Holy Opposites 40

	Axio aligned the bench carefully, stacking it lengthwise on the top of the table.  “All right, I think we’re as set as we’re going to be,” he said.  “When I break the stone, the ceiling may come down, so be ready.”

	“Axio, I don’t think that’s water damage,” Cavria said carefully.  He looked down to where she was pointing, at the spot below where the light was streaming through.  He squinted.

	“Is that blood?” he asked.  It was hard to tell with his black-and-white darkvision.

	“Lots of it,” Cavria said.  Her voice was grim.  “Hurry.”

	Axio climbed up on top of the bench atop the table.  “All right.  Be careful.  I may break the bench,” he said.  “If you three could brace the wood slats of the benches, then that would be helpful.”

	The other three adventurers moved to grip the wood and metal benches to steady them.  Axio hunched over below the ceiling.  He pressed his back against the rotted stone and tested.  It didn’t shift.  “All right, this is sturdy,” he said.  “I’m going to have to try to use divine might to get through this.”

	“Be careful,” Luanea said.  She shivered in tension.  They were so close…

	Axio set his teeth and closed his eyes.  He probed deep into his mind and soul, seeking the primordial bond he held with Ryaire.  He found the glow of her light within himself and immersed in it, just as he had in the store.  He bunched his shoulders and lifted.


	The chair in the ritual room shifted.  The Wire Golem’s tendrils pulsed and spun, coiling up into a bundle.  “Found you!” it roared, and it brought the floor down.

	Axio yelled in pain as the ceiling above him suddenly gave way.  Doshellas grabbed his legs and pulled him clear as hundreds of pounds of stone collapsed all around them.

	Cavria grabbed her glaive and swung as a monster appeared in the cloud of rock dust.  “Wire Golem!” she shouted.  She struck low with her glaive, trying to rip its tendrils away.

	The creature they had fought before had been much smaller.  This thing was an abomination.  It lashed out with its tendrils, catching Cavria across the face and knocking her back.  She stumbled, bleeding profusely, and Luanea lunged at the creature from behind, driving her bastard sword deep.

	“Die!” the monster roared, slapping at Luanea.  She caught the strike on her blade and deflected it.  “DIE!  I shall FEED today!” it rumbled.

	Axio staggered to his feet.  He grabbed blearily for his sword when an arrow zipped out of the dust and scattered off his armor.  He gasped and raised his shield.  “Archers here!”

	Doshellas rolled away and came up with his bow.  He loosed a shot and heard somebody above yelp.  Axio charged into the dust and stabbed deep with his blade into the Golem.  Something caught him about the face and threw him back against the table.

	Cavria forced herself to focus.  There were cultists coming down out of the hole now, hacking with knives and clubs.  She was suddenly aware of how she was unprotected from the waist up, but shook off her nerves.  It was time to fight.

	A cultist charged out of the dust and lunged at her.  She parried his blade with a spin of the haft and brought the pommel up under his jaw.  He staggered, clearly stunned, and she finished him with a sweep of her weapon at neck height.  Another cultist crumpled as Doshellas shot him clean through the nose.

	Luanea and Axio were a shimmering whirl of light.  One or both would duck in and cut, then leap back out of range and cast enchantment spells on themselves.  The Wire Golem struck out at them, sometimes landing hits, but neither looked to be stopping.  The two unarmored warriors were fading back from the others, drawing the cultists away from the Golem.  It was a risk, no question, since they would be farther from help if they took a bad hit, but they were out of options.  They hadn’t been prepared to fight that quickly.

	Doshellas leaped backward and kicked a cultist in the crotch, then ducked another one’s retaliatory swing.  He slashed a metal arrowhead across one fighter’s eyes and rolled away, then doubled over when the blinded fighter struck him at random.  He lurched away from a clumsy swing and brought his bow up, driving his attacker back a pace.  He fired his bow at zero range, piercing clean through his target.  He kicked away from his stumbling foe and rolled towards an empty hallway.  If this one was the same as the last…

	His remaining enemy sprang forward, stabbing with a dagger.  Doshellas dropped his bow and grabbed the cultist’s flailing arm, then used his momentum to toss him down the hall.  The cultist stumbled onto a pressure plate and exploded as burning darts swished out of hidden murderholes.

	The drow hunter didn’t spare him a look.  Doshellas sprinted past the blind man and came to a halt in the middle of the room.  He sighted the two men battling Cavria and fired.  His first shot took the nearest cultist square in the back, and he dropped like a stone.  The other twisted out of the path of the arrow, straight onto Cavria’s stab.

	Axio and Luanea were struggling.  The Golem was whipping its tendrils around so quickly, they could barely get a stab in under its movement.  Axio reeled from a blow to the knees and stumbled.  The Golem saw its chance and wrapped a tendril around his neck, then lifted and slammed him down.

	The Aasimar had already tired himself with his efforts to clear the stairs, to fight the semi-phantasmal Balor, and lift a stone ceiling.  He cried out in helpless pain as the Golem pulverized a bone in his leg with the force of the blow.

	“For Eilistraee!” Luanea cried, and swept her blade under the Golem’s fibrous legs.  It squealed, caught off-guard.  It turned murderous eyes on her, and flung Axio’s body.

	Luanea barely managed to get her blade clear of her friend’s body before he slammed into her.  Her jaw snapped shut, and she groaned in pain as she bit her tongue.  They both went down, stunned.

	The Golem moved to stamp down on them when a glowing arrow tore through it.  Doshellas fired again, entangling the Golem’s leg with the rubble in a blast of magic.

	It roared and detached the hobbled leg, then spun around and flung a loose tile at the archer.  Doshellas shot it with an arrow that promptly exploded, sending stone chunks everywhere.

	That was the distraction Cavria had needed.  She propelled herself forward with a flap of her new wings, driving the glaive up to the spur in the monster’s torso.  It screeched and died.  Cavria felt the daemon gathering its strength to escape and cast her last spell.

	“Protection from Evil!” she cried, and a wave of Ryaire’s energy surged out of her tattoo, just as the blast of power from the Blood Rift washed over her.

	She slammed back into the ground, dazed.  Luanea scrambled up and started healing Axio while Doshellas dropped to one knee, firing at random up into the clearing dust of the hole in the ceiling.

	Somebody inside shouted a curse and ran.  Doshellas strained his ears, but he couldn’t hear more than one set of footsteps in their immediate area, though he was sure that hadn’t been the last of their attackers.

	The daemon exploded out of the Golem’s corpse, leaking blood and ichor.  It howled its rage and lunged at the priestess of Eilistraee.  Doshellas pivoted at the waist and fired, taking the creature in the ear, and it collapsed with a sick gurgle as the arrow lodged itself in the monster’s skull.


	Silence fell.  All four adventurers struggled to rise.  Axio groaned in agony as his fractured bone ground against the tear in his skin.  He suspected his greaves and shin-guards were all that was holding his leg together.  “Up the hole,” he managed.  He laid his hand on his leg and poured healing magic into it, but though it slowed the swelling and numbed the pain, he couldn’t knit the bone back together or remove the shards from the skin.  “Go!  They could be closing the portal right now!”

	Luanea sprang up the pile of rocks and the collapsed table and charged into the room above.  Doshellas was next, vaulting up into the light.  Cavria gave Axio a quick look – nothing Solen couldn’t fix – and followed.

	It wasn’t so different from Nessus.  A blood-soaked room with a single torch greeted her.  There was a chair in the corner, upended and rotting from all the blood it had absorbed.  She charged through the door and gasped aloud in horror.

	There were cells on the walls.  Hundreds of cells, with doors no more than five feet tall, each with a tiny window for air.  Fully half of them had pairs of eyes behind them, children’s’ eyes.

	She swooned.  This wasn’t a laboratory, this was a prison.  Or, maybe it was a laboratory, which was worse.

	“DIE!” a voice above roared.  She heard the clash of steel as Luanea and somebody else started fighting.

	“We’ll be back,” Cavria whispered to the hopeless faces.  She ran up the stairs.

	The altar room was a bloodbath.  There was a cultist pitched back over the patchwork table, bleeding to death, while another was sprinting across the room, trying to escape.  Doshellas was firing arrows into the last one, who was deflecting them with his shield.  Cavria took off at a dead sprint for the door on the far wall.

	The cultist slammed it behind him and she heard a latch clank.  She cannoned into the door, and the latch audibly creaked.  She reeled back and slammed into it again, and the old wood shattered.

	“STOP!” she screamed.  The cultist was leaping from one tile in the floor to another in a random pattern.  He stumbled when he heard her shout, but kept on going.  Cavria snatched her javelin from its clip and hurled it with all her strength.

	It caught the cultist square in the shoulder, and he yelped in pain as it shattered his shoulder blade.  He stumbled to his knees and grabbed at the edge of the next doorway for support.  “Go sod yourself,” he snarled at her.

	Cavria snarled back and raced forward, but her foot landed on a pressure plate.  A hatch to her left, which she had mistaken for another child cell, sprang open, whipping her legs with chains.  She collapsed, and the cultist took the opportunity to flip her off and slam the door.