Holy Opposites 59

	Axio shouldered his way past the others and sprinted towards the charging cultists.  His many stacked defensive spells sent a faint aura of light in his wake.  “BASTARDS!” he screamed.  “RYAIRE JUDGES YOU!”  The front rank of cultists slowed as he approached, with various looks of fear and anticipation on their faces.  He did not slow down as he impacted their front line, knocking one man flat on his ass.  The others charged in his wake, save Doshellas, who leaned back against the outward-opening door to help hold it shut, and fired from a crouching position.  The whole corridor staggered as Kyria unleashed a massive fireball, targeted behind the cultists’ packed front rank.  Axio slammed his sword’s flat against one man’s head, sending him reeling, and then caught another blade on his chest plate.  He bit back a groan of pain and lashed out with a shield bash, knocking one cultist back against the wall.

	Several days of mental anguish over his innocent sister’s fate sprang free from his mind.  He felt his sword pulse with divine energy as he swept it about, smiting and blasting.  Arcs of radiant light leapt from its surface to scatter over the bodies of his targets.

	Things were not going entirely their way, however.  Cavria reeled back from a savage blow, bleeding from the mouth.  Axio himself lurched a pace to one side as a cultist with an enchanted war club smashed it into his already-damaged helm.  He swung at his attacker, who skipped nimbly out of the way.

	Kyria danced from foot to foot behind the others, trying to get a clear line of sight.  Most of her attack spells affected an area, but the fight was turning into a brawl, and she didn’t want to hit her allies.  Finally, she relented and cast magic missiles at a cultist trying to draw Cavria into a grapple.

	Doshellas grimaced as he felt something slam into the door behind him.  The stone would hold, but eventually they would get through.  His heart was pounding.  He was no clergyman like half the party was, but the sight of those helpless children had set his skin crawling.  He wanted nothing more than to rip the door behind him open and lay into the monsters on the other side.  He set his sights on a cultist that had skipped past Suivi and was charging Kyria, and shot him in the neck.

	Suivi kneed one man in the balls and flipped him feet-over-face to land on his back.  He rammed his dagger into the stomach of another cultist, and then screamed in pain as the man he’d flipped stabbed him in the thigh from the ground.

	Cavria could do the math.  They were winning, but barely.  All of them were hurt now, some of them badly.  If the door behind Doshellas opened before they were ready…

	Luanea cast Healing Word, and she and Suivi felt Eilistraee’s loving warmth rush into their wounds, knitting them shut.  The drow priestess caught a swipe on her bastard sword and turned it into a parry, slicing one cultist’s hand off.

	Axio disemboweled one attacker and broke through to the other side of the melee.  He ran straight for the cleric at the back of the pack, swinging his sword at waist height.

	The cleric gipped his holy symbol tight and cast a spell.  Axio stumbled as a wave of necrotizing energy washed over him, but he gritted his teeth past the pain and forced himself to charge.  The cleric’s eyes widened as he realized Axio hadn’t stopped.  He brought up a hand mace to deflect the Aasimar’s charge, but it was too late.

	Axio ran his sword clean through the other man’s armor.  His sapphire eyes blazed under his cracked helm as he bellowed his rage.  “SMITE EVIL!”

	The last of his energy reserves surged through his glowing sword and into the cleric’s stomach.  The man’s tendons tightened as the immense heat blasted through his body, cracking his back and yanking his mouth open.  He tried to scream and couldn’t.  Axio poured all of his divine favor through the weapon, cooking the cleric from the inside.  The older man simply exploded.

	The battle slowed as the rest of the combatants took in the sight.  Axio slowly turned to face the rest of the Baneites.  The shockwave had blown his damaged helm off, and his gore caked his entire front side.  He set his burning blue eyes on the nearest cultist, a bloodied swordsman, and bared his teeth.  “Suffer,” he snarled, and he threw himself on the man.

	If there had been a pre-arranged signal for a retreat, that had not been it, but it was enough.  The surviving cultists broke and ran for their lives, back towards the staircase.  Axio bore his target to the ground and crushed his head against the stone; Doshellas and Kyria brought down another with ranged fire.


	Vorthane’s hands cracked on the psychic control slats on his armor.  The imbeciles.  The utter imbeciles!  Why, WHY had the ambush force fired on the Ryairans before the damned interlopers had walked all the way into the room?  If the man who fired that first shot lived through this, Vorthane promised himself, he would spend several hours – a day! – on the Harness.

	The lieutenant at his side felt Vorthane’s seething anger and wisely said nothing.  Vorthane turned to her, and his eyes blazed with psychic fire.  “Rally the entire armory crew, the portal room guard, and all the survivors from the attack group,” he said, in a voice devoid of any emotion at all.  “Stick some metal bars through the portal door in the main room, so the Waterdhavians cannot come through.”

	“I shall, sir.  Where shall I lead the men afterwards?” the lieutenant asked, sweating heavily.

	“The Grist chamber, of course,” Vorthane bit off.  “We have only numbers to our advantage now.  Amalgamate your men, and the dungeon guards, and attack as one.”

	The lieutenant saluted and ran off.

	Vorthane sat back against the cold stone of his control throne and forced his breathing into a regular pace.  He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer for patience.  He had not lost yet.


	Axio limped back to the others.  His hate had burned out, and now he was just sobbing.  The sheer wrongness of the dungeon beyond was weighing on him now.  His nature made it hard to process, more so than for the the others.

	Kyria wiped blood off his face and gave him a worried look.  “Uh… what now?” she asked carefully.  “The cultists on that balcony will shoot us if we go back in that way.”

	“The portal to the top floor,” Suivi said.  “This cult master can’t have many men left.  We should go around the dungeon and kill the people guarding the main entrance.”

	“Call in backup from the Watch?” Kyria asked.

	“We could.”  Axio tried to assert his discipline over himself and failed.  This entire affair was chipping away at his soul.  “We… yes.”  He took a deep breath.  “My sister…”

	“We’ll get her, Axio, I promise,” Cavria said.  “She’s right there.  We’ll get her.”

	Axio slowly wiped his blade clean on a cultist’s robe.  “Right.  Right.”

	“GUYS!” Doshellas yelled.  He was straining now.  He had his booted feet dug in against the stone tile, pushing his back against the dungeon door with all his might.  “HELP ME!”

	The others ran over past the pools of blood.  The drow hunter had set his bow aside now.  His arms were bulging with the strain of holding the door closed.  “They remembered they had a key,” he grunted.

	Axio reached over his friend and set his superhuman strength to holding the door closed.  Doshellas gasped in relief and stumbled out of the way.  Luanea braced herself in his place.  Cavria kneeled beneath her and lent her fiendish strength to the task.

	The door stopped moving, though Axio could feel the dungeon guards pounding on it.  Doshellas slumped against the wall besides the door.  His muscles were protesting their abuse, and he rubbed his arms to get the circulation moving properly.

	Then he paused.  What was that beside them?  He squinted, and his darkvision made out the shape of a door in the wall that he hadn’t seen.

	In fact, it hadn’t been there.  He felt his hackles rise as he saw where a splash of blood from one of them disappeared where it crossed the outline of the door.  “Uh… guys?” he asked nervously.  He stooped and retrieved his bow.  “This is weird.”

	Luanea looked over from her spot by the door and saw the same door.  “Was that there the whole time?” she grunted.

	“No,” Suivi said certainly.  “It wasn’t.”

	Cavria looked up and felt her heart seize.  Where the others save Axio were seeing a blank door, she saw a wending garden path, leading back from the stone wall into mist.  She looked up at Axio, who returned her look of overwhelmed shock.  They knew what it was.

	“Go,” he said quietly.  “We’ll be right behind you.”

	Cavria stood.  She was shaking from head to foot, now.  She distantly supposed that that was silly.  A goddess in heaven had raised her; even knowing that, she still felt a sense of wonder.  She reached out with one trembling hand, and it passed through the stone.

	Doshellas’ eyes widened.  “What are you doing?” he asked.

	Cavria took a step through the stone and onto the path.  In an instant, her five companions were standing around her, without having moved at all.  Axio stumbled as the pressure of the door disappeared.

	The High Succubus took one tremulous step after another down the path.  Suivi looked around, clearly frightened.  “What is this?  Is this some psychic trick?”

	“No, Suivi, and put your weapons away,” she said.  “This is the best thing that has ever happened to you.”