Facing Reality

I recently bowed out as DM from a D&D game I've been running on and off for about 3 years. I also have cut out just about everything in my life that isn't work or family.

This isn't because I don't want to write, or that I don't enjoy posting my stories, it's because I am now a partner in a small law firm, and we are swimming upstream in an effort to pay our bills.

I've tried to write, and it comes out worse than flat. I'm perpetually exhausted creatively, and I have to face reality.

Until my firm really takes off down the runway, I need to focus everything I can on it in order to provide for my wife, my two daughters, and my son.

So...I'll attempt to return on or before 4/1, but no promises.

Thank you for reading and for hanging in there.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

WOW. major geek alert. How many of you saw this story about the cave system in Viet Nam and didn't think there were drow elves there or something?

We now return to your regularly scheduled geekiness. Story updates later in the week.

Chapter 10 – Part 18

On the 19th of Zarantyr, 994 YK, they returned to Blood Crescent. The way back was quicker than the way there, especially with so many riderless mounts. The treasure they bore was minimal, not much had been locked away in the old temple, but they’d burned the bodies of their comrades so as to prevent any gain to the Wastes’ carrion-eaters.

They’d even burned Nebly’s body, accounting that the flayer had forced the gnome to betray everyone, and it hadn’t been the little fellow’s own choice.

Watching the pyre, Orphan had deeply regretted his juvenile jealousy.

Of course by any standard he was a juvenile.

By the 21st of Zarantyr they were on a ship bound for Yrlag.

Chapter 10 – Part 17

The flayer twitched and writhed wildly, trying to escape Orphan’s grip. It could not, the forged had it perfectly pinned. It tried to use its powers to teleport away. It could not, the pain from the pressure on its neck and spine from the monk’s wrestler’s grip was too much.

So the flayer mentally called K’gah to its side.

Which Orphan had been counting on.

Timing the turn perfectly, the warforged pivoted and threw the flayer towards the charging gnoll captain. The great blade spitted the flayer, and the alien thing squawked and spit forth purplish-blue blood from its tentacled maw. K’gah gasped at what he’d done, then fell to his knees, grasping his head in pain as the flayer shrieked anger directly into the gnoll’s brain.

And since the locked gauntlet kept K‘gah from dropping his blade, the immediate effect of K’gah dropping to his knees was to peel the flayer open like a pig at market.

Orphan sidestepped the shaking sword point and grabbed the mortally wounded flayer. He threw the thing from Xoriat at the wights. Weakened, the flayer fell to them quickly, falling to the ground as it wasted away from the wights’ energy drain.

The wights stood up over the flayer’s corpse, eyes glittering with malice.

Of course since their touch couldn’t hurt the warforged, it only took him about forty seconds to pound them into motionless paste. The torn corpse of the flayer didn’t even last more than three seconds after it rose.

Orphan waited, listening for anything else coming out of the tunnel. Nothing. The only sound was Delegado’s soft breathing, and the grunts of K’gah as he sat up, armor clinking.

“You’ve got your mind back?” Orphan asked, eyeing the gnoll captain carefully.

K’gah grimaced and nodded. “I must apologize,” he began. “It was – there was a fog in my head, and you were the enemy. I was…” He trailed off.

“No apology necessary,” Orphan said. He moved forward and helped K’gah stand up.

“My men,” K’gah said.

“All dead,” Orphan told him. K’gah’s face crumpled in real pain, and then the gnoll captain strode forward to kick the flayer’s corpse.

Orphan used the opportunity to go to his half-orc friend and take Delegado’s waterskin. Splashing water woke Delegado up, and his any tears that might have come when he learned of the deaths within his House.

Chapter 10 – Part 16

Death and carnage awaited his eyes.

For a moment, Orphan’s mind was seized by terror as he thought Delegado was dead as well, but his friend was still breathing.

The half-orc bounty hunter was the only one in the chamber who was.

Well technically the flayer breathed, but Orphan would remedy that. The flayer hadn’t heard the warforged monk, concentrating intently on controlling the few remaining thralls in the tunnel – who apparently were being finished off by something that had been protected by bursts of fire and lightning.

All dead. Everyone who came with them. Save for Delegado.

And K’gah, the gnoll would be coming around the corner with his huge sword in moments.

Perfect.

Orphan dashed forward, leapt, and slammed both feet into the flayer’s back. The thing shrieked in pain, even its resistance to wounds couldn’t wholly block out a double blunt trauma to its spine.

Orphan fell atop the thing, and snaked his arms behind its inhuman neck. The flayer wriggled and tried to bring its tentacles to bear, but Orphan was behind it. “Not so tough when someone has the drop on you, eh?” Orphan crowed.

Shuffling footsteps made Orphan glance to the tunnel. One of the gnolls was shambling forward. Its flesh was white and desiccated, and it was accompanied by an undead thing that had eaten its life-force and changed it.

Wight, the headband noted mechanically. Damage resistant to non-magical attacks. Drains life force with a touch. Creates spawn. Warforged likely are immune.

But a sleeping Delegado wasn’t.

Chapter 10 - Part 15

Orphan got to the top, and began taunting K'gah some more. He'd surmised that the flayer hadn't exactly turned the gnoll into a drooling puppet, there was something of the gnoll captain's real thoughts still active.

And no gnoll became a leader of its kind by letting challenges go unheeded.

"Afraid of heights!" the warforged barked in orc. "Afraid to climb!"

K'gah snarled and came up, slowly, stumbling in his heavy armor. "I will end you!" the gnoll captain growled.

Orphan waited until K'gah was halfway up, then tumbled past the startled gnoll with a handspring. K'gah spat an oath and turned to follow, but Orphan was already in the temple before the gnoll even managed to turn around.

Chapter 10 - Part 14

Orphan ducked, dodged, and generally quit attacking. His sole focus was on parrying the lethal blows of the gnoll captain. Not for the first time he wished deeply for the defending kama that he'd lost to the rakshasa under the Wastes.

He kept darting backwards, trying to find a way to bolt around K'gah, but the gnoll captain was too canny.

Orphan then turned and fled, following the tunnel down, then left and up. K'gah couldn't move as fast as him, and from the air patterns he'd felt, the monk was sure that the tunnel would lead him back and around to the main cavern they'd first entered. The warforged figured he had to take the flayer out before K'gah would come to his senses.

Of course if the flayer was giving mental commands to K'gah, the gnoll might have doubled back as well to lay an -

Orphan ducked as he popped out of the tunnel, rolling forward in a ball, and K'gah's sword swished through the air where the warforged's head had been.

"Ambush," Orphan muttered, jumping to his feet and bolting to the left. K'gah was again between the monk and the temple chamber. Rather than go to the right, back outside, or behind him to the tunnels, to the left was a rock outcropping, a fairly steep incline up, maybe 8 or 9 feet.

He had to get K'gah to follow, to move away from the doorway to the temple.