Morgan and Dillan rose early, and after a hearty breakfast headed straight back into the forest to gather more Valoplant. They returned to town without incident just before noon, meeting Ralph and Chris at the gate.
“Hi guys!” Greeted Morgan, “Any sign of the other two?”
“Nothing yet.” Responded Ralph. “We’ve only just got here; we’ve been exploring the town. That respawn shrine is expensive, isn’t it. Didn’t bother with it, so promise me that if I die, you’ll keep my gear safe for a couple of days, OK?”
Morgan readily agreed, before spotting a couple of figures in the distance heading towards them on the road. “Looks like that’s them. Let's go to greet them and get them caught up on plans.”
Lana, the elf and Lauren the human looked exactly as Morgan remembered, gorgeous in their buffed leather armour. Ralph stared open mouthed at the two, before Chris elbowed him in the side.
“Hi cat man! Hi other guys!” Started Lana as the groups got into range. They had a round of introductions, with Ralph stammering a little as he introduced himself to the two women. Dillan invited them all to a party, and they headed towards Harl’s clearing.
Ralph leaned over to Morgan as they walked, quietly asking, “So, how did you get to know these two glorious amazons? And why do they call you cat man?”
Morgan grinned, “I met them on the road when I was making my way to the Kandalan outpost, they seemed friendly enough. As for cat man, that’ll have to remain a mystery for now, but you’ll understand soon.”
Ralph shrugged amiably in reply, “Whatever you say, cat man.”
Morgan had sent Harl notice that they were coming, but the lumberjack was still surprised to see the large group enter his clearing.
Harl greeted them with a wave, “More than I was expecting! This should be a cakewalk. The tree is about half an hour’s walk that way” He pointed vaguely west.
Another round of introductions quickly followed as Harl joined the party, and they all set off in the direction he pointed.
Once they were close, Harl stopped them all to huddle together. “Anyone got stealth to go have a proper look?”
Lauren smiled widely, “I’ve got a good rank. I’m happy to scout.” The rest of the party agreed, and Lauren slipped off into the bushes towards the tree.
Dillan tried to organise the rest of the group. “Ralph, are you OK being our main front liner? We’ll put Chris on your left and Morgan on your right. Harl, you hang back behind them and assist whoever needs it. Lauren and I will stay out of sight until we can get a good surprise flanking in. Lana, I’m assuming you’re ranged?”
Lana nodded, “I’m good with a sword but better with the bow.”
“OK,” Dillan continued, “Would you stay behind the three frontliners and support? We’ll try and get as close as we can without being spotted, and you can start us off with an arrow.”
Lana unstrapped the bow from her back and fussed with a quiver of arrows on her hip. “With pleasure.”
As the team readied their weapons, Lauren silently reappeared from the brush. “There are six pixies that I can see. Levels 7 to 9. Doesn’t look too bad.”
Dillan told her the rough plan, and the group headed slowly and as quietly as they could towards the tree. Soon, the tree was in sight through the brush, and the party halted to take in their foes.
The six pixies in sight were short evil looking green and brown humanoids, with skin like bark. They held wooden weapons, three with thin wooden swords and shields of bark and vines, two with spears, and one with a bow slung on its shoulder. Morgan focused on the closest, a sword wielder with a whorl of root sticking from the side of its head.
[Identify - Pixie: Level 8]
[Race - Monster/Plant/Spirit]
[HP - 310/310]
[SP - 300/300]
[MP - 150/150]
Morgan looked around to see everyone identifying pixies, until all heads turned to look at Dillan. The runner gestured forward and low with his hand, and the team inched towards the pixies. When they were at the edge of the bushes, 30 meters away from the pixies, Dillan stopped the group with a raised fist, before gesturing to Lana to line up her shot.
Morgan was tense, crouched in the bush, and almost squealed in surprise as the arrow left Lana’s bow with a thwack. The pixie with the bow sprouted an arrow from its left eye and toppled to the ground.
[A party member has killed Pixie: Level 7 : + 270XP]
The rest of the pixies jumped in alarm, grabbing at their weapons and forming into a tight unit, the two spear wielders behind the three sword and shield pixies. Lana loosed another arrow at the group, which was caught by a quickly raised shield. The surprise over, Morgan, Ralph and Chris stepped out of the bushes with Lana following behind, leaving Dillan and Lauren hiding to the sides.
The two armed groups faced each other, neither side moving for a long moment, before Lana broke the tension with another arrow. It flew at a spear pixie who tried to dodge, but the range was too short and it lodged in its upper torso. The five pixies charged the players.
Morgan swept a thin wooden blade aside with his hefty goblin sword, the weight of his blow taking both him and the pixie by surprise. As he bought his sword back up, the pixie recovered faster, slamming its shield into his face, stunning him for a moment as a spear from another pixie bit into his shoulder. He grunted in pain as the spear twisted and pulled out of his body. Harl appeared on his right, slamming his axe down on the shield bearer, splitting its head in half, revealing wooden innards and leaving sap on his blade.
Morgan followed up, charging the exposed spearman, getting inside the sharpened tip’s range and hacking at its neck. He scored a good hit, but the pixie didn’t go down. Lauren appeared behind the pixie, and with a twin flash of her blades, the monster fell, the job finished. Ralph and Chris had already felled a sword pixie each, and Dillan was finishing the other spear wielder with his daggers.
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A silence fell over the glade, before Ralph exclaimed merrily, “Steamrolled! Well, that was easy.”
Lana handed Morgan a vial of Valoplant sap to use on his shoulder, as Chris and Dillan looted the bodies, piling the pickings up nearby.
Harl walked up to the tree, paused for a moment, and then turned to the group. “This is it, guys. It should only take a few minutes to take down.” With this, he hefted his axe, and swung at the tree.
As the axe bit deep into the trunk, the tree screamed. The sound was terrible, a thousand ancient branches moving. It was deeply unsettling, like hundreds of nails scraping on a chalkboard. Harl wrenched his axe out and staggered back, as the other members of the party stared at the tree in astonishment and horror.
Suddenly, there was chaos. From the canopy of the tree dropped a rain of apple sized seeds. As each seed hit the ground, it exploded like a fragmentation grenade, peppering the group with shrapnel splinters. Chris tried to jump away as one landed at his feet, but he didn't have time to react. Most of the chunks bounced harmlessly off his mail armour, but some peppered his exposed face, leaving him gasping in shock and pain. Lauren tried to deflect one with a sword, but it exploded on impact. Most of the shrapnel went over her head, but a few bits struck her, and she screamed in shock and pain as a particularly savage splinter hit her in the eye.
As the party tried to evade the falling seeds, a line of eight beetles burst through the brush and into the glade, each bearing a pixie rider on its back. Six of the riders carried spears, and two, who slowed to stay behind the spear riders, held bows at the ready.
Dillan shouted over the hissing pop of exploding seeds, “Form up on me! Now!”
The party reacted quickly, Ralph dragging Chris as the tall player tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. Lana grabbed the dazed Lauren and led her through the carnage towards the assembling group.
An arrow whipped past Dillan's head, as another sunk into Ralph’s chest, biting through the mail. Morgan grabbed a wooden shield from the pile of loot taken off the previous guardians, before running to his position at the front of the group. The rate of falling seeds slowed to a trickle, and the beetle riders prepared to charge. Ralph, an arrow sticking from his mail, bellowed a war cry at the advancing line. Morgan darted in front of him, leading with the shield, intercepting an arrow that would have struck him in the neck.
Dillan briefly took in the scene before bellowing orders, “Frontline, hold fast! Take out the beetles first, riders after! Lana, get the archer on the left. Lauren, grab a shield and cover Lana.”
The players held their ground as the six riders bore down on them. Before the lines met, both Ralph and Harl took a step forward, swinging their axes in mighty downswings. Ralph hit a beetle cleanly, slicing through its head, as Harl’s blow reached further, grazing the rider before sinking into the beetles back chitin. The beetle Ralph killed skidded to a halt at his feet as he swung again, a diagonal strike that almost cleaved the pixie rider in two. Harl had to abandon his axe, stuck as it was, and he grabbed instead the spear that the pixie thrust at him. He wrenched at the spear, and the pixie was torn from the back of the beetle. Harl tried to wrest the weapon from the monster, but it wouldn’t let go. The lumberjack picked up the spear, pixie and all, and threw it at another rider, knocking it off its beetle.
Lana traded arrows with the two archers as Lauren used the shield to try to protect her, the elf managing to disable the left archer with an arrow to its arm, as Dillan used his speed skill to dash around the edge of the clearing, appearing behind the other archer and sinking his two daggers into the back of its neck. The beetle it was riding rose up on its hind legs, dropping the pair to the ground as the pixie landed on top of Dillan. The beetle turned and as Dillan tried to scramble out from under the fallen pixie, it scythed its mandibles at the fallen runner. He blocked one swing with a dagger, but the other mandible almost took his left hand off at the wrist. He cried out in pain as the beetle prepared to attack again, before it sank to the ground with two arrows sticking from the back of its head.
Morgan and Chris were kept busy, blocking spear thrusts and dodging flailing mandibles, barely keeping up with the onslaught of attacks. Chris managed a lucky strike, plunging his metal spear tip deep into the head of a beetle, killing it instantly. The rider leapt from the back of the dead beetle, soaring over the line of players and landing neatly, its spear ready to thrust into Chris back. Morgan was ready, already turning to swat the pixie with his heavy sword, hitting it so hard that the pixie flew a couple of meters before rolling to a stop. Another rider, taking advantage of the distraction pushed its beetle forward, a sharp mandible biting into Morgan’s unarmoured side, before Chris managed to ward the next attack off with his spear.
Chris took a pixie’s spear thrust to the leg, followed up by a savage attack from its beetle, driving the player to the ground. Morgan stood facing two riders and two beetles, trying to cover his downed ally, his side screaming agony from the wound. He dodged one spear thrust, then another, a mandible scored his leg as he dropped his sword and rolled, ending up on one knee. One rider stayed to keep him pinned down as the other turned to finish off Chris. His foe surged forwards, bowling him over and raising his spear for a killing thrust. His sword was out of reach, but Morgan managed to grab the spear that was aimed at his chest, pushing it to one side. The rider jerked back, tearing it from his grip and readied for another lunge.
Morgan couldn’t die now. He was so close to succeeding, despite his setbacks. There was only one thing to do. Time to let the cat out of the bag. With this thought coursing through him, he fished out the Bag of Cats from under his shirt and pointed the opening towards the rider that loomed over him.
His six cats appeared, leaping from the bag straight onto the pixie rider, clawing and biting. The rider reared back in shock as it tried to deal with the new threat. Morgan rolled again to grab his sword as the rider dropped its spear and tried to wrench the cats off.
Ivycat cast a shield on Luna as a hand reached for her, and the bark whorled fingers slid off the faint bubble. It managed to pry Trip off with the other hand, throwing him to the ground as Scrap climbed over the monster's head. The black and white cat dealt a devastating blow to the back of its neck, causing it to slump over the beetle, dead. The five cats turned to savaging the beetle, which reared up and landed on its back in an attempt to crush the new riders. The cats were too agile to be caught by the move, leaping off the falling beetle only to jump back on to rend its lightly protected underside.
Trip, who had been thrown off, teleported before he hit the ground, appearing behind the rider that was assaulting the downed Chris. The rider, thrown off by the appearance of a furious black cat, missed it’s thrust at Chris and turned to swipe a woody hand at the feline, who dodged the clumsy blow and jumped at the rider's face, clawing at its amber coloured eyes. Chris, who had recovered enough to grab his spear, clumsily dodged a blow from the beetle's mandibles before sinking his spear into its neck.
Dillan appeared, pale with pain as he used the dagger in his good hand to finish the rider that still had Trip hanging on its face. Ralph appeared, staring wildly at the cats as Trip disappeared in a flash of darkness. He smashed the beetle with a mighty downswing, crushing its back chitin with such force that the beetle almost tore in half.
Panting, the dwarf looked around at the carnage, dead and dying beetles and pixies lying among the organic shrapnel that littered the floor of the glade.
He turned to Morgan with a puzzled look, “Dude, are those cats yours? I swear you just pulled a bunch of cats out of your pocket and threw them at a guy. I did not know you could do that.”
Morgan shrugged as he watched the cats finish the beetle they’d been attacking. “Yup.”
Ralph turned to Chris, “Did you see that? Morgan just threw some cats at a guy!”
Chris had recovered his spear from the beetle it had been stuck in and was leaning on it like it was a crutch. "Oh, I noticed alright. That little black one saved my life. That was a hell of a fight, between the pixie riders and the seed bombs. So how come you have pocket cats?”
Morgan grinned, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we’re back at the inn. For now, you got any healing salve on you?”
The party took a minute to apply salve to their wounds, with Chris, Lauren and Dillan being the worst affected by the fight. Lauren squirmed in pain, cursing vividly, as the splinter pushed itself out of her eye, and sighed in relief as the eye reformed.
When everyone was healed, Dillan spoke up, while massaging his freshly healed wrist. “Good job, everyone. Let's see if we can get what we came for. Everyone form up, just in case something else happens. Harl, you ready?”
The lumberjack nodded and stepped towards the tree. The rest of the party gathered close by, staying low with weapons at the ready. The whole group tensed as Harl took a swing at the tree. The blade bit deep once more as the party watched. Harl withdrew the axe and swung again. Everyone relaxed a little, as they watched the player chip away at the large tree.