Artifact of Evil

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Horns bellowed in answer to the screaming trumpets that sounded from the high towers of the concentric castle. The starless night was suddenly bright with globes of glowing light, radiance that shed betraying illumination behind the lines of besiegers outside the fortress. Men and machines were moving across the trampled ground toward the great stone walls. Arrows, quarrels, and streaking missiles of magical origin flew toward the encircling soldiers. Some arrows and quarrels lodged in wooden mantlets or struck into shields, but others sank into flesh. The magic missiles, blazing fireballs, and crackling bolts of lightning were far worse. Bodies were tossed high by roaring blasts; wheeled shelters were split and broken by the flashing strokes of electricity while metal-clad men-at-arms behind them became charred corpses. Varicolored darts sped unerringly into hapless targets who screamed and died. Torrents of flame erupted from the sky to set siege towers blazing, giant torches that added a hellish light to the scene, while raging fires swept over the advancing lines or made curtains of flame that seared their flesh.

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