Chapter 18 - Part 6

“There is a strange pace to their attacks,” Sentry noted, blasting more dead bodies with fire. “Irregular. Like a pipe whose flow is manipulated without pattern.”

Orphan nodded. He wasn’t sure how long they had been at it, but Sentry had run his magical reservoir of spells dry twice, so it had been a good while. The coutal still had some left after the latest wave, an odd mixture of fiends with half-melted bodies and a large, bull-like thing with smoking red eyes and jet-black skin. “They have been pacing us, studying us.”

“They are so pitiful compared to the ones I battled when I was alive,” Sentry said contemptuously. “Now, where were we?”

“Discussing art, and how it comes from unconscious philosophy,” Orphan said. The conversations he had been having with Sentry were most interesting. If not for the constant threat of attack and the shadow of terror that hinged on the fiends acquiring the rod that Sentry was protecting, Orphan would be enjoying himself. “But, I think we ought to go up the tunnel, somehow. They may be gauging us. And they still have all those crossbow bolts.”

“I have told you that I cannot leave this place, else I would have gone up there long ago and eradicated them,” Sentry reminded the warforged. “I am bound to the rod. And if you go up there, the kyton will crush you beneath the chains that it controls.”

Orphan nodded, recalling that the kyton was the chain-controlling thing, and the hunched demonlings were dretches. Sentry knew his opposition, and he had filled the warforged in on the various strengths and weaknesses that the creatures had. “The kyton, it serves twisted law, axioms set to further evil, correct?”

“Yes,” Sentry said. “And the dretches are creatures of chaos and evil. You wonder why they work together. The simple answer is that they are afraid of the kyton, and perhaps also of who the kyton serves.”

“This kyton has had some interesting allies,” Orphan noted. “And I think he is simply trying to keep us busy. I suspect he is keeping us occupied while he prepares some final push.”

“Orphan, neither of us need to eat or sleep,” Sentry said. “The fiends need some of that. The kyton is trying to keep them busy, keep them from fleeing, perhaps. That is all. Let us turn our discourse to more savory topics.”

Orphan went along with Sentry’s insistence, but his heart remained troubled.