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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2700453" data-attributes="member: 143">And you shall have one!* * * * * Chapter 485As the gargantuan ghoul tendriculos rose up out of the ground, revealing the full insane scale of its form to the elves, Dannel surrounded himself with the magic of his song.  Empowered by the expeditious retreat spell, he did exactly that, grabbing Jannae and running swiftly toward the far side of the ruin.  One of the tendriculos’s tendrils smacked the ground where the two elves had been standing a heartbeat before, but they were able to make their escape from its reach before it could fully mobilize itself from its entrenched position.Of course, they could not go very far, given the constraints of the lich’s conjured wall of thorns. With their main adversary apparently protected against their arrows, Ellene, Aymie and Lyson turned their bows toward this new threat.  The elves held their ground and unleashed a potent barrage, but their arrows simply vanished within the incredible bulk of the creature.  Eldren, on recovering his feet, focused upon the lich.  Charging into the arch that marked the entry of the ruin, he slammed hard into an invisible barrier, and fell back.  He cautiously stepped forward and probed the obstacle; while his sword passed through, his hand was blocked by what felt like an utterly smooth, impermeable wall of force.  The lich lowered its arms, and met Eldren’s gaze with its own undying stare. A scream sounded behind the ranger. Eldren snarled, and turned back to his companions.  The tendriculos moved ponderously, its own bulk hindering its movements.  But its long tendrils gave it an incredible reach, demonstrated as it lashed out and caught up Lyson by the ankles.  The elf screamed as the creature lifted it into the air, but the sound died as the fell power of its undead touch froze his muscles.  The ghoul tendriculos lifted the stiffened ranger up above its huge body, and dropped him into its waiting jaws.  The elf just disappeared within, vanishing with finality. “Lyson!” Aymie screamed, unable to do anything to stop it, except to fit a pair of arrows to her bow and fire both into the body of the undead-plant combination.  The missiles tore into its body like all the others, but the elves could see that the injuries that it was suffering were quickly closing, healing as the monster regenerated.  “It is vulnerable to blunt weapons!” Eldren shouted, his extensive woodlore including knowledge of such creatures, although he’d never before faced one that was a ghoul as well as a plant.  Such things were… impossible, he would have said, but here they were dealing with the raw power of an out-of-control mythal, and lore that had been ages lost when his great-grandparents had lived.Mayhap that knowledge, that power, was better lost. Despite Eldren’s knowledge, the fact was that nearly all of the elves’ weapons inflicted slashing or piercing damage.  Eldren improvised, leaping forward as one of the tendrils lashed out at his back, narrowly avoiding a hit and coming up into a roll that brought him within range of the creature’s body.  Striking with the flat of his blade, he managed to smack it solidly, crushing the vegetable matter that made up its leathery hide, sending a quiver through the creature’s ample body.  Sensitive as it was to such blows, the tendriculos immediately focused its attention upon the ranger, slamming him with both tentacles and rolling forward until it had almost toppled onto him, the huge maw coming around with the rotation of its body, until it could seize the ranger with a single huge bite.  Dannel was running forward, Alakast coming into his hand as he ran, his still-effective spell adding speed to his movements, his boots seeming to barely touch the ground with each preternaturally long stride.  Ellene had drawn out her own blades, but Aymie looked uncertain, her skills with her sword inferior to her efficacy with the bow. “Keep firing, overwhelm its regeneration!” Dannel shouted at them, at all of them, for he knew that Jannae was coming up behind him, and knew that her own sword would be of little use against the massive creature.  He spared a glance back at the ruin, wondering why there had been no more magical assault from that quarter.  But the arch was empty, the baelnorn gone. That respite was welcome, but it still left them facing the undead horror. Eldren slammed the flat of his blade down on the tendriculos’s maw as he darted back, the massive opening closing on open air with a grinding snap.  The ranger tried to evade, to gain a new position from which to strike, but one of the tendrils slapped him on the leg, knocking him off-balance.  The creature took advantage, and wrapped the other tendril around his neck, jerking him back into the waiting opening where Lyson had vanished moments ago.  The elf struggled and kicked, somehow summoning the fortitude to resist the paralytic touch of the creature, but he could not avoid being hurled into that dark gap.  Dannel was there an instant later, too late to stop it, but able to lash out with a heavy blow that smacked solidly into its side.  The tendriculos, arrows sprouting from its body as Aymie kept up her fire, shifted to face him.  He dodged a tentacle that nearly caught him in the forehead like a bullwhip, but a second twined around his left ankle, pulling him roughly down.  It started to lift him, but before it could add the arcane archer to its list of swallowed foes Ellene was there, hacking at the dense vines with her swords.  Right Sword cut deep into the tendril, which loosened enough to deposit the elf roughly upon the ground.  Jannae arrived a few moments later, eschewing a martial attack for a simple touch attack, unleashing a cure moderate wounds into the monster.  The blue glow burned at its hide like fire, and it slammed a tendril across her side, knocking her sprawling—and, unfortunately, overcoming her resistance, paralyzing her. Dannel, pulling himself back up to his feet, launched an all-out attack at the creature, trying to draw it toward him, and away from the helpless priestess.  “We have to get Eldren and Lyson out of there!” Ellene said, hacking at the body of the tendriculos, although the wide gashes she opened began almost immediately to close.  “I know!” Dannel replied.  His blows with Alakast were doing damage, but he lacked the sheer destructive power of Lok or Arun.  Either of the warriors would have made short work of this foe, the elf thought… but they were not here, so he had to make the best of what he had at hand. A tendril came sweeping down at him.  He saw it coming, and leapt aside… but the creature’s maw was coming down again, its huge bulk shifting forward to engulf the elf.  He darted out of the way of that bite, but the creature’s momentum carried it into him nevertheless, knocking him roughly back.  The elf spun and slammed his staff hard into the monster’s body, its sick green hide turning gray as the blow destroyed its tissues.Ellene had dragged Jannae out from under the path of the surging monster, and now rushed in again, her swords at the ready.  Aymie continued to fire her bow in a staccato rhythm, the shafts sinking into its body, forcing it to maintain the energy of regenerating the punctures in its body.  Dannel lifted his magical staff again, but a tendril came around and snared the weapon, twisting around the long shaft and one of the arms that held it.  The elf felt the sickly chill of paralysis creep into his body through the touch, but gritting his teeth he was able to resist that numbing flow.  But even though he retained control over his muscles, he was unable to keep from being lifted off his feet by the creature’s incredible strength.  For an instant he was hurtling through the air, high above the battlefield, the landscape rushing past his vision in a blur.  And then he was descending, straight toward the open maw that gaped wide to accept him.</blockquote>

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