“What is it?” Vaddon asked without preamble.
“There’s something ahead of us,” Lirra said. “Something big. And it’s coming toward us. I think it’s an aberration of some sort … or maybe many aberrations massed together. I’m not sure. But whatever it is, it’s approaching fast.”
Vaddon looked at her skeptically for a moment, as if he didn’t trust her perceptions. He turned to Ksana, and the halfelf cleric raised her right hand, closed her eyes, and whispered a quick prayer to her goddess.
She opened her eyes. “I think Lirra is right. Whatever’s coming feels like those creatures of Elidyr’s we fought in Geirrid. Not evil in the supernatural sense, but definitely unnatural.”
Vaddon turned in his saddle to face the rest of the Outguard and made a series of silent hand gestures. The men and women under his command-including those who’d only just joined the Outguard-understood the code: We’re about to be attacked. Make ready. Crossbows were raised and swords were quietly drawn from their sheaths. Without a word, the soldiers moved their horses into a circular battle formation so that they’d be prepared for the attack no matter which direction it came from. Lirra and the others did likewise, Longstrider and Shatterfist stepping forward to join them at the head of the circle.
Ranja sniffed the air and made a face. “They definitely stink like the white-eyes and that dolgaunt friend of your uncle’s. Like rotten mushrooms covered in snail slime.” The shifter shuddered in disgust. “I can hear them too. Dozens of them, approaching from all sides.” She cocked her head as she listened more closely. “They aren’t big, but there’s a lot of them.”
Lirra could hear them now as well. Thudding footfalls on the forest floor, harsh, labored breathing, and muttering voices. She felt the tentacle whip’s coils slacken around her arm as the symbiont prepared for action, and the thought-voice whispered with glee: Finally!
Seconds later, the first wave of creatures came at them. Though she’d never seen them in the flesh before, Lirra recognized the things at once, thanks to the briefings Elidyr had given the Outguard on aberrations, the daelkyr, and their servants. These were dolgrims, creatures created by the daelkyr during their long-ago invasion of Khorvaire. To create a dolgrim, a daelkyr took two goblins and fused them into a single being using its flesh-molding powers. The resultant creature was a loathsome thing, three-and-a-half feet tall, squat and hunchbacked, with four spindly arms and no head. Its face was located on its chest, and it had a pair of toothsome mouths, one set atop the other. The skin was oily and white, though a number of these dolgrims bore garishly colored tattoos upon their flesh, as if to differentiate themselves from their brethren. They wore dark leather pants as their sole clothing, and carried four weapons, one for each hand: a morningstar, a spear, a light crossbow, and a shield, though some dolgrim wielded greatswords instead of spears. According to Elidyr, the creatures possessed two brains, though one personality was primarily dominant, and sometimes they held conversations with themselves, which explained the muttering Lirra had heard. While the creatures weren’t particularly smart, their dual brains did allow them to wield all four of their weapons in a coordinated attack, which made them foes to be respected.
Many of these dolgrims were different from the standard breed, however, and Lirra knew that her uncle had added his own special touches to these before sending them out to attack. Some were covered with bony spikes, while others were encased in insect-like armor. Several possessed claws long and sharp as sabers, and a few had discolored foam-which Lirra had no doubt was poisonous-dripping from their twin mouths. As dangerous as the creatures had been before, they were doubly so now, thanks to Elidyr.
Vaddon shouted for the Outguard to attack, but he needn’t have bothered. The dolgrims were upon the soldiers so swiftly that it was all they could do to defend themselves. The Outguard’s horses had been trained for battle, and many held steady, but they hadn’t been trained to deal with unnatural creatures like dolgrims, and some whinnied, bucked, and threw their riders. Those horses tried to flee in panic and were quickly dispatched by the dolgrims, though a few of the creatures fell beneath pounding hooves before all the terrified horses had been dealt with.
The creatures seemed reluctant to attack Lirra. She swiftly dismounted and smacked her horse on the rear to send her on her way. The mare had been a thorn in Lirra’s side for the last two days, but she wished the horse good luck as she turned to face the nearest dolgrims, sword in hand, tentacle whip uncoiling of its own accord, eager to draw blood. Lirra didn’t chastise her symbiont for acting on its own. Now was precisely the time to allow the whip the freedom to act on its own.
The whip lashed its barbed tip toward a dolgrim-this one covered with spikes-and struck the creature in the eye. The dolgrim howled as poison flooded its system, and it dropped all four of its weapons as it staggered backward, dying. Meanwhile, Lirra swung her sword at a different dolgrim, this one gnashing foam-flecked teeth. It swung its morningstar at her, but she batted it aside easily and dodged to the side as the dolgrim followed up with a spear thrust to her abdomen. Before she’d bonded with the tentacle whip, the strike might have hit home, but she was faster now and more agile, and while the spear tip tore the cloth of her tunic, it didn’t draw blood. The dolgrim attempted to follow up its strike with a blow from its shield, but Lirra was ready for that. She commanded the tentacle whip to grab hold of the dolgrim’s shield hand by the wrist, and then she took the opportunity to jam her sword into one of the creature’s eyes.
The dolgrim shrieked in agony and fell away from her sword, blood spraying from the ruined socket where its eye had been. Lirra turned away from the creature before it could fall to the ground, selected another target, and set upon it.
Ranja assumed her full bestial aspect and leaped off her horse to engage the nearest dolgrim, while Osten remained on his mount, swinging his sword as the creatures came at him. But given the dolgrims’ diminutive stature, his sword missed as often as it hit, and the creatures were able to come in close and attack his horse, using their weapons or even their teeth to wound the animal. The steed screamed in pain and started to go down under the assault. Osten vaulted out of the saddle in time and managed to land on his feet just as a pair of dolgrims rushed at him. His horse fell to the ground and was overrun and slain by dolgrims who then quickly moved on to other targets.
Longstrider and Shatterfist lost no time in engaging the enemy. It was, after all, what they’d been created for. The two warforged waded into the sea of dolgrims with devasting effect, Longstrider’s spiked feet slashing flesh, snapping bones, and crushing bodies with his spinning kicks while Shatterfist’s hands reduced dolgrims to so much oily white pulp with one blow after another. The creatures shrieked as they died, their cries high-pitched and grating, sounding more like yowling cats than unnatural aberrations.
Vaddon and Ksana dismounted and smacked their horses on the flank, sending them pounding into the ranks of the dolgrims, in hopes that the animals might escape or, failing that, at least kill some of the creatures before dying themselves. The two fought back to back, Vaddon’s sword flashing almost faster than Lirra’s eyes could track, Ksana’s halberd matching him strike for strike. Despite Vaddon’s age, he fought like a warrior in his prime, his blows precise and economical, guided by years of battlefield experience. Ksana fought with a fluid grace. The cleric’s face was calm, almost beatific, as if she were praying instead of fighting for her life.
How long the Outguard fought against the dolgrims, Lirra couldn’t have said. She fell into a state that she was well familiar with from her time on the battlefield, a state wherein she ceased thinking consciously and gave herself over to her training and experience, letting her body do what it needed to in order to survive. The state was quite peaceful in its own way, and since her symbiont was happily occupied with slaughtering dolgrims, the pressure she felt from the aberration’s constant attempts to escape her control and subvert her mind had lessened. In many ways, this was the most relaxed she’d felt since bonding with the tentacle whip-and wasn’t that a sad commentary on her current state of existence?