Drow's Dilemma Ep. 123: Clockmaster

Author's Note:

A Drow's Dilemma began as a one-on-one roleplaying project and has been converted into a chapter-by-chapter format for weekly posting with the permission and assistance from my partner. It will contain a considerable amount of sexual themes such as femdom, lesbian, straight, 'reverse' rape, BDSM, group sex, romance, and other themes. The main goal of the story, however, is to tell an epic tale of adventures, gods and goddesses, fae, and nymphomaniacs. This episode and every episode to come will be available for free on Literotica for the foreseeable future. All characters that engage in sexual or suggestive situations are mentally and sexually mature: the human equivalent of 18 for their race.

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Episode 123: Clockmaster

The party made their way out of the Treasury Vaults and over to the Engineering Quarters. As they entered the Clockmaster's Demesne, the change was obvious, with gears, cogs, belts, and other machines spinning and whirring away to no real purpose. Lots of power was flowing around here, but most of the devices seemed to be mere decoration.

But not all of them were pointless. As they entered, several machines from the walls snapped and whirred together to form clockwork monks that began jerkingly darting around, stabbing and shooting. They appeared to be constructs possessed by ghosts.

Althaia, being in the front, was the first to engage the creatures, quickly striking down a few. But as she did so, the ghosts left the constructs and possessed other ones, leaving their number the same.

Ashyr jumped in after Althaia with those whirling Yin and Yang blades. "Is it just me, or are these more determined this time?" Ashyr asked in annoyance when she watched the spirits repossess seemingly endless hunks of whirling metal.

"I wouldn't be surprised if these are literally endless!" Selene responded to what at least a few of the party members were thinking.

"I'll have to get rid of the spirits, then!" Hadlyn said with a little more optimism than Ashyr or Selene seemed to have. A string of beads like stars with a glowing moon at their center that decorated her chest and breasts began to glow a holy light. The light burst forth as it had several times that day. This time, however, it was aimed to damage the undead rather than heal her companions, as she had been doing every time previously.

Hadlyn's wave of divine energy flashed out across the constructs, causing the nearest ones to collapse limply on their sides. Encouraged, she sent out another wave. That one dissipated harmlessly as the tentacled shadow of a little girl manifested in front of them. Laughing maniacally, the shadow ate up the energy from the turn undead spell and sighed, sending out waves of dark energy.

The satisfaction on Hadlyn's face when her first spell was so successful faded to dismay. Her spell that worked so well against the undead was not going to work against this creature. Apparently, something had to be born before it could be considered undead. She, just like most of the party, was knocked back by the unexpected rush of evil. But with bared, clenched teeth her holy symbol began to glow more brightly than ever before as a holy aura surrounded her and protected her from the Evil-aligned attacks.

Nirza put a shield around herself and avoided being knocked to the ground. The ghostly drow gritted her teeth. "The Shadow of the Neverborn," she said grimly. "I had hoped we would have time before She appeared again."

[You interlopers have been causing me some problems,] The Shadow of the Neverborn hissed. [Taking my Brewmaster from me and persuading my Adventurer to help you. You, Dark Apprentice, this is your fault! But it will end up just like last time. You are powerless against me.] The shadowy figure began sending out reams of tentacles to grasp and constrict at the party.

Ashyr tumbled backward and landed back on her feet farther away from the freaky Neverborn. Her expression was set in a fierce grimace; she wasn't sure how she was going to attack this foe. Abyss, she wasn't sure if she could even manage an attack while dodging all those tentacles. Bard was certainly having a difficult time of it with his mere natural attacks. He didn't seem to relish the prospect of letting his claws or mouth get anywhere near the tentacles.

Selene was in a similar situation, but at least she had the ranged spells to throw out while she focused her mental energy on slapping the grasping tendrils away from her. Her familiar wasn't much use in protecting her mistress; she was better skilled at dodging, but only had magically-imbued physical attacks to lash out with.

The High Priestess focused more of her attention on offense than defense. It was a gamble to simply trust her Holy Aura to protect her, but what other choice did the party have? They had to drive away the Neverborn. From a ring that decorated her hand she drew out a wave of holy water, but before it could splash to the hall, the water froze into long-shafted javelins. They shot out from her outstretched hand towards the shadow and her tentacles, which Hadlyn hoped would encourage the creature to go elsewhere until they were ready to deal with her. The Neverborn deflected Hadlyn's ice javelin's with a laughing snort, though a close observer would observe that hissing holes were temporarily bored in her shadows.

"To me! Faraia, assist me!" Nirza shouted, gathering the party into formation. She threw up a shield against the roiling tentacles. "The Neverborn is not alive, dead, nor undead," she said grimly. "She simply Is Not, despite Being."

"Still Evil; still can be smitten," Althaia said, her red eyes glowing with the glory of the fight. "Ashyr, back me up. I am going in!"

"Althaia, that is-" Nirza began to protest, but the paladin leaped forward with a cry, her sword and shield alike glowing with holy light that caused the Neverborn to hiss back. "Oh, never mind. Ashyr! Your weapons are uniquely suited to strike her down. Let them flow through you! Hadlyn! Selene! Use force magic. Or anything infused with Holy magic. Strike where Althaia and Ashyr strike!" She herself began madly chanting spell after spell.

Althaia's assistance and rallying call caused Ashyr to dive into action. For some reason, she hadn't thought about her blades being suited for this sort of thing. When she thought about Yin and Yang, she didn't think 'Holy.' But then, the ranger was poorly suited to sense such things. So, she took Nirza's advice and let her mind and body become in-tune with her weapons - or, more accurately, threw herself into it harder than she normally did.

The Neverborn howled, and the monastery shook. With rage being shown in the static fraying of the edges of her shadow, the unborn goddess lashed out at the oncoming elves and nymph.

Meanwhile, Selene refocused on getting the tentacles out of her cousin's way, and then on wherever the melee members struck as Nirza prescribed. She was not able to cast any sort of holy spell; goddesses never had much sway with Selene. Not Lolth (though she sometimes swore using her name), and not even the much preferred Eilistraee. It was all arcane all the time with Selene. Well, right up until she had artifact-given psionic powers, which she now wove with her arcane magic as usual.

The High Priestess, however, had more of those holy ice javelins up her proverbial sleeve. She noticed how they had been at least moderately effective. Not that she was surprised; the Neverborn was clearly and intensely evil. Her attacks became more targeted towards the points that were attacked, as she chose to trust Nirza's knowledge about Ashyr and her artifacts' abilities.

The walls around the party quivered and expanded out, the passage growing in size and dimensions with a groan. The Neverborn groaned and shuddered along with the monastery. When the passage was large enough to allow her to move more freely, the shadowy creature grew several sizes, gathering more of the solid shadow around herself.

Then, she met the party's onslaught. She dodged, sliced, and screamed as she was cut and struck. Light and force drove her back a bit, but she came on more aggressively. Althaia lost an arm, Ashyr lost a foot. Hadlyn was struck through her stomach, and even Ylene had her tail badly cut.

But they managed to push her back. Blasting, hacking, slashing, stabbing, they forced her back. The Shadow of the Neverborn collapsed with an agonized, ear-shattering scream, and the still-enlarged passageway fell dark and silent.

The party stood in panting, cautious silence. For several long moments, they fully expected their enemy to come roaring back into the hallway and force them to redouble their efforts to drive her back. If that were to happen, they needed to be fully prepared, else they were convinced that more important, less reobtainable limbs were severed from their bodies. Like their heads.

Speaking of severed limbs, Hadlyn was the first to dive into action. She needed to address Ashyr's foot and Althaia's arm (she had already healed the pierce wound through her stomach) so they could recover as quickly as possible. So, she reattached both limbs and pumped holy energy into them. After that, she healed poor Ylene's tail once Selene convinced her familiar to let Hadlyn take a look at it.

"Thanks," Ashyr said with relief. Not for the first time, she truly appreciated the usefulness of having a good-aligned (or at least neutral...) cleric in her party. Lolthian priestesses, for the most part, were incapable of potent healing spells. She rolled her ankle to test the strength of her foot: not perfect yet, but seeming to get better as the bones and muscles reattached themselves. It was much the same for the paladin's arm.

Althaia assisted Hadlyn with helping the party recover from injury once her hand was restored. Between the two of them, the rest of the group was pretty well able to fight again within half an hour.

"Now I say we get going. Who knows when the Unborn will rally and attack again," Ashyr said after she could pretty much walk normally.

"Indeed," Nirza replied. "The Mechanical Clockwork Animator is next. And he has no doubt been perfecting his factory mecha these last few centuries. It was difficult to fight last time, I shudder to think what it might be like now."

[It is powerful, yes, but we are easily a match,] Caleldra said cheerfully. [I fought it with this group a few months ago, and we won, and they are all much more powerful now than then. Plus you are here.] The fetch grinned. [I hardly even think the old Mechanist will be a challenge.]

"Except I have to repair the machines, so you will not have my help," Nirza added. "And I will need either Selene or Hadlyn to assist me."

"I'll have to assist you, I suppose." Selene decided with a sigh of resolve. "I can throw the occasional spell to distract the Clockmaster, but Hadlyn will be much more important in keeping the party alive." Not that Selene was too upset about the prospect of not having to do direct battle with the clockwork monstrosity. She recalled that the last time involved a lot of climbing - and some terrifying falling as well.

"Regardless, we can do this," Althaia said, flexing her regrown arm. "Let us advance. And be on the lookout for that half-giant imprisoned here. I think that he will be around here somewhere, and we could use his help."

[I think the Neverborn has him,] Caleldra interjected.

"A pity," Althaia sighed. "Let us advance anyway."

And, they did. Back into the factory full of spider-tanks and lightning-fisted mecha monks. They were easier to clear out this time. But, once more, The Mechanical Clockwork Animator rose in his ninety-foot tall monstrosity, moving even more quickly than he had last time.

Ashyr bared her teeth as she glared up at the mech. It looked like the repairs the Clockmaster had made caused the thing to be even better than before. Great. She gripped at her swords, and, like the last time, their hue and appearance changed to a sickly grey-green cast as she imbued them with acid. She had been working with elemental damage with them; the acid should be more powerful than it had been the first time. That done, the ranger sprinted forward to try to mount and climb one of the mech's legs to get at what had been vulnerable joints the last time she fought the thing.

Ylene was right on Ashyr's heels. This was exactly the sort of thing the catgirl rogue was supposed to excel at: climbing and stabbing at vulnerabilities. She also had the advantage of both magical and mundane acid attacks to eat away at the machinery (assuming the Clockmaster hadn't found a way to make himself immune to such things). And, if she were to fall, everyone knew that cats always land on their feet.

The High Priestess of Eilistraee was the slowest to react. She had to take a moment to goggle at the sheer enormity of their foe. Then she shook herself out of it, activated her ornate anklets, and rose gracefully from the ground on ethereal wings that sprouted from her feet. It wasn't something she could do all the time, but it should work for as long as the battle lasted. From her position and mobility in the air, she could heal and buff the party much better. The first on her list was a buff for Ylene to make the rather squishy catfolk more durable.

Selene was soon to be sorely disappointed: repairing the oldest and least pointless of the broken machines ended up requiring a good deal of climbing and squeezing through small enclosures, as the original clockwork devices in the foundry had been overtaken by the larger, more dangerous, uglier, and more pointless devices of the last twelve centuries. It took the two of them a bit of time to get to the machines, but Nirza (and Faraia, though the crazy Psion was mostly kept busy keeping the Mechanist's Mecha at bay) remembered these machines from back when they were in perfect working order. So, the Dark Elf got to work on them post-haste, sending quick instructions to Selene all the while in Archaic High Undercommon, which made her sound very old and very aristocratic.

As might be expected, crawling and climbing through the mess of confusing clockwork did not do good things to Selene's mood. Still, she followed instructions to the best of her abilities. Cheerfulness did not seem like a requirement, though, so she felt free to grumble under her breath and curse at the inconvenience she was subjected to. It didn't take long for her to wish that she could be destroying the monstrosity behind her; that looked far easier than what she was doing. And yet, there was a secret part of her that was fascinated by the inner workings of the machine. That part thoroughly enjoyed itself

While those two were fixing up the Mechanist's old machines, the rest of the party had to try to break his current machine. "A truly poetic balance," Nirza observed.

The rest of the party continued their attack with enthusiasm, emboldened by how much progress they were making. They didn't bother changing tactics, as their current one seemed to be working wonderfully. Compared to the Shadow of the Neverborn, this hulking mass of metal was easily manageable. Destroying the Clockwork Animator's Mecha was not exactly a poetic affair. It was a quick one. The group was vastly enhanced in power and skill from a few months ago, and the Mechanist's machine being bigger did not, in fact, make it better. So it was not long before the acid-rusted joints began to fall apart, in time with the fixed machines whirring on. The party each cast their own versions (or had cast on them) of slowfall, that they may dismount without taking dangerous fall damage.

But they knew that this was only the first stage of this battle. If the repairs weren't done soon enough, they would have a more difficult fight on their hands. Perhaps it would have been better to keep the Clockmaster in this form for as long as possible, but then they ran the risk of him noticing the party's real goals.

One of the problems with fixing the machines was that, though Nirza remembered what they were for, she did not give overmuch information and the things were so alien and advanced by drow standards that they almost seemed pointless. But while these did not appear to be for anything, the machines they were clambering through to get to them were obviously meant for nothing.

"That was the half-way mark," Nirza said, rolling a glowing blue wire into a coil and shoving the coil into place. "If we keep this pace up, we will be in very good shape."

Meanwhile, the mecha had collapsed completely. Out of the wreckage of pistons and parts rose the massively stout figure of The Mechanical Clockwork Animarot, wearing a solid, smooth mask in the form of an expressionless face with eyes closed. Lighting began to form around his fists, and the monk lashed out at the nearest figure, Althaia. The nymph dodged and slashed back, and so the fight began with the rest piling in.

Around the fighters, the mech began to reassemble itself, starting to trap some party members. Right up until the Mechanist screamed, gasped his mask, and had his false face shatter, layers of metal fall off of him, and his emaciated, near-skeletal robed form was all that remained.

"We fixed the machines!" Nirza shouted exultantly.

[No! Not again! No!] The Neverborn shouted. Once again, her tendrils wrapped around the fallen monk, pulling him away. The factory fell silent, except for the calming whirr of a few purring machines off in the cavernous distance.

A bedraggled Selene emerged from the inner workings of the machinery with a grumpy look on her face. Before she could even look happy that it was all over, she magicked her hair and clothing back into some semblance of dignity. That seemed to make her feel better. "If I never have to do that again, then it will be too soon!" she claimed as she sat on a convenient piece of mechanical detritus. "Things like this are much better learned in books."

Ashyr laughed breathlessly at her cousin. The ranger was tired from her recent conflict, and yet her eyes shone with the excitement she always felt after a good fight that she was victorious in. "Don't worry; I'm sure there are worse things to come, dearest cousin," she 'assured' Selene in her usual manner of half-sarcasm, half-true feeling when it came to the 'dearest' portion of her words.

Nirza phased through the machinery to emerge, unruffled, next to Selene. "You did well, Selene," she said respectfully. "But I too would not want to replicate that experience. In fact, I will be dead before I do anything like that again."

Althaia chuckled at the jokes. "There probably are worse things to come, and with that in mind, I am with Hadlyn. Let us rest a bit. But not too long: we do not want the Neverborn to recover enough to strike at us again."

"The Neverborn cannot recover in this area," Nirza said. "At least not for a few weeks. It will take that long for her to re-corrupt them. We learned that back when Faraia and I were trying to purify this place: we cured Tokkler and Faranci, but when we got to Caleldir..." She sighed. "Goelon is leagues more powerful than those two. We will have a very, very hard fight ahead of us."

"Weeks? That is more time than we need... But, in light of that, I would like to request the full hour to rejuvenate. Most of my strength will come back after that much prayer, so I think it would be worth risking the Neverborn having more time to regain her strength," Hadlyn said as she pulled a moon-and-stars square of cloth out of nowhere that she proceeded to sit upon cross-legged. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her Holy aura became more perceptible to those around her.

Althaia briefly considered joining Hadlyn in her meditations, but the paladin had not noticeably exhausted her spells just yet, so she shrugged and continued strategizing. Or fraternizing, one of those.