Chapter Twenty-Eight


On some level, Tamoko felt a bit bad about leaving the adventurers behind.

They were strong, and had a healer among them, so she felt it was possible that most would survive. But she could recognize Winski Perorate's handiwork in the necromancy involved, and the old monster was a craftsman above all else. In a straight battle, she was certain that she could kill him, but if he had the time to prepare tools, he could be quite dangerous. The barbarian woman had been wounded and not healed fully, from the way she was moving. Unless a more gifted cleric tended to her, she would die. Skeleton Warriors had little fear of magic, so the mage would be killed if one managed to pierce the front lines, and one most certainly would; the two half-elves were already threatening to break what little formation they had in order to protect each other above the rest of the group. If that happened, it was likely most of them would be killed unless the mage animating the skeletons was stopped from directing them somehow.

Tamoko was not planning to do that, though certainly if she came upon Winski in the temple she would gleefully crush his skull. If anything, her goal would be best served by them simply having a long, drawn out death that stopped his weapons from coming to Sarevok's aid. She didn't really care about their probable deaths, honestly… but as she ran down the dead paths, her boots echoing across the broken stones, she felt a bit bad that she was the sort of person who didn't care.

She supposed that she deserved what was going to happen next, which was of some small comfort. She was, in all honesty, a poor priestess, but she could at least show the universe that karma still came for those who had earned it.

She spun a corner, seemingly just any normal street in this dead city, and her breath froze in her lungs.

"Hello, my love," Sarevok said.


Winski Perorate's hand was at play in the necromancy filling the cavern, of course. Just as Tamoko suspected, the old mage was the puppetmaster to it all, both commanding the reanimated bodies of the long-dead Deathstalkers and casting the lesser spells that guided the ghouls, zombies, and skeletons that roamed these broken halls. It had been the work of years and his greatest achievement in Sarevok's name, an army of death to serve as the perfect vanguard for a nascent Lord of Murder.

And yet, he was underwhelmed with the results.

Oh, technically speaking he was winning. Thanks to his years learning to control the old enchantments of the Temple and attune them to his personal scrying mirror, he could see anywhere in the cavern essentially at will. Even if the two errant pretenders to his lord's throne managed to escape Tazok (and bluntly, he had little reason to believe the beast could possibly face and defeat two of Sarevok's siblings, lesser though they might be), they could not escape his web of magic. These caves were steeped in death and he could easily draw in or raise enough zombies to keep even them occupied for hours to come. The drow priestess being powerful enough to break his control was an issue, but this was his territory. It was more than possible for him to simply drown her in a tide of dead flesh until she reached the limit of her power to hold it back.

But…

The Deathbringers were held back, stopped from pursuing their greatest targets by a band of normal, mortal adventurers. The skeletal knights had been his true masterwork, and they had barely affected the course of the battle before the Bhaalspawn had simply pushed through them. The horde, likewise, had managed to slow them, but they had been on the verge of pushing through it before Tazok had intercepted them. They were dangerous. He had underestimated them, and that error had forced him on the defensive in a battle he had truly believed would just be a matter of stalling them until the lord saw a moment to strike. That had been a miscalculation.

Underestimating Tamoko's resolve had been another; she was not supposed to be here. Her influence on Sarevok, even if it had shifted from affection to disdain of late, made her presence an unpredictable factor. The lord was out in the wild dark, putting himself at risk (however minor, for Winski firmly believed nothing in the whole of the Sword Coast could have faced Sarevok as he was now), with no reliable way to reach him.

To say this, to even think it, was anathema to all of Winski's thoughts for the last two decades of his life. But after not one but two such errors in judgment leading the situation to such volatility, he had to admit it: There was, however insignificant, a threat to his lord's plans here. Even if it was only a thousandth of a percent, the chance for the two Bhaalspawn to snatch a victory once more from the jaws of certain defeat was extant. This could not be tolerated.

He swiped a hand across the surface of his scrying mirror, erasing the images of battle and focusing on a middle-aged but fit man with a trim black beard, black robes lined with poisonous green, and bright eyes that held all the empathy of a hungry snake. "Semaj. Can you hear me?"

Winski's prime apprentice closed his eyes, pushing aside his physical senses to better focus on the magical communication. "Your sending is stable, sir. I found a small group of ghasts in the southern ruins, and was preparing to clear them a path toward the-"

"I have a more important task for you. Proceed to the path to the surface, kill the adventurers blocking the main tunnel. Clear a path to allow my Deathbringers back to us. I want to flank the Bhaalspawn's party, hammer them between our two forces."

"… Sir, he won't like it if you kill his siblings before he has a chance."

"He'll like it even less if they stab him in the back before he's done dealing with his lover's quarrel. Besides, if they don't live to face him personally, it shouldn't be too difficult to just convince him they were never worthy of his time to begin with."

"Are you willing to bet your life on that, sir?"

"… I'm more willing to bet my life on that than sacrifice it because I failed completely. Now go."

"… As you wish. But I won't be coming back, sir. Being in the same room as Sarevok is courting death, and I'm unwilling to spend another second doing it. This will be my last act as your apprentice."

"Understood. I kept copies of some useful scrolls I believe you haven't learned yet, in a hidden compartment in my quarters at the tower. If any of them survived the fire, you're welcome to them, along with anything else you can salvage. You'll need any advantage you can muster to flee the region before the lord notices you're gone."

"You've been a good teacher. I could have spent a few years more learning at your feet, if you were more sane. But I'll not risk my life in Sarevok's presence one day longer."

"Ah, my boy, that's what you never understood. I'm not risking my life, I'm making it last forever."

The apprentice smirked. "And in a few hundred years when I'm a lich, I'll be sure to find your grave and ask if it was worth it."

Even Winski had to chuckle at that one, and he was not a mage predisposed to humor.


The spell 'Dimension Door' allowed the user to create a portal in space between where he was currently standing, and anywhere he could currently see. It was a useful tool for a mage to escape a dangerous situation. Even in a situation such as this, where the line of sight of any mage was closed off by a combination of darkness and rubble, it could be a quick and efficient way for a mage to flee a goodly distance from any physical threat.

Edwin could not, in point of fact, cast such a spell. And for the first time, he cursed his own genius for being so brilliant that it had led him mostly to learning more universally valuable spells, and not the niche ability that he most needed right this moment with death closing in on his inferior bodyguards.

He had, in fact, a solid dozen spells remaining for the day, and some of them could have been quite useful. None of the monsters he could summon with spells of his level would be able to fight undead of this caliber, but a warm body between the group's fighters and himself could have been a help to any of them. Of the five holding on the front lines, three were some flavor of wounded (the dwarf may have been as well, but truthfully Edwin had difficulty telling with the short folk; they did not seem to feel pain and he had never bothered to learn how to read their stunted, beard-coated faces for signs of it. He wasn't a racist, he was just… well, no, he was just a racist, but he felt it was deserved because all species and subspecies were equally inferior to the humans of Thay) and the others were being slowly but surely pushed back. The elf, Xan, was helping where he could with spells of protection or to bolster morale (of course it was not much use because he was an Enchanter and even the very Zulkir of Enchantment was a miserable fop, useless in every sense, an opinion Edwin had no issues thinking very quietly while several thousand miles away from him) but he was doing what he could. And Edwin had, briefly, considered doing the same.

Then he had remembered that he did not particularly care if any of them lived or died, and begun to say a certain level of gibberish while waggling his fingers whenever the elf looked at him, while preparing to attempt to make a run for one of the tunnels the skeletons had torn open, followed by fleeing to the first ladder to the surface he could find, and then fleeing outside this godsforsaken barbarian city and, hopefully, return one day at the head of an army of Thayan undead to kill every living thing in it, especially any survivors of this repulsive group.

With the advent of this grand scheme, he had begun considering ways in which he might do such a thing. He had a spell which coated his humble robe with a layer of magical armor, but the blades of the undead knights were enchanted as well, and Edwin was hardly a tumbler to dodge such things, nor a wall of Rashemi meat to absorb them. He could summon a small menagerie of beasts (a skill in Conjuration that he had deliberately hidden from the upstart elf mageling who thought himself Edwin's 'leader,' purely for spite and to push forward his inevitable betrayal of the imbecile), but nothing, at the moment, which could be trusted to protect him against both a small army of skeleton warriors and his own disposable 'allies,' who would certainly turn on him immediately in the manner of the barely-sentient animals they were.

A finger bone, still coated in a thin layer of Shar-teel's blood from where she ripped it out of her filthy rippling thigh, clattered on the slime-covered stones under his feet. If the creature even noticed it had lost the digit, it showed no sign, just continuing to hack its filthy blade at her neck with all the finesse of a rabid animal.

And of course, one mustn't forget that this retreat is on a rather sensitive time limit, he thought with the intense distaste of one who has never seen anyone hack at anything else, and found the entire action incredibly barbaric. Perhaps if I layered myself with defensive enchantments, I could just run through the swords? A Stoneskin would probably last long enough, and it isn't as though anyone will truly be paying attention to-

Me.

Something cold washed over him, like his head had suddenly been immersed in ice water, and when it was pulled forward, the world was seen through a fog; the sewers had not physically changed, but his perception of them was blurred and muddy, as though that brief chill had left a film over his eyes. What is…

Improved Invisibility, Vocalize, and finally Domination. As a fellow connoisseur of the darker Art, I thought perhaps you might enjoy learning how I defeated you before you even knew I was here, Semaj thought, through the telepathic link the spell of Domination forged with its victim. I wonder, are you a dignitary of some sort? I wonder if some Thayan embassy would pay for your corpse. Or, rather, what little will be left of it. You know, might just have to stick to a piece of unique jewelry.

Now, for my first command: I believe you should kill all your friends.

Nothing happened. Edwin stood stock still, silently raging but unable to show so much as a sign of dismay on his face. Further down the tunnel behind him, his form still blurred from the remnants of the illusion that had allowed him to sneak up on the group without issue, Semaj blinked in confusion. After a moment, he rolled partially-transparent eyes and sent out a second command.

I believe you should kill everyone in the group you are currently traveling with, regardless of your friendship or lack thereof with them. Idiot.

Edwin, his mind roiling with repressed indignity, reached into the arm of his robe for the small dagger he habitually carried in the event some inbred foreign baboon ever managed to reach him despite his incredible magic. He was not terribly adept in its use, but even a child was quite capable of striking at an enemy that was not moving and was only two steps away. And so, with this in mind, Edwin took those two steps, and slid the small weapon between Xan's third and fourth ribs.

It was not a large blade, but it was wickedly sharp and obviously poisoned (who didn't poison their weapon, really? Buffoons). The elf whirled on him, eyes wide with a mix of shock, agony, and resignation, as Edwin withdrew the blade and drove it back in a few inches to the left. Xan looked like he very much wanted to say something, and it was probably going to be quite biting, but he seemed to be having trouble doing anything other than crumpling to the floor. He turned toward the larger group, and began to weave a pattern in the air, his eyes locked on Jaheira, the only real healer they had.

Semaj, looking out through his eyes, nodded in approval and ordered the dominated mage to call up the most destructive spell he knew. A fireball, perhaps, or even a Cloudkill if the dolt knew something so advanced, something that would leave the magic-resistant undead mostly untouched while wreaking havoc on the overwhelmed party. Yes, in this case, chaos was the ideal…

"FRIEND ELF! MINSC COMES TO YOUR AID, AND THE COWARD WHO STRIKES YOU FROM BEHIND SHALL FACE HIS BERSERKER FURY! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

option?

And that was when Semaj learned that he had no idea what chaos was.


Acherai's first thought, once he was past the pain of the flames tearing the top layer of skin from his face, was to make a break for it. He had two spells of Invisibility memorized for the day, and just one would be enough to get him halfway out of the cavern while the rest of his 'party' held Tazok and his zombies. Honestly, the only one of them he held a real emotional connection to was Viconia, and that was more about lust than any genuine affection. He would miss being sarcastic with her, and certainly her love of power was a grand aphrodisiac, but she was also quite mercurial in her tastes and it wasn't as though there weren't other attractive women in the world. A mild affection was not worth dying for.

Besides, he was fairly sure that if he stayed and risked his own life to protect her, he would also lose what little respect he had earned from her. Better to flee and perhaps see about a resurrection later when he could arrange the resources and locate a suitably amoral cleric.

But, to his own surprise, he realized almost instantly he was not going to do that. That was what the old Acherai would have done, the sneak-thief making a pitiful living in the streets of a city best known for being conveniently located for caravans to pass through, living day to day trying to scrape together magic based almost entirely on the fact he had some childish perception of it being 'special.' An Acherai who dreamed of power instead of actually seizing it, who didn't fully grasp the idea he had a destiny.

Well, Acherai had a gods-damned destiny. And he was not leaving this cavern without Sarevok's head on a pike.

Instead, he turned to the drow in question, threw her the healing potion he had been saving for an emergency involving himself, and said, simply, "Start praying again."

He then reached over to Coran, pulled the burned and dazed elf to his feet, and said, "You. Get out of here, get to the shadows, and find the central temple! There must be a mage or a priest managing this disaster, and if we want to get out of here alive we need them dead. If you try to run away, I will find you."

"What are you…" Sephiria began.

"Questions later!" Acherai snapped, pointing a crystalline blue wand over her shoulder. She felt the magic effect more than saw it, a ripple in the air cold that passed by her head and left a thin layer of frost clinging to her hair and the right side of her face. She did not stop to question why he had done that, instead whirling and bringing her sword up in a slash at…

Tazok's blade slammed down on hers, and she had never felt an impact like that, not even from Sarevok in their two interrupted duels. The monster might not have been her vicious brother's equal in most ways, but he was strong, matching her blow easily and holding her in check with an ease that no blade she'd ever met had matched… And even more disturbingly, as she looked into his massive, fanged grin, blood and foam dripping from the side of his mouth, she realized he was doing it with one hand.

Unfortunately, she realized this because the second, dinner-plate sized palm clamped down on her face and began trying to twist her neck around until it snapped.

"Again?! This thing again?!" Imoen squeaked, her first arrow already away and a second nocked even as she watched it pierce barely a quarter inch into the ogre's hide, not even far enough to stick into the arm that was trying to twist her best sister's head off. She had not been happy to meet Tazok when it had almost bitten her head off in the Iron Throne tower, and now it had a damn sword and it was trying to rip Seffie's head off and gods above she needed bigger arrows or maybe to learn some magery…

"Back, all of you, and guard me as best thou can!" Dynaheir snarled. "I grow frustrated with barbarians of late."

"Seffie is…"

"I. Said. Back," the witch said, motes of silver and crimson light glimmering between her fingers as she murmured something under her breath that made Imoen's skin crawl.

And it was then that Imoen began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the reason that Dynaheir did comparatively little compared to the rest of the group since they'd met her was that (and she was considering this a theory for the moment) if she routinely let loose her real power, she would have probably killed most of the party because they were in the way.

Dynaheir raised her hands, the heels of her palms pressed together and her fingers extended outward to form a fan with her palms. The red light between her fingers went fully silver, then a harsh, almost painful white like the worst winter Icewind Dale had ever seen. And then, well…

If the wand in Acherai's hand had released 'ice', what Dynaheir's spell created was just cold. Pure, brutal, punishing cold so intense that Imoen, who was standing to Dynaheir's side and not even close to where she was targeting, could feel it through her hood and traveling cloak, like she had stepped outside into a harsh winter at midnight.

And so, she couldn't really blame Tazok for screaming when what looked like a wave of rippling air and mist, which she would later realize was the water in the air freezing as the Cone of Cold passed, slammed into his flank. Frost instantly roared up the entire left side of his body, solidifying into a layer of ice so cold and thick it seemed black in the dim lighting of the cavern. There were flecks of red barely visible beneath it, and with a sick feeling in her stomach imoen realize this was because the ogre's thick hide had split under the cold, exposing bloody muscle that had instantly frozen as well. His grip on Sephiria loosened (of course it did) and she fell to her knees, gasping for air…

And swung her blade in immediately at the ogre's frozen left leg.

Imoen tried very hard not to throw up as a chunk of frozen muscle flew past her head, and she would later be very proud she mostly pulled it off.


"I loved you, once. When I was capable of such a thing," Sarevok said. "Still, in honor of that faded emotion, I will allow you one chance to atone for this treachery. Bend the knee, right now, and go kill one of my siblings. Both of them are here, as you can probably tell by the distant screaming and explosions, but I am nothing if not generous; you need only bring me the head of one. Return to me before day's end with a bloody Bhaalspawn head, and all is forgiven. You will not merely be spared, but once again be part of the glorious future I am building."

Tamoko smiled sadly. "You're lying."

Sarevok didn't even bother to reply, merely moved. Had Tamoko not seen the subtle tensing of his legs, she would never have seen it coming; despite his bulk and seemingly impractical armor, Sarevok was nearly as fast as he was strong, and she had seen more than one opponent brought down with the first blow simply because it landed too fast for their eyes to follow. One moment, he was fifteen feet away and seemingly calm, the next he was a blur and his sword was slashing in at her neck.

Her shield was already halfway up before he had taken a step, and the Sword of Chaos slammed home into the metal disc on her arm. It was enchanted, of course, for both lightness and strength; she was the (ex-)lover of one of the wealthiest men on the Sword Coast, her gear was all of the finest quality. While small, her shield could stop an ogre's club dead, and she knew this because she had done so.

Sarevok's blade hit it with such force she thought she felt a bone crack, and the magically strengthened metal bent slightly inwards along the edge of the sword, black sparks burning along the edge of it as the shield's magical aura began to buckle under the power of the divine weapon. On the first strike.

By the time she even realized this, the blade was already whipping back for another swing, aiming low at her flank, and she had little doubt that Sarevok was aiming for a weak spot in her armor; he'd had the suit commissioned, he knew every hinge, every lighter plate, every space where a blade might slip between the metal. But by then, she had already begun to release the spell she had been calling to her mind since the second he had begun moving.

Her shield arm pushed out to the side as she stepped into his swing, ensuring that even if he didn't manage to stop himself in time the only thing that impacted on her armored shoulder would be Sarevok's foream, and her open palm to release a magical missile into the eye-slit in his helmet, aiming to the single glowing orb still remaining within it. Not one of fire or lightning, which she knew his armor would largely repel; she knew very well what limitations the suit had, power of Bhaal or no. A fist-sized globe of poison, leaving a pale green mist trail behind it as it erupted from her palm, slammed home into Sarevok's face at the speed of an arrow. The huge man leaped backwards with that same almost impossible speed, his arm raising to block as much of the liquid as he could… which was specifically why she had chosen a liquid. The thick sludge struck his outstretched hand and burst like a balloon, thick poisonous gel splattering across his face and breastplate and almost instantly semi-dissolving into a gas that flooded around his face.

She heard a hacking cough from somewhere in the cloud; the divine poison would kill an ox, but she was not fool enough to assume Sarevok had taken anything like a fatal wound from any single spell she had the power to beg of her gods. Before he could get some semblance of his balance back and go back on the attack, she stepped forward again and swung her mace in for the center of the cloud.

She hit empty air, and realized almost instantly what a mistake she had made, just before Sarevok shot back forward through the poison mist like a striking snake, slamming the gauntleted, and still poison coated, fist into the side of her head.

Hard.


You see, what Edwin (and through him, Semaj) had failed to grasp, fundamentally, was that Minsc was not stupid.

… Okay, no, Minsc was stupid. But he was stupid in an extremely specific, extremely focused way. It was not so much that he could not solve the problems he encountered in life, but that he only had one way to solve problems: smash his head against them until they were not a problem anymore. And it was not that he had no grasp of the world around him, as he often appeared to, it was that his grasp of the world was focused through several very specific rules that he would not deviate from. These were, in order of importance:

1) Minsc's Witch must be protected.

2) Boo must be guarded, to preserve his wisdom for future generations.

3) Minsc's friends are small and squishy, and they must be defended, and if they should fall must be Avenged, for Justice. 'Minsc's friends,' here, were defined as 'anyone in Minsc's presence that was nice to him, or at least mean in a way he didn't notice.'

4) Evil must be squished.

5) If at any point the world that Minsc observed did not match his perception of these immutable laws, he should engage in his one and only 'problem solving method.'

And so, even as Minsc was fighting valiantly to hold back the skeleton warriors from his squishy elf friends (and the even squishier Thayvian that Dynaheir had politely asked him to refrain from crushing to death until such time as larger concerns were dealt with), his unique view of the world meant that he was the only one of the party to regularly put his own life in danger to regularly check on the safety of the seemingly-safe rear line, because they were small and squishy.

And he saw Xan, his favorite of the squishy elves, the funny one, the one who he felt Boo loved most of all, fallen to the sewer floor.

His enemy's filth-coated sword slammed down on his shoulder, biting deep into his armor. He did not notice.

The creature leaned in, wrapping a skeletal hand around his neck and beginning to squeeze with inhuman strength, the bony hands digging wells of blood from the thick muscles as they sought to just tear through flesh to reach the bone beneath and snap it. He did not notice.

Nothing mattered to him, in that moment, but the fact that he saw a Comrade fallen, struck down by an Unseen Foe that even the repulsive Thayvian seemed to fear, and that Minsc needed to come to their aid.

And so he went Berserk, because it was time for Minsc to solve problems in the Minsc way.

Berserking was not just the act of getting angry, though that was certainly part of it. A big part of it. The most obvious part. And Minsc was very good at getting angry, no question! But to the people of Rasheman, the art of the Berserker was sacred. It was a specialized technique that required training, focus, and ritual to master to its fullest extent, and a true Berserker was a respected leader of soldiers who fought as a part of Rasheman itself, in touch with the spirits of the land and channeling their fury against all invaders. Any warrior could move with greater strength and speed for a time when bolstered by anger and adrenaline. A Berserker of Rasheman used that battle-rage as a gateway to tap the power of their spirits and their homeland to truly become stronger and faster.

And in the case of truly great Berserkers, those with the greatest power to draw upon that well of sacred energy, larger.

The reanimated Deathbringers could not truly feel fear. They were empty vessels puppeted by a distant wizard, more like machines than the living unholy warriors they had once been. But the one attempting to crush Minsc's windpipe with its bony hands might, might have been perceived to have be somewhat taken aback when its grip was broken by the fact Minsc's neck was now much thicker and a solid eight inches higher off the ground.

It was certainly taken aback a second later, when Minsc's sword slammed in so hard that it went completely through the creature's guarding hand, its helmet, and its skull in rapid succession. Because Minsc was stronger. Minsc was faster. Minsc was more hardy, Minsc was bolstered by the fury of his ancestors, Minsc was the mightiest warrior this fallow land had ever known.

Unfortunately for everyone present, Minsc was also no longer capable of telling friend from foe and would charge at anything that seemed even slightly hostile. On a proper battlefield, the psychic directions of the Witches and the pre-battle ritual preparations with his fellow Berserkers would have kept him directed toward the enemy… but this was not a proper battlefield, and he did not have any of those things.

And so, when he turned to look at everyone present, his skin red and steaming in the cool air of the underground passages, flecks of foam at the corner of his mouth, and screamed, nobody cheered.


It was that moment, as a piece of his flash-frozen thigh as big as his fist was ripped from his leg by a broadsword, that Tazok could officially say he had Had Enough.

He was, and proud to be so, the most dangerous thing he had ever met outside of Sarevok himself. Half-ogres were typically smaller and weaker than their fullblooded cousins, and had to make use of their more human brains if they wanted to survive, but from the day he had ripped his father's heart out and eaten it as a teenager, Tazok had been aware he was special. Stronger than a pure ogre, smarter than most men he met (well, they ended up dead, so he assumed), he had the best of both worlds. He was a gale force barbarian who had bounded together an army of humans and goblinoids into a working coalition under Sarevok's will, and in six damn months not one of those ruthless, amoral cutthroats or bloodthirsty monsters had started a fight with any of the others.

Because Tazok said 'no,' and every Chill hobgoblin or Black Talon thug knew better than to get on Tazok's bad side. Coldblooded, heartless killers to a man, and none of them would say a damn word against him. It had been a good life, and he had enjoyed it. Until these people.

Since these people, these elves and humans and dwarves and vermin had entered his life, it had been a parade of disgraces. Far from respecting the power and intellect that had propelled him to Sarevok's right hand, they tormented and humiliated him with seeming impunity before vanishing off to whatever Hell had spawned them, again and again and again. He had been shot, stabbed, burned, struck by lightning, killed, and lost Sarevok's favor. And now, frozen.

And that was enough. That was just Enough. Even if he had to die a thousand times and rot in every single layer of the Abyss one at a time, he would see. These. People. Dead.

The world fell away from Tazok in a red, bloody cloud as pain and fury mingled to destroy whatever mind he had left. These lower beings insisted on treating him as an idiotic ogre to be mocked and belittled and humiliated?

Fine. They would get an ogre.

With a roar that would have made a full-grown bear turn and run for its cave, he slammed his forearm into the young paladin before she could draw her blade out of his ruined leg, smashing her with enough force to leave her breastplate bent inward against her ribs as she was sent flying into one of the crumbling, smoking walls and finally collapsing it, the noise and motion in the streets redoubling the moans from the undead swarm that continued to close in on them.

The moment she was out of sight, Tazok forgot she had ever existed. There was nothing in his mind but a hot red fog and the need for raw meat sliding down his throat, and all he could see or recall was the prey directly in front of him, their fear filling his nostrils and drowning out the rapidly numbing pain in his leg with primal hunger and a bone-deep hate for anything living. He charged, faster than either his bulk or his half-severed leg should have allowed, leaving behind a slick pool of gore in his wake as the ice fell from it in chunks and blood began to flow.

Long before he ever noticed it beginning to make his mind hazy, he was among them, and then the hate was all he needed to stay alive.


Imoen was not strong, particularly in comparison to her goliath of a big sis, but she was really fast, almost as fast as the elves the group kept picking up (and that was starting to get annoying, because how was she supposed to show up if the team was suddenly made of natural pointy-eared acrobats?). So she had roughly enough time to realize that this was more important overall, because Tazok was essentially an avalanche that had come to life and started growling at them.

So when the two mages raised their hands, bolts of magic roaring out at the charging ogre, Imoen just frickin' ran, and this was why she was spared the just intensely cringe-worthy thing that happened to everyone else.

Acherai was the closest to him and the first to get stepped on, the line of fire he conjured setting Tazok ablaze once again, and ensuring that the ham-sized fist that slammed him into the ground was on fire now. He couldn't even scream; the only sound was the barely audible cracking of his ribs and the 'chuff' of all the air being driven from his lungs by the force of the impact.

Dynaheir was the better mage, and her spell was the better weapon. A full bolt of lightning like anything you'd see in a midsummer thunderstorm, lighting up the dim cavern like the height of noon and unleashing a thunderclap that left Imoen half-deaf.

If Tazok noticed the smoking black hole that was all that was left of his chest, he did not notice. But Dynaheir definitely noticed when he turned his attention to her, and in a single move so smooth it seemed unnatural to see, backhanded her across the face. Some enchantment she had woven upon herself flared with magical armor at the blow, and it probably stopped her head from coming completely off.

It did not, however, stop her head from snapping way too sharply to one side as the woman spun around three times before slamming to the floor, leaving a line of blood beneath her head as it slid along the stone roughly. She did not move, and Imoen was unable to tell if she was breathing.

And Tazok turned to face her, so she didn't really have a chance look closer.

The ogre didn't even bother to roar, and Imoen wondered if he couldn't; there was a pretty decent hole burned through his chest at this point, and his left leg was more bloody meat than limb at this point. Imoen was no doctor, but she was fairly sure he should be dead and was held up entirely by pure hate at this point.

Given that the hate was aimed at her, it wasn't the best feeling in the world.

He leaped, giving Imoen a solid view of the muscles in his ruined leg squeezing before he was halfway to her in a single bound, that gigantic fist opening to crush her skull with a single squeeze. And in that split-second, time seemed to freeze as Imoen considered her options. She saw, in that crystalline perfect moment, three choices.

One, get to the streets before the ogre killed her, and try to outrun it. There were two ways out of the ruined building; the wall behind the ogre, and the doorway crammed with a frantically praying drow and a small army of zombies and skeletons fighting each other to the re-death. Neither seemed like a promising exit.

Two, fight the ogre. At close quarters. With her, what, he dinky little shortbow and the knife in her pack. Yeah, that wasn't even an option.

Three… do something stupid and pray that in the resulting chaos she came up with a better plan.

Hells, why even ask the question? That one might as well be our team motto.

So Imoen did the stupidest thing she could think of: Lowered her head and ran toward the charging monster, screaming in a combination of absolute nerve-shattering terror and a vague notion that an adventurer ought to scream a war cry when they charged. It wasn't much of a war cry, but it was the best she could manage.

She felt Tazok's hand brush the top of her head and tear free a few strands of her hair (and resolved to cut her hair shorter the next time she could, even if she needed to do it herself with a bloody hatchet) but her sudden forward motion had thrown off his aim, and by then she was doing the second stupidest thing she could think of: throwing her legs forward, and using the momentum of her suicidal idiot charge to slide between his legs.

… Well, sort of.

In plays and novels of adventure, sliding on the floor was a really easy thing that all heroes could do. In the jumbled panicky mess of Imoen's mind, what had happened was that she not only slid through the monster's legs and confused it with her catlike grace, but she managed to pickpocket him in the moment of passage and got a potion that would heal Seffie to do the fighting for her and give Imoen sparkly-white teeth.

What actually happened was that her leggings got caught up on the rough stone floor and kind of made her more skip along the floor than slide, making her slightly higher off the ground than she was planning to be, and the top of her head kind of sort of slammed into the ogre in a spot that would have left her extremely scandalized if she had understood what she was doing. And that impact, rather naturally, caused her to lash about in confusion and try to grab at something that would help stabilize her a bit. What she grabbed was cold, wet, slimy, and smelled even worse than what her skull had just slammed into.

Imoen did not fully appreciate her position at this point, because she couldn't really see it with her eyes closed in instinctive terror and disorientation. But essentially what she had done was headbutt an ogre in the groin, and follow this up by plunging her hand into his gaping leg wound and kind of twisting and then squeezing at whatever she could grip in there.

There are certain pains that no amount of rage can overcome, and quite frankly this was two of them.

Tazok howled; not roared, howled as the red haze of hatred was pierced by an arrow of absolute pure agony. He lashed out more like a beast trying to remove a stinging insect than the implacable monster he had been, tearing the girl free from his leg and hurling her aside in an effort to just get her away from him. As she flew, he saw something red and glistening and slick in her hand that his half-broken mind was vaguely aware he probably needed inside him, but it was suddenly so impossible to care. The fury had become pain, his limbs felt like lumps of iron attached to his joints, and even the few steps to kill the brat felt impossible. He dug deep, pulling up as much hate as he could manage, trying to make those few steps…

And then they stopped feeling impossible and became impossible, as something entirely different began to weigh him down.

He looked down at the scent of rot and a new, dull pain running up his good leg, to see the half-shredded, legless zombie attempting to bite into his ankle. The sight of it was almost comedic, until he tried to pull his leg free from the crippled thing's grasp and found he was barely strong enough to do it… and another one latched onto his back. He spun, smashing it aside with far less force than he had planned, and found three more behind it that immediately lunged at him, one grabbing at each of his arms and the third digging its rotting hand into the cracked, moist burn on his chest, as the one below him latched onto his leg yet again, and more began to shamble up, piling on, hundreds of pounds of quite literally dead weight on his limbs that could barely lift his own body anymore…

Viconia smiled, her holy symbol gleaming with a black fire that seemed to make the room darker rather than shed any light on it. "Night Mother, we revere you for your generosity. As all things one day die, as loss and oblivion one day claim us all, I thank you for giving me the tools to deliver another poor soul to the void in your name," she said, and her tone reminded Tazok very much of the way ogre shamans sounded just before they sacrificed some poor soul in the dark wilds on an altar of bones.

Tazok lay, unable to move, barely able to think, the scent of rot and the cold weight of the dead overwhelming him. Unable to see anything but the Drow's glowing eyes and the undead swarming around his prone form, sinking their teeth in. Unable to feel anything but their teeth and claws ripping into the holes already punched into his hide And as one began to latch onto his throat, trying to work open the jugular, he had his final thought, piercing the veil of fury and exhausted pain that had left him a barely sentient animal in all other ways.

It would be a bloody elf.