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You recite the words of the Brotherhood Spell Lightning Hand and cast a bolt of energy at the leader. It strikes the bird’s wing and breaks the bone, causing the creature to spiral out of control. Yranai cheers but his triumphant cry is premature. You watch aghast as the Itikar collides with the balloon and stabs its talons into the canopy. In its desperation to survive, it shreds the cloth to ribbons before it falls away and plummets to its doom in the timberlands below.

The impact of the bird hitting the canopy knocks you off your feet. Yranai falls on top of you and, for a few nerve-racking seconds, you lie entangled at the bottom of the basket. You can feel the balloon is rapidly losing altitude. When you pull yourself up and peer over the rim of the basket you see the trees of the lower mountain slopes rising towards you at a dizzying speed. Yranai looks up to see shreds of cloth trailing from the punctured canopy above and the sight is too much for him: he faints. Hurriedly you haul his frail body over your shoulder. Then you place one foot on the rim of the basket and get ready to make a desperate leap away from this doomed balloon as the tops of the mountain pines come into view.

With the old magician draped over your shoulder, you leap from the basket and plummet towards the ground. As you fall, you utter the words of the Brotherhood Spell Levitation and instantly the spell enables you to control the speed of your descent towards the trees below. You see the balloon smash into the timberland and you brace yourself in readiness for the moment when your feet touch the ground.

Unfortunately, when you cast Levitation in mid-air, you did not anticipate that the increased weight of Yranai would have any effect on your control of the spell. It is not until you are within twenty feet of the ground that you realize you are coming down too fast. You attempt to compensate but it is too late and you strike the rocky soil with a tremendous jolt that knocks you unconscious.

Turn to 341.