Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 1662759" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #276] The Second Test, part IV[/PLAIN]Ixin and Ledare both looked at the trench and then at each other. Without a word being spoken, the Janissary stepped back and the sorcerer spread her stunted wings. They were still far too small to allow for true flight, but they were large enough to provide the drakeling with a significant boost to her jumping ability. With a convulsive flexing of her muscular thighs and a massive downsweep of her wings she sailed up and over the trench, landing lightly beside the tattered remains of the halfling.The bear roared in protest at this new interloper, but the sorcerer paid it little mind. Vade looked even worse up close than he did from afar and she knew that he wasn't long for this world without some immediate magical aid. A pool of blood was spreading beneath his ruined body and she thought that she could see some of the halfling's organs visible within the raw wound tore into his belly. Choking back her revulsion, she produced a healing potion from her Cloak of Many Pockets and poured the contents over Vade's wound, suffering an opportunistic slash from the bear's one good claw as she did so.Vade's body arched upwards violently as the magical elixir knitted his guts back together. He moaned, coughed up blood and opened his eyes which glittered brightly like two polished copper pieces.Ledare fired two more bolts into the bear and Morier finished it off with another gout of flame from his wand. Vade was obliged to take shelter behind Ixin as the cone washed over them, but the drakeling was highly resistant to fire and provided him more than adequate cover."Is everyone okay?" Ledare asked, breathlessly after the mamoth bear dropped at last to the ground."Nae! I'm nae okay, lassie!" Karak bellowed from the bottom of the trench. "Somebody throw me a rope or something! I smell gobbos!""And look at my poor buddy, Feln!" Vade cried out, rushing painfully toward the unconscious half-orc. He drew a vial from his pack and administered the contents to Feln."Somebody help Karak!" Ledare said as she holstered her crossbow and backed up to take a running jump across the trench. She faired little better than Karak and clanked into the far side; she managed to grab onto the stoney ground and prevent herself from falling down onto the stakes, however.Morier cleared the trench without trouble and offered the Janissary a hand up while Ixin went toward the cave entrance and peered inside. She only just noted the four small figures stirring in the shadows before they raised blowguns to their lips and peppered her with darts. Only one managed to pierce her naturally tough skin, but she felt the burning sensation of poison take hold of her at once, stiffening her joints and filling her with lethargy."Poison!" Ixin hissed as she gritted her teeth in concentration and began summoning mana to power a spell."Nothing they could tell us, huh?" Feln groaned as he downed his only potion of Cure Moderate Wounds and felt the magic heal some of his many hurts. "They could've said, 'the goblins have poison darts', couldn't they? It would've killed 'em?""Wouldn't want them to make it too easy for us, would you?" Morier grinned wolfishly as he helped Ledare to her feet and moved toward the cave. He carried his greatsword awkwardly in one hand and quickly re-sheathed his wand with the other."I'm just saying that they could've warned us," Feln replied as he moved in step with the eldritch warrior."Sopio!" Ixin commanded and sent her magic into the goblins' midst. Two out of the four visible goblins succumbed at once to the Sleep spell and the sorcerer thought she heard the thud of several more bodies hitting the ground behind the ones that she could readily see. The last two goblins standing clutched their pathetic blowguns uncertainly and fumbled for darts in the small pouches at their hips."Somebody throw me a rope for pity's sake!" Karak sputtered as he again tried unsuccessfully to scale the wall of the trench. "I be missin' all the action!""Vade!" Ledare instructed as she moved up behind Morier and Feln. There was a wry smile on her face as she said, "Throw Karak your slippers!"The halfling nodded and sat down by the edge of the trench to remove the magical footwear. As he worked, he occasionally glanced down at Karak who was fuming among the stakes at the bottom. "You wouldn't have fallen if you weren't so fat," he told the dwarf which sent Karak into a momentary fit of apoplexy."Ye'd best pray to the god o' skinny runts tha' I dinna get me hands on ye when I get outen this pit!" Karak growled, exercising every shred of self control he had to keep himself from flying into a rage. Vade could hear his teeth grinding with effort as he spoke."Do you want the shoes or not?" Vade taunted, waving the purple and red slippers over the dwarf's head. "Because I could just go help the others." Vade saw a ropy vein pop out on Karak's purpling forehead and dropped the shoes. He rolled away from the edge before the dwarf could respond.As Feln advanced on the nearest goblin who was struggling to reload his blowgun, he gave his Gelgian multi-staff a twist. The weapon split at the center into two well-balanced clubs. The twin bludgeons reduced the goblin warrior to lifeless meat in seconds. Beyond him, the half-orc's darkvision revealed that only one goblin remained standing although she looked considerably different than the others. For one, she was female and festooned with withered fetishes of bone and hair. For another, her skin was pox-covered and her cracked-and-bleeding lips gave her chin the illusion of a beard of blood. She snarled at the martial artist, baring teeth that were nearly rotted from their gums.There were two more goblins lying unconscious at her feet and she kicked one of them roughly, growling something in gobbledy that Feln didn't understand. When she made some powerful gestures with her gnarled hands and produced a ball of greenish fire between them, he got the picture. She drew back her arm and hurled the flame at him before he could react properly and the small fireball burst against his shoulder, singeing his skin.Morier advanced on the other goblin, closing the distance to hand-to-hand combat and ending the creature's life with a single thrust of his silvered blade. Ledare followed in his wake, her longsword making short, unpleasant work of the goblins that had been rendered unconscious by Ixin's magic.For her part, the drakeling wasn't wasting any time agonizing over the stiffness in her joints and the aching in her muscles. She advanced toward the cave mouth and as she went, her hands moved through the somatic components of the Magic Missile spell. With a harsh cry in the tongue of dragons, she sent two bolts of raw energy into the she-goblin's wrinkled chest. The gobliness hissed in response and looked in Ixin's direction even as a second ball of fire appeared between her two hands."You'll pay for that!" she said in gobbledy; the Persistant Tongues spell active on Ixin's magical cutlass effortlessly translated her words into something that the mage could understand.Feln made to close with the goblin witch, but the goblin that she had kicked stirred at the half-orc's feet. As he started to rise, Feln brought one of his clubs down on the creature's head, crushing the top of his skull and sending him dead back to the floor. Even as the goblin dropped, Feln's other club was swinging in the witch's direction, but she was able to avoid the clumsy blow."You'll not touch me!" she wailed. "None of you will touch me!" And she hurled the ball of fire in her hand at Ixin, striking the mage full in the face. It had absolutely no effect on the fire-resistant drakeling."Ha. Ha," Ixin said with a grin. The witch's shriek of frustration was quickly drowned out by the clanking juggernaut of steel that charged her on daintily-slippered feet."Shaharizod! Guide me axe!" Karak bellowed as he charged with his waraxe held above his head in a two-handed grip. He felt a swelling of Divine Favor as he came and put considerable strength behind the swing that followed. It was a blow on a scale similar to ones that Ledare, Vade and Ixin had seen Draelond deliver on a regular basis and it split the witch from jaw to crotch. Her putrescent guts uncoiled into a noisome pile at her feet moments before the rest of her body collapsed atop them like a marionette whose strings had been unceremoniously cut."Tha' be another fer me, orcblood," Karak panted, as he stood over the body. "And she be a spell-caster ta boot. That' be worth double, methinks!"</blockquote>

Verification