I always think a nap helps to clear the mind. It gives you a whole new outlook to what to do.
After my short nap, I woke up and had several ideas about the carts that were arriving. On was to work out exactly where they were going to arrive - were they going to be evenly spaced out around the tower, or only approximately? How close would they be? The cliffs are tall, but almost vertical. A quick calculation showed that we should be able to use the napalm canisters as bombs, and launch them from the castle walls with some accuracy.
At the same time, Charity had been inspecting the carts themselves. She said that they contain wood, nails, clothes, armour. All mundane items. Not enough wood to build towers to reach the castle, but I was concerned that they might be trying some sympathetic magic. Charity's previous trick of shutting off magic, although annoying for me, meant that this wouldn't work, but they may still try to prepare for it.
Benedict came up with another option, that they had been thinking of using the fog to erect dummies to make it look as if the tower was still under siege, while most of the army went off to do something else.
To any intelligent person that sounds silly and easily spotted, but maybe demons and humans have the same thought processes. Anyway, we decided that it was plausible. Charity had also noticed some of the demons leaving in small groups, which added to the possibility of it being true.
The only place that we thought that the demons might attack was Ygg, so we headed there to meet Corwin. Corwin wasn't answering trump calls, so we trumped directly to Ygg to try to find him.
These discussions weren't very hopeful. Corwin didn't have enough troops there to defend Ygg, and we had no hope of getting enough there without the Jewel of Judgment. So this then led on to perhaps an even worse idea - to go to the Keep of the 13th Hour, find what was being guarded there, and take it. Something is definitely there, and we know that Brand needed the 3 jewels to break the seal, as well as a powerful sword.
And so we prepared. The demons can use power words, so I prepared a silence spell to avoid that issue. We took two of the rail guns, and Corwin came along as well. Probably we should have taken some other people as well.
Our idea was for most of us to go to the pattern at Carnelian. Charity would scry the area from Elysium (the trump painting in Deirdre's tower), then immediately trump to us. We would use the pattern to go there, I would cast the silence spell, and everything would work well.
In practice, Charity scryed the area and found out that there were more demons there, but we decided to go ahead anyway. We used the pattern, and I started casting the spell. Unfortunately I got hit by another 'grey' spell and became inactive at some point. I can only guess that the demons were attacking the others in this time.
When I came to, about half of the demons were down, but we weren't doing so well. I cast my spell, which probably helped a little, but even so I was left facing a demon that had downed Charity. It avoided my crossbow bolt, but I managed to just reach Charity's gun and kill it before it reached me.
Things really weren't looking too good at this point, even for a gnome. Both Charity and Allagahn were down now, and Corwin had disappeared. I thought of trumping out quickly, but there was one demon left approaching me too quickly.
Charity's gun had run out of ammunition, so I hurried to reload with a spare clip from her belt before the demon arrived. It was going to be close. The hideous thing was over me even as I rammed the clip into the gun, and started shooting upwards as its claws descended.
Why is it left to me to make a last stand? I'm not a dwarf for god's sake.
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| Hero of the Hour - Alfred | The Keep of the Thirteenth Hour |