Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: mba@controls.ccd.harris.com (Belinda Asbell)
Subject: [Ga] A mind is a terrible thing...
Message-ID: <1993Feb5.133900.17336@ccd.harris.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 13:39:00 GMT

Mardan had scarcely moved Zebron's body away when one of the strange
tigerbeasts attacked him.  The battle-hardened veteran parried and
countered with lightning speed, driving the beast back before him without
sustaining a scratch.  Garriot was murmuring in some forgotten language,
wrestling on the ground with another of the tigers. Others in the party
joined the fray, finding battle within easy reach...The elf looked to be a
mage, and was thus a major threat.  Marra's brave clawing had done no more
than delay the inevitable spell, and the small cat herself had taken wing
damage from a tiger claw.  She sat now up in the branches of a tree,
cleaning her wounds and warning Khisanth of attacks from behind.

Khisanth herself needed all the help she could get.  She had tried to
spellbind the elf, but his weaknesses were hers as well, and a weretiger's
claw had lost her the spell.  She drew her own sword, and hacked at the
tiger, landing a fairly solid blow.  Something grabbed at her mind, but
didn't catch.  She looked up and saw the mage staring at her...so he *had*
managed to get off a spell.  No more for him, though, because one of the
warriors was up in his face as soon as the spell completed.

Another, different force grabbed at her mind, very nearly holding on.  The
dwarf, this time.  "Why me??" she thought.  

The rents in her armour attested to the beating she was taking, and she
felt weak from loss of blood.  Something hit her arm, knocking her sword
out of her hand....

The battle reached a feverish pitch, and a weretiger bit her seconds 
before Alaric jammed a sword in its back...she had to do something about 
that dwarf...reaching for her fallen sword, she felt something grab at her
mind again....and holding. she turned, and saw the dwarf muttering some 
incantation as he glared at her....she felt her world slipping away....

<* NOOOOOO! *>

Without thinking, Khisanth threw the entire force of her anger and fear at
the praying cleric....She felt the dwarf's mind explode in a cloud of pain,
and her own world went black...

-- 
Belinda Asbell        +  System Administrator, Harris Controls Division
mba@ccd.harris.com    +      Any opinions presented are mine alone.

           We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.