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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 2819795" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #334] The Killing Field, part 2[/PLAIN]Karak, standing untouched in the midst of the barrage, swiftly assessed the situation: it wasn't good. Glancing around quickly, he saw that only he and Shamalin were obviously uninjured. He didn't see Lela, but that wasn't surprising; she was damned hard to spot under the best of circumstances.And as circumstances went, these were very far from best. "Aye, they've got the jump on us, lass," the dwarf bellowed to Shamalin, but loud enough that he hoped the archers above would hear also. "The Ogre and the white elf are down." He looked meaningfully at Morier and then at the ground, suggesting that the Eldritch Warrior play dead, but Morier didn't seem to take the hint. Karak spied movement along the ridge line above, but no obvious targets until one archer popped up - perhaps to assess the truth of the dwarf's announcement.Karak slipped free one of the handaxes he kept threaded in his wide girdle, drew it back and let it fly. The dwarf was not, by his nature, a specialist with ranged weapons, but his attack proved true. The axe bit into the archer's side and stuck there. Screaming, the man - who looked to have some orcish blood in him - fell back down behind his cover.Up until that point, the archers had dismissed both of the warriors in plate armor as secondary threats. Their leader reasoned that anyone in heavy mail would take far too long to reach bowmen high atop the hill. Time during which the archers could continue to pelt them with arrow fire. Finding that the dwarf could strike at range changed that.Which was, of course, just what Karak wanted.Karak hadn't spied her, but Lela was there. Despite the heavy constriction in her chest (which felt awfully like someone were trying to slowly squeeze the life from her fragile body) she knew she had to act. Death awaited all of them if she didn't do something to change the dynamics of the situation. Her wings a bright blur behind her, she rose 30 feet straight up to survey the battlefield and came quickly to the same conclusion that Karak had: they weren't in a good position. Feln and Huzair, she saw, were both down, bristling with feathered shafts and Morier looked like he was ready to join them in the mud at any moment.She could also see the murderous figures who were raining death on them from above. There was a score of them divided more or less evenly between the two facing hills. Mostly they looked of human blood (or human blood diluted with some other ancestry), but there was a group of four halflings among the opponents on the right and a trio of dour-faced elves on the other. Behind the halflings stood a scruffy-looking man with a rather large sword strapped across his back who seemed to be directing the assault. Not ten feet from him was a hunched figure in heavy plate armor carrying a large wooden shield. As she watched he began the somatic passes of a Bull's Strength spell eager to swell his muscles with power.She had her target, and she dropped an Entangle spell on the right hilltop. Immediately the nettles and bracken that crowned the hill sprang to clutching life and chaos reigned amongst the enemies there. They cried out in alarm as the scrub that had been providing them with partial cover suddenly sought to pin them in place. Most of the archers, including all four halflings managed to dance about and avoid the entangling foliage, but three of them were snared before they could react. Both the leader and the spellcaster were amongst them and Lela was happy to see the Bull's Strength spell fizzle. A sphere of translucent energy surrounded the caster and those near him momentarily as the magic went awry, but it rapidly faded away.The archers on the facing hill were not unmoved by their compatriot's plight. The keen-eyed elves spotted Lela and targeted the sprite immediately. Two of the missiles flew wide, but the third transfixed the faen's right thigh making her shriek in pain.With neither a ranged weapon nor access to healing magic of his own, there was little that Morier could do. He looked for cover, but there was none, so he dropped prone and began to scuttle away from the kill zone. Feathered shafts struck the ground near him, but none found his flesh as he frantically wormed away from the line of fire. Two more arrows knifed toward Lela, but they were horribly wide of the mark, arcing uselessly away from the battlefield.A few quick pokes out from behind Blackheart's shield confirmed Shamalin's suspicions - Feln, Huzair and Morier all had taken significant hits from the archers. She scanned the top of the cliffs, but could not make out any discerning shapes. Someone was up there... several someones, in fact, all with good aim. Pulling herself as close to the shield as she could, she closed her eyes preparing her mind to seek out the status of her comrades.For an instant she faltered as images from her last attempt at the Deathwatch spell exploded inside her head. It was several moonsdances removed now, and yet the shock of what her divine inquiries had found on that fateful day was still sharp in her memory. Pushing those images aside to focus on the Order, she reached out first to Feln. And it was not good.He was seriously hurt, the small tremor of his lifepulse fading quickly. The same was true for Huzair although somewhat less so. Morier was in better shape still, but not by much.Shamalin took several deep breaths to steady herself as she considered the situation. "Karak, can you help Morier? I'll attend the other two," she called to him from behind her shield, hoping he was still within range to hear her.She didn't have an opportunity to look, however for arrows began to clatter ineffectually off her heavy armor. If she'd looked up, she'd have seen a single arrow nick Karak's left ear and have witnessed the sneer of contempt that wound had elicited from the hardy dwarf.Grinning darkly, he clanked forward across the muddy road, angling to come up the more gentle side slope of the hill. "Telnon," he growled as he came and the head of his waraxe glittered eagerly with ice crystals in the afternoon light.In the sky above, Lela whirled in a circle to avoid another arrow sent her way from below. The shaft that had pierced her leg made the maneuver cumbersome, but she managed and looped down with a handful of Confusion Dust at the ready. Flying over their heads, she hurled it into the midst of the elven archers firing on her, but the wind caught it and blew it into the faces of three archers to their left. The first, clearly a half-orc dropped his bow and fled from Lela as fast as he could. The human woman in the center just grinned stupidly and began to babble nonsense. The third dropped his bow as the half-orc had, but he drew a great curved falchion from the sheath on his back and slashed at the nearest elf. The fey archer dodged the attack with apparent ease, but it forced him to divert his attention away from the sprite.Scurrying painfully on his elbows and knees, Morier avoided two arrows that thunked down into the trail beside him. A third missed him only by virtue of his position slithering on his belly; it struck the ground less than half a foot from his head.There was no place that was safe from all the arrow fire, but he managed to crawl to the base of one hill thereby limiting the number of archers who could target him.Still, he knew, it would only take one arrow to send him on to the Walk of a Hundred Days.Two more arrows pinged pointlessly against Shamalin's shield as she walked determinedly to Feln's body with the words to a Sanctuary spell on her lips. She made a conscious effort to avoid looking at the cliffs and those shooting at her. She knelt in the blood beside him and used her magically enhanced sight to check again for signs of life. But there were none. His body was nothing but a lifeless shell.Feln, last surviving member of the massacred Gelgian Brotherhood had died a second time.</blockquote>

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