Part V
Bloody Vengeance

Eddy looked up, re-armed himself, and prepared to open a portal to the Rogue Encampment. Then he noticed the sound of footsteps fading to his left, and realized he was alone in the chamber with Sissy.

“Sissy, where did Saucy go? Back up to the Waypoint?”

They heard Saucy’s shout echoing through the doorway.
“Eddy, I found the stairs up. The Inner Cloister is up here. Come on, it is daylight outside. Follow my voice and the sound of skulls cracking!” Eddy looked at Sissy, who merely picked up her staff and said, “If it moves, it fries.” Then she hurried off in the direction of Saucy’s voice.

Eddy was dumbfounded by the fey mood that had gripped the two women. He could hear the voice of the sergeant at arms back at the temple:
“A disciplined fighting force can handily defeat a frenzied mob ten times its size. A pack of enraged solders fights well for the first charge, and then are spent, easily defeated in detail. Keep your soldiers’ swords focused, and keep control of the situation. Tough? Sure. But if it was easy, anybody could be a knight!”

He was close to losing control of the situation. All thoughts of returning to the stockade to bury Slicer were replaced by a growing fear that there might be another funeral if he didn’t act quickly. He hurried down the hallway and up the short flight of stairs, his fears growing as he heard the Amazon scream “Die, you gravy sucking pig!” and the sound of breaking wood, followed by a rapid series of cracking blows that echoed off of stone walls.

He leapt from the stairwell into a barrel filled storage chamber. Bright daylight entered through an open double door to his left. Saucy stood astride six or seven corpses of dark rogues, burying the head of a broken spear into the midsection of a Yeti while Sissy cracked it across the skull with her staff. The beast fell with a feral moan, and Saucy stepped through the doorway, a manic scream erupting from her lips.

“Come and get your dinner, you black hearted bitches!! I said, bring it on!!”

Sissy stepped forward to follow, only to be pulled up short by Eddy’s voice as he ran forward to grab Saucy by the elbow.

“Hold, Light blast you, you are losing your heads!” His voice cracked like a whip.

The two women turned to regard him with wild, red rimmed eyes.
“The Revenge Charge is great in the war songs,” he barked at Saucy, “but if you remember how they turn out, the hero usually dies. I need you alive if we are to defeat Andariel. Get back in here--NOW!!”

Sissy backed a few steps into the room. Eddy jerked Saucy roughly back into the antechamber and realized with dismay she had gone slack, but was still resisting him. She turned into him, planted her right foot in his chest and pushed him away with a powerful thrust that sent him tumbling over a barrel of rotted apples.
“I’m not done killing yet, Paladin,” she said in a thick voice, “so either lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way!” Turning, a wordless battle cry erupting from her lips, she charged into the Inner Cloister.

Eddy scrambled to his feet, and grabbed Sissy by the arm.
“We have got to get her before this battle rage leaves her surrounded by foes. Come on!”

They emerged into the courtyard to find Saucy kneeling behind a wall, sending arrow after arrow at a pack of giant porcupines. Eddy charged into their midst, while Sissy let loose with a wave of frost. After a short, furious melee, Eddy dispatched the last animal and looked up.

Saucy stood next to a wall, her arrows now flying through an open door. The high pitched gibbering of devilkin was punctuated by screams of pain as her arrows found their targets. Sissy ran forward and slammed the doors shut.
“Saucy, back up, withdraw!” she called, “Eddy is right.”
She backed away from the door, and the three rejoined in the courtyard.

The double doors burst open again, spilling forth a pack of dark imps armed with scimitars. There was no time to organize a fighting retreat. Saucy picked up a javelin from the ground and entered the melee on Eddy’s right, a small shield somehow appearing on her left forearm. Sissy frantically cast spell after spell; it was she who first realized that the slain imps were getting back up and reentering the fray.
“We need to get the shaman, quick, or we will be overwhelmed!” she cried.
Eddie crushed a cold blue imp’s skull, shattering it into a hundred ice fragments, and charged into the Cathedral, scattering dark imps right and left. Saucy threw four or five javelins she’d found on the floor, then paused to retrieve her bow. Sissy followed Eddy, the darkness lit by the firebolts flying from her staff.

Saucy hurried to catch up, running into the darkness to rejoin Eddy. She entered an eerie silence, the noise of battle suddenly deadened. A dull green light gleamed ahead and to her left as she looked for targets to shoot. She saw, and heard, nothing like the skirmish she had just been in seconds before. Hustling forward, she suddenly emerged from that weird stasis into the nave of the cathedral lit by the bright firelight of shaman bolts and the cold blue death erupting from Sissy’s fingers. Eddy crushed a shaman’s skull, while Saucy found herself surrounded in furious melee in a crowd of black imps that had emerged from nowhere.

Suddenly, the sounds of the fight returned to fill her ears with the gibbering cries of the dark ones. A skeletal mage, glowing green, pointed a finger at her, muttering an eldritch curse. She felt her blood chill to the bone. The two handed slash with her bow that she aimed at an imp’s skull slowed perceptibly, and she once again felt time distort as a scimitar slashed horizontally into her left side. Her dodge, slowed by the cold, could not avoid the deadly blade. Hot flame shot up her side.

Cold numbed the pain. Her right hand thrust forward and buried an arrow deep into another imp’s eye socket. She spun on the floor and kicked out, tripping two more imps as she frantically fought to get back to Eddy’s side. He had charged into the crowd of chilled imps and was laying about furiously with his scepter. Sissy was sending glowing blue bolts of ice somewhere to Saucy’s rear when a ball of flame caught her full in the back while she pushed toward Eddy’s side.

She was on fire. All she could feel was a burning all over her body. Her hands and feet flailed violently in sheer defiance, punching and kicking with a will of their own. She floated, so it seemed, into a wooden pew. The sound of combat receded. The grim skeleton-mage shattered into bone fragments under Eddy’s furious assault. The imps fell, and remained on the ground as Sissy poured a stream of fire from her staff. Saucy found her movements sluggish, and fell to the ground, her vision dimming. The right side of her face was ablaze, while the sharp pain in her ribs was replaced by a dull, wet throbbing ache that she discovered was her heart pumping blood onto the floor at an alarming rate.

She called to Eddy, but he did not seem to hear her. He turned, and appeared to run in slow motion to her side. The din of battle receded. Eddy was speaking to her, but she could not hear him. He laid his strong left hand on her forehead. Sissy was kneeling now, robe bunched in her right hand as she applied direct pressure to Saucy’s aching left side. She heard Eddy’s voice as though from a great distance.
“Saucy, hold on, I will get us back to the camp. Breathe slowly.”

A shimmering blue portal opened, and Eddy lifted her in his arms, his words coming out in a thick voice that sounded like “Airhead of the Tamoe Highlands.” Akara would heal her, Saucy thought dreamily, certainly the old priestess had the skill . . .

Saucy awoke suddenly in a cool green garden. She sat up and realized she was not in the Rogue Encampment. She glanced at the snowy white peaks and the tall trees and recognized her home island. Or so it seemed. A voice filled the room, calling her name.

“Archer, what are you doing here?”

A great shining being, whose face emitted a radiance that hid its features, walked slowly toward her.

“You have lost your body, Archer. It lies in a military encampment, beside a mighty warrior. Sisters of the Sightless Eye are singing hymns for your soul. That is what brought me here to find you.
“You have died fighting the Great Evils, but you are not a proper berserker. You are meant to fight with arrow and bow. I am sending your spirit back, Archer, because I have need of you. See that you do not throw your life away foolishly again.
“Rage is the weapon of evil, Archer. You must fight with the discipline you were taught by your mentors. Carry the cold fury of the mountains peaks with you, and let your own fury be tempered by the Spirit of the Great Glacier.”
And Saucy knew no more.

Forward to Part VI >>