DAY 249 cont...
I would have dearly loved to have found out what the process was that was at work in this room. It was such a shame that we were just going through the Black Rift like a wave of death.
I watched as more bodies appeared and disappeared. One appeared on the bier next to Basil and he snatched a coin-purse from it before it disappeared again. The shadows popped up once more, but Sylvia saw four of them off again before they could do any harm.
Yli put an arrow through one of them and Irritator finished off the last one with a Magic Missile.
After that I looked at the crude map I had been drawing in my journal of the Black Rift and came to the conclusion that we only had one tower left to check out. Since this was probably where the dragon was we prepared as much as we could and Basil sent in two 'Waves of Wolves' ahead of us.
The large chamber we came to did indeed have Despayr in it, manipulating the shadow weave in the middle. Up and down the walls were cages that held the bodies of people that looked only partially alive. Some sort of force was being drawn from them. It was all very confusing and pretty terrifying, I could see the people were wasted away, but still just alive, twitching from time to time. Some of them even groaned some words, either pleading for freedom or death.
The dragon took to the air, thus avoiding the dire wolves and the battle began. There was no roof to this tower, but he only went to thirty feet or so. Drashnag was the first to arrive in the chamber, right behind the wolves, and shot up at Despayr with his bow.
The dragon started swooping about the place, doing flybys, and chomped one of the wolves in half. Since they were not much use on the ground I summoned two dire bats and sent them in. The dragon killed one of them as well, but they were serving their purpose, keeping it distracted while we all arrived. I was terrified, sure we were going to die here, but we had a lot of fire power as we all piled in and did battle.
Yli and Shump arrived and started shooting. Most of their arrows just bounced off its scales, but some dug deeply into its hide. Drashnag was the first to land an arrow on it, claiming first blood.
I chanced my arm on a Baleful Polymorph spell and it very nearly took hold, which would have ended the battle right there. For some stupid reason I didn't go for a flying creature. I'm sure if I'd decided to turn it into a raven then that would have been that! Well, we'll never know, since the dragon managed to shrug off the spell and the fighting continued.
Basil and I started throwing Earth Bind spells at it, hoping that one would eventually catch. It attacked with its breath weapon, a cone of shadow shards that really injured everyone that was unlucky to get in the way of it.
We all, well most of us, got caught in one of the showers and in a slight panic I carved a hideout into the cave wall with Stoneshape and hid in there with Irritator. Sylvia was badly injured but was too bulky to follow us, so ran as fast as she could back to the library. Thankfully the dragon didn't pursue her, or she would have been dead for sure.
I turned into a badger and came back out when the dragon turned to other targets. Basil tried a Flame Strike but it was shrugged off. I could see Despayr was injured. It had a despicable way of healing though. It used its breath weapon on the prisoners and slaughtered a row of them.
This had the effect of healing everyone in the chamber.
Basil summoned three hippogriffs and sent them in to take on the dragon. They harried it to the ground and wonder of wonders one of my Earth Binds finally landed!
We knew it was all over then, but no mercy was shown. Irritator blasted away with his empowered magic missiles and the other charged in with their melee weapons.
It was a Hypothermia spell that I cast that finally killed the poor beast off, a huge icy blast that killed it stone dead. Thus was the end of Despayr.
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