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"I believe we should investigate the tracks then," Isilme says, "If there's something happening here, it might be important for those at the fort to know about it."
Part II
A star falling from the heavens is neither omen nor auspice, it is simply a reminder from our lady that nothing is eternal. -- The Book of Stars
Though sleep had called to them all, Song felt its pull strongest, perhaps due to the whims of her lady. As she gave herself to its embrace, she drifted off into dreams again. Song walked down a dark path through a cemetery. Once it must have been green and full of life, rife with beautiful stonework, a monument to those who had come before; now, however, only fleeting glimpses of that time remained. She wandered long through its paths until she came upon a hedge of brambles at its center. So thick were they that she could find no way to pass through them. In fact, whatever had despoiled the grounds had failed to pierce through them as well, though it had certainly taken its toll. She peered through the gaps where it was thinnest and within she saw a miraculous sight. At the center stood a bush with a single rose blooming surrounded by four magnificent statues that had been spared the fates of those without, and amidst it all a young girl lay curled up, sleeping peacefully. She smiled and started to call out to the child, but instead awoke to a room filled with sunlight.
The group had begun to assemble already, for they had a monumental task ahead of them. She recounted her dream to the others, thinking it would ease their minds, for somehow she knew it was meant for them. The story moved both Rose and Lion, though each took a different meaning from it, and all were heartened by its telling. Before long, Wolf, called for the heroes to assemble upon the ramparts of Bastion. They looked out from the battlements and saw company after company of soldiers and cavalry, their metal armor gleaming in the sun. “Our troops are ready to march,” said Wolf to the group, “They will stall the demonic forces while your group infiltrates Bulwark, the fortress which they have taken as their base. I will accompany you in that task, but in my absence the troops will need someone to lead them into battle, some…” Wolf found herself interrupted by Tower’s booming voice as he strode forward to the ramparts, removing his helmet.
“Soldiers! Heed my words!” he said, pausing for a few moments to allow the amassed forces to turn towards him. “Today we march to ensure the future of our home, of our friends and loved ones! We know the demons’ plans, and so we know what we must do: We will fight so that these heroes will have the time needed to thwart their plans. They are my friends, together we have fought our way through countless battles, and though I would prefer to fight at their side I will do what I must. Will you fight along side me? Will you lend me your strength to ensure that these heroes may accomplish a feat which hasn’t been seen in the last century?” A cheer rose up among the troops, slowly at first, and then gathering strength as more crusaders lent their voices to it. “We will fight so fiercely the demons will think the very hosts of the heavens have marched upon them! They will tremble at our approach, and they will pay for every injustice and evil they’ve committed! And when the day ends, they will find their armies shattered and their plans dismantled, They will have tasted both fear and defeat!” The chorus of cheers from below turned into a roar as they raised their swords and spears to honor the man who would lead them into battle. Turning to Wolf, Tower grinned broadly, and she responded “I suppose that is settled then!” with a laugh. “We depart for Bulwark immediately!” she added, turning to head back into Bastion.
With Tower, Wolf, and the heroes at the head of the armies, they marched forth in good spirits. Boldly they pressed forward, the clanging and clanking of countless suits of armor marching calling out their challenge to the demons. When the demons finally met them, he turned to the others and wished them the forge-father’s blessing before charging into battle at the head of the column. Tower waded into the mass of lesser demons and cultists with a fearsome cry, each swing of his mighty hammer laying low a foe. The heroes, at Wolf’s command, broke off to head to Bulwark. Though it was behind enemy lines, the majority of their forces had moved to meet the crusaders in battle. When they approached the main gate of the fortress, they found it guarded not by cultists, but by terrible demons whose very presence drained the life of those around them, and who animated and wore the skins of fallen crusaders as a trophy. The group moved quickly to confront them, and Song conjured the illusion of an elven host charging forward to do battle with the demons. Distracted briefly by the figments, the demons were unprepared for the combined assault of Lion, Wolf and Rose. Though the fiends fought back fiercely, they succumbed before long to the group’s coordinated efforts, leaving the front of the fort unguarded.
"No Rush... so democracy." Ary says, lofting a brow to Annabelle. "If folks think it'd be wasting time, then it's a bad idea. If folks think it needs investigating, then we definitely should. At the moment, I'm leaning towards 'going into the brambles to make 'belle get off her high horse." she says with a grin.
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"Whether they lead to friend or enemy, we should follow them," Ehren agrees, hopping off the wagon to stretch his legs out.
"I think we should probably leave at least a couple people with the horses and wagon. Visibility is terrible, but we can at least keep in contact for the first hundred feet or so with message," she says, answering a question that no one had asked. "I can stay here if Val wants to go ahead with Ary. If one other stayed, that would probably be best. If you haven't found anything when you've reached the edge of the spell's range, then we can think about how to proceed."
"Isilme's plan sounds solid to me. Wandering too far apart in this kind of weather just leaves us vulnerable if something actually does come up. And I'd rather have everyone in arm's reach if something goes bad. Better to be careful and all that."
"Sounds good to me." Ary says as she follows the tracks towards the edge of the woods. "Leaving our horses alone seems like a bad idea, anyway, this close to the river... so we'll see." she says, following the tracks. "They're fairly fresh. We might be an hour behind. Give or take." she says, moving towards the outskirts of the woods.
Isilme connects the group with message, then Ary and Valaria move ahead to follow the trail. Annabelle moves to tie the horses (except for her own Blossom) to the trees, that way if something comes up and spooks them they aren't frightened off.
Ary and Valaria press into the fog and find it leads through the thick underbrush and up onto a hill covered in gnarled apple trees. The hill rises high enough that it breaks free of the fog, and Ary looks out over a flooded field sectioned off by raised, earthen walkways that converge on a larger, dry area. Thick clouds of fog partially obscure the water below. The water is moving - the floodwaters traveling downhill into some tributary of the West Sellen River. They are roughly 100' away- at the outskirts of the capabilities of the message spell their voices come in distorted, but legible.
Below, they see seven peasants assembled on the landmass amidst the flowing water. They do not see them, as they are mostly obscured by the trees, and there is a lot of fog besides. They are beside a pile of dead bodies - all other peasants. Five are standing and are armed with pitchforks, scythes, or knives - typical farming implements. Two - both women - - are on the ground - helpless.
One of the men grins. "Well? Well? On with it!" His booming voice carries to Ary and Valaria.
One of the women draws a dagger and advances on one of the women on the ground. She hesitates.
"It is what we must do," assures the loud man.
Val looks out over the water and sees the group gathered and the piles of dead bodies. "Oh, that's not good." She silently curses, hoping the situation isn't nearly as bad as it looks. Unfortunately, the man's voice quickly dashes that hope rather definitively. "Isilme," she hisses using the message spell. "We have a problem. A group of what looks like villagers on an island in a river killing each other. For some reason. Whatever it is, it's not good. Find somewhere for the wagon and get the rest of the group over here. I have a very bad feeling about this."
Ary concentrates for a moment, tugging on the Iomedae-gifted kernel of magic, and she can't help but smile despite the situation, each spell she casts reminding her of the warmth she had felt in her dream. "First into battle." she intones, and her magic wraps around her, bolstering her speed. "It looks as though they're preparing for a sacrifice... we can either bluff, or we can rush in. Give me a decision fast, Val."
Val hesitates for only an instant. "Do you think you can get in close while I try to keep their attention and talk them down? I might be able to keep their attention long enough for you to get close and do something if talking them down doesn't work."
One of the male villagers raises his hand. "Lashdi, ank bush al, bimbum."
Suddenly, one of the bodies in the corpse pile rises up and moves over to join the rest of the villagers. No one on the island reacts to this as if it were strange.
Val's eyes widen slightly when the corpse rises. She hurried whispers into the message spell again. "Okay, we have a necromancer speaking abyssal and what looks like human sacrifice. We can't wait. Get down here fast and join us. I think we're going to need the extra blades." She turns to Ary. "Right, let's get in close, fast. We can't let this go further." She spins and hurries down the slope, heading straight south and rushing toward the southern path across to the island.
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Val slips through the water and stops near the edge of the island, hoping that the group arrives quickly and not sure if the spell can still connect them now that they've run ahead. She draws her blades, silently praying that the others arrive before something unfortunate happens.
"Ok, I'll let them know and we'll be right there." Isilme says via the spell to Valaria. "We need to go, Val says there's a necromancer and human sacrifice going on up ahead," she says to the others as she begins to move in the direction Val and Ary had headed off.
Isilme and the others head quickly towards Ary and Valaria while the two slowly move down the hill and through the icy-cold water. Before they can catch up, the standing woman reaches down with her knife and slits the woman on her knees before her's throat. Blood gushes out the wound and onto the ground.
The woman who did it sobs. The man behind her clasps her shoulder. "Good. Good. It is all falling into place."
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Ehren nods, having already procured a pinch of dirt from a pouch on his belt. A supernatural spryness comes over him as he follows after Isilme, a quickness to his steps.
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Initiative Order
1. Man #1, Woman #4
2. Annabelle
3. Valaria
4. Man #2
5. Hinagiku
6. Man #3, Woman #1, Woman #3 (Prone)
7. Ehren
8. Markus
9. Man #4
10. Ary
11. Isilme
Surprise Round!
1. Valaria
2. Ary
Val momentarily considers trying to talk the strange peasants down, but can't think of anything convincing enough to get them to listen to her. She simply doesn't know enough about the situation. And the murder of the helpless woman is enough to convince her that the strange peasants need to be stopped now. The entire scenario rubs her the wrong way and she feels like something else is going on, but she can't allow another murder to take place while she can help it. She erupts from the fog bank, charging down the man who seemed to have raised the corpse moments ago.
Valaria emerges from the fog, charging straight at the man she witnessed raise the dead... but moves straight past him. The man turns in alarm, as Ary moves slowly, but steadily around to his other side. He scowls.
"Crusaders," he growls, and begins to grin, impossibly wide. "Good, good. Your bodies will be perfect."
Man #1 is a man with a round face, matted wavy golden hair. He has a flail.
Man #2 is a short, overweight man with matted graying-blonde hair and a beard. He has a scythe.
Man #3 is an older gentleman with a long face, balding grey hair, and large green eyes. He has a scythe.
Man #4 is a young man with an angular face and curly red hair. He is very tall and has a scythe.
Woman #1 is a young woman with matted, platinum blonde hair around her face. She is wielding a dagger.
Woman #3 has wavy brown hair and pale skin. She is very overweight, and she is prone and helpless on the ground.
Woman #4 is unarmed. She has thick, curly blonde hair.
Round 1
The man who has his hand on the crying woman's shoulder moves quickly, grabbing ahold of the helpless woman on the ground. She weeps but offers no resistance, limp as a doll. He ducks behind her as a shield, staring at Valaria and grinning creepily as he moves. Valaria makes the mistake of glancing at him, and is filled with dread and unease. The freshly risen woman cackles, an enormous scorpion crawling out of her clothes and across her body. She raises a hand in a clenching motion and Valaria lifts up slightly into the air, as if being choked. She cannot move. She can only watch, helpless.
Annabelle is up
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Annabelle squints towards the battle, then turns back towards the rest of the group. "Valaria's in trouble, you guys! We've gotta go!" then she moves towards the land-bridge that connects the islands.
She could move faster, but Markus had ordered her to stay close to him.... she hesitates, looking back towards him, but stops.
She draws her glaive.
Ary moves quickly after Valaria into the fray, standing shoulder to shoulder with her... until she nearly takes a dive.
Not really having time to apprise herself of the situation fully, with lives at stake, Ary tries to mentally recap. The man with the flail seemed to be enjoying pushing the people, and the redhead with the scythe had raised curly blonde from the corpse pile... and that she was a caster.
That left two men... and two prisoners.
"Drop your weapons." she says, simply, though she doesn't say it with quite the level of command necessary to convince a group of prisoners to do so when surrounded by cultists.
Only then does she notice Val hadn't ever stopped nearly taking a dive.
Valaria is up.
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Val growls and violently throws off the spell holding her. "You're not going to get to use my body for anything, murderer."
The overweight bearded man with the scythe hesitates for a moment, then circles around to behind Valaria. He swings at her, but Valaria intercepts the handle of his scythe with her starknives and shoves them aside. She is much stronger than she looks, apparently.
Hinagiku is up.
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Hinagiku had been on guard ever since they had stopped. Eyes closed, since the fog did not allow them to see really far, she focused all her attention to her hearing, letting herself feel the very sounds penetrate her mind. She analyzed none, yet recognized all.
When Annabelle spoke, she was ready to act. She barely had to wait to understand the meaning of the cavalier's word. In an instant, she was deftly moving through the orchard, following the path that Ary and Val had taken. That is, until she arrived at the top of the hill and had to stop her run to avoid falling down into the river.
For a moment she stood there, observing the fight down below.
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The older man follows the overweight one with his own scythe, moving to flank Ary. He swings awkwardly at her, and Ary easily rebuffs the blow with Faith.
The young, crying woman with the dagger moves towards Valaria... in a straight line at first but then she stops, with a strange look on her face. She instead moves to circle around to flank Valaria, and lunges faster than Ary can move to stab Valaria in the thigh. It's ultimately a shallow wound, though - there was not much force behind of it.
Ehren is up.
Ehren squints through the fog, having slowly worked his way down the incline. He thought he could hear some voices in the distance, but it was next to impossible to tell from where from. The slow progress he was making just wasn't good enough - the situation as Isilme had briefly described it sounded dire. I guess I have no choice, then.
With a sharp breath Ehren's body becomes nothing once more, dispersing into twisting winds that distort the area around him. The small air elemental then darts straight up into the sky, seeking to ascend above the heavy blanket of of fog. He emerges just as intended and stops briefly, to get his bearings straight. It was a good thing he had gotten the chance to test this form already... not that his brief experience made it any more suitable for combat. Still, it was by far the fastest way to get him to where he needed to go.
Seeing the island that Ary and Valaria were at, he darts forward at full speed, hoping that he would make it in time.
Unable to see what's going on easily from where he is, Markus elects to use the magic of the scale to push him up and over the scene.
He takes it out, gazing at its silver reflective surface for just a moment before he invokes its magic and a funnel of clouds appears below him, churning and pushing him up into the air.
The tall man with the curly hair, the necromancer, backs up away from Valaria and Ary and vomits out a swarm of spiders onto the two women... and on the other peasant. The spiders are... more disgusting than they are harmful to the two women, but the other man screams in horror as spiders crawl into his clothes.
Ary is up.
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Ary lowers her voice to a whisper as she tries to make sense of the situation and share the retcon with her team. "Curly blonde woman is undead and a caster. Matted blonde was goaded into killing by flail guy, he-Holy son of a F***" she says suddenly, as the man she was about to proclaim as evil spews spiders all over herself and Valaria. From his mouth of all places, but she doesn't let herself get distracted by the biting swarm... even though too long in it will be the death of her.
"Okay, redhead guy needs to die." she says, returning her voice to a whisper. All the better to not let the spiders into it. "Both scythe guys have attacked, but..." she trails off, as she shifts her weight forward, through the swarm, trying to bring down the person who'd summoned it... at least she knew he was a bad guy. She delivers a stroke so awful, the only thing she could really do was try to recover from it, by bringing the blade back around in a wide arc.
Isilme is up.
Isilme looks down at the water and edge of a path below her, suspecting it was a good way to head towards where she'd seen Val and Ary. She utters a short prayer to Desna, calling upon her to guide her safely through to those in need. Taking off, she hops lightly down to the water close to the path ahead and begins to head along the path towards where the battle was ongoing. As she reaches a gap in the raised dirt she was sprinting down she skips over it lightly, barely even noticing it as she continues onward. She skips over a second one before coming to rest upon the island.
Not wasting any time, she traces the rune "आशा" before her and empowers it, filling all her allies with hope.
Looking over those present, she eyes them, trying to get a feel for the situation. She looks at the woman nearest her first, and then the man being attacked by the spiders. When she starts to look at the other man flanking Valaria, she just can't help but feel she's missing something. Summoning her magic to gather inspiration, she studies him again briefly, this time noting something strange.
After a few moments she whispers to the others. "Val, the woman behind you is an innocent, as is the man in the spiders with you. There's something off about the other man by you, however."
All of the peasants on the island are actually corpses, with the exception of Woman #1, Woman #3, and Man #3.
They are not, however, reanimated corpses.
Round 2
The man hiding behind the trembling body of a peasant woman backs up a few feet. He puts his flail away and raises his hand against Valaria.
The risen woman cackles and points at Isilme in the distance. A flaming sphere manifests on the far end of the mudbank and hurtles towards her.
She then turns and vanishes into the fog behind her.
Valaria is up.
Val tries to curse, but she finds herself frozen again, unable to even speak. She desperately attempts to marshal her will and drive off the spell.
With another growl she throws off the enchantment. "If that's the best you've got, I'd advise you to start running."
The short, bearded fat man with the scythe swings at Valaria once more, but Ary has her back, repelling the man's swing before it can land.
Hinagiku is up.
Isilme catches sight of the woman beginning to cast and realizes she is being targeted with a spell. Tumbling to the side, she manages to get out of the way when the ball of flame goes careening by her.
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Markus squints and furrows his brows, appraising the scene. He sees everybody fighting, he sees the peasants. "There must be something more. Where did these peasants come from? They're not even alive - just zombies. But... not magical? There must be something else inhabiting the bodies.", Markus whispers into the spell.
"This is chaotic. I need to incapacitate some of them."