Without waiting for the others, the undead sorceress glided across the cavern floor toward Paganus's skeleton.
Ghaji's elemental axe burst into flame, illuminating their attackers just in time for Diran to duck beneath a set of long, wickedly curved black claws. The creature was a long-limbed, ebon-skinned, rubber-fleshed thing the size of a halfling with large almond-shaped eyes, tiny mouth, and three scimitar-like claws on each hand. As the monster's arm-like its claws-passed overhead, Diran slashed out with both his steel and silver daggers. The dark flesh parted beneath the blades' edges, but it did not sizzle or smoke at the silver's touch. As Diran spun and straightened to meet the next attack, he returned the silver dagger to its sheath within the inner lining of his cloak and drew another steel blade. He only had so many silver daggers, and since the holy metal had no additional effect on this creature, Diran preferred not to waste them.
More shadow creatures attacked from all directions, running at the companions from the ground and leaping at them from tree branches. The creatures came at them in silence, making no noise at all as they advanced, and if Diran hadn't wounded one himself, he might've thought they weren't solid beings at all, but instead ethereal forest shadows that had somehow come to deadly life.
Ghaji's axe slammed into the shoulder of one of the creatures and it released a high-pitched shriek like the piercing cry of a jungle bird as the elemental weapon carved it in two. So the shadowclaws could make noise when they wished!
The beast Diran had wounded whirled about for another try, but a backhanded slash at the creature's throat by the priest thwarted the attempt before it had even begun. Black blood gushed from the thing's neck, and it staggered backward, collapsed to the forest floor, and died. Diran didn't pause to take a closer look at the creature, which he'd already begun to think of as a shadowclaw. Though he was unfamiliar with the species, he knew everything that was important: the beasts were trying to kill them and the things died at the kiss of cold steel. Nothing else mattered right now.
It was difficult to estimate how many shadowclaws were attacking. Ghaji's fire axe only provided so much light, and the creatures' black skins blended in perfectly with the darkness that suffused the dark forest. A dozen shadowclaws? Two dozen? More? It was impossible to say.
Leontis was rapidly nocking and loosing arrows, and with every twang of his bowstring, another shadowclaw fell.
'We need more light!' Leontis shouted.
'Happy to oblige!' Yvka called back. She'd taken three small wooden juggling balls from her pouch, and she tossed them into the air. The three balls froze at the apex of their flight and began emitting a dazzling shower of white sparks.
For a radius of fifty feet, the forest became bright as day. The shadowclaws caught in the glare of the sudden light hissed, squeezed shut their overlarge almond eyes, and tried to block out the painful illumination by raising their huge talons. The light didn't keep the shadowclaws from attacking, but it made them hesitant, and that was something.
'Many thanks!' Leontis said, his voice little more than a throaty growl. He continued loosing arrows, but now each shaft plunged into a shadowclaw's eye, penetrating straight into the brain and slaying the creature. With alarm, Diran watched as his friend began to transform. Leontis's eyes glowed a feral yellow, his teeth became sharper and more pronounced, and his hands and face were now almost entirely covered with fur. Nose and mouth merged and stretched into a lupine snout, and his ears became pointed and shifted upward toward the top of his head. His fingernails lengthened into claws, and the priest could no longer get an effective grip on his bowstring. With a snarl, Leontis threw the weapon to the ground, shrugged off his quiver and backpack, and leaped at the nearest shadowclaw, his own claws outstretched and eager to rend flesh.
Diran took a quick glance around to see if anyone else had witnessed Leontis's change of shape, but the other companions had been too busy battling the shadowclaws to notice. Good, Diran thought. The last thing the others needed as they fought for their lives was to be distracted by the realization that they had a werewolf in their midst.
Tresslar knelt on the ground near Solus. The psiforged stood immobile, the psionic crystals that covered his body pulsing with multicolored light. Solus grabbed hold of the shadowclaws in his vicinity with his telekinetic powers and flung them into the air to slam into tree trunks or, just as often, each other. It was as if the creatures were being tossed about by a gale that could neither be seen nor felt.
Tresslar's revealer lay on the ground, and the artificer was furiously working on it with a pair of tools that looked something like lockpicks formed from shimmering light. Diran had no idea what Tresslar was doing, but he had no doubt it was important, so the priest sprinted over to the artificer's side to stand guard over him. Tresslar didn't look up from his work as Diran began slicing at shadowclaws as they attacked, but he said, 'Thanks, Diran. If you can just buy me a few more moments…'
'That may be about all I can do,' Diran muttered.
A pair of shadowclaws dropped toward them from the trees, and the priest hurled both of his daggers at the same time, aiming for an eye of each creature. The blades struck, the shadowclaw's eyes popped like rotten fruit, and the monsters fell to the ground, dead.
Leontis had been on to something: the creatures' large eyes made excellent targets.
As Diran grabbed a fresh pair of steel daggers from within his cloak-poison-coated blades this time, for the sheer number of shadowclaws meant they needed every advantage they could get-the priest spared a second to look toward the last place he'd seen Leontis. His fellow priest, now more wolf than man, stood in the midst of a group of shadowclaws, slashing at them with his own claws, tearing at ebon flesh with his teeth, ignoring the deep wounds the creatures' large talons made as they struck again and again, for their claws were not made of silver and therefore did him no lasting damage. His injuries healed almost as swiftly as the shadowclaws could make them. Diran had fought numerous beings that could change their shape, but he'd never seen a true lycanthrope in action before, and the sight was a most impressive one indeed. The speed and savagery were beyond anything he had ever witnessed before, and add to that the swiftness with which lycanthropes healed, and Diran understood why the Purified had once fought so hard to extinguish their kind from the face of Eberron, and why they continued to guard against a lycanthropic resurgence to this day.
Leontis's curse was proving to be a benefit to them now, but what would the werewolf do when there were no more shadowclaws to fight? Would he be so intoxicated with battle-lust that he'd turn on them? If so, then Diran would be forced to do as his friend had originally requested and free him from his curse by plunging a silver dagger into his heart. If that time came, then Diran vowed he would strike swiftly and without hesitation. He owed Leontis that much, at least.
A single shadowclaw rushed at Tresslar, claw-hands held high and ready to strike. Diran stepped between the artificer and his ebon-skinned attacker and hurled a poisoned-coated dagger at the creature's throat. The creature managed to bring down its right claw in time to deflect Diran's dagger and knock it onto the ground. But in the short amount of time it took the shadowclaw to perform this action, Diran had already thrown his second dagger and the blade sank into the base of the creature's throat up to the hilt. The shadowclaw gagged as the poison went swiftly about its work, coughed a spray of black blood, and collapsed onto the forest floor where it laid still, its life fluid soaking into the soil.
Diran quickly moved forward to retrieve his blades. He picked up the dagger that the shadowclaw had knocked to the ground, and then yanked the second blade from the dead creature's throat. He didn't bother wiping the dagger clean, for he wished to keep as much poison on the blade as possible. He shot Tresslar a quick look. 'I thought you said you made it through the forest without incident during your last journey!'
'That was forty years ago,' the artificer said. He tapped the revealer's metal ring in a rhythmic pattern with his light-picks, moving the tools back and forth rapidly across its surface. 'And it was daylight when we crossed the forest-both coming and going. These things don't look like the sort of beasts that enjoy light, do they? Not with those eyes and that coloring. At least, that's what I'm counting on.' Tresslar stopped working on the revealer and held it up for inspection. Diran couldn't see anything different about, but Tresslar must have, for he nodded and said, 'That should do it.' The artificer then rose to his feet, groaning as his knee joints popped. 'I really am getting too old for this sort of foolishness. Let's go.'
Diran slashed another shadowclaw's throat with a pair of cross-handed strikes that nearly decapitated the ebon beast. 'Go where?' he asked as the poisoned creature stiffened and fell to join his dead brethren littering the
