[i]By the time that Katia sprung from hesitation to action, five of the shadows had been vanquished, one by the strike of her staff after it had been shot with a small crossbow bolt to which it recoiled briefly; moments before that, there were those slain by the strange burst of wooden shrapnel and had since vanished into the a gaseous cloud of deep indigo and faded, only to be followed in quick succession from those there on up to this moment. Yet, this all was not without cost, for the small hunched over bodies of darkness scampered to life after the advancing onslaught of those dedicated to unseat this great, mysterious being of black. In their heroic haste however, quite a few of them felt the bite of those dark claws, which seemed to ignore their flesh and armor and strike true to their heart.

It was always a chill thing to be touched by the darkness, like a brief bath of ice to the spirit so swift one might swear it never happened at all; only the hole in emotions and morale reflected the reality otherwise though. Being enough to fight through compared to say an actual flesh wound, the shadows' assault leveled its wrath on the arcane ward that surrounded the elf in spectral armor. In a frenzy of leaps and strikes, they slashed away at him, his ward, his armor and his magical shield, each blow glancing off until the spell itself buckled under their relentlessness and want to steal his light. At that brief moment, Haemar caught two of the small things' attacks through his defenses.

To all others however, seeing as the abjurer's attention was reasonably placed elsewhere, they witnessed the dark giant before them rearing back, great orb of shifting darkness now palmed in one hand; bits of stone work drifted past it from the fading world they stood in, falling up into space to vanish into the ever larger tear in the sky.

The purple flames of the being's eyes then narrowed down upon Wick, its ire and hatred drawn or whatever it could manifest for an emotionless thing, where it then hurled the magic forward like a heavy boulder. Despite its composition of nothingness, its absence of light, it moved with great weight as it sailed down and exploded upon her shield; the sole thing that saved her from taking on the brunt of its strike. The detonation showered the area in harmful energy that clung to them, those being the paladin, the monk, and Wick herself briefly before the spell burned off into ether. Another orb crackled to life after the first, cultivated within the giant's hands while it stood its ground.

Last and seemingly least, the most distant shadow of which had originally taken off in flight after Katia, came now running at an odd angle and seemingly fell into the back of the wizard as he busied himself with fending off the rest of the horde. By sheer luck it seems, the accident proved to score a blow against all odds and the beady eyed fiend, worse yet, had no idea how lucky it had been. It only seemed to blink and hop back to its feet, ready again to fight.[/i]

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[url=https://www.myth-weavers.com/map.html#id=4370]Turyn's Keep[/url]

The first quick, wily [i]Shadow[/i] strikes Haemar with a critical hit for 2 slashing damage, followed up by the fourth [i]Shadow[/i] who strikes for 1. The four [i]Shadows[/i] then encircle him, the others failing to hit even with advantage, with the last one coming up from behind him on his left. When it goes to attack him, it succeeds by chance and deals another 1 point of slashing damage.

The [i]Dark Leviathan[/i] fires a [i]Shadow Orb[/i] at Wick, narrowly missing her Armor Class due to her shield. It still detonates however, dealing 7 necrotic damage to all targets within 10 feet of her. Katia, Thea and Wick must beat a Dexterity saving throw DC 10 in order to take half damage.

The top of the stairway is now between seventy to sixty feet away. The world is still crumbling, perhaps a foot every few seconds, into the abyss while other portions of it drift off into space above, only to "fall" into the all consuming sphere.
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