It took another few minutes for the colossal skeleton to show up. Seeing the skeleton with my own eyes was even more shocking than seeing it through Blink’s images. Like the living ogres, his teeth were massive blunt objects. Even the two protruding from his face were more like molars than canines like what orcs showed. Now that all the flesh was gone, his truly oversized portions were very apparent.

Magic was odd, like with the skeletons from the dungeon, this guy’s armor kind of floated in space. It would protect it, but it fit like it would have if he still had muscle. But that wasn’t saying anything about his bones still holding up his mass and moving without the muscles. Magic.

As he approached at a languid pace, I began focusing on him to bring up as much information as possible.

Empowered Tormented Skeletal Ogre

HP 550

Weight 200 lbs

Armor rating 8*

Weapons

Siege Axe

Ogres by nature are brutes they have an extremely high damage resistance. They enjoy feeling things break under their strength and so tend not to use armor or weapons. Those rare ogres that use equipment are far more deadly than the rest. They are ones that have been trained by an outsider and taught not just how to be a brute but are given direction.

Tormented: To reach the level of tormented an undead must have been raised at least twice and used against those who they use to care for. As a tormented the undead receives the following.

Immunity: Mental and emotional attacks- Tormented undead are already under so much mental strain that mental and emotional attacks fail. Debuff: Unthinking- some may consider this a bonus those who are tormented do not have enough mental capacity to think on their own.

Skeletal: This undead is held together by mana and not muscles only the bones remain.

Damage resistance: Cutting and piercing 1/8th damage. Weakness: Fire and decay 2x damage. Holy 8x damage non-repairable.

This guy’s bones were heavier than I was, making doing much of anything physically challenging. However, if my Lay-to-Rest counted as holy damage, I could take this guy out quickly. I hoped. I would need to re-kill him well before he got to the tree because I didn’t think for a second that I would be able to live on the ground with him and the hell dogs.

I could cast the Lay to rest out to about 10 feet from me, which meant that he had to be almost on top of me before I could do anything. If it wasn’t for the dogs keeping me in place, I would have run already. I might have been able to beat the dungeon, but I had no delusions of grandeur. I was small, and it was big, which meant that I could go splat even faster.

I could have sworn that the ogre had a sneer on his face as it appeared to stroll toward me. Of course, it couldn’t, as it had no flesh, but it moved with the swagger of a cocky prizefighter on his way to a pre-fight news conference. Its large axe rested over its right shoulder, floating just above where the bones were.

With the speed he was going, I had another minute or two to figure out my plan. I didn’t have enough mana to cast a medium, and anything smaller than a large wouldn’t get both the ogre and the dogs in a single cast. He would stand away from the dogs while swinging just because of the size of the axe. If I wanted to catch both of them at the same time, then I would need to be praying that he chose to follow his base desires to rip things apart and not his trained ones to use a weapon.

I was expecting it to all go to pot. Which meant that I needed another way out. I looked up the tree. I could make it up another twenty feet easily now that I was in the canopy, which would put me out of the ogre’s range. Unfortunately, moving up would also put me out of range for my spells, which could really hurt it. If, however, I took a potshot now at the group below and moved up, then I could ride the tree down and likely end up in another tree.

If that worked out, then I would be able to climb back up higher and take any of the undead that came up the fallen tree. That all worked well if everything went according to plan. The problem was I didn’t have enough time to make my backup plan and the backup to the backup. This meant that I had to hope that luck liked me and that I was important enough to the Sisters that they might throw me some help.

I popped off a small Lay to rest at the base of the tree, which caught about 5 of the Hell dogs and started to eat them away. Since I aimed at the bottom of the tree, I had thought that it would hold them back for a while. However, it appeared that their desire to get to me was greater than their desire to not get hurt.

The lingering effect of the spell appeared to be within the amount that the hell dogs were willing to deal with, and so they kept attacking the tree. I didn’t take much time to watch as I needed to get moving up higher. It would be another ten minutes or so before I could cast another lay to rest. I was hoping to stay safe that long.

I had just pulled myself up when I heard and felt the impact of the huge axe on the tree. I almost fell as the blow shook the whole tree. But instead, the branch I was standing on caught me with one leg on each side. I wrapped my arms around the tree and hugged it as the pain sliced up through my midsection.

Pain like getting kicked in the balls or, in this case, falling on a branch didn’t show up as a debuff. Nor did the ivy show as something that could be healed. Instead, they both showed as irritants. Which I guess was the world’s way of making it so you could get around everything with magic, or at least I couldn’t.

Another hit from below, and the tree shook. The class of the axe was a siege axe, so I was guessing cutting through gates or perhaps walls was what was expected from this thing. Which meant that I didn’t have much time before the tree I was in came down. So up I went trying to climb while in pain and trying not to get thrown off with each hit.

I had made it just a few branches higher when I heard the crack. The crack of the tree breaking. I felt the sway of the tree, which was sadly coming in my direction. Which meant that I was about to be on the wrong side of this ride. If my stats had been higher, I would have tried to run around or jump from branch to branch and move to the top of the tree. But then again, if my stats had been higher, I wouldn’t have been in this situation.

The tree fell for only part of a moment before its branches caught in the ones around it and arrested the plunge. However, the sudden stop in motion was enough to break my precarious hold on the large tree. I started to fall through the branch on the way to the ground, only to be hooked by my pack and the three staves that Ni’Bish had given to me. So thoroughly did the pack stop my motion that the straps dug into my arms, and I heard them popping.

I quickly grabbed for a branch and wrapped my body around it. Then I started to try to climb up. The branches were small enough that I could wrap my legs around them and begin to worm up. I was in the leaves and so couldn’t tell how close to the ground I was. I

What I could tell, however, was that the ogre hadn’t given up on the idea of getting the tree to the ground. I felt it trying to shake the tree. It weighed enough that I figured it would be able to do something if it was able to get the angle right. I was in only a slightly better place right this moment than I was before the ogre took the tree down as the tree was now better supported.

I knew that I had a fight up ahead with the skeletons, but at this moment, my struggle was with the tree and with gravity. I needed to move up and onto the trunk so that I could run away. I knew that if I dropped out of the tree, not only was it going to be a long fall, but also the hell dogs would get to me.

I was wishing that the hell dogs could still bark. It would have made this whole thing easier to work with. But, since they didn’t, I had no idea where they were. They could be under me or climbing the tree, or they all might have left. I had no way to know because they were silent.

I struggled for a few minutes fighting my way back to the trunk of the tree. As I broke out of the leaf section and into the main branch again, I noticed that the tree had fallen only to about a 70-degree angle. I was still going to have to climb, but it was something that was doable at this point.

I looked down about forty feet and saw that the ogre was at the base, still swinging his axe. I was feeling the hits, but now that we were suspended, it wasn’t near as bad as all the branches adsorbed some of the shocks.

The immediate problem I faced, however, was from the bark-less pack of hell dogs running up the tree.