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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1489811" data-attributes="member: 9626">The inevitable killer statueRudyard, despite his pessimism, let the charge up the stairs, and was bitten on the way up as a result.  But he was able to return the blow, slashing the statue’s neck, and causing a few rocks to crumble off of it.  It also proved to be a useful distraction, letting Dane, Raz, Tal, and Quercus up the stairs before the draconic statue could respond.  Dane and Quercus engaged the creature up close, while Tal shot an orb of magic at it and Raz fired at it from a distance.  However, the dragon responded with a strange breath weapon.  It was shaped like a wave, and shone in many different colors at once.  Tsine gasped when he saw it, after hearing horror stories about such things, but was relieved when he thought about it for a moment, and realized it wasn’t a prismatic effect. The end results weren’t much better, though.  Rudyard was blasted by a sonic force, which cut deep into his skin, giving him multiple lacerations.  Dane felt like his whole body was trying to pull itself apart, and it was only the most intense effort of will that kept him together.  Raz suddenly fell through the floor, and ended up back at the bottom of the stairs, and Quercus disappeared completely.  Only Tal was unaffected, which broke his streak of bad luck.  At the same time, a book flew out of one of the bookshelves in the room, floated over the dragon, and opened all by itself.  A strange, transparent image of an archer materialized above it, and it fired at Rudyard, giving him another nasty wound.  Tsine realized that things were getting serious, and let loose with a new spell he just mastered, shooting a bolt of lighting at and through the dragon.  Rudyard got his own revenge by slashing at the dragon, while Flix impressively tumbled up the stairs, leapt onto the dragon’s back, and plunged his sword into the dragon’s back.  It roared at him and tried to bite the tiny target, but before he could get the chance, Dane neatly sliced the dragon’s head off, causing the entire thing to crumble into a pile of rocks.While Quercus was healing Rudyard, the rest of the party was looking for Quercus, only to have him appear exactly where he was standing moments later.  He immediately prepared to attack the dragon, before realizing the dragon was already destroyed.  He looked extremely confused, like he lost all the time he was gone, or just jumped into the future.  Regardless, the party noticed that the light was, in fact, revealing another part of the shaft.  Another clue could be read in the area around where the light was striking, but most of the shaft more than a few feet away from the light was still shrouded in darkness.He was also betrayed as he betrayed.    The invader’s magic caught him by surprise,But at least the mage tried to preserve the books, for the fireball he used damaged None of them.The knight was knocked out by the blast, then his throat was slit where he lay.Tsine snorted.  “Well, that’s easy.  Just find a statue that can be hit by a fireball without damaging any of the books.  And if it also has a neck wound, we can be certain.”It only took a matter of minutes for Tsine to figure out the next statue, and as expected, more secret passages opened.  The observation room’s south wall opened up, connecting it to the second floor of the library.  Another passageway opened up on the fifth floor, but before exploring that, Flix eagerly dashed back to the elevator, only to return to the party disappointed.  “None of the other buttons lit up this time.”Tal tried to look sympathetic.  “Well, maybe we can check the other floors again.  Something might have opened up on one of them.”Quercus groaned.  “Maybe we should wait on that.  I’m almost out of spells, and I think Tsine is too.”  Tsine nodded his agreement.Tal pondered this for a moment.  “Yeah, I agree.  I almost am out of magic as well.  But before we go, we have to make sure we didn’t do anything to alert the staff of what we did here.” All they could find, besides the swords of course, were some rocks from the dragon statue that rolled into the library after the secret passageway in that room opened, so they took a few minutes to gather those and toss them back into the observation room before removing the swords and leaving for the night.A few hours later, a dark figured entered the library, and smiled.  The party was doing surprisingly well so far.  Well, for mortals anyway….OOT Notes: The dragon in this fight is yet another creature I made up.  It was called, appropriately yet embarrassingly titled a Book Wyrm.  I always enjoyed these creatures, especially its weird breath weapon, but whenever I used one, it had a tendency to die too quickly.  As always, I’d be happy to share the creature with anyone who wants to take a look at it.  It has a CR 8, and unlike my last two monsters, it has been updated for 3.5 already.</blockquote>

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