Move 359: RegroupingSmooth Caverns--Early, Day 37 (Marpenoth 20)
Blacky and Jana made their way back in the direction that Azrun and the roper that was following him had gone. For the moment, Blacky's strength still seemed to be holding up in spite of the multiple attacks he took from the roper.
Azrun bent down to pick up the arrows that Renn had dropped for him. The pause that he took to get the quiver was enough for the roper to get him within firing range. The bard hit the roper with an arrow, and the roper hit the bard with one of its tentacles.
"Time to die you bastard!" Blacky moved in on the roper and hacked at it with his large axe.
Jana edges toward the strand holding Azrun and hacks at it.
Azrun dropped his bow to the side. He squirmed to reach his knife and tried to cut himself loose.
Azrun tried to get his knife, but he dropped it onto the tunnel floor. Jana moved over and sliced through the strand that was holding him. Blacky charged the roper on the wall with his great axe. More than a little surprisingly, the creature maneuvered itself down and around enough to grab the axe's handle up near the head with its mouth, snapping the wood with its powerful jaws. It crept down the wall, advancing on Blacky now.
The other roper was still nowhere to be seen.
Jana ran to the roper, wooden shield in front of her, and hacked twice at the creature one-handed. If she seemed to be inside of strand range, she threw the shield away and hacked two-handed.
Azrun pulled himself free of the strands and began to cast a spell at the roper.
Azrun hit the roper with several magical beams, which seemed to cause it a significant amount of pain. Jana advanced on the creature, and it turned its attention from Blacky, who seemed slightly stunned by his broken axe, to her. It bit into her shield, shattering the wood into little toothpicks, and it also caught her across the torso with its gaping maw. The bite would have at least broken ribs if it had not been for the shield deflecting some of it; as it was, it caused a huge amount of bruising, some bleeding, and it seemed to knock her breath away.
Azrun, heartened by his success with his spell, tried it again with similar results, wounding the roper badly. Jana took a ragged breath and hacked into it with her sword after discarding the splintered shield. The sword wound was enough to take the monster down. From behind Jana, the sound of quiet chanting was heard. Suddenly, her bleeding stopped, her breathing calmed, and she looked healthier than she had seconds before.
"Fuck!" Blacky screamed as he saw his weapon destroyed. He drew his two handed sword and attacked.
"Uhm, thanks, Renn," Jana said a bit shakily. "Uhm, we need to secure the area. We can't have those things infesting this place when Arachne and Aloysius are supposed to, uhm, pop in. Renn, what kind of detection spells you got and what sorta range?" As she spoke, Jana set about cutting open the corpse as they had before, unless someone objected first.
Before he answered, Renn raised his voice in prayer again. Once his spell was finished, Renn spoke softly, as his words appeared to come from closer to the visible people then they were before. "Only a spell for sensing danger, and it's range is quite short. It will only detect trouble which is within about ten feet. With Olaf slain, I focused on healing nearly exclusively," Renn explained. "Well fought against that pair," he said encouragingly. "When we are ready, I can try to find the one which was retreating, and collect my lightstones along the way."
"Damn...it actually worked." He looked around and picked up Renn's quiver, "I'd like to hang onto this quiver, if you don't mind, Renn." He pulled the one arrow left in his quiver out and put it in the one Renn had dropped.
He looked around, "Ummm, Echo? You still with us?"
"Over here," Echo said quietly. Her voice came from near the left branch of the fork. "I'll keep watching while Jana cuts that one open."
"Not so well," Jana rebutted. "One got away and may be going to tell its friends. We should think about chasing it down."
Azrun nodded, "I'm up for it. Blacky, do you have a spare weapon to use? I know you have some hand axes, but do you have anything that can slice and dice in a much grander fashion?"
Azrun looked at his make shift shield, "These things helped some, I guess. You're wound probably would have been much worse without, Jana. Do you want mine since yours is now toothpicks?"
"Blacky's got that big-ass sword he can use," Jana commented as she put the mostly de-icked coins and gems in a bag. "And yeah, Azrun, I'll carry the shield if you'd rather not." She stood and held out the bag. Speaking to empty air in a random direction she said, "Echo, you wanna carry this or you want me to hang on to it?"
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