From: hutch@hfglobe.intel.com (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: [KQ][TGMOAB 7.4] Never had a fiend like...
Organization: Intel Corporation
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 21:57:46 GMT

[Admin]  This includes POV for Marcel and 'Raelf.  Thanks for da feedback,
	 Jones laddie.  

'Raelf watched, concerned, as Lady Azzar attempted to pull herself
together enough to be able to wear the poncho he had loaned her.  The
air was growing cold, and wisps of dry hard powder snow were beginning
to drift down to the lower altitudes.

"Azzar.  Please wear this for me."  She smiled, shakily, the implanted
compulsion to nudity giving way to the implanted compulsion to obey,
but the request wasn't in conflict with her real desires this time.
She took the proferred garment and slid it over her head.

An incoherent roar and a sense of something malevolent moved with
blinding speed behind them.  'Raelf whirled, staff to ready, and saw an
empty place where Kron was supposed to be.  His eyes went pale blue as
he shifted his attention to Air - there was something, a faint hot
turbulent trail in the air, suddenly blurred as something magical
swirled through, dampening sounds and dispelling the heat traces.

"Shoulda kept my board out,"  'Raelf muttered to himself, looking around
carefully.  The others were just as baffled - looking for the sudden
assailant, without success.  Some kind of a patterned warping of air
and sky was making a nesting set of mirage-images, multiplying the
blasted cityscape around them, confusing their attempts to see where
the dimly echoing roaring was coming from.  A distorted voice, from
all around, shouted "Silken!" - a different voice, from nowhere,
screamed "KRON!  You don't understand, you've ..."

'Raelf was pissed.  His eyes went black as he pulled a complex shape
from the Void, the body pattern for Kron which he had learned days or
years ago when he healed the man's injuries outside the drug warehouse.
But it evaporated before he could start a sympathy-locator.

"Marcel, got anything?" asked 'Raelf.

Marcel slowly turned in a circle, his sword held in a defensive
stance.  /Scanners on full.  Find Kron./   "I'm looking."
[I'm looking, kid.  Damn that thing was fast.]
Marcel continued his slow spin, keeping an eye on the crowds for more 
attackers.  /Find anything?/
[There's a high static charge in the air, it's making scanning difficult.]
"Something's blocking me."

"Me too."  'Raelf continued his search.  This was intolerable.
Suspicious, he looked around them - but it wasn't one of Mother's
little thought tendrils, it was something else.  He spun the staff,
whispering <<Void to .8 by Earth to .3  time vector .5,.3,.42,.5>>
and a faint transparent sphere glowed around him - from outside, he
seemed to be blurring in a direction which was unpleasant to look at.

There.  A thoughtform, giving meaning to the mirage that concealed Kron.
'Raelf spent a nanosecond assessing his situation.  Relatively safe in
the timetwist, a third order place of power, probable enemy threat rank
cannot be assessed without further information.  Find the root of that
concealment spell then.  Start with the thoughtform.  In the realm of
mind, action cannot be taken without leaving traces, Saint Heisenburg
shows the Principle, and ...

Somewhere in Generica lives a creature who used to have a name like lesser
men, but he has been so purified and exalted in magic that he now transcends
names and only bothers to carry the title, Sorceror.  Accustomed to having
things ordered to his will, he found himself surprised by the turn of events.
He was having more trouble controlling the elf-entity than he intended, no
doubt due to the etheric noise from the wildly fluctuating timestream, and
now his spells were being traced.  Unacceptable - he still needed secrecy.
Attacking the snoop could be inconvenient.  He grabbed for his most easily
accessible pawn.

IGLYARCH.  SOMETHING IS TRACING MY SPELL.  STOP IT FROM FINDING ME.

The lackey vanished from the safety of his lurking hole, and appeared
in the Buffer, atop a building.  The spell tracker was that fellow he'd
seen earlier across the bulk of Mother, the one who had been fighting
with that disgusting Sandar Tol simulacrum.  So, they'd gotten away from
the Mother?!!  Best use a NASTY attack.  He prepared his spell - the one
called "Feeblemind" by the uncreative lout who had invented it.

Frustrated by the static, Marcel had a brainstorm.
    /Of course.  Rabbi, initiate playback.  Time index -95 seconds./
A small window appeared in his field of vision.
    /Speed 1:60/
    [Gotcha.]
    FRAME: Kron standing there, looking bewildered at the crowds.
    FRAME: Kron staring at something behind him.  His eyes are fractionally
wider:
    FRAME: Kron's feet flying up out of shot.
    FRAME: Kron being held by some black clad, flying humanoid.
    /New Frame: enhance whatever's got Kron &/
    FRAME: A small blurred blob flying up to a nearby rooftop.
    FRAME: The blob lands on the roof.
    /Pattern match the building to surroundings./
    [Sorry, the static's too bad on the background.  Hang on, I'm
     starting a signal enhance analysis.]

'Raelf (operating at a convenient ratio of fifteen to one) moved his
point of view along the "route" taken by the concealment spell.  There,
it was coming from a power nexus elsewhere in the city.  A major nexus.
Possibly enough energy present to be a nuisance to the Great Mother, even.
There, it was a seventeenth-order place of power, with a

Iglyarch's spell struck.

It took more focus than he expected, but he managed to make his spell
reach across the barrier to where the creature stood.  But it wasn't
coherent when it got there - Iglyarch scowled and drew on the chaos
around to shape the energies into a destructive physical blast,
instead of the mind-destroying demonic shredder that he had wanted.

'Raelf staggered, his attention brought back to the "real" world.
Smoke came off his hands as he began to absorb the incoming bolt.

Marcel and Rhoan were looking up at the top of the closest building,
where the bolt of magical energies had originated.  Rhoan shouted,
"Iglyarch!  Get him!" and Kron's frustrated helpers had a focus for
their frustration.  Colin launched an arrow, but it Ping!ed off a
barrier of some kind.

Rook saw the man on the roof starting to pull out some bit of dried
phlegm or whatever disgusting thing it was he used to focus his sorcery.
She smiled, and "pulled the lever" - bar, bar, bell - luck was with
her and NOT with Iglyarch - his grasp was too hurried, and the stuff
in his left hand blew away in a freak wind before he could use it.
Scorpion, meanwhile, shifted his face-parts into something that used
to be a smile, and cut loose with a blast of destruction that shredded
the skin along the magician's right arm.  Bones might be broken.

Rhoan came up behind him, sword drawn for a deathstrike.  A board creaked.

"Master!"  the panicked magician cried, and he vanished.

'Raelf, still in timespin, had gathered the energy that was hurled at
him, and held it in a ball of flame and ice, ready to return it to the
kind man who had sent it, when the thought-tendril holding the concealment
spell bifurcated, and one part spun the aforementioned fellow off to some
other place.

'Raelf grinned, watching the slow-motion fade as Rhoan's sword swung in
a lazy arc through the place where the magician would have been.

Now, while its attention is divided.  'Raelf momentarily flickered, and
Kron stood in his place, with flickering eyes and staff in hand.  THERE.
He was on top of THAT building.  FLICK - the blond surfer was back, glowing
white-hot, and the sphere around him vanished as the ball of stolen magic
flashed outward to screen his motions from whatever had been casting the
concealment spell.

    [Enhancement complete.  Match identified.  That one, sic' em!]
A building two down from where Iglyarch had been standing was outlined
in a red aura, in Marcel's cybered vision.

"On the roof, over there!" shouted Marcel, pointing towards the building.
Rhoan whirled, following the pointer, and leapt across the narrow gap
that separated the buildings.  Marcel pushed through the panicked
crowd and started scaling the wall.

    [Got some more on the bogie.]  The picture of the rooftop dissolved,
to be replaced with a new window.  The black blur resolved into a black
clad, haggard, wasted-looking elf that could have been handsome once but
showed signs of some disgusting, sickening malaise.  His eyes were red with
bloodlust and his hands and feet were distorted into clawed structures.

"It's some kind of demon elf," shouted Marcel.  Rhoan nodded and vaulted
across to the next building, where Kron had been taken.  'Raelf, mostly
made of fire, leaped to the top of the building, then sped like wildfire
to where Kron was slumped.  A windborne croon: <<GuardMode>> and the staff
hung in the air between him and the elfthing.  Then Rhoan was standing over
the downed creature, sword to its throat, holding it prisoner.

'Raelf flickered back from fire, and touched Kron.  Damage was severe.
He wouldn't be able to save him without consuming him, too many vital 
systems were involved.  He took a deep breath, and began the process,
reaching for the dying man's spirit, then realized that Kron's spirit
was unusually slippery, somehow it pushed him away.  He stopped.  This
wasn't good.  Besides, that momentary glimpse had shown him something
black and vile in the wounds and injuries, some kind of nascent curse.
That avenue wasn't open then.  He'd have to rely on physical methods.

But Kron was still breathing and now conscious, if shocky.  First things
first.  A ceiling tile shredded in 'Raelf's hands, changing to a fluffy
mass of threads and fibers, sterilized by intense heat, then cooled to body
temperature.  He packed the mass into the worst of the wounds, and shouted.

"KRON!  I'm applying first aid.  Don't move, you'll be all right.  Say
 yes if you hear me."

He waited for a response, then looked around.  Cold wind - he'll start to
shiver, not good - <<SpaceHeater>>  The air around them warmed to a balmy
95 degrees farenheit, and spun slowly in a vortex to keep from dissipating.

The bleeding stabilized with pressure, but organic damage was severe.
Still blood - oh gods, it nicked the artery in his leg.  That's small,
localized, can be fixed without eating him whole - FLICK - the wound
was gone, shiny fresh skin.  'Raelf waited, monitoring Kron's breathing
and pulse, keeping him from fading too far into shock.  Augment Water,
he needs the fluids, augment Fire, he needs the blood.  Augment Air,
don't let him get tissue damage from oxygen deprivation.

Others were here.

"We need to get Kron to a healer, or get a healer to him.  He's alive,
but barely.  Where's the woman we saw earlier?  Delmara, I think."

"She's down below, in one of the buildings."

"OK, I've got him stabilized.  We may have to move him down to where
they are."  'Raelf pulled the staff from the air.  "One last thing,
though.  Marcel, something nasty in there, feels evil.  I can't get
rid of it without messing him up - can you?"

"I can but try."  The tall paladin flinched as he entered the heat
of the warmth-vortex.  "More magic.  Mon Dieu."  He laid his hands
against Kron's head, and began to pray in Latin.  Whatever the black
gunk was, it fled.  "C'est fini."

"Gracias."  A cry from below, "Don't Move Him, I'm Coming Up!"
and they were joined moments later by the silver-haired woman who
had been tending to Maleiu.  'Raelf stared.  She wore a whip around
her neck.  The elemental similarities to Noira were incredible, but
where the priestess of Pain had been ugly this woman was beautiful.
Then he saw her assistant, and decided he'd have to find out who all
these people were.  Later.

But back to the business at hand.  The woman was handling Kron's
injuries in fine style.  So now to deal with the bastard that had
inflicted them.

The elfthing was still there, curled up in some kind of mental fugue.
'Raelf smiled grimly, and FLICK shifted to stone.  Best to not give
it a chance to hurt him.  He walked carefully over and reached into
Void - a handful of tiny crystals scattered in front of him, some of
them reacting to the creature, others not.  So, it really was an elf,
with a complicated curse - blood-drawing changes to the teeth like a
leech or a strix adapted to the canines, a power-shunt based on the
blood magic, some blurry, incomplete taps on the shunt, seemed to be
attached to self-image.  Fire and Water pervasively twisted through
a reinforcement of the body structures, strong but malleable.  Too
many ways the curse could twist the creature around.  Strong spirit
component, with the convolutions typical of a psychic.  Not dead, but
clearly not undead.  Not healthy, not quite sane, and currently it
carried massive bad karma.  Not a therianthrope, no moonbind.  Weird.

Not satisfied but not getting any more information right now, he took
the amulet that hung around his neck and exchanged the amber-colored
crystal in it for a deep red one.  A *flash* of not-light saved the
image of the elfthing, and he swapped the crystals back.  All but one
of the archetype crystals dismissed, he spun his staff in the air beside
him.  Rhoan stepped back, keeping his sword at the elf's throat.

<<FormStasisField, lock_balances>> - A very useful trick, he'd learned
it from Lord Raven and his crew, on the receiving end.  For a while it
would keep the creature from shapechanging or doing anything of that sort.
Would also keep it from berserking, for a while.  He touched it gently
with one rock-hard hand.

"So you are Silken.  Wake up.  You've got some explaining to do."

The crystal rune of Truth rested on the ceiling between them.
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