Rapidly running out of ideas, Carina keeps her eyes closed, reloads her crossbow and fires again.
Can't risk throwing my bombs into that crowd--I'd just end up hurting the others more than the demon.
Through the haze of his rage, Tanith catches Farrukh's warning. He retreats a step and grabs the dark metaled dagger hanging from Astraden's belt.
As Tanith retreats a step, a bolt flies through the space his head had been in.
Rodrigo sighs, dismisses the azatas, and conjures up the heavy artillery. "Just avert your gaze and blast that thing."
Two of the archons freeze up and acquire a blurry quality, drifting aimlessly in the air.
The other four open fire. Lasers fly everywhere, some rebounding dangerously off the sides of the tomb and the sarcophagus itself. Three, however, strike the demon itself.
Snarling, the demon rushes forward, aiming straight for Carina. "Your chain is mighty. But, I see, only as strong..."
The demon rushes forth and, before she can dodge the unseen enemy, swings up at her torso. One of the spikes impales Carina through the gut. She staggers. "...as its weakest links!"
Tanith continues to be hit in the chest with eyebolts.
Seeing that shit is getting real, and that his azatas are useless against this demon, Rodrigo shifts tactics and calls on his old standbys, the lantern archons.
The archons begin firing upon the demon in concert.
Seeing that he has been ninjad by the great DM in the sky, Rodrigo castes haste instead.
Also, Astraden can now move again. Consider yourself unsqueezed as long as Eben is unconscious.
Astraden is momentarily transfixed by the demon's many stares, but she warns herself against looking, telling herself not to fall prey again. Still winded from the stomach wound, she can only muster the energy to channel Olidammara's divinity, and even that damages her connection to the god. Then, she closes her eyes.
Eben feels consciousness return as healing rushes over him, lifting the overwhelming need to curl up in a ball and shut down.
Back to being terrified out of his wits.
Eben whimpers. And sucks his thumb.
The shock of the sword going through her stomach causes Carina's eyes to open in surprise as the wind is knocked out of her.
Unfortunately, the demon's paralytic gaze promptly takes hold.
Astraden's healing doesn't do much to soothe her nerves.
Farrukh steps over and keeps trying to bash the demon's face into the wall.
The demon resists being knocked into the wall, but does take a couple nasty cuts to the left wing.
When the demon turns away to charge Carina, Tanith swipes at it powerfully with Astraden's freshly blessed dagger.
The big man groans when the demon's eye rays continue to hammer painfully into his hairy chest. Astraden's divine light helps ablate the damage until the shared pain from Carina's injury hits him.
With Carina in danger, hurt, and already in a rage, Tanith calls on his mighty patron once again and goes after the demon with his dagger in a frenzy.
Tanith slashes the demon as it moves by. Astraden's knife, once owned by Tanith's old boss, Balabar Smenk, sizzles as it strikes the Abyssal, porous flesh. A deep gash is left in its side. The demon hesitates after striking Carina, glancing back at the blade. For the first time, a look of fear enters its eyes.
Tanith lunges forward and stabs furiously. This is not his god's favored weapon, but it will do. The blade slices up the demon's wing as it turns around, then skewers the demon right in an eye in its chest.
The demon knocks aside the fourth strike, snarling. "Cruel, hard, chilly steel. Augerric sees—"
Tanith swings upward. The knife cleaves straight through the demon's arm, severing it at the shoulder. The arm hits the ground. The demon stares in stunned silence at the arm, then at Tanith.
The demon hits the ground two seconds after.
Carina collapses to the floor, exhausted and gasping for breath in the aftermath of the demon's gruesome demise.
She turns a venomous glare on the fallen beast, gets up, and starts stomping on the corpse as viciously as she can.
She lets loose a string of words in Infernal. They're mostly invectives.
"Abyssal would be more appropriate, I think." Farrukh says as he opens his eyes and looks around for the Inevitable.
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Carina's language becomes more creative. This time a few words of Abyssal are sprinkled in.
Carina gets a very bloody extremity. The demon's body releases small squeaking noises every third or fourth time she steps on it, like a child's plush animal.
Farrukh sees the kolyarut watching this with interest.
As Farrukh opens his eyes and looks around, he instinctively squints again and hisses in pain.
"Was it always so damn bright in here? Those torches are burning my eyes."
Through the pain, he decides to do a more thorough investigation of teh sarcophagus.
"That was a close call!" Rodrigo exhales. "Anyone want some demonic lovin'?" he continues, holding up a bottle of fiend blood.
One of the archons flickers unhappily. "Master, I thought we talked about those."
Farrukh finds no more traps or tricks on the sarcophagus or around it. Another thing he doesn't find: A lid.
After some awkward shenanigans, he manages to examine the top side of the sarcophagus. Like the bottom side, it depicts the image of a sleeping Wind Duke. This carving's hands, however, are empty, and protrude out of the top. They seem to be carved as if to hold an object.
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Farrukh sticks the Seal in his hands.
Tanith flicks Smenk's knife a few times to shake the demon's filth from its blade before wiping it clean. He spits on its corpse as one final insult and then gives Astraden back her dagger.
He wraps a brawny arm around Carina's shoulders as she finishes her string of extraplanar expletives. "You okay Red? I've never felt you get hit that hard before."
Performing a variety of impressive maneuvers to achieve the height, Farrukh deposits the Seal in the image's hands.
The sarcophagus slowly descends to the ground. A few seconds later, the top of the sarcophagus fades away, leaving the Seal of Law suspended in the air above Icosiol's remains below.
Icosiol's body is nothing more than dust and fragments of bone, but several potent-looking items remain within his tomb:
A heavy platinum ring set with four large, pale blue sapphires and carved with the crisp runes of Law.
A curious fragment of rod. The outside surface is smooth, glassy, and dark, like obsidian. The interior, though, is studded with geode-like crystals. Carina recognizes its significance instantly. Image.
Two swords: A mithral shortsword and a mithral scimitar. The shortsword's pommel is a single huge star sapphire that glitters with electrical energy. The scimitar's hilt is set with six pale sapphires the size of grapes.
Farrukh is, naturally, drawn to the beautiful scimitar, and reaches his hands out to touch it...but stops himself before doing so. He eyes the Kolyarut suspiciously.
"Okay seriously, why are you watching us? You tried to kill us just for being in the temple before, but you're fine now that we've reached the inner sanctum? What gives?"
A familiar mechanical voice rings out from the far end of the room, its source invisible to all but Farrukh. "I am waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
To the others: "Can one of you guys identify what these do?"
The inevitable points first to Eben, then to Farrukh. "Both of you have interacted with the deceased snow weird. I am waiting to see what happens when you interact with the possessions of Icosiol. It will determine my reaction."
"I see. That's...ominous."
"But what the hell, since you're waiting so patiently..."
Farrukh calmly picks up the scimitar.
Tanith positions himself between Carina and the inevitable but otherwise ignores the construct/outsider as he moves closer to the contents of the sarcophagus.
"Well those a couple swords. The curved one looks a lot like yours", the big man offers helpfully.
Farrukh lays his hand upon the scimitar's hilt and lifts it from the sarcophagus. As he does so, he feels a momentary rush of jealousy and anger welling from within the blade. The hilt burns his hand as though white-hot.
The others feel a fraction of this—a sense of extreme unwelcomeness. It hurts just a little, and starts to hurt more. Tanith's head starts to throb with a splitting headache. Carina hears something in her pocket emitting an awful, high-pitched hum that only she can hear.
But just as quickly, the sense fades away. It is replaced with a feeling of acceptance, peace, and resolve. A ghostly blessing settles around the party with a soft sigh and feeling of contentment and support. The headache vanishes. The humming lowers to an almost imperceptible level.
Farrukh finds that the scimitar's hilt feels cool and pleasant to the touch now, as well as tremendously well-balanced. Tanith feels his mind opening slightly, awoken by the faint Auran whisperings of Zosiel's diadem.
And Carina pulls out the object emitting the hum. It is the defunct talisman of the sphere acquired from Zosiel's tomb. She senses that it has been restored to full functioning.
". . . Snow weird? Didn't Eben have a . . . negative . . . reaction to that?"
Astraden checks out the scimitar before Farrukh picks it up, then (seeing no pyrotechnics) takes the time to cast some orisons before she more leisurely examines the rest of the items.
"After this we should bring Robin up. Let him know we're all right."
Farrukh hefts the sword appreciatively.
"It's perfect."
"Well, did you see what you were hoping to?" he asks the Inevitable.
"But the subject elsewhere referred to as 'Farrukh' had a positive one. I could simply slay those of you with undesirable qualities, but an analysis showed that delicate separation bore a low probability of being successful. Additionally, I...this unit determined, mathematically, that the extermination of the majority of this party based solely upon ethical placement would prove...unpalatable."
Astraden is unable to determine the qualities of anything, but they are all definitely magic items.
"And you probably didn't want to get tied up and dropped in a pit again," Astraden chimes in. She's looking somewhere left of the kolyarut's shoulder.
Farrukh hefts the sword appreciatively.
"It's perfect."
"Well, did you see what you were hoping to?" he asks the Inevitable.
"As an emotionless automaton devoid of personal agency, no. However, with Icosiol's blessing, I have no particular obligation to destroy you." It gives something almost like a shrug. "And with Sionsiar's, I have no particular inclination to."
The invisible inevitable bows. "It appears that whatever is happening in this world at present, those items will be needed to help stop it. You have been found worthy of wielding them. I will honor the intent of the contract."
Carina readily fills the party in on the specifics of the rod piece and the busted talisman of the sphere.
"You okay Red? I've never felt you get hit that hard before."
"...I'm kinda shaken up, but otherwise I think I'm fine." She says, her boot now caked in demon gore. "I just felt so damn helpless--I couldn't do much of anything to help..."