As the vile bloated creature reaches out, trying to grab hold of anyone it can get its misshapen claws on, Rhia once again invokes her Ancestors' aid.
"Spirits protect me!" she says calmly as ghostly images in ancient armor flicker in and out around her, sometimes overlapping her space, at other times forming a tight circle around her, shields or weapons raised to defend her.
Taking deep breaths to control the rising dread threatening to throw off his concentration, Christoph has time for one last blessing before the beast is upon them. Drawing his bow with preternatural speed, he dodges back a step from the rush of the creature's wings even as Sookie is snatched up in its grasp. With a scowl, he mutters, "Can't be having that now."
As the creature rushes past, he sees, that the creature seems to be less 'alive' in some places then others. With a suspicion in mind, he looses his arrow at the spot which is quickly followed by another two. The arrows flash through the night with blazes of fiery light, one after another towards the creature. Best hope that brings it down. Don't like the idea of the only other sure sane one taking a dive into the water.
Sookie stabs once more at the creature, though she suspects that the Speaker's volley may have done the deed well enough on its own.
”Hey! Let her go! Safely!” Naught growls as her hands ignite in witchfire and lash out at the rotting bird.
Her hazy, confused expression now focuses once again. Yet, she is not the same...
An eerie blood red glow emanates from both of the troubled dancer's eyes as the creature flies overhead. Her features are strangely haggard, her skin a deathly grayish tone, as if she'd aged 40 years in a moment.
Looking up at the imposing creature, she strikes at it with her own clawed hand... a bony, aged hand with long sharp nails that were not that long a moment ago. A dark effervescence seems to manifest in her palm as she does so. Her strike goes wide, however.
Most troubling of all, she speaks a most vile-sounding rhyme in a most soul-chilling and alien tongue to most of you. Her haunting syllables seem to possess a dark power that... should... not... be...
Her face exudes wicked pleasure as she watches her new minions and old alike inflict grievous wounds on her enemy.
As the winged creature flies overhead and its prey evades its grip, the agile blonde thrusts her blades first among the precariously positioned party. One of them sinks into its flesh.
The holy warrior takes one more stab next. A talon blocks it aside this time.
The hatted storyteller ravages the abomination in melee last as it's horrifying form passes overhead. With claw-like hands ablaze from her fierce witchcraft, both make purchase. Bits of grotesque grayish flesh drip from her hands. Significant slash marks are left in the creature's underside, which continue to flicker with Naught's burning flames.
The burning flames on its flesh, more than any other assault, catch the attention of the winged horror. It wails in terror now, fumbling a bit in the air, taking greater and more rapid swipes of its wings, and clawing at its own body to put out the flames: all in all, a futile attempt to put them out.
The disturbed dancer then attempts to grasp the creature with her dark touch, but misses.
As it begins its maladroit efforts to remain aloft while panicking over the burning, the Speaker then lets loose his volley of hurtin'. He aims for a spotted weakness, and the first arrow pierces its flesh just beside a rotting patch near its upper spine. His second shot just misses as the creature suddenly drops several feet, fumbling again in the air in its panic over the fire.
Tracking its more jagged movements now, Christoph lands his third shot soundly in another rotting patch of flesh in the creature's neck. This manages to cause a minor sputter of... is that blood, or oil? Judging by their earlier encounter with the battered spidery machination on the Count's manse's hall floor, probably an admixture of both.
The winged horror, in spite of being slashed and pierced by spear, blade, claw, and arrow several times, and trailing a dribble of bloodied oil, continues in its graceless flight. It turns slowly to come back around for a second assault.
"C'mon, little chickadee," Naught calls out to the beast as she waits for its return.
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The witchy crone touches one of Naught's gory claws. With a wicked smile, she puts a dripping bit of golem flesh to her lips and tastes it, giving her pet a glowing red-eyed wink.
Her other bony claw continues to emanate a dark effervescence as she anticipates another fly-by.
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Naught gulps. What was that an innuendo for? I'm scared. More than of the giant bird thingy. It's still scary, but still...
The change in Aliseya's tone, appearance, and demeanor draws quite a bit of Rhia's attention, though the immediate threat takes precedence. As the foul creature swoops in again, greeted by the attacks of her new companions, she calls to those who have traveled with her most of her life. "Now, strike true!" she calls out, directing the vague ghostly image that manifests in the air above her.
Though the ghostly warrior is vague, the beautiful ethereal spear it wields is anything but, glowing with cold light, the weapon is thrust forth to catch the winged monster in its aerial pass.
In the back of her mind, something in Aliseya's voice causes her skin to pebble as gooseflesh rises, a familiar yet ominous sensation.
Nodding in grim satisfaction as its grip on Sookie doesn't seem to take. Wasting no time, he draws from his quiver with practiced ease as he draws his bow to his -feel the arrow's flight, echoing in his ear- as he looses, draws, looses, draws and looses with smooth economical precision. Three hissing blurs of glittering metal launched in a few seconds.
As the winged horror arcs back around to assault the companions once again, it continues to panic and struggle with its burning wounds.
Another of the Speaker's swift arrows hits, yet deflects, off of one of the creature's odd, cold metallic eyes with a "clank" noise. It releases another horrifying cry as it casts a rage-filled glare at the Pharasmin warrior.
The ghost whisperer's phantasmagorial warrior then fully manifests before the creature in mid-air. It attempts to skewer it through. Alas, the tormented monstrosity evades its silvery thrust.
Another pain-wracked cry. A second arrow sinks deeply into the creature's neck, dead on center, immediately cutting its cry short. Oily blood jets forth from its neck in greater force now. The creature's entire body contracts, it fumbles mid-flight. Losing height, a third arrow grazes its hide. Its tensed body moves only from momentum now. Its jowl drops open as oily blood gushers from mouth and neck alike. The sound of fizzing can be heard as a steamy mist erupts from where flesh meets its acidic oily blood.
Suddenly, as its trajectory reaches 30 feet from the companions, its body erupts into a blazing fireball... and it's headed straight for YOU!
Naughty smiles as the monstrosity bursts into flames. Which promptly vanished as she watches the inferno soar towards her and the others. ”IHATETHISPLACE!” she screeches as she dashes for the door, Roland digging his talons into her coat and happily screaming at the turn of events.
A slight smile -Kjell would be proud of those shots- is swiftly cut off in alarm and panic as the now biologic firebomb plunges towards him.
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”Sookie! Hurry!” Naught calls out as she all but tosses the Paladin over her should as they run.
One of the greatest detriments of Rhia's connection to the spirit world was the tendency to sometimes lose track of the physical realm. So in tune is she with her spiritual allies amid the battle, that the physical world becomes a faint dull background buzz.
To her new companions, she stands still, staring up blankly, her eyes completely blank, an ethereal glow emanating from them, unblinking even in the face of the fiery explosion
As the winged horror goes limp, the wicked witch heinously cackles. Her wretched smile features the jagged, yellowed teeth of an old carnivorous animal.
With a gravelly deep gasp, her red glowing eyes blink twice at the sight of the fireball fast approaching. She immediately rushes in, passing the Speaker and the storyteller.
Inside, eerie red eyes glower back at her more inept minions.
Too easy to murder. They will not do. Not at all...
While the others are busy helping each other get inside, the haggish crone's red eyes glaze over. She drops to the side of one thigh. Legs sprawled on the floor, claw-like hands hold her upper body up. The reddish glow dampens as she stares off, blankly. Her one pupil returns to its hazel hue, ragged gray hair revitalizes back to black lushness, and wrinkled skin smoothes back to its youthful appearance...
While well served by his own lightning fast reflexes, Christoph finds himself in the unenviable position of realizing halfway to safety that he is no longer on his own and that he is now responsible for helping others. All my instincts are going to be off... He dashes back, pulling frantically at his companion to get them to the safe cover of the door. "Faster now!"
The winged horror's flaming carcass fast approaches the companions on the stone platform. Zelda, Christoph, and Naught are swiftest to act. The door is immediately swung open to a lobby inside. Those who linger behind outside are either carried or dragged in behind them. Meanwhile, Aliseya's alter ego rushes past them all, collapsing on the floor as her form transforms.
Alas, the carcass impacts the platform just as the paladin and the ghost whisperer are being carried or dragged in. Everyone is thrown to the floor from the force of impact, as flames jet into the room from the body's explosion. A foul acidic spray follows immediately after, along with several jettisoned body parts.
Naught, carrying Sookie across her back, falls forward from the blast while running back inside. The paladin's body absorbs the bulk of the projectiles, providing effective cover for the storyteller underneath her and her deceptively heavy armor. Flame and acid scorch her armor and flesh. A large gasket, stuck with bits of oily charring flesh, smacks her right in the back, knocking the wind out of her.
Zelda's swiftness bests Christoph as the artful blonde suddenly grabs the dreamy-eyed oracle's arm and drags her inside. She ducks behind a large cabinet, urging Rhia to do likewise. Yet Rhia's attention is unfortunately and rapidly brought back to the present situation only as flame and acid singe her flesh and her ethereal attire alike. A metallic part, coated in oily oozing blood, flings into her thigh with such a force, she's literally swept from her feet, landing on her back and bumping her head.
The Speaker manages to find cover behind the large cabinet with Zelda. The witchy woman, seated further across the room, evades the range of the array of hazards.
The bulk of the burning remains then slides from the broken platform, falling to the dark falls below. Oily and bloody patches and chunks of flesh and metal remain alight on the platform, with the flames beginning to burn the rope bridge
Once the companions recover themselves and their bearings, they see they're in a lobby crammed with large glass-doored cabinets full of weird, alchemically preserved creatures and creature parts. Some of the glass doors are shattered from the blast, though the bulky cabinets remain upright. Most notable are a pair of ice mephit wings, several large spiders, parts of a dissected giant slug, and the digestive tracts and proboscises of three stirges.
Three doors lead further into the building, one on each wall of the square room (north, west, and south; east leads back outside to the burning platform and rope bridge).
"Ali!Sookie! Rhia!" Naught promptly calls out as she collects herself and crawls over to the paladin.
Roland meanwhile glides over the Dancer.
With a soft groan, Rhia forces herself to sit up. The ghost whisperer's eyes gradually sharpen, taking in the carnage around her as unseen hands tamp out the smoldering edges of her clothing. "Th..thank you. That was...unpleasant to say the least....and painful."
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"No one died this time though!" Naught happily announces.
A peacock stares back at Aliseya as sight returns to her better self. Roland tilts his head while examining the young woman, chipping and chirping softly as if to speak words of consolation.
Having experienced the last couple of minutes as if in a dream, the troubled dancer's vague memories slowly begin to clarify for her. She glances around, still somewhat hazily.
She suddenly gags, as if about to retch.
"Did I... did I lick..." she says uneasily. She points at Naught's claws, with bits of oily and bloodied flesh still clinging to them.
Turning her head away, she fully retches. It takes her half a minute to recover.
"Like. So. Gross."
After rinsing her mouth, she rubs Roland's head. Looking around at her companions in the lobby, she sees Naught, Zelda, and Christoph unharmed.
"Oh my gods! Are you, like, okay Sookie? Rhia?"
But her eyes widen at the sight of her worse for wear friends.
Slow to get back to her feet, she collects herself and approaches the two women who look like they've taken a serious beating. She offers to help each back to their feet.
She also retrieves a pair of white wands, offering to heal whoever needs it.
Roland affectionally nuzzles his head against the dancer's palm as she pets him before extending a wing to help escort the shaky dancer around.
Including rubbing her back when she goes into a retching fit.
Naught meanwhile quickly tries to rub the gore from her claws onto her pants.
"Oh..thank you. That definitely helps." Rhia says, accepting the help up, and sighing in relief as the healing energy fixes most of the scorching and acid burns, leaving only some bruising and a few scapes and cuts.
"I very much look forward to meeting this fiend of a count again." she says with irritation in her voice, and angry whispers fill the area for a moment.
"He's an absolute horrid host," Naught thinks aloud.
Sookie channels and borrows Aliseya's wand for a couple touches of healing. "That was nothing."
”Yay!” Naught let’s out with a jump as the unbothered Sookie heals herself and the others.
Seeing her new friends healed up, Aliseya's eyes look down to the floor.
"So, um... I hope I didn't scare anyone too much, back there. With my, uh... witchy side, I mean..."
"Scare? No, no.... grossed out." Naught lightly says.
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Sookie flips her hair back. ”Darling, I have lived in Ustalav all my life. If I was scared by such trifles, I would have died of fright before I left my mother’s belly. If something is not trying to kill you or frighten you, it is only because something far worse is preparing to.”
"Does she usually manifest when you're injured or harmed? Frightened perhaps?" Rhia asks with a genuine mixture of professional interest and concern.
Thas a good question actually.
Ali almost breathes a sigh of relief at Naught's and Sookie's responses. 'Grossed out?' "Well... yeah..." She looks embarrassed.
"It does usually happen whenever I get frightened," she replies to Rhia. "I don't have to actually be injured or anything."
"I can hear her in my head, too. At random times, not just when I'm scared."
"Sometimes, other weird things happen when I'm scared. Like, I'll be me, but I won't understand what everyone's saying. And noone else can understand me. Like I'm speaking in tongues or something, though I think I'm speaking normally while it's happening."
She now looks hesitant to continue. "To be honest, recently I've started to feel like she's a part of me, somehow. There was this ugly green creature of a woman. No fashion sense whatsoever. It came to us, before we got to Lepidstadt, and called me 'child.' I was totally repulsed, and I know my mother died soon after I was born, but... but part of me felt like... like..."
She lets her last sentence hang. Her face is stricken with horror at the thought of what she cannot manage to verbalize.
Listening to Ali's account, she studies her, noting the mismatched eyes and remembering the wicked, raspy voice dripping with bitterness and spite.
Naught saunters over and hugs the scared dancer as Roland does the same with his wings.
As Aliseya described the woman she met as an "ugly green creature," you suspect her mother may have been a green hag more specifically. Terrifying crones known to haunt foul swamps and tangled forests, green hags harbor an intense hatred for all beauty and purity. Making use of their varied deceptive abilities, these crones delight in murdering innocents, unhinging noble minds, and debasing the pure of heart. They are particularly fond of using disguise self to assume the forms of alluring young maidens and then seducing young men away from their lovers or families. In this form, they can infect such noble and upstanding citizens with all manner of debauchery and scandal. Some green hags prefer to reveal their true natures to their lovers at a moment precisely engineered to drive the man mad with horror and shame. Others drag out their dalliances and do what they can to utterly ruin the lives of the men they seduce before showing the broken shell that remains the truth. In the end, the luckiest of these unfortunate lovers end up being eaten by their green hag companions—for the unlucky, their final doom can be much worse, for the cruel imagination of the green hag is vast.
Grunting as he hurries to stand after the crashing seems to stop, he draws and nocks an arrow as he scrutinizes this new room of horrors for more threats.
Momentarily satisfied that they are not about to be immediately attacked, he turns his attention to his companions. "Glad you're all alright." He eyes Aliseya for a moment, unsure how to react to everything he's seen, "Can't say it sacred me, precisely. Alarmed maybe."
His eyes flicker to Rhia -She? She's right there? What are you on about?- then back to the dancer as she answers. Still perplexed by the unusual situation, there is little that is said assuages the growing tickle of alarm in the back of his mind. Old tidbits of fireside lectures with Kjell and in drafty Pharasmin monasteries begins to form a better picture. Remember that this is the path you've been tasked to walk, Speaker. The Lady will Guide.
A slight intake of breath and his eyes narrow as he watches the woman, "I don't suppose the name changeling means much to you, Aliseya? What you're describing, and what I've seen, seems to fit the bill. I don't want to offend, but I share what I know if you like." He pauses, his face grows more serious (if that were possible). "It might not be pleasant to hear."
The dancer hugs Naught and Roland back with a comforted smile.
"Changeling?"
Ali blankly shrugs at Christoph's question.
"Uhmmm..."
As she listens to him further, the young woman's facial expression and body language vividly capture her inner conflict. Part of her feels a deep aversion to knowing too much about her condition. Yet she simultaneously seems eager to know everything and more about her inner demon.
At last, a look of resolve.
"Ignorance is bliss. But not to everyone around you... or to yourself, when it eventually leads to your own peril. So, like... yeah. Tell me what you know."
"Well...what do you know of your mother, Aliseya?" Rhia asks. She knew this part all too well, the tenuousness that came before revealing something that the subject might rather not know. In her experience that usually involved speaking with a family member, of someone who'd for one reason or another I crossed the line between death and undeath. But in this case the harm is likely to be much the same.
Aliseya looks distantly off to the side of Rhia, as if looking into the past.
"She was very caring. Very loving, and warm hearted. And very beautiful. But she died, soon after I was born. Tată told me all about her. He told me many stories..."
She crinkles a smile thinking about her father.
"He enjoyed telling stories. He had a gift for it. He was also a fantastic violinist..."
A tear comes to her eye.
"He died, too. Recently, though; he raised me. I couldn't ask for a better tată growing up..."
Realization dawns on her.
"Oh, but you asked about my mother. I could tell you a story or two..."
”If you’re up for it,” the Storyteller quietly says.
"Sure." Rhia encourages, wheels turning in her head.
Could an enchantment last that long after the enchanter's death?