Echoes of the Reach

[3.3] | A Dose of Dockside Digging

    "Damn it, these things again?" With gritted teeth, Darius eyed the approaching duskclaws and freed his rapier from its sheath. "Alright, but don't say we didn't try asking nicely!"

    "Less chatting, more smashing, pretty boy!" Focus locked on the nearest duskclaw, Arlo snatched up their hammer and sprinted across the hall. They reeled their weapon back and, crying out in anger, swung it into the creature's side. The impact split against shell plating to draw spurts of tainted purple blood, yet, to Arlo's dismay, the insect held its ground. "Okay. Kinda expected it to go flying when I did that."

    Not only did this duskclaw hang around, but the purple glow resonating in its many eyes seemed eager to return the gesture. It swiped out with its clawed front leg, then shot forward during the backswing to slam its body weight into Arlo's gut. The dragonborn tumbled backwards, smashing their head through a rickety dining table. Loosed from their hands, their hammer clanged against the floorboards, sitting helplessly out of reach.

    Shutting her eyes, Kerensa released a long sigh. "No use hiding and playing coy anymore, I suppose," she said, drawing a string of shadowy sigils in the air. With a snap of her fingers, slithering tendrils of deep red and purple fire burst out before her, burning hot without emitting any light. Her hands swayed with weaving motions, and their lengths spooled into a tangible mass. "Come, my pretty! Mother's calling."

    The necromantic energy fizzled and crackled, yet the shape refused to settle.

    Kerensa tutted under her breath. "Enough slouching, Trumpet. Don't make me come in there!"

    Lashed into obedience by Kerensa's tongue, the flames raged their hottest, then flashed out of sight. Where they had burned, there hovered a short skeletal imp held aloft by a leathery pair of carmine-hued wings. A faint magma-like glow emanated from within its crooked ribcage, the light graduating to exposed pockets of infernal lava pooled in its eyeholes. From its stout head jutted multiple pairs of curved horns, their deep purple edges as sharp as the hooked claws that looped from the creature's digits and wings. Black smoke puffed from the skull's slight noseholes.

    The imp rubbed at his fiery eyes, his drawn-out yawn bellowing off the mess hall walls. "Waist-deep in the middle of a bloody good dream, I was," he said as he stretched out his back, exposing the thick loops of red thread that bound his wings to his skeleton. A glint of reflected sunlight shot into his eyes, and he hissed and hid his face in Kerensa's dress. "You trying to be the death of me? What time do you call this?"

    "High time you got up and did something, precious, that's what," Kerensa answered, pulling her clothing free of the imp's desperate hold. She extended her arm, and the imp fluttered over to perch upon her limb as she gestured to the duskclaw opposite Darius. "Now, boy, see that vile thing there?"

    Trumpet squinted into the distance, his flaming eyes flicking between the creature and the rapier-wielding half-elf. Coiling his long, pointed tail of bones around his waist, he turned back to the necromancer. "Which one d'you mean?"

    "The bug, Trumpet. The one that's dared to drag its hideous no-face into our sight." Kerensa dropped her head into her free hand, then perked back up with a petitioning grin. "What say you and I teach it a painful lesson?"

    A chirpy whistle left Trumpet's dry lips. "We can do that, yeah! I love lessons about pain."

    "I know you do, you adorable little freak."

    Patting her familiar on the back, Kerensa rushed forward with a ball of twisted shadows in each hand. She fired them at the duskclaw, stealing its attention just as a sweep of her arms tore a sheet of pulsing energy from the shadows beneath the tables. As the necromantic blasts bit into its shell, the insectoid creature disappeared under a blanket of darkness, blinded to the imp that flew on a stream of sharp dark purple flame to slice straight through its stinger-tipped tail.