Sonya concentrates on her focus to Abadar.... and gets feedback of there definitely being evil a-present. Just what, precisely, may be a bit harder. The room seems to be pervaded by a general sense of wrongness and evil: there's definitely evil coming from that far fountain, the one that pulses with orange-hued light.
E's not 100% certain what the simmering orange pool is or might signify, but he feels it has some pent-up arcane energy in it. Kind of ominously so. Like something might erupt from those angrily-titian depths, maybe. Is it possible for liquid to feel angry? Because this liquid sort of does.
As you pick your careful way forward to the base of the steps that lead up to the higher dais, an angry, high-pitched voice rings out in space from the vicinity of the orange fountain. A tiny, winged figure abruptly becomes visible, hovering over the orange pool, a small but wicked-looking dagger in one hand.
"Mortals! You... dare... desecrate! My... sovereign territory!" she shrieks, and slashes at her wrist with the knife, dark blood dripping down into the orange pool. "WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT!"
The pool flares with a violent glow, and a splash of liquid blorps out of it, congealing into a vaguely humanoid shape on the edge of the fountain. After that, the orange glow dims.
The magma-like liquid that the pool retched forth is quickly congealing... into something that looks just like the creature you faced in the entrance cavern.
"Be careful, there's somethi-" Sonya starts to say.
"You've got no power here or anywhere but the Abyss, and by Abadar's hand I'm sending you right back there!"
A flash of bright golden light erupts from her hand, accompanied by a brief deafening sound of coins jangling.
Sonya feels a brief sense of resistance as she tries to bathe the creatures in her powers, but after a second she overcomes it. The misshapen humanoid that has just coalesced from the pool stands for a moment, bathed in the glow.... but seems unfazed by it. Her spell seems to have had no effect on the creature at all.
The light also washes over the quasit, who shrieks, throwing a tiny arm up over her eyes... but also doesn't succumb. Shaking off the effects with a twist of her wings, the quasit disappears from sight. You hear leathery wings flapping for a brief second.
Rokan falls back to the doorway. "I'll try to keep it inside!" he shouts. Then the Shoanti elder-in-training begins calling on the spirits of the air and fires, readying to unleash their power on the creature should it reappear.
Rokan hurries to the door to be on his guard against the flying threat, and E draws his weapons.
The hideous congealed form's head swivels to the right, focusing on Sonya, and then it shambles towards her with a low, building snarl.
The bite is brutal and hard-hitting, but fortunately Sonya's strong faith shields her mind from the nightmarish images.
Seraka stood stock still as she saw her vision of the quasit and sinspawn appearing. She wastes no time preparing herself.
Seraka raises a fist and calls out.
"Gorum! Let's show these edgy a#%%~%!s what a real battle looks like."
Empowered by Gorum's favor, she bounds up the stairs, landing a few feet away from the spawn.
"Feathers! Blue! You two watch for the little coward while we throw this one back in the orange glowy crap."
Sonya curses when the quasit disappears, and then curses even louder when big fangs chomp down on her arm. She tears it away and clenches her fist on her sword as her wounds start to stitch themselves back together.
"A little help over here, Seraka!" Sonya barks as she tries not to lose her footing on the stairway.
You hear-- and see-- nothing from the quasit. Sort of an ominous silence, though.
"We will get it," responds Rokan, his eyes scanning the room for any traces of the invisible quarry.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Rokan's senses are strained to the limits, but he can hear nothing.... until.... a whiff of sulfur, a faint dark miasma wafting from a point in space... he acts, and the quasit appears, ringed in green-flickering flame from Rokan's magic and flying above the skull-ringed pool. She shrieks in anger, but the smell of sulfur continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the hideous abomination attacks Sonya with a single-minded intensity.
Sonya... as the savage teeth tear into you again, your vision clouds...
Seraka steps forward, swinging over the pool of molten hot burning stuff towards the sinspawn.
And she stumbles on the edge, losing the arc of her swing. She silently curses to herself as she recovers.
Sonya jabs at the monster to keep it at bay, twisting to see the source of the screech. "Be careful!"
Sonya and Seraka try to bring down the ugly thing, but without much luck. Sonya briefly imagines she got bitten, but it was all in her mind.
The stench of sulfur increases, and suddenly, a man-sized thing appears in front of Rokan, lurching at him with a disgusting glorping noise. It looks... well, if one stretches the term one can say it's vaguely humanoid-- it has things that could pass for legs, and two emerging limbs with which it attacks Rokan, and a blob that might be a head with two holes for eyes... but on the whole it looks more like a child's crude mud-fashioned idea of a person than anything else-- if the mud were flesh.
Though illuminated by Rokan's magics, the quasit shows no signs of giving up. She laughs at watching her minion appear and strike Rokan, a high-pitched giggling.
"I am QUEEN, blue one! Queen of all these catacombs! The Thassilonians... that... that was a long time ago! They don't rule here anymore, I do! Watch, I can make your strongest warriors bow to my will! YOU THERE, YOU OVERGROWN UGLY... THING, GO TO SLEEP!"
She turns and glowers at Seraka.
Seraka feels a faint flicker of drowsiness, but shrugs it off easily. The quasit looks stunned, then all the more furious. "OH, YOU THINK YOU'RE SO TOUGH!"
”There you are, little demon,” Rokan says quietly as his eyes narrow in focus. The little creature manifests a disgusting mass of … something right in front of Rokan, but the hunter won’t be deterred. Ignoring the glancing blow, he sidesteps quickly, and two of his new cold iron arrows flow from his quiver, onto the bowstring, and across the intervening space … hissing towards their illuminated target.
One of Rokan's arrows neatly nails the quasit, but she just manages to dodge the second.
The abomination continues to press its single-minded attack on Sonya...
The jaws miss her by a hair, but one of the deformed hands catches her with a talon.
Any frustration she had at missing the sinspawn evaporated as she chuckled at the quasit.
"I don't have to think I'm tough, buddy."
She overhead chops at the sinspawn. Feathers could handle the talky flying one.
Sonya slices and dices (but mostly stabs) the sinspawn as it reels from Seraka's blow.
Sonya vaults over E as he recovers from his own attempt at vaulting, and it goes alright, but is not nearly as stylish.
Sonya whistles at the summoned creature, focusing and amplifying the echo in the stony chamber to attack its mind.
Seraka delivers a powerful chop to the monstrosity attacking Sonya, and Sonya finishes it off a second later with a quick stab, while E calls out advice for dealing with the new critter. Sonya then hurriedly vaults downstairs to help Rokan.
E knows that lemure devils have no particular special attacks, really. But it is possibly of interest to him-- or to Sonya-- that they're immune to spells that target the mind.
The lemure closes with Rokan and claws at him with an disgusting glorping sound as its flesh moves against itself.
The arrow-mark on the quasit's flesh starts healing a little bit. Deciding Rokan is the greatest threat to her with his bow, she focuses on him. "Drop that nasty thing!"
Sorry, did you just tell him to drop Markov's bow? The bow that Desna has blessed? Rokan would laugh, except that his face might break, or something. Flustered at another spell-failure, the quasit keeps hovering up at the ceiling, shifting around a little to try and keep distance from the rest of you.
Sorry, did you just tell him to drop Markov's bow? The bow that Desna has blessed? Rokan would laugh, except that his face might break, or something.
”Can someone come get this lump of fat off of me?” Rokan growls as another claw grazes his side. As he shrugs off the creature’s mental assault, he reverses direction, diving to his left and around the summoned creature to once again gain a clear line of sight on the quasit.
Draw. Aim. Release. A third cold iron arrow flies at the towards its target.
Seraka drops down from the platform onto the ground and moves up to strike at the lemure .
"Working on it, Feathers."
She swings at the lemure, but her grip falters. Seeing the disgusting mass of flesh up-close throws her off just long enough.
Sonya rushes to Rokan's side as he pelts the glowing quasit with arrows, sliding to a stop as she stabs forward into the misshapen lemure.
Seraka hurries down but swings with more force than accuracy at the summoned monstrosity. Sonya has more luck in hitting, though her blow seems to barely nick the creature despite the force she has behind it.
E rushes down to help interpose between the archer and the blob of flesh-gone-wrong. "Coming!"
E misses horribly. However, Rokan's single arrow finds its target and the lemure hisses with pain and fury. Still, her wounds continue to heal slightly.
Now unable to reach Rokan, the lemure attacks with mindless violence at the shining bastion of goodness in front of it.
Both claws miss... one by a hair. The quasit focuses on the creature most able to hurt her: the man with the bow.
"Run!" she shrills at him. "Panic, you dolt! Flee before my... my... sovereign majesty!"
Rokan feels a wash of fear, but is able to throw most of it off.... a little remains though: niggling doubts, is he really worthy to wield this bow?
Rokan grits his teeth through the continued mental onslaught. ”I do love to disappoint,” he responds, another pair of arrows speeding through the air.
Seraka steps to the side into a flank with Sonya. She swings again, thinking she's prepared to look at the fleshy mass undulating in front of her. Her mouth twists in disgust as she realizes that, no, she was not ready.
"We'll keep it busy!"
Rokan's arrows fly, but not true... some doubts remain, despite his confident words. Unfortunately, Seraka and Sonya have just as rotten luck, getting in each other's way with their attacks.
It's E who steps forward and drives his rapier twice into the vomitous mass of flesh, once with brutal precision. Ichor spurts from the deeper wound, though his second strike seems to be ignored by the creature.
The lemure lashes back at E.
...to no effect. Overhead, the quasit's wounds continue to slowly knit together, and she looks around with a mixture of fear and fury. "You! Blue thing! Sleep! Just... just sleep!!!"
E doesn't feel very sleepy.
As the last two arrows fly wide of his small, mouthy target, Rokan grimaces. He focuses, the room seeming to narrow to encompass only the quasit and the intervening space, and the next two arrows fly truer.
"You first," he mutters.
As she continues to miss, Seraka's frustration mounts. She channels that frustration into powerful swings, but the lack of focus leaves her continuing to miss the mark.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sonya has to keep hopping back as Seraka's blows clang and spark on the ground around the demon.
Both of Rokan's arrows strike true! The quasit reels mid-air, almost going into a tailspin, but managing to right herself and remain airbound, though dark blood drips from her.
Sonya and Seraka continue to have little luck closing on the disgusting flesh-demon, while E dinks it, but feels his damage blunted by the thing's otherworldly hide. However... the lemure puffs out of existence in a sudden whiff of sulfur nonetheless, before striking again.
Despite the grievous wounds Rokan's arrows have inflicted, the quasit is still flying, a few of the arrow punctures sealing a little bit. She looks panicked to see her servitor disappeared. "No! Ugh! Do I have to do everything myself?!"
She points at Rokan, shouting, and a sickly green light flares from her tiny clawed hands to the Shoanti man.
The beam misses him.
Rokan ducks under the green light and steps forward, trying to keep the little creature within close range as he lets another two arrows fly.
"You could give up," he offers the quasit.
Seraka grumbles as the lemure finally disappears. She spits on the ground where it once stood (does fleshy ooze "stand?"). She turns a tired look towards the quasit and regards her throwing spears. She finally sighs and trods over next to Rokan, taking up position next to him like a pikeblock might stand in front of their archers.
She casts a quick spell, calling upon Gorum's guidance, and then taps Rokan on the shoulder, passing it along to him.
"Hey, Feathers. Gorum says kill that f*!&er."
Sonya focuses on the fluttering demon, sending painful psychic static her way - the most painful thing she can think of for a demon, which mostly involves various benevolent god's symbols and happy religious proceedings.
Rokan's first arrow strikes true, while Seraka calls on the spirits of battle to aid him and Sonya summons up what qualifies as a nightmare... to a demon, anyway. The little creature shrieks raggedly at the arrow but shakes away the terrible visions.
E drinks. And knows things?
The quasit looks super grievously injured, though her wounds still sluggishly close. She twitches weakly, losing some altitude and flapping hard to regain it-- an arrow perforated one wing completely.
"You-- you invade my kingdom, and have the-- the NERVE to-- demand my surrender!?" she shrills, but raggedly.
"--I surrender if you swear to let me live and leave then, you... you imperialist scum!"
She warily watches to see how this is received, a spell at the ready if hostilities continue.
Seraka's face turns all angles at the quasit's whining.
"IMPERIALIST?! I'm half-shoanti and half-orc, a$$+%%$. I ain't imperializing s!%%."
Seraka takes a hand off her bardiche, draws her cold iron dagger, then chucks it at the demon.
Seraka flings a dagger.... accurately. The little demon has some answer to make, but Seraka's dagger catches her in the throat, cutting off her words in a gurgle. The tiny 'sovereign' plummets to the ground with an audible splat.
A quick inspection will reveal there exists a flicker of life in the ravaged form still.
Rokan nods to Seraka's well-aimed throw and hustles over to the quasit's still body, which he puts his soft-leather trail boot upon, ensuring it can't suddenly fly away. "This thing isn't allied with goblins or their plans. But it's a threat to this town." He nocks his final cold iron arrow, drawing it back and aiming it at the unconscious creature's head. "Is there reason not to destroy it here and now? I cannot imagine a creature that can fly, make itself invisible, and summon demonic friends is one we want to risk trying to keep confined or guarded. This town is better off with it gone completely."
The hunter stands poised and—if he receives no arguments quickly—he looses the arrow directly into its brain.
"I'm not about to let a demon live underneath the city where it can make more of those... things we fought earlier. Sandpoint has enough problems to deal with already, and now there's a tunnel open leading straight out of these ruins into city center."
"From what Tsuto wrote in the journal, it sounded like they hadn't contacted the quasit yet. I say we get rid of it before it wakes up and disappears again."