Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [20]
CHAPTER Five
Twilight heard shouts and a crash as Davoren slammed into Gargan. She whirled. A creature materialized where the warlock had stood. Desiccated flesh stretched tightly across the gaunt figure's bony ridges, and its eyes burned with rage and hatred. Its clothes were old and tattered, the fashion of a long-forgotten age. Tufts of inky black hair stood on its cracked and peeling scalp, and it grinned a mouthful of needlelike teeth.
"Wights!" Twilight shouted, thrusting Liet behind her and brandishing her rapier.
"By Corellon!" Taslin shouted, channeling Corellon's wrath. Her holy symbol, a golden crescent fused to her sword's hilt, burst with daylight.
The wight flew backward and shattered into thousands of pieces, all of which crumbled to dust before striking the opposite wall.
All around the creature's path, monsters just like it shimmered into being, shambling as though dazed. The display of Corellon's power had not destroyed them, like the first wight, but it had ruined their concealing magic.
"Invisible wights," corrected Twilight.
A score of the horrid creatures burst into view all around them, claws and fangs raking. Only Taslin's power kept them all from being overwhelmed in that first moment, foiling many attacks as the wights recoiled from the painful light.
Twilight shut her eyes, relying instead on her hearing and instinct, and lunged ahead. Sure enough, she impaled one of the invisible monsters as it prepared to leap at her. The thing, confused by her sudden, perfect strike, slumped to the ground, its animating essence lost. Flames flickered up and down Betrayal's hissing steel.
The shadowdancer had no time to gloat, for she sensed an attack coming from her right. She dived forward in a roll as blasts of energy scored the air where she had stood. Her success was short lived, however, as the bolts veered in the air to slam into Twilight's chest, blowing her to the floor. Through her agony, she saw a wight standing in a corner, weaving its hands in arcane gestures.
"Wizard wights?" she groaned.
" 'Light!" Liet shouted, leaping to the attack, but a half-visible wight slammed into him. Liet tumbled to the floor, grappling with the horror.
Weapons darting, the others formed a tight circle around the staggering Davoren and the coughing Asson. Gargan caused the most havoc to the wights, his battle-axe sending a creature whithering with every swing or two. Taslin continued to blast holy power to shatter the undead foes or drive them back. Davoren righted himself, his eyes blazing. Then he threw a deafening blast of crimson power that drove one of the monsters staggering back, burned by otherworldly fire in the shape of snarling devils.
"Help Twilight and Liet!" shouted Asson. The old mage could do little but shine the light of his staff wherever the creatures seemed thickest and direct the defense there.
"Leave them!" Davoren shouted. "Worry for yourself, whitebeard!" He cast out a forked blast of eldritch power, sending two of the gaunt monsters staggering back. The power sizzled outward to more wights, burning their flesh as well.
Thanks for the support, Twilight mused.
Without looking, she waited until a wight leaped for her from behind, then snapped her blade up, spearing it through the throat. The blow was hardly enough to destroy an undead creature, but the beast paused. Twilight used the opportunity to roll between its legs to aid the struggling Liet.
The youth had lost his sword in the wight's rush and now bent his strength against the creature, merely to keep its claws from his face. Pus and yellowish ooze dripped from a dagger embedded in its eye, but it failed to distract the wight. As they wrestled, it hissed and slavered over Liet, snapping its fangs at his nose.
Twilight leaped to the youth's defense, putting her rapier clean through the wight's head. The wight turned its attention, and its claws, to the elf. Though the last thing Twilight wanted was to