choose your own adventure, episode 23b
KNIGHT SWORD, EPISODE 23B
Both Curtwall and Caius hesitate, looking in the direction you heard your father’s voice.
“Keep running!” you shout, though all your heart wants to find your father. “Keep running…”
No sooner do you shout than your father bursts from the trees.
Or, rather, what’s left of him.
Jerome of Moridun was always a portly man, especially in the last few years, but now he moves with superhuman speed and swiftness, sometimes running on two legs, and sometimes racing along on all fours like a wolf. His face is pale, and his eyes burn with the same sulfurous yellow fire you saw in the eyes of the controlled wolves.
In the eyes of Ulmoch.
A wave of nausea comes over you, and the soulblade starts to vibrate in your hands, the way it did when you confronted the controlled wolves. You realize that whatever power, whatever creature, that controls your father is not really him, that some dark force has made a puppet of his corpse.
Yet that in no way reduces the horror of the scene, and for a moment you stand frozen, unable to move as Jerome races at you, shrieking and gibbering…
An instant later blue-white lightning explodes from Curtwall’s staff and plunges into your father. The blast strikes him with enough force to fling him into the trees, one of the trunks shattering beneath his impact. Yet when the thunderclap fades you hear him screaming curses and threats, hear him promise to kill you.
Your father has become the same sort of creature as the Night Ravens…and no mortal magic or weapon can kill the Ravens.
A black shadow blots out the moon.
You look up and see a wyvern swooping towards you. Ulmoch himself sits upon the creature’s back, a shadow in his black armor, and yet even at this distance you can see the yellow gleam of his eyes, feel the weight of his gaze upon you.
Again Curtwall lifts his staff, and lightning rips out of the sky, tearing into the wyvern with enough force that the beast explodes into a storm of flame. You see Ulmoch plummet to the earth like a comet, his cloak ablaze. It’s a fall of a hundred feet, at least, yet Ulmoch lands unharmed, his sword blurring from its scabbard with the speed of a striking serpent.
Your father leaps from the woods, his charred clothes still smoking, and you hear the tramp of the orcish soldiers charging through the trees.
Curtwall grips his staff in both hands, and you feel the charge in the air as the wizard summons his magic.
A lot of magic.
“Run!” he roars. “Run, now! Get out of here! We’ll hold them off! Go! Go, now!”
Jerome charges at you, but Mourner and Caius move to intercept him, like two dogs trying to fight an enraged bear. Curtwall looses a lightning blast at Ulmoch, but the Night Raven shrugs off the spell, and hurtles forward with inhuman speed.
At you.
You stumble away, trying to dodge, but Ulmoch’s sword reaches for your heart like black lightning…
Then Dietrich is there, Ulmoch’s sword clanging off his massive hammer. Dietrich lands another blow before Ulmoch recovers his balance, and the Raven’s cuirass rings like a bell, a fist-sized crater in the steel. The blow would have crushed the chest of a normal man.
Ulmoch reaches out, rips the hammer from Dietrich’s hands, and kicks him to the ground.
Your betrothed falls with a thump, and Ulmoch’s sword comes up, ready to plunge into Dietrich’s heart.
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