Chapter 4 – Part 8

Ois sat up, her stomach settling, perspiration covering her body and reality came back. The naked changeling staggered to her feet, trying to get her bearings.

She saw the stormstalk a split second before its beam hit her square on.

Electricity sizzled through her nerve endings, burning her skin. She felt staggered, slowed down. She recognized temporary nerve damage as her reflexes slowed.

When you are in a place that you cannot defend, you run, and you attack what evil you can reach, an instructor had told her once. The Silver Flame does not expect its paladins to defend the indefensible, when evil needs to be attacked elsewhere.

Before the start of the Great War, the attitude of the Silver Flame theocracy to paladins retreating had not always been so broad-minded. Necessity adjusted ecclesiastic thinking faster than debate could.

She ran, or more accurately lumbered, towards the creature. She didn’t have time to go hunting for her sword. It was free, which probably meant Thomas was dead, and she had to go next door to tell Delegado. Betting that it had no teeth or stinger to make an opportunistic attack on her as she ran by it, she trundled through the doorway and turned left.

She was right about the lack of physical defenses, but the tiny aberration was able to recharge before she could get into Del’s room. Again her flesh sizzled, and only clenched teeth kept her from howling in agony. Again her limbs gre leaden, the damage to her coordination slowing her tremendously.

Thomas’ cabin was to her right. The wood was buckled, and strange lights flashed from around it. Delegado’s door was ahead and to the left. She hoped he was there.

This is your sin, she told herself hysterically. You wanted him to be your lover, to find you nude, and initiate the love-making. You made yourself a harlot, and the Flame withdrew its protection from you.

She scrabbled at the door, finally getting it open. He wasn’t in. She saw a rumpled bed, some bags, rolled up, and the body of the warforged, lying as if at rest. She tried shutting the door behind her.

She was not fast enough. The next bolt of electricity hit her left leg, just under her buttock. She twisted, the leg giving out, her body no longer responding. Choking out pain, she fell, slamming into the deck, paralyzed with electrical damage to her nervous system.

And as she fell, her hand fell on the warforged’s foot.

Even unmoving, she could summon the Flame. She laid on hands through the merest touch. Though the construct side of Iron Orphan’s body cut her efficiency in half, she sent every scrap of healing that she could into the warforged’s body.