[While on a rescue mission gone crazed, a holy warrior and a rogue fight bandits, demons, and the urge to rip each other's clothes off.]
The mission, rescuing a princess, could be going better.
Séa is an earnest paladin, honest and gullible. Tash is...
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"Eh? That's cryptic." The paladin's back plate deflected a sword thrust and she spun. By luck or the grace of Torugg, her mace hit the offending blade broadside. It broke into shards. When she came full circle, Tash was gone.
She kissed me. Pinch me. Am I dreaming?
The beheaded wight seemed discommoded by its injury. It stretched out its arms and wandered, by all appearances trying to feel its way around. The other three attempted to encircle Séa while the reconstituted yotch conjured a spell in the near distance. The angry blind monster hissed from behind the portal. Worse, shadows appeared in the pulsating green fog that spanned the spectral gate. The shadows coalesced into orc-like musclebound hulks wielding clubs.
"Stay alive." Séa muttered. "Easier said than—"
She became too busy to speak.
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Tash sprinted. As she whisked past the portal, several humanoid creatures emerged. Short and squat, they carried large, spiked clubs in fists that could each displace a gallon of water. But she had no time for that. Her six-legged quarry lay beyond the portal. "Hey, Lizzie!" she shouted. "Come get me! Woo, woo! Hey, you!"
I just rhymed. Clearly, I've spent too much time with that fecking airhead paladin.
The snout of the giant lizard oriented on her. That's so intimidating. I'm prey.
"Yes, you! Come after me, Lizzie! Come on, you mountain of muscle."
It accelerated toward her voice and droned a buzz from a cluster of hornlike scales on its snout. Tash's next shout died upon her lips. Abruptly, her situation came clear. Truth dawned like the chop of a guillotine. Death awaited her. Imminent, painful, horrible death. The enormity of it all overwhelmed all other thoughts and she wailed in despair. Dimly, she realized that she had fallen to her knees. Tears erupted from her eyes.
A tiny, insignificant voice insisted, No, Tash. It's a spell. It isn't real. Run, Tash, run!
She sobbed. Her body pulsed with uncontrollable spasms. Death. Death. Death.
Remember, Tash. Remember the knave that tried to rape you. You didn't fall to pieces, then. You cut his throat and drank his blood.
The monster's footfalls fell like thunderclaps. She glanced up through tear-flooded eyes to see its outline grow, blotting out the rest of the room. Inevitable death.
The quiet inner voice strengthened. Remember Séa, Tashiel. Remember Habrax the furion. She saved you, then. Now, it's your turn. Don't let Séa down. You owe her. Get up, you fool. Run.
A scream ripped from her throat, but it was a scream of rage, not terror. She sprang to her feet. Half blind from the tears, she sprinted. Each time her foot touched the stone floor, the oncoming tremor of the terror beast jangled its sole.
Fly, Tash, fly. Hard right turn. Now behind the vines. Now call out.
On the opposite side of the curtain of vines that tugged at the portal frame, she choked out, "Lizzie! You fecking troll turd. Come at me!"
The monster came. It lunged through the vines. Its scaly snout struck Tash and she sprawled forward. She tucked into a roll, instinctively, but escape seemed impossible. In the next instant, she would be trampled.
But the vines held. Only a few strands snapped. The behemoth's forward progress halted. It roared and thrashed. It hurled itself away from, then toward the stony portal frame. It collided with the stone and a high-pitched crack echoed in the hall. The green radiance flickered.
The strangling grip of spell-induced terror slipped from Tash's mind, to be replaced by a single, imperative image.
Séa.
Be alive, Séa.
The rogue pelted toward a knot of flailing clubs and jostling bodies. Nearby, Ghomarck, Chantelle, and an ashy yotch stood, all conjuring and gesturing. Above the fray, a raven hunted among a sparse cloud of stirges, talons extended. One of the new club-wielding demons lay in a twisted heap on the ground with black vapors rising from its corpse. Another seemed held at bay by a faceful of sparkles. The rest crowded together in a jostling clump. Tash caught glints of silvery metal between dark bodies.
She's still on her feet. Praise luck and all the gods. "I'm coming, Séa!"
A louder crack sounded. The green of the portal flickered out again. This time it did not return to its former ghoulish glory but sizzled and crackled like a sap-heavy log in a fire. The projection of the Roach King faded to cloudy transparency. The terror beast vented its blind fury on the vines, and more of them snapped.
Knives out, Tash targeted a club-wielder at the periphery of the clump surrounding Séa. Ducking low, she stabbed the backs of its thick knees. With a gargling croak, it fell over backwards. The rogue greeted its fall with another double stab, this time to its gristly neck.
With a boom, the portal oval broke. With a final flash, the green glow died, along with the illusory Roach King. Darkness exploded. The only illumination in the hall came from a few burning quasit corpses and Ghomarck's daze spell. The two stone legs of the oval portal frame fell outwards, followed by cracked chunks of the top half. A many-ton column came down on top of the terror beast, whose hisses abruptly ceased. The reanimated wights surrounding Séa abruptly collapsed into heaps of metal, as did the ashen yotch.
One club-wielder's wide mouth dropped open as it realized its exit had just closed. A weary Séa managed to divert its attention with a – for her – tepid smash to the skull with her mace. Tash unspindled her garrote and a threaded it around the neck of the one that Ghomarck had dazed.
The ends of the demons came shortly thereafter.
Silence fell, broken by Séa's and Tash's heavy breathing. The darkness increased until Ghomarck fired up his trusty magelight.
"I can't believe I'm alive," Chantelle said in breathy tones. A raven sat on her shoulder, and she stroked its feathers with a finger.
"My sentiments exactly, milady," wheezed the wizard.
Séa sat with a clatter of metal. She raised her visor and panted. "I'm gassed. Anybody have any water?"
"You do." Tash pointed at the canteen at Séa's waist.
"By Torugg, I do! Tash, you are a wonder. Truly, a wonder." With shaky hands the paladin fumbled for her canteen.
