Chapter 18 - Part 2

“I think it’s after midnight!” Thomas yelled, his greataxe carving through one of the dozens of fiends surging at them. Its ichor, a gruesome, stinking, yellowish fluid, sprayed the cavern walls as it died.

“Your point?” Delegado asked, pumping two arrows into the head of one of the things. They were disgusting, a molten mass of flesh, shapeless below the waist, but they had horrid claws beneath human-shaped heads that wore expressions of permanent anguish. Shapeless or not, they were tough. Until Delegado had poured one of their few remaining bless weapon oils on his bow, his arrows had barely hurt them.

“We lived another day!” the half-daelkyr laughed, swinging back and forth to whittle down another one. More followed right behind it. While they may have been a mindless, oozing bunch, they worked with a rigid discipline and order that reminded Delegado of the giant worker bees he’d fought in Droaam. The half-orc had no desire to see what the queen fiend looked like.

“Joy,” the bounty hunter muttered. He stepped back from a particularly aggressive sludge-body, and fired two arrows at once. Fortunately the things were relatively slow, and it died spastically, twitching at it head was punctured.

“How many more of them are there?” Thomas asked. This was the fifth grouping of them that they had found, and each grouping had been over twenty in number.

“No idea, but this place can hold plenty, I’ll tell you that,” Delegado said. Two more arrows took down another, and then the half-orc drew his adamantine blade. “It seems half of these tunnels and cave are below ground, and the rest reach upwards into the rock of the embankment,” he said as he sliced a pained face and avoided hooked claws. His sword had no blessing enchantment on it, but he was determined to save arrows for now. There were only five of the things left. “Looks like most of the place is empty, working on something below.” He hacked at the thing again, and finally killed it. Four to go.

Thomas took a scratch on his forearm that made him swore in his father’s language. Delegado hated the sound of the daelkyr tongue, but he had tactfully refrained from mentioning it. Thomas’ return swipe gutted the melted flesh thing. He then stepped between two of them and did a double-eight with the battleaxe as they futilely scratched at his armor. Leaking from identical wounds, they melted and collapsed.

The final one hit Delegado in the chest with a lucky shot. While his armor blocked the worst of it, he was sure a bruise formed. The half-orc stabbed the fiend in the middle of its puddle-like torso, and grunted in frustration when it mindlessly ignored the pain and took another swipe at him. The half-orc yanked his sword out and sliced at the fiend, but he only sheared off a bit of its unholy flesh. The fiendish mass seemed to quickly repair itself against a mundane blade, even one made of star-metal.

Even fiendish healing had a limit, however, and when Thomas came up behind the thing he split it into two viscous lumps with one mighty blow. The fiend lost what little form and substance it had possessed, its corpse no more than another fetid pool on the rocky floor.

“Thanks,” Delegado said, procuring a rag from his belt pouch and wiping his sword down. Thomas got out his own rag and began to do the same with the edge of his axe. “Messy things.”

“But relentless,” Thomas said. “You said your dragonmark sense was fading?”

“No, it faded already,” the half-orc told him. “Went longer than it ever has before though, a good ten hours.”

Thomas nodded. “Maybe we should get back to the horses. Unlike Orphan we need sleep, and we’ll need your dragonmark powers fresh in the morning.”

Delegado nodded. “Tell me you have scrolls left that will let us walk without leaving a trail,” he said.

“Not many,” Thomas told him, rustling in his bag. “But some.” He found them and cast them quickly. Delegado felt the stealthy magic fill him, but the did not sheath his sword just yet.

“Let’s go,” the half-orc said. “It’s a long walk back.”

Thomas nodded, and interestingly, so did his stormstalk. Delegado thought that the Khyber-bred thing must not like the fiends any more than he did. Doubtless the daelkyr didn’t care for their underground neighbors around here.

They set back for the magically fashioned cave, hoping Orphan would still be alive in the morning.