NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/pub/dragons/4174

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 14.4 KB | 257 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!newsflash.concordia.ca!sifon!charnel!rat!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!ukma!asuvax!chnews!hfglobe!hutch
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: [DQ] Kadrys: Going Hunting
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Intel Corporation
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 07:46:15 GMT
Lines: 247

[ADMIN] This is posted for Andrea Evans.

As Miro tells the group that he knows the location of the priestess' rooms,
Kadrys' fangs glitter in a feral grin.  'Well well, Noira, guess who's coming
to dinner!' he thinks with uncharacteristic venom.  'Remember me?  The vampire
you wanted to use for target practise?  Before I'm through with you, you're
really going to wish you'd killed me instead of 'Raelf.'  Red flickers
fitfully, ominously in the depths of his eyes as he silently follows the
greyclad elf.

Soon after, Miro stops at a corridor branch, whispering "We'll split up
here.  I'll get the souljar from the PCD.  Noira's rooms are down the left
corridor, but beware.  She's got a warning rigged: when you step on one of
the stones in the floor, she'll know you're coming.  She'll probably send
some sort of reception committee out to meet you.  Take care."  He draws his
swords, and fades away.

Kadrys changes into bat shape, after explaining that echolocation should let
him hear even silent approachers, and also that in midair he will avoid
triggering the trap.  Lancos and Valgar exchange grim glances then take front
and rearguard positions respectively.  Alita looks happy to have at least one
man between her and any swordplay.  William's expression is glazed, as if
constant exposure to danger has left him in shock, uncaring.  Together the
party advance down the corridor, the bat hovering ahead of them, calling
constantly down the darkened passageway, listening intently for any
distortions in the returning echoes.

The party realises to its chagrin that someone must have triggered the trap
when the bat suddenly darts back toward them.  They all know what this means,
readying their weapons as Kadrys swaps to human form, hissing rapidly,
"Doorway ahead.  Large space beyond.  Many moving bodies."

The questers stand shoulder to shoulder as a horde of zombies shamble toward
them, rotting arms groping toward them, insensible to the pain of their
slashing swords.  Behind the fighting rank, William is heard whimpering
indistinctly, a sound eloquent of abject terror.  Or so the questers thought.
Their opinions are revised as before their astonished eyes, the zombies
tremble and cease the attack.  Their skins bulge and split as weird fungi
erupt and stretch outwards, warped caps unfolding, threadlike roots feeding
with furious speed, corrupting and absorbing the zombies' flesh.  In moments,
only a few shrivelled mounds bristling with fungal growths remain.  The
questers tear themselves away from this bizarre sight, grinning hasty
congratulations to William before racing on into the large chamber beyond.

Noira faces them across the width of the room, framed by her two agony-bound
slaves.  Kadrys hisses as he sees he will be unable to use gaze to bring them
peace again.  Noira has ripped out their eyes, placing burning coals in the
sockets to constantly sear away the amulet-induced healing.  She grins like a
shark and snaps some words of command.  A white marble statue in the centre of
the room moves reluctantly to face them.  A larger-than-life figure of a man,
muscular and handsome, it would be almost a classical artwork, were it not for
the four arms, each gripping a wickedly sharp sword, and the air of determined
resistance against a cruel compulsion, which the stone exudes like sweat.

Kadrys frowns.  'WhoinHell does that thing look like?' he wonders
distractedly.  As Alita starts to laugh, Kadrys realises the answer; he grins
gleefully at the thought of those two together.  Alita's brazen laugh scales
down several octaves as succubus becomes incubus, and lecherous masculine
amusement pounds at Noira.  She howls with rage, "Laugh THIS off, you
pleasurelovers!"  To the accompaniment of her slaves' screams, she orders
the golem to kill.  It raises its swords, slowly, then freezes into place.
Noira wrings more pain from her servitors, but all they can give her is not
enough to compel the golem to actively seek to kill the questers.  They
realise this, and begin advancing across the room.  "Defend me from them!"
Noira shrieks, and the golem is forced to obey this lesser command.

The party fans out to face the golem, but its multiarmed silhouette is soon
ringed with a whirl of flashing blades as its four arms work skilfully in
defense.  It parries the thrusts of Valgar and Lancos without difficulty.
Alita tries to distract Noira, but the priestess has evidently prepared
herself in advance to resist the incubus' attraction.  William looks round
frantically for some earth among Noira's supplies, anything he could sculpt,
but finding nothing starts to sob quietly as the emanations of Noira's
various experiments eat at the fringes of his mind.

Without warning, Miro appears, crying "Krastin - catch!" as he flips daggers
of holy ice into the eyesockets of the suddenly visible skeleton.  Alita and
Valgar, who are standing nearest to the blinded undead, whirl and chop at
it, aiming for the strings of toughened gristle binding its joints together.
Between them, they hack off its arms, finally dismembering it.  But the fight
takes time, and absorbs all their attention.

Meanwhile, Miro has vanished once more.  A moment later, Kadrys catches the
sound of the elf's whispered tones, too low to reach Noira's ears, coming
from the distant corner where William is huddled.  As Kadrys listens, a slow,
sharp smile dawns on his face.  William nods in agreement to Miro's plan, as
Kadrys turns his full attention to the task he has promised himself.

Lancos is plying both his swords with equal skill, but he is unable to find
a hole in the golem's defensive wall of blades.  Kadrys smiles hungrily,
looking past the flurry of arms at Noira, who is chanting, her eyes tightly
closed, perhaps in concentration, perhaps to protect herself against his
gaze.  'Time to...  as poor 'Raelf would have said ...get up close and
personal with that bitch.'  His human form flickers briefly, but does not
change to mist.  He snarls in frustration.  Noira's chanting is re-creating
Raven's earlier forbidding: holding him to a solid form.  He flicks to bat
shape and launches himself at her, but the golem sees him, and the flat of
one of its swords hits his muzzle, pushing him backwards through the air.  He
drops back to his human self as the floor rushes to meet him, lands on his
feet.  The next moment, two more glittering ice daggers fly from nowhere, no,
from Miro's unseen hands, stabbing into Noira's mouth, gashing her lips and
tongue.  For one crucial moment, her chanting falls silent.  Kadrys needs no
more.  His fixation on his intended prey is too intense to miss such a chance.
He cannot be slowed even by the shock of hearing Miro cry out to him in the
long-dead Elvish language known only to himself and 'Raelf.  Instantly, he
flicks to mist and fades past the golem's thrashing blades, resuming his
true self only when he is well beyond their reach.  He stalks silently across
the room, closing on Noira with the inevitability of nightfall.

She abandons the breached 'solidity' forbidding, ripping the thorned symbol
of Loviatar across her face and screaming an invocation of the goddess' power
to turn the approaching vampire aside.  But her goddess refuses to respond to
her plea.

'Hardly surprising,' thinks one calm corner of Kadrys' mind, floating above
the red haze of revenge enfolding the rest of his being, 'if what I think
happened between her and Alita is true.  I'll soon find out the facts...'

Kadrys lunges forward with sudden lightning speed to grab her chin.  Her
concentration is broken and her eyes involuntarily snap open.  The flame of
his gaze reduces her will to ashes and she stands frozen, the symbol falling
from her loosening grasp.  Kadrys pauses to remove the amulets from the necks
of her two slaves.  In the absence of the enforced healing that locked them
within their tormented flesh, their souls depart, freed at last from their
unspeakable agonies.

As Kadrys turns back to their torturer, he feels the entity's gift rising
within him, and he decides to test it.  The power of his gaze alters, tapping
into the wellspring of the priestess' life, feeding her strength straight
into his own being.  He shudders at the force of it.  Its bludgeoning impact
almost breaks his hold on her mind.  He feels very much as would a
professional wine taster, upon downing a mouthful of raw alcohol.  His senses
swim with it, but his sensibilities are revolted.  'Pure unadulterated
power.' he thinks dizzily, 'But no subtlety.  No meeting of minds (though it
might not be a bad thing to avoid _her_ mind).  No...  no pleasure...'

And with that thought, he smiles.  For the first time in too long, the smile
is _not_ a display of wicked fangs.  It is his normal, wry expression.  'Ahh,
that was so close.' he thinks, 'I almost let my lust for vengeance destroy
me.  But now I see the trap behind the entity's "gift" of life-draining by
gaze.  Using such powers, there is no contact with the victim.  No knowledge
of their mind, their soul.  No comprehension of the value of life, of the
meaning of taking it from another.  ...  And it's ironic, that in avoiding the
trap of that "gift", I must fall back on what is, after all, the perfect way
to achieve justice on this disciple of pain.'

He exerts his will once more, not to drain her by gaze, but to reach her mind,
to talk.

>< _RELEASE_ _ME!_ ><

*** Be serious.  ***

>< How in the Screaming Abyss did you DO that to me, you stinking leech? ><

*** Never mind.  I won't do it again.  ***

>< So, you reconsider now! I knew my Goddess would punish you for the fatal
mistake of affronting me! ><

*** After what you and Alita got up to? Count your curses that your goddess
only ignored you just now.  She must be deeply - disenchanted with you for
having such a Good time.  ...  Besides, I said I wasn't going to drain you by
gaze.  I didn't say anything about reconsidering.  Or about freeing you.  ***

>< You.  _Will_.  Release.  Me.  _NOW!_ ><

*** Yes, I will.  From life.
But I don't think it'll be that much of a release.  Remember that jar? The
one you imprisoned 'Raelf in? You really should've smashed it when you took
him out of it.  Still, I think it's poetic justice...  ***

>< Do your worst! My Dark Master will free me from the jar.  Then I will
suffer for my failures.  Suffer and grow _strong_! ><

*** Are you sure? Don't you wonder what your precious goddess will do to you
once you escape and she takes you? Are you sure that you won't prefer to
stay in there? ***

>< _One_ experience of (shudder) pleasure is permissible to one accomplished
in her service.  ><

*** _One_ experience? Well, I have some bad news for you.  I've been reading
your memories, and Alita was hauled off you before he'd had the chance to
finish the job.  But when I take your blood, I won't be interrupted.  You'll
finally know what _pleasure_ can really mean! ***

>< Hah.  Empty bluff.  I have seen Lord Raven at his feeding.  I have feasted
on the delicious agony of his victims.  I look forward to feeling it from
you! ><

*** Think again.  Vampires aren't all the same, any more than people are.
And I am _not_ Raven.  ***

Silently, in the world outside their minds, he moves to stand right before
her paralysed body, encloses her in his arms.  He tilts her chin to one side,
and bows his head to her throat.  Entwined thus, they look strangely like
lovers.  Lost in the pulsing ecstasy of the embrace, as her life ebbs away
she imagines the reaction of Loviatar to a priestess who died of pleasure.
Her last living thought is a prayer, no, just a hope that the jar can keep
her locked away from her deity's vengeance.

As Kadrys drinks, his body, desperately drained after his recent impalement,
is healed and restored.  The sharp, angular lines of his bones are hidden as
his sinews fill out to their normal wiry strength.  He senses the priestess'
mind fading beyond his reach, feels her heartbeat falter and fail.
He wrenches his mouth away from her throat and cries to William "Now!"

William holds up the jar and chants "Calthectos Cortartam Talonis!" The hand
holding up the jar is lowered as Noira's spirit is drawn inside.  William
seals the jar swiftly, beaming with a happiness all too rare for him in this
place.

But their troubles are far from over.  With the death of the priestess, the
golem seems to go out of control.  The defensive parrying becomes a whirlwind
of attack, concentrated on Miro.  Before any of them could react, the golem
drops two of its swords, grabbing Miro with those hands, lifting the
struggling elf off his feet and clutching him to its body.  The other two
swords stab convulsively inward, plunging deeply through Miro's body and
into the golem's own chest.  Locked together in death, the two crash to the
ground.

'No! Miro! The golem - 'Raelf?? Not both of them! _NO_!' Kadrys cries
silently in his mind.  His eyes are wide and dark, pools of sorrow that
cannot be relieved by tears.  Then, a whirl of rainbow colours appears,
converging from impossible directions on the two bodies.  Kadrys has
witnessed such a sight only once before: when 'Raelf's shattered body had
fallen away and disappeared.  He watches with all his being, scarcely daring
to hope.  The dazzling, bewildering colours coalesce, absorbed into the stony
form of the golem.  Miro's body is nowhere to be seen.  Even his blood is
gone.  Kadrys' eyes are riveted to the golem as it moves toward an injured
Lancos.  The vampire tenses, preparing to attack in case his hope proves futile
and the golem is just animated stone trying again to kill Lancos.  Then, he
hears the golem speak in his mind, in a voice he had given up hope of ever
hearing again.

"_'Raelf!_" Kadrys starts to laugh, dry, weak chuckles of sheer emotional
exhaustion.  Smiling widely, he moves unsteadily closer as the golem vanishes
with a FLICK, and 'Raelf is standing once more before them.  He looks if
anything healthier than before: his muscles are noticeably larger and more
clearly defined.  His hair is longer: indeed, Kadrys realises 'Raelf now
looks exactly as his elder self had when he appeared at the Inn.

Kadrys remains silent, quite unable to find anything to say that could
adequately express his feelings.  Not that words are necessary.  His eyes,
his face, speak eloquently of his joy at seeing his friend alive again.