With an Auran battlecry on her lips, Fin springs away from her tent and charges the evil apparition. Whoosh's form wavers, seeming both solid an intangible as it strikes, cleaving into the nebulous arm of the Spirit, releasing her misty essence. The Spirit hisses in response but does not falter in her attack.
She shakes off the spider and glides effortlessly towards the gnome. What benevolent Gods protect the gnome none can say, but he twists and dodges, evading her grasp!
Denied one victim, the Spirit turns her cold glance on the tall elven woman. A sentient wisp of her nightgown seeks to brush against the elven maiden, so full of life... Worried about her little brother, Fin takes a moment too long to dodge the seemingly harmless cloth and instantly feels the marrow freeze where the eldritch material brushes her calf. Her rebellious spirit defends her soul and only a little of her essence flows into the evil creature.
Devouring Fin's life-force, some of the Spirit's wounds begin to heal.
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9|
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ORDER:
Map: Beach of Bones
Full Attack -
Negative Energy
CON Drain
Negative Energy
CON Drain
Jayse considers movign to flank, I won't survive another hit from this thing! The thought is accompanied by the hiss of his blade manifesting, and he lashes out with an ineffectual slash.
Ushari returns the glare of the evil spirit with one of her own. For a split second, it seems they are a mirror reflection of one another. Then the moment passes, and another wave of glowing energy erupts from her, engulfing the beach battleground, and those theron.
Dark meets Light... and the Keening Spirit's limitless evil blunts the full effect of Ushari's power. Still, the positive energy chips at her unlife-force and angers her greatly. She eyes the cleric like a meal.
Like a demented arthropodic dune buggy, Skitter takes off across the sand. He tightly circles the evil harpy who spins on him and delivers a leisurely kick. Skitter ducks the blow then launches at her face, putting a crease in her cheek.
HIT
DAM
Ushari's healing energy is a god-send, heartening the gnome. Seizing on the distraction provided by the pint-sized cube, Straehan slides to a position opposite Fin and attacks with his smoking claws. The Spirit easily sidesteps his first strike, not realising it is a feint for his second, which carves a modest set of claw marks across her belly.
ORDER:
Map: Beach of Bones
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14|
Full Action -
HIT: DAM:
HIT: DAM:
Gritting her teeth against this staggeringly powerful foe, Fin levels another attack with Whoosh.
Fin delivers a decisive blow to the evil spirit, who spins around under the onslaught of unlikely blows. She looks for a suitable target to vent her malice upon. Ah... the God Servant.
Like a vile disdainful wind, the Keening Spirit sweeps between the monk and sorcerer, intent on drawing the life from Ushari. The Cleric's soul, not to mention her infernal magic, is a vexing beacon of light and life in the Spirit's territory of despair. She falls upon her prey like a falcon upon a mouse.
Skitter leaps at the vile creature once again but misses by a hair's breadth.
HIT
DAM
Findelgwing desperately tries to connect again with the spirit as it passes by her, but her father's swords cleaves only the chill night air.
Time stretches out for Jayse inside the Calm, and the woman glides past like cool molasses on the air, just waiting for Jayse's blade. His calm mask shows a smirk as he realizes his moment to strike, and he drives the blade powerfully into her form, enhancing the strike with some mental power.
Straehan tries to claw at one of the Spirit's legs in passing and only succeeds in catching the same night air as Fin.
His only satisfaction is in seeing the spirit effectively drag itself across Jayse's blade.
HIT: DAM:
Time:
If undead could gasp, the Keening Spirit would. That last blow, a blow she would have sworn was impossible for a mortal to land, eats at her mind. She has not given thought to her own destruction in many long years but now it seems... possible. She debates, coldly and dispassionately, the idea of retreat. But first... there is the hunger.
With a snarl she lashes out at Ushari, her hands clenched into claws. Though she cannot recall the last time she felt compelled to share words, she whispers sinfully, libidinously, as if talking to a lover between the sheets, "I'm going to leave you a withered husk, little one."
The intense cold of the Spirit's embrace is excruciating, setting the slightly built woman shivering with cold... but Ushari's spirit, girded by her faith, resists the soul-siphoning unlife of the ghostly woman and prevents the vile creature from regenerating.
ORDER:
Map: Beach of Bones
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13|
Negative Energy
CON Drain
Ushari hisses back at her, "You will have to do BETTER than that!" Holding up her hand, she feels the divine rage welling in her...and it explodes from her body in a burst of divine radiance! Her glowng rapier flies above the undead spirit and thrusts at her ectoplasmic form.
The Keening Spirit is again weakened by the blast of positive energy but still her vile essence deflects most of the damage and she deftly slaps away Ushari's spirit blade.
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14|
Skitter hustles across the sand but is unable to close with the supernaturally mobile Spirit.
ORDER:
Map: Beach of Bones
Gotta keep her boxed in... Jayse thinks and launches out in a circuitous route, past Straehan and Ushari's strange little box-thing, taking a diving leap over a tent , rolling to his feet without missing a beat and glides up behind the creature, startling her once again with a vicious strike at her exposed back.
Jayse weaves across the battlefield, a man possessed. He handsprings over his own tent and tumbles across the sand behind the evil spirit. His blade whips out, cutting across her spine. Her entire form shifts and wavers then re-solidifies.
ORDER:
Following on Jayse's daring attack, Fin rushes thru the opening created by him and seeks to disrupt the apparition's form with her blade.
Fin sprints to halt alongside Ushari and rams her sword into the creature's midsection. The Keening Spirits writhes on the blade and her ectoplasmic form nearly disperses. It reforms but only the face is as it was. The rest of her 'body' appears as little more than a vaguely human-shaped vapor.
The Spirit whispers malevolently, "This isn't over yet..."
Straehan sprints around the corner of the north-most tent, his over-sized boots kicking up a spray of sand... His hands move in an eldritch gesture, "I wouldn't bet on that, harpy." Despite his words, he silently prays his spell is strong enough.
Two slender bolts of force smack into the Spirit, rocking the nearly amorphous blob. Even her face begins to lose cohesion blending into the cloud of unlife.
RANGE: 100' +10'/lv
EFFECT:
Missile #1 DAM
Missile #2 DAM
The spectral form of the Keening Spirit wavers, shifts, contorts, contracts... but HOLDS. It is now little more than a thick bluish mist. Briefly a snake-like tendril slithers toward Ushari then retreats. Even the voice is weak, though its malevolence is unabated, "I'll have you yet."
The ghostly creature sinks rapidly into the beach.
Due to the withdraw, AoOs are not possible for her leaving her starting square. Since her subsequent square is only in AoO range of Jayse (she moved diagonally) and is fully within the ground, it is considered total cover and does not draw his AoO. All further squares are not threatened.
Ushari shakily looks around her, wondering if the creature is truly banished, or whether it is waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
”Straehan…is that spirit destroyed”
She glances at the members of the fellowship, ”If we cannot destroy it, then we need to ”
Straehan blinks at the question, "You're asking me? I have NO idea. But she seemed to move with a purpose and I'd think, if she were destroyed, we'd have seen more fireworks or something."
Ushari contains her momentary alarm and thinks... It did move of its own volition into the sand, though it was very close to total dispersal. I still feel the taint of it on this beach... but that could be nerves. My gut says it is still 'alive'.
To 'banish' her, you can either destroy her as you almost did OR determine the curse that created her and then lift it. If the curse is just that she was insanely wicked and hungered for eternal life... then you'd have to locate her mortal remains then bless and bury them.
Fin sheathes Whoosh and stalks over to the boat throwing off the camouflage and setting her shoulder against it to get it back into the water.
"Mako, now!"
Straehan scoops up a couple of the tents into an ungainly laundry pile in his arms - not terribly concerned if he managed to get all the supporting poles. He races to dump them unceremoniously in the Mako (along with himself most likely).
Ushari looks around her and notes the pristine condition of the beach, she turns to Straehan and Jayse, and asks with more than a little note of fear in her voice, ”Did either of you run across any sign of bones on this beach…Any at all?”
Jayse answers as he helps Fin push the boat into the water, "Yah, i stepped on some right before we were attacked." As he gives a second attempt , he gestures to the spot with his chin, "It was over there. I was walking for a bit to stay alert when something sharp poked into my foot. I picked it up... that's when she came out."
Fin slides the boat towards the water until Jayse all but lifts it up and carries it in...
Once the boat is shoved off (and if he has time), Jayse will jump back to the beach to recover any of the other items that hasn't been grabbed. Only once they are all safely aboard the baot will he consider whether or not it's important enough to swig some healing potion.
Ushari stares at the spot of the beach where Jayse had indicated earlier. She thinks, Could the creature's bones be amongst them? Would it be possible to... She then realizes the bones could be used against the group as well.
She snaps out of it, and quickly grabbing Skitter, along with a tent and as many other items as she can carry with her, she splashes into the water, and climbs aboard the Mako.
All the while keeping a sharp eye out on the beach...
The Mako slides effortlessly back into the water, all but hurled by Jayse and Fin. Straehan, trying very hard to remember every little trick the ladies showed him about piloting this craft, is doing his best to get her turned around and under way - using his knee to hold the tiller while unfurling the end of the sail. He actually does something of a decent job but he is happy to relinquish the duty as Fin and Ushari jump aboard and start preparing the craft expertly.
From FAR up the hillside, you hear the voice of the Keening Spirit. It is low and malevolent. You don't know the language, but whatever it is, it sounds ominous. Ushari looks at Straehan, and says, "She's casting a spell."
The stern of the Mako swings round oh so slowly as the Spirit goes silent... As the sails start to fill and the Mako slows her rearward movement, you hear a buzzing on the beach, as of wind blowing across the sand. You spy the skull and jaw Jayse uncovered slowly rock and then start tumbling towards the center of the strand. Other bits of bone from the hole get blown out and start spinning lazily down the beach.
The buzzing grows louder and the whole beach appears to bounce, as if it were a thin layer of sand on a drumhead and someone is tapping the drum. The sand sinks down as the foundation comes up - bones - dozens, then hundreds of them are 'shaken' to the surface. You lose count of the number of skulls, mandibles, femurs, scapulas, and thousands of tiny bone fragments. Each one slowly emerging from the sand and then blown by some ill wind toward the center of the beach... where the largest pile of all is slowly emerging. The only thing louder than the the buzz-drumming is the loud 'clack' as each bone strikes the central pile which rises each second. Fin encourages the sails to fullness as Ushari ties off lines. Jayse and Straehan can only stare.
Under the ladies' expert guidance, the sail fills and the Mako begins to gather speed, moving northward, paralleling the coast for the moment. You pass the massive 20' high bone pile at the center of the beach as it continues to grow even as the beach itself sinks, deprived of its foundation of skulls. It looks like a frozen whirlpool of sand around a giant flameless funerary pyre.
Straehan can't take his eyes from sight, saying with a slight tremor in his voice, "Come on, Mako, go faster."
Some sort of critical mass is reached for the clacking dies down and in every socket of every skull in this vast pile of death, nacreous blue flames light. The bonepile rises up, like a wall of living death, alight with the thousand twinkling candles in the skulls. Appendages resembling stumpy arms and legs form from the myriad bones. It reminds Fin of the water elemental she met at Isolde's lake... except this one is composed entirely of bones. What passes for the creature's head swings around and seems to watch them. It climbs from the hole and starts stumbling towards them. Its body aglow in the moonlight from the many lit skulls enmeshed in its body. The creature is absolutely immense.
Map: Beach of Bones
Jayse stares unblinkingly across the suddenly too-small gulf of water at the monstrosity, "Seriously?! Ok, surely between you three magic geniuses we have some kind of spell to get this thing moving faster." He begins to bounce his slightly glowing blue blade in his hand out of nervousness.
Ushari can only stare at the bone golem as it grows to full size. She shakes her head at Jayse, "I have no magic to propel the Mako faster. We can only pray it is tied to the beach like the spirit is."
"Seriously?! Ok, surely between you three magic geniuses we have some kind of spell to get this thing moving faster."
Fin concentrates on her fingers, frowns at the sail and holds out her hand saying, "Mako GO!"
Unfortunately, nothing happens. She snaps her fingers, shrugs and picks up an oar to start rowing.