Apostles of Doom

The giant charged straight at Tom, who had the Wand pointing at it. As he had hoped, the giant shifted to its air form. This was going to be risky, but… he gunned up the Air Portal at Doom and used the relay at the Doomalogue to suck the wind giant’s gaseous form to the Air Portal.

Both Doom and the Doomalogue revved up to pull the wind giant to the Air Portal. It seemed to be working, as a vortex of visibly churning air twisted at the end of the Wand of Orcus. Come on now! Tom tried willing the wind giant to get sucked up into the Wand. It was fighting hard, though; very hard.

If Tom’s brow could have sweated, it would have been doing so. The wind giant was pulling extremely hard, much harder than he’d imagined. Tom stared down the Wand at the funnel cloud trying to escape his vacuum cleaner. He could see the liches in front of a giant archway in the distance. “Okay then, buddy, let’s do this your way!” he said out loud as he quickly reversed polarity on the Air Portal and then pulled air from the Nysegard portals as well. Instead of sucking, he was going to blow the air giant back to the Storm Lords.

WHOOSH!!

The funnel cloud suddenly shot back down the cleared path towards the Storm Lords. As it did so, the wind giant turned back to physical form, but his momentum was too much; his physical body continued to fly through the air until it crashed into the assembled Storm Lord forces, and then into the archway behind them. There was a loud explosion with brilliantly flashing lights as the archway fell over.

Tom had to blink. The region around the giant and the archway seemed to warp and twist before finally returning to normal. The archway was collapsed and broken, the entire area a shambles, nearly everyone and everything lying on the ground.

Tom turned to the other two giants, who were now simply standing there as if unsure what to do. Darg-Krallnom and Roth Tar Gorefest quickly began attacking them, and they only halfheartedly fought back.

“I think the liches controlling them were knocked out of commission!” Inethya yelled to Tom.

“Can you seek to banish them as you would other Unlife?” Tom yelled back.

Inethya nodded and quickly began chanting and moving her arms.

Tom shifted his attention to the fire giant as it fended off attacks from Darg-Krallnom. It was definitely taking damage. Was it hurting? Tom noticed the giant’s eyes wincing with the blows that connected. He’d never seen a zombie wince; they should not feel pain.

Tom shifted his sight to examine the creature better. He blinked. The thing was bound up in all sorts of dark tendrils encasing it. The giant’s inner light was the dark purplish light of antimus. Is that light? he wondered, briefly seeing a small flash of animus light at the core of the giant, before it was hidden again by dark tendrils.

Suddenly radiant light poured down from the sky as Inethya’s ritual took effect on the frost giant. Roth Tar Gorefest jumped back and switched to attacking the fire giant with Darg-Krallnom. Tom smiled to himself as he watched the cleansing light of Tiernon’s magic engulf the frost giant. That would be able remove the antimus, even has he had used it to cleanse himself. As he watched, however, the black tendrils seemed to fatten, widening, encasing, shielding and protecting the antimus inside.

He glanced to Inethya, who was frowning. Clearly, things were not going as planned. The light was unable to pierce the tendrils to get inside and cleanse the antimus. The antimus needed to be cleansed by the light, even as he had cleansed Excrathadorus Mortis; unfortunately, the black tendrils crawling over the giant’s being prevented that.

Suddenly the giant taking a beating from Darg-Krallnom and Roth Tar Gorefest seemed to shake its head. It quickly flashed to fire, faster than Tom could react to activate the Fire Portals. It was suddenly on the other side of the two D’Orcs and making and end run, in physical form, to the walls.

The two D’Orcs had stumbled at the sudden disappearance of their target, and were working to recover. Tom shook his head and took off after the fire giant. As the giant approached the moat at a full run, it suddenly jumped, leaping over the moat and slamming hard into the wall.

There was a great creaking and groaning sound as the Citadel’s wall was rocked by the giant’s impact. The fire giant released blasts of fire, scorching the wall. Steam rose from the moat as the flames licked the water. Suddenly the giant fell to its knees and plunged its fists in the Holy Water. It let loose a horrific scream of pain even as fire raced over the moat’s surface, turning the Holy Water to steam.