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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2811951" data-attributes="member: 143">Nice one, Elemental.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> * * * * * Chapter 521Hodge caught a glimpse of the destruction of the smithy out of the corner of his eye, but although he shared Beorna’s concern about the disposition of his friend and mentor, at that moment he had other matters more prominently on his mind.  When the beetle had run over him, caroming off its underbody and a slashing leg, he’d bounced hard off the ground and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street.  His friends were putting the fight to the big bug, he knew, but even as he pulled himself to his feet—that “pop” he heard from his back couldn’t be good, but he’d worry about that later—his attention was drawn back to the ruined gate of the village. His eyes widened as a horde of giant centipedes literally poured through the gap, with those unable to immediately fit merely sliding over the wall to either side as though the fifteen foot stockade were a merely incidental obstacle.  And it probably was, to bugs that were forty feet long if they were a foot!  The dwarf suddenly became very aware of the fact that he was standing alone, very alone, in the middle of the street, as the flood came directly at him.  But then he remembered himself, and he lifted his axe with a snarl.  The straps of his shield had gotten snagged and torn from their moorings in his little misadventure with the beetle, so he shook it off, taking up the handle of the axe in both hands.  He placed his feet with deliberation, taking up a defensive stance right were he was.  Damned if he was going to move for a bunch of bugs!“Arright, you ugly mothers, c’mon and get it!”A stream of liquid energy infused with black wisps of shadowstuff tore through the night sky, arcing through the giant wasps assuaulting Umbar.  The wasps suffered the full effect of the shadow evocation, the simulated chain lightning blasting through all three of those attacking the priest before culminating in a fourth that had started over to join in the commotion.  But although it was obvious that the strike had driven them into a fury, to Cal’s disappointment none of them fell.  Umbar joined in the barrage, calling upon a flame strike that blasted two of the wasps heavily, including the one that had been the focus of Cal’s spell.  That wasp was suffering now, its body blackened from the dual impacts, but it continue to buzz angrily at the dwarf, its abdomen darting ahead of its body with its deadly sting.  Umbar drew back, but took another hit from the second wasp, and yet another from the third.  Unable to outmaneuver the massive wasps, he was begin battered around like a child’s ball, and while his heavy armor had protected him thus far from being impaled, Cal knew from experience that those heavy blows had to be hurting him regardless. “Get out of there!” Cal shouted, risking drawing attention to himself to forestall what he saw to be an inevitable outcome. Umbar appeared to see it as well, for as he spun away from the latest impact he dove down, moving toward the base of the tower and the cover that it offered.  But he had only covered a fraction of the distance when the fourth wasp shot down, intersecting the path of the cleric’s flight.  It did not stab with its sting, but rather seized him with the hooked ends of its legs, holding him fast before turning and flying off rapidly with its passenger. Cal began a casting to intervene, but adjusted his plan when he saw the other three wasps heading toward him, their wings beating with enough power to buffet him even fifty yards distant.  They could not see him, he knew, but he’d already long since recognized that there were not only ordinary vermin, but that something… or someone… was directing them. You’ll have to take care of yourself, he thought, before his mind shifted from Umbar’s plight to the pending difficulties of his own. The cloud of dust and debris continued to surge around the head of the beetle as it drove deeper into the wreckage of the forge.  There was no sign of Arun within that chaos, although with the beetle’s mass in the way it was unlikely that the glow of his magical hammer would have penetrated out into the night outside the ruined structure.Beorna rose up off the ground, her sword a black slab in her hands.  Her heart pounded with dread for Arun, but after the beetle had rammed the paladin into the building she’d known that her dagger wasn’t going to be enough to stop it.  She’d recovered her sword, narrowly avoiding being trampled by the beetle’s surging hind legs, and now emerged from under it, moving forward parallel to its massive body until she was abreast of the point where its broad head joined to its body.  Most of the head was lost in the wreckage of the ruined building, which the beetle continued to thrust against, as if intent upon reducing the forge to a mere smear upon the landscape of the town.  And somewhere within that building was Arun. “By Helm!” she shouted, her loud cry sounding over the cacophony of the beetle’s destruction of the forge.  Her sword came down in a powerful arc, driven by the templar’s considerable strength into that joint at the base of the beetle’s chitinous skull.  The thing was just too damned big for her to decapitate it, but nevertheless her sword pierced deeply, her own weight driving it and her downward, cutting an opening easily eight feet long in the side of the beetle’s body.  Black ooze erupted from the gap, splattering her as the beetle reared upward, turning toward her.  Beorna did not flinch, only bringing her sword up to strike again. Hodge spat a gob of blood to clear his throat, sweeping his axe into the thick body of a centipede as it knifed past him.  Blood splashed onto him from his other side, whipped by the gyrations of another centipede that he’d cut in half moments after it had delivered a painful bite to his shoulder.  Twisting multisegmented bodies were everywhere, and he was lost in a writhing mass of bodies that were so intertwined that he could not tell where one ended and another begun.  The heads, though… those he looked out for, for in addition to bludgeoning him with their bodies, the centipedes’ true danger lay in their envenomed bites.  His body burned with the poison he knew coursed through his veins already from the three hits that had gotten through his armor, but there was nothing to be done about that, so he ignored it.  Besides, he was a dwarf; he was damned if he was going to let a few bug bites do him in. “Yer want more?  C’mon then, yer bloody bloomin’ bastards!”  He swept out his axe to meet a diving head, shearing half of it away, driving the centipede back chittering furiously.  “Oh, yer want a piece?” he shouted, turning as a long body snapped against his back, nearly causing him to lose his footing.  Thus far he’d maintained his stance, mostly because the sheer size of the creatures was hindering their own ability to swarm over him.  He chopped into the body as it twisted past him, his axe unleashing a spray of blood and gore that fountained across his already befouled features. “I got plenty fer all a---AAARG!”Hodge staggered forward, nearly falling as a centipede head drove into him from behind with the force of a piledriver.  The burning sensation in his torso intensified a dozen times over as the thing pumped what felt like a gallon of flaming hot oil into his body.  Something hard clamped onto his leg, but he barely felt it through the numbness that seemed to fall over him like a blanket.  No.  He was…  a… dwarf…“That the best yer got…” he mumbled, as he turned, his fists tightening on the bloody haft of his axe.  Bodies slammed into him, and something glanced hard off of his helmet with enough force to dent the steel, but he had his gaze focused on the centipede that had stung him, its long body already lifting for another strike.  “Come… an… get… it…” he managed, the words barely audible as he brought the axe—suddenly it seemed so heavy—up above his head. The head snapped forward, jaws coming wide to engulf him.</blockquote>

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