight had just turned out of his favor. Bourne quickly confirmed that his blade was keener than his opponents' and that the Easterner was, indeed, no more skilled than he.

  Each man received at least two more cuts but Venpuezo's were deeper and more dire. This would keep the battle from lasting overly long as now both men had wounds to their torso and were bleeding equally. Finally, Bourne made a subtle parry followed by a savage slice that knocked the black sword from Venpuezo's hand. As it clattered across the floor, the Easterner made to lunge for another weapon (most likely a dagger by his nightstand). Bourne caught him deeply in the ribs with a wide swing and Venpuezo sprawled onto the floor. There was another slight lull in the battle and then a dagger thrown from across the room slammed into the Easterner's throat. Venpuezo coughed twice and then died.

  Bourne merely sheathed his sword and said, "That was not very sporting of you. I had actually already beaten him."

  "Yes, but we are in a terrible rush. No time for heroics," replied Strom who appeared out of the hallway. "Besides, we were supposed to kill him together."

  Bourne merely shrugged as he tried to remove the maille from his wounded thigh. "I did not want to bother you as you seemed to be enjoying the roust we were giving those young Clerics."

  Strom handed Bourne a large potion vial and replied, "Have this, it should ready you for Tantalous. Yes, I particularly liked the look of horror that crept over all of their young faces simultaneously when they realized they were vulnerable in their own home. The few that did not get put behind the stone walls were no problem. Of course, you would know that if you hadn't disappeared in the middle of combat. Even I do not do that! Ah, what is this?" Strom had picked up the Lives Stealer and looked it over.

  "Be careful of that!" cried Bourne. "It is viler than I had thought it might be."

  "Oh, I know how to handle this type of blade," Strom said as he found the sword's scabbard and sheathed it. "The head of Norec's assassins' guild would certainly forgive my past rudeness to him if I were to give it to him ."

  Bourne had quaffed the potion and tossed the vile back to Strom. His wounds retreated towards being scares and his blood thickened. "I do not think that we have decided what we will do with that, but giving it to an assassin is probably a tremendously bad idea. At any rate, let us rejoin the others."

  The other members of the party were regrouping after chasing a group of clerics into a small room. Beneth read the last of the Wall of Stone spells that he had put on scrolls to seal the room off. Durrock noticed that Bourne had been injured and then spied the ominous sword Strom was carrying. He said, "I take it, then, that the chief bodyguard is no more?"

  Bourne nodded and replied, "Yes and my instinct tells me that his black sword would be of little use against Tantalous either. It is in the grand hall then?"

  "Yes, I think we managed to corner the demon and contend with all of its Clerics," Leena stated flatly as she prepared herself for what lay ahead. "Our surprise attack did take everyone here off guard. There internal defenses are even poorer than we suspected they would be."

  The party moved down the hallway cautiously with Strom checking for traps that might have just been activated. The grand hall that they had seen the huge demon peering out of had a large archway at its opening. The hallway beyond the arch had been sealed off and there were already several Clerics' voices on the other side of the thick stone wall that had been instantiated there.

  Strom got low to the marble floor and used a tiny mirror to peer into the hall. "I can see something moving towards the back of the room. He's put out the torches in there but I don't see anyone else of course, there might be a Cleric or two hiding in the shadows," he said.

  Beneth stepped forward and said, "We shall just see about that!" He made some gestures in the air and mumbled a few consonant sounds then, for the briefest of moments, stepped in front the archway. One of the large plaques on the far wall became illuminated by the Light spell that was cast. Just as Beneth slid back from the doorway, a fast moving blob flew out from the grand hall just past his head. It struck the wall behind the archway and stuck there. The mass began giving off a loud hissing sound almost immediately

  Tassif leaned towards it a little and said, "That looks both poisonous and acidic. Wonderful. At least we have discovered Tantalous could do that before we engaged him!"

  "Do not do that again, Mage," said Bourne sternly. "We do not know all of his offensive weapons as of yet and your life holds all of ours in it." Beneth just nodded. The thought of how close that blob had come to striking his face made his skin crawl. He decided he would let the others be the heroes for a while.

  Strom was still discretely looking over the room in its new light. "I think there is a Cleric with a mace behind the far pillar on the left. I cannot see another way out of this room and I spy no obvious traps. The beast appears to just be waiting for us. By the way, it is physically rather larger than I expected it would be; considerably more so, in fact. He is sitting on a raised dais at the back of the hall which has four marble steps around it so you will be attacking uphill initially. Good luck with that!" He went on to describe the hall as having two fifty foot columns of pews and, therefore, three isles to the dais, one by each wall and one down the center of the room. There were also many pillars to duck behind all of which were made of stone.

  When Strom assured them that there were no traps in the first ten feet of the room and he had described the basic layout of the hall, the in
itial attack commenced. Beneth cast a temporary weapon enchantment on the thief's short sword, all of the party members drank their anti-poison potions, and then Tassif dove through the archway, rolled, and came up behind a stone pillar. He started shooting arrows as quickly as he could manage not intending to actually hit anything. Durrock and Strom then burst into the room and made for like cover. Leena also rained down arrows from the archway towards the large demon though it made little attempt to escape them.

  The initial impression each of them received from seeing the self professed demi-god for the first time was largely the same. It did look like a huge spider in some respects but demonesque in others. Its vile mandibles, multiple legs, and single, lidless eye were certainly arachnid in appearance but the sneer it wore on its face was not. However, what worried them all uniformly was its tail. It was black and curved like a scorpions and it now dripped with a green venom. The poison it produced might not be in and of itself overly dangerous, but the amount of it which the creature could inject into a person was certainly to be respected and a danger in its own right. Also, they could feel the Demon's malice filling the room.

  The huge beast had been waiting for whoever lay in wait to attack. His home had been invaded and his Clerics assaulted. His anger would spew forth and destroy them all! He saw the people dive into the room and he inhaled deeply then spat out another ball of acidic bile. It struck the pillar Tassif had made his cover and splattered all around it. The Bard got a few drops of the mass on his leather armor but it caused him no major harm. Bourne and Beneth had waited for that inevitable blast and in the few seconds after it, made their entry into the hall. Then, an inevitability occurred; Durrock sprung a hidden trap. He and Strom were both working their way towards the demi-god while making the best use of the available cover as was possible. Strom had seen a trip-wire and avoided it but a like wire on the opposite wall escaped the Ranger's notice. A spike shot out of the wall beside him and pierced the side of his armor. The injury was little more than a nuisance but it did slow him down. Had Tantalous launched a ball of bile at him at that moment, he might have been killed. However, just as the trap was sprung, the flame-works commenced.

  As had been planned, Beneth launched a fireball spell at the beast just as Tassif and Leena loosed fire bolt arrows at it. The three simultaneous blasts should have all but killed the creature as he was a hard target to miss. However, when the blast and heat subsided moments later, the demon appeared unharmed.

  Beneth all but yelled, "Curse it! He has an anti-magic shield around him. Well, there goes how many hundreds of rilks in fire arrows!"

  Durrock had wasted no time waiting to see the fireballs' effect, he had already heaved his heavy hand axe at his enemy's head before the wall of heat had fully moved past him. He struck his target but it had little effect on the creature. Tantalous seemed to somehow laugh and made a large inhale once again. This time, just as the ball of bile was expelled, Bourne threw his shield in front of the beast's mouth. The bile continued forward but splattered into tiny droplets down its trajectory's path along with what was left of the now sizzling shield. The net affect was that the mass covered more area but did not seem to solidify at all. Tantalous's many faceted eye looked at Bourne and then it launched itself at the Fighter.

  Bourne was ready for the attack and made to dodge the bulk coming at him. Durrock leapt towards the creature's side and the rest continued their attacks with arrow and sling. Benenth was left to ponder what spells he might employ that the demi-god's anti-magic spell would not negate.

  As the arrows seemed to bounce off of the creature's hide, Tassif said, "It is as I have feared, only magicked weapons may harm this beast! Between us, we have only a few such arrows. We must close with it sooner than planned." Leena only nodded at this. Their plan had been to continue a barrage of different attacks upon the creature and allow their Mage to stay as far away from it as possible. This would deprive it of easy targets to attack and challenge whatever defenses it might have. But, it now appeared that plan would find its shortcoming in a lack of appropriate projectile weapons. Enchanted arrows had simply not been affordable to the party in bulk and Tassif's stash of them had been recently depleted.

  As Durrock struck at the creature's open side, it whipped its hind legs at him and knocked him back. Bourne used the steps to slip under Tantalous's gaping maul and struck at its mandibles from below. Then, out of the shadows, Strom bounded onto the monster's back and plunged his sword deep into what should have been the creature's spine, but the wound seemed to have little effect. As Strom raised his short sword to strike again, the demon's tail whipped up and its barbed tip found the back of the Thief's arm. A thick green fluid pumped into Strom's veins and he fell to the floor with a dull thud where he lay motionless for a few moments. Durrock attempted to draw Tantalous away from the body and further into the center of the room. As he did so, Bourne grasped Strom's legs and pulled him out of harm's way. Durrock must have not adequately convinced the creature to move towards him as the god's tail struck the back of Bourne's torso. The blow knocked him flat for a second, but the barb did not fully pierce his armor. With a hearty backwards lunge, Bourne pulled the Thief off of the diaz and he managed to move Strom behind a small by sturdy looking podium several feet away from the battle. Then, he flung himself back into the action. He hated having to leave the Thief there but saw that Durrock was being hard pressed by the giant monster.

  Beneth then came forward and began chanting. He cast a rather feeble bolt of lightning at the creature's front leg. He knew it was a gamble that would most likely fail, but he thought it was worth a try. To everyone's surprise, the bolt did strike the leg and Tantalous jumped back in either pain or surprise. "Üâfon åæ!" he cried immediately. The words were an ancient Elven battle cry but they did carry a meaning. Bourne and Leena began trying to somehow herd the massive beast further into the room for that is what Benenth desired of them. Durrock gave a dumbfounded look towards the Magister but he quickly decided to follow the others' lead. The three of them attacked the tail with a renewed vigor and Tassif shot the last of his enchanted arrows at the creature's eye.

  Beneth cast the last of his Wall of Stone spells from memory as far forward on the dais as he could. He realized that it was the platform that was magic-proofed and not the beast itself, so cutting it off from its haven where spells and enchanted weapons did either little good or none at all was the only hope the party had of winning this battle.

  Tantalous tried to push its way back to safety but the cuts it received slowed it down. Then, a stone wall appeared on its throne pedestal. Now, at best, it could protect only a part of its body from spells as most of its bulk would no longer fit in to the protected area that had been so painstakingly put in place. "Killing these intruders will actually be a chore now," he thought to himself. Then, he used his clairaudience to shout a thought at his nearby Cleric, "Attack, you fool!"

  The Priest that had been hiding in a still dark corner of the room heard his master's thoughts and, against all of his better judgment, jumped out of the shadows and attacked the Dwarf with his mace. Durrock decided to move as far away from the beast as he could to engage the black robed miscreant so he would not have to fight two things at once.

  Tassif took the wall's arrival as a queue to try another of his fire bolt arrows. As Tassif knocked his arrow, Beneth began another fireball spell. Since Bourne was the only one near the beast, the timing for the blast was right. He let it erupt just as Tassif yelled, "FIREBOLT!" to Bourne and fired. Only the left side of Tantalous was injured as its right was inside the protective field. Bourne dove for cover just in time and Durrock used the Cleric's surprise of the blast to cleave his head open. To the Cleric's credit though, he did nick the Dwarf during their short fight.

  Tantalous instantly reared up to project another ball of venom. If he killed nothing else this day, it would be that magician! Both Bourne and Durrock tried to find something to throw in the projectile's way but they had only a s
econd or two to do so. Benenth was in the middle of chanting another spell and apparently intent on finishing the casting before he ducked. Mages could be stubborn that way. Leena moved to tackle Beneth but it was Tassif that saved the Magician's life. He had already knocked the last of his fire bolt arrows so he waiting for the ball of venom to be emitted while leading his aim a few feet in front of the beast. The ball and arrow connected and detonated in the middle of the room. Tassif was on the left side of the Hall's entrance so the off-centered blast knocked the venom to his right and into the wall several feet away from Beneth. The ball stayed more together this time and splattered in a smaller radius.

  But, there was no respite from the demi-god. Losing no time, he pounced on Bourne ripping the front of his breastplate and rending his flesh. For a brief moment, the fighter was held by the creature's long, thin arms and its scorpion-like tale poised for its attack. Just as the barb flew forward, Durrock leapt into its path. The stinger's barb was deflected but still tore into Durrock's thick leathern armor and some of the deep green venom found his forearm. Beneth raised his sword and hacked his way free while two arrows flew into Tantalous's head.

  Durrock ducked away from the beast and used his axe to cut the straps holding his gauntlet in place. He ripped his long glove off and immediately sucked the venom out the wound. Its taste was foul and made him nauseous but he felt himself getting only a little ill from the venom.

  Although the demi-god was moving more sluggishly for all the hacking and spells being cast on it, Tantalous showed few outward signs of being weakened or having suffered more than flesh wounds. It made another leap at Bourne but was stopped short by a dagger landing in its one, huge eye. Strom was crouching behind the podium and seemed to be only semi-alert. "You hit like a little girl!" the Thief yelled as the beast resumed its attack on the fighter seemingly all but unphased by the dagger's blow.