Kalchine's ears droop and he shakes his head in sympathy at the suffering in the room.
He quickly moves to the man that Quasit has freed and provides what medical assistance he can.
He gestures for Chest Thumper to keep a look out and glances up at the rafters before focusing on his work, himself. Just in case.
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"You said that Quasit said that this was caused by vampires. But in that case, where are they? I mean, it would be a lot of vampires, right?"
Fin smiles as he shrugs. ”Not sure, Hlao-roo; dunno how much it takes to feed a vampire. Maybe a lot, maybe a little…don’t worry though, we’ve had to deal with the undead a lot, we’ll be OK,” he says, trying to reassure her…
That being said, he keeps his bow handy, and warily checks out these barracks for any signs of danger and anything that might prove significant…
Maka hurried inside, her glowing eyes darting around for any hidden dangers. "Finn, what vampire stuff is true and what is just stories? They burn right?" Maka wished she had paid better attention when Hace had explained it to her. Though that was so long ago now she doubted she would remember even is she had paid attention.
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Fin ponders a moment at Maka’s question…
…before responding in a sad tone. ”I have a history with the undead…and a strong hatred for them…as some of you know, a mummy killed my Father...
“Dad was a glorified tomb raider, a legend among our Desert tribe; I accompanied him for several years during my youth…he taught me much about the different kinds of undead so we’d be prepared for anything…well, almost anything…
“Full-fledged vampires are very dangerous and can be hard to kill…they don’t necessarily burn with fire but do in direct sunlight…they don’t like garlic…weapon wise, magic/silver are most effective on them…
“But there are lesser vampires as well…not sure what kind of we might be dealing with here…”
The sole conscious soldier focuses on Quasit, turning his head--just about the only part of his body he can move, strapped down as he is--to look at her.
He lifts his head slightly.
Fin doesn't see anything else of interest in the barracks. It seems completely bare except for the soldiers and a few unlit stoves.
Maka can't really tell more than that the puncture wounds do look like vampire bites.
Kalchine can tell that most of these men are near death. They've obviously been drained of much of their blood.
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Fin nods to Quasit. ”Nothing else here. Keep talkin’ to him, Q, I’ll untie him; he might be more amenable to help us when he’s free of restraints…”
The Elf stows his bow temporarily and walks slowly to the lucid soldier, showing empty hands to the man, while trying to give a friendly smile. He bends over and removes the binds holding the soldier down…then backs away slowly, again showing the man his hands…
Fin draws his bow then, keeping it pointed down, just wanting to be ready if something unexpected pops up, as Quasit does her diplomacy thing…
”Wait! Don’t some undead create thralls? Shouldn’t we make sure these guys won’t turn on us before we free them? Make sure they are not well on their way to becoming vampires themselves? I don’t know if that can happen, but shouldn’t we try to make sure? I can try healing them, but if they are hurt instead, that would mean they are undead right?”
Maka opened her mouth to argue before reconsidering Selena's plan. "That's...actually a good idea. Yeah do that!"
Kalchine waits to see how Selena's spell goes but is then ready to stabilize each of the men either by magical or mundane methods.
Dmitri snorts disbelievingly, but doesn't protest.
Selena's healing hex does repair the puncture wounds, but it's clear he's still not well.
”Well, they are not undead, at least not at the moment, but there is something deeper going on. Anyone have a restoration or greater potion?” Selena says as she carefully examines the soldiers as she gives them all a heal.
It's pretty easy to tell it's constitution loss from blood drain.
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As she unties the man, Quasit continues to speak to him.
"Please, tell us what happened to you. And who are these Brothers? And perhaps you can tell us why so many men are here to protect this burned out ruin and this infernal machine when you could be fighting those filthy marauding Germans? Could some of these soldiers be convinced to stand aside and let us turn off that machine?"
"Also, I don't suppose you've happened to see the daughter of the Tsarina around here? Anastasia? We'd like to get her away from Rasputin as well."
Dmitri slowly sits up and rubs a couple spots the bindings had been particularly tight.
He looks at Quasit somewhat incredulously.
He scowls. "Worst mistake of my life. Rasputin being alive is no miracle, it's the power of the devil. But those Brothers... there are three of them, they wear the robes of priests but they are bloodsucking demons inside. But when they speak to you, things get... fuzzy. You can't see them for what they are, you want to do anything they say. Of course, they don't bother with that after they've tied you to a bed."
"Anastasia is dead. But if Rasputin is alive, she could be too, I suppose. But I wouldn't trust it. Not after finding out what kind of devil Rasputin is."
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"Yes, my friends and I are definitely behind on news of the war. Our mission has taken us to some very far flung places. We didn't know about the provisional government being overthrown."
Quasit shares what's she's learned from Dmitri with the group.
At the news that Anastasia is (probably) dead, she gives a small nod. "That might be for the best." she says grimly.
She stands up and addresses her companions in Common.
"I think we should release everyone in here. If these Three Brothers are vampires, then perhaps if we destroy them, then the enchantment charming these soldiers will drop away and they'll stop defending this place. I hate to kill these guys if they're just charmed. But the vampires may not even be in this camp right now, they might be with Rasputin on the other plane."
"Clearly Rasputin has the power to revive the dead, and if he has plans for Anastasia he may have resurrected her and have her in his keeping. And who knows if she's a willing partner of his or is just another innocent victim."
"Kal, do what you can for these guys. Fin and I need to go find that fairy. Everyone else keep watch here I guess."
She turns back to the soldier. "Dmitri, how long since the Brothers were last here? Has it been more than a few days?"
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Sakitu can't understand the harsh sounding language when the soldier speaks so she is grateful when Quasit translates.
"I agree with you Quasit. We should let all these guys go. If we're lucky those vampires won't be here."
She nods her head at the command to stay here but she scoots over the Fin and gives him a quick kiss. "Please be careful. I know that you always are, but I can't help but say it."
She steps up on her tiptoes and gives him another quick kiss.
Dmitri frowns. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it, then opens it again.
Quasit nods and starts moving from bunk to bunk. He does, indeed, do what he can without expending any of his higher level magics for the men before unstrapping them. Just in case any of them are not on their side or have an adverse and violent reaction to being healed.
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"…Fin and I need to go find that fairy. Everyone else keep watch here I guess."
Fin gives a weary nod. ”Aye, Q…ready, just say the word…”
She nods her head at the command to stay here but she scoots over the Fin and gives him a quick kiss. "Please be careful. I know that you always are, but I can't help but say it."
She steps up on her tiptoes and gives him another quick kiss.
Fin smiles as he returns Sakitu’s kisses. ”We’ll be fine, Hlao-roo; you stay alert here in case those bloodsuckers return early. Stay close to Bull…”
Fin stretches a bit, then checks his bow as he preps for their jaunt to find Polina…
Selena went one by one to the captives, using her healing hex on each of them. It might not heal the long term affliction, but it still worked to test if any of them had become spawn. And the men would need every ounce of strength to escape the camp.
As Selena touched each captive with magic, and weren't revealed to be a monster, Maka quickly cut through their bonds with a small torch from her finger.
While Selena's healing doesn't reveal any monsters among the soldiers, Dmitri seems to be the only one sane enough to speak. The others either simply gaze vacantly at the ceiling when awoken or start mumbling incoherently.
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Fin nods, grinning as he murmurs, ”Once more into the breach, eh Q?”
He draws his bow, and moves quietly to the outside edge of the building…
Keeping an eye on the searchlight patterns, he’ll give the go signal to Quasit and move stealthily till they’re both under the NW tower, using shadows and tombstones for cover…
…then he’ll draw an adamantine arrow and use the arrowhead to slice thru the wire, making a gap large enough for he and Quasit to crawl thru…
…once outside the wire, he’ll quietly move towards the area try last met the fairy, again using the shadows and tombstones for cover. Fin will also look for any tracks that might aid in finding her, as well as alert them to any patrols or other such danger…
Kalchine's ears droop as he sees the state of the men when they awaken.
"I've seen this far too often," he comments. [b]"Too many soldiers whose bodies have been fixed but whose minds are still broken by the suffering they have endured. There won't be much we can do for them, especially in the short term. If they survive, if anyone cares enough about them to care for them, it will be years before they recover at all and they will be haunted by the horrors inflicted on them for their whole lives."
Quasit and Fin have no difficulty getting out to the graveyard. Fin searches around for signs of the strange fairy, but the first thing he catches is her quiet muttering.
"Good bones, yes. Much better dead than in those nasty soldiers," she's saying as he silently approaches, while examining a femur bone.
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Fin quietly follows the muttering, leading Quasit to her. Not wanting to startle her, he greets her in Sylvan, speaking lightly from behind a nearby tombstone.
While he awaits her response, he whispers a translation of his greeting to Quasit, then says, ”You’re far better with words than I, Q; as before, I’ll translate anything you wish to her…”
Polina glances up at Fin and Quasit. "Yes, yes, you have come back for Polina's help. Put him down, put him down, and make sure he's all here."
"Hmmm, yes... still fresh enough," Polina mutters to herself as she examines the corpse. Then she starts dancing around it, singing softly to herself as she does.
After a couple minutes of this, the corpse twitches. A couple of twitches more and Viktor starts blinking, slowly raising his head and looking around.
After a few seconds, he murmurs,
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Fin’s eyes go wide and his mouth drops open as he’s never witnessed a resurrection before; Selena’s reincarnation was odd, especially considering she came back as a different creature and half the size. He decided he preferred this to that…
He looks over to Quasit and silently mouths, WOW, before turning to the tomb fairy to nod in appreciation. Not understanding Russian, he reverts back to being a lookout, confident Q, with her silver tongue, can handle the rest…
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Quasit wrinkles her nose a little at the clearly unholy ritual, and actually cringes a little when the body starts to move. But she tries to remain focused on the task at hand.
She sits down by the fellow once he speaks. "I don't know if it's Hell, but it's definitely Russia. And I'm certainly no devil. Just ask my friends! Anyway, you can call me Quasit, that's Findurel, and that, my good fellow, is the tombstone fairy Polina, who raised you from the dead,"
"I take it you're Victor Miroslav, inventor of this Dimensional Anchor machine?"
"Can you tell us how you died?"
Viktor scoffs wordlessly at Quasit's assertion, but answers, "Yes, I am Viktor. That demon Rasputin decided he was done with me and had me shot."
"As you probably know," he mutters to himself.
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Quasit tries not to take the nerd rage personally.
"Well, I sorta guessed but I wanted to be sure. You know, you might be more grateful. Did you miss the part where I said we raised you from the dead? When we found you a literal demon was about to eat your corpse."
"But I digress. You see, we're here to stop Rasputin. By killing him. We're hoping you'll help us do that."
She pulls out the blueprints of the machine. "To get to him, we need to turn off the machine that's keeping him in that other dimension. I've looked at these blueprints, and it's helpful, but I have to confess I've never seen anything like this and it's way over my head. I've worked out that the four generators need to be turned off all within an hour, and also that if I just start cutting wires I'm liable to electrocute myself."
"So tell me Viktor, if I may call you that, if you were going to shut that machine down, what would you do?"
He sits up and looks at the ground. "It was going to be the greatest discovery of our age. A way to bridge worlds! Proof of dimensions beyond our own! Hah, what hubris. If only I had known..."
He sighs. "All that Rasputin wanted was a way to make his Hell on Earth. Well, if my punishment is to dream I can fix my greatest sin, so be it. You have my blueprints?"
Once you show him the blueprints, he starts explaining. "The greatest problem is this is just a prototype. I hadn't yet put much thought into how to display the status in a way that would help other people understand what was going on. So, you see..."
Viktor launches into a technical description of how to manipulate the World Anchors. "...You want it to start humming at about this pitch." He hums for a bit. "If the pitch gets too high, you need to flip this switch, which will direct the current from this circuitry into this section, which will step down the voltage, but if it gets too low, you'll want to twist this dial to the right..." It does involve getting to each of the four generators and tuning them appropriately within an hour.
In the midst of Viktor's rambling description, one other thing stands out.
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Quasit tries to hum along with Miroslav, trying to bake the pitch into her memory, and trying not to be distracted by the idea of obliterating the world by mistake. Miroslav was talking fast, using jargon, and her primitive level of understanding his language left her feeling rather at sea.
"OK, look, you may as well come with us. We'll try and get you out of the camp to safety. The rest of our team is over there, in that building--" she says to Viktor in Russian, pointing back to the blockhouse containing the drained soldiers and her companions. "Can you walk?"
She turns to Findurel and speaks to him in Common. "I think we should head back to the others. We need to lay low for a bit after all the excitement in that camp with the headless guys and their pet goat. What do you think would be best -- teleporting back out to the Hut, or just hunkering down here and getting some rest to recharge spells and whatnot?"
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Fin ponders but a moment. ”I think the Hut would be best. If we hunker down here, Rasputin can pay us another unexpected visit at any time; at the Hut, he cannot. Think we’d rest better there as well, I’m weary as four hells…and perhaps Selena can rid me of this damned curse. We can always teleport in addition to Kal’s ‘travel by plant’ spell to practically anywhere in the camp…
“Just my thoughts…but if you think otherwise, that’s fine by me…”
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”The only reason I was thinking about staying was that the 3 vampire priests might come back to snack on those soldiers, and if we managed to deal with them, we might free all the soldiers in this camp from their influence.”
“But you’re probably right. The vampires might be in the other dimension with Rasputin. Miroslav was probably only shot very recently, given the state of his body. For all Rasputin’s bluster, I get the feeling that our arrival spooked him and he’s kinda pulling up the drawbridge behind him.”
“So, all right, let’s get back to the others and then bug out for the night, then come back tomorrow and finish the job. And hopefully get your curse lifted. We’ll need you and Maka at your best.”
She regards the creepy fairy briefly, then addresses her in Russian. ”Polina, how can we thank you for your help?”
Viktor checks his prosthetic leg, spending a couple moments adjusting it before slowly getting up. He sighs, but doesn't say anything, apparently figuring he's shown well enough he can move.
Polina cackles. "Oh, kill, kill kill, kill the nasty soldiers and the disobedient child! That is good enough for Polina! Then there will be many bones, yes."
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Polina cackles. "Oh, kill, kill kill, kill the nasty soldiers and the disobedient child! That is good enough for Polina! Then there will be many bones, yes."
Involuntarily, Quest's head lurches back a bit at this macabre request, though she quickly realizes that perhaps she should have expected nothing less.
"Well, we killed a lot of them already, and no doubt more will fall in the days to come." she answers vaguely, then turns back to Findurel.
"Did you notice that? She said disobedient child. I assume she's talking about Anastasia. That makes it sound like she's around here somewhere, alive. And that perhaps she's not in league with Rasputin at all. Interesting."
"Anyway Fin, go ahead a bit like you always do, and wave when it's safe for me to move across the open ground with Viktor."
Then in Russian, she asks Miroslav "How do you feel about monkeys?"
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Fin nods, pulls his hood up tight and, with his bow in hand, reverts back to stealth mode, waiting for a break in the searchlight pattern, then moving quietly among the tombstones and shadows until he gets back under the search tower…
…and then he awaits till the coast is clear again and waves Quasit and Viktor over…
Once they’re safely under, he’ll do the same from the tower to the building where his friends are at…
…once again waving Q and Viktor over when the coast is clear…
Viktor shrugs noncommittally in answer to Quasit's question.
Fin is getting quite good at getting people across the camp. Or maybe Rasputin is plotting something. Either way you're able to rejoin your companions without incident.
Maka waved excitedly as Fin and Quasit approached. Thankfully her monastic discipline prevented her from calling out to them, even though she desperately wanted to.
"Welcome back! I freed all the people. Also, who is this? Maka loudly whispered after giving the pair warm hugs.
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Fin smiles at Maka weakly. ”This is Viktor, the dead guy we found; the tomb fairy raised him from the dead. He’s gonna help us take out that infernal machine…he only speaks Russian though, you’ll have to get the details from Q…”
He turns to Quasit. ”Think we need to get back to the Hut before Rasputin finds out we have Viktor here; we might want to bring Dmitri with us as well, be safer for him…
“Selena, how many can you teleport? And Kal, how many can you get there with that plant travel thing you do? If we have too many, I can sneak back by foot…”
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Viktor shrugs noncommittally in answer to Quasit's question.
"Why does it matter?"
Quasit hesitates then shrugs in return with a secret smile. "Oh, no reason."
Once back in the blockhouse, Quasit is able to relax a little again. She gratefully accepts Maka's hug for once.
She speaks to Dmitri again.
"Look, you don't want to stay here. It might be another day or two before we've dealt with the priests and Rasputin. I don't know if you and your friends can move very far... or at all. But the camp with the horsemen on the other side of the ruined temple has been cleared out, as have the trenches out past the fence in that sector. You might be able to hide one of those places in relative safety."
She pulls out the crumpled bits of Russian money she collected in previous days and pushes it into Dmitri's hands. "Here, take this. It might help somehow."
