((At long last...))
As the Margravine rounds on the fog cloud for another attack run, it sweeps up away from the foot of the bridge, elongating toward the open air above the north end of the barracks building, directly across from the triangular conference room. Then the trailing end of the fog cloud pulls in, and the cloud resumes its irregular, lumpy spherical shape. The north end of the barracks is engulfed in the opaque fog from the polished stone roadway of the island all the way to the ornately carved ceiling fifty feet above.
Lord Bane's senses easily pick out the precise locations of the remaining five creatures hovering above the north end of the barracks, and so, guided by the telepathic link, that is where the Margravine's next aerial attack takes her.
As she sails into the fog cloud and brings Dreamheart to bear around her, the fog melts away into a featureless gray, Dreamheart unrefined, and the five come into view... but there are thirty-six, not five. There are nine identical images of four creatures, weaving and overlapping in an intricate, confusing dance. Bane's senses easily tell that most of them are not real, give her the locations of the four real ones distinct from the fakes, and identify the position of a fifth creature that is far too small to track easily by vision; the same problem with Captain Vir as before when she tried to shoot him.
Stranger but expected: They no longer look the same as when she first saw them; most of them have changed into the creatures she saw beginning to form on her first pass. Three are winged creatures in green and blue, much like the colors of Chaos... in fact, exactly the same colors, precise to the very shade and brightness of green and blue as the Maw. The fourth is even stranger. He is a mix of wings in blue and green, and thick muscular arms and legs in red, an incongruous combination of two different creatures in mid-transformation. Most of them appear bedraggled, damaged from their first encounter with the Maw.
No matter; she isn't shooting, doesn't have to target them, and will just destroy them where they stand. Or fly. The Margravine brings the Blue Green Maw of Chaos to bear on them.
The blue and green Chaos flows into the creatures. They absorb it; their blue green feathers drinking in the Chaos and strengthening, the damage vanishing as the Chaos merges with their forms. This is not what is supposed to be happening! It's her Dream, not theirs; they are supposed to DIE!
Unfortunate; unexpected, dismaying, but... No matter to this either. She will pronounce Dictum upon them, and then they WILL die.
But they are waiting for her; she now realizes that they were looking precisely at the point where she emerged laughing from the fog and saw them, and bolts and arrows are already winging their way at her as she tries to wheel and dodge. They close and continue to fire; one of them is firing so fast his hands are a blur. She tries to evade but they seem to track her perfectly... too perfectly. They shoot where she will be. In a trice, the Margravine is full of bolts and arrows, and each one strikes with a hammering impact far greater than any bolt or arrow should. Not a single shot misses, and only a few are minimal enough in impact for her to resist the damage.
Even after DR 10/cold iron or magic+slashing, the Margravine takes 70HP damage from seven arrow and two crossbow bolts. Three of them are too tiny to see, but every one of those still hit with impact she could feel, whether or not she resisted the damage.
The one blue green creature who did not fire an arrow seems focused to the north, and suddenly a very deep rumble of sound arrives from just to the north, more felt than heard, and a slow shockwave rolling through the air tosses everyone, bowling them like tenpins.
Outside the fog cloud, Lord Bane, Gabriel, and the others see a double explosion at the corners of the massive wedge of stone supporting the ramp leading onto the south end of the bridge where it connects to the island. The bridge erupts, sending rock racing toward the ceiling. The underpinning of the foot of the bridge fractures, and the huge pieces of the wedge begin a tumble through the air into the river. Pebbles of stone rattle the walls and ceiling like rocky shrapnel as the ramp disintegrates, and the center of the bridge begins its descent toward the water. The shockwave tumbles Bane and the others too, and the roar of sound behind it engulfs them, followed by a rapidly expanding cloud of pulverized rock dust.
The mismatch of perceptions of the bridge explosion on the link is very curious, but familiar to the Margravine; the nightmarish cascade of events inside her Dream far exceeds the rush of events elsewhere in the Bral compound, which seem like a stately procession by comparison.
The blue-green-red creature is following the shafts to the Margravine, but he loses half a step as both of them are buffeted by the roar from the bridge. His red, massive arms are at the ready with a wickedly curved, double edged scimitar. He too seemed to be anticipating her arrival; it almost seems as if he jumped for her before she appeared.
The double bladed scimitar flickers in the creature's heated attack that leaves the Margravine's clothes and hair smoldering with scorch marks; heat literally washes off of him. He strikes so deeply on the first, second, and fourth attacks, he has to wrench the double blades free from her supernaturally tough skin. The third attack scores her as well. Twist and turn as she might, to evade him, she finds he is flying faster than she is and can easily stay with her.
Deep bass rumbles, smashing sounds of tumbling rock, punctuate the creature's attacks.
As the hot, red-armed creature comes in for the fifth attack, another massive wash of sound and vibration rips the air, and his aim is thrown off. The Margravine finally manages to evade his swing.
Outside the fog cloud, Lord Bane and the others are buffeted again by a concussion followed by another massive blast of sound as the center of the bridge drops into the river and smacks the surface in a twin geyser toward the ceiling, and water pours down from everywhere, washing away the dust cloud in an instant. Water and stone rain down, flooding the streets with a slurry of gravel flowing back toward the river.
With his superior flying speed, the creature swarms all around her, swinging his long, wickedly curved sword from above, below, and all sides in a true three-dimensional aerial attack; he hits again on the sixth, but then he is pelted by a few heavy chunks of rock spinning slowly past him, and he misses the seventh attack. He flows into a different trained attack form which steadies him and two more attacks hit her as well. All of his strikes also seem to have extra weight, much like the shafts that struck her earlier.
The few chunks of rock that hit the creature were just the leading edge of a deluge. A flood of water and rock shards begins to tumble down in slow sheets, a slurry of water and gravel in undulating, Dreamy motion, and visibility drops toward zero.
At last the Margravine manages to elude him in the fog, rain, and shower of falling rock, and she loses him momentarily, long enough to do what she came to do, and leave them dead behind her.
The Margravine was critted three times, on attacks 1, 2, and 4; luckily, because of the symbiotic greenbound pixie, she is immune to the extra damage. Attacks 3, 6, 8, and 9 were hits. Attacks 5 and 7 were misses. Her damage reduction operated each time; she only felt damage from the first four attacks, though all of them had extra weight to their impact, and she was scorched by all seven that hit. Net damage is 45HP, so she's still up.
Finally free of the horrid, scorching creature, the Margravine rights herself. Her fury only seems to have increased, clearing her mind. Then, she shouts one Word.
One Word only, filled with the power of Divine Law, she unleashes in a terrifying shout, right above the enemies, focusing her anger, her hatred, spreading Dream wide so that none escape its area:
!יהוה One of the blue green winged creatures winks out, along with his eight Mirror Images. Bane's senses report that Captain Vir is gone too. The Margravine does not see a dead body, nor does Bane sense the object; the creature is simply gone.
In the same moment, the seven arrows that struck her vanish as well, the three tiny ones and the four that were fired at her in a blur. Only the two crossbow bolts remain, as does the creature holding the crossbow, who seems completely unaffected by the Word. The other blue-green creature who was focused to the north is still there, and so is the one attacking her.
Then the Margravine flies out to rejoin Lord Bane and the rest. The shower of water and rocky chunks lessens and stops. Everyone is in flight and well away from the foot of the bridge, so while some of the biggest chunks leave bruises, no real damage is sustained.
With the images of the battle on the link as Arkesh ordered, two things are obvious to the trained fighters. First, the strange blue-green-red swordsman was expertly trained in 3-D aerial combat. He attacked from above, below, and all sides, flowing easily through forms that would not be effective on the ground but were devastating in the air. Second, like the volleys of bolts and arrows, the near-perfect success of his attacks was not just lucky; the only times he missed were when he was distracted in the act of swinging. He was anticipating her far too much; it was as if he knew when the Margravine was going to feint, and where she was going to move next, almost before she did herself.
Arkesh is grim on the link.
<It's just like what the dossier says is claimed about pirates' battles with the Elven Armada. First the Empress trains her pilots in extreme flying maneuvers that no sane creature would use; they're much too dangerous and can rip your ship apart. Then, they say if she shows up at a battle in person, the Armada ships' spell cannons don't miss. Almost none of their attacks miss. The pirates say it's not magic, but something else. The superstitious ones blame it on a connection she claims with The SpellJammer... a mythical ship that's miles in size, like a small city, and a common sailor's worst omen if even its symbol is sighted. Looks like a winged scorpion. Sometimes you can't sort the foolishness from the truth until you see it for yourself. Now I believe they don't miss.
I don't know of anyone who has bribed the secret out of an Armada crew either. All they'll say is... they claim she never commands them but they'll follow their Empress anywhere, they just contradict themselves. Their loyalty is... ecch. I can't think about it.> Lord Bane has three targets left for his attacks: The green-blue-red swordsman, the green-blue crossbowman previously identified as a Paladin, and the green-blue creature who focused to the north just when the bridge blew up. All three apparently absorbed the blue-green Chaos the Margravine brought, and no longer seemed damaged, to the Margravine, from what she saw. The Sith lord prepares himself mentally, and then charges, silent and deadly, into the midst of the enemies.
Ears still ringing from the concussive burst of sound when the bridge exploded hear very little as the crimson blade slices into the unprepared foes -- nothing but the hiss of searing flesh and then brief screams as the creatures register that they have been attacked moments after Bane disappears back into the fog.
Bane's trajectory takes him first past the two blue-green creatures, which he recognizes from memory as the bearded one with the axe and the being in golden platemail. His two initial strikes aim true, each one powering the lightsaber to cleave his enemy in twain, as he has known it to do so many times past. Both figures collapse in an instant.
Then he is on the strange multicolored creature with the double scimitar, who seems to still be disoriented from the transition out of the Margravine's Dreamheart. Nevertheless the creature survives the first attack from the lightsaber, though it strikes off one of its arms at the shoulder. The wound is instantly cauterized by the crimson energy.
Bane's momentum begins to run out, but he has one final blow left... and with it he removes the creature's head.
Almost immediately the fog disappears -- whatever was suppressing the invisibility is gone. Around Bane are a few spatters of blood on the cold dark stone, most of it tracing the path of the Margravine... and no bodies. The cavern is eerily silent but for the rushing of the water and the ringing in everyone's ears.
