[center][h2][color=lime]The Emerald Empire[/color][/h2]
[b]The Fractured Riverlands[/b]
[/center]

It had taken Selzona’s expedition 3 days to over the ground the sargent had covered in one and in the interim the devastation had spread. On their way the group passed several small groups of refugees and from which they discovered that 2 villages of the main road had also been destroyed. From personally interviewing the peasantry Selzona acquired a slightly better understanding of their quarry and was beginning to suspect that the rumors of a monster where true. While this spooked their human cavalrymen, most of the dryads where getting worked up at the news, thinking of the glory and thrill of fighting something no-one had faced before. Selzona herself tried to avoid being caught up in their excitement, as the leader she needed to stay level headed, but their emotions swirling around the Dreaming got to everyone, somewhat to the annoyance of the Ents who were supporting the Psychic link.

They arrived in the village which Vertrestin’s group had last been seen in, located next to a river crossing, and set up camp for the night just outside near a small patch of trees. While the Dryads did not need to sleep per say, their night vision was as poor as a humans and they also welcomed the chance to rest, eat and socialize. Through the night, while the humans and Ents slept, the Dryads made plans, using a small number of glowing chunks of enchanted artificial amber as a lightsource.  Using a cloth map dotted with stones placed to represent rough locations of the destroyed villages and areas of supposed sightings they managed to work out roughly what their quarry’s path had been over the past few days and in doing so make a guess as to what area it was in now. 

Once the dawn came the expedition briefly stopped by the village to underpay some villagers to cook them breakfast and recruiting the local militia. Because of the closeness of the village to one of the estuaries they were better trained and equipped than the average town maitia due to the threat of raiders, but that did not mean many had seen battle before. Roughly 2 hours after sun up the small army set off.

It was just past noon when beast was found, lurking in a hilly area near Loch Finray. After reaching the area Selzona had split their forces into 5 smaller groups, each accompanied by an ent who keeped them all in a psychic link despite the distances between them. It was through this connection that first felt battle adjoined, the relative calm and boredom of part of the dreaming flared up suddenly, excitement and fear burning brightly in their place. 

[sub][i]Report! Do not engage![/i][/sub] 

Selzona tried to push commands though to the group, but even with the ent assisting, her thoughts were drowned out as party engaged whatever they had run into. Bursts of pain, fury and exileration drowned out any attempts to communicate. Instead she was forced to do it the human way, shouting down to the ⅕ of the expedition directly under her command at the moment and ordering them all to assist their kin. Then she drew a bronze bugle horn and sounded it as a signal to attack that would be able to reach the other three groups. Turing to where the engaged group was supposed to be the small number of dryads raced off up the intervening hills, hammers and maces drawn. The ent Selzona was riding, waw slower to react but subsequently caught up with the dryad its long strides. The human militia brought up the rear, encouraged to follow by one of the deer riders who was acting as their captain screaming bloody murder at them. 

As her ent crested the final hill she saw their foe for the first time, a truly titanic hydra that looked like it was rotting, its scales had fallen off in may places and a grey ooze leaked from the exposed flesh. It certainly smelled like a corpse, the valley that the monster was in was suffused with a heavy stench into which Selzona and her reinforcements descended. The monster was at the center of a vague ring of about 10 dryads who where doing little more than hold its attention as they barely avoided its 3 snapping jaws. As the reinforcements arrived one was snapped up by a head, the massive fangs of the hydra punching clean  through his armor and body as he was carried screaming to the sky before being swallowed whole. 

Wrapped in the massive tail of the beast, being slowly crushed, was the first group’s ent. The forest giant, standing 40 feet tall, was rendered helpless as it strained against the coils of the hydra, the wretched grey puss leaking from the hydra’s body soiling the ent’s bark as it attempted to break free and retrieve its sword that had fallen to the ground when it had been ensnared. Of the humans that had accompanied the group, few remained. Some had taken one look at the monster and flead. Judging by the blood and discarded weapons, some had suffered the same fate as the dryad male just had. Those that remained had regrouped up on the opposite side from Selzona, rallied by the captain half of who’s face had been badly burned by a spray of boiling hydra blood.

Selzona ordered the humans with her to go group up with the captain’s lot and then, grabbing a rope hanging from one of the ent’s branches, slid down it to the ground. From there she began to giver orders. The ent she had been riding was sent to try and free it’s fellow, while 3 dryads scrambled up the rope Selzona had just descended from. The rest were sent to join the ones already engaged, where they stopped the 3 heads from delivering a finishing blow on the large ent, shooting the hissing heads with arrows or trying to get in at its legs to smash them. Slezona herself meanwhile began to mutter a spell from her position on the valley slopes, the simple chant was not however the main part of the spell. Anyone who could feel the dreaming would see the complex pattern being twisted within it around selzona, pulsating web of ideas and power woven around her. As the power built the air around her chilled, ice forming on the grass surrounding her feet that began to grow until it formed a jagged ring of knife sized icicles. 

As the ent from selzona’s group closed with the hydra its leftmost head ceased its chasing of the nimble Dryads and raised up, hissing menacingly at the large threat and rearing back in preparation to strike. It was then that selzona unleashed her spell, the 24 newly formed frozen blades firing off in machine gun succession, streaming up towards the monsters head and plunging into the side of it. Despite this barrage, the hydra stills struck, its many fanged mouth closing around an arm the ent raised to protect itself. The drayads riding the ent retailated, 2 leaped from it in an attempt to get on the hydra's back. One suckseaded, jamming two long kives into an exposed area of flesh and them climbing up, the other fell short and plummeted to the ground, breaking both her legs on impact with the ground. The third ran along the ent’s arm and delivered a two handed hammer blow to the hydra's eye, causing it to release the arm as it related back screaming. The central head came to the aid of the left, forcing the ent to back off and leaving the larger ent still trapped in the constricting tail. The dryads around the hydra took advantage of two of the heads being distracted to launch attacks on the legs, several being kicked or clawed for their efforts.

It was then that the rest of the expedition began to arrive, a 10 ft tall beastial ent in the shape of a wolf came bounding across one of the hills, the archers riding on its back immediately opening fire on the hydra, their enchanted shortbows perrering the rightmost head with arrows. The second group to arrive contained an ent sporting long vicious claws instead of a weapon and most of the expeditions enchanters, who hurried over to join her. The third had the smallest ent, only 8 ft tall but also sported the other mage of the expedition, Festar the parliament, who rode up to Sezona riding atop an owlbear, with two owcilots perched atop his shoulders. Accompanying all the groups where dryad food soldiers and militia troops who joined in the fray. With all her troops now on the battlefield Selzona began a plan to actually kill the beast.

Working in tandem the 2 mages worked to try and bind the heads of the hydra, vines erupted from the earth, lashing around the central head while chains of ice extended from the ice knives down to the ground. With every flail of the heads, more bindings broke, but hey where replaced too quickly for the beast to truly escape the spells, the enchanters offering up the mana in their items to help the mages continue their magic. The rightmost head was then tackled by the bitten, clawd, wolf and small ent, who all wrested with it to keep it occupied. While the three heads attempted to break free the sargent lead a charge of the human militia, who, having learned from the sargent’s wounds, stopped short of the distracted hydra and hurled their spears at the tail and legs of the beast, before hastily retreating from the resulting spurts of boiling blood. The dryads harassed the legs of the hydra using their heavy blunt weapons whenever they set down, breaking toe bones and bruising ankles. Panicked by its entrapment and the wounds it was receiving the hydra un-coiled its tail from the great ent and tried to use thrashing it to help it escape. With lethargic speed, the now freed ent picked up its massive sword, hefted it, and then swung the 20 ft long blade at the hydra’s necks.

[hr]
It was approaching even by the time the decapitated hydra's body stopped twitching, and for the pool of blood it had collapsed into to cooled down enough for it to be safe to go anywhere close to the corpse. Most of the surviving expedition had moved, or been moved, out of the valley to avoid the smell of the thing, which was now worse than ever. One of the remaining deer riders had been sent back north with an initial report of the incident, but for the time being the rest of the force would remain near the site while Selzona and Festar conducted an investigation of the hydra in an attempt to work out why it had already looked like a corpse before it had been killed.