The other guard, chased out into the middle of the street, turns to confront Albrekt. He braces his stance and steps closer to attack with his halberd.
The guard's polearm bites deep into the antipaladin's exposed flank, driving clean into his hip and grinding against bone. Blood flows freely down the warrior's leg and onto the cobblestone road.
Haruk closes the distance to the man, and fires off a pair of force bolts which slam into the guard
Haruk's arcane missiles strike the guard in the chest, causing him to stumble but he does not fall.
Albrekt steps away from the guard, attempting to give himself room to bring the enchanted glaive to bear;
The brute aims an arcing swing at his opponent;
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Albrekt's swing is powerful, but predictable. The guard handily ducks the wide, arcing swing of the weapon and maintains his footing. He grips his halberd steadily, a look of grim determination in his eye.
Solace glares at the guard again.
The young man's determination falters as sweat beads across his forehead, eyeing the witch warily.
"Help me!" he cries out to no one in particular before he grits his teeth and lunges towards the scarred Ulfen once more.
The guard's swing comes up short, scoring a minor wound across Albrekt's knee rather than the solar plexus he was aiming for.
Albrekt ignores the mounting damage to his scarred frame and presses home against the wounded guard... The brute reaches out with his baleful touch;
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Albrekt's touch sends traces of black fire racing up the guard's arm, causing him to shriek in pain. His eyes go wide with terror as the grim reality of his situation becomes evident.
Cursing her current lack of spells, Solace moves over towards the guard and attempts to stab him with her shortspear.
Moving to just behind Albrekt, Haruk calls upon the freezing cold of Cocytus and solidifies it into a ray he fires at the guard.
Rushing into the street, Solace circles around the guard and strikes from behind with her shortspear. Her strike lacks the power to penetrate the guard's armor, however, and the tip bounces off of the metal scales.
Haruk approaches cautiously, firing a beam of frost into the melee and scores a glancing blow on the man's shoulder causing him to wince in pain.
Like a caged animal, the guard lashes out with a furious cry. His halberd strikes desperately at Albrekt...
...but strikes nothing but the air in front of him. He clenches his teeth, breathing heavily but clearly ready to face death in defiance of his attackers.
Spitting in anger Albrekt steps backward and brings down the enchanted glaive with all the rage and force the brutal antipaladin can summon;
"Now you umkommen!"
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Stepping back alongside the sorcerer, Albrekt brings his enchanted weapon to bear in a powerful downward arc. The leading edge of the blade strikes the young man in the temple at an angle, but his skull is nowhere near strong enough to mitigate the antipaladin's fury. The weapon rips straight through orbit and cartilage, bisecting the jaw, and tears still further into the upper torso. The blade finally comes to a halt somewhere in the guard's chest, the combined drag of armor, bone, and sinew ending its terrible momentum. With a wet ripping sound, the guard's corpse falls away from Albrekt's instrument of death, the two halves of his upper body hitting the cobblestones in a spray of crimson.
Perception! (+2 additional if the thing being perceived is Human):
Kamau watched from a nearby rooftop, hunkering low to keep his profile away from the night sky, a shadow in the deeper shadows of the city. He couldn't call out to them without being loud enough for others to hear, so he simply silently willed them all to pay attention...
Not even pausing the admire his handiwork Albrekt tilts his head to listen to the silence...
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"More men kommen..."
"Time to leave quickly then." Solace turns and begins to run away from the scene.
Haruk claps Albrekt on the should "Well done old boy, well done! Twas a truly masterful blow that you struck to rid us of that most bothersome guard" He looks you over, noting the blood "You've made quite a mess my friend. I believe I can clean you up right quick, if you'll let me"
"Here Albrekt, you'll attract too much attention bleeding like a stuck pig from that guard. Let me cast a healing spell on you."
A bit hesitantly, Solace will place her hand on Albrekt and casts a cure spell upon him.
Knowledge (local)
If the pain of his deep wound knitting together registers... the Rovagite does not show it.
At Haruk's offer Albrekt shrugs his heavy shoulders;
"If Albrekt muss be clean to walk amongst menn...then Ja."
The brute opens his arms to recieve whatever solution the sorcerer has in mind...
"I believe it is time we made our escape. I most likely could talk our way out of any trouble, but I would rather not risk it. Does anybody have a suggestion as to where we might make our way to?"
"We can head for my shop. I'd rather not risk getting lost in the residential section."
"Sounds good to me, let us depart, most quickly"
After a moment of deliberation, the party tears off into the night in the direction of Castle Ordranti with intentions on the marketplace beyond where Solace's shop lies. The hue and cry of the guards echoes behind them as they hustle along the cobblestone streets. The castle itself looms in the east, casting its long silhouette into the moonlit sky.
Knowing that a mad dash through the late-night streets of Caliphas would draw too much attention, the group slows their retreat as they near a guard checkpoint at the southern end of the castle grounds. A pair of men clad in breastplates bearing the mark of Prince Ordranti stand vigil alongside large braziers on opposite sides of the street. It would be impossible to circumvent their post at this point without seeking to scramble along the nearby rooftops or double back into the arms of the party's pursuers...
Wrapped in his winter blanket Albrekt lumbers along with the group, he eyes the oncoming guardpost with disinterest as they approach;
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Solace whispers to her little group. "Haruk, you better skilled than I at telling lies. Would you care to take the lead in talking to the guards? Perhaps you brought me your friend who was suffering from some strange affliction and we are on our way to my shop for some potions to help him?"
"Wonderful suggestion my dear! Come, let us be done with these guards as soon as possible and continue on our way"
With the Haruk assumes his most superior expression and moves confindently up towards the guards.
As the group approaches, the guards take note. While not hostile, the guards are most certainly on edge. One of them, a middle-aged man with a rather distinguishing scar across the bridge of his nose raises a hand.
"Hold there. What's this all about then? You lot shouldn't be traipsing around at night, there's an assassin on the loose. Go back to your homes."
The other guard, a bit younger and larger than the speaker, rests a hand on his sword and gazes out towards the neighboring buildings... scanning the rooftops in particular.
Albrekt unconciously mimics the guards actions and finds himself looking skyward.
Haruk appears shocked and a bit worried over the news of an assassin "Oh my, an assassin you say? We're just making our way back to the young lady's apothecary shop, as she said she needs some herbs and such to help treat my sick friend here."
The older guard looks Albrekt over, narrowing his eyes slightly, then looks back to the others. "What's wrong with him? He looks okay to me. We can't let anyone pass through the castle square, not at night like this. Either go back to your homes and wait until morning or head back through the rowhouses."
The guard gestures back in the direction the party came from. The younger guard turns his attention away from the rooftops and looks to the group again, simply nodding to the older man's advice.
Haruk flashes a quick look and makes a very subtle gesture to Albrekt
"Well you see Captain, my friend here was a bit stupid and wandered into the sewers, looking for adventure. He was gone for the whole day so I went looking for him with my lady friend here. We found him stumbling out of the sewers, the apparent victim of a were-rat attack. We need to get him to her shop right away or else we won't be able to cure him"
Albrekt looks slooooowly back towards the guards, his eyes narrow and he brushes at an imaginary set of whiskers;
"Ja. Ratten... eek-eek-eeeeek!!!!!"
The two guards exchange glances for a moment, the older one frowning deeply while the other one simply shrugs.
"A were-rat? Here in Caliphas? You're absolutely certain?"
Without really waiting for a response, the man bites his lip nervously and looks to his younger companion again. "Alright, fine, go on through... but Sergei will escort you. We can't have people in the castle square unattended."
The younger man nods and lifts the barricade out of the path before gesturing the others through. The older man returns to his post with a scowl, muttering under his breath about were-rats. Once through the checkpoint, the younger man lowers the barricade and joins the group to lead them through the square.
The group passes through the castle square under the watchful eye of their escort. It seemed, for the moment, that they had managed to evade their pursuers. The night was quiet now, save for their own footsteps and the quiet crackle of the guard's torch burning.
Perhaps halfway across the castle square, in the shadow of Castle Ordranti itself, the silence is abruptly broken. The sound of a few large stones falling clatters out from a nearby alley just on the other side of a wrought iron fence. The guard snaps out his sword in an instant, squinting into the darkness. "Who goes there?!" he calls out in a booming voice.
"An ally," Kamau declares flatly, dropping to the ground. "You and yours do not patrol the rooftops, from which came the assassin's arrow today. I will not suffer to have my companions caught out in the open as the victim was." As he spoke, he loomed up out of the dark beneath the rooftop overhang, a challenging scowl-smile on his dark features.
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Still caught up in his mummer's role as rat-bite victim Albrekt fails to notice anything until Kamau appears from the shadows...
"Come towards the light," the guard orders, taking a few steps towards Kamau. He glances between Kamau and the others, sword still held at the ready.
A heavy wrought iron fence separates the road from the rowhouses where Kamau currently stands in the alleyway. As the guard approaches with his torch, the long shadows of the bars dance eerily along the backs of the houses. Before long, the illumination falls upon the Garundi, his dark skin distinct even at the light's edge.
The guard narrows his eyes at Kamau. "Your name," the guard says, less of a question and more of a command.
Kamau took a few rolling steps forward, leaving his backpack in the alleyway behind him and visibly limbering his arms as he walked. The barred shadows reflected starkly on his sharp features.
"I have obeyed your command, guardsman. I am here for you to see. My name is not for you to know, and you are better off ignorant of it."
"You move in shadows and carry a bow on your back without regard for the laws of this city during a manhunt. You will not tell me what I do and do not need to know, Garundi. Name," his tone is harsher now, and his brow furrowed.