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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2785547" data-attributes="member: 143">Short one today, but naturally a cliffhanger:* * * * *Chapter 511They were on her in seconds.  Dana regretted not having a second holy word handy; she’d been relying heavily upon divinations since arriving here, and two greater scryings per day had proven more necessary even than the devastating power of the former spell. She dodged back as the first rank of insectoid fiends rushed at her.  Pain blossomed along her side as one grazed her with one of the tines from its trident.  The weapon was barbed, designed to cause particularly vicious wounds, but despite her apparent vulnerability, the priestess was warded with a number of potent magical protections.  The second mezzoloth found this out as it thrust its weapon at her chest, only to have the blow turned by the defensive auras projected by her moon bracers and ring of protection. Dana! came the voice through the link. Busy! she shot back, moving further back before the ‘loths could encircle her, leaping into the air as her winged boots carried her out of the reach of their tridents.  Several of the fiends hurled their weapons at her, but none scored a hit as she twisted nimbly in mid-air out of their streaking paths.  As she gained clearance over them—it looked like there were about a dozen!—she caught sight of a shadowy figure that remained in the doorway, fixing her with a stare infused with a tangible malevolence. That would be the boss, she thought, her suspicion confirmed an instant later as a crackling black beam—a ray of enervation—shot out from the creature and stabbed into her gut.  She felt the icy touch of the beam spread through her body, although her life energy was strong enough to mostly resist the fell power of the necromantic magic. The mezzoloths could not reach her as she lifted almost to the ceiling fifteen feet above.  But the fiends had magical power, and before she could venture her next course she could feel surges of energy from them, seeking to disrupt her magic.  Her own spells were of far greater potency than the power commanded by these lesser fiends, but her boots were not, and she realized her error even as a dispel took hold, and she plummeted straight down into the knot of waiting fiends.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, another of the ‘loths conjured up a cloudkill that spilled out over the chamber floor, forming a plume of sick green vapors that swallowed her up as she fell.</blockquote>

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