Chapter 20 - Part 3

Meschashmal flexed his innate magic, blasting darts of force at the demons that flew at him. The fiends had finally found him, and were attacking him en masse with flying demons that were immune to the electrical discharge that Meschashmal was able to freely breathe.

His claws and teeth served him as well as his magic, and his heavy tail collapsed the midsection of a buzzing thing that looked like an oversize fly. They attempted to get him, as did the fiends on the ground, but he had defensive spells as well as offensive ones, and a scaley hide that was harder than marble.

Two fiends rose up with great bows that crackled with fire. Before they could draw and fire on him, he dispelled the magic that kept them aloft. They shrieked curses at his race as they fell to their death.

Meschashmal knew this would not last. So far he was winning, but only because the more dangerous fiends had not yet arived. The rakshasa could come in at any minute, as could terible things that were only found in the Wastes. The great blue dragon could flee, of course, and he might even get as far as the Icehorn Mountains before the rakshasa caught him.

Fleeing, however, was not what this was about.

Meschashmal roared, then dove and shot a line of lightning at a group of smaller fiends that wear bearing packs for the larger ones. The ones that didn’t die from the electricty suffered broken necks after they landed from being tossed in the air by the explosion.

The great blue wheeled about again, using the fear his race inspired to break up the ranks of those fiends that weren’t mindless lemures. Out of the corner of one eye he could see the smudge on the horizon that marked the beginning of the Labyrinth. If he survived for another eight or nine hours, the holy orcs within would be drawn out to kill the fiends, adding to the fight.

And adding to the chaos that served as a distraction for the fiends while the prophesied companions snuck into, and then hopefully out of, the city of Ashtakala.