Thrythlind walked to the edge of the pavillion and looked out into the rain, bored. He could see the Wetlanders out and about chasing, or being chased, by various monsters, but no Celestials, so he decided to remain and just wait for the war to come. The Celestials were hidieously outnumbered, but they planned on taking out as many of the other side as possible, before they went down. He looked up, perhaps the war might never come.
That's when he noticed Colonel and Arcades battling the giant, hmm perhaps there were some Celestials out there after all. The huge creature rebuffed the two healers, easily and they fell back to regroup. Thrythlind trotted toward the two, and prepared to aid them in their battle. The reptillian mage stretched his long limbs, it had been months since he had awakened in this form next to the river. Since then his shape shifting had been limited to reptillian creatures, and he could no longer achieve multiple bodies.
Perhaps something had happened in the dark lord's cave that he wasn't aware of. Something that had partially cleansed the human and elven away from his dragon blood. It wasn't an important question though. He had been travelling down the final road of a shaper, when they ceased to be human in any sense of the word and became instead a mass of hive-minded animals, people and creatures. Now he had one body and a limited number of forms, this was better.
Arcades and Colonel nodded thanks for the help as they trotted back down to face the giant. It was a frost giant, and he was tossing around iceballs left and right. That was fine, Thrythlind knew how to handle frost giants. While the two healers hefted sword and shield and marched out, he shifted his shape into something more dragon like. He could have called on his spirit allies, but he wasn't certain that the Serpent and its offspring would wish to interfere in this matter. He had his own powers, he was expected to use them.
The dragon-man padded around a system of great pillars in the giant's lair, spitting gouts of flame when he thought he could hit. The two war-healers pressed the giant from either side. All in all it looked to be a fairly even match, until more Celestials joined in. One of the North Celestials, a barbarian who's name Thrythlind never caught, the Druid-King Bagera, the warrior Dugal McVey, and Sir Father Thomas von Drakken, the Dark Lord.
As they arrived one of the iceballs struck Thrythlind and he was frozen in place. As luck would have it, Colonel had cast a similar spell upon the giant. The huge humanoid now bore an odd resemblance to a giant bush. This is when the goblins started popping up, attempting to attack the remaining Celestials. They should have known better.
Power virtually crackled in the spaces between the three powerful casters and the Dark Lord. Father Thomas wielded a huge pike and laughed as he charged down the terrified goblins. Mostly everybody else just quietly slashed the goblins to pieces and waited for the goblin to break free.
Thrythlind broke free first, shattering the ice as the heat gathered around him. It was only a few moments later that the giant ripped apart the wood and vines holding him, then the weight of enough magical power to shatter castles was bent fully on him. As the giant finally fell, Thrythlind summoned a serpent of the earth that rose up and crushed the dying giant completely.
The Celestials took a moment to catch their breaths, which was when the air elemental appeared. Later he would learn that this was the being that had caused Arcades and Colonel the most problems as it rained lightning and ice down on the warriors. Thrythlind found himself frozen yet again, along with the Dark Lord as well, as the remainder of the celestials were forced back by the surprise.
Thrythlind and Father Thomas each chipped at the ice in their own way. Thrythlind was building up more body heat, while the ice around Thomas seemed to be actually getting slowly eaten away by the anti-paladin's darkness. Thrythlind arched an eyebrow about being allied with this being who had once threatened all of the Celestial Kingdom, his former kingdom, with the forces pulled from his homeworld, but he had since dropped the mantle of Void Lord. Besides outnumbered as they thought they were going to be, they had little choice in their allies.
Before either could break free another giant appeared, saw the corpse of his kin and angrilly picked up and threw the two iced powers away. They landed back near the pavilion on the edge of the Celestial Kingdom camp near the Wetlander stronghold.
A brief conference later and they decided that it would be easier to take creatures closer to our size. (translation for the anime lists: they made us walk on our knees to fight the giant, grumble) First, there was magic to pass around. Father Thomas was already protected from flame by the druidic power of the current king. The Dark Lord took a smaller, ten foot, spear, and handed the great pike off to Dugal. Since the warrior did not yet carry an enchantment, this left free to touch the pike with the venom of Serpents progeny, Viper. Bagera chanted over the elf Arcades, and the healer's skin became hard and gray, like stone. It was the strongest defensive enchantment known in amtworld, stoneskin. The northern barbarian merely sneered at the use of magic and waited for them to re-enter battle. Colonel recieved a shield enchanted by the arts of another of Serpent's offspring as Thrythlind called on Couatl to proof the shield from all harm and magic. For his own benefit, Thrythlind called on a mixture of Couatl's teachings and his own shape-changing powers. Where the dragon-man had stood, there was now large, wingless dragon with translucent scales like red crystal.
After this little session of power building, Thrythlind and the other Celestials bypassed the giant and made for the troll bridge. There were two trolls actually on the bridge, one of them holding back a mass of Wetlanders retreating from somewhere. One of the trolls heard them coming and turned around wielding a pair of swords and a hideous fanged grin.
"Hey, what's this?" someone asked.
"I think its a troll," came the answer. Thrythlind said nothing as bands of yellow energy gathered over his scales.
"Yep, definitely a troll," the Celestials weren't too concerned with the monster, after all, Colonel and Bagera were both Dark Trolls themselves. Thrythlind reared back and released a blast of yellow lightning which struck the troll's groin. This elicited a shocked and horrified expression from the troll that vanished in an electrocuted grimace as the body fell off the bridge. Of course the Celestials laughed and proceeded on to the bridge.
Father Thomas, wearing a great deal of armor, strode forward with Colonel and Arcades to right up behind the second troll. Dugal, with the great pike, stood next the Thrythlind, with King Bagera in the rear, ready with some druidic burst of power.
"You'll never cross this bridge!" Father Tom shouted his spear pointing past the troll at the Wetlanders, then he laughed and continued. "Oh wait...HE'S the monster." The Celestials, on to the joke, stepped about five feet back.
The troll paused in his battle turned to look at them and then jumped off the bridge. A monk bearing a supreme aura of peace and harmlessness led the fleeing Wetlanders across the bridge.
"Sanctuary, thank you, sanctuary, thank you."
"You're welcome," Father Tom said as each Celestial shook his hand, even the dragon-formed Thrythlind. "What's over there?"
"A volcano, and mystical place. Lots of trolls and dragons and skeletons, and you don't want to go over there!!!"
"Things to kill, let's go," The Celestials mobbed over the bridge, straight into the trolls that had been pressing the fleeing Wetlanders. Poor trolls.
They came to a place of obvious power, but they did not yet have the items necessary to go there, and in stead tramped off towards the Volcano in the distance.
It didn't take long for the dragon and flame elemental in the volcano to notice their presence and make an attack. The dragon and elemental's fire attacks could do nothing to either the Dark Lord or Thrythlind. Each had acquired some form of protection from flame, and the fiery arrows and gouts of flame just bounced off of them. On the other hand they had trouble hitting the flying dragon and the flame elemental refused to leave the volcano, where it was unkillable.
Once the dragon reached down and snatched up Father Tom and dropped him. The Anti-Paladin was caught on the fall back down by one of the remaining Wetlanders on this side of the bridge, a stony skinned warrior, obviously under the effects of druid spell like the one on the elf Arcades.
Eventually they got bored with taking pot shots at the flying dragon, or catching the flame elementals arrows before they could strike the less protected Celestials. All eight of the Celestials backed off and then saw another stream of fleeing Wetlanders, coming from deeper on this side, what they had been told was the Dark Lands.
"What are you guys running from?"
"You don't want to go there, its an area of unnatural darkness." Several other wetlanders pointed back and shouted "area of unnatural darkness," as well.
"Unnatural darkness?" Father Tom repeated. Then started strutting off in that direction. "SOUNDS LIKE MY KIND OF GUYS!!!"
There was an edifice, some sort of ancient ruined tomb, and they couldn't see inside, that left blasts of raw energy. They couldn't target a spell on something they couldn't see. As they rounded the tomb towards the entrance a hoard of skeletons appeared, with arrows flying out of the darkness. As skeletons fell a burst of lightning flew from the blackness and they were resurrected.
Thrythlind and another wizard tossed fireball after fireball through the entrance, but the lightning bolts kept coming. They could hear a dry rasping voice inside casting, but couldn't see the skeleton mage to kill him. They pulled back, along with the three wetlanders there, to plan.
"FLAME ELEMENTAL!! FLAME ELEMENTAL!!" one of the Wetlanders shouted. Thrythlind looked to the left and saw the flame elemental targetting them with his fire bow. He twisted his draconic form about and strode forward next to the Anti-Paladin and Colonel. The dragon backed off. The flame elemental first targeted Thrythlind, realized flame couldn't hurt him, then Colonel and saw the glowing shield before the dark troll and realized the arrow wouldn't get past the shield. This left the anti-paladin, Dark Lord. Of course the aura of druidic power was apparent in thin shell around the cold darkness about the Celestial Dark Lord.
Seeing that things were pretty much under control, Thrythlind backed off to terrorize the dragon. Breathing lightning and ice at the creature, as well as calling on those of his spirit friends that would come. The dragon dodged lightning and stone serpents, finally retreating to the Volcano when it was struck with a blast of freezing breath.
Then Thrythlind noticed that flame elemental was coming towards him and he started breathing blasts of power at it as well. Apparently, his companions weapons had been melted upon contact with the beast, and they were bringing magical means to repair them. The elemental fled, unable to get close enough to the dragon to bring weapons of more physical manner to bear. The elemental was in the process of running to the Volcano, when it too was struck by a freezing blast of air. The elemental vanished with a scream of frustrated pain, and Thrythlind shrugged and returned back to the skeleton warriors.
He hung out with that for a little while, frustrating as it was. He was killed once ressurected. The skeletons casting fear about with magical force were keeping away problems like him and Father Tom. Though Thrythlind quickly recognized the weave and dispelled it. After the spell wore off, Father Tom grumbled about skeletons getting over their heads by taking on Dark Lords. An Hillman later reported to be Sponge Jimmykicker, joined the Skeletons at some point and took Thrythlind by surprise.
As Thrythlind was recovering, waiting for Arcades to have time to heal him, some Wetlander grabbed his unconcious form, dragged it to the volcano and through it in. Apparently the dragon had taken offense at Thrythlind's freezing breath earlier. Soon after Thrythlind woke up and left the Volcano to return to the Celestial camp.
I.E. it was raining too much, I got bored, took the life, and left the quest.