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<blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3982149" data-attributes="member: 143"><p>Chapter 331</p><p></p><p>A KICK IN THE ASTRAL</p><p></p><p></p><p>With a yell, Dar tore free of the tentacles holding his arms, and staggered to his feet. “What in all the hells are those things?”</p><p></p><p>“They are not undead!” Allera yelled, her attention split between the appearance of the new foes and Navev, who was falling back along the wall of the room. Shaylara was rushing toward him, her longspear coming down as she picked up speed. She spared barely a glance at the summoned giants, even when one turned and started to lumber after her. </p><p></p><p>Varo and Letellia materialized together a few feet away, the sorceress shivering from her renewed contact with the penetrating cold aura of the <em>chilling tentacles</em>. “They are astral constructs, entities fashioned out of psionic energies,” the cleric said. “I have never before seen any this large before. Be wary; they are as strong as they look.”</p><p></p><p>“Wonderful,” Dar said, stepping forward to meet the onrushing constructs. With one of them heading off toward Shay, half of the remainder shifted left to face Talen’s charging vampires, while the other half started toward the living companions. Between the two groups, the <em>chilling tentacles</em> continued to mindlessly twist and seek, but all of them were now safely out of their reach. </p><p></p><p>Navev turned, intending to remedy that by invoking its power anew. Shay was still too far away to stop him, but Allera lifted her hand and hit him with a targeted blast of healing energy. The warlock screamed as positive energy ripped through its undead body. It lifted a hand, dark energies forming between its fingers, but it hesitated; its last <em>eldritch blast</em> had faltered against her <em>holy aura</em>, and Navev was not certain that it could withstand another <em>mass cure</em> of that magnitude. </p><p></p><p>Shay’s yell brought its attention around. The warlock summoned its powers again, and there was a brief flash of energy around its form. Shay snarled and put on a last burst of speed as the spearhead drove unerringly toward Navev’s breast. But the magical weapon only passed harmlessly through empty air; Navev had transported away, leaving only another illusion behind it. </p><p></p><p>Shay barely had time to jerk the spearhead aside before it struck the wall behind with the full force of her momentum behind it. She glanced back; the astral construct was closing fast, a thick white arm coming up to strike. </p><p></p><p>The vampiric bandits leapt at the larger constructs with reckless abandon, hacking at the white forms with their short blades. Talen had not equipped his troops with magical weapons, however, and despite the considerable strength behind the vampires’ blows their initial assault had little effect upon their foes. The constructs, likewise, possessed no silver to use against the vampires, but they more than made up for it with the sheer power behind their blows. The vampire spawn withstood the initial exchange far better than mortal men would have, but even so all four took devastating hits that knocked them roughly about like ninepins. </p><p> </p><p>Dar was tougher still than the vampires, but he too found himself in some difficulty as the constructs reached him. Their reach gave them advantage, and he took a pair of hits across his shoulders that felt like sledgehammers. Dar stepped into the reach of the nearest and smote it across the body with <em>Valor</em>. The hit was solid, and it cut through the sticky white substance of the monster, but as Dar watched in surprise, the outline of its body began to shift and change. The transformation took only a second, but when it was done the construct had taken on more definition to its form, the substance covering its torso and legs thickening until it looked almost like the thing was wearing a suit of plate armor. </p><p></p><p>Dar struck it again, and found that the stuff resembled armor in another way, as his stroke was turned away. And then he had to fight for his life, as the second creature smashed him hard across the side, and he had to fall back to avoid being crushed between them. </p><p></p><p>With Dar fully engaged by two of the creatures, the other two split around them, coming toward Varo, Allera, and Letellia. The cleric, lost in a complicated casting, paid them no heed, but Letellia fired off a <em>lightning bolt</em> that arced through one of the constructs before it clipped one of the pair battling Dar. The electrical discharge visibly scorched the creatures’ pale bodies, but neither appeared to be seriously damaged. </p><p></p><p>The one Letellia had blasted first stopped its charge. Its form rippled and shifted, but this one, rather than growing armor, took on a form that was eerily similar to that of the sorceress. The construct lifted a hand toward Letellia, and a bolt of electrical energy lanced from its palm, blasting into her. The bolt penetrated her <em>holy aura</em> as though it was not even there, but her <em>shield</em> turned at least some of it, saving her from the worst of the blast. </p><p></p><p>“They are adapting in response to our attacks!” Allera exclaimed. Her foe was still coming toward her, picking up speed as it bypassed the melee around Dar. Fully engaged by the first two constructs, the fighter could do nothing to stop it. </p><p></p><p>Allera glanced toward the twisting field of tentacles, weighing her chances if she tried to lure the construct within their reach. Her <em>repulsion</em> spell had been spent, and her remaining powers were defensive in nature, of little use against a monstrosity such as the astral construct. But a loud trampling noise behind her announced the arrival of reinforcements. A pair of fiendish rhinoceroses summoned by Varo charged headlong into the fray; one impaled the construct facing Allera, driving its horn deep into its thick body, while the other struck the one that had just blasted Letellia with a glancing blow, spinning both rhino and construct around from the force of the impact. </p><p></p><p>As another grimlock collapsed, blood fountaining from the deep gashes in its torso, Talen started to move to the aid of his warriors. The last grimlock he faced was mortally wounded, but still it leapt at the vampire knight, spending the last of its life in an effort to delay its foe. Talen knocked aside its axe with a look of contempt and drove his sword through its body, almost to the hilt. The grimlock flapped at him as it fell, blood splashing all over its foe. Talen had the look of a butcher, his black garb soaked with crimson from the creatures he had violently dispatched. </p><p></p><p>His army was having difficulty. The bandits, compelled by the will of their master, pressed their assault, but it was clear that the constructs had the upper hand. The vampires had abandoned their ineffective weapons in favor of slam attacks, but the constructs had no life-force to drain, and their efforts were just as futile. Drudge was picked up by a construct and hurled across the room, bouncing off the hard floor several times before finally sliding to a stop almost fifty feet away. Hedder leapt at a construct’s head, only to be intercepted in midair by a hand that snapped down around its ankle like a steel shackle. Another construct reached over and grabbed the vampire’s head; between the pair they tore the hapless bandit to pieces. The vampire dissolved into mist as the constructs sought out new adversaries. Utar and Needles fought on, but were driven back, absorbing bone-crushing blows from the astral constructs.</p><p></p><p>“Shay, look out!” Allera warned, but the scout had already sensed the threat lumbering toward her from behind. She snapped up her spear and spun it around, jamming its end into the intersection of wall and floor a split second before the full weight of the onrushing construct struck the gleaming steel head. The astral construct impaled itself on the spear, its momentum driving the weapon through its chest and out its back. The wound would have been fatal had the creature been mortal, but the construct merely took the hit, continuing to surge forward toward the scout. Its arm twisted and enlongated, taking on a form similar to that of the spear that had run it through, its fingers coming together in the shape of a blade. It swung at Shay with that newly-fashioned weapon, but she rolled with the hit, and took only a minor hit across the shoulders. Her sword hissed from its scabbard as she came up into a crouch a few paces distant, while the construct turned ponderously, her spear still stuck in its body. </p><p></p><p>The battle had dissolved into a chaos of melees. Dar exchanged titanic blows with two of the astral constructs; he withstood a pair of impacts that nearly took him to the ground, and which would have ended him if not for another <em>mass cure</em> from Allera. Both constructs were damaged, but both were now protected by the body armor that had grown around their bodies in response to the fighter’s attacks, and he had to resort to more precise attacks to damage them. Each hit he took drove him back, and within a few moments he was once more on the edge of the <em>chilling tentacles</em> effect, the tendrils probing eagerly at his back, just out of their reach. </p><p></p><p>“Blast it! Get to the mind flayers!” Talen shouted. Utar and Needles tried to obey, but the constructs laid into them as they rushed past. Utar’s jaw was pulverized by a blow that laid him out upon the cold stone, while Needles was seized by the cloak by another and hurled around, sliding thirty feet back into the <em>chilling tentacles</em>, which immediately fastened upon him. </p><p></p><p>The other two came at Talen, who darted between them, taking hits but avoiding their grasp. And then he was through, headed toward the pillars and the stone basin within their circle. On the far side of the room, Shay likewise heeded his command. She ran between the construct’s legs, hacking at the back of its left knee with her sword as it passed. The blow had little effect, but it was slow in coming around, and by the time it had turned to pursue her, she was twenty feet away and running full-out toward the pillars. </p><p></p><p>Varo brought down a <em>flame strike</em> into the center of the room, at the source of the blue glow. But the column of flames flickered out as it struck the sapphire aura within the pillars, and the spell had dissolved utterly by the time it neared the ground. Annoyed, Varo immediately began casting another spell.</p><p></p><p>His rhinos were likewise being countered. The construct on the left had been impaled through the gut, and the summoned beast was continuing to drive forward, thrusting the horn deeper into the monster’s body. But the construct adapted; it reached down and seized the rhino’s head, while its head twisted and reformed, a long white horn emerging from its forehead. With an impressive display of sheer strength, the construct tore the rhino’s horn free of its gut, and yanked the rhino’s head back until the thing was nearly standing upright. Then, predictably, the newly-horned head came down, and it drove its implement into the rhino’s exposed throat. The fiendish creature let out a mewling noise at it toppled over backward, blood fountaining from the terrible puncture. The construct made quick work to finish it, diving forward and ripping the rhino’s exposed belly open from neck to tail. The summoned monster dissolved rapidly, leaving behind only a greasy black smear to advertise its existence. </p><p></p><p>The other rhino was struck at point-blank range by another electrical bolt from the construct that had copied Letellia’s form. The blast savaged the creature, which lunged at the construct again, driving its horn through the monster’s leg. The construct reached down and placed a hand over the rhino’s skull; blue and white energies exploded from the touch. The construct rode the rhino down, blasting it until black smoke surrounded both in a toxic haze. </p><p></p><p>Letellia came forward to lay down a <em>wall of ice</em>, intending to separate off at least some of the astral constructs from the raging battle. But as she looked for the best place to create the barrier, she caught sight of movement from within the ring of pillars. </p><p></p><p>A cascade of mental energies radiated out from the center of the room, as the mind flayers appeared in the spaces between the pillars. The vampires were not affected by the <em>mind blasts</em>, but the same could not be said for their living companions. Varo and Allera, their considerable wills bolstered further by the <em>holy auras</em>, withstood the mental assault. </p><p></p><p>But both Letellia and Dar were overcome. The timing was particularly poor for Dar, who was stunned right as one of the constructs was lunging forward to attack. The fighter took the hit square in the middle of the chest, and was knocked backwards, flipping head-over-heels before he landed in the soft embrace in the <em>chilling tentacles</em>, which immediately lashed around his arms, legs, and throat, tightening once more their deadly embrace.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lazybones, post: 3982149, member: 143"] Chapter 331 A KICK IN THE ASTRAL With a yell, Dar tore free of the tentacles holding his arms, and staggered to his feet. “What in all the hells are those things?” “They are not undead!” Allera yelled, her attention split between the appearance of the new foes and Navev, who was falling back along the wall of the room. Shaylara was rushing toward him, her longspear coming down as she picked up speed. She spared barely a glance at the summoned giants, even when one turned and started to lumber after her. Varo and Letellia materialized together a few feet away, the sorceress shivering from her renewed contact with the penetrating cold aura of the [i]chilling tentacles[/i]. “They are astral constructs, entities fashioned out of psionic energies,” the cleric said. “I have never before seen any this large before. Be wary; they are as strong as they look.” “Wonderful,” Dar said, stepping forward to meet the onrushing constructs. With one of them heading off toward Shay, half of the remainder shifted left to face Talen’s charging vampires, while the other half started toward the living companions. Between the two groups, the [i]chilling tentacles[/i] continued to mindlessly twist and seek, but all of them were now safely out of their reach. Navev turned, intending to remedy that by invoking its power anew. Shay was still too far away to stop him, but Allera lifted her hand and hit him with a targeted blast of healing energy. The warlock screamed as positive energy ripped through its undead body. It lifted a hand, dark energies forming between its fingers, but it hesitated; its last [i]eldritch blast[/i] had faltered against her [i]holy aura[/i], and Navev was not certain that it could withstand another [i]mass cure[/i] of that magnitude. Shay’s yell brought its attention around. The warlock summoned its powers again, and there was a brief flash of energy around its form. Shay snarled and put on a last burst of speed as the spearhead drove unerringly toward Navev’s breast. But the magical weapon only passed harmlessly through empty air; Navev had transported away, leaving only another illusion behind it. Shay barely had time to jerk the spearhead aside before it struck the wall behind with the full force of her momentum behind it. She glanced back; the astral construct was closing fast, a thick white arm coming up to strike. The vampiric bandits leapt at the larger constructs with reckless abandon, hacking at the white forms with their short blades. Talen had not equipped his troops with magical weapons, however, and despite the considerable strength behind the vampires’ blows their initial assault had little effect upon their foes. The constructs, likewise, possessed no silver to use against the vampires, but they more than made up for it with the sheer power behind their blows. The vampire spawn withstood the initial exchange far better than mortal men would have, but even so all four took devastating hits that knocked them roughly about like ninepins. Dar was tougher still than the vampires, but he too found himself in some difficulty as the constructs reached him. Their reach gave them advantage, and he took a pair of hits across his shoulders that felt like sledgehammers. Dar stepped into the reach of the nearest and smote it across the body with [i]Valor[/i]. The hit was solid, and it cut through the sticky white substance of the monster, but as Dar watched in surprise, the outline of its body began to shift and change. The transformation took only a second, but when it was done the construct had taken on more definition to its form, the substance covering its torso and legs thickening until it looked almost like the thing was wearing a suit of plate armor. Dar struck it again, and found that the stuff resembled armor in another way, as his stroke was turned away. And then he had to fight for his life, as the second creature smashed him hard across the side, and he had to fall back to avoid being crushed between them. With Dar fully engaged by two of the creatures, the other two split around them, coming toward Varo, Allera, and Letellia. The cleric, lost in a complicated casting, paid them no heed, but Letellia fired off a [i]lightning bolt[/i] that arced through one of the constructs before it clipped one of the pair battling Dar. The electrical discharge visibly scorched the creatures’ pale bodies, but neither appeared to be seriously damaged. The one Letellia had blasted first stopped its charge. Its form rippled and shifted, but this one, rather than growing armor, took on a form that was eerily similar to that of the sorceress. The construct lifted a hand toward Letellia, and a bolt of electrical energy lanced from its palm, blasting into her. The bolt penetrated her [i]holy aura[/i] as though it was not even there, but her [i]shield[/i] turned at least some of it, saving her from the worst of the blast. “They are adapting in response to our attacks!” Allera exclaimed. Her foe was still coming toward her, picking up speed as it bypassed the melee around Dar. Fully engaged by the first two constructs, the fighter could do nothing to stop it. Allera glanced toward the twisting field of tentacles, weighing her chances if she tried to lure the construct within their reach. Her [i]repulsion[/i] spell had been spent, and her remaining powers were defensive in nature, of little use against a monstrosity such as the astral construct. But a loud trampling noise behind her announced the arrival of reinforcements. A pair of fiendish rhinoceroses summoned by Varo charged headlong into the fray; one impaled the construct facing Allera, driving its horn deep into its thick body, while the other struck the one that had just blasted Letellia with a glancing blow, spinning both rhino and construct around from the force of the impact. As another grimlock collapsed, blood fountaining from the deep gashes in its torso, Talen started to move to the aid of his warriors. The last grimlock he faced was mortally wounded, but still it leapt at the vampire knight, spending the last of its life in an effort to delay its foe. Talen knocked aside its axe with a look of contempt and drove his sword through its body, almost to the hilt. The grimlock flapped at him as it fell, blood splashing all over its foe. Talen had the look of a butcher, his black garb soaked with crimson from the creatures he had violently dispatched. His army was having difficulty. The bandits, compelled by the will of their master, pressed their assault, but it was clear that the constructs had the upper hand. The vampires had abandoned their ineffective weapons in favor of slam attacks, but the constructs had no life-force to drain, and their efforts were just as futile. Drudge was picked up by a construct and hurled across the room, bouncing off the hard floor several times before finally sliding to a stop almost fifty feet away. Hedder leapt at a construct’s head, only to be intercepted in midair by a hand that snapped down around its ankle like a steel shackle. Another construct reached over and grabbed the vampire’s head; between the pair they tore the hapless bandit to pieces. The vampire dissolved into mist as the constructs sought out new adversaries. Utar and Needles fought on, but were driven back, absorbing bone-crushing blows from the astral constructs. “Shay, look out!” Allera warned, but the scout had already sensed the threat lumbering toward her from behind. She snapped up her spear and spun it around, jamming its end into the intersection of wall and floor a split second before the full weight of the onrushing construct struck the gleaming steel head. The astral construct impaled itself on the spear, its momentum driving the weapon through its chest and out its back. The wound would have been fatal had the creature been mortal, but the construct merely took the hit, continuing to surge forward toward the scout. Its arm twisted and enlongated, taking on a form similar to that of the spear that had run it through, its fingers coming together in the shape of a blade. It swung at Shay with that newly-fashioned weapon, but she rolled with the hit, and took only a minor hit across the shoulders. Her sword hissed from its scabbard as she came up into a crouch a few paces distant, while the construct turned ponderously, her spear still stuck in its body. The battle had dissolved into a chaos of melees. Dar exchanged titanic blows with two of the astral constructs; he withstood a pair of impacts that nearly took him to the ground, and which would have ended him if not for another [i]mass cure[/i] from Allera. Both constructs were damaged, but both were now protected by the body armor that had grown around their bodies in response to the fighter’s attacks, and he had to resort to more precise attacks to damage them. Each hit he took drove him back, and within a few moments he was once more on the edge of the [i]chilling tentacles[/i] effect, the tendrils probing eagerly at his back, just out of their reach. “Blast it! Get to the mind flayers!” Talen shouted. Utar and Needles tried to obey, but the constructs laid into them as they rushed past. Utar’s jaw was pulverized by a blow that laid him out upon the cold stone, while Needles was seized by the cloak by another and hurled around, sliding thirty feet back into the [i]chilling tentacles[/i], which immediately fastened upon him. The other two came at Talen, who darted between them, taking hits but avoiding their grasp. And then he was through, headed toward the pillars and the stone basin within their circle. On the far side of the room, Shay likewise heeded his command. She ran between the construct’s legs, hacking at the back of its left knee with her sword as it passed. The blow had little effect, but it was slow in coming around, and by the time it had turned to pursue her, she was twenty feet away and running full-out toward the pillars. Varo brought down a [i]flame strike[/i] into the center of the room, at the source of the blue glow. But the column of flames flickered out as it struck the sapphire aura within the pillars, and the spell had dissolved utterly by the time it neared the ground. Annoyed, Varo immediately began casting another spell. His rhinos were likewise being countered. The construct on the left had been impaled through the gut, and the summoned beast was continuing to drive forward, thrusting the horn deeper into the monster’s body. But the construct adapted; it reached down and seized the rhino’s head, while its head twisted and reformed, a long white horn emerging from its forehead. With an impressive display of sheer strength, the construct tore the rhino’s horn free of its gut, and yanked the rhino’s head back until the thing was nearly standing upright. Then, predictably, the newly-horned head came down, and it drove its implement into the rhino’s exposed throat. The fiendish creature let out a mewling noise at it toppled over backward, blood fountaining from the terrible puncture. The construct made quick work to finish it, diving forward and ripping the rhino’s exposed belly open from neck to tail. The summoned monster dissolved rapidly, leaving behind only a greasy black smear to advertise its existence. The other rhino was struck at point-blank range by another electrical bolt from the construct that had copied Letellia’s form. The blast savaged the creature, which lunged at the construct again, driving its horn through the monster’s leg. The construct reached down and placed a hand over the rhino’s skull; blue and white energies exploded from the touch. The construct rode the rhino down, blasting it until black smoke surrounded both in a toxic haze. Letellia came forward to lay down a [i]wall of ice[/i], intending to separate off at least some of the astral constructs from the raging battle. But as she looked for the best place to create the barrier, she caught sight of movement from within the ring of pillars. A cascade of mental energies radiated out from the center of the room, as the mind flayers appeared in the spaces between the pillars. The vampires were not affected by the [i]mind blasts[/i], but the same could not be said for their living companions. Varo and Allera, their considerable wills bolstered further by the [i]holy auras[/i], withstood the mental assault. But both Letellia and Dar were overcome. The timing was particularly poor for Dar, who was stunned right as one of the constructs was lunging forward to attack. The fighter took the hit square in the middle of the chest, and was knocked backwards, flipping head-over-heels before he landed in the soft embrace in the [i]chilling tentacles[/i], which immediately lashed around his arms, legs, and throat, tightening once more their deadly embrace. [/QUOTE]
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