Chapter 12 - Part 11

The plan worked perfectly. When the livened oak tree burst forward, charging at the warforged, they dropped their digging tools and massed for a charge. Warforged were trampled and crushed as they swarmed at the tree, and it made deep bellowing sounds of pain as its bark was slashed by heavy greatswords.

Pienna stepped out from behind some brush, and hastily strode forward. Thomas, Chubat, and Missy stood before her, ready to protect her from the onslaught. The druidess cast from one scroll, the air around her glowing as the scroll crumbled when its energy was released. The waves of warforged coming at the treant suddenly slowed, as the ground in a bent oval some two hundred feet deep and four hundred feet long shimmered. The warforged on one fortified position, and on the cleared approach towards them, all sank in five feet of thick mud. While they struggled, more warforged went around the flanks of the oval, now heading towards Pienna and her group. The warforged around the animated tree suddenly realized that their hundreds of fellows that were coming to deal with the tree were now mired down, and they began to die quickly underneath ferociously strong limbs.

Pienna cast from the second scroll, which also crumbled into dust, and the energy now flowed in a different color. The mud all turned to rock, and close to half the warforged force was now imprisoned in the ground up to their armpits.

“They’re coming!” Thomas shouted, as two long lines of warforged went around the tree that was smashing their allies.

“But nature is already here!” Pienna said. As the two forces charged, she pointed towards one, then the other, casting quickly. Columns of earth and rock, some eight to nine feet tall, burst upwards, making vaguely humanoid forms. The earth elementals had bulging arms and thick bodies that turned aside the warforged blades. With the animated tree, they began shattering warforged bodies, throwing them far, grabbing and breaking off heads, and knocking the constructs down in heaps.

The warforged attack slowed, but it was not checked. Some twenty to thirty warforged, led by one who had a pair of red stripes on his arms, made it around the elementals and the tree. Shouting about having to ‘dis’ the spellcaster, and ‘points rush south!,’ they moved with murderous purpose.

Missy moved first. Springing forward, the giant cat knocked two warforged down, tearing one to shreds with her powerful back claws. Seconds later Thomas blasted another with his stormstalk. Chubat followed with a crossbow bolt that carried magical cold.

The javelins flew in. Pienna dodged one, but two struck Thomas, and one Chubat. They ignored them, stepping forward to meet the warforged charge. Greatsword and stone bodies clashed with a byeshk waraxe and a huge greataxe. The warforged were trained veterans, but Chubat was a tremendously skilled warrior, and Thomas had lived on his own against the worst that the Icehorn Mountains could offer. They gave far more wounds than they took.

“Bypass them and attack the woman!” yelled the warforged with the red stripes on his arms. Another group of warforged was running around the earth elementals.

Pienna casted, and a vertical column of nature’s own fire blasted downwards at the warforged officer, reducing him to cinders. Another spell, and a rush of ice and rocks flew horizontally from Pienna’s hand to the newly-arrived warforged, pummeling them backwards. Two more castings, and a pair of earth elementals, these smaller ones no bigger than a human, rose out of the ground near Thomas and Chubat. They flanked the warforged closest to the half-daelkyr and the dwarf and began hammering at the warforged.

The warforged stuck in the ground were trying to push themselves out, trying to find some leverage, when the tiny beetles and centipedes in the grass suddenly grew to be as large as sheep dogs. They began to carve and cut the helpless and pinned constructs. Lacking fresh backup, the warforged ranks began to falter as the animated tree and the larger elementals tore into them. Chubat, Missy, Thomas, and the human-sized elementals slew all of the warforged near Pienna, and then advanced forward carefully.

Pienna sweated as she cast another spell that entangled more warforged trying to rally with the trees and grass in the area. A further spell covered a warforged group in mist, keeping them orderless and confused. She then used her last scroll, collapsing many of the trenches.

The warforged finally broke. Another officer, this one with colors painted on his chest, ordered his men to pull out. Some two dozen of them followed him, running away.

“Kill the trapped ones!” she yelled. Chubat, Missy, and Thomas went to work, helping the animated tree and the giant vermin destroy the trapped warforged. The earth elementals slew a few, and then collapsed back into normal dirt as their summoning spell ended.

The work was slow, and unchallenged. The trapped warforged began to beg for mercy, but they got none. It hurt her to be so, but she had no choice. Some ten minutes later the giant vermin shrank back to normal. Her companions, the panther, and the animated tree kept at it. After they had killed the ones in the ground they methodically went back and hacked all of the still warforged that may have merely been disabled and not dead.

The entire battle was less than a half-hour. They all bore wounds as they came back to her. She could not heal them, she had already used her healing spells and potions back in the center of town. The truth was she had almost no magic left, only a few minor spells. It had been worth it, though. Almost four hundred warforged were now a couple dozen. Half of the warforged casualties had not even been able to fight.

Now they just had to get back to town and hope that the suspected second warforged force was not just as large, and not already there.