Clash of the Planes

	A crackling shield of black flame erupted around Gillint’s body as he sprang towards deKestral, still singing at the top of his raspy voice.  deKestral wove around his body slam attempt and landed six lightning blows against his face and neck.  Her hands darted through the flame to strike the blows.

	The music faltered for an instant, as Gillint fought to maintain it, but he managed to keep going.  deKestral’s body twisted under a vicious back-kick and simply fell into line behind him.  She slammed her open palm into the base of his spine, and the raw power of her blow drove the Dance Lord to his knees.  To her surprise, however, he turned it into a roll and came up swinging, scraping his black claws over her legs.

	She hissed in pain as he managed to rip the skin open on her left leg and nearly layed the right one open to the bone.  Blood spurted out onto the ground.

	Linus saw the wound, but he was too surrounded by satyrs to help.  He slashed his blade high and juked left as one charged him, claws out, and the fey dropped to the ground, dead.

	It hurt inside to be killing somebody that was obviously pregnant, but Linus knew that whatever emerged from the satyress’ wombs would not be a person.  He simply blocked out the pain and resolved to deal with it when his soul was in less immediate jeopardy.  Linus caught a set of claws on his shield and slammed its clockwork face into the attacker.  “Check the time,” he growled, and then he was through the gap.  Rather than run to deKestral, however, he simply spun on his armored heel and slashed at an angle.  A stunned-looking satyr collapsed, opened from hip to shoulder.

	The last three satyrs looked at each other uneasily, then slowly moved to circle him again.  One charged and tried to grapple with the Paladin, but Linus simply skipped back a step and brought his armored knee up into her midsection.  She doubled over and vomited, and Linus slammed his boot down in her neck, popping it like a bubble.  The other two charged as one.  The first, a young male, sprang high, clawing at Linus’s eyes, while the woman lunged parallel to the ground, trying to take Linus’ knees.  Caught off-guard, Linus managed to twist aside so the diving satyress went right past, but he caught the jumping one’s blow right across the face.

	“ARGH!  Piece of Gnoll SHIT!” Linus snarled.  Images swam in and out of his sight as he tried to draw focus.  He swung his shield in a tight arc, pushing the clawing satyr back, but then he dropped to his knees as he felt the diving one scramble over to him and dig its claws into the back of his leg.  Something pierced his armor, and a horrid burning sensation erupted in his left side.

	Linus fell and twisted, suddenly bringing his feet up under the one clawing at his knees.  He rolled partway onto his back.  She squealed in surprise and he kicked his legs, sending her flopping up into the air.  She came down on the edge of his sword, and though she hadn’t landed with enough force to cut deep, she still screamed as the magic weapon sliced into her flesh.  Then Linus whipped the sword out from under her with both hands, laying her ribs open to the bone, and with another quick slash, Linus beheaded her.

	The last one slammed into him from behind, ripping at Linus’ head.  The warm summer air caught the sweat on his scalp as the satyr ripped his helmet off.  Between that and the pain from the claws across his cheeks, Linus swooned for a moment.  He threw himself backward with all his might, trying to crush the satyr, who rolled free.  Then Linus felt and heard a tearing sound, and a wave of utter pain, as the satyr managed to rip one of his dreadlocks away.

	Squirting blood from his scalp, Linus managed to rise to his knees and thrust both hands forward, catching the satyr by the arm.  He pulled, and the satyr slid up against him.  The astonished satyr grabbed Linus’ gauntlets with his own claws, but it was no use, the magic in them was simply too much.  “Lord, help!” the satyr managed to bleat.  It was too late.  Linus drove his hands into the satyr’s face, crushing the bone back into his skull cavity and killing the last member of the tempt immediately.  Suddenly, a blob of darkness under the table lurched free and tackled him, sending him sprawling.  Linus reacted by instinct, driving his armored fingers into the narrowest part of the blob.  Ichor jetter out as he popped something’s eyes, and he heard a horrid scream in Abyssal.  He focused on it, and the darkness fell away to reveal a tiny Quasit demon with Linus’ hand through its head.  Linus clenched a fist and whipped his hand, and the corpse spun away into the trees.

	Linus slowly stood up, drenched in blood and gore, some of it his.  He fumbled his sword and shield back into place with shaking hands and looked around.  The slaves were staring at him through the bars of their cage, some cheering, some simply shivering in animal misery.  The cow had caught fire on the spit, and was filling the clearing with noxious smoke that smelled disconcertingly good to Linus – he hadn’t had a square meal in over a day.

	Blood poured from the rip on his scalp and the claw slices on his cheeks as he spun around, looking for deKestral.  Gillint was still on his feet at the other edge of the camp, but he couldn’t see deKestral anywhere.


	Vleria deKestral wove and spun around Gillint’s waving claws, landing a hundred tiny blows on the Dance Lord.  Linus was in trouble, she saw, but she had to deal with this first, and killing was what a monk did best in close quarters.

	The Dance Lord was still singing his wicked song, in Abyssal no less.  She wondered for a moment if he was even aware of his Yeenoghu taint, but discarded the question.  He was clearly too far gone to save.  The music was pressing at her mind, at her nature as an elf, but she was ignoring it as best she could.  If it had been true satyr music, the product of the Dance Lord untainted, it would have been a very different story.

	She slid beneath a vicious claw swipe and landed four rapid staff blows to his ditigrade legs, then skipped away from a retaliatory strike.  deKestral swept aside a wave of scorching black flame, sending it down to the ground and igniting the fallen cages.  She suppressed a gasp of pain as he followed the wave of fire with a crude side kick that she didn’t manage to deflect.

	She stared at him, placid-faced, as she took a long step back out of his reach.  He was putting on a good show, but she was hurting him.  His movements were slowing, and his Abyssal fires were slightly cooler, in the way that a campfire is cooler than a blast furnace.

	However, her own wounds were adding up.  She was quite confident she could defeat him eventually, but it would only take one slip to lose.  As Gillint rose to his full height and began singing his song again, she heard it pressing on her mind.  She shuddered internally at the power of it.  If her soul wasn’t resting comfortably in the arms of her Mistress, she probably would have succumbed by now.  She drew strength from the fact that her true self was sleeping peacefully in Sehanine Moonbow’s darkness and drove the music from her mind.

	Gillint flung a wave of flames at her, and she sprang up into the hanging gibbets above, then cast a surge of shadows from herself.  The shadows swallowed the flame within and burst into mist.  The blast of fire vanished, and she was gone.


	Linus levelled his sword and set his teeth.  “Die, Gillint,” he hissed to himself, and braced to charge.

	“Look out,” a pitiful voice whispered behind him.  Linus looked back to see one of the slaves pointing out elsewhere in the clearing with tears pouring down her face.

	Linus looked and saw the earth twitch and buckle.  “The mouths are here,” the slave managed.

	The bloodied Paladin gasped and flung himself at the buckling spot, then thrust his blade deep into the mound.  It shrieked and exploded, throwing bits of ichor around.  Linus quickly scrambled to the next site and lanced it too, but as he moved to the third, a clawed hand burst from the ground before he could reach it.  Linus stabbed anyway, adding the power of a Smite to the stab, and the clawed hand fell away, but it was too late.  The ground all around him erupted and burst like pustulent flesh, and Maw Demons emerged.

	“Not again,” the slave whimpered.

	Linus felt despair clutch at his heart as he saw how many there were.  He had killed three, but there were eleven more climbing out of the dirt and bones of the clearing floor.  “Fuck everything,” he muttered bitterly.

	“Ah, my servants have hatched and come out, Knight Vorth, and shall turn my home into a perfect redoubt,” Gillint said with a dark chuckle.  He gave up looking for deKestral among the gibbets and walked slowly over to where Linus was standing again.  “I do say, your head looks bare.  Did somebody cut your hair?” he taunted.

	Linus sighed quietly.  Ignoring the demons all around him, he spun on his heel, cloak billowing out behind him, and charged without a word.

	“Fine,” Gillint chuckled.  “I shall feast on your guts and send your soul to my master.”  He flexed his horrid claws and prepared another wave of black fire.  “Fall on your sword, little boy, it might be a bit faster.”

	Linus sprang at the mutated satyr and tucked his feet up in the air so that he fell down in an arc.  He dropped under Gillint’s startled swing and thrust his blade forward with both hands.  Gillint looked down in dumbstruck horror as Linus’ magic blade sank into his groin.  “Holy Smite, Thundrous Smite,” Linus chanted, and two concussive waves blasted out from his sword.

	Gillint flipped through the air.  The streaks of blood and holy fire from his ruined crotch mixed with the black fire trailing from his hands like an evil Catherine Wheel.  The satyr slammed into his stone table, knocking it aside.

	Linus stood as the Maw Demons all fixed their eyes on him as one.  “I am the fist of Torm, you mewling animal,” Linus said flatly.  “My weapons, my training… my every fiber is built specifically to kill demons.”  He held his sword before him and levelled it at the dazed mutant.  “If you were still but a common fey, it would be harder to kill you.  But now?”

	One of the Maw Demons sprang on him, but Linus turned faster, and with one sound like the ringing of a bell made of brass and steel, the demon was two pieces on either side of the dusky Paladin.  “You are weak,” Linus hissed.  He charged.