Session #30 - Denouement

The world around them spun and lurched, everything mashing together in a blur of color and light.  The experience went on and on, stretching their sanity to the limits.  And then reality returned with a jarring suddenness, all of them falling to the ground as if they had been dropped from a great height.

 

It was deathly still and quiet.  Above was blue sky, the first time in weeks they’d seen something other than a sickening orange haze.  The temperature felt cool to skin that had become acclimatized to the oppressive warmth of Avernus.  The planetar was nowhere to be seen.

 

“Did that actually just work?” Kent asked with a cautious joy as he dusted himself off.

 

“We’ve seen many infernal tricks,” Almont said.  “We must be cautious.”

 

Off in the distance came a hint of sound, metal striking metal and dogs howling.

 

“There’s fighting over by the hall,” Lola said.  The hollyphant had been hovering up in the air.  “There are gnolls fighting the palandins!  We need to help them!”

 

Kent sighed.  “Well, back to the forge then.”

 

 

Almont and Katla climbed aboard Lola, while Donyxn carried Kent.  As they rose over the city they saw the eastern half mostly deserted, much of it reduced to smouldering piles of rubble.  Nothing stirred in the streets.  It was like visiting an ancient ruin.

 

Much of the west side was in a similar state, but as they headed in that diretion they saw a small army of gnolls laying siege to the hall.  Before they could reach it, however, Lola spotted a group of paladins holding off a band of gnolls as people ran past them toward the hall. 

 

“We have to help the paladins protect the people!” she shouted.  Lola dove toward the square with terrifying speed, Almont and Katla hanging on as if their lives depended on it, which at this height and speed they most certainly did.  The hollyphant landed at the edge of the square with such force that pavers cracked.  Her passengers half fell from her back.  Donyxn and Kent arrived a few moments later.

 

Bodies littered the square, the blood of gnolls, paladins, and common people sprayed across every surface.  They watched as the closest paladin was struck down by a pair of assailants.  Further ahead three injured paladins were desperately trying to fend off eight more beasts, while off to the right an isolated warrior battled another pair.

 

The party sprung into action immediately.  Lighting arrows and thunderous chromatic orbs announced their arrival to the surprised gnolls, and both Kent and Almont rushed forward to join the fray.

 

Almont rushed toward the single paladin but failed to reach him in time, the gnolls taking him down and beginning to rip at his flesh.  They looked up to see the cause of their own deaths, the glowing head of the cleric’s warhammer caving in the chest of one while the grinning skull head of Lightbringer pulverized the other.  

 

Almont turned back to the fallen paladin to see if there was anything he could do for him.  As he did so Lightbringer’s head suddenly lit up with an intensity he had not seen before, the white-hot light giving the crystal skull the look of intense craving.

 

“You too will soon die and join my undead army!” a voice boomed.  

 

Kent continued to rush toward the other skirmish, but took a quick look in that direction.  Standing atop the building was what had once been a man, a greenish glow coming from his hands.

 

“Gideon!” he shouted.  “I knew we should have killed that bastard!”

 

Almont felt the rage building inside of him, and he was so focused on Gideon that he failed to notice the fallen paladin behind him getting back on its feet.  It was a vibration from Lightbringer that caused him to turn, just in time to step back from a clumsy sword thrust.  The paladin’s eyes were devoid of life. 

 

The cleric swung Lightbringer in a wide arc, annihilating the former paladin with a bringht flash.

 

“Almont, what are you doing?!” Lola shouted in confusion and barely controlled rage.

 

“Gideon is raising the paladins as undead!” he answered.  He saw Katla blast another with an Eldrtich blast, but after a few seconds it staggered back to his feet.  He looked down at Lightbringer and the destroyed undead creature at his feet.  “Only the holy can destroy them!  Leave the undead to me!”

 

Gideon and Katla began a magic duel of their own, the pair trading spells and knocking one another off balance.  The high ground gave Gideon the advantage, but the tables turned when he saw something streaking toward him from his right.  The evil priest spun just in time to see a winged tiefling reach out, grab him, and pull him into the air.  Gideon screetech as Donyxn rose… and then unceremoniously dropped him from about sixty feet in the air.  Gideon landed with a wet cracking sound.  When his eyes fluttered back open he saw the tiefling hovering, an arrow notched in his bow.  His eyes grew wide, and then grew dark when the magic arrow pierced his chest. 

 

Almont had now joined Kent.  Two of the three remaining paladins had been killed and re-animated as undead and more gnolls were arriving from other parts of the city.  As the cleric finished off the last of the undead he looked up and saw Gideon back on his feet, swaying unstably but growing in strength.  It seemed he too could only be killed by the holy, and Almont was only too happy to indulge him.  He cast forth a guided bolt of holy radiance that struck the necromancer in the chest.  Gideon exploded in a greenish spray, globs of sticky goo splattering the walls.

 

The last of the gnolls fell to Kent’s scimitar.  The square looked even worse than it had when they first arrived, the stones sticky with gore and blood.  The remaining paladin, who they came to learn was named Timothy, was in rough shape.  

 

“The gnolls and undead are besieging the hall,” Tim said between shallow breaths.  “We have to get back there to help them.”

 

Before they could work on a plan they heard more howling coming from the south, quickly growing in intensity.  The howls were followed by the crashing sounds of collapsing buildings, coming closer and closer.

 

“Now what?” Katla asked resignedly.

 

Seconds later the answer arrived.  A building at the south end of the square shuddered before its façade shattered outward.  Bursting through the newly-made hole was 14-foot-tall gnoll-like beast carrying a three-headed flail.

“Oh look, it’s Yeenoghu,” Kent stated very matter-of-factly.

 

Timothy looked at the dwarf, then to the demon lord, which pounded its chest with one hand as it threw its head back and howled with enough force to make the ground shake.  The paladin turned to Almont, hoping the cleric would offer a prayer to give him the courage he clearly wasn’t feeling at the moment.  

 

Almont never took his eyes off the beast, which was now staring at them from across the square.  “Timothy, go to the hall and get reinforcements.  Now.”

 

Grateful for the order, Timothy ran to the west, though he doubted that all of the paladins still left at the hall would be enough to bring down the thing he saw in the square.  The image of it was burned into his psyche.  Though Timothy aquitted himself in battle many times in future years, he never stopped having nightmares about those horrible moments in the square. 

 

The party had faced Yeenoghu once before, in their time-travel journey to Idyllglenn, and it was only the timely arrival of the angelic version of Zariel that saved their lives.  They had a few more tricks up their sleeves this time around, but all of them knew that the demon’s flail was a death-dealer.  

 

“Well, no time like the present.”  Kent held his scimitar in his right hand.  He turned and gave the others a wink before dashing toward the demon lord. 

 

Yeenoghu loped forward to meet the dwarf.  Almont ran to follow, but Kent’s magic boots made him much faster than the cleric.  Donyxn rose into the air and unleashed a lightning bolt from his bow, the energy coursing around the running monstrosity but seeming to have little effect.  Katla hit it with a thunderous chromatic orb, but this also failed to slow it.

 

The dwarf passed under the first swing of Yeenoghu’s flail, his scimitar cutting deep into the demon’s leg.  But as Kent began to turn to make another pass he felt as if he’d been struck by the Demon Grinder’s wrecking ball.  Yeenoghu’s reflexes were impossibly fast and it had swung around and caught the rogue with its flail.  Kent skidded across the ground on his back.  

 

Almont arrived before Yeenoghu turned back, allowing him to land a pair of blows with his warhammer and Lightbringer before he too was unceremoniously knocked fifteen feet through the air by the flail.  Yeenoghu looked to the sky and roared.

 

As Kent scrambled to his feet,  reached inside his cloak, and pulled out a white sequined glove, the death trinket he collected from a spectre he killed at Red Ruth’s hovel.  “Here goes nothing,” he whispered to himself as he put on the glove.  As he hoped, his body went into a ghost-like spectral form.  

 

Katla was trying to gather magic for her next spell as she saw Kent become ghostly.  She watched his form move toward Yeenoghu.  As he did so he reached into his robe and withdrew the immovable rod.  The dwarf passed through the demon lord, and when he emerged… he was no longer holding the rod. 

 

Yeenoghu looked down and begain trying to move, but instead howled in pain.  It caught sight of Kent, who had re-materialized about fifty feet away, and pointed at him.  The demon then blinked out of existence, leaving behind the rod covered in ichor and chunks of its entrails.  

 

Kent only had a moment to feel pleased for himself, and it was only his uncanny reflexes that caused him to dodge to the left just as the flail reached him.  It was a glancing blow, but one that still knocked the dwarf prone.  The demon lord had sacrified some of its internal organs to teleport directly behind him.

 

Yeehoghu towered over the dwarf, who was doing his best to scramble away.  Kent surely would have died had not Katla, Donyxn, and Lola all struck simultaneously.  The lightning arrow hit first, followed almost immediately by another thunderous chromatic orb that shook the square.  Yeenoghu staggered forward and turned, just in time to receive a full blast of rainbow-colored, sparkling energy from Lola’s trunk.  The demon screamed and pawed at its eyes, momentarily blinded by the attack.

 

Kent made it fifteen feet away, giving Almont the space he needed.  The cleric made a circling motion with his right hand, his left holding a dagger outward and pointed at Yeenoghu.  A ten-foot high cylinder of swirling, glowing blades surrounded the demon.  The priest felt relieved, but only for a moment, as Yeenoghu strode right through the wall of blades.  It emerged covered in cuts and gashes, ichor pumping from it with each beat of its cursed heart, and headed toward the cleric.

 

Donyxn intercepted the demon, bringing down Zariel’s sword upon it and opening up a canyon-like cut in Yeenoghu’s back that would have been big enough for a person to climb into.  The beast turned with a roar and smashed Donyxn with its flail, sending him careening off across the square.  

 

Kent was firing bolts from his pistol crossbow, which drew Yeenoghu’s attention once more.  Turning its back on Almont was a mistake, and the cleric rushed forward and grabbed the beast by the leg, necrotic energy flowing from his arm into the demon.  It howled in rage, turning impossibly fast and once more smashing Almont with its flail.  

 

The cleric flew back and bounced along the ground until his momentum was stopped by a wall thirty feet away.  He looked up and saw a grin form on Yeenoghu’s face, the demon lord anticipating tasting his soul. 

 

As the beast stepped forward Donyxn dove in from above.  Instead of attacking, however, he landed next to the fallen cleric and pulled his magic cloak over them both, teleporting them to the other side of the square.

 

Yeenoghu turned back and snarled at having been cheated of its kill.  The square was a complete disaster area, covered in rubble and bodies, many of which had been crushed under the feet of the massive demon lord.  Nothing short of a complete razing the entire square could possibly ever remove the unholy taint that infected it. Yeenoghu took it all in with a glance and grinned in satisfaction.  It was certainly badly hurt, but its enemies were battered.  It wondered who it should kill first, the dwarf of the cleric.

 

A rumbling began to rapidly build at the far end of the square.  Yeenoghu looked at the source – an elf moving her hands as if she were holding some kind of orb.  She looked tasty.  Perhaps it should kill her first. 

 

Kent, Almont, and Donyxn heard the rumble as well and looked at Katla.  Her eyes had gone completely white as the debris-filled air swirled around her.  A ball of energy was forming in her hands and the air pressure surrounding her dropped.  They had never seen so much wild magic surround the elf.  

 

Yeenoghu strode quickly across the square toward them.

 

Katla held her cupped hands in front of her face and regarded the melon-sized ball of energy in her hand.  She had never created or held anything so perfect before.  

 

Everyhing around the sorceress went still as the demon approached.  

 

Katla smiled, and gently blew on the orb of energy.  

 

They watched as the orb of light lept forth from the sorceress.  It took less than a second to reach Yeenoghu.  The sound of the impact was a deafening thunderclap.  Every intact window in a hundred yard radius shattered from the shockwave and two of the buildings lining the square collapsed.  

 

Yeenoghu’s legs and waist remained upright, but the upper half of its body was obliterated, only some hand-sized chunks surviving the blast.  One of the demon lord’s huge canine teeth was later found embedded in the wood door of a ruined church.  It was consecrated as a holy relic, a monument to what would later be known as the Miracle At The Square.  

 

Katla fell to her knees, drained from having called forth so much power.  The others limped and stumbled their way to her.  They all looked as though they’d been pulled from a collapsed building, their clothing torn and covered with grime, blood, and ichor.  But they were alive.  

 

Lola flew upward, looked around, and then returned.  “The rest of the gnolls are running from the city!  We did it!”

 

Kent sat propped up against what had been the cornerstone of building.  “Got any of that elvish wine, Almont?”

 

The cleric smiled through bloodstained teeth and pulled two bottles from the bag of holding.  He pulled the stopper from one with his teeth as he limped to Kent, handing it to the smiling dwarf.  The other he opened and handed to Katla.  “You earned it.”

 

She looked at the cleric and nodded, grabbing the bottle and taking a huge swig from it.  They all raised their eyebrows – no one had ever seen Katla take a drink like that before.  She handed back the bottle and wiped her lips on the grimy sleeve of her tattered robe and then began to laugh.

 

They all began to laugh. 

 

A dozen battered paladins arrived at the far side of the square and stopped, stunned at the carnage.  

 

“Hey look, it’s Reya,” Kent said.  “Reya!” he called to her.

 

Reya looked their direction and her eyes got wide.  She walked across the square, her cohort following.  “I thought you were all dead,” she said.

 

“Nah.  Well, to be fair, Almont and Donyxn both did die, but only for a few seconds, so I don’t know if that counts or not.”

 

Reya looked at them sitting in the rubble and drinking wine.  “I see some things don’t change,” she said with a wry grin.  Then she noticed Donyxn and her eyes got wide again.  “And some things do.”

 

“By the way, you may see some man-sized salamanders in the city.  Three of them, to be precise, brothers.  Do us a favor and don’t kill them.  They helped break one of the chains and they’d be pretty handy in helping rebuild all of this,” Kent waved his hand in the air as he took another pull off the bottle.

 

“What of you all, then?  It will be a tremendous amount of work, but we will rebuild Elturel.  We could use your help.  What do you say?”

 

They party looked at one another.  

 

“It won’t be over until Zariel has paid for what she did,” said Donyxn.

 

And so ends the story of the adventurer’s journey through the Descent Into Avernus.  It took them from 5^th level to 14^thlevel, though they never got their reckoning with Zariel.  What does the future hold for them?  Who knows.  But for now they’ll get a bit of a break as the players start from scratch again at 1^st level for a whole new campaign.