Goriel and Beyond, Part 5

[Alberich]

Argus' electrical blasts were a strange sensation to Carloc -- who, horrible as he was, was not all that creative a combatant. (He'd never needed to be.) He adjusted to fire back -- and then got struck from an unexpected quarter.

Udo had rather rest after being healed, but some part of him understood this wasn't the time for that. Besides, those goatsuckers had stuck him like a pig, and their boss was down there, and it was time to get some! So he rolled onto his belly, grabbed up his staff, and fired away, yelling "Itchy kitchy ho ho!" (Which in fact was a children's story about a flying rickshaw, but it was the first thing that came to mind.) In fact, his blasts weren't anywhere near the strength of Argus' -- but they were unexpected. And just as he Carloc was refocusing on the new threat --

A pistol report rang out -- the bullet came nowhere near; three hundred yards would be beyond extreme range under the best of circumstances --

And a dispel struck right below his feet -- to disrupt his levitation, or at least the invisible platform on which he stood.

When it came to raw magic power, he had enough strength to meet all these challenges and more. But now it was his scattered, unfocused, unstable mind that failed him. A moment's failure to concentrate, and his shields were ripped open. And Argus, whose focus never flagged, tore his shields apart and he fell --

...to be impaled on the rune-tipped spire of stone Argus had raised before, in an extremely nasty way. While Udo and Therese both fired at him with every force bolt they could muster.

(Tim saw that. He didn't think that Argus should adopt the naming conventions of this place and change his name to "Vlad." But he did remember the threat Argus had made if he ever slapped him again. What was it with powerful wizards and impaling people's backsides?)

Without his shield, and impaled, Carloc looked even more horrible than before, and yet his body was not free of movement. Some kind of tentacular nastiness poked its way out of two places on his abdomen, places Drusia remembered as the sites of his fatal wounds. He might not be firing magic back, but the magic wasn't gone from his body yet.

Now the expedition might come down to check their kill - or stay back and reduce it to slime and powder first. What would they do?

[OOC: The parts inside of him that are still moving, including the emerging tentacle-thing, are extremely hard to destroy. This is not ordinary necromancy. Even if there is such a thing, this isn't that, and the PC's haven't seen it before.]

[Drusia]

...to be impaled on the rune-tipped spire of stone Argus had raised before, in an extremely nasty way.

Without his shield, and impaled, Carloc looked even more horrible than before, and yet his body was not free of movement. Some kind of tentacular nastiness poked its way out of two places on his abdomen, places Drusia remembered as the sites of his fatal wounds. He might not be firing magic back, but the magic wasn't gone from his body yet.

That's my cue.

I dont' like the look of those tentacles, so I'll just have to make sure I'm faster than they are. This is going to be tiring, but it's a technique I've used before - and I'm fairly well rested, having mostly used my feet this battle. Also, very importantly, I didn't use it on him last time. I don't think anyone could expect me to do this without seeing it themselves. It's one reason I don't like doing it where I can be seen.

I take a second to plan. Four teleports in six seconds takes a bit of planning. I calculate distances and angles in my head. And then I concentrate.

I appear in midair beside him, already swinging my Durus blade. It cuts neatly through the first tentacle, and deeply through the strange magical wound where I stabbed him last time. Before he can react - and before I can fall more than a few inches - I activate my second gating, up and to the other side of him. Reality bends again, and I'm there.

His second tentacle is reaching towards where I just vanished from - I cut it off, and slice into the other wound, just as I did to the first one. It takes skill to flank with oneself, but then that is exactly what I developed this technique to do. Again, I only fall a few inches before my third gating. Reality bends.

This time I appear behind him. Bullets and magic are still hitting his front, so I attack his back. My first strike takes his neck, and I make sure to cut deep. Again, I don't know if decapitation will work, but it works on just about everything else, so it seems a good bet. This time, I let myself fall a little and take two more cuts, diagonal slashes (due to my falling, as my motions are both flatly horizontal) slice through his spine in two places, one severing ribs and spine, the other bisecting his hip bone on his right side.

Those five strikes should leave him in at least half a dozen pieces, but I don't stick around to make sure. My last teleport gets me the hell away from him. With my luck, he's going to sprout more tentacles from those fresh wounds. I've been to Tsuirakushiti enough to know what monsters do with tentacles, so I don't want to be anywhere near them just in case my paranoia is justified.

-- Drusia

[Jack Rothwell]

Tamina had listened to the sounds of battle as Tim patched her up. She groaned and tried to sit up at the sight of Drusia's teleportation spells.

"What going on? Magic man dead yet?"

[Alberich]

Up close, Drusia could see that the tentacular monstrosity had more teeth than eyes. That is to say, some of its stalks had teeth but none had eyes. It could apparently detect where Drusia was, but by the time it lunged out to grab or bite, she wasn't there. It snapped out very clumsily at her. Even without her amazing short-range teleports, she could likely have avoided it. As it slopped its way out of Carloc's body, she could further see that its coils had been bunched up in shapes redolent of several internal organs -- organs that she had destroyed when she first sliced the errant some thirty years ago. In a flash of insight she realized that this damned thing must have replaced those organs with its own disgusting slimy body, and so preserved his life when it ought not to have been preservable. (But then, she'd had to leave in such a hurry....)

A durus blade could cut it though not with ease. It could regenerate but not instantly. She had the advantage and could maintain it for a while - but something more would be required to destroy it finally.

Bloody death always stank, as Drusia well knew, but this body with this thing coming out of it had to be the most repulsive corpse she had ever encountered.

[OOC: I had PM'd this to Drannin but I'll go ahead and tell you - the creature is basically a familiar in the Tsuirakuan sense. I don't mean it's quite the same species as Ellis, Harker, or Rape-kun, and I'm sure it would be forbidden in Tsuiraku even if they had to hold a special street-corner session of the Council to get the law passed. No doubt Argus or Harker will be able to recognize and articulate that fact. My point is, in terms of just how hard it is to kill, that's the order of magnitude. I have no further plans for this disgusting creature and am quite fine with it getting killed, however you guys care to describe its death.]

[Alberich]

Udo, who was watching, grinned back at Tamina. "We got him!" -- his estimation of his own role in the final takedown was already growing -- "He's got a stone spike up his ass! I think his intestines are trying to fight it out with Drusia but she's got 'em on the run."

Tim looked mildly queasy but continued with his task.

[Jack Rothwell]

"Good." Tamina sighed and slumped back sleepily; the nature of kobold magic drained the user of stamina if used frequently.

"Was gonna get stabbed 'gain." She smiled at Udo. "Thanks for stopping him. And thanks for.. umm... healing magics." She patted Tim on the arm at that remark.

A moment later she closed her eyes and began to doze.

[Drannin]

Argus twisted his lip in distaste. Whatever this... thing was, it was durable and repulsive. Well, maybe he could fry the damned thing.

Walking up yet keeping a safe distance, Argus began pumping electrical power into the monstrosity, charring from the inside out. It was time-consuming, though. The thing really was tough.

"It's a familiar."

Argus jumped at Harker's voice coming from beside him.

"You sure."

"Yeah, but... it's non-standard to be sure. Same nature, but..." Harker trailed off, an unfamiliar expression of confusion and distaste on his features. Argus just focused on killing the damned thing.

[Graybeard]

"Well, it looks like we're winning," Sister Rose said, observing proceedings from a distance. She felt a little self-satisfaction: the Dispel idea seemed to have worked. Whether that was the key to success, or it was simply one of a number of things happening all at once that finally became too much for their adversary to overcome, would never be knowable. Either way, she felt good about the idea.

"It does," Therese agreed, no more expressive in victory than in the heat of battle. "But look at this." She handed her field glasses over to Rose; avoiding the unnecessary use of magical energy for vision extension still seemed like a prudent thing to do.

"Oh, my ..." she gasped. She put the glasses down with a frown. "I want our captive to see this." Therese nodded, and the two women went to where the Gyermanov man lay, still struggling against his bonds, still swearing at Harker (even though he had left for Argus' side). "Let's haul this guy to where he can see the action."

By the time they got him up to where he could see, the dismembering of the tentacular monstrosity had proceeded to the point that amplified vision wasn't necessary, at least to see that what was being slashed apart wasn't human. Rose turned to the captive, disgust in her voice. "This is your shaman, the man you followed into battle: not a man, but a monster. In our language we'd call him an 'Eldritch Abomination', but monster will have to do ... So why do you have such pride in associating with such a thing? How can you possibly call yourself a man?" She laughed bitterly. "Maybe I should let Harker have your balls after all, since those who are not a man don't need them. But I'll give you one last chance. Explain what we're seeing here and how your people came to have such a disgusting thing as your shaman. Now."

[Alberich]

Matysh was a bit surprised to see that the foreign wizards were so close to bringing Carloc the Gift of Death for which he longed and had taught them all to long. Rose's insults, however, went right by him. Even had he been able to read, he wouldn't have been able to spell "eldritch abomination" or come within three vowels of doing so, let alone figure out what it meant, and her aspersions on his manhood just went right by him. They'd grabbed him with some kind of magic he couldn't fight against. He hadn't helped them win anything. If they let him go, he'd cut their throats and their guts 'til they had to kill him.

How in hell she expected him to "explain what we're seeing here" was a separate question. Kind of a stupid one, too. But he went ahead with it. His insolence rose as the beaver wasn't right on him -

"What you're seeing there," he said, "is the Gift of Death, the greatest gift there is in the world. Carloc died but he didn't die, so he got power and pain. Back before my time we worshipped one of those weak-kneed clan gods. They killed, us, took our idol, broke it to pieces, made them into fucking chess pieces or something. So Carloc showed us where true strength lies, and which god really rules this world. It's Sital - god of the Ultimate Reality! Want to be like Carloc himself? Avoid dying, fear it. Want to avoid it? Embrace death, and bring it to others. Better still - bring it to yourselves. Now!"

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose turned away in disgust. It was all she could do not to deliver this absurdly obstinate man a ferocious slap to the face. However, the more compassionate part of her reasoned, he could only be what he was. She settled for one last insult after checking again that his bonds were secure -- "I was hoping that I could yet reason with a man who was defeated, but I see that I was mistaken. You're not a man. You're a troll" -- and then she turned to Therese.

"I probably shouldn't have said that," she said. "Getting frustrated here. But it's true enough. From all that I've ever read, trolls' minds are like that, completely impossible to get through to, incredibly resistant to coercion --" she reflexively declined to use the word "torture" for what she'd started Harker on the track of doing, a euphemism for which she would be penitent later -- "just about have to kill captives because they never quit fighting and actively embrace death."

Therese nodded. "I have heard many of the same stories. But there are others, too, that speak of the trolls' love of family, their reverence for their ancestors, their sense of honor."

Rose pulled a face. "I have to say, the one troll that I've ever met came across as one hell of a lot more honorable man than that does." She gestured disgustedly toward their captive. "So yeah, maybe I insult the trolls by the comparison. Anyway, I guess we did learn one thing. They have this ferocious god they call 'Sital' who gave that mad mage his power, and gives them their attitude toward death." A harsh chuckle. "Nobody I want in my neighborhood pantheon, I'll tell you that. Before we're done here, if we can do it without exposure, we'll probably want to figure out where that came from, and who this Sital is ..."

Suddenly, the slurring of words together triggered the same thought, at the same time, in both women's minds. They turned to each other, their eyes similarly wide, and spoke in unison.

"Exitialis."