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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 215401" data-attributes="member: 143">Book IV, Part 31Dana leapt down into the cleft, coming up behind Lok and touching him lightly on the shoulder.  Healing energy flowed from the young woman into the genasi, easing some of the hurts he’d taken from the force of the sorcerer’s lightning bolt and magic missiles.  The task done, Dana retreated to the top of the slope and loaded her crossbow.  All of her useful spells were cast; all she could do now was add her force to the ongoing barrage.  On the other side of Lok, the Uthgardt barbarian, Nanoc, also leapt down onto the ramp, an orc shortbow in his hands.  At point blank range he fired a shot that sank to the feathers in an ogre’s chest, deflating the massive brute.  Even as it fell, though, the others rushed up the ramp, heedless of losses or injuries.The barbarian unslung a mighty waraxe from across his back, looked at Lok, and smiled.Benzan gritted his teeth as yet another lightning bolt blasted into the ridge.  He saw a dwarf crouched a few feet away flung into the air, his face a blasted mess.  Tendrils of energy erupted from the point of impact and sought him out, stabbing into his leg and arm, but he fought through the pain, ignored everything but his target.  He drew and released.  For a moment the arrow hung in his vision, traveling in slow motion across the distance that separated him and the ogre sorcerer.A few feet away, Jerral had narrowly missed being caught by the blast.  She too had targeted the sorcerer, and like Benzan, she too had called upon a special power to make this shot, of all the arrows she’d fired today, count.  The rangers of the North called it “hunter’s mercy,” a state of concentration so intense that it allowed the archer to fight through all distractions and strike a killing blow.  She’d felt it only once before, on a long all-day hunt where she and Seth—the memory brought a pang of pain that he had to crush mercilessly to continue—had tracked a rogue worg that had wandered down out of the mountains and was stalking the game trails of her forest.  She’d finally caught a glimpse of the creature, through a maze of tree trunks, momentarily unaware of her presence.  The creature had been instead fixed on Seth, who was approaching from the other direction, unaware of his danger.  Before she could think she had drawn, aimed, and fired, all with a purity of intent and motion that had ended with her arrow lodged into the wolf’s throat, slain.Seth had been so impressed with her, and that night they as they had lain together, he had told her so, among other things…Jerral was suddenly aware that she was crying, and that her arrow had already flown, fired without conscious volition from her bow.  She realized that she felt pain in her side, that another lightning bolt had struck nearby without her even realizing it. Benzan’s arrow was the first to strike.  While it missed the sorcerer’s eye that he’s been aiming for, the magically empowered arrow hit the half-fiend’s head just an inch higher, tearing a jagged slash in its forehead as the arrow glanced off of the thick bone underneath and spun away into the rocks.  Soroth cried out and lurched backward, clutching at the wound as blood flowed down into his eyes.  The motion lifted him out of the relative safety of his shelter amidst the rocks, and provided an opening for Jerral’s arrow just a few heartbeats later, which sank to the feathers into the sorcerer’s chest.  Soroth wiped his eyes clear and looked down at the wound in surprise, barely feeling any pain at all even as his heart pumped a river of blood out through the hole that the arrow had torn in the organ.  Almost in disbelief, the ogre sorcerer took a few tentative steps forward, before lurching to the side and tumbling off of the cliff into oblivion.  Even as their leader fell, however, the other ogres had rushed blindly into the cleft toward the line of defenders, lost to the rage of battle.  For a moment, the charge had faltered as several of the leading ogres fell to the arrows and bolts of the defenders, but then a massive brute, bearing a huge double-bladed waraxe, broke free of the pack and swept up the ramp with a cry of violence and fury.  An arrow jutted from its neck, and another pair were stuck deeply in its fur jerkin, but none seemed to hinder the creature as it tore in at the pair of warriors holding the summit of the cleft.  Lok held his ground until the last instant, dodging just in time to deflect the powerful overhand strike from the ogre with his shield.  He and Nanoc met the ogre with a combined attack.  As the barbarian lunged within its reach the ogre responded with an almost casual backswing that sliced deeply into the Uthgardt warrior’s shoulder.  Seriously wounded, Nanoc refused to give ground, bringing his own axe around in a powerful arc that tore mightily into the ogre’s torso.  The ogre grunted in pain but held its position, bringing its axe up to finish this human warrior for good. But then Lok was there, his own axe coming in from the opposite side.  Unable to reach as high as the tall barbarian, he went low, his frost-rimmed blade savaging the ogre’s knee joint with the full force of the genasi’s strength behind it.  The ogre stepped reflexively back, and when it put its weight on the crippled limb it buckled, shouting out in defiance as it fell with a loud crash on its side, skittering several yards on the loose rocks of the slope in a chaotic jumble.  A tight knot of ogres had taken advantage of the attack to push forward, however, and as they swarmed around and over it seemed as though the stalwart pair of defenders would be overwhelmed by their surging rush.  Cal had not been idle during the exchange, however.  Even as the first ogre fell to Nanoc and Lok’s attacks, the gnome looked down over the edge of the cleft and cast a spell.  At his summons sticky strands of magical webbing burst into being, filling the space between the narrow walls and engulfing the tight mass of ogre attackers crowded within.  The ogres were incredibly strong, their already considerable prowess enhanced by their rage, but in the confined space there was nowhere to go to escape the clinging webs.Still, they tried.  The foremost pair, only a few giant-sized paces from the summit, reached down and tore free from the webbing that clung to their legs and ankles.  When they looked up, however, they saw death waiting for them above.  When the webs had appeared, Nanoc had been poised to charge into them, to bring the fight to the trapped ogres.  Lok, however, realizing that such a move would only ensnare them as well, grabbed the barbarian on the arm, holding him back.  “Let them come to us, lad,” he suggested, reaching down to recover his bow.  The barbarian, already hovering on the edge of battle rage himself, looked at the genasi for a moment with anger in his eyes, then realization set in and he nodded, bending to recover his own bow.  So when the lead pair of ogres tore free, it was only to feel the sting of arrows fired point-blank into their thick hides.  Lok fired, hit, reloaded, and fired again.  While he lacked Benzan’s talent with the bow, the heavy pull of his weapon allowed him to impart incredible power to his shots, and with his second hit the first ogre crumpled in a bloody heap.  Beside him, Nanoc fired several shots as well, and while they lacked the power of Lok’s arrows the second ogre was soon bleeding from new hurts as well.  Several of the dwarves had crept to the edge of the cleft and were now adding their own missiles to the barrage against the hapless defenders.  Some had run out of arrows but used heavy rocks instead, hurling their crude but deadly stone missiles onto the heads of the ogres fighting free of the dense webbing.  For several moments longer the ogres pressed on into the grinder, ignoring their wounds and their terrible losses at the hands of the defenders.  Three more actually reached the summit, pushing through the webs via brute force and launching attacks at Lok and Nanoc.  The pair recovered their melee weapons and held their line even as more arrows and bolts tore into them from the flanks.  Nanoc took a solid blow that knocked him sprawling, and even Lok was staggered by a bruising smack from a two-handed war club.  Even as the ogres sought to press their momentary advantage, however, Benzan and Jerral leapt into the melee, tearing into the ogres from behind.  Benzan thrust his sword to the hilt into one ogre’s side, dropping it, while on the opposite flank Jerral slashed her axes through another ogre’s hamstrings, crippling it.  Lok finished the last one with a pair of devastating blows from his axe, toppling the ogre onto the still-thrashing bodies of its companions. And with that, it was over.  With that final violent surge the remaining ogres realized the looming outcome of the fray, the grim specter of impending death finally penetrating the haze of their battle rage.  Those in the rear of the rush were the first to break, realizing that their fellows were being slaughtered, and that their leader had been slain behind them.  The dozen that had not made it into the area of effect of the web fell back, most already sporting several arrow wounds, and as their fellows died their withdrawal became an out and out retreat.    As they moved back across the bridge several more fell, struck down by the continued harassing fire from atop the ridge.  Benzan and Jerral recovered their bows, and with their deadly accuracy added once again the retreat became a rout.  Six ogres made it across the ridge and back into the relative shelter of the boulders, as last arrow from Benzan’s bow chasing them as they vanished around a bend in the trail out of sight.  The companions looked around them in amazement.  The cleft was crowded with the stinking bodies of nearly a score of ogres, and that was in addition to those who had fallen on the bridge or tumbled away over the cliffs.  Several of the bloody forms still entrapped in the webs moved weakly as their lifeblood seeped from their many wounds, and these the defenders put down without mercy or hesitation.  The dwarves and other captives had suffered too much at their hands for such considerations as fair play to take hold in these circumstances.  Of the defenders, only a handful had been killed—one dwarf slain by a lightning bolt, and a second who’d stepped to close to the edge of the cleft and was run through by an ogre spear from below.  Nanoc and some of the others had been seriously injured, but all recovered quickly at the touch of Cal’s wand of healing.  “I can’t believe it,” Benzan was saying.  “We defeated so many, and it wasn’t even close…”“We were lucky,” Cal admitted.  “We drew them into a confrontation on ground of our choosing, and they were too stupid to realize that they were charging into their doom.  Fortunate, too, that you and Jerral were able to take out that wizard of theirs.”Benzan glanced over at the woman ranger, who was already moving amidst the bodies, checking to make sure that all were dead.  The look she wore gave him a shiver—it was a cold look, a look that seemed almost as dead as the creatures they had just slain.  Benzan looked down at his tunic, which was soaked red in the blood of the ogre he had run through, and he wondered how he looked to the others around them.  For a moment he considered getting a clean shirt from Lok’s bag of holding, but then he decided to just leave it. There would likely be more blood to come, he thought grimly. Gaera sought them out then, her own face creased by the heavy weight of responsibility.  “We must move on,” she said, although her expression betrayed her own exhaustion.  “It will be dark soon, and the enchantment upon the arrows…”She didn’t finish—didn’t have to, for each of them knew that despite this victory, one final confrontation awaited them.* * * * * Editorial note: Hunter's Mercy is a ranger spell from Magic of Faerun.  It basically lets you score an automatic critical threat with your next shot.</blockquote>

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