The Firey Finale!

[Jareth]

Links to previous Chapters

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=68208

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=68632

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=68984

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=69509

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=69512

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=69518

After unlocking the door and descending into the earth on lime encrusted stairs the five heroes became hotter and hotter. The jungle was stifling, and the desert was intense, but this combined the worst of both of them. Despite Mr. Tarnish's grumbling personality, he was silent. The time was to important, to tense for anything as mundane as comfort. A glow appeared ahead and the five entered the chamber. The floor was divided into a small terrace of stone and a vast field of Lava. Seperating the two were small rock fingers topped by skulls. Rising from the Inferno pool was a titanic collumn of blackened stone. Amidst the drips and hisses of water drops striking the magma the heroes could hear voices. The only voices they had heard since entering the caverns. To Quivver the sounded like the human bullies who taunted him as a child. To Belladonna, like her mother's brothers, the ones that all but exiled her from the tribe. To Hasan they were slavemasters. But to all of them, they said the same words. "Hunger" "Fire" "Murder" "Feast" "Flame" "Kill" "Devour" "Burn" "Slaughter"

Quivver was the first so spot the crimson Bat-like forms crawling on the surface of the rock. "Imps!" He cried and the three demons swooped down from their perches to hover in front of the five.

"Glottony" "Pyre" "Massacre" "Starvation" "Scorch" "Slay"

Quivver drew the arrow allready nocked in his bow to his eat and took carefull aim at the imp that sounded like Alex, but The Tacomancer put a hand on his shoulder and whispered "Hold, don't aim at them, 'Donna and I will handle them if they get close. Shoot all of your arrows into Him."

"Him, who?"

"Him."

The ebon form unfolded into limbs. Legs, a tail, Wings. The figure now turned around revealing a blood red sward that burst into flame as the horrible mouth screamed. One arm plunged into the lava and ripped it up into the air like a beserker with the heart of an enemy, and the spiral of flame hung in the air and spat bits of liquid fire down to the plaza.

"ANTITAPICO!" Bellowed The Tacomancer, and a greenish glow repelled the droplets. They all ducked when an imp dove at them, but Belladonna stuck it with her staff and it split in a burst of heat and light. A snake and a monkey dropped from the miniature explosion, and a bat winged away.

"How am I supposed to get up there?" Mr. Tarnish yelled in responce, only to have the Tacomancer shove him from behind with a shout of "FLY" and Mr. Tarnish rose into the air, past the chain of skulls, other trophies and the Gem of elemental flame up to the glowing coal like eyes.

Tarnish struck and struck again, to no visible effect. The Titan tried to swat the dwarf once or twice, but then chucked like a thunderburst and threw a ball of the collumn of embers at his friends on the ground.

He spun around in midair to see the Hasan Block the spell with his tower shield and the mage bolster it with a spare hand and some type of spell that turned the sheild glossy-white like ivory. "Tarnish!" Yelled quivver, "Move out of the way! I don't want to shoot you!"

"I can't hurt it anyway!"

The Tacomancer turned from Hasan and spoke in a voice that shouldn't have carried over the sounds of flame and mocking imps, but did anyway. "You have a pick, use it on the rocks, not the demon."

Tarnish soared to rip apart the caldera wall and Quivvers hands started planting arrow after arrow inbetween the scales of the demon. Belladonna made a sound like a highlands wildcat and now quivvers hands moved like a blur. At the same time as Hasan impaled the last imp, he ran out of arrows.

Again the Deep booming chuckle, and the scale-armored evil spoke. "Sticks? Sticks can not Hurt a Master of Hellfire! Even sticks that do not burn."

Belladonna shouldered her way between the archer and the ranger. Her staff began to glow as she raised it in the air. "Warp Wood!"

The arrows writhed like snakes, prying up the obsidian scales. Light and heat emanated from the holes, and again the pillar of diabolism screamed. Louder. The spiral of incandescence fell back to the lava field.

"Never before have I felt such glorious pain. Let me share it with you. Forever."

All but forgotten, Mr. Tarnish ripped a boulder from the ceiling and water, glorious, precious rainwater pushed it. Showering and cooling everone and everything. Through the steam, the heroes saw the white hot gaps in the armor cool through the spectrum of heat. Yellow, orange, red then black.

Tarnish swooped down and plucked the gem from the horrid necklace and flew back to his companions.

Later, back in the desert castle he showed the Gem that had led them so far. "Our lord will be pleased indeed."

"With what?"

"Daft mage. With This! The Gem of elemental fire of course!"

"Thats it? Why didn't we get one of the other ones? That would be much simpler, and safer to boot!"

Another pause settled over the five. Quivver was afraid of the answer, but he had to ask anyway. "What do you mean 'other ones.'"

"Well, we've been passing by those thing ever since we started. In fact there's been at least one of those gems at every major step of our journey."

"Well, this is the real one, the others must be fakes."

"Are you sure? How do you know? Oh man, this means we have to retrace our steps to get them all, just to make sure we get the real one."

Edited May 12, 2012 by Jareth

[soccerkid6]

Scary guardian, the cave walls look good

[NiceMarmot]

Yeah, really nice guardian. Cool spiral of lava, nice stonescaping. This has been an epic saga, and a funny one too. I've really enjoyed all the different scenes, and the story. This episode seems a bit more rushed than all the others... You probably ran out of time, like all of us did. I suppose we shouldn't make any changes until after the voting. Maybe some better photos and some proofreading on the story will help.

[de Gothia]

That guardian is just wow! Very much action packed into the scene and I can almost see how the beast is moving! Fun to see those microfigs!

As I said before, it´s to bad that you didn´t put all the chapters in one thread.

[Rogue Angel]

Quite the story! I love all the D&D references you make throughout the adventure, and the overall humor. I really like the druids staff, the 2 trees made with green tiles, the use of wedge plates along the river, the dunes in the desert, and all the plants in the 4th chapter (I think) - very original!

[Gabe]

Awesome story Jareth, very entertaining! You really had me going back and trying to spot all the other gems in the different chapters afterward. Some very cool techniques used throughout the chapters too. One thing that might help you in future is to work on your presentation - i could see some cars etc in the background in some shots and it was quite distracting. A bit of photo editing would be an easy fix for that. Anyway, great entry, best of luck in the voting!

[Jareth]

Thanks Guys!

@deGothica: Yeah, I really should have put them all in one post, but on the other hand, Mine was so long, I'm not sure the server would have handled it all in one posting. As it was I had trouble with a couple of postings.

@nicemarmot: I did sort of run out of time. A lot of the photo quality problems in this are because I had to take pictures with artificial light. I thought it would be OK, because the setting is underground, But for some reason the colors made the pictures....grainy. I had to stick with it, but If I could do anything over, It would be to get daylight photos.

@Gabe: I agree about the cars. The worst is chapter 2, so I now have a couple of posterboards to help. Photo editing would be better, but I don't own a computer. As it is one of my bottlenecks was using a work computer to resize the photos. Anyway, Aside from this chapter I thing my presentation skills have improved. Not as nice as most of you, but It's a step forward.

[robuko]

Jareth, this story is so good. Very funny, lots of variety of scenes, some brilliant building techniques in each chapter. Hiding the gems is absolute genius! I think I found them all, it tooka while. Superb entry