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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1901714" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 282Beorna saw the green beam stab from the doorway, past the naga and the warrior, and impact Zenna squarely in the back.  She knew the source, and shouted a warning to the others.  “The wizard!”  But she was helpless to assist Zenna as the green glow pulsed over her, too quickly for her to stop it with a dispel.  It lasted all of a second, and in that time Zenna fought for her life.  Her own innate fortitude, reinforced by her wards and resistances, warred against the pulse of Fetor Abradius’s disintegrate spell.  A scream was dragged from her body as the ray tore through her, but when it faded, after that long second, she was still there.  Still there, but weakened and damaged.  She staggered back, half-caught by Beorna, who steadied her.  “Are you all right?”Zenna nodded, and tore herself free, nearly falling to the ground.  “GO!” she yelled.  Arun fought against the forceful hand, but though he was able to stand his ground, and avoid being pushed back further, he could not draw any nearer to the naga.  The undead monstrosity reared up, no doubt preparing to cast yet another terrible spell, when suddenly the ground below it buckled.  Slabs of stone rose up out of the ground, resolving into the powerful arms of Shensen’s elemental.  The naga twisted and tried to break free, blasting a spell into it.  But Shensen’s magic held, and the naga screeched its terrible cry again as a massive stone fist crushed into its skeletal form.  The elemental grappled it, and for a moment the two titanic creatures struggled in a raging melee.  The fiendish warrior swung at the elemental with his axe, knocking several head-sized chunks of rock free from its leg, but then Beorna laid into his back with a vicious two-handed stroke of her sword, driving him down to his knees with a single mighty blow.  A sinuous ray of black energy appeared from the shadows of the doorway, stabbing into the naga, filling it with dark energies that healed its injuries and redoubled its strength.  But Abradius’s aid came at a price, as Dannel leapt up from the breach in the base of the wall of force with his bow fully drawn.  Despite his lingering exhaustion his accuracy was still true, and a cry of pain rewarded his first shot as it knifed into the narrow opening, finding its target. Mole was already moving toward the melee, looking for a spot where she could make a contribution without being squashed.  Shensen came out through the gap below the wall of force on Dannel’s heels, already beginning a new spell, while Hodge, the last to squeeze through, promptly got stuck in the narrow opening. The naga, still twisting in the elemental’s grasp, bent its head around on its long neck and fired a series of scorching rays point-blank into its tormenter.  The elemental began to crumble as the fiery blasts played across its body, but it tenaciously maintained its grasp until a series of energy bolts appeared through the doorway, blasting into its already battered body.  The elemental crumbled, falling into a heap of scattered stones.    Unable to get around the forceful hand, Arun finally just let out a dwarvish battle cry and hurled himself with his full strength against it.  Step by step he pushed forward until the elemental’s demise dropped the naga, and its gyrations brought it within reach.  Calling upon the power of Moradin to guide his hand, he brought up his blade, and with a resounding roar smote the creature.  The naga screamed as the holy blade blasted into it once more, blasting fragments of bone from the interlocked segments of vertebrae that comprised its body.  Still deadly dangerous, bolstered by Abradius’s enervation ray of moments ago, it unleashed a powerful cone of cold directly into the paladin’s face.  But the dwarf, protected by wards, and beyond that a stamina beyond the ken of most men, simply shook off the terrible, numbing frost, and struck again.  Behind the naga, meanwhile, Beorna stepped over the twitching body of the fiendish warrior—his head lay a few paces further distant—and joined in the assault, laying into the undead creature from behind.  Her first swing was foiled by its still-potent displacement, but she stood her ground, and adjusted for a second strike. A shaft of white lightning darted down from the ceiling, slamming into the naga.  Shensen held her hand aloft, drawing upon her power to call lightning once more, watching the doorway for another sign of the wizard.  Beside her, Dannel was doing the same, but when Abradius did not present himself for another attack, he unleashed his shot at the naga.  The shot glanced off its head, doing little damage, but sending a small surge of electrical energy through it that added to its tally of injuries.The naga tried one last gambit, rising into the air above its foes, out of the reach of the dwarves with their holy blades.  It conjured its favorite black tentacles again to confound its foes, the long tendrils rising out of the floor grabbing and snaring the adventurers.  Zenna was caught up instantly once more, and the dwarves had to dedicate their efforts to fighting off their grasp, unable to reach the naga ten feet above their heads. Dannel and Shensen were caught as well.  The elf dropped his bow as one tentacle wrapped around and crushed his arm, but the druid ignored the pain of their constricting grasp, all of her attention fixed upon the naga above.  Another bright line of electricity flashed from the ceiling, striking the naga directly below the base of its skull.  Again Shensen was able to penetrate its resistance, the bolt of lightning running up and down the length of its body, driving up into its skull.  The spell would have barely discomfited it when whole, but the naga had already taken a pounding.  Blue flashes of light stabbed through its skull, exploding out from the gaping openings, and then the creature fell, a lifeless hulk that was quickly ensnared by the mindless, grabbing black tentacles. Beorna and Arun helped the others free themselves from the tentacles, and the companions withdrew to the very edge of the wall of force, the only corner of the room not covered with the twisting black filaments.  Hodge continued spitting curses until Shensen and Arun helped pull him free from the narrow opening under the wall, and they cowered back just out of reach of the tentacles, which continued to gyrate and twist probingly in their direction. “Well, now that was a fight!” Beorna said, casting a healing spell to restore some of the color to Arun’s frost-blasted skin.  “That warrior was nothing special, but that demon-snake put up a struggle!”Zenna suddenly sat up.  “Where’s Mole?” Indeed, there was no sign of the gnome, or of the wizard Fetor Abradius.</blockquote>

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