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: 4234269" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 44IMPACTSThe companions redoubled their efforts to distract the treant or otherwise stop it from killing Letellia, but it ignored them as it drove the sorceress head-first toward the adjacent wall. Letellia had stopped trying to break free of its grasp; the branches twisted around her body held her like iron manacles.  Instead, in the last second before her brains would have been splashed across the wall, she summoned her magic, and opened a dimension door that transported her to the relative safety of the corridor below.  Zethas almost dropped his bow as she materialized beside him, only slightly the worse for the experience.  The warriors were starting to have some effect against the treant through sheer determination and persistence.  Kiron had kept hewing at a spot on the thing’s left leg until the stone finally split open, spraying him with foul yellow ichor.  The stuff sizzled as it seared his flesh, but his cry of pain turned into an angry roar, and he redoubled the fury of his assault.  The treant smashed down at him with a branch, but he merely took the hit and kept fighting, hacking at its thick trunk as though his sword was a woodsman’s axe. Selaht, still chasing after the treant that had been pounding on Dar, ducked under a sweeping branch, then leapt over another that came in almost in the shadow of the first.  He flipped forward almost on top of the roots that surrounded the treant’s right leg, and slammed a fist into its body.  Red flames erupted from the point of impact, and as he drew back, they remained, a bright nimbus of fire around each of his hands, somehow burning hot without harming him.  Dar gagged as toxic fumes burned in his nostrils.  He’d kept pressing the attack, flanking the treant in conjunction with Selaht, trying to hurt it without getting crushed in the process.  Another healing spell had infused him with fresh energy, but it seemed that he’d barely had time to take a swing before the branches were smashing at him again, delivering blows that each hit like the club of a giant.  The wound in his side had healed, but he had fresh ones in his neck, arms, and back, and he could feel blood trickling down the left side of his face where a glancing hit had bent the inside of his faceguard against his temple.  He’d hurt the thing; long gashes covered the treant’s legs now, which continued to ooze that nasty yellow gunk.  But he’d fought enough battles against bigger enemies to know when he couldn’t stand up to a full-on, head-to-head smackdown. “We’ve got to move!” he yelled at Selaht, and started running backwards, along the line of the wall of force.  He was dimly aware of the pounding on the other side, and wondered just how long Letellia’s magic was going to last.  If it goes down soon, I’m screwed, he thought. He almost lost it as the tree gave him a going-away present, a blow that crashed against his right hip, and drove him into the wall.  But then he was away, and trying to get position for the inevitable chase.  Glancing up, he saw that the treant was already following.  Selaht had moved back out of its reach as well, but Dar wasn’t really that surprised that it was coming after him. Trouble just seemed to follow him around, it seemed. The other treant was showing just as much damage as the first, but the warriors surrounding it were taking wounds faster than Allera could treat them.  Primus had gotten a good hit against the thing, sliding his sword up into one of the gaps in its trunk opened by the others.  The soldier thrust his blade deeper even as the yellow ochre spilled out over his sword arm, and he did not relinquish his weapon even as the stuff started to sizzle against his skin.  But a moment later the treant swept down a branch that caught him solidly at the point where his neck met his body.  There was a loud and terrible crack, and when the warrior finally settled to the ground, the angle at which his head lay told of his fate.  Allera sent another pulse of healing energy through them just a moment later, but the young man did not stir.   The young soldier’s death drove the others as they continued to press their assault.  It was becoming difficult to see now with the yellow vapors rising up off the floor and out of the treant’s wounds, but the warriors kept on diving into that miasma, unleashing attacks.  Petronia got up off the ground for the second time, drawn back again by Allera’s healing magic, and cut off a length of root the thickness of her forearm.  The treant responded predictably, lunging down at her, but Aldos was there to provide cover, setting his glaive to meet the descending branch.  The impact tore half of the limb away, but both knights were knocked sprawling.   The treant shifted a step closer to the fallen pair, but before it could finish them Kiron launched another attack against its damaged leg.  His first blow rang off the stone as it glanced off its armored body, but some fortune must have guided his backswing, as the blessed weapon struck a weak point, and there was a rumbling cascade as half the limb gave way, shearing off of the creature’s body.  The treant tottered, and for a moment, it looked as though it would collapse.  Kiron sought to take advantage, and lifted his sword to finish it. But the moment passed, and the treant recovered in time to defend itself.  Leaning on its damaged limb, it smashed a branch down upon the knight, driving him into the ground with the force of a sledgehammer.  The treant could not rise, but it did not have to, and instead used its weight as a weapon, crushing the man beneath it.  Kiron tried to fight free, but he could only cry out in pain as metal plates groaned, and blood spurted out from his mouth as his innards were reduced to paste.</blockquote>

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