If you can’t take your best shot, take your second-best.
Diran hurled the wooden dagger at Erdis Cai’s unprotected neck. The blade severed the vampire’s artery as it pierced his undead flesh, and black slime spurted from the wound. Erdis Cai spun around, eyes aflame, fangs bared in a feral snarl. He made no move to withdraw the dagger jutting out of his neck as Diran approached. Instead he raised his own knife, the one formed from the unholy Mark of Vol, and lunged forward to meet Diran’s advance.
Diran stopped and raised his right hand. It was empty at first, but then a glimmer of silvery light appeared. The glimmer burst into brilliant radiance and Diran Bastiaan held the power of the living Silver Flame in his hand.
Erdis Cai broke off his attack and raised an arm to shield his eyes, dropping the sacrificial blade as he did so. The weapon fell into the roiling blood pool, which was slowly draining, its thick crimson liquid flowing up the sides of the pit and into the runnels as it continued to restore life to the hobgoblin army.
“It’s over, Cai!” Diran said. Energy blazed through every fiber of the priest’s being, but there was no pain, only a sensation of strength and Tightness as the Silver Flame did its holy work through him. He was the weapon, and the Silver Flame, which was the power of Life itself, was the hand wielding him. Some called Diran the Blade of the Flame, and that title was never more appropriate than at this very moment. “Surrender, and I promise your destruction will be swift and merciful!”
Erdis Cai cringed from the intense illumination radiating from Diran’s hand, and the priest stepped closer, reaching back into his cloak for a dagger-any dagger-that might end the vampire’s foul existence, but before Diran could locate a suitable blade, Erdis Cai turned and clamped his gauntleted fingers around Makala’s throat.
“Extinguish your light, priest, or I’ll close my hand and pop off her head like the bloom of a dandelion!”
“Don’t-” Makala started to say, but the vampire lord tightened his grip, choking off her voice.
Diran knew what his former lover had intended to say, for he would’ve said the same in her place. Don’t worry about me-kill him! Diran also knew that as a priest of the Silver Flame, it was his sworn duty to destroy creatures like Erdis Cai, regardless of the personal consequences. Diran knew then what he had to do., He closed his fingers around the silver flame burning in his hand, extinguishing it in his fist.
The blinding holy light gone, Erdis Cai released his grip on Makala’s throat and whirled around to face Diran once more. His armored hand lashed out and fastened around Diran’s neck. The priest felt a jolt of freezing cold as the metal came in contact with his skin, and a numbing sensation became to spread outward from his neck into the rest of his body. He felt weary, listless, drained of energy, then he understood what was happening. Erdis Cai’s obsidian armor was enchanted, and the vampire lord was using it to absorb Diran’s lifeforce.
Erdis Cai’s inhuman gaze bored into Diran’s eyes. “You put up a good fight, priest, I’ll give you that much. In fact, it was the most fun I’ve had since I became immortal, but the game’s finished and I’m the victor. Go to your death knowing that your strength will be added to my own, and your woman will join me in the dark glory of undeath. Farewell, Diran Bastiaan.”
Diran caught a flash of orange-red out of the corner of his eye, and Erdis Cai’s head snapped back as Ghaji’s fire axe bit into his skull. The vampire lord screamed as his head burst into flame, and he loosened his grip on Diran’s throat-not much, perhaps, but enough. Diran felt the transference of his lifeforce cease, and he opened his hand to reveal a still-glimmering flicker of the Silver Flame. The flicker grew and lengthened until to became a dagger of pure energy, and then Diran rammed the blade of silver fire through the opening in Erdis Cai’s breastplate.
The vampire lord opened his burning mouth to scream anew, but all that emerged from within was a shaft of bright silvery light. Other shafts burst forth from his eyes, ears, and even his nostrils, the light spreading, merging, until it covered Erdis Cai’s entire body. Diran pulled his empty hand free of the vampire lord’s chest. The silver light dimmed and the flame surrounding Erdis Cai’s head slowly died away as Ghaji’s fire axe deactivated. All that remained of the undead explorer was a suit of armor and an ash-flecked skull with an axe embedded in it. For an instant, the skeletal remains continued standing, as if held upright by the obsidian armor encasing them, then Erdis Cai’s remains collapsed to the walkway, his armor striking the ground with a loud crash.
Diran felt like collapsing himself, but Ghaji shouted, “Do you mind tossing my axe back to me? I could really use it right about now!”
Diran turned to see that Ghaji and Tresslar stood on the walkway, battling the undead warriors as they came one and two and a time. Ghaji was forced to make do with his old axe, hacking off desiccated arms and legs, while Tresslar’s dragonwand had conjured what appeared to be a gaseous reptilian claw from its tip. The claw was solid enough, though, for it gouged out large chunks of undead flesh from one hobgoblin after another. The destruction of Erdis Cai appeared to have had no effect on the undead goblinoids. They continued to fight, and though Ghaji and Tresslar had taken out a number of the creatures, more were being resurrected by the moment.
“Forget the axe!” Tresslar said. “Throw Onkar’s arm into the pool!”
Diran recalled how his poison-coated daggers had affected the Mire, and he thought he knew what the artificer had in mind.
“Do it, Ghaji!” he shouted.
The half-orc dispatched another hobgoblin then raced across the walkway, weaving between more of the undead warriors. He reached Onkar’s severed arm with its bloody, ragged stump and kicked it into the pool. Immediately, the blood remaining in the giant basin turned black, and the ebon color rapidly spread along the upward flowing streams of liquid and down the twenty-five runnels and back into the alcoves where the rest of the hobgoblins waited to be restored to life. A rank stench of rotting meat and sewage wafted from the openings, and a flood of brackish liquid gushed out, flowing back into the basin and filling it almost to the brim once more. Skeletal fragments bobbed in the horrid soup, but they quickly dissolved and were gone.
Diran smiled grimly. Onkar’s arm had poisoned the blood his master had harvested over the course of four decades, destroying those warriors that had yet to be resurrected. Unfortunately, it hadn’t done anything to stop those hobgoblins that had already been reanimated, but at least no more would be replenishing their ranks.
Diran pried Ghaji’s axe out of Erdis Cai’s skull and tossed the weapon to his friend. The half-orc caught the axe easily, and the metal burst into flame once more. Ghaji then returned to doing what he did best-hacking things to pieces. Diran turned, stepped over Erdis Cai’s armor, and went to Makala’s side. With the vampire lord dead, her paralysis had been lifted and she sat up.
“I’d say it was good to see you, but that would a monumental understatement.”
Diran smiled and leaned forward to kiss her. When they parted, Ghaji said, “If you two are finished, Tresslar and I could use a little help over here! Too many remain for us to deal with alone!”