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: 827895" data-attributes="member: 143">Book VIII, Part 18  Lok looked at her, and at the flying creature as it lifted higher into the air on beats of its massive wings.  The genasi nodded, and said, “Right.  I’ll take care of that overgrown lizard.”  With a grim look on his face, he hefted his axe and began rising into the air. “Good luck,” she told him.  “I’ll be right behind you.”He nodded, and then he was off like a dart, not looking down as the ground dropped out beneath him and the wide expanse of the valley opened up below.  Dana, however, was already opening her mind to the siren song of her goddess’s voice.  A buzzing sound filled her head, penetrating and annoying, but with a purity of focus she shed the distraction as she called upon the divine power of her patroness to initiate a summoning.  She did not notice as the two creatures on the valley floor below abruptly looked up, and almost immediately started flapping their wings to lift themselves ponderously off of the ground toward the brewing confrontation.  Lok glided higher to meet the ascending arc of the first yrthak.  Rather than taking the time to draw out his bow from his bag of holding and string it, he simply lifted his axe and swept straight for it.  The creature seemed intent upon the far ridge where Dana waited, and did not even seem to notice the armored figure coming straight for it.  However, as Lok drew nearer, less than a hundred paces off, it suddenly swung its strangely-shaped head toward him.  The air suddenly hummed, and Lok was blasted roughly back, as if struck by a giant’s club.  His roar of pain was torn from him, but even as the creature’s flight drew it closer and above him, the doughty genasi spun in mid-air and launched himself straight up to meet it. The frost-rimmed axe tore around in a mighty arc, and as the two flying enemies drew apart a spray of red erupted from the deep gash in the yrthak’s abdomen.  It did not cry out, but continued its sweeping pass, its jaws clenching and opening as its slanted head tracked the movement of its painful adversary.  Slowly, it turned for another run. Dana finished her spell, and at her calling a giant eagle appeared in the air through a momentary rift in the planes, swooping down to land on the rocks before her.  It regarded her with regal, knowing eyes. “Why hast thou summoned me, mistress?”“I require thine aid against some deadly foes,” Dana said, falling into the eagle’s archaic speech pattern despite herself as she leapt forward and smoothly hopped upon its back.  The eagle settled under her weight, but did not seem troubled by the burden at the least.  “To battle, then!” the avian cried, uttering a more normal-sounding screech that resounded off of the walls of the valley.  It leapt ahead and as it plunged off of the edge of the plummeting slope, its powerful wings lifted it smoothly into the air.  The two yrthaks from the valley floor were already winging up to meet her, gathering speed as they rose higher into the air.  “Verily doth it appear that the odds be stacked against us!” the eagle cried, but it did not waver as it angled into a rapid dive.Dana, already lost in the casting of another spell, did not respond.  Lok’s foe, meanwhile, had already completed its arc and was coming once more for the armored warrior.  It blasted him with a second sonic lance as it drew near, and while the warrior was clearly distressed as the focused energy slammed into him, he did not retreat as it swooped at him, claws outsteteched to snatch him out of the sky.  Its claw snapped down and struck him, but at the last moment Lok lurched upward, tearing free from the hold and driving his axe once more into the creature’s belly.  This cut crossed over the gaping wound from the first stroke, and the yrthak faltered as a bloody mess of gore and entrails poured from the terrible wounds.  Its momentum carried it past the warrior, his armor twice splashed now with the blood of his foe.  The yrthak apparently decided it had had enough, what with its wounds from the earlier confrontation and now these twin gashes from this second foe, and flapped haltingly away, still trailing great gobs of blood that plummeted far to splatter on the rocks below.  Dana dove down to meet the other two yrthaks on the back of the giant eagle, her spear cradled like a lance in one hand.  With the other, she pointed and called forth a blast of searing light that struck the first of the yrthaks solidly in the head.  The blast tore a fiery gash in the side of its jaw, and the wounded creature veered unevenly to the right.But a moment later, the first sonic lance struck.  Dana felt it through the body of the eagle, a terrible vibration that tore through the noble creature’s taut frame, sundering flesh and muscle and bone.  The eagle faltered, and for a desperate moment the two were falling together, out of control, until the eagle was able to spread its wings and catch the winds beneath them. Shaken, Dana looked up just in time to see the yrthak’s outstretched claws reach for them. Without thinking, she thrust upward with her spear.  The electrically-charged head of the magical weapon slammed deep into the yrthak’s body, and she could feel the shudder of its frame down the length of the haft she clutched with desperate strength.  The eagle tried to sweep free, tearing the spear from her grasp, but then the claw snapped down and caught them, and the world spun.  And then the beast was away, and Dana realized that she’d been knocked from the eagle’s back, and was falling... falling...The rocks of the valley floor rushed up to meet her.</blockquote>

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