A Druid's Story {Graphic Violence, Some Sexual Content}

Loving the story so far, can't wait to read more.

[p]I always read yours, Ferrunia. And niko's, lest he feel left out.[/p][p]Actually, I read almost everything here eventually.[/p][p]And as to the feedback I get, keep in mind that as far as I know, I'm the oldest continous poster on the forum. (With perhaps the exception of Eriol and Kassaba... I remember them from way back as well.) Besides, as we all know, there are far more lurkers than posters out there. I'm sure that both of you get way more viewers than you think you do. [/p][p]One thing that annoyed me about the forum migrations, was that we lost the "views" counter on the posts... [/p]

Yeah, I understand all of ya...barely have any time to read myself. Sent in some stuff on children's writing yesterday, hoping I get decent reviews, might not be what I really would like to do, but I wouldn't mind breaking out into writing professionally in one way or another. p.s. I hate not having the view counter...

And yeah, I remember the old timers from these forums too. Been on here longer than you actually Ekuth Eriol was one of the only ones to post on my story back in the day. Can't remember the name of any of the other few without looking back through the chapters back in '05. Thanks for the comment also, Gryph.

[p]See, there you have it. [/p][p]Now where's the next chapter, dammit?[/p]

Chapter 27: Vaz'Gok



Swift on the tail of the first gargantuan, stone-formed figure, two more, smaller, but still huge figures stepped out of the heavy foliage. The massive golem in the lead gazed across the clearing, then its rough features formed an evil grin and it stepped ponderously in their direction before breaking into an earth shaking run, followed by its smaller brethren. Impeding shrubbery was smashed under foot and as the lead creature reached the party it reached out and tore a tree from the ground whole, brandishing it like an overgrown club.

As the first blow swept across and through where the party stood, Elhonna and Ereviz charge forward, under the tree, and the remainder of the party scattered in whatever possible direction kept them from being in the path of the three pace-long club. Noris grabbed Fiona and sprinted to the right while Maggie dove to the left away from the creature.

Maggie wound up facing one of the smaller, companion creatures, while Noris and Fiona on the other side of the main creature had their own smaller version to contend with.

Riding on Noris' shoulder, Fiona started spitting out the words to her most powerful spells, knowing any subterfuge would only get them killed at this point, while Maggie sent arcane power racing into his quiver, then pulled arrows four at a time from it to fire into the stone being, shooting lightning streaming arrows into the golem, which impacted and left small dents, but not much more. As Fiona snapped off her final words and released a stream of magical might, her opponent was surrounded by a torrent of fire that hurt the eyes to look on directly. Stone started to crack in small rivulets down the frame of the creature, but her power ran its course and she slumped onto Noris' shoulder, spent momentarily, and the creature didn't go down.

As this all happened, Ereviz and Elhonna confronted the main golem. When they passed under the tree in the joining moment of battle, Ereviz charged at the massive being's left leg and unleashed a mighty blow on its lower calf, since that was about as high as he could reach a small crack started from the impact and ran up and down the creature's leg, and widened a bit when spinning, he brought his shield around to slam into the same spot, using his brother's magically imbued heirloom to do as much damage as possible. He used the rebounding force to roll away from the golem's feet, which it had stomped down trying to crush him.

The temperature in the vicinity of the main golem rose substantially and Ereviz looked back to see Elhonna rolling and flipping over and around, and at one point, standing on the tree as it rose from another blow powered by the thing's unnatural might. Her eyes started to glow red and embers rose from her shoulders. Her hair turned white hot and as she rose from the ground she reached down through the small tree's branches and touched the trunk, seemingly transferring all the built up heat, because the temperature dropped and she stopped glowing. She back-flipped off the tree and looked at Ereviz only a moment as she shouted, "Run!" before leaping away at a full sprint.

Not even taking a moment to wonder what she had done, Ereviz sprinted the opposite direction away from the creature, behind it. A strong breeze blew through the area as Elhonna glowed dimly blue for a moment and Ereviz felt a power course through his veins, muscles in his legs loosened then compacted to much greater strength and he ran nearly as fast as a horse, powered by the speed-enhancing spell. Noris ran beside him, carrying Fiona, and Maggie was running with Elhonna to the front of the trio of golems.

A thump from the clearing shook leaves off trees for half a league, and left rents in the ground for dozens of paces. A ball of fire taller than the main golem filled the fifty pace wide clearing then flashed into the surrounding trees, flattening many of the smaller ones. The concussion of the blast lifted Ereviz and Noris their feet, though each took the force in a different way. Noris was sent rolling, and he cradled Fiona to his stomach as he rolled away from the blast, bouncing over small rocks and stumps, but keeping his head tucked to minimize damage.

Ereviz bounced along like a stone skipped over a pond until his forward progress was abruptly halted, by a tree nearly wider than him, which his bulk crashing into split and caused to lean over, severely damaged. He stood up, groggily shaking his head, then looked back at the clearing, amazed by what he saw.

"By Brell's bones, El, don't try an' kill us too," then he chuckled to himself as he headed back to the clearing to see what remained of their opponents, followed by a limping Noris and Fiona, who had concern etched on her small face.

"Don't worry, Fiona, they'll be fine. El's been through worse than that li'l blast. I'm sure she kept Maggie outta harm's way too," Ereviz spoke over his shoulder to reassure the gnome, then glanced at Noris, who nodded.



* * *



As it happened, Elhonna and Maggie got off a lot easier than the others. As she felt the blast about to commence, she reached out and grabbed Maggie by the hand, then pulled him into a small depression in the ground and pushed him face-first into the ground before laying beside him in the same position. The thud of the release of pent-up energy almost lifted them from the ground, but they were low enough to escape being hit by any of the limbs and rocks sent in every direction by the blast, and rose to their feet moments later.

"Learned some useful stuff when ya were dead, eh?" was all Maggie had to say. She grinned then turned and headed back to the blast site.

They walked through a ring of flattened trees and shrubs, into a scene from hell. Trees and ground alike were burnt to ash. A dark haze hung in the air from the heat and floating particles from the flash fire. In the center of the clearing stood the remains of the trio of golems. Two large heaps showed where the smaller golems had melted and crumbled away completely, but the largest figure stood there looking like a demon, with molten stone running down its body and dripping off its one remaining arm to sizzle as it hit the scorched ground. Its formerly rough-featured face was a smashed ruin, but in the pits of its carved eyes, red dots shone brightly as the power inside it raged, fighting against the mighty blow it had been dealt. It looked down and saw two separate groups coming into the clearing at about the same time and raised one massive foot into the air then stomped down.

The force of the many tons of stone hitting the ground with such force raised furrows of earth around the golem while the impact took all the adventurers but Elhonna from their feet. She only kept her footing by rooting herself to the ground using her druidic powers. Working quickly, she cast a web of power into the sky around which clouds slowly began to form.

The party jumped to their feet and surrounded the monstrous golem. Thunder rolled overhead as the battle was joined again. Maggie kept to the perimeter of the fight, shooting arrow after empowered arrow into the red-glowing golem, slowly widening cracks that had formed under the extreme heat in the middle of the fireball. Fiona repeatedly cast spells of arcane binding, keeping the creature from raising its legs back up in the air for another stomp, and Noris worked on healing the party from their earlier and present fight. Even as he cast a restorative spell to close some of his own wounds from his tumbling along in the wake of Elhonna's blast, he saw Ereviz take a kick on his shield that sent him flying back a dozen paces, trailing small pieces of stone that glowed like sparks in the quickly darkening day. He stood up, arm hanging crookedly, then howled and reached over to snap it back into place before looking at Noris, who cast a spell in his direction to re-knit the bone.

As the golem's foot drew back from the kick that had launched Ereviz, Elhonna dashed towards it. She sidestepped as a massive hand crashed into the ground, then snapped both her blades from their sheathes as the creature withdrew its hand. As the molten stone-covered hand passed her head, she stabbed both magically imbued blades into the stone wrist like it was made of paper. She rose towards the creature's face as the golem started to sling its arm backwards over its shoulder, in hopes of slinging the druid into some trees probably a hundred paces away. She disavowed the creature of that idea, and jerked both blades free and pushed off the arm as it went over the creature's shoulder.

Maggie and Fiona focused their attacks at the creature's midsection and legs as Elhonna alighted on the golem's shoulder, with a flash of lightning back-lighting her presence, standing beside a head as tall as her, and much more massive. Smoke rose from her boots from the heat of the creature. The whole party looked on as she stabbed a sword into the golem's temple then spun to land on top of the smoky rubble that had once been an ornate crown carved from stone. She pulled her sword from the creature's temple and brought both swords flashing down to stab deep into the golem's eye sockets. The creature brought its hand down on its head in an effort to remove her, but she had already dove off, damage done. She was in a headfirst dive to the ground when she stabbed both swords into the creature's midsection and brought herself to an abrupt halt. She pushed off and sheathed her weapons before hitting the ground three paces below and rolling to absorb the fall.

The golem staggered blindly for a moment, then a grating howl rose deafeningly from its chest and erupted from its gaping broken mouth, as the tortured spirit used to animate it screamed in anger at its loss of sight. All the while, Fiona and Maggie kept up their assault, only stopping when Elhonna made her way to the ground, and commenced when she was out of the way. Ereviz rushed back in and went to work on the same leg he had damaged at the beginning of the fight, while dodging about to avoid the blinded golem's kicks and swipes of its arm. Cracks formed eventually in the massive chest and tree trunk-thick leg, but not enough to take it down. Building his power, Ereviz smashed one more mighty blow into the calf of the animated being, and the ankle started to come apart.

At this point, the evil powers used to animate the being came into play, and a sickly green glow surrounded the golem as it started to reform itself. However, after a seemingly interminable wait, Elhonna's first action finally came to fruition. First a few drops, then a steady downpour fell as Elhonna pushed more and more energy into the rainstorm she had called.

The creature stopped healing as the cool rain caused stone to sizzle and crack again. Elhonna looked in Fiona's direction, and the gnome, understanding, gathered her energy to her once more. Stabbing her small staff into the ground to stand before her, she put her hands together and her hair rose and blew about her face as a chilly wind surrounded her. She unclasped her hands and held them out towards the creature while planting her feet firmly and leaning into the spell as she finished chanting the words that would bring it out of the ether and into the material world. Drops of rain froze as they fell close to the gnome as in a flash, the temperature in a small dome around her dropped to below freezing.

She closed her eyes and shouted the last word of the spell and a huge ball of ice formed in the air before her, then launched at the creature at blinding speed. The gnome was tossed onto her rear as the spell pushed away and the whole party watched as it impacted the rain-soaked golem. With a sound like ice breaking away from a glacier the ice ball crashed into the creature and flash froze all the water that had poured into its many cracks. As the water expanded, the creature shook a moment, then blew apart under the pressure, its magically imbued stone no more resistant to that force than stone in nature.

The party stood there a moment, wondering if it was truly over, and for some reason, were unsurprised to hear a clear, deep voice ring out over the clearing.

"Well done, indeed. But here is where your little foray into our land will stop." The man accompanying the voice rode out into the far end of the clearing as he spoke, on a well-armored, coal colored horse with flaming red eyes. As the last words left his mouth, a line of massive lizardmen mounted on what looked to be a weird mish-mash of horse and lizard formed up on either side of him, a score across and two lines deep.

There's the next chapter, dammit.
Hi there Ekuth, since you'll prolly be the first one to reply.
I promise it isn't all going to be fight scenes from here on out...just a necessary part atm.
Enjoy the read people who still read this stuff.

See, I get a little lippy and I get what I want.
And what's wrong with fight scenes? You write them well.

Mwahahaha like I'd say being lippy is a bad thing but....
/wacks Ekuthh ont he knuckles with a ruler
Let the man write some stuff that is not all fighting and killing. There is a lot more to a story then the fighting. He;s developing as a writter
/pats ferunnia on the head
see doesn't even bit anymore hehehehehe

/turn into wolf and lop niko's hand off
/wolf form off

*pick up hand*

"Would you like this back? I'll even heal it. Won't hurt...much...

Well, I just caught up with the last chapter. I've read them from the first chapter to the last post, I couldn't stop reading. And after all that you've left me hungry for more. With a story this good, never worry that you have no readers, you'll always have at least one from here on.

/Niko scrolls through his harassment list. With a fresh post from Ekuthh and Valk out of comission Niko turns his attention to Ferunnia.
You do realise that it has been over a week since we had a chapter? Furthermore had your story not caught my intrest you would not be recieving encouragement in this form.
SO. Since you decided to write well and draw my attention you must continue to supply me with new material. Else I may be forced to unleash Video Abuse (the movies i make) on your or maybe evenenlist Valk to do some Photoshope abuse. DOn't think that I wont.

I'm about to move this Friday just so you guys know why I haven't been writing, stuff's been kinda hectic. Peace, love, and chikin grease.


*disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any hopes that may have been raised and then crushed on the jagged rocks of reality*

Do I want to know how Chicken Grease applies?

It's a line from a movie called "The Pest". John Leguizamo is the star, it's an adventure in pure silliness. Chicken grease=happiness I suppose, if you like fried chicken.

Best of luck on your move. Just remember when you get to your new pace to unpack the computer first so that you can get back to writting =)

Finally came back to this story and glad I did. I am looking forward to more. Good luck in your move and don't lose anything.

Whelp, move went well, but it took a bit to get the internet back up and running. Dunno when the next chapter will be written, this weekend I'm attending my cousin's basic graduation (He's USAF). Anyways, Just letting ya know I'm alive.

I am still here and caught back up and um when ya gonna post another chapter? twitch