Another dwarf hit the floor, and several more behind him.
“Form and fight!” Connerad shouted to his boys, for what else could he do? More than a hundred were down on the cavern floor, with no way to retreat, and with no further reinforcements coming. . at least, he hoped not.
“Stop them!” Tuckernuck screamed, soaring back up, even as Kenneally came flying down from the landing.
“We have to get them out of there!” the woman shouted, moving in close. Two of the other Harpells came soaring up beside them.
“They hit Toliver!” one exclaimed.
“They broke the ritual!” said the other.
Kenneally looked to Tuckernuck, who could only shake his head, his expression horrified.
“Is Toliver dead?” she started to ask, but the answer came not from one of the three flying about her, but from below, where a lightning bolt split the darkness-one originating in the air above the battle and not the recesses of the cavern.
“Toliver!” Tuckernuck said.
“Fetch him,” said Kenneally. “We have to get the dwarves out of there. Fetch him and fly back up near the landing and prepare to set your feather fall once more.”
“Too high,” Tuckernuck argued. “The dwarves will float for a long while, easy targets. .”
“Do it!” Kenneally yelled at him. “And allow no more dwarves to come down. Not on their ropes and not with your magic. Be quick!”
She flew off then, diving down to the cavern floor. As she moved lower, she only confirmed her idea-Connerad and his Gutbusters were being sorely pressed by monstrous hordes of goblinkin.
And soon to be joined by demons or devils or some other extraplanar menace, Kenneally saw, noting a band of lumbering four-armed, dogfaced beasts moving through the slave horde, tossing aside the goblinkin with abandon.
The woman stopped and hovered, surveying the area, noting mostly the movements of the two Harpells flying down to retrieve Toliver.
“Hurry,” she whispered under her breath, and then, having no choice in the matter, Kenneally began to cast a powerful spell.
Another pea of flame arced in. Connerad and Bungalow Thump dropped to the floor and covered just in time before the fireball erupted, immolating several goblins they were battling and igniting a dwarf behind them.
“Put ’im out!” Bungalow Thump shouted to the others, but all nearby were too engaged in desperate battle to break off to the aid of their burning friend.
“Go!” Connerad told his friend, and he shoved Bungalow Thump along. The dwarf sprang over the burning fellow, bearing him to the ground and rolling him about, smothering the flames.
Behind them, Connerad met the incoming enemy, bracing himself to the charge of a pair of orcs.
But those creatures never made it, caught suddenly by monstrous pincers, to be so easily hoisted and flipped aside.
In waded the gigantic glabrezu. Connerad got his shield up in front of a snapping pincer. He slashed across with his sword, but the glabrezu’s reach was too great and the blade cut across short of its mark.
In came the second pincer and Connerad had to throw himself backward and to the side, executing a perfect shoulder roll to come back to his feet just in time to spin and duck behind the shield as the pincer came in once more.
A familiar voice sounded then, a magical call from above. “Get to the landing area! Now!”
The dwarves didn’t know what to make of it, and weren’t sure the call was even aimed at them, or from where it had come.
Connerad couldn’t begin to react to the command anyway. The demon pressed him hard, pincers snapping all around him. He got his shield up to block one, but the powerful demon pressed in with the claw anyway, and Connerad winced as the shield cracked ominously under the great weight of the press.
The demon held on and twisted and the young dwarf king found himself easily yanked off balance, and thought his life at its end as the second pincer came across for his midsection.
A living missile intercepted it as Bungalow Thump flew into the glabrezu, knocking aside the arm and driving the beast backward. It let go of Connerad’s shield, and the overbalanced dwarf king tumbled back and to the ground.
Bungalow’s cry of pain had Connerad back up immediately, though, and seeing Bungalow Thump hugged in close, the demon’s maw chewing at the dwarf’s neck, he fearlessly charged in.
Connerad Brawnanvil leaped high, both hands gripping his sword for a mighty two-hand chop aimed at the glabrezu’s neck. At the last moment, the demon stood taller, though, and so the cut came in low, driving just below the shoulder.
Not a mortal blow, perhaps, but a vicious one, so much so that the glabrezu’s top left arm fell free, cleanly severed.
The demon’s howl echoed across the cavern, and many combatants- dwarf, goblin, demon, and even drow-paused to consider the sheer horror of that shriek.
The glabrezu threw Bungalow Thump at Connerad, the dwarves colliding and tumbling in a heap.
But Connerad went up and hauled the bleeding Bungalow Thump up beside him. Before the Gutbuster could argue or resist, Connerad shoved him hard and sent him stumbling back to the landing area.
“Ye heared Kenneally Harpell!” Connerad called to all the dwarves. “To the landing area, I say!”
Easier said than done for Connerad, though. The wounded, outraged glabrezu leaped in at him.
“Go! Go!” he roared at Bungalow Thump even as the demon began knocking him back. He knew the Gutbuster wouldn’t leave him. “I am right behind! Form the defenses!”
But Connerad Brawnanvil wasn’t right behind. The glabrezu’s pincer caught him by the shield again, and this time the compromised buckler folded under the tremendous pressure.
Connerad grimaced and growled as the pincer came in hard across his forearm, pressing in through his fine mail. He tried to bring his sword to bear, but the demon caught his arm and held him at bay.
In came the biting maw, and Connerad timed his headbutt perfectly to intercept the toothy jaws with the crown of his helmet.
The glabrezu staggered, and Connerad wriggled free his sword arm and stabbed straight ahead. He felt his fine blade sink into demon flesh, and felt the hot Abyssal blood spurting out over his arm.
Not far from the floor, Kenneally Harpell watched the dwarves scrambling, trying to get back to the landing area-which was easy to locate with nearly thirty broken dwarves lying in a tangled heap.
The woman forced the gruesome image out of her thoughts and looked up, trying to see if Tuckernuck and the others were in position, and with their spell enacted once more.
But to no avail, for they were in darkness too complete. But Kenneally knew she couldn’t wait. She began casting her spell, a powerful dweomer known to only a few at the Ivy Mansion, aiming it right at the dwarves clustered about their fallen kin.
“No, you hold!” Tuckernuck shouted at the dwarves on the landing. He had figured out Kenneally’s desperate plan and knew what would soon be coming his way. “They’re coming back, all of them, and you need to be ready to catch them and pull them to safety! Grapnels, I say! Ropes and grapnels!”
Many dwarves shouted questions back at the flying wizard, and many more shouted curses.
Tuckernuck ignored them. He had to lead the ritual-nothing else mattered. He understood the carnage that would ensue should he fail Kenneally, should he fail the dwarves now.
The other three Harpells returned to him, and he motioned them into place. Clearly injured, Toliver barely managed to get near to his spot diagonally across from the leading wizard, and Tuckernuck wasn’t sure that one could bring forth his part of the ritual.
The dweomer needed four participants.
With no options available, Tuckernuck continued his casting, then reached his arms out left and right, forming his corner of the square. From his fingertips shot tiny filaments of light streaming out to be caught by the casters at those corners, the two of them then redirecting the energy to Toliver.