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Neri promptly becomes hopelessly lost.
Luna looked uncomfortable at the idea of being the one trusted to kill the wolf but didn't say anything about it."Could I have my dagger back now?" she questioned Lina.
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Lina hands the dagger to Luna. "Stay together, all of you—" she calls out. "Luna, if this thing twitches, put one of its eyes out. If it twitches again, take the other eye too. Everyone else—remain here."
And she does what she can to locate Neri with her tracking powers; if she can, she'll run in his direction (with fast monk speed) and then lead him back to the others.
Before he leaves, Johnny makes sure Neri has something unique on him.
"Well, if he's doing that, then Locate Object probably won't be as much help." As he speaks, he makes a few gestures, causing his leg muscles to grow slightly stronger.
He tilts his head to one side as he thinks. "Normally augury only tells you if an action will have a good, bad, or neutral outcome. So I don't think you need a question so much as an action in mind. The first action would be 'killing the crystal wolf' with maybe 'staying here for 30 minutes' as the second. But again, the results will be hard to interpret since, for example, a 'woe' for the second action could mean there are more wolves on the way, which has nothing to do with Liisa's well-being."
Just on a longshot, she manifested another arrow and fired into the salt. Then she used Detect Magic and tried to figure out more about the persistent salt.
Hmm. Maybe I can restore the tree enough for it to fight off the curse itself ...
...somehow. What do trees like again? Sun, a bit of rain, and nutrients for the roots.
But I can't be the first one with this problem - right? Hmm ...
...Well, possibly with this particular instance of the problem. A bit worse then oversalting your breakfast egg. But salt, didn't I read in some book? Maybe that would work ...
...given what I know of magic here. Hmm.
Or maybe I'm attacking it in the wrong end - If *I* were to try and curse and keep down something like a tree, what would I do, what countermeasures would I create? And what would I miss?
I guess I *could* try to rig up something to remove the salt. Maybe a really big herd of cows, they like salt ...
You had an idea earlier about shape earth to meld all the salt into one big block...
After Lina leaves and doesn't return for a while Luna will try to finish the wolf as directed.
After her brief pondering Liisa can't think of any better idea then her first one - and so calls upon nature's energies to start lumping the salt together into a larger ball. Which, hopefully, I can get rid of! Or simply be content with it affecting a smaller area ...
Lina leaves to find Neri, and promptly becomes lost!
Once Lina loses sight of the rest of the group, Neri seems to change positions every 2-3 steps she takes. If she stands still, he mostly stays in the same direction, but as soon as she takes a few steps, his position radically changes. For reference, if he was at "12 O'Clock" and she takes 3 steps, he suddenly traces as being at "5 O'Clock".
Everything Liisa 'knows' about magic says this shouldn't work, but she's desperate, and can't think of anything else. She casts stone shape, and begins willing the salt into a large chunk of stone...
...and the salt begins to move, flowing up into a large salt block! Or at least, about a third of it does...
As Luna moves toward the wolf Kong stops her, "Wait for Lina to come back unless it starts to wake up. And it's best to do that from range. I'm going to try my augury spell now to find out if killing it has any good repercussions."
Kong then concentrates and and asks "Would killing this wolf creature hurt our chances of finding Liisa?"
"This wolf is likely causing what is getting them all lost, we can't wait forever."
Kong smiles at Luna, "I agree with you. Let me cast this then move everybody back and depending on the answer I get, kill the b!t@#$!"
Kong concentrates and casts his spell...
...An image forms in his mind...
Fairly certain he didn't cast it right he shakes his head and concentrates harder.
Kong laughs loudly, "Aparently that spell is the magic 8 ball spell.", then concentrates again. "Luna, kill the b!t$#!", he says confidently and quickly adds "Make sure everyone is out of blast range first."
Lina shakes her head, then casts Light on a shuriken, hurling it high up into the air. Again—a second shuriken aimed at Neri's position, another thrown in the direction of the party, and then she flings a few randomly.
The glow vanishes as they are flung away... slowly at first, and then blinking off as if something swallowed them. On the third toss, Lina catches a glimpse of the glow in an entirely different direction for a fraction of an instant before the fog consumes it.
"Right," Lina mutters. "F***ing physicists." And waits a few minutes, at least, to see if the others figure something out.
"I could try my whip or throw the daggers but both would take much longer."
Depending on which method Kong wanted Luna would try to do as she was told.
not entirely sure exactly what's going on but getting the gist it might be dangerous, Ssetheen stands back a ways.
Ssetheen gets 60' back if he can... and waits.
As Luna attacks, Johnny moves back a healthy 40 feet, making sure to keep Luna between himself and the beast. As he does so, his hand starts to glow slightly as the air around it begins to shimmer in waves of heat.
Ssetheen runs off and promptly get's lost!
Ssetheen stops moving at about 60' away... and lost. He pauses, listening for the others.
Luna steps back and begins to whip the wolf. Oddly, she finds the whip seems to bite into the wolf's hide much easier than the knife did, tearing chunks of flesh free.
As the freezing blood pours out, the blue crystals on it's back fade to black.
Suddenly the wolf's eyes open, black pits look out where blue eyes had been before. A fireball goes off but the body continues to move even as it burns. "The forest. How did you get out from behind the wall? No matter, I know where you are now. Such a feast soon... elder souls..." The wolf's voice is cold and distant, the fur burning off.
Then the crystals on the wolf's back shatter, and black energy expands out 30 ft in a circle! The entire area is fully filled with the clinging black energy! Plants immediately whither, bark cracks and sloughs off tree trunks! Leaves tumble tot he ground inside the black energy!
Luna crumbles to ground as the energy washes over her but is able to regain herself and stand hoping the others had survived the blast.
Wide-eyed, Johnny is frozen in his tracks, very glad that he had headed whomever warned him to stay back. Blinking a few times in rapid succession, he quickly runs up to Luna, checking her damage and seeing if she needed healing.
"Well...that was...s!*#. We seriously need to find the others and get the hell outta dodge." He looks around a tad frantically. His voice holds a hint of a whine as he says, "Konngggggg, I thought you said killing the b#@$$ was a good idea. Where is everybody. Wait....where'd the lizard guy go? If that explosion doesn't get enough attention for Neri and Lina to hurry back here, then it means something must have happened to them as well, and we'll need to go after them. Possibly after tying ourselves together; anything that can keep Lina's tracking out of commission is a bad sign."
Kong then concentrates and and asks "Would killing this wolf creature hurt our chances of finding Liisa?"
Lina takes her Kyotetsu Shoge—a large iron hoop attached to 10' of rope—and ties it to the end of the 50' of mundane rope she carries. This, in turn, is attached to her reinforced scarf, creating—including the length of her arms—approximately 70' of rope to swing. Doing what she can to channel her frustration constructively, she attempts to whip this in a circle around her, hoping to hear something as the iron hoop on the end collides with a person or a tree.
Assuming this accomplishes nothing, she'll bunk down for the night, and begin repairs on her Robe of Twine.
Kong dives to the dirt at the negative energy explodes out.
"I was expecting a cold explosion not that. Is everyone ok? Any thoughts on what to do now?"
Luna stops Johnny from getting close when he moves to heal her keeping him away from her returning lunch.
"Need a minute, do we have anything that can dispel this?"