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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2816821" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Eighty-FourthIn which: it’s the attack… of the blob!Reyu just has time to dodge out of the way and realizes that her earlier assessment is almost completely inaccurate.  Whatever the pool is, it is no pond… and it is about to be fed.As Reyu ducks away from the “pond’s” lashing tongue, Eva wastes no time on philosophical musings.  Bow out, and unable to discern anything that looks like a vital organ, Eva fires an arrow right for the thing’s center mass.At a target that size less than thirty feet away, she can hardly miss, and indeed her arrow flies true, passing right through the center of the creature and out the other side, leaving a silvery path of bubbles through the viscous fluid. The creature shudders for a moment, and then… bifurcates, right along the path of the shot.  Each half slides away from the wound, and—since they flatten slightly on the ground—leave the appearance that each is now nearly the same size as the original blob.  The two halves roll across the ground towards the party.  Everyone backs up, horrified.“Right,” says Lira, as she readies a spell, “let’s not do that again.”Thatch nods in mute agreement, holstering his sword and reaching instead for Professor Alexandra’s pitcher.  Bracing his feet firmly on the ground, he shouts, “Fresh geyser!”  The pitcher obeys, sending out a blast of cold, clear water.  Thatch aims the torrent at the half nearest him, and the transparent blob ripples and bubbles a bit under the onslaught.  Most importantly, the stream of water slows its advance towards the party.The other half of the creature has no such obstacles.  As it nears Eva and Lira, the sorcerer unleashes her readied burning hands.  A small chunk of the creature melts away under the assault, but at that instant, another pseudopod emerges and thwacks Eva right in the chest.  She gasps and tries to back away, but the thrashing appendage sticks like glue, enveloping her, and drawing her back towards the body.Eva struggles as hard as she can.  Her skin burns everywhere the viscous body of the creature touches her, and she squeezes her eyes shut as tightly as she can.  On her back, she feels her pack hiss and steam.  Dimly, through the goo pressing into her ears, she can hear Lira screaming her name. Thatch does the best he can with the pitcher, trying to keep his half of the blob away from Reyu, Annika and himself.  Annika calls down a lightening bolt upon it, which Reyu follows up with a flaming sphere.  The blob shudders and ripples a bit, steaming from the heat, but continues its slow advance.  It’s like a giant slug, Thatch thinks.  Then, he gets an idea.  Maybe it is like a giant slug.  He doesn’t have a huge saucer of beer handy, like they would put out on the farm.  But there was another way to keep them away from the gardens…Thatch renews his grip on the pitcher.  “Salt geyser!” he shouts.  The blob almost seems to sputter for a moment, and its forward advance stops.Eva can feel the last of her armor melting away into slag and falling off her trapped limbs.  Her lungs are nearly bursting, but she resists the overwhelming urge to take a breath.  Drowning, she thinks, in something that isn’t even really water.  She fights against the crushing grip of the creature.  Must get free.  Must get free.  Must… She blacks out.With a roar, Anvil charges the blob still holding Eva, her now unconscious body suspended, her feet inches from the ground, her face inches from the open air.  His sword rips down through the creature, causing it to split again.  Although, he notes with satisfaction, at least this time the halves are markedly smaller than the parent.Lira strikes the blob holding Eva with a magic missle, and it shudders just a bit.  Excellent, Anvil thinks, and turns to the others.  “By Kettenek’s Justice—!” he begins, just as the other blob he separated reaches out and envelops him, drawing the Justicar into its acid embrace.With Anvil still doing his best to smite the affront to Kettenek in which he has been enveloped, the rest of the party concentrates their efforts on freeing the unconscious Eva, hoping that she is still alive.Reyu lets her flaming sphere assist Thatch in keeping the largest chunk of the blob contained, and casts produce flame at Eva’s transparent prison, hoping that the heat will not further injure her trapped friend.  Annika follows suit with a jolt of electricity from her wand of shocking ray.  Eva appears unaffected by the attacks, but the goo surrounding her becomes cloudy and loses vitality.Lira casts a final set of magic missiles and the chunk at last splatters, melting into the dirt and leaving Eva lying unconscious, but still alive, on the damp ground.  Reyu runs forward to heal her, and a few seconds later, Eva gasps, eyes flying open.“What in the hells is that thing?”“Not a pond.”Eva blinks.  “Is it dead?”“A piece of it is.  You might want to… withdraw.”Eva takes another shuddering breath.  “Yeah.  Good plan.”  She doesn’t even bother to rise to her feet, but tumbles directly backwards, out of the reach.Two blobs remain.  The larger lurches towards Thatch but is unable to reach around the geyser of salt water he has trained on it.  Inside the other, Anvil feels his armor begin to dissolve.Anvil, however, is not out of the fight.  Calling upon his divinely granted feat of strength he wrenches himself free of the acid creature, just before Lira nails it with a magic missile.  The two halves of the blob try to close back together, reaching to trap Anvil and Reyu between them, but all of the flailing pseudopods miss, flapping helplessly in the air.  Annika zorches the larger half with her wand of shocking ray.  As she does so, Reyu plows into it with her flaming sphere, then throws a produce flame.The blob snaps rigid for a second, abruptly going from translucent to opaque, and then bursts apart in a shower of acidic slime.Thatch grins, and turns the salt geyser to nail the last remaining smaller one.On the other hand, the blob is not giving up without a fight.  It scoots sideways out of Thatch’s stream, and as it does so, it envelops Reyu in a single gulp.  Annika fires her shocking ray and Lira casts yet another magic missile, but the blob holds fast to its new victim.Inside the creature, Reyu remains calm.  Testing her strength against the creature’s all-encompassing grasp, she quickly determines that she will not be able to break free through brute force.  However, that is not her only option.Calming her mind, Reyu strives to ignore the feeling of her clothes melting against her flesh, her hard armor scraping against raw skin.  Instead, she reaches out mentally to her flaming sphere, still active and burning only a few feet away.  Quashing any panic that her air is running short, she calls the sphere to her.It comes, and as the flames lick the wet surface of the viscous blob, the creature squeezes Reyu one last time… and bursts open.Reyu’s feet hit the ground and she immediately dives into the stream of water from Thatch’s pitcher.  The pounding spray immediately lessens, and when Reyu opens her mouth, she finds that the fighter has reset the magic item to its “fresh fountain” setting.When the last of the burning feeling on her skin has faded, Reyu steps out of the spray and looks at the rest of her companions.  They are alone in the clearing.  The battle is over.Then, she realizes that Thatch and Anvil are pointedly not looking at her.“What is the matter?” she asks Lira.The sorcerer blushes.  “The ah… blob ate your clothes.”Reyu looks down at herself, not quite covered in only her leather armor.  “Indeed.”Thatch nervously clears his throat.  “I have a spare set,” Lira offers.  “We should be the same size.”Reyu mentally rolls her eyes at her companions’ discomfiture.  Only Kiara seems unbothered by her state of undress.  “Perhaps that would be best.”As Reyu dresses, Thatch tries to console Eva on the loss of her armor and equipment.  Her clothes are still reparable, but unfortunately, that’s all her encounter with the creature has left her.“Well,” he offers, “at least you have your modesty?”Eva gives him a look to indicate that consolation is just as stupid as Thatch thought it was.  “Frankly, I’d rather have my f---ing money.”Thatch tries to change the subject, turning to the group at large.  “Umm… do you think we should still camp here?”“Why?  Do you want to fight the next pool we decide to camp beside too?” Lira asks.“That we would encounter two such creatures in one day would be highly unlikely,” Reyu opines as she rejoins the group.  “And besides, we now know the signs to look for.”Lira is unmoved by the logic.  “And when was the last time ‘likely’ was the operative word for this mission?”There is a certain logic there, and once the group satisfies themselves that the area is free of further hazards, they make camp.    Laying out their bedrolls, they do find one object of note.  At the spot where one of the blobs was destroyed is a large rounded stone, carved with the same sigil they found branded onto the plant creature.  The rock radiates a faint aura of enchantment, but none of the magically inclined members of the party are able to determine what spell might be generating the effect.</blockquote>

Verification