The Giants stand united! (Full story) (Atlas POV)
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Atlas wanders deep into the hill giant lands, which he's spent over a year of his life living in once to progress his own training.
Upon arriving to the bridge that leads towards the hill giant chieftain's cave, he notices... That something doesn't feel right... The feeling in his gut keeps telling him, nearly screaming at him before he decides he needs to relent to this feeling and pulls out multiple of his invisibility potions to be ready. "Something is wrong here... I've already heard of the Frost Giants attacking Hin Hold, and heard about the Hillies attacking Peltarch... Something is definitely wrong, they've never acted like this as far as I've seen or heard..."
As Atlas mumbles this to himself he quickly ducks behind some crumbled walling and sneaks up as quietly as the white dragon in full-plate armor he considers himself to be can, right as he sees a brute step by, he holds his breath as the Brute looks about thinking, "They've never been this cautious before... Nor kept watch quite like this... I need to see what's going on..." He then downs the first invisibility potion, and runs past, knowing that the tamed wolves can sometimes still catch your scent when running by invisibly. So he sticks to different covers avoiding the wolves while stepping on rocks to avoid leaving as many foot prints as he can while he makes his way towards the entrance.
Atlas freezes once he witnesses the sight in front of his eyes and whispers, "Ooh no... The Fire Giants are with the Hillies!..", in front of his eyes are two fire giants soldiers defending the entrance! "This makes no sense! How could they be HERE?! How did they get past Blackbridge?! Is everyone out there okay!?" Images of Lady Rika and Lady Sebrienne flash before Atlas's eyes and he begins to panic imagining the worst.
Atlas grits his teeth as he forces himself to meditate his mind to calm himself, "You need to calm yourself Atlas... Both Lady Rika and Lady Sebrienne are strong! There's also been no warnings, and you can check Blackbridge yourself afterwards, right now you need to focus and find out what's going on, RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW!" Still gritting his teeth and seeing the flashes of Lady Rika and Lady Sebrienne bleeding in his mind, he tries to focus as he jogs up invisibly and slips between the two fire giant soldiers guarding the entrance.
Upon entering the cave Atlas notices that their are more hillies near the inside entrance than usual and proceeds to stick near the cave walls as he makes his way past counting down the time before he should take another invisibility potion with all his time wasted panicking outside he estimated that he'd need to take another in about one minute. "This sneaking around shit I hate, how can people do this?" Some of his frost breath slips from his mouth as he tries to hurry while being careful. "I don't have the patience for this, it's like I am chomping at a bit!.. But I am alone right now, and I have to assume that I am the only one who knows about this right now!"
Atlas proceeds down the halls of the cave walking as quickly and quietly as he can, sneaking past the savages and brutes invisibly taking in all the information he can. "There's none of the basic hill giants in this cave... They're all Brute and Savage class hill giants! That's not normal..." He frowns as he makes it to the wider cavern and chugs his next invisibility potion estimating the time was about up and a few seconds extra overlap was worth the price for this mission. Proceeding into the wide cavern while staying as close to the walls as he can while avoiding the feces traps, making his way towards the Chieftain's cavern.
Atlas freezes again once he gets closer to the hallway leading to the Hill Giant Chieftain, "Fire Giants!.. They're stronger than the defense oriented soldier class fire giants! How are all these guys out here?!" Biting back the panic of what may have happened at Blackbridge, Atlas thinks as he begins to start sneaking forward again, "Okay Atlas, think of how this might be possible... One; Blackbridge has been over run... Unlikely... I hope... Two; ...There's gotta be a mage in this party of fire giants..." He quickly darts between the backs of the fire giants as they pace past each other switching sides and freezing once past them and against the wall as both of the fire giants turn towards him and the noise he just made. Holding his breath as the fire giants look at each other and thankfully seem to assume that the other of them made the noise. Atlas releases the breath he was holding and quickly starts making his way down the hall to the chieftain's lair.
Once Atlas rounds the last corner, he begins to hear giants speaking, but he's unable to make out quite what they are saying, though the conversation seems tense. Continuing down the hall quietly he makes his way towards the cavern freezing again. "There's even fucking Berserker class fire giants?! What the hell is going on?! They've brought so much of their strength out here! If any of the normal adventurer came out here, they'd get killed!" Gritting his teeth he proceeds up to the entrance of the cavern and hides invisibly right outside the entrance trying to listen in on what the Chieftain and the unknown are talking about. "Blarga-blarga-blurg-tuk-tuk!" Atlas sighs "You'd think after spending over a year out here, that I'd have learnt the fucking language by now!" ((BTW, I need a dm to look over my language skill points on bard levels, I have 5 ranks in it, but don't have that any extra languages from it
))Atlas tries to get closer so that he can see who the Hill Giant Chieftain is talking to, as he steps into the room, BOOF! "A trap?! This was not here before!" Atlas quickly dashes out of the sprung trap and into the back room to try and hide while he tries to stifle his coughing, not noticing he just ran into a room with a tamed dire wolf and 2 brute class hillies. "Thankfully I'm still invisible.... Wait... What are they looking at-?!" Suddenly the tamed dire wolf pounces as the two brutes ready their rocks and fire! Atlas jumps out of the way watching the wolf ram itself into the wall with it's pounce and avoiding the rock artillery from the brutes!
"HOW?!" Atlas thinks as he coughs and he tries to get the rock dust as well as debris out of his eyes trying to see through the dust. "My invisibility must have dropped! I gotta quickly reapply it and get out of here!" Atlas quickly goes to reach for the bottles that he had prepared and notices that they broke when he jumped to dodge the rocks and dire wolf that's now digging itself out of the rubble! The brutes charge Atlas as he tries to get his bearings back, and begin swinging, "Ahh, FUCK IT!!!" Atlas screams as he releases his frost breath and draws his trusty scimitar to charge in-between them to avoid their swings and cut at their defenseless legs. Still taking one of their clubs to his shield side but successfully bringing one of them down to it's knees while he turns and quickly runs up it to cut it's neck and finish it off, but not cutting quite deep enough! As the wolf gets out and tries to pounce on him again with it's jaws wide for Atlas to quickly raise his shield and bash it into the wolf's face breaking it's jaw as it reals back. The other brute taking full advantage of the situation to bash his club into Atlas's back, right after Atlas brings his scimitar back down on the initial brute managing to cleave it's head off with his second attempt. As Atlas flies forward from the force taken to his back from the second brutes club and rolling to get his feet while taking a defensive stance spitting out some of his own blood while focusing on the other brute as well as the dire wolf still busy whimpering with it's busted jaw.
Hearing a lot of noise coming from the Chieftain's room heading this way, Atlas drops his defensive stance after blocking the brutes next club swing on his shield, while Atlas takes 2 quick swings, one at the leg getting a deep cut making the giant tumble forward enough as Atlas raises his shield to bring the club up and over his head letting the brute tumble over and the second swing taking quick work of the brutes neck. Right as the two fire giant berserkers arrive in the back room and instantly billow out their rage before charging Atlas, before even getting one moment to ready himself for more, taking one of their giant swords to his shield and parrying the other over his head with his scimitar into the other berserkers blade. Giving Atlas enough time to back peddle and grab one of his heal serious potions from his waist box, "Since when did all of you shits get so good at hitting?!" glancing at the two dead brutes before refocusing on the berserkers that seemed to thankfully be glaring at one another long enough for Atlas to drink the potion while only one was able to try and swipe at him as he razes up his shield again to full on block taking enough force that he dropped his potion not getting the entire drink off but enough to revitalize and keep going!
Taking quick stock of his options in the room while Atlas slowly fights them backwards to an area where only one can reach him at a time as he hears more commotion coming from the chieftain's lair, the distraction costing him a swipe from the dire wolf's claws that Atlas thought ran away. Gritting his teeth Atlas begins to hum his battle chant as he focus's purely on the current fight. "Dodge... Dodge... Avoid Swipe... Parry... Slash... Dodge... Slash... Cut... Dodge... Slash..." As Atlas begins to hear his father's blue ancestor's temptations, "Why not give in..? Use that power, you could raise an army of their corpses and slaughter them all... Overwhelm them... Trample them... And draw more power from their CORPSES!" Taking a hit in his moment of distraction noticing that one of the berserkers was near death and quickly finishing it off with a thrust to it's neck, and on the pull back from the thrust, slashing through the dire wolf's neck finishing it as well. Panting as the other berserker seems to take a moment to look over Atlas, while Atlas looks deep into the berserkers eyes, and sees it's Fear. Smiling Atlas walks forward giving into his blood lust at this moment with all the rage boiling over from not knowing what's become of HIS PEOPLE in Blackbridge, "Tell me Giant... How did you get here..? Did you trample upon what is Mine?" Taking another step forward as he flicks the blood from his scimitar while giving the berserker a nasty slash to it's leg and preparing to slaughter whatever gets in his way. "My patience is about at it's end... You can understand... Right?" Watching the berserker in it's fear try and crawl back because it can't put weight on it's badly bleeding leg as Atlas takes another step forward. "A dragon doesn't accept those that trample upon what belongs to them..." Cuts deeply into the berserkers other leg making it unable to walk at all as it tries to make a swing in it's fear to be blocked my Atlas's shield while Atlas brings his foot up and stomps down on the flat of the giants blade breaking it. "My mercy... Has run dry, you've spilt too much blood..." readying to finish off the fire giant berserker, Atlas then takes multiple magic missiles from somewhere, as the berserker on the ground then vanishes with only a blood trail slowly leading away, foot by foot.
Atlas sees another volley of magic missiles incoming from a spot with nothing there as he tries to quickly reach for his broach and get hit again before activating it's shield. "Gahh!" wincing from the missiles as he reaches to grab one of his potions of heal and drink it as he gets hit with a dispel losing the shield right after putting it up, and quickly ducking for cover from the spot it originated. "How..? How is it still invisible after firing an attack..?!" Atlas tries to think through the situation still hurting even after his wounds restore themselves with after the potion. Clarity coming over Atlas mind from his previous bloodlust, "Even Old-Man-Master-Seth can't remain out of sight after firing an attack spell! How is it doing this..? Could it be an item, maybe an artifact of old?!" hearing the loud footsteps slowly circling around the middle pillar of which Atlas was now hiding behind. "I need to think of something quick... This scenario is beyond what I can currently handle" Atlas looks at his silence potion stash, "Do I tempt it..? Would it work..?" As the last foot step brings around the corner an invisible enemy coming into view now that it's close enough.
Atlas looks up at the Fire Giant Emissary as he quickly reactivates his broach again and quickly reaching for and drinking his silence potion... For the giant to just vanish. Atlas's eyes go wide as he feels it's staff smack him, but still unable to see it. "I need to get out of here, this is far beyond me! I need to find a way out!" As Atlas hears beyond his silence aura, multiple giants on their way to the room from the halls beyond. Atlas hides behind his shield as he looks for his other invisibility potions, while managing to block the invisible staff and fire giant emissary.
Right as he finds the invisibility potion it gets knocked from Atlas's grasp as he gets smacked against his shield from the staff again, for the emissary to finally come back into sight. "Fine, it seems that it wants to go and it can't cast in the aura, and I can somewhat see it now! So let's dance!" and the fight with the emissary began, as the chieftain finally makes his appearance, the emissary and Atlas both bleeding and some fear showing in the emissaries eyes, it re-vanished and from random spots began hammering Atlas's magical shield with magic missiles and fire arrow spells breaking through and landing on Atlas's cloak defending from the worst of it.
As the spell barrage ended the Chieftain looks down upon Atlas in his bleeding and beaten state, as Atlas slowly raises another Heal potion to his lips, hearing a lot of commotion of foot steps leaving quickly, he downs the potion as the chief raises his own rock to throw, and Atlas rolls from his spot barely avoiding the boulder to once again begin the fight feeling beaten and battered but in the end overcoming the Chieftain, while Atlas is on his last leg of energy, "I... Must make it... Out... And warn the... Others..." coughing up a lot of blood as he quickly grabs the invisibility potion that dropped earlier and drinks it before limping out of the Chieftain's cave as fast as he can passing out on his horse after he barely straps himself on to it and arriving back to Peltarch near death and passing over all the events that transpired to Peltarch's Herald Thaddeus.
((I thank all for reading, and I apologize for any typos and such, this is currently coffee and Monster energy drink written madness, and thank the DM Greatly for the fascinating event! (Remember to ALWAYS Thank the DM Crew and their hard work!!!)))
