From: andrea@cm.deakin.OZ.AU (Andrea)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [DQ] Kadrys reacts to recent events in the Plaza of Glittering Steel
Message-ID: <3643@sol.deakin.OZ.AU>
Date: 8 Aug 92 04:08:19 GMT

Kadrys' fingers clench on SunStorm's shoulders, and he shakes the enraptured
figure, then slaps his face to get some response, all without success. Kadrys
bares his fangs in a grimace of anxiety. 'Desperate measures...' he thinks,
and he bends, placing his eyes on a level with SunStorm's. The pupils of the
vampire's eyes, normally imperceptible against the black irises, suddenly
dilate and flare, becoming fathomless wells of blood-red radiance. Kadrys
reaches inside, searching for SunStorm's essence. For a long, long moment he
stands frozen into that face-to-face posture, not even bothering to breathe.
Then, the tension breaks and the red glow is quenched. "There's nothing IN
there!" Kadrys snaps in frustration as he backs away from the attempt at
contact. "It's like trying to use gaze on a zombie!"

Now, someone taps Kadrys on the shoulder, and he spins with weird rapidity to
face the interruption. His anxious snarl makes the newcomer go deathly pale
and stammer distractedly. Kadrys recognises the man as some sort of sculptor
from the Inn. After the man recovers his nerves, he offers to cast a spell to
counteract the pyracube's effects. Kadrys nods assent, distracted by something
ShockWave was saying: "He's too far gone. That thing sucked him in!" "You mean,
his soul?" Kadrys asks hastily. He is so worried by the implications of
ShockWave's words and of his own failure to reach SunStorm, that he does not
even express disappointment when William's spell fizzles and he returns to the
Inn.

At that moment, 'Raelf completes his analysis of the pyracube and starts the
spell to destroy it. Kadrys cries to him to stop, but it is _much_ too late.

There are two screams of horrified denial. The first in ShockWave's familiar
voice, and the second... Kadrys whirls and focuses on a figure in sable plate
standing atop a nearby roof. 'At last. SunStorm's friend from the fight.
Lancos' recent acquaintance. I _am_ pleased to meet you...' Kadrys thinks,
giving a slow, sharp smile. The armoured man, however, is in no smiling mood.
He roars at 'Raelf: "You've just broken the portal! Now I'll have to wait
until the new moon! I'll kill you for that! NOW! Spawns, attack! KILL KILL
KILL! Especially the flying mage!"

And the grotesque statues fringing the rooftop behind the armoured man,
suddenly begin to move. 'Gargoyles...' Kadrys thinks, 'Gaze won't work on
them. So, no easy kills. Not this time.' But even as he thinks this, his mouth
twists in a feral grin and he rises onto the balls of his feet. 'What the hell!
A more active technique'll be a refreshing change...' He retreats to the
shadows of the nearby buildings, watching the bestial attackers leap off the
rooftop and take to the air, concentrating on those that choose to dive
towards the ground. 'Raelf would have to take care of the midair swarm
converging on his board. Kadrys grins as 'Raelf gets in with the opening
blows, and two of the airborne pack plummet earthwards with a crash and a
brief spray of stone chips that were once wings.

Several gargoyles choose the easy targets, the scatter of people standing in
the square. The lead creature, marked by a slash across one wing, simply folds
her wings and dives, talonsfirst. 'Easy meat. Stupid foodthing. Looked at
spell. Not even moving. Eat soon.' thinks wingslash, drool running from her
jaws as she drops like a stone. Closer. Closer. And still, there is just the
tiniest twitch of movement from her chosen target, a local resident gradually
emerging from charm-induced nightmares, paralysed by terror at finding the
waking world suddenly swarming with monsters worse than his dreams.

In the shadows, Kadrys stoops into a strange posture, bracing one foot against
the juncture of wall and floor, bending the other leg forward, his weight just
resting on his splayed fingertips. He raises his back and tenses every muscle,
unblinkingly watching as the gap between the diving monster and the human
dwindles moment by moment. The man's still form is blotted out by the shadow
of the gargoyle's wings when Kadrys is gone, racing towards the still figure
in a black blur of inhuman speed, dragging him out of harm's way only just in
time. Wingslash's strike misses by a hair, and without the extra weight of
prey in her talons to act as a brake, her speed is too great to pull out of
her dive in time. With a stunning crash, she ploughs into the paving of the
plaza, her back shattered by the impact.

Across the other side of the square, Kadrys sets the man down in a porticoed
doorway, which affords concealment and shelter from attack. He leans against
the door for a moment to recover from the strain of his sprint, grinning
sarcastically at the gradually reviving citizen. "Maybe after that little
jaunt you'll know better than to gawk when someone warns you about a charm
spell!" he pants.

Breakthumb gives a rasping shriek of dismay as wingslash misses her grab and
fails to come out of her stoop. He circles, looking at the wreckage. "What
happened? Where's the foodbeast? Where'd it go? Was it splattered under her?
Hope not, I'm _hungry_!" he grumbles. Tonguerot howls at him, "Moron! You
blind? The other thing took it away! That way!" Tonguerot jerks a thumb toward
the other side of the square and turns, cursing, back to setting breaknose's
wing.

Kadrys hears the cry, and, after searching momentarily in his memory,
translates it. As breakthumb wheels in midair, following the direction of
tonguerot's gesture, Kadrys hastens back towards the centre of the square.
Best to attract the attackers' attention away from any unarmed people toward
himself. Moving to the crumpled body of wingslash, he cups his hands under the
waning flow of blood from the beast's shattered body. He raises his hands to
his face, and drinks with slow relish. '_That_ should draw their attack...'
he thinks. Throughout this taunting display, his eyes never cease scanning the
skies for the reaction. And it is not long in coming.

Breakthumb opens his jaws and screams incoherently, pivoting on a wingtip and
instinctively dropping into a dive of his own. But he remembers wingslash's
fate and reopens his wings, slowing from a headlong plummet into a more
controlled descent. His gnashing teeth fill the air with the dry rasp of
stone, and the air pounds to heavy wingbeats as he comes in low. He hovers a
wingspan above the foodthing, which stands still and watches his approach,
baring its fangs in a maddening gesture of mockery. Breakthumb screeches
"_You_ are food! _We_ are eaters! Now, you will DIE." The foodbeast hisses
rapidly in fluent Gargle "You're much too late for _that_, you son of a
shitcovered stalagmite!" With a final roar, the gargoyle extends his claws and
drops the remaining distance, pouncing on the softthing with all his weight
behind his talons. His massive stonegrey limbs and heavy whiplike tail twine
themselves with the slighter, darker figure in an inextricable tangle.
Fighting like cats, the two roll over and over, the gargoyle trying to trap
Kadrys in his granite grip. Then the frantically writhing mass resolves itself
into a frozen tableau. Breakthumb has both arms wrapped round Kadrys' chest.
He tightens his grip and Kadrys' ribcage collapses with an audible crunch of
bone. But apart from a soundless snarl of pain or rage, the terrible injury
seems to have no immediate effect. Kadrys is concentrating fiercely on his own
wrestling hold. With one arm locked round the gargoyle's neck, he clamps his
other hand on the thing's muzzle, using it to wrench the creature's head
further and further around on its shoulders. Fractures bloom on the beast's
hide, until with a long slow shriek of overstressed stone, the neck shears
apart.

Kadrys and the gargoyle collapse together, the desperately wounded vampire
snatching a quick drink at the stump of the corpse's neck. Ribs and spine that
had been crushed to pulp and splinters in the gargoyle's clutches, reform
themselves with eerie speed as he drinks. Kadrys staggers away from the body,
looking up to see another gargoyle in midair harrying the people in the
square. Kadrys leers at the severed head he is still holding, before hurling
it into the air, smashing the attacking creature's wing. As the injured
gargoyle squalls and flaps madly, trying to stay aloft with one wing in
shards, Kadrys beams happily and thinks 'Now that's what _I_ call killing two
birds with one stone!'

The maimed gargoyle starts spiralling downwards, unbalanced by the splinters of
his wing, but using his undamaged wing to slow his descent. As Kadrys watches,
he realises that unless someone does something, the wounded gargoyle may well
reach the ground, and the people there, alive. Without warning of any kind,
Kadrys vanishes, the familiar human form instantly replaced by that of a large
black bat. The bat hurls itself into the air, dodging round the flailing form
of the gargoyle with the shattered wing, and hovering out of reach above it.
The next instant, the bat is gone and the full weight of Kadrys' human form
crashes without warning onto the one-winged gargoyle's back. The suddenly added
burden is enough to force the luckless beast into an abrupt and rather final
acquaintance with the cobbles of the square.

Tonguerot Gargles a virulent curse as deathstink joins wingslash in a heap of
lifeless rubble on the ground. "There's more where that came from, crushpulp
bastiches..." he snarls as he finishes shoving eyestab's dislocated arm back
into its socket. "GET those softthings!" he orders, kicking eyestab back into
the fray.