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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2652408" data-attributes="member: 143">Heh, there was no Pelor (or any other gods, oddly enough; I don't think Basic even had them as far as I can recall) when I started playing D&D, and my 2nd character was a cleric, ended up at around 18th level (back in the days when artifacts were as common on character sheets as magical potions <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  ). I didn't set out with a mission to target clerics when I started writing, but after a while the "red shirts of Helm" thing sort of took on some steam.   And come on, how can you not enjoy it when those stuffed shirts get the smack?    <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Of course, we're at the level now where stone to flesh is readily available... if, of course, Lok and Mole can survive the next few seconds:* * * * * Chapter 470Lok hovered in the gray border between consciousness and the dark void that threatened to simply absorb him.  His body felt like a burden dragging him down, and his breath rattled in his chest as his crushed lungs struggled to draw in life-preserving air.  The part of him that struggled against the inevitable urged him to keep fighting, for if he faltered now, then it meant death for him, his friends, and ultimately, his people.But that narrow wedge of the cavern visible through his helmet visor blurred and faded, and Lok knew that he had lost this fight.  He did not hear Gaera cry out to him, or feel the surge of healing energy that tore into him.  The heal spell from the priestess restored his broken body, but it did not penetrate the gray veil that had surrounded him, nor did her desperate cries reach him as the Horror loomed over them to put an end to the hopes of the urdunnir. In that moment, as events passed quickly on the Prime Material, Lok found himself lying on a bare stone floor in a familiar stone room.  The place was warm, and cozy, and safe.  The genasi could do no more than raise his head, which alone took an insurmountable effort, enough to see the figure seated in the ancient stone chair, regarding him with a sad look on his face.  The dwarf seemed as old as the world, his face lined with troubles.“Father,” he managed, his voice rasping. “It is time, my son,” the elder dwarf said.  “Father,” he repeated, unable to say more.  He tried to shake his head, but only managed a shivering quake.  “I name you my Chosen,” the dwarf said, and with that word he seemed to… diminish.  The last thing that Lok saw was his eyes, points of light in the darkness as everything else went gray around him once more. Reality returned, and with it action.  The sound of battle and the incessant rumbling of the Terror was everywhere around him, in him, as he tore free from the last lingering threads of unreality that had held him.  He drew himself up, his wounds mostly memories.  He saw Gaera, froze into stone, but turned the rage at that sight against his enemy.  The Terror had been hurt by his friends, he could immediately see, but it was still coming, still a deadly force. His axe was gone, knocked away when he had been sent flying by the monster.  There was no time to search for it now; he instead hurled aside his shield and drew out Coldburn, rushing past Gaera to meet the Terror.  He saw the inevitable strike coming and hurled himself aside, his boots skidding on the uneven surface of the ground complicated by the still-roiling effects of the elemental entity’s presence upon the surrounding stone.  He felt something hard carom off his armored torso from the side, but his attention was focused wholly forward.  He rushed up a slope of rippling stone that trembled beneath his hard boots until he could unleash his assault upon the body of the Terror.  The wounds he had opened before with his axe had vanished into its body, enveloped by its shifting mass, leaving no indication of whether they still hindered it, or had been simply repaired.  But the massive two-handed sword opened a fresh gap four feet long lined with blackened char on one side, and crystals of ice on the other, as the odd magical effects of the sword inflicted their damage upon the entity.  Lok expected a counterattack, and it came swiftly, powerful blows that rained upon him from the Terror’s massive fists.  Healed by Gaera, infused with the power that had been imparted into him by Dumathoin, he nevertheless felt the hits shake his body; for all of what he was, he was still mortal, and this foe seemed to be beyond the power of mere weapons to defeat. He felt a momentary calm settle over him, as the huge stone fists lifted up to continue battering him down.  He felt… different, and part of that was a new perception, something inexplicable that he felt through the body of the monstrosity that confronted him.  He could sense its link to the surrounding stone, the creature both of and against the fabric of this world that was not its own, and he could feel the tendrils of energy that infused it, leeching strength from without to restore itself from the damage being inflicted upon it. Releasing one hand from the grip of his sword, he reached out and plunged it into the body of the Terror.  The stony surface gave way at his touch, rippling out like a pool of water around the point where the limb vanished into the depths.  Lok leaned forward, until the entity had absorbed his arm up to the elbow.  Through that connection, he felt an odd synergism with the elemental, and a rage that made him shake with the overwhelming strength of the emotion. The Terror was shaking too, now, clearly not happy with what was being done to it.  Its upper body was looming over Lok, now, and its fists came together from the sides to crush the warrior between them.  But an instant before the impact, Lok plunged forward, his body sinking into the elemental’s form entirely.  The stone fists smashed together with incredible force, but when they drew back there was nothing there to be seen. But whatever Lok was doing, it was obviously having an effect.  The creature drew back, receding away from the spot where it had engaged Gaera and Lok.  But as it fell back, its body began to split apart, like a cloth being torn from its base upward.  In that opening, Lok became visible, still holding Coldburn, dropping away from the grasp of the creature as its substance retreated from him.  Looking up, he saw that the stone of the Terror’s body had crumbled away enough to reveal a great black lump, right where the heart would have been had the elemental been a living, mortal creature. Above that, the black spiral, now twisting in agitation, of the monster’s “face” had focused upon him.  It unleashed another pulse of energy at its tormenter, enveloping him in gray light that threatened to swallow up the genasi.  Lok struggled within that enveloping glow, his movements slowed as though he’d been dropped into a vat of molasses.  And then Mole shot into view.  She’d recovered her crossbow, and fired a tiny bolt into the thick of that black mass, the monster’s “heart”. The Terror shuddered, and the gray beam faltered—only slightly, and only for a span of time measured in fractions of a second.  But in that instant Lok surged forward, thrusting through the enveloping field of energy, and he drove Coldburn upward, through the black heart, the flames and frost engulfing the corrupted knob as the steel slid deeper into its substance. The gray beam of energy vanished, and with a roar Lok twisted his body, tearing his weapon and half of the matter of the black orb free.  The cavern was filled with another violent tremor, but this time the pulse was the death-throes of the intruder, as the substance of the Terror began to dissolve.  Great chunks of it broke free and crashed to the ground, and finally the hulking mass of its body collapsed backward, filling the cavern with a surge of pulverized stone and shards of debris that gradually settled to the ground.  Lok and Mole staggered free of the radius of destruction, the gnome coughing for breath, until they stood at the point where Gaera’s petrified form stood, her mace still lifted in bold defiance.  “Well, that was something,” Mole said, looking back at the ruins, clapping her hands to clear them of dust.  “We must take Gaera back… the elders should be able to restore her,” Lok was saying, but he stopped as Mole turned toward him and her jaw dropped in surprise.  “What is the matter?”“You look… different.”  And indeed, the genasi’s appearance had changed.  The stone-like coloration and texture of his flesh was as before, although now it was smudged with dust and dirt.  But where his dark eyes had been, now twin sparkles of pale white light shone, like lonely stars witnessed through the haze of clouds on the deepest of nights in the world above.</blockquote>

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