Formorians 2

Nolin spins and tumbles as he falls. He considers casting fly, but instinctively realizes that there simply isn't enough time. "That's it, then," he thinks to himself. "I'm going to die." He tries to prepare himself for the upcoming pain, but there's a clamor in his head, a noise like a dozen people all shouting at the same time.

Then as the ground speeds towards him, Nolin realizes that the noise is a dozen people all shouting at the same time, only over the mindlink. "Nolin, you idiot!" Tao and Velendo are almost drowning one another out as they try to get the bard's attention. "You can featherfall!"

"I can featherfall?" Nolin's brow furrows as the hard stone spins up to meet him. "I..." Almost as if in a dream, he thinks over his first level spells, and suddenly feels horribly embarrassed. "Crap! I can featherfall!"

So he does. About fifteen feet above the ground.

Velendo looks at Nolin with a critical eye as the hyperventilating bard wafts down to the ground. "Cutting it a little close there, weren't you?"

Nolin shakes his head, trying to bluff even as his breath comes in short gasps. "No, not at all! I was... err..." He is interrupted by shattering stone and the sharp sting of rock fragments against his cheek.

"Incoming!" A second tremendous boulder plummets down from the heights, this one crashing down right next to Nolin. As the Defenders pull back towards cover, the horse-sized gargoyles still circling the group leap forwards to attack. More flap down from their nests on the wall.

Velendo snorts. "I've had about enough of this." He casts a flexible wall above their heads, shielding them from boulders and hedging out most of the gargoyles. Mara, Malachite, Stone Bear and Galthia make short work of the two that remain within the wall. More than a dozen large rocks rain down from on high, but all of them break and bounce away from the invisible shield of force that arcs over the Defenders' heads.

The boulders let up for a minute, probably while the giants go to find more. "You quite done?" shouts up Velendo. Another barrage of missiles answers his question, but this ceases fairly quickly when it becomes glaringly apparent to the giants that the boulders aren't doing any actual damage. Outside of the flexible wall, the gargoyles also give up and flap back up into the darkness.

A deep voice echoes down from above, one considerably smarter than the last giant. "We were paid to kill you."

Velendo rolls his eyes, clearly fed up with the entire situation, and shouts upwards. "I'm sure you were. And I'm sure you would be able to eventually do so. But we're armed and ready for battle, and we would take several dozen of your people with us. Is that what you really want? Were you paid enough for that?"

Silence. Then more silence.

"Well?"

The deep voice echoes down, deep and booming. "You pay the toll, we will let you pass. Magic items, as you were told. Good ones, for there are many of you." Slowly, a basket is lowered down from the heights on a rope.

Malachite snorts. "You want us to pay you before we pass?"

The voice laughs sourly. "Pay now, or go away. We might spare your life. Be pleased."

The Defenders roll their eyes at one another. "How do you know you won't take our items and then attack us?"

The disdain in the giant's voice is audible even from a distance. "We care nothing for the ghouls. They are customers, like any. If we were going to kill you, we would do so without asking for payment first."

"Let 'em try," growls Tao.

Nolin turns to the others, and speaks more softly. "We've got them."

Stone Bear looks at the bard, his hollow eye sockets catching the light from Mara's shield. "How so?" His raven caws and flaps briefly into the air.

"I'm thinking that they already know we could rip them apart. They know the ghouls wanted us stopped, but couldn't do it themselves. Now their attempt to kill me failed."

"So?"

"So, I think they're scared, but they have to maintain face. So they're letting us buy the way out of the contract."

"Well, I don't have much that I want to give away," says Mara plaintively. "Most of my things are useful."

"Mine too," says Agar.

"I don't really have many magical items," grumbles Priggle from over in the corner.

"Well, grab potions and bric-a-brak. Let's see what we have." Within a minute, the group has gathered a small pile of one-shot items, redundant trinkets and seldom-used weapons. Nolin dumps it into the basket, and watches as the small trove is hauled up.

"That's IT? Not enough!" The outraged roar comes from above.

Mara shouts back, "Well, you aren't getting any more! You have already been paid by the ghouls for killing us. Since you aren't completing that contract, you should consider their payment to be our payment. And we are doing you a favor; we plan to destroy the undead once and for all."

"That is no favor. They pay us to pass, well and often. You kill them – as if you could – we get no more tolls from them."

"But if we kill them, you can send people to take your pick of their treasures." Her voice rings with sincerity, and the two groups angrily bargain back and forth for almost half an hour. Finally, the giants reluctantly agree to allow the heroes passage, in exchange for a handful of additional magical miscellania.

"I have no idea what they're going to do with these things," wonders Agar with doubt in his voice as he slowly ascends the steep wall, hauled upwards on a coach-sized sledge that slides up the wall on two huge cables. "It's not like they can use a lot of the one-shot items we gave them unless they have a wizard amongst them." The sledge chunks into a space at the top of the ascent, and the first of the Defenders steps off before the sledge descends for the second of four loads. "Let's face it, I..." He pauses and swallows. "Oh."

Surrounding the small group is close to two dozen misshapen giants, all of them with heavy spears or oversized boulders. At the forefront of the giants, surrounded by another half-dozen malformed giants in piecemeal armor, is an evil abomination leaning on a tremendous steel scythe. This giant is old, old enough for his prodigious nose- and ear-hair to have turned white, but his muscles still ripple unnaturally and his one eye glares in distrust. As Agar watches, he holds up several of the group's less powerful offerings and crushes them with one anvil-sized fist. Magical energy courses up his arm and into his body, and Agar's true seeing spells watches the spent magic somehow get consumed by the giant's muscle fiber.

"Heh.. hi?" squeaks the halfling.