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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 2472341" data-attributes="member: 726">Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 251How can this not be the Boss Fight?Dranko, grievously wounded, has been intending either to heal himself or to try finishing off the more wounded Mass.  Instead, seeing Aravis’s gruesome new pseudopodia, he rushes over with a wand of cure critical wounds and brings his friend back from death’s door.   He hears another sound of a chain lightning, this one from Ox, get sucked into the ironstorm.  The Trunk sizzles. Flicker launches a vicious attack at the Mass.  He’s hasted, and finds that these things can be sneak-attacked.  (At the center of the Mass is an actual body, hard to reach, but more vulnerable.)  He practically disappears into its multitude of smaller tentacles, and the others see gouts of black ooze spattering out of its middle.  Finally it stops moving, and settles into a lifeless lump of drooping rubbery ropes.  Flicker squirms out of its dead embrace, covered nearly head to toe in dark fluid and grinning like a maniac.   It takes Yoba a second to get over her shock at Aravis’s condition, but with a determined grimace she steps up to him, watches for a second, and slashes mightily with her sword.  She lops the tentacle off only a foot from Aravis’s body, and that’s enough.  The remaining foot slides sickeningly out of his body, leaving a gaping wound.  “I... I’m sorry,” says Yoba, as Aravis gasps in pain.  “It seemed for the best.”“That’s okay,” Aravis croaks.  The second Mass, itself badly wounded, still presses the attack.  It fails to cause Ox to sprout a tentacle, but it slaps him hard with all four of its own appendages.  The damage is immense, and now Ox is close to death.  High in the air Ernie hears a loud sucking noise from the Trunk, as a third Mass drops out from near the top and lands with a squelch at its base.    It looks slightly smaller than the others, and its tentacles are thinner, but it’s still larger than an ogre and writhing for all it's worth.   Turning back to the Trunk, he can see now that it’s been seriously damaged by the repeated spells.  The part in the ironstorm is ragged and spewing blood.“Hurt the pillar!” he thinks to the others.  “Keep hurting the pillar!”  The minotaur body is lifted by its tentacle and whipped high in the air while it casts a spell.  Then the tentacle brings it down to the second Mass, on which the minotaur casts heal.    To make things more fair, Kiro casts heal on Ox, while Morningstar does the same to Aravis.  The battle grinds on.  Ernie continues to slash at the Trunk, with Beryn Sur dancing on one side of him and his spiritual weapon chopping away on the other.  Wedges of mottled flesh are hacked out of the Trunk and drop wetly to the stone below.   Down below, Yoba looks up and watches Ernie’s brave assault, admiration shining in her eyes.  More blows are traded.  Sagiro attacks the tentacle-armed dwarf, who in turn unloads a full attack on the already injured Dranko.  Somehow the half-orc stays conscious, but he knows that even if he survives, his scar collection will be getting a huge boost.  Before sinking into the stone floor for cover, Kibi summons a large earth elemental by the Trunk, then follows with a quickened coldfire that catches multiple foes.   The troll is seared away from its tentacle and falls lifelessly to the floor.  The headless body with the greatsword and platemail survives, and is then carried up near the ceiling by its tentacle, where it unleashes an ice storm on the thickest concentration of heroes.  More melee, more spells, more pain on both sides.  Jack has lost his rapier in the body of one of the Masses, forcing a switch to his returning daggers.  Snokas gamely swings his picks.  Aravis and Ox fire off empowered cones of cold.   With concentrated effort they manage to knock two more bodies – the minotaur and the dwarf – from their tentacles.   (And a good thing, too.  The axe-wielding dwarf was gearing up to finish off Dranko – and it surely would have, with one more round of attacks – when Yoba stepped forward to finish it off.)  Meanwhile the Masses continue to wreak havoc among the heroes.  Though they don’t cause any more tentacles to bloom, their melee attacks are hugely damaging, and the ability-score drain is starting to add up.  Ernie keeps carving away.  The Trunk has now endured damage that would have brought a small army to its knees, but still it stands, blocking access to the blue glow at its center.  Ernie has hewn himself a small niche in its bulk, and this affords a better look at his ultimate goal.His heart sinks.  He can see now that the bright blue object at the center of the Trunk is not an Eye of Moirel at all, but rather yet another Way, albeit a particularly vibrant one.   That would explain the lack of crystal.“Crap!” he thinks, and conveys this to the others.  “This isn’t even the big fight!”But there’s something else, something worse, something that’s been happening for several seconds and is now impossible to ignore. Slowly but unmistakably, the light of One Certain Step is fading. * *Let us return for a moment to Kibilhathur Bimson.   Having cast his spells, he finally remembered that he should be using his xorn movement to give himself cover each round.  Now he has sunk himself into the rock floor of the cavern.   Ordinarily Kibi finds comfort in subterranean immersion, but this time it’s different.He can feel an increase in the Earth Magic, but it’s accompanied by a much larger surge in the churning nausea of Cleaners.  There are things in there with him, squirming in and through the stone.   Worst of all, he can sense that below him the stone doesn’t get denser and more solid, but rather that if he were to descend much deeper, he’d leave the earth all together and plunge into...To his credit, he doesn’t go mad.  Instead he hastens to the surface, and once back in the relative comfort of the Cleaner-infested cavern he sends an empowered lightning bolt sizzling into the ironstorm.   Over the mindlink, Ernie informs the mages that further use of the ironstorm will be pointless; all of the Trunk that was in its area has effectively been burned away.* *Realizing that Step’s light won’t last more than another five minutes (if that), Grey Wolf casts body of the sun.  For a second his body flares with light, sending the nearest tentacles shying away from him.  But almost immediately that light becomes dimmed, as the overwhelming presence of Fgogl stifles the effect.  From high above them, the platemail-clad body unleashes another ice storm.  Given the precarious heath of many of the heroes, Aravis decides to minimize the risk of one of the Masses delivering a killing blow.  He casts reverse gravity, sending the newly-born Mass hurtling up toward the cavern’s roof.   Even from that distance the thing tries (and fortunately fails)  to force another tentacle to burst from Aravis.   The remaining Mass at ground level is subject to a final burst of attacks from the heroes – Jack keeps throwing his daggers, Ox casts another cone of cold, and Flicker tumbles in to once again deal the killing blow.   Already dripping with black goo, things just get worse for Flicker in that regard.  The dead Mass falls on top of him.  While Yoba lays hands on Dranko, and Kiro applies much needed healing to himself, two of the Trunk’s smaller tentacles wrap around Snokas and Ernie, pinning their arms to their sides.   They hold their prey out away from the Trunk – and in the ironstorm.  At their mental cries of alarm, Grey Wolf dismiss the spell. So.  Two of the Masses are dead, and the third is suspended helpless in a reverse gravity field.  Only one animated body is still active.   The Trunk seems badly damaged, and the heroes’ healing magic has kept pace with their wounds.  Best of all, no one since Aravis has sprouted an unwanted tentacle.  On the other hand, many of the heroes are still seriously injured, and Snokas and Ernie are being grappled by the Trunk’s smaller appendages.  And now, from a spot about half-way up the Trunk’s body, a pale green light begins to glow.  Ernie looks up and wonders what new devilry is brewing.“This can’t be good,” he thinks to the others, and no one disagrees....to be continued...</blockquote>

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