When Jack entered the village square again, it was considerably changed from the appearance he remembered. The ground was a torn up wasteland of raw earth and shattered rock, and smoke from the burning buildings and the two large craters on that now occupied the far end of the square hung thick enough to make Jack cough and put his sleeve over his mouth until he could mutter a simple spell that generated fresh air around him as he walked.Peering through the smoke, Jack saw a large humanoid shape looming in the distance, standing over something on the ground. As the wind shifted, he could begin to make out details, and his blood ran cold.
The gnoll shaman was standing over Ellie, the ground underneath and around her torn apart and scorched black by fire. The charred remains of her staff were visible a short distance away, still smoking, and the ground around them both exuded a haze of steam and heat that caused the air between Jack and the two of them to wave and ripple.
Ellie"s robes were burned. She wasn"t moving.
"ELLIE!" Jack called out to her instinctively, before immediately stopping short and coming to his senses.
The gnoll"s head jerked around towards this new arrival, and, seeing Jack, turned and spun his staff around. The roots at the tip suddenly flashed blue, and an arc of lightning jumped from the end of the shaman"s staff, searing and crackling straight at Jack"s head.
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Jack dove to the side at the last possible moment as the ray of electricity crackled past, its outer edges jumping and leaving painful scorch marks across Jack"s back and legs. Jack"s head flooded with spell words as he frantically tried to drag up something to throw back. As if on auto-pilot, he leapt to his feet, threw his hand out, and shouted the words to conjure a lightning bolt of his own, using his anger and disgust to drive every bit of his vital energy into the blast.
A jet of blue-white energy crackled and surged towards the hulking furred shape of the shaman, throwing sparks and tendrils of energy that arced off the stones beneath. The gnoll roared something in a primal tone, and before the bolt could strike him, a slab of earth erupted from beneath the paving stones of the square in front of him, causing the electricity to arc harmlessly into in, leaving behind a smoking dent made of gla.s.s.
Jack swore to himself, and his fear and anger overriding his typical sense of self-preservation, ran toward the wall of earth. He had to help her. To save her. That"s what heros do... right?
Reaching the wall, Jack leapt around it, swinging his axe around in front of him, hoping to strike the creature while it still stood behind the wall. His swing followed through as he stepped around, but hit nothing but air until it collided with the backside of the earthen wall.
Jack immediately drew the axe back into a defensive stance, but to his confusion and surprise, the gnoll wasn"t behind the wall. Jack glanced around, and his confusion increased. The creature wasn"t anywhere to be seen. Had he turned invisible or something? Was that even a thing a shaman could do?
As he began to contemplate what had happened, and focused around for some clue, he looked off to his right, in the broken area where Ellie had been laying when Jack had first seen the two of them.
To Jack"s absolute horror, the spot where she had been laying now lay empty, save the broken end of her staff.
Ellie was gone.