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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2084372" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 343The companions made their way swiftly down the connecting street that spilled out onto Obsidian Avenue.  The city was strangely quiet, now, with most of its inhabitants having escaped to join the floods of refugees now streaming down the mountainside roads.“How are we set for healing?” Arun asked, as they made their way to the end of the street, joining the main boulevard and heading toward the square in front of the town hall. Despite her shorter stride, Mole’s magical boots allowed her to easily keep pace with the others, especially the heavily armored dwarves.  “I have a few healing potions left,” she said.  “The moderate-strength ones, I think.”“Anyone else?”  There was a grim silence punctuated by the tread of their boots upon the flat stones of the street.  All of them knew what they were getting into.  Arun shared out the last of the potions he’d bought from Weer the alchemist with Hodge and Beorna, downing the contents of the small vials as they ran to enhance their strength, endurance, and agility.  Beorna in turn laid her hand upon the paladin’s shoulder, covertly placing a protective ward upon him that would hopefully spare him from the next assault he suffered. That delay meant it was Dannel who first arrived in the great square that opened in front of the town hall.  The place was a ruin now, with more than half of the buildings surrounding the square either collapsed or seriously damaged.  The elf turned as a loud noise echoed across the city, punctuated by a loud roar.  Its source was visible an instant later as the dragon rose into view again, its massive wings beating the air as it lifted above the uneven line of rooftops, silhouetted against the plume still rising from the lake behind it.  It had barely gained a hundred feet of clearance above the city skyline when it spread its wings and swept out over the city in what looked to be a resumption of its search, its dagger-shaped head scanning the streets below as it slid across Cauldron in a wide arc.  At one point, it adjusted its course fractionally to avoid a farastu plummeting down into the volcano, but otherwise it seemed uninterested in the cataclysm gripping the town. Dannel did not wait for the dragon to spot him.  The song had filled him from the moment he’d first heard the dragon, and he as he tracked it with his eyes, a long arrow fitted to his longbow, he abruptly drew and aimed at an empty expanse of sky high above the city. The elf had always been good with a bow, but in the last months his skills had advanced until he could rightly claim to be one of the foremost archers in the South.  But with the song playing through him, binding him to the bow, he exceeded even his exceptional skills, and became one with the weapon. The arrow... changed, as the song entered it, taking a part of the arcane archer and infusing his essence into the wood and feathers and steel.  Every distraction faded into the background, and when Dannel finally released, it was as if the arrow sprung eagerly from the bow, ascending into the sky like a caged bird finally embracing its freedom. Mole and the dwarves rushed into the square in time to see Dannel’s arrow rise high into the air, and as it reached its apogee and began to arc downward, eight hundred feet from the bow that had released it, it intersected with the dragon. The arrow had lost much of its force, with such an insanely long shot, and against a flying target it lacked the ability to recapture some of its momentum as it descended back to earth.  Against the dragon’s armored scales, the shot should have had no chance.  But Dannel’s song still resonated in the missile, and as it struck the dragon just below the left shoulder the phase arrow knifed into its body, sending a clear message in the form of a lancing spear of pain.  Hookface got the message, and the dragon banked toward the square, hatred burning in its eyes as it instantly spotted the archer standing in the open in the middle of the square.</blockquote>

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