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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 774722" data-attributes="member: 143">Book VIII, Part 7The adventurers faced a charge by a half-dozen misshapen but huge and powerful formorian giants.  The ground rumbled as the creatures lumbered ponderously down the slope toward their position, their clubs already lifted to pound their much smaller foes into jellied mounds of splattered organs and shattered bones.  Even as the giants started their rush, Cal abruptly vanished.  Lok, by all appearances now alone, save for the woman hovering in the sky above, held his ground, drawing his great bow with an efficiency a weaker archer could never have managed.  His first shot scored a hit that lodged deep in a charging giant’s shoulder; the formorian roared in pain but did not ease its rush.  Lok’s second shot, aimed at the same target, narrowly missed, but he calmly drew a third and fired again even as the giants rapidly closed the distance between them. Dana rose higher up into the air, her eyes vacant as she opened her mind to the power of her goddess.  Using that power as a conduit, she called out across the planes, seeking aid.  Cal, shrouded now within the protection of improved invisibility, and already bolstered by stoneskin and haste, turned toward the other charging giants.  A pair was coming down a narrow cleft sandwiched between two steep cliffs.  That wedge consisted of a slope of fallen rocks that offered an easy route down to the canyon floor below, but Cal quickly decided to make things a bit more difficult for these two assailants.  His hands could not be seen as he wove them in an intricate dance of motion, and the words that he spoke in the arcane language of magic vanished on the wind as soon as he spoke them.  But the results of the powerful spell he called, one of the newest in his arsenal, were immediately evident.  Thick black tentacles sprang forth from the ground and from the walls of the cleft, filling the confined space in a writhing, twisting mass.  The two giants were caught in the middle of the spell, and the conjured tentacles quickly started twisting and grasping at their heavy limbs.  The giants were too large and too strong to be held long, and the shadow conjuration was weaker than the standard version of the spell, but Cal’s intent was to delay, and for the moment he had accomplished that. As he turned, though, he saw that two more giants had already reached the canyon floor coming from the opposite side, and would reach them in moments.  Suddenly, though, the first giant cried out in sudden pain, its shout echoing against the walls of the canyon as it clutched at its neck in pain.  Blood ran freely from between its fat fingers as it staggered down the final feet of the slope, looking around for the source of the attack.  Its companion shouted something and pointed its club at a shadowy form crouched between two boulders nearby, no longer protected by the cloak of invisibility.  A translucent disk of blue energy hung in the air before the concealed archer, but it did not look like that alone would protect him from the vengeance of the enraged giants as they turned toward his hiding place.  A second arrow followed the first, slamming into the already wounded giant’s side, driving them on even further.  Before they reached him, however, the entire area was swallowed up in a ball of absolute darkness.  The unwounded giant was already too close to avoid stumbling into the sudden black, and its angry shout was heard a moment before it reappeared on the other side, falling hard to the floor of the canyon as it tripped on the uneven rocks.  Dana opened her eyes as she felt a surge of divine energy flow through her, exulting as she felt the glory of the momentary link to the Higher Planes.  At her call a being shimmered into existence beside Lok, a form that solidified into the shape of a massive lion.  The beast, easily twenty feet in length from head to tail, wore a coat that seemed spun of pure gold, and its eyes gleamed with an intelligence that quickly fixed on the foe.  The giants seemed that much more hideous in the face of the celestial lion’s beauty, and it roared its own challenge before bounding to the attack.  It rushed toward the nearest foe, the giant that was already reeling from the hits from Lok’s bow, and leapt onto it in a storm of claws and teeth. Dana, meanwhile, hovered above the battle, but before she could begin her next spell, her attention was drawn up to the ridge.  There, the huge giant leader still stood, not having joined the rush of the others.  Tendrils of flowing energy were twisting down the length of its staff; the source of those flows, she realized, the glowing white stone at its throat.  It fixed her with a malevolent gaze that pierced her like a blaze, then it hefted the wooden shaft.  The flows of power coalesced into a wicked blade that topped the thick trunk like a spearhead.  Dana opened her mouth, the words of a prayer already on her lips, but to her surprise the giant roared and leapt forward off the cliff on which it stood, as if it could somehow will itself over the gulf that separated them. But having already witnessed the power of the elemental stone, she was not overly astonished when it lifted into the air toward her, the gemstone glowing like a miniature star around its neck.  The two giants that Cal had trapped with his shadow-version of Evard’s Black Tentacles had quickly started tearing through the grasping tendrils of shadowstuff, although not without taking damage from their powerful grip.  But Cal did not let up in his attack.  Even as they fought free he called upon an illusion, a cloud of utter blackness that reached out and enfolded the giants in its depths.  The giants shouted and redoubled their efforts to escape, one even swiping at the cloud with his club, but of course the attack had no effect against the image.  Cal even chuckled as the giants’ confused cries rose up from within the black cloud; while his spells had been mostly harmless thus far, they were quite effectively confounding their foes’ efforts to bring their incredible size and strength to bear. His grin faded fast when he saw the giant leader take to the air, but even as he shouted a warning to Lok, he heard another noise that drew him around again.  To the black cave entrance, where his sharp eyes spotted movement even before its source became visible.  That source was revealed to all of them a moment later, as three huge shapes came into view.  Two were additional giants, younger versions of the others by the look of them, standing merely ten feet or so in height.  And between them lumbered forward a huge form on four clawed legs; the largest bear that any of them had ever seen.  It opened jaws that could have even given one of the adult giants pause, and let out a roar that was almost deafening as it echoed off the cliff walls of the canyon.</blockquote>

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