Thurn

The thurn rises from the darkness on wings of corruption. Buoyed by their fly spells, the Defenders of Daybreak swoop in to meet it.

A phoenix-born fireball splashes off of its gray hide, charring its boil-covered skin but doing little damage. A searing light burns through its arm. A blade barrier slices into its ankles, and a flame strike pours down holy fire on it from above.

It grunts with foul breath, and keeps coming.

The monster's wings thunderously pound the air as it rises above Tao's still-whirling blade barrier, and its mouth cracks open like an infected wound. The creature speaks in a tongue older than mankind, and its horrible voice hammers the ears.

"NOT. YOU. HERE." It squints with the effort of speech that only Nolin can understand. The bard shakes his head, recognizing that the thurn isn't exactly going to volunteer as a backup singer any time soon.

"Ignore it. It isn't saying anything interesting."

"Fair enough." Malachite is the first to close with it, and the monster is clearly pleased to be able to kill instead of converse. It chops downwards with its twelve foot long rusty sword in a blow that would fell a good-sized tree. The Hunter of the Dead is ready for it, though, and the massive iron sword clatters against his magical shield with a shriek of metal. Then Malachite darts under the thurn's forearm and calls upon the power of Aeos to guide his swings.

Aeos doesn't disappoint.

The holy sword Karthos blazes with daylight, and the brightness of the illumination makes Malachite's green tabard glow almost like a true emerald against the repellent gray of the thurn's flesh. Malachite hits one, two, three times, his blade sinking almost hilt-deep in the creature's belly. The thurn grunts a low, rumbling gurgle that shakes beetles off the wall.

It raises its sword, but Stone Bear is already there. He spins in midair and strikes with an adamantite-hard forearm across the flat of the ancient blade. It snaps with a sound like ice cracking, and most of the blade falls down into the darkness to leave the thurn armed with nothing more than a hilt attached to an iron chain. Stone Bear continues his spin to strike into the thurn's actual body, even as Mara and Galthia attack from the far side. Foul gray ichor sprays into the air, raising welts everywhere it splashes onto flesh.

"Now!" yells Splinder. The dwarven crossbow men fire a volley of crossbow bolts that arcs into the monster's legs. "Nice shooting, lads," says the dwarf, and he flies in with axe upraised. The gladitorial bullywug Burr-Lipp maneuvers in as well, plunging his spear into the creature's thigh and twisting savagely.

Beset by enemies, the huge thurn grunts again as it swings the iron chain shackled to its forearm in a deadly arc. Dodge left, advises Stone Bear's ancestor spirit in a conversational tone, and the shaman twists his body to elude the powerful blow. Then the monster's other claw reaches down to grasp Malachite, even as it ponderously ducks its head. Malachite instinctively jabs his sword into the grasping hand to ward it off, but he can do nothing about the descending cavern of a mouth. The thurn's teeth bite into Malachite's body around his waist, crushing and grinding, and the pain is horrible. Malachite can feel corruption forced into his body, and he is suddenly unclean.

The thurn spits out Malachite, surprised to see him still alive, and the paladin gasps out a warning. "Don't let it bite you."

"Are you all right?" calls Mara. She hovers above the creature's back, her holy mace blazing like the sun in the darkness of the cavern. Ichor steams on weapon, slowly burning off in the light, and the paladin's blond hair is whipped about by the wind of the thurn's wings.

"I'll keep." He can feel the skin around his middle doing something horribly wrong, itching and burning beneath his armor, but now isn't the time to deal with it. "Just kill it."

"Okay. I'll be glad to." Another barrage of spells from Velendo, Nolin and Agar hammer the beast, even as Tao darts in with her swords to try and carve a hole in its belly. Malachite swings upwards with Karthos, and Mara calls on her faith and slams her mace down on the back of its neck.

The snapping sound is horrible.

There is a half-second of silence when the thurn's huge wings fail to beat, and then the limp monster tumbles from the sky. As it falls away from the heroes, the corpse grazes the edge of Tao's still-active blade barrier. Chunks of mushroom-gray flesh scatter off the corpse's leg and lazily spiral down into the darkness, roughly following the same path taken by the massive iron sword that was sundered seconds before. The blade barrier supports the thurn just long enough to start the body spinning, and then the whirling blades toss it out into the abyss. The corpse tumbles away out of sight.

"We can't let it get too far ahead of us!" shouts Velendo. "When it lands, it will alert the ghouls. Quick, everyone, after it!"

So at full speed, the Defenders of Daybreak follow.