"Level 11 and elite, seriously?" Polly messaged. "Can we even take them?"
"One possible way," Casian said, "We need to pull only one of them at a time and fight them one after the other. If that does not work, then," he shrugged, "we're all toast."
"Cletus, Is there any way that we can know what the agro radius is on these things?" Lucinda asked.
Cletus had been hanging back but suddenly shot forward. When he neared her he suddenly slowed to a stately stroll a heavy and ornate robe appearing over his body as he thoughtfully paged through his tome. This took longer than normal, Cletus even reaching up to tug on his chin hairs a few times. He suddenly looked up, "From the compiled data from other adventurers, it appears that it may be possible to pull only one of these."
"Well, that was new," Lucinda replied.
"Yeah, the developers just released the crowdsourced system and I thought I would make it look cool."
"So, getting back to the issue at hand," Sparky messaged. "What do you mean by possible?"
"There have been three thousand other sightings of Stone Golems, but none are this high level. There seems to be a widening of the agro radius every three levels; the best example I have is a level 9 stone Golem that aggroed at 10 yards; if the pattern holds, this one should agro at 13 yards and the distance between the golems is about 14 yards. I would agro it as lightly as you are able if I were you."
"Lightly and agro don't really go together in my book," Caisin said.
"Then let me handle this." Lucinda offered.
The thief led the party to the rightmost side of the cavern. When they were settled about 20 yards away from the right golem, Lucinda frowned and then bent down and picked up a small pebble, throwing it at the golem.
The moment the stone passed within a few yards of it the golem's eyes snapped open, and its hand shot up and caught the pebble in mid-flight. The creature rotated its massive head in the direction the pebble had come from, saw the party, and with a great grinding and thumping, advanced toward the party. Through all of this, the other golem remained as still as a statue.
The party began backing up along the right wall of the cavern, pulling the golem as far away from its companion as possible. At one point, the golem suddenly lost interest in them and turned to return to its post, but Caisin shouted at it, "Fight Me!" the magical words drawing the giant stone creature's attention. The golem's head whipped around, and it charged at Caisin.
As the party had been backing up, they naturally clumped together, and when the golem suddenly charged, they scrambled to get apart. Polly and Sparky backpedaled quickly, but as she did, Polly slipped and fell. At the same time, the golem swung down with its huge war hammer. The hammer's head the size of a postal service drop box.
Caisin dove to the side but the hammer still clipped him, his health bar dropping to half. "Polly!"
"Sorry," She yelled as she got back to her feet.
"I need support, or this thing is going to make a pancake out of me!"
The huge creature lifted its hammer again and began to swing at the warrior.
Just then, a bolt of green leaped from Polly's hands, when it touched Caisin his health bar lurched back to full.
Caisin, suddenly emboldened, stepped close to the stone giant, slashing at its side with his huge axe. He had stepped inside the creature's reach, but the golem suddenly changed up bringing the butt of its hammer's shaft down on Caisin. Thus, the cat-and-mouse game between the warrior and the golem began, Caisin darting inside and outside of the giant creature's reach, the giant trying to land a single killing blow. At the same time, Polly healed Caisin for every glancing blow the golem was able to land.
Once Caisin had firmly grabbed the giant's ire and attention, Grog stepped up to one side of the golem and began peppering blow after blow into the creature's leg. Lucinda and Lance popped out of and into sight behind the creature peppering it with backstabs. The stone creature was not susceptible to Lucinda's poison, but she still delivered massive damage. Even with all of this, the golem's health dropped very slowly. But then lightning began leaping from Sparky's hands slamming into the creature's head and chest, chips of stone and rock flying wherever the bolts landed. Each blow took a significant chunk off the golem's health. Suddenly the giant stopped and roared lifting his hammer high above its head.
"Look out for an AOE attack!" Polly yelled.
Everyone turned and sprinted away from the golem as its giant hammer descended. When the hammer hit, only the two spell casters were out of range. The others were thrown from their feet as a wave of earth erupted outward from where the golem's hammer hit the ground. Lance saw a debuff show up.
A moment later when Lance and the others got up Caisin immediately yelled, "Fight Me!", causing the golem to turn his attention away from Polly who was cowering in a corner. The party again began working the golem down, but without Sparky's burst damage, the fight was a slow grind. On the positive side, the golem did not use its AOE attack again. Eventually, the golem fell under the combined weight of the attacks. When it did Sparky sat up with a missing arm.
"I thought you were dead!" Lance said.
"I wish I was!"
Polly walked over and poured healing into Sparky and his arm began to grow back.
Sparky spoke, despair on his face. "I don't think I am going to make it all the way through this."
Lance sat down and looked pensive for a moment. "Sparky, we need you. I don't think we could have killed that thing without your help. But if you don't want to pursue Borgakh with us, I am sure we all would understand."
Everyone nodded.
"No, it's not that. I am just letting the pain talk." Sparky smiled a crooked smile.
"Oh, you darling." Polly gave him a big hug and a peck on the cheek.
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Sparky turned bright red, then suddenly sputtered. "Okay, Do you think that the density of my attacks is what set off the golem's special attack?"
"I would agree," Lance said.
Heads nodded around the group, everyone ignoring Sparky's embarrassment.
"I think we have a better plan for the second golem?" The party nodded aggressively.
The second golem took about one-third of the time the first had. Lucinda lured the creature away from the temple using the pebble method. But when the creature turned away, and Caisin pulled it with a shout, the rest of the party was already in place. Sparky stilled his enthusiasm and spaced his attacks out liberally, not triggering the golem's AOE attack.
Once the creature had dropped, the party rested until all of their health, stamina, and mana bars were maxed and only then approached the temple.
The doors to the temple were, like the rest of the building, covered in depraved pictograms, but they opened like normal doors pushing inward on silent hinges the moment Grog shoved at them.
The inside of the temple was more sedate than the outside. The walls were made of grey stone and the floors from a red tile. The ceiling was arched with exposed wood. Pews, apparently for congregants, sat on either side of a central aisle. Sitting in the pews were skeletons, maybe a hundred all told.
Lance sent via chat, "Wow, the preacher here must be REALLY boring!"
Polly and Sparky tried to stifle it, but then both burst out laughing audibly. Every skeleton turned its head to look.
"Okay," Lance said, "That was a dumb time to make a joke."
The skeletons arose as one and a cold blue light burned where their eyes should have been. The nameplate over the head of each of the undead creatures read "Skeleton - Level 6".
Lucinda and Lance popped out of sight, Sparky and Polly backed up through the door, and Caisin and Grog stood their ground in the doorway, their broad shoulders a mere foot or two apart.
Lance sent via chat, "Hold out as long as you can; we have a plan. Sparky, I want you to have a really big spell ready to go at a moment's notice."
Grog ground his teeth as he faced down a wall of skeletons. Suddenly they burst forward, and he found himself bashing, hacking, and slamming bones. But the skeletons were bashing, hacking, and slamming, too, and he felt his health begin to drop, but soon enough, he felt the cool wash of Polly's healing flood over him.
This seemed to go on for a minute or two when Lance suddenly sent in the chat again. "Caisin and Grog on my mark I want you to make a big push forward and then step back and slam the door shut in the skeleton's faces. Sparky, I want you to let loose with that spell as soon as they are out of the way."
A moment later, Lance sent, "Mark!"
Grog pushed forward, and Caisin did the same, and then suddenly, they both pulled back and stepped aside to slam the doors shut. As they did a huge ball of electricity erupted from Sparky's outstretched hands, making the hair on his hands and arms stand straight up as it passed. It consumed the skeletons rushing out the door, making it easy for Caisin and him to shut the doors. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, Lance and Lucinda popped back into visibility. Lance was holding a large box.
Lance led them to the right side of the cavern and then up the hill. As they went, he motioned that they should slow down and move quietly. A few seconds later, he called for a halt and motioned for everyone to get down and hide as wraiths began to pour from their home and stream down the hill toward the temple, which was now on fire. Lance was counting the wraiths and as the last one streamed out, he waited for a few seconds and then said, "Two."
He got up and motioned for everyone to follow him again, running toward the bypass passageway at a dead sprint. They sprinted up the bypass and through the door with no resistance, but when they came to the entryway, there stood a wraith.
Caisin wasted no time and slammed his axe into the creature's chest as he sailed past. The specter spun as Caisin reached the door and spun around yelling, "Fight me!" leaving the rest of the party directly behind it.
Lance stopped a few feet behind the specter and laid a trap, standing up he backstabbed the monster.
From then on, the battle went quickly, Caisin had firmly grabbed the creature's attention, and its enlarged hands battered at him. It screamed some sort of a sonic attack at him, but Polly kept healing him. The rest of the party continued bashing and slashing at it as its health bar depleted quickly, and finally, it dropped.
Lance pulled the goblin shaman's staff out of his inventory and pressed it into the door, which melted away. There was a collective sigh of relief as they moved quickly into the passageway. As Caisin, the last to enter, passed into the tight hallway, a distant howl erupted from deeper in the cavern.
"Quickly now!" the warrior urged.
Lance touched the glowing staff to the exit door, and it, too, melted away. The party scrambled out of the passageway into full daylight that had them blinking and squinting until their eyes adjusted. Lance darted to the left and quickly laid a second trap just outside the main doorway, and then they all began running down the hill. As they ran, Lance was thinking about their pursuers and how they could possibly best that many Wraiths. They had all grown since their first fight, which showed in how quickly they had downed the Wraith at the doors, but twenty or twenty-five, there was just no way.
They ran as their path twisted and turned down the valleys, and the party continued to follow the faint track. Every few minutes, Lance felt a tingle, and his stamina bumped up to nearly full. Looking over at Polly, he noticed her face was becoming increasingly worn and even grey.
Suddenly, Lance heard a terrible cry from up the valley behind them, "They are out."
"Can you get us to the forest, Polly?" Grog asked, looking back at her.
She silently nodded, clenching her teeth.
"Then let's go. It's time for my plan." He smiled thoughtfully.
Lance ran, visions of Wraiths streaming down the valleys behind them running through his mind.
Polly stumbled a few times, and eventually, Grog threw her over his shoulder and kept running. They reached the overlook and plunged past, Grog taking the lead.
Lance looked over his shoulder and started as a wraith flowed over the hilltop not more than a hundred yards behind him.
"If we can just get inside the tree line!" Grog yelled.
The party put their heads down and ran with all of their remaining strength, the howls of the wraiths coming nearer and nearer. Suddenly, they were under the eves of the forest, branches whipping at their faces, roots nearly tripping them. They pushed forward following Grog.
As Lance looked up, seeking a clear path through the woods, he saw yellow eyes everywhere. None of them were blinking as they stared out of the dense forest. Lance was glad they were not looking at him, but really, he was beyond caring as he stumbled to a halt next to Grog, crouching behind a tree, his eyes fixed on the place, maybe a hundred yards back where they had entered the forest.
Suddenly, the wraiths were streaming into the trees directly at them. Sixty yards, fifty, forty, thirty, twenty. Lance saw Grog mouth the word "Now" silently, and the forest erupted with grey fur. From every side, wolves shot out, clawing and biting at the ethereal enemies. The wraiths howled, the wolves yowled, and the fight ground on. Eventually, a group of maybe ten wraiths backed out of the forest, followed closely by twenty-five huge wolves. As they left, the Wraiths howled one last time, a deep and spiteful sound.
Two wolves broke away from the pack and streamed toward the party. Lance flinched as they approached, but Grog touched his arm, shaking his head. The wolves padded up to Grog and nuzzled him as he stroked and scratched their grey fur. He pulled bits of jerked beef out of his pack and fed each in turn. As he did this, several of the other wolves approached the party, their fangs bared in anger and rage. Grog's wolves suddenly darted out and growled back at them, standing their ground and defending the party no matter how angry the other wolves became. Eventually, the pack peeled off and returned to the forest, the last two being Grog's wolves after he had thoroughly scratched and petted them.
"Quite a plan you had there," Caisin said.
"Yeah, how does that work?" Sparky queried.
Grog shrugged, "The greater pack was decimated by that fight, and I won't be able to do that again. But the animosity will fade. The wolves naturally hate the wraiths."
"Okay then," Lucinda smiled, "that was awesome! Where to now."
"I think heading back to town makes the most sense," Lance offered.
The party agreed, scooped up the loot from the battle, and headed off.