NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4205219" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 33THE STONE FOREST Jasek fell back as the six stone trees, three on each side of the room, came to life and started forward.  But his companions had been ready for something like this, and were quick to act.  The Seer invoked a wall of force, cutting off the entire left side of the chamber, and trapping three of the trees behind it.  The stone trees battered at the barrier, but their efforts had no effect.  The three trees on the right moved forward ponderously, their long limbs giving them a considerable reach.  Navev hit one of them with an eldritch blast, but the streaking black energies merely vanished into the thing, absorbed without inflicting damage.  “Golems, resistant to magic,” Parzad suggested. But the Seer frowned.  “I do not believe so,” he said.  He hurled a lightning bolt that clipped two of the trees in its arc, but like Navev’s attack, his magic merely flashed harmlessly around their trunks, doing no damage.  “Elementals of some sort, I believe.  But their spell resistance is considerable, and possibly beyond my ability to penetrate.”Ozmad said nothing, and merely made a gesture that invoked an unholy aura around himself.  The black radiance spread outward, its protection coalescing around each of the elf’s companions, offering protection.That assistance proved very timely as Jasek leapt back, the closest tree slamming its long branches down into the ground where he’d been standing.  Falah rushed forward to engage the creatures and keep them away from the casters, unslinging his khopesh as he ran.  But he was still a good five paces away from the trunk of the nearest when a branch snapped down into his side, knocking him flying across the room.  He hit the wall next to the archway hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, and as he fell to his feet he slumped against the stone, gasping for breath. Aerim surged into battle in the Razhuri fighter’s wake.  Another branch tore down at him, but the veteran warrior shifted subtly to the left, surging forward as the jagged ends of the stone limbs raked the air behind him.  But before he could draw close enough to its trunk to attack, the second tree moved to block him.  A pair of huge branches came down, smashing into him from each side like a pair of sledges.  Stone branches jabbed into his armored torso like a dozen spearheads, while a forest of limbs formed a dense web around him, holding him fast while the branches continued to grind away at him. Jasek, still evading, glanced over his shoulder to see the last tree bearing down on him.  He dove forward as it swept a huge branch down toward him.  While his maneuver allowed him to slip under the thick bole of the branch, he was snagged by the thinner trailing branches that jutted from the limb like a hundred trailing fingers.  The tree scooped him off the ground like a heap of dirt caught by a shovel, and before he could attempt to slip free it twisted and hurled him across the room.  He narrowly missed being brained by the capstone in the entry arch, but went a good fifteen feet further down the tunnel beyond before he finally hit the ground.  The thief remained aware enough to roll with the impact, but he was almost back to the elevator before he finally came to a halt, battered and dazed from the rough treatment. Ghazaran looked at Parzad.  “Tend to Falah,” the cleric said.  He drew out his mace-like rod as he turned back to face the seemingly invincible tree-golems, and invoked a righteous might spell.  His stature grew to twice his original size, but the trees still loomed over him by a considerable margin.  Stepping forward, he engaged the tree that had struck down Falah, delivering a powerful blow to its trunk that hit hard enough to crack the stone.  The tree, however, countered with a series of titanic impacts that knocked the cleric roughly to the side.  Ghazaran fell against the slick wall of force, recovering in time to turn into another series of powerful attacks. In the meantime, the tree that had hurled Jasek away had made its way forward to engage the spellcasters in the second rank.  The Seer completed a haste spell, bolstering his allies, but then was quick to use his enhanced speed to beat a hasty retreat.  He fell back into the entryway, where he vanished under the cover of an invisibility spell.  Ozmad held his ground, and seemed almost careless of the danger, an unperturbed look on his face as he looked up at the massive thing bearing down on him.  The tree lifted several of its massive branches as it came within reach of the elf, and with its next “step” it drove them down, clearly intending to reduce its foe to a bloody smear on the chamber floor. But in the sparest instant before the blow landed, Ozmad summoned his magical power to his defense.  A globe of transparent blue energy appeared around him, and the stone tree’s assault was rebuffed as solidly as if it had been a real tree’s branches hitting an iron wall.  The tree hit the resilient sphere a second time, and then a third, but within the globe Ozmad merely stood unaffected, casting more buffing spells.  The golem could not harm him within the protection of the barrier, but as long as it was up, neither could he do anything to affect the course of the battle outside. With a roar and a cracking of stone, Duke Aerim exploded through the crushing branches holding him.  The tree lashed him with a long protruding root as he stepped up to the massive trunk, but he took the hit across his armored torso without flinching.  The fighter, armed with strength augmented beyond that of any common man, smote the tree solidly across the bole with his greatsword.  The ancient weapon, forged by dwarven smiths in a time far beyond living memory, rang as it smashed into the thing’s solid substance, but the steel held, and the stone gave way.  A crack opened in its trunk, and a hissing noise issued from within.  Aerim recovered his swing and brought the sword up to follow up with another strike. But as the tree reared back, and the crack Aerim had opened grew wider, a gout of pustulent ochre substance issued from the wound, spraying over the face and body of the armored warrior.  Wisps of smoke rose from his golden robe and mithral armor as the caustic substance burned him, and the man’s scream echoed from within the depths of his helmet, filling the chamber with a discordant noise of burning agony.</blockquote>

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