"We can hope," Val replies. She draws out Terendelev's scale and enchants her magical starknife with its power. "Isilme, Aron, I can infuse your weapons with good energy so at least we can hurt them reliably."
:)
"Sure. But we still have to try. I'll bless your starknife this time, and align Hina and Belle's weapon... plus Radiance. she finishes as she enhances Hinagiku, then Annabelle, then herself as she crosses the space, to finally Bless Valaria's weapon, if she doesn't come to her first.
"Alright. Val stops before she touches her knife. "Then I can align three weapons if we need to. If nothing else, we'll have a charge left over for an emergency."
The hezrou listens for a moment, then grunts and returns to defacing the temple with the horrific sludge it exudes with its partner.
Aron rejoins the others while they plan. He whispers, "I'm not certain this is a good idea. I've seen those things incapacitate entire squadrons with the stench alone...Is this truly the only way?" He sighs. "But... I made the oath. I will follow you, Captain."
"ooooh, don't be a coward, Aron." Annabelle gives Ary a very, very small smile as she aligns her glaive to fight the hezrou. "Thanks! Okay. Okay. We can do this! Right? Yeah of course we can." She glances at Hinagiku. "Ugh, this is gonna be real gross."
While Ary is imbuing her body with the strange magic from a silver scale, Hinagiku looks into her eyes. As she does, she seem somewhat more serious than usual.
"Ary, if these onis are as formidable as Valaria says, do you think I should try what the same thing I did with the minotaur? It might give use the advantage we need." she asks, uncertain whether such an approach would work on the onis she has never seen before.
"It would likely be a good idea. Just remember they'll be much more dangerous than the minotaur, and simply being close by might end very badly for you. We're going to need a lot of luck here... And hopefully backup." she sighs. "I'm not ordering anyone forward, Aron. It's your call whether to push forward with us, or not. If you're good with a bow, snatch my longbow, it has a bit of pull, and quiver. The silver-fletched ones are holy, and the red are bane. I don't know what you're capable of, and I don't have any more resources to grant you. For those who will press forward... I'm as ready as I'm going to be."
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Again Isilme finds herself in the role Ai'sintar had taken so long ago. Two Hezrous around the corner, and the group ready to rush in. She did not see this going well for them. Backing further around the corner to be out of earshot of the Hezrous, she addresses the group. "Our goal here is to find Aron's friend and take them to safety. We will need far more support than just us to fight them. We should send Val and I through to scout for him while the rest of the group takes cover." she says, urging the group to avoid direct confrontation.
"Fighting a single one would be difficult enough, and while I can likely negate their ability to call forth blasphemies, we would still be at a significant disadvantage. Let us find Sosiel and then we can consider getting support from the crusaders to dispatch or drive off the Hezrous."
"If we are determined to fight them, we need to use everything at our disposal. If we hold back, we will likely have people die. Remember that they, like other demons, can summon aid, and that we have no way of countering their stench. Nor will we be able to stop them should they decide to flee."
Aron nods, grabbing Ary's longbow. He keeps it in hand, sheathing his sword and putting away his shield. "I've been trained in all the basic martial weapons, same as any other crusader grunt," he assures.
Annabelle bites her lip, glancing at Isilme anxiously. "Ummmmm I'm following my Captain," Her eyes dart to Ary and Markus. "Okay, so, if we're doing this, someone lead the way!"
"I'm aware of the dangers, Isilme.". Ary says, chewing her lip. "And I also know that if anyone is in danger, they're at a much larger disadvantage than we are. I can't just leave a temple full of people to a couple of demons. I'm going to go in. But you probably already knew that... I'll try to keep everyone guided. You're right, though. Nina, take the bull's strength. Markus, Ehren, take these invisibility potions. You'll get the most use out of them, even if it's just to get out. I also have the slip stream, if one of you wants it."
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Ehren sighs inwardly, wary of the threat that they were being warned of. Both Isilme and Valaria seemed to think that fighting them directly was a terrible idea. It would hardly be the first time that they steered clear of a foe greater than them. But this time, with innocent lives potentially at stake, there did not seem to be much of a choice. So instead of arguing he simply nods, taking an invisibility potion, not liking the idea of it being an escape route. He then casts another spell, fortifying his willpower... though from the sound of it, it would be their fortitude that needed improvement.
He then looks to Valaria, well aware of the damage she suffered at the hands of the hag.
"Here," he says to her quietly, retrieving a long-forgotten scroll from his scroll tube and unfurling it. "If you are going to get close to one of those things, then you will need all of the help you can get."
Gently pushing away Ary's hand, Hinagiku refuses to take the potion handed out to her.
"Strenght has nothing to do with the way I fight. My power comes from feeling and following the flow of the world."
Having said that, she takes out a potion from her own bag, and drinks it. As she does, her skin takes up a darker hue and becomes bark like.
"Attack it once it has followed me."
Bowing, Hinagiku leaves the side of the group and heads for the street leading to the temple. A few feet away from the intersection, she stops and motions the others to follow.
Once they are all by her side, she swiftly runs down the street, stopping at the intersection leading to the temple.
"الشياطين ، كيف تجرؤ على تدنيس بيت الله ؟" she calls out, before continuing down the street. There, out of view, she turns on her heels, and waits for the oni to follow her.
"Onis, how dare you desecrate the house of a god?"
Hinagiku moves into the hezrous' sight, and they stop their focus on the temple to peer at her with wicked delight.
"Ah... bu il bal? Ai búshdoghum? Ni bosha nu di ai búshdoghum...."
"Glu roshum, bimbum, bum ditul hat bel pakki ata umbum'l..." chuckles the other one, thick ribbons of drool cascading from its lips...
"Ah who is this? A crusader? Too scrawny to be a crusader.... "
"No matter, brother, their bones will break like any other's..."
Initiative Order
1. Ehren
2. Annabelle
3. Hezrou #1, Aron
4. Valaria
5. Ary
6. Isilme
7. Hezrou #2
8. Markus
9. Hinagiku
Ehren is up!
Annabelle snaps her glaive to attention and runs down the alleyway, circling around behind Hinagiku. She holds her weapon at the ready, her undead body poised to deliver a powerful blow should the hezrous try to close with Hinagiku.
"I've got your back, senpai.", she murmurs.
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Perhaps it is dread, or perhaps it is the smidgen of insight he gained from his own spell, but Ehren reconsiders Isilme's words and starts to have second thoughts about combating the hezrou demons directly. Unfortunately, doubt only really starts to seep in once Hinagiku has already moved forward, moving subtlety off the table. The druid frowns, chiding himself; how did the saying about hindsight go?
"Does the temple have a rear entrance, Aron?" he asks calmly, trying to survey their options. Whether they stood a chance against the demons or not, the fact remained that this was a rescue mission. He draws a glass bead from his belt and rolls it in between his fingertips. "If things go south, we will need to secure an escape route."
Once he receives an answer, Ehren moves down the street, though not quite out into the open. He was not a powerful warrior by any means, and did not want to get in the way of his more capable allies.
Hinagiku sights when she realizes that Annabelle had followed her so closely. Alone, she knew the onis would have tried to toy with her a bit. Now, with allies, they might take it less lightly.
[small]"Everyone, please wait until the onis come. If they see too many of us, they might grow cautious."[/small] she whispers to the others.
Hinagiku sights when she realizes that Annabelle had followed her so closely. Alone, she knew the onis would have tried to toy with her a bit. Now, with allies, they might take it less lightly.
"Everyone, please wait until the onis come. If they see too many of us, they might grow cautious." she whispers to the others.
She then turns back toward the Hezrou, staring them down and waiting for them to move.
The hezrou stands its ground and begins to chant - "Bimbub ugh bi noshug rashi, bi oshul bol, bishdi bashol ugh hoshi oshurzug irbu bi Ashushorz kúsholump – pil ugh bi Rushil ank bi roshonk lel ugh Ghibhúrbai. Ashum al! Bush al ish bi kemb."
Aron unfortunately doesn't hear Hinagiku's whisper, as he is excluded from Isilme's message - he moves forward, slowly and carefully due to the burden of the many engineering tools he carries in his pack, finally leaning against the corner of al building and drawing a holy arrow for the upcoming attack.
Valaria is up!
Val curses under her breath and runs forward. "Everyone stop! she hisses urgently, speaking through the message and whispering to Aron at the same time. "They're calling more of their kind. Two was enough of a problem, but we cannot beat even more. Aron, is there a back way into the temple? Some way to get the priests out? We should focus on getting them to safety rather than fighting a losing battle."
Aron whispers back, "Yes, there is a back door, but how will we get there without being seen?"
"Considering that I'm invisible, I have a little over five minutes to get there. I have a spare potion of invisibility. If you come with me to show me the way, I'm sure we can make it before the spell runs out. We just have to convince the priests to leave, right?"
"Okay! Sorry, I didn't realize you had a spare. I-I don't know what to do. I just need to know if Sosiel is there or not. I'll do whatever you think is right," Aron whispers back.
"Alright. You take the potion and come with me to get inside. If Sosiel's in there, he'll probably listen to you right? I'll need the help to get them to leave. Buildings can be repaired. Lives are a lot harder to fix." She reached into one of her bandoleer pouches and offers the vial to Aron. "Come on. Let's go rescue your special someone."
Valaria is invisible - and so is her vial - so she has to press the thing into Aron's palm to get him to even realize it is there. But once she does, he nods, and holds it to his chest. "Alright. Let's do this."
Ary is up!
"Maybe try going through a window instead." Ary suggests, as she tries to determine whether to listen to her ally's emphatic suggestion that this was too much for them... or not. Leaving Isilme free to act in the intervening time.
"I think I can provide us a means of escape, do not let them get around the corner yet, and I need someone to open one of the doors over ahead of us, preferably on the side of the alley away from the temple." Isilme points over down the alley past the T which the Hezrous are down, then reaches for her pack, digging out a tome. She focuses on the ring on her finger and begins studying the spell, channeling the arcane formula into the ring so she can call upon it.
Ary nods. "Right. On it. Don't you dare die, guys." she whispers as she sprints across the space, aided by Isilme's magic. As she speaks, she lets her divine essence pour into those last words, which seem to resound, even being heard by Aron, despite being whispered. The words were lost for him, but the meaning was clear.
The other hezrou joins in the chant, and an even fouler smell begins to waft up around the pair...
Markus is up!
Markus runs closer to the party, eyeing them and trying to peer around the corner to see the hezrous. He knows what they're doing, because their booming voices have carried out to him and he'd made sure to study Abyssal before he'd come out here... but he's just not sure what he's supposed to do about it.
"Ary, you have to give the order to break off. And the rest of you, Aron, Annabelle, we have to commit 100%. No fighting if not all of us are fighting."
He looks around at his friends. Plus Aron (who he supposed he has to count as a friend, given that he's the brother of Markus' ward). They're scared, truly. "Hey, you know that it'll be alright either way, right? We can pull through this no matter what."
She fidgets with the handle on her new glaive and bites her lip - a small rivulet of blood drips down her chin. Her teeth are sharper than she's used to, after all.
Then she turns and dashes down the alleyway towards the back door of the Shelynite temple, her speed magically enhanced.
Hinagiku is up!
Her longspear in hand, Hinagiku steps forward until she can barely withstand the stench of the onis. There, she firmly plants her feet into the ground and brandishes her weapon.
"I will hold them as long as I can." she whispers to the others with a grimace.
Round 2!
Ehren is up!
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"You might not have to," Ehren remarks to Hinagiku, finding the ominous chanting increasingly disquieting. He did not know what kind of plan Isilme had in mind, but he knew that if even one of the hezrous' summoning spells succeeded, an already unwinnable fight would get worse. With one hand he rummages in his bag for Ghalcor's sacred prism, having a feeling that he would need every last ounce of power that he could muster. He could not hope to kill the demons, but he could at least try to buy them some time to flee. "I will do what I can, but we have to keep moving."
With the prism tightly gripped in his hand, he steps around the corner and points it toward the two hideous demons, feverishly murmuring the appropriate incantation. He puts all of his concentration into the spell, drawing power from closest ley line he can find, as well as from the energy contained within the sacred prism. Ehren focuses all of that power into a single spell, which he proceeds to unleash on the hezrou demons - a searing flash of blinding light, a contained explosion of divine energy.
Annabelle nervously eyes the summoning creatures, knowing that she can almost certainly disrupt their spell if she were to charge into combat...but she's also pretty sure that if not everyone were right at her side during the charge that she'd promptly die.
She fidgets with the handle on her new glaive and bites her lip - a small rivulet of blood drips down her chin. Her teeth are sharper than she's used to, after all.
Then she turns and dashes down the alleyway towards the back door of the Shelynite temple, her speed magically enhanced.
As she runs, Ehren unleashes a holy flash bang on the demons - the closer hezrou is distracted mid-chant and his spell dissipates. He snarls and moves down the street at heroes blindly - they are surrounded by its nauseating odor, leaving their eyes watering and stomachs churning. After taking a few unsteady steps down the street, the hezrou stops and and snarls,
edit:
As the Hezrou begins to utter a blasphemy in abyssal, Isilme thinks back to the tower and the rune Ghalcor had chosen to empower the weapon's effect. The demon's words begin to ring in her ears, but despite pain nearly overwhelming her and her body weakening almost immediately, she forces herself to focus. She quickly traces out "بسالة", focusing on the feeling she'd felt as the weapon's energy flooded through them all in that room. The rune glows brightly and she releases it into the air above her, exploding in a miniature burst of light like the rune had in the tower.
As the light washes over her, she feels the pain and weakness ease, and though she still finds herself unable to recover immediately from it, she is certain the worst of it has been negated.
Though Isilme's response negates the worst of the hezrou's blasphemy, the heroes are still entirely mobilized for just a few terrible moments...
The other hezrou finishes his incantation, and a third monstrosity appears amongst the heroes, answering his kin's call.
"Gushi bi pashi ashurz-nishug beshughush. Búl krum ditul dushush am kal."
The demon grins with evil delight - picking the little monk up with its huge, oozing arms and biting deeply into her shoulder. Hinagiku cannot move - she cannot do anything as her body becomes violently ill in reaction to being coated in toxic refuse. He lifts her up and grins, blood dripping down his chin.
"Krum bul il gugarul - shu buzg ank skúshi. Bul kishol! Bush ri ish bi kemb. Thrili nu ra buri"
Round 3
The other demon moves forward- arms outstretched, until they brush against his brothers'. He grasps out blindly, just barely missing the paralyzed monk.
"Al, al, throsh i but krum bug? Krum kem?"
Aron comes to first. He calls out,
He then steps back away from the hezrou demon and downs the invisibility potion, vanishing from sight.
Valaria is up!
As the demon's offending odor sweeps over him, Ehren recalls Ary's words, attempting to use the power behind them to force his body to resist the sickness coming over it... to no avail. A cough is caught in the druid's throat when the hezrou speaks in its blasphemous tongue, rendering him paralyzed. He can only watch helplessly as another demon joins their ranks and tears into Hinagiku.
The paralysis wears off, but Ehren's muscles are left feeling weak. He almost felt like he could crumple beneath his own weight.
"Aron, keep moving. Get to the temple and get the priests out. It looks like I'm going to be busy." She growls and leaps at the hezrou demon holding Hinagiku, her blessed blade lashing out in a barrage of slashes.
"Okay. Okay." Aron whispers back to Valaria as she cuts deeply into the demon twice, her starknives screaming through the air with a keening whine and slamming into her target.
Isilme is up!
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"Everyone," she hisses through the message. "Our unwanted tag-along is back and he might be able to get us out of here, but we'd all have to be touching and he can only take six of us. If Annabelle and Aron leave with the priests, we could get away once they empty the temple."
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”Three.” The number flashed through her mind as the pain of the blasphemy began to fade. The significance was clear, as the space in front of Hinagiku and Ehren began to waver and swell, the smell of decay and filth emanating from the weakened space. Before she had finished regaining control of herself, the boundary between worlds had ruptured, disgorging another of the terrifying demons.
Caught up in the moment, she forgot where and who she was, willing herself up into the sky where she would hold an advantage over the three, keeping out of reach. “One I might be able…” she began thinking, but her body’s unwillingness to cooperate brought her back to her senses quickly.
The situation had been dire. With two of the Hezrous present they might have had a chance, and Ehren's successful blinding of the two meant escape was quite likely. Now, however, as she watched the demon tear into Hinagiku, she knew they might not survive this. ”Two more blasphemies, then we can attempt to flee.” She would do everything she could to save the others, and that began with negating the remaining two demons’ blasphemies.
Valaria’s message saying that the Bound Horror had returned and had offered to help save them troubled her greatly, but there was no time to argue over the cost of such a ‘favor’ as it was likely Val had already struck a deal. ”Understood Val,” she calls back through the magic of the spell. Isilme moves up quickly amidst the group and begins reciting in her lilting celestial a poem filled with longing and the promise of the future. ”مجالات الدعوة الجنة ، واعدا الإفراج عن المتاعب و الأعباء الخاصة بك .امشي معي هناك ، واحتضان حرية تلك الحدائق أثيري .على الرغم بالألم وبالضجر ، قد نجد العزاء و كوم“ As she does, her thoughts wander far away to Kenabres and Defender’s Heart, wishing for the opportunity to safely return there.
”The fields of Elysium call, promising release from your troubles and burdens.
Walk with me there, and embrace the freedom of those ethereal gardens.
Though pained and weary, we may find solace and comfort together,
embracing beneath those starlit skies, suffering replaced by a promise of forever.”
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One moment Hinagiku was holding her spear ready to face the coming onis, the other everything was dark as the voice of the onis penetrated her mind. The sound was horrible, reaching so deep within her that it seemed to unravel her very being, ripping through her body and tarnishing the good within herself.
Worst is, when the darkness lifted, she could feel immense pain. So very strong that it overcame her years long training. In pain, she cried out. A long cry which was only brought to an end when she started retching from the putrid touch and smell of the oni that was holding her.
With all her strength, Hinagiku focuses her mind just enough to remember what Ary had said last, giving her the strength to withstand the putrid sensations coming from the oni.
Ary is up!
Ary looks from the door back to the creature that's grappling Hinagiku... she'd bust down the door in a moment, she wasn't going to let tall, disgusting, and toothy just have his way with her friend.
She crosses the intervening space with a small step, pivoting on her left foot to bring Radiance arcing around - and to hide her shield for a moment with her cloak - and were it not for her allies, she'd have had absolutely no chance of striking the demon. As Radiance sliced through the air, she was already bringing down her other foot, which she pressed firmly into the pavement to put the full weight of her body behind her shield... and squarely into the Hezrou's Flank.
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Markus realizes the threat this situation poses as soon as he comes to from the paralysis - another hezrou, disgorged into the Material plane as the two that were already there become blinded. That was going to be nice and helpful, but now they were in a pinch to be sure.
"We need to pull back - immediately! Separate so that we're not all targets of their magic and so that we're not all within reach of the creature!" he shouts. "We can't just leave, too. What about Annabelle?"