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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1654820" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 178Facing two hill giants, the evil hags, and their former ally, once again the situation looked grave for the adventurers from Cauldron.    The song filled Dannel as it always seemed to, now, as he lifted his bow and took aim down the length of a long shaft.  He could not keep it in, and his lips parted in a pure note of focused joy as he let the arrow fly.  The missile slammed into the hag’s shoulder, drawing a cry of pain from her as it drove her back.  He reloaded and drew again, lost in total focus upon the bow and the song, and even as the hag recovered he struck her again, piercing her side this time with the second shaft.  But the hag was a supernatural being, infused with the darker powers of faerie, and despite the two grievous wounds she was still clearly far from beaten.  Arun did not hold anything back, laying into the giant with a two-handed smite that sent the huge creature rocking backward, pain exploding from the deep wound in its side.  The giant lifted his club to strike again, but before he could swing the paladin slid six inches of steel into his groin, and the giant stiffened in agony.  In desperation the giant smashed his club down into the dwarf with everything it had, the full power of its strength and weight behind the blow.  The club struck the ground with enough force to crack one of the floor tiles.  But the dwarf, trained from youth in the tactics of fighting giants, had shifted out of the path of the club as it had come down, and stood unharmed.  The giant looked down into the eyes of the paladin, and saw death. The other giant was finding itself pressed as well.  It pounded Clinger with several powerful blows of its club, but the celestial lizard refused to release its hold upon the giant’s ankle.  Hodge rushed back to help it, opening a foot-long gash in its other leg with his axe.  The giant shifted back to the dwarf and struck him solidly in the shoulder, again knocking him roughly about, but even though it was clear that the dwarf could not absorb many more hits like that, still he lifted his axe and came in again.  The giant poked the club at the dwarf’s face, but Hodge too was a dwarf of dwarves, and he easily ducked the desultory attack, coming up in a roll that ended with his axe coming up into the giant’s thigh.  The giant roared in pain, its legs now twin channels of agony running in parallel up into its body.  It lifted its club again, but even as it shifted its weight it felt an explosion of pain in its lower back.  It felt as though a spear of flames had been thrust into its spine, and as it staggered, the sensation grew as it lost its balance and plummeted forward, falling to its knees and only barely catching itself from falling on its face.  It saw the dwarf and his damnable axe coming again, and tried to grab him, but again the dwarf was too quick and his fingers closed only on air. As the giant fell, Mole let go of its belt and fell smoothly to the floor.  She looked at her bloody knife with amazement and smiled to herself. It’s not how big it is, it’s where you put it, she thought.  But then, leaving the crippled giant to Hodge to finish, she turned and headed swiftly to the stairs that led up to the platform.  But even as the dwarves battled for their lives against the giants, Zenna’s attentions were focused on the cleric who started toward her, the club coming up menacingly.  “You don’t have to do this, Morgan,” she said.  “You can fight them!”But the cleric did not respond.  Zenna hurled a spell at him, to hold him again, but this time her magic slid off the focused shield of the cleric’s will.This time, he would not be denied the vengeance he had desired, ever since he had met her.  She saw Dannel turn toward them.  “No!” she cried.  “You know what you have to do!”  She saw the pain in the elf’s eyes, but also saw the acceptance, knew that the key to their victory lay in overcoming the hags, in breaking the spell that held Morgan captive.  Leaving her to face the wrath of the dominated cleric alone.</blockquote>

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