NPF Avatars IV, Chapter III: The Sphinx on the Doorstep

[PyrosNine]

Pyros had, for the most part avoided any such encounter with the Dryads. Sure, a few had come near, but he'd flown up and away before they could become too close. They seemed to have some frightful power, and it would not be good to just run in and fight.

Pyros scanned them well, gauging their strength and considering his own, judged them to be some warped mix between tree and rock, when the chaos hit these tree's earthbound roots. They seemed to be able to become part of the trees as if immersing in water, and when outside were able to petrify and be unpetrified by attacking others.

Fortunately, Pyros did not approve of Pygmalionism, and always kept a few soft's handy. But it was most important for now to not be made stony before he could use it, and to best conserve them he'd need to deal with the dryads before they could afflict those healed again.

Pyros did devise some strategy. He was nowhere near the others, but he called out. "Forgive me for being late to aid, but I have been watching closely. They seem to lose their rocklike composition after using their petrification attack, so those who have attacked the most should be the easiest to pierce with weapons."

Pyros flew up and over another dryad whom he'd bumped into before, as apparent by the deep slash in it's face from Pyros's sword.

"But in using that to our advantage for a group of this number would be ill-advised, as waiting for them all to become soft would involve leaving only one of us non-petrified and then hoping that person could destroy them all, then unpetrify the others without become stone himself."

Pyros doubled back and gave a strong thrust of his blade into the center of the offending dryad and smashed it into a nearby tree. Naturally, it cackled with glee at being repaired and replenished.

"But do not worry. I have another theory."

Pyros's hand lit ablaze. "Trees can burn, so therefore that which is one with trees should also."


Pyros torched the tree with the Dryad still in it.

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by PyrosNine

"Forgive me for being late to aid, but I have been watching closely. They seem to lose their rocklike composition after using their petrification attack, so those who have attacked the most should be the easiest to pierce with weapons."

"Yeah, I figured that out already!" Fenris yelled while avoiding the rubble monster that was on his ass. "That's how I killed one of the dryads. It's also how my arm's all fucked up, and I can't fight back against this guy!"

The Rubble monster decided to start lobbing its body parts at him. Fenris reflexively held up his arm to block. Unfortunately, it was his petrified arm. The rock began to crack. Fenris's eyes went wide.

"I NEED HELP!" he yelled, holding his arm together.

[mauve]

Mauve was still face-down on the cold ground beneath Rhiya's wing when Garud tossed the shadowy potion at her. Plink! It hit her stone shoulder and bounced.

"Eep!" yelped the mage, realizing what would happen should it hit the ground and break. Her right hand shot out and grabbed the bottle just before it impacted with the earth. Instead, it broke in her hand.

"Oh look. Broken glass in my hand." Mauve commented dryly. "Well that's lovely, isn't it? It bounces off the rock just fine, but the moment it hits my nice soft hand, it-- OW! What the..?" The strange potion seeped into the cuts as though she were made of sponge. Seconds later, the left side of her neck began to feel normal again, aside from the hot sting of the acidic potion as it ate away the stone curse.

"Oh-kaaaay, I don't think that was supposed to happen," Mauve said warily, eying the cuts on her palm. "But y'know, whatever works is cool. As long as the curse goes away, I can deal."

Clumsily she forced herself into a crouch, leaning against Rhiya's frozen side. The petrification was slowly going away, but it still clung to her hand and lower arm. Plus, the acid didn't feel incredibly pleasant as it washed over and through the very-much-alive upper shoulder wounds.

A few drops of the potion had pooled inside some of the concave bits of broken glass that fell out of her hand. It definately wouldn't be enough to revive a dragon, but it might have some effect on Mesden. Mauve edged over to the goddess and dropped the potion and the glass on Mesden's stone shoes. (Up to you whether it works or not, Mesden.)

Mauve crawled out from underneath Rhiya's wing and stumbled towards Garud. He had given up his potion to help her, so the least she could do was distract the dryad for a minute. There was, regrettably, nothing else she could do for Rhiya and Mesden right now; she had already checked her right pocket for Soft potions and found none, and her left pocket was still frozen solid in rock.

Garud didn't look good. A patch of blood tinted with grey stone was steadily growing on his hip. He shot a beam of shadow at the dryad, but it was clear that he was weakening.

"Heavenly Strike!" called the mage, and a chair-sized ice crystal formed directly above the dryad's head and crashed down on her. It didn't harm the dryad much, but it was a nice little greeting card. The dryad's head swiveled towards Mauve in annoyance, but the mage turned her attention to Garud.

"Cura!" she commanded. She didn't have the white magic to undo stone, but she figured that if she healed the wound, the poison might spread less quickly.




With a series of cracks, the stone fell away from her hand. Mauve could feel her left fingers again. She would have danced for joy, if her left leg still had all of its feeling. Instead, she settled for a "Wheee!!!" of joy. Now her Pocket of Near-Infinite Holding was free, so she took a break from the fight to look for a Soft potion. There was only one that she could find. Damn. She supposed she shouldn't have left the other six or seven in her medicine cabinet at home.

But there was nothing to be done about it now. Turning, she hurled the Soft at the frozen Rhiya. Hopefully one Soft could revive an entire dragon.... And she hoped that Rhiya wouldn't end up hurling Phoenix into a tree if/when she returned to life and jumped up...



She turned back to Garud and his fight.

"I owe you one," she said, throwing a fireball at the dryad. Suddenly, she got an idea.

"Hey, can your shadow magic lower the temperature around the dryad?" Mauve asked. "Enough to freeze water?"

[Steel Shadow]

Steel gasped as his wounds healed. The spining world settled down and pulled itself into focus.
"Thanks man, I owe you." He said as he pulled himself to his feet. Hearing Fenris's yell he spun around to see the giant rock monster about to pound the hobo into the ground. Ignoring the voice in his head screaming at him to run, he ran between them and intercepted another attack, sheilding seconds before it hit him and smashed itself apart. He let the sheild drop and looked back to Fenris and Skyshot.
"Any ideas how to kill this thing?"

[Mesden]

The curse ate away, only to reveal a shell. The body fell over, lifeless in every regard. Whatever glow of vigor she had, whatever emotion her body could depict, anything you could call truly human was seemingly gone.

(Arhra, you're getting irony)

[PhoenixFlame]

Originally Posted by PyrosNine

"But in using that to our advantage for a group of this number would be ill-advised, as waiting for them all to become soft would involve leaving only one of us non-petrified and then hoping that person could destroy them all, then unpetrify the others without become stone himself."

"Well thank you for that beautiful ray of useless sunshine!" Phoenix called back in her angry, sarcastic voice. Generally, Phoenix would have been polite and happily discussed tactics with Pyros over tea and chips. Unfortunately, a distinct lack of tea and chips, accompanied with a vastly hostile enviroment was contributing a great deal of stress.

It didn't help any when Phoenix witnessed Mauve attempt to heal Mesden from her perch atop Rhiya's stony form. "Oh, bloody hell..." she groaned, whipping her pistol around to fire at a dryad attempting to climb Rhiya. The rocklet impacted it's head, and sent it reeling back down to the ground in a rather comedic fashion, but still failed to kill it. No matter, as long as it was far away from her, Phoenix didn't mind.

Grumbling at having fired her entire cylinder, Phoenix popped the breach of her weapon open and inserted her handy speedloader. Fumbling with reloading now was not a good idea. With a stone arm however, Phoenix soon found how difficult it was to load such a weapon even with it's excessively large speedloader. While requiring all the dexterity of a lethargic house, it was all her stoned arm could muster at the moment.

"I NEED HELP!" Fenris screamed.

"Don't we all?" Phoenix muttered sarcastically to herself, and turned around to find the Hobo and his assailant. Any second now, she'd finish snapping the weapon back together in a hollywood style wrist flick. Maybe two wrist flicks. If Tom Cruise could do it, Phoenix could do it too. Or so she thought.

"Fenris! Take Cover!" she felt compassionate enough to warn him, before finishing at a dramatically appropriate moment and fired the first of her shiny new plasma cylinder's cartridge at the stone construct.

[GARUD]

(OOC: Mauve, you can use my character for your plan whatever it involves. It's just so you don't have to wait for me to respond.)

The beam connected well but it didn't knock the Dryad off it's feet.

"Look at me, not her. She's not the one you want, I am."

The Dryad charged at the demon slayer who met the creature, punching it with a stoned hand. What was better was that he hit a soft bit, which broke a couple bones. However, he was losing movement as the rest of his arm became solid rock.

"No Mauve, I can't use my shadows to freeze water or make it colder... but I can use my sorcery. Just tell me what I have to do because I don't have much time. I used alot of the shadows in the room to make that acidic potion, so I can't heal myself right now."

Garud saw the Dryad spring to her feet, and concentrated. He needed to have a clear head to carry out Mauve's plan.

"And for the record, if I become completely petrified, just know that you owe me nothing. I broke a promise I made to myself before our arena match and it was the least I could do to make it up to you."

[Fenris]

Fenris heard Pheonix yell at him to take cover, and he did. If taking cover means falling flat on the ground, and snapping the stone arm in two. Luckly, the nerves were stone, so he felt no pain, but it was still quite freaky to witness his own limb getting cracked in two.

[Flarecobra]

I saw Mes fall, seemingly lifeless. "Shit, MES!" I called out, and made my way over to her. A trio of Rubble Monsters started to come at me, but I blew them back by hitting them both with a fireball. "Ok, let's see if this works..." I said, as I started to cast Life-2 on Mes. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Dryad poke out behind Syttulg and was about to claw his face. "LOOK OUT!" I called out to him.

[Fenris]

(OOC: Phoenix has told me to decide the way the Rubble Critter reacts)

The rubble creature loomed over Fenris, who cowered, holding his stump of an arm, as a shining blue streak slammed into the monster's back. A large explosion rose from the creature's backside, coating it with a chemical that seemed to be quite combustable. The heat emitted was extraordinary; Fenris could feel it even though there was solid rock between him and the source. The monster turned his rocky head towards the vampiress on the dragon, and started lumbering at her. Fenris could see that his back looked like it was literally eating itself, the rock was melting and dripping onto the ground, leaving little charred splotches on the earth.

Fenris lay on the battlefield, cradling his arm.