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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2693384" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 482“Go high!” Eldren shouted, putting his own words into action as he rushed to the nearest tree and started to climb.  The elves immediately started aiding each other, those already in the trees tossing down lines to help those still below.  Dannel knew that his position atop the fallen log would not give him much advantage against the charging mohrgs, whose skill at climbing he’d already seen in action.  He instead called upon his magic, and used his ability to alter self to take on the form of an avariel, wings sprouting from his back through the careful seams he’d long ago had installed in his armor.  He saw Jannae, exposed in the center of the clearing, and leapt down beside her.  Taking the priestess into his arms, he beat his borrowed wings to lift the two of them slowly into the air.  She was not exceptionally heavy, but Dannel was not a natural flyer, and the nearest shambler was only about fifteen paces distant when he finally got high enough off the ground to be sufficiently clear of their reach.  “There, that branch!” Jannae said, pointing out a good destination. “Dalan!” cried Yaela, from halfway up the trunk of another nearby tree.  The elf ranger had not joined them in their ascent, instead taking up a defensive position amidst the protruding roots of another tree, his wolf by his side.  “Yaela, don’t stop!” Eldren warned, seeing a shambler lumber toward the woman ranger’s tree.  She started up again, but the massive creature slammed into the tree with a powerful all-out blow from its thick arms.  The trunk of the tree was easily seven or eight feet thick, and even the shambler could not unroot it, but the blow was enough to shake it severely.  The elf screamed as she lost her grip, plummeting into the waiting grasp of the plant creature.  For a moment she looked as though she would get free before it could grab her.  Bouncing off its spongy mass she tumbled to her feet, darting away as it turned.  But then a second shambler rose up before her, and engulfed her in its huge arms before she could even scream. “Yaela!” Dalan cried.  He started toward her, his wolf running ahead, but almost immediately had to defend himself as a mohrg leapt at him, trying for a bite that would leave him paralyzed and easy prey. Ellene let out a battle cry as she leapt from her own tentative perch, using the rope she’d been climbing to swing her into the melee.  She caromed into the mohrg with enough force to send it sprawling, and as she landed she drew out her twin shortswords with a flourish.  “Behind you!” she warned Dalan, engaging the mohrg she’d knocked down while the elf and his wolf faced another three of the skeletal undead, with others close behind them.  The last two rangers had already reached secure branches about thirty feet up and had wedged themselves into firing positions, and started blasting mohrgs with accurate shots from their masterwork bows.  One, locking her knee around the branch to steady herself, fitted two magical arrows to her string and fired both into a charging mohrg’s chest, shattering bones and stabbing deep into the putrescent mass inside its ribs.  But none of the undead started for the trees, not yet, swarming instead upon the embattled elves on the ground. Dannel dropped Jannae on the branch and immediately took up his bow again.  They were relatively safe, but only so long as their friends distracted the enemy forces.  Without hesitation he called upon one of the greater powers of his song, launching another hail of arrows that slammed down into their foes in a devastating barrage.  A second shambler went down, Dannel’s arrow finally pushing its tally of injuries over the threshold of what it could take, and several mohrgs took hits, but they already knew that these enemies were too tough to be taken out with a single blow.Jannae, meanwhile, drew upon her powers to bless her allies; there was little more she could do, with Dannel’s bow lying atop the fallen log almost forty feet below them.    Yaela’s eagle dove down at the top of the shambler holding its companion, digging its claws deep into its dense mass.  The attack was little more than a distraction, but the ranger became momentarily visible as she tore herself free from the creature’s grasp and fell hard onto her back before it.  The shambler immediately lifted its huge arms to crush her, but before it could strike Eldren yelled and leapt from his position thirty feet up a nearby tree, drawing his sword as he fell.  He slammed sword-first into the shambler’s body, driving the elven blade deep into it, even its momentous bulk affected by the weight of the elf impacting it.  As Yaela leapt free, Eldren tore his sword out from the wound and fell back, tumbling on impact and coming awkwardly to his feet.  As the shambler turned, he glanced to the side, where two mohrgs were already coming his way.  “Come on then!” he yelled, leaping inside the shambler’s reach, taking a solid hit across his shoulders but avoiding its enfolding grasp. “He’s crazy!” Dannel exclaimed.  The last shambler, still coming slowly through the second entangle spell, was only a few steps from reinforcing its peer, and the mohrgs were everywhere.  He tried to help Eldren by firing arrows into the back of the one he’d dropped onto, but again the missiles seemed of little individual effect.  “Yes,” Jannae whispered, as she stepped forward and dove off of the branch.  Dalan smote a mohrg across the front of its skull with his longsword, sending the already-injured undead staggering back.  Beside him, his wolf Longfang had borne a second of the undead monsters to the ground, and was trying to shake it to pieces.  But the elf cried out as three mohrgs leapt at him from ahead and each flank, two of the piercing tendrils stabbing through his armor into his flesh.  The elf stiffened and went down, barely feeling the punishing blow across his back as he fell.  Longfang instantly leapt to his help, or tried to; the mohrg he’d taken down nipped the wolf in the flank, and the animal crumpled, paralyzed. Ellene could do nothing to help either, struggling against two mohrgs that were doing their best to flank her.  Her head swam from the effects of the glancing punch she’d taken to her left temple, and she felt stiff from the toxic bite to her hip that she’d barely resisted.  She was a master swordswoman, very adept at the two swords style that maintained effective offense and defense, but these were no common adversaries.  She was not alone, as her friends continued to rain down arrows from above, but the mohrgs seemed able to withstand an incredible amount of punishment. Eldren ignored the blows that punished his back, focusing on the shambler.  The mossmantle protected him from the mohrg’s paralysis, but he thought he felt a rib pop as another crushing blow slammed into him.  And on top of that, the shambler was winding up for what looked like a pretty intense attack of its own, its arms coming up high above its body.  Yelling a curse in elvish, he swept his sword through its torso, feeling the resistance of its body collapse before the preternatural sharpness of the blade.  The shambler staggered back and toppled over, crushing Yaela beneath its crumbling bulk.  The ranger turned just in time to take a solid hit across the front of his face from the last shambler, and everything went dark.</blockquote>

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