12 Chirreb 4385 (5 Chirreb): The Final Battle

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The Final Battle

I bounced back to life a second after dying and Trust patched me together while Mirhandrax, Purrzhon, Nightbloom and Outcast were wreaking havoc on the bandits.

We were outnumbered so you might not be expecting this to go well for us. I know I was sort of dubious about it even before I got killed by it. I had a pretty good idea of everyone's capabilities except for Outcast and yes Purrzhon is good and Mirhandrax is surprisingly dangerous even as a pocker but against eight?

Fortunately Outcast was exceeding my admittedly low expectations. He'd bowled past two mewellicaps to charge their healer, killed him, then killed him again when he bounced, all the while with mewellicaps stinging and biting at Outcast. Outcast also yelled, "Branner, Faefen's safe! We've got her!" to her dad. Who was a Cani and therefore too loyal to outright turn on the other bandits, but he wasn't fighting us at least. Mirhandrax was jumping around pecking at eyes and joints and other weak spots to cripple our enemies. Nightbloom and Purrzhon were mostly keeping the bad guys away from me and Trust. Their sorceress hadn't managed to pocker anyone new yet.

I'd gotten woozily back to two feet and had just cast Nowhere Prison on a new target when their sorceress-leader Sharone cried out, "Call off your hunters, Purrzhon, or the scawn dies!"

We all stared at her. She had a scawn clutched to her chest with a sword to its neck, just like the last bandit had held a Rassimel boy hostage.

Except this was a scawn and not a Prime.

I giggled. I mean, really? 'Or the scawn dies'? We so had this fight won. Mirhandrax jumped for Sharone while Nightbloom hefted sword and spear to advance. Outcast stood with great axe frozen in midstrike.

And Purrzhon said, "Stop."

"Whaaaaat?" I said.

"That's better." Sharone said, as Mirhandrax fluttered to the floor and Nightbloom halted, staring in disbelief at Purrzhon. "Now, back out of the room."

Purrzhon backed slowly towards the door. "But there's -- " Mirhandrax started to say. The Sleeth shook his head, staring hard at me.

I rolled my eyes. It's one thing to risk getting beheaded for an innocent prime child but for a scawn? And I'd shifted back to biped so I wouldn't just fall out of her arms like I had the Cani.
Also, for a scawn?

"Do it now!" the bandit captain screeched. Just before my last cast of Nowhere Prison FINALLY finished building. On the sorceress. She must have been taking magic resistance lessons from Mirhandrax because poof. The scawn dropped to the floor and darted towards Purrzhon. It had a big sack tied to its back with ropes that wrapped around its chest and held its arms to its side, but it was still doing its best to dodge bandits as they tried to reclaim their hostage. One of them almost got it but Outcast nearly chopped off two of his tentacles and the scawn got away.

After that it was pretty much mop-up work. The sorceress managed to open a hole in nowhere to come back earlier than she would've otherwise but even so most of the bandits had died and/or surrendered by then. Sharone refused to surrender so we had to kill her.

Although not before she turned Nightbloom into a pocker. Sigh. At least Nightbloom had the excuse of having run out of cley by then.

And that's how we beat the evil extortionist hostage-taking bandits! That's sort of the end of the story although of course lots more stuff still needed sorting out.

Like getting back out of the strongroom past the water-Khtsoyis of drowning.