That was stupid of me! But what’s done is done. Tom turned up the heat to try and melt the frost giant. Things were getting wet, but the frost giant seemed able to regenerate his icy armor nearly as fast as Tom could burn it away. This was not going to work; the frost giant was moving on, going around Inethya and heading for the walls of the Citadel.
Tom let go of the frost giant and flew down in flame form to retrieve his possessions. He landed, shifting to his true form, albeit his slightly more traditional larger form. He grabbed his kilt and the Wand and fastened the belt around his arm.
Earth! Tom yelled in his head and pointed the Wand of Orcus at the ground in front of the charging risar. He willed the Earth Portal at Nysegard to pull the ground under the giants towards himself — literally pulling the ground from beneath their feet.
The giants collapsed on the ground as Darg-Krallnom and Roth Tar Gorefest moved in to smash the two giants on the back of their heads before they could shift to their elemental form. Tom winced at the sound the two giant battle swords made as they crashed into the giants’ heads; with any luck, that would disorient them temporarily.
There was a loud explosion as the ice encasing Inethya burst, spraying ice shards for a thousand feet, impaling several nearby ghouls and cutting slightly into Tom’s wings and buttocks. The prophetess began chanting something that Tom could not make out. Suddenly her sword began glowing very brightly.
Inethya moved towards the frost giant, who was struggling to stand in its icy and still slightly melted armor. She drove her glowing sword straight down to the giant’s back, point first. There was a loud crackling sound as the armor began splitting under the sword’s pressure. Inethya pulled back and struck down again in the same location, this time edge first, trying to force the crack to enlarge. That knocked the frost giant from all fours to flat on the ground.
The fire giant turned to flame and suddenly engulfed Darg-Krallnom. Darg-Krallnom batted at the flames with his hands, as if trying to put them out. He was not in any pain, obviously, but he seemed quite annoyed. He looked to Tom. “This is going to be a long battle; we all seem rather evenly matched.” The D’Orc commander shook his head in frustration.
Tom shared the feeling. He was at a loss as to what to do against these creatures. All of his main ranged attacks were elemental based, and these giants were also elemental based. He needed something that was not elemental based, or perhaps something Earth based. A gravity canon would be extremely useful right now.
The wind giant flashed to air before reforming about one hundred feet closer to the Citadel, and began charging it again.
Crap! How do we stop that thing? Tom wondered. He took off at full flight speed to try and overtake the wind giant. He suddenly had a plan.
He was faster in the air than the wind giant was on the ground. He overtook it and spun, landing in front of it. His head was not even waist high to the giant, but if the giant stayed physical, he would trip it up before it could crash into the walls of the Citadel.
I may have incoming near the upper Air Portal, Tom sent to Arg-nargoloth. It’s an Unlife Hrímthursi. If it changes to physical form, knock the crap out of with the gravity canons. He didn’t want to use the Nysegard Air Portal in the event the wind-giant went material on the Isle of Doom; that would be bad. Doom in the Abyss would be much better prepared.
Got it! Arg-nargoloth replied.
The giant charged straight at Tom, who had the Wand pointing at it. As he had hoped, the giant shifted to its air form. This was going to be risky, but… he gunned up the Air Portal at Doom and used the relay at the Doomalogue to suck the wind giant’s gaseous form to the Air Portal.
Both Doom and the Doomalogue revved up to pull the wind giant to the Air Portal. It seemed to be working, as a vortex of visibly churning air twisted at the end of the Wand of Orcus. Come on now! Tom tried willing the wind giant to get sucked up into the Wand. It was fighting hard, though; very hard.
If Tom’s brow could have sweated, it would have been doing so. The wind giant was pulling extremely hard, much harder than he’d imagined. Tom stared down the Wand at the funnel cloud trying to escape his vacuum cleaner. He could see the liches in front of a giant archway in the distance. “Okay then, buddy, let’s do this your way!” he said out loud as he quickly reversed polarity on the Air Portal and then pulled air from the Nysegard portals as well. Instead of sucking, he was going to blow the air giant back to the Storm Lords.
WHOOSH!!
The funnel cloud suddenly shot back down the cleared path towards the Storm Lords. As it did so, the wind giant turned back to physical form, but his momentum was too much; his physical body continued to fly through the air until it crashed into the assembled Storm Lord forces, and then into the archway behind them. There was a loud explosion with brilliantly flashing lights as the archway fell over.
Tom had to blink. The region around the giant and the archway seemed to warp and twist before finally returning to normal. The archway was collapsed and broken, the entire area a shambles, nearly everyone and everything lying on the ground.
Tom turned to the other two giants, who were now simply standing there as if unsure what to do. Darg-Krallnom and Roth Tar Gorefest quickly began attacking them, and they only halfheartedly fought back.
“I think the liches controlling them were knocked out of commission!” Inethya yelled to Tom.
“Can you seek to banish them as you would other Unlife?” Tom yelled back.
Inethya nodded and quickly began chanting and moving her arms.
Tom shifted his attention to the fire giant as it fended off attacks from Darg-Krallnom. It was definitely taking damage. Was it hurting? Tom noticed the giant’s eyes wincing with the blows that connected. He’d never seen a zombie wince; they should not feel pain.
Tom shifted his sight to examine the creature better. He blinked. The thing was bound up in all sorts of dark tendrils encasing it. The giant’s inner light was the dark purplish light of antimus. Is that light? he wondered, briefly seeing a small flash of animus light at the core of the giant, before it was hidden again by dark tendrils.
Suddenly radiant light poured down from the sky as Inethya’s ritual took effect on the frost giant. Roth Tar Gorefest jumped back and switched to attacking the fire giant with Darg-Krallnom. Tom smiled to himself as he watched the cleansing light of Tiernon’s magic engulf the frost giant. That would be able remove the antimus, even has he had used it to cleanse himself. As he watched, however, the black tendrils seemed to fatten, widening, encasing, shielding and protecting the antimus inside.
He glanced to Inethya, who was frowning. Clearly, things were not going as planned. The light was unable to pierce the tendrils to get inside and cleanse the antimus. The antimus needed to be cleansed by the light, even as he had cleansed Excrathadorus Mortis; unfortunately, the black tendrils crawling over the giant’s being prevented that.
Suddenly the giant taking a beating from Darg-Krallnom and Roth Tar Gorefest seemed to shake its head. It quickly flashed to fire, faster than Tom could react to activate the Fire Portals. It was suddenly on the other side of the two D’Orcs and making and end run, in physical form, to the walls.
The two D’Orcs had stumbled at the sudden disappearance of their target, and were working to recover. Tom shook his head and took off after the fire giant. As the giant approached the moat at a full run, it suddenly jumped, leaping over the moat and slamming hard into the wall.