>>5724057>19 for EwaldSir Ewald’s charge catches you off-guard not in its swiftness or strength this time, but in its sudden stop. He does not plunge toward your with his miniature sword but, rather callously for a holy-symbol, he hurls it like a common throwing-knife. In your surprise, you fail to step aside, instead jumping back.
>4/5 HP leftThe miscalculation costs you blood—the dagger strikes true, lodging between your armour’s plates. It’s a shallow wound, but when you grasp for the dagger…
“<HOLY JAVELIN!>”
>3/5 HP leftThe dagger sudden surges with electrical energy, surging through your hand and chest alike and sending you into a series of spasms of pain and disorientation. You grip the holy symbol tighter, determine to remove it, but it only burns your hand worse for the effort. You roar, and wrench it free, but it takes considerable effort, and while you are distracted, the Old Paladin is not still-he is retrieving his <Holy Avenger>, and taking up the hallowed and no-doubt ancestral weapon.
Too late, you look up at him with wide and furious eyes. He does not charge right away—which is good, because your’e not sure you could resist a charge right now, but rather lifts his champion-balde aloft.
“By Moroth,” he intones like a holy rite, “and by marese! By Hawksong, b y the paladin Kngs of Old! By all that is Good and Holy and RIGHT…”
His sword is aglow now, and parking with heavenly lightning. The electricity spreads down from the blade to the hilt from hilt to hand, across his armour until he is all aglow, and his stern and judgemental gaze full of Heaven’s own wrath.
“<EAGLESOUL!”>
The light explodes forth, and to your horror (well, extreme irritation), he is healed—his earlier wound mended, his exhaustion dissipated.
“A cheap trick,” you remark.
He does not respond, instead stepping forward, lifting his luminescent blade, and crying out:
“<SMITE EVIL>!”
He brings the sword down upon you, its metal body augmented and lengthened by a crackling length of tamed lighting, and the force of that magic supplemented by the force of his conviction. The Gdos fo Light are with him, you sense, rendering their verdict upon you.
And yet…
>12…You are not just some ‘monster’ to be slain. You are a master of the blade! Your sword catches his, blades clashing and locking against one another. It is a crude and foolish technique—better to strike lethally at his exposed body, of course—but it is all you can do to catch it in time. The khopesh is at least well-designed for this action, but his strength holds—you cannot rip the weapon from his grip…
>19But with a backhanded bash of your off-hand, still wearing the forcefield-projecting <Ring of Protection>, you are able to force him to loosen his grip just enough at adjust your stance, to loom above him, and to apply the necessary pressure.
“Then let usss ssee if I am ‘evil’ after all, yesss?” you suggest.
