Chapter 18 - Part 15

He stalked the babau, his command of both divine and arcane magic assisting him in his search. The babau was born with its skills and could not improve them because it could not change its nature, but he could, and he did. He touched the gold monocle on his eye, activating another detection spell. The babau’s aura should be leaving traces, but he hadn’t found anything recent. He was convinced the thing was alive, however. Its little hidey-hole was still filled with coin and gems, and had the babau been defeated in combat its living quarters ought to have been looted.

The elf spectre hovered by him, waiting for commands. It had been surprised when he had called it forth with the rod. One of the artifact’s lesser power was the ability to control all but the most powerful undead. Each time the rakshasa had encountered a natural dead zone to his detection spells – a not uncommon occurrence in the natural rock strata of this area – he sent the spectre through the walls and floors to circle around and report back.

A silent ping went off in his mind. Something had tripped one of the silent alarm spells. He frowned, wondering if it could be the babau. It was coming from the ledge that he had levitated up to. He doubted it, but he sent the spectre back there to check it out.

An hour later he had finished checking a series of cross-tunnels that held no surprises, and he was wondering where the spectre was. He caressed the rod, pulling forth just a trickle of its power, and he hunted for undead.

Nothing.

The rakshasa was surprised. The spectre was a powerful undead, untouchable by most weapons. Then the tiger-thing’s brow furrowed. He had left several of the ghost touch weapons alone in cavern where he had drained the dretches. Could something have taken those weapons to use against the spectre?

The rakshasa cast a spell that made it walk faster and hurried back to the ledge. He set his monocle to a continuous detect evil spell. The babau should show up like a fireball’s explosion at midnight. Smaller flickers of evil were ignored, as they were just the atmosphere of the Wastes.

The rakshasa turned a tunnel, and suddenly a human with a worm in his neck and a large battleaxe became visible as it read from a scroll. A light flared behind the rakshasa, and he saw a glowing figure of a large bear, a summoned celestial being whose claws dripped that venomous holy energy, appear and attack him. The bear’s claws slashed against the mage’s armor that surrounded the rakshasa, and the tiger-thing lifted the rod, ready to blast everyone away in a sea of evil.

A figure moved forward quickly, a pronged-fork weapon in its hand. It was another warforged, or maybe it was the same one, and it had been cleverly hidden behind a curve in the tunnel. The warforged did not strike at the rakshasa, instead flicking the weapon’s prongs around the rod, and wrenching it from the rakshasa’s grasp.

“No!” the rakshasa yelled, furious that the precious artifact was so easily taken. He had been hunting it for literally thousands of years, and he was not about to let it go so easily. He raised his hand and cast, easily dodging another swipe from the celestial bear’s claws. A bolt of black, enervating energy shot forth, hitting the warforged dead on.

The warforged ignored it utterly, and began to run back down the tunnel. The rakshasa was stunned. A divination spell that he had cast about a decade ago had told him that the warforged were living beings, and he had thought that the negative energy attack would work.

The worm in the human’s neck spat electricity at the rakshasa, but the tiger-thing’s natural resistance to magicks brushed the discharge off as easily as he would flick a fly. The rakshasa cast a quick dismissal on the celestial bear – which was the only thing that theoretically could get past his natural damage reduction, and ran after the human with the worm, who was already fleeing along the route the warforged had taken.

Coming around the bend, his magical speed easily helped him overtake the human. No, it is a daelkyr-spawn, the rakshasa realized. That only made the matter more delicious, although he did not understand why his detect evil spell had not alerted him to the symbiont’s master, assuming one of the smaller evil pulses had been the symbiont itself.

The rakshasa blasted the half-daelkyr in the back with a spell that overwhelmed the man’s mind, making him stumble and drool. The tiger-thing slashed viciously at the half-daelkyr as he passed, still in hot pursuit of the warforged who had his rod. The warforged moved as fast as the rakshasa, even with the tiger-thing’s enhanced speed.

Two arrows slammed into the rakshasa with great force. The fiend shuddered for a moment in fear before realizing that his innate regenerative abilities prevented any harm from the wounds. Had either the arrows or the bow been enchanted for holiness, the pain would have been incredible. Ahead of the warforged was a large orc with a longbow. Even as the warforged cover over half of the one hundred feet gap between the orc and himself, the orc was withdrawing a sword. A sword whose color became apparent to the rakshasa in the light of the sunrod the warforged carried in his belt.

“Be careful, Delegado,” the warforged cried out, tossing the rod to the orc. “It burns!”

The rakshasa sneered at the pain that the pathetically pious warforged was feeling when holding the rod, and he quickly cast a spell as the orc, or maybe half-orc, named Delegado drew his arm back to deliver the blow with the adamantine blade.

A large hand with tiger’s claws erupted out of the tunnel wall. Formed entirely of stone, the summoned hand grabbed the half-orc, preventing him from delivering the blow. Caught off-guard, the half-orc struggled his mighty muscles to free himself from the grip of the stony hand. And no doubt that he would, but not soon enough.

The warforged hurled a flask at the rakshasa and then withdrew his kama and ran at the summoned stony hand, trying to help Delegado free himself. The flask hit the rakshasa, and a tiny burst of electrical energy singed the tiger-thing’s fur. This astonished him until he realized that it was an alchemical effect, not a magical one, and thus it could hurt him, if not greatly.

He was more concerned about the kama, however. It was the most powerful magic that the warforged carried, according to the monocle on the rakshasa’s eye. The tiger-thing decided not to take a chance.

“We’ll see how you like having things taken from you,” the rakshasa snarled. He mentally activated a ring made of byeshk and dragonshards on one hand, and a telekinetic bolt of force slammed into the kama. While the ring was very powerful, it did not handle things of a larger size with any precision. It had been designed to steal coutal spellbooks, long ago, and it had been useful for other things since then. Now the rakshasa slapped the kama so hard that it sailed out of the tunnel, over the ledge that was some ways behind the half-orc. A second mental nudge tapped the kama until it spun to the right, assuring that it would land in the lava pool.

The warforged called out in anguish, but punched the stony hand, trying to free his friend. The half-orc grunted in pain, and managed with the warforged’s help to shove the fingers open.

The rakshasa tapped with the ring again, trying to rid the half-orc of his weapon as well, but its grip on its weapon was too strong. The half-orc swung downwards, even as the rakshasa charged.

The half-orc’s first blow hit directly along the rod’s side. Despite the strength of the blow, only a minor crack appeared. This terrified the rakshasa, as the rod should be unable to be even scratched. The half-orc’s second strike opened the crack more, and flickering lights danced on the rod’s surface.

“I think not,” the rakshasa snarled, bursting a web of sticky strands around the half-orc and the warforged. The web was a particularly strong one, as the rakshasa had enhanced its magic with years of practice. The half-orc was stuck, and began trying to pull free so as to hit the rod one more time, but the warforged was not, instead being only slowed down.

The stony hand grabbed the half-orc again, and between the hand and the web the half-orc was painfully immobilized. The rakshasa used his ring again, and now the adamantine sword slipped out of the half-orc’s hand, tumbling backwards into more of the web. It finally came to rest a good five feet behind the half-orc.

The warforged charged at the rakshasa, and wrapped its arms around the tiger-thing’s throat. “You will fall!” the warforged insisted.

Even with his air supply cut off, the rakshasa noted the deep scratches and wounds to the warforged. It was the same one from before after all. A swipe of the rakshasa’ claws, and the warforged was stumbling backwards, thrown into the wall of the tunnel. Another swipe and the warforged collapsed in a heap.

“I fall when I choose,” sneered the rakshasa. He looked back towards the orc, who was slowly turning purple as the stony hand began to seriously threaten his ribs. “And I will be able to fix what you have done to the rod,” the rakshasa said, striding forward. “And I will enjoy torturing you for centuries.” The rakshasa cocked his head to one side as he regarded the half-orc. “You know, you look familiar.”

“I humped your mother,” the half-orc said, spitting a wad of mucus at the rakshasa. Something about the half-orc’s face, even through the pain, was off. It wasn’t simple bluster, it was –

A heavy greataxe slammed into the rakshasa’s back, penetrating the magical fields and the thick skin of the tiger-thing. The wound was a grievous one, hitting in a particularly vital area. Even with his immediate healing of blows from most weapons, the rakshasa was badly hurt, and began to bleed profusely. For a brief moment he felt his legs give way until the nerves in his spine reconnected.

The rakshasa turned, trying to recover from the horribly damaging sneak attack that the charging half-daelkyr had delivered with his greataxe. Thomas was moving faster, however, and the raging half-daelkyr gouged the rakshasa across the stomach. Only the rakshasa’s initial resistance to damage kept the tiger-thing from being eviscerated. It was still incredibly painful, and more of the rakshasa’s lifeblood covered the tunnel floor. It awkwardly stumbled to the side, trying to get some room. Thomas whirled his greataxe a third time, but this time the strike was at a bad angle, and the rakshasa’s thick skin and magically summoned armor prevented any more damage.

The rakshasa was terrified. It had been preparing a spell, but the pain crushed its concentration. It had never been this badly hurt since it was a whelp. It tried to scratch Thomas with tiger claws and it succeeded, but the half-daelkyr, now frothing at the mouth, seemed not to notice.

“Thomas,” said the warforged with obvious effort, dragging itself to the webbed half-orc. “The sword. Get the sword.” The half-orc was growling, and shoving the stony hand open with terrific effort. “Break the rod.”

Thomas turned and bolted for the webbing, barely able to focus through his rage. He pushed his way into the sticky mass, slowing down but not stopping, and reached past Delegado for the adamantine sword.

“No!” the rakshasa yelled, casting a small spell now that it could focus his mind again. It had used too much spell ability and had no more for its most powerful arcane spells. A series of four magically summoned darts slammed the half-daelkyr in his back. Thomas grunted, but grabbed the sword and pulled it free anyway.

Thomas could not go far, but he didn’t need to. He turned himself around and stabbed downwards. The rod split, and then made a high-pitched shrieking sound.

A torrent of sensation burst in all directions, temporarily overwhelming the minds of everyone there, the rakshasa included. They saw and felt the pain of dretches, or coutals, of dragons, of other great fiends. Shapes and creatures that they could not understand went by. Somewhere in the rakshasa’s mind it understood that the life force that the rod had captured was now all being released into where such things went when they died as the artifact dissolved, but anger and pain were feelings that washed away any sense of philosophical appreciation.

The stony hand dissolved, no longer held by the rakshasa’s mind due to the overwhelming sensations. Thomas collapsed in the web, his rage prematurely spent, his alien mind still trying to cope with what he had perceived. Even the stormstalk looked disoriented. The warforged was in no better shape, its many wounds keeping it from moving quickly or decisively.

Only Delegado seemed to rally himself, oddly enough, and he managed to act before the rakshasa could rise from the prone position that it could not remember falling to. The half-orc did not try to retrieve his sword or his bow. Instead he grinned as he pulled a flask from his belt pouch.

“Forgot I had this,” laughed the half-orc, flicking the stopper out with his thumb and sprinkling oil onto the warforged’s body.

The rakshasa snarled as it moved forward, his claws flexing. It wanted nothing more than to rip the webbed half-orc’s throat out.

The warforged suddenly rose, and stabbed the rakshasa with the fork-prong thing. Astonishingly it slid all the way into the rakshasa’s side, and the tiger-thing cried out in pain. “Delegado and Thomas didn’t have any more bless weapon oils,” Orphan said. “But it turned out that the kyton was hiding one, he didn’t trust you too much.” The warforged stabbed again, and the rakshasa jumped backwards to avoid being hurt again.

A good and piercing weapon, the rakshasa realized, feeling real terror. He slashed with his claws again, then turned to run.

The warforged dodged the claws, and hit the rakshasa in the back with a flurry of stabbings. The rakshasa ran now, ran from the lesser beings, but the warforged was just as fast as he was. The tiger-thing turned to slash with its claws again, not understanding how it could be losing.

Then the warforged’s weapon went cleanly through its heart.