Shu Lien narrows her eyes at Hinagiku. "ん。あなたがより強くそれから戻ってきたならば、明らかに死は本当に失敗ではなかった。"
"完璧であることは最強であることであり、私が最強でなければ私はIroriの完璧さにふさわしくありません。しかし、私は戦い続けます。私はあなたより強くな る方法を考えます。私がやろうとして死ななければならないなら...それから良い。多分それから私はあなたがそんなに強くなったのか、とても早く理解するでしょ う。"
And with that she stalks off.
Before Hinagiku can get to Ehren, Annabelle intercepts her. She wraps her in a tight hug. When she lets go, she can see that she is wearing one of Xanderghuls blue Irori shirts, which is comically oversized on her small frame. "Yay, Senpai! I knew you could do it! I knew it!"
Ary reviews Hrut's town patrol routes and locates the guards who patrol this part of Southbank regularly. She finds that they do recall the three elderly Kellid women that she was looking for, but they don't believe that they live nearby, as they know all of the families who live in the surrounding streets and there are no kellids living here. They do note that they are always seen riding on black horses, and they ask Ary if they need them to detain them for questioning should they see them again.
She then heads to the closest gate - the Southern gate - to ask if the paladins stationed there had screened a trio of old kellid women on horses. They don't seem to remember anyone with that description passing through.
"Definitely don't make attempts to detain them, no. Just alert your captain when you see them, so that we can figure out where they're coming from and going. We believe they may be powerful outsiders, but need to look into it, and together. If you follow them, you're likely to die, so be safe and help us to find them." Ary informs the guards. "We don't think they'll even show up on a detect evil scan, so..." Ary says offering a small shrug. "Hopefully we'll resolve it soon."
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While evacuating Andreas to Nerosyan seemed like a rather extreme precaution, but the fact that Ehren could do so in an instant clearly made it the best course of action. Conveniently enough, they needed to do some shopping anyway. After leaving Andreas at the clinic, Ehren accompanies Xanderghul, but refrains from adding anything to their list. Time was of the essence.
Once they are back in Drezen, Ehren spends the rest of their daylight hours waiting for the stakeout. Closer to sunset he saunters off, leaving the chapel entirely. Not even an hour later, a perfectly ordinary owl swoops in and lands on the branch of one of the trees in front of the building.
"Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo," it says, in an entirely convincing matter.
Str 10, Dex 20, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 22, Cha 12
AC 18, touch 16, flat-footed 13 (+1 deflection, +5 Dex, +2 natural)
Feat Weapon Finesse
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”It is good to be back,” Ehren replies, returning Hinagiku’s smile with a meaningful look. The implications of her current state of dress seem to evade him, at least until she starts putting the rest of her clothes back on. Conscious of the lingering crowd and quite certain that his ears are going pink, he clears his throat and gets down to business. This was not how he expected their reunion to go, but they had something important to attend to. ”Something has come up. It sounds like Ary and Markus need our help.”
As sunset draws near, Val heads back into the storage room off the main healing ward so she can hear if something starts up in the next room. She drops down onto one of the crates against the walls next to Ayavah as they wait to see if Andreas' nightly tormentors put on an appearance or if their deception fails to lure in their foes.
Officially in position, all that is left to do is wait and see if their suspicions about night hags being the culprit are true...
Anevia almost dozes off from the sheer boredom of waiting in the dark room at "Andreas'" bedside. She keeps herself occupied by looking out the window, and counting the stars. She didn't really have the interest in memorizing their names, as the Desnan priestesses do, but she enjoyed looking at the night-sky from time to time as much as anyone, really. After a few hours of silent vigil, the young red headed man in the bed next to her starts to thrash in his sleep.
You don't remember what you were dreaming of previously - as dreams often are - but suddenly you find yourself in a blazing inferno. Hell? The Abyss? Does it matter? Everything as far as you can see is a blazing wasteland, and everything is in fire. It's hot, sweltering hot, and you look up, hearing cackling from above. Three twin shapes, demons with enormous, batlike wings, and sweeping overhead. In the distance, you can hear crying children... but why would children be in such a place as this?
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"Doing absurd and embarrassing things is their own reward," he says, handing over the glove.
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Anevia slips off the bed and moves to tuck Totally-not-Isilme in, smiling softly as the Azata was pulled into a nightmare realm of pure imagination. Not that she was smiling because of the torment, mind you, but because she was solemnly up to no good! She makes a soft shushing noise, as she heads for the door. "You'll be safe, promise. Be riiiiight back."
"All clear boss! Just gonna go scrounge up something to keep me up!" she calls into the kitchen. Totally the signal! And totally true, too, if Xanderghul would give her some of that twiddlefinger power that would let her not die by evil hag powers while she yoinks all their cool stuff!
Variska jolts upright (she had been falling asleep from boredom) when Anevia walks into the supply room she and Xanderghul were tucked into. She's sitting on the ground leaning against a sack of flour. Bowie is curled up into a little white floof on her lap. One of his ears perks upright as Variska's violent motion wakes him up.
Ayavah yawns and stretches. "Guess it's showtime," she whispers.
Xander grins and taps Variska on the shoulder. "Showtime," he whispers. "We're waiting for Anevia to nab the heartstones. Once they're physical, you get in and wreck 'em, but don't overextend. There could be three, and these things are not things you wanna mess with."
He closes the door behind Variska and moves a little farther away from where Isilme was resting. He knew their senses could only extend so far onto the Material and it wasn't worth taking the chance that they could hear him. Then he uses a few spells - two just in case, one that was necessary, and one to help the ambush part of their tactic.
First, he calls upon his divine nature, freshly-discovered. Xanderghul embodied freedom from one's own limitations, and he lays an enchantment upon Anevia to ensure that no fear would prevent her from accomplishing her task - an ability very like remove fear, and then cast a protection from evil as well to redouble the ward.
Then he casts see invisibility on himself, followed by invisibility on both himself and Variska. Making the group appear to be as small as possible could only benefit them. "Okay," he says, "Ready for you to make your move," and he pulls Variska slowly after Anevia when she signals that she's ready to make her move.
Variska nods to him, picking up Bowie and tucking him into her now-invisible backpack, which causes him to vanish from view. "Alright. Gonna go beat up three old ladies. Sounds easy enough."
"Looks like it," Val agrees as she looks through a crack in the door. "Now we just wait for Anevia and hope this works..."
"Once I cast this, you go - okay?" mutters Xanderghul, to Anevia. Then he touches her and renders her EXTRA invisible. "Go!"
Isilme couldn't remember exactly how she'd gotten where she was. All she knew was that there were demons above and burning heat around her. Her initial instinct is to get to coer and try to assess the situation, but the sound of children crying makes her rethink that. Moving quickly to find any kind of cover, she begins to move quietly towards the sound of the crying.
Invisible to all but Xanderghul, Anevia slips like some sort of eldritch shadow across the floor, creepily and eerily moving into the doorway... then, gone in even more of a flash, she slips sideways to see what lies in the room, before lunging at the first thing she sees!
Meanwhile, Ary pulls the door that she's in open just enough to be ready to make her move... should she be given the opportunity.
Darting from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop, Isilme makes her way across the fiery hellscape, even as the black demons overhead circle her like vultures. Eventually she comes across a structure made of hard, black stone. Dangling from chains, three children and one woman are held precariously over a blazing inferno, even as they cry. She recognizes them as the kellid family from ages ago, the kellid family she died trying to save. Dancing in a mad circle around them is a mass of babau, singing and chanting.
Anevia shirks into the room, where she is greeted with a bizarre sight! Three women wearing devilish, grinning red masks with horns and tattered clothing stride over Isilme's male form. One on her neck and chest, the other on her stomach, and the last on her legs. Stringy white hair bobs up and down from behind their masks as they jerk their heads erratically from side to side. Around their necks are various heart-shaped gems of different styles.
Anevia lunges at the closest one, sinking her hand into her back and draining her one of her magical auras.
That one stops moving and stiffens. She stops. "何だって?" She looks around, but the soundless, invisible Anevia is impossible to see...
And then as soon as it happened, Anevia flickers back into the Material realm, and the figures vanish from the room.
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Well... that was weird. Who dresses up like a creepy knickknack to go invisibly into somebody's house? Then just stand over them watching them sleep? Nightmare fuel, sure, but extra weird to be invisible and still wear a mask, almost pointless, really! Oh well, that didn't make them real-world-level, so they certainly couldn't ambush them just yet. Steeling herself, she focuses on the trick she'd just pulled - it was an epic trick! It'd been super epic when she'd shown Irabeth the other day. Then she was ready to go once more back into the brink! The very same witch gets a BOOP from Anevia. It was becoming clear that this was probably the intended purpose of her new ghost-rogue powers. Sigh. Oh, wait, was that sigh out loud? Nammit. This was all supposed to be internal dialogue.
One more touch, and wham! Anevia is suddenly completely ethereal. The woman in front of her is abruptly yanked into the material plane. Her outline wavers, and all three women suddenly go invisible. The two women behind of her abruptly vanish from sight... though without her divination magic, the hag closest to the tricksy rogue is still vulnerable to her state of dimensional flux. She stands up on the bed, peering into the dim light with a scowl, not realizing she was staring straight through Anevia!
Also, you are there, and you can see 1 hag, but you can't see Anevia. Variska can't see anything.
Seeing the hag there, Xanderghul reaches out with a burst of powerful abjurative magic. He draws upon the power of antimagic to try and render their opponent visible once again. Fearing the strength of his own magic, he enhances its strength using a shard of his mythic power.
If the hag appears, he calls, "Variska, go! Stop it from escaping!"
"Val, Ehren, get in here! We've got a victim!"
Initiative Order!
1. Night Hag #3, Night Hag #1
2. Isilme
3. Ary
4. Valaria
5. Anevia
6. Night Hag #2
7. Hinagiku
8. Variska
9. Ehren
10. Kule
11. Xanderghul
12. Bowie
13. Ayavah
Night Hag #3 -> 27
Night Hag #1 -> 25
Isilme -> 22
Ary -> 21
Valaria -> 20
Anevia -> 19
Night Hag #2 -> 17
Hinagiku -> 15
Variska -> 14
Ehren -> 13
Kule -> 13
Xanderghul -> 11
(Bowie) -> 11
Ayavah -> 5
Ayavah is up!
At Xanderghul's call, Ayavah touches Val's shoulder, making the air around her hazy before she pushes open the door and steps though. A haze appears in the air around the other tiefling as she casts a defensive spell on her.
The hunched over woman in the doorway jerks her head erratically from side to side, shrieking out inhumanly as she abruptly appears in plain view for all to see. Her beady little red eyes are visible in the pinpricks of her mask, glowing in the dark. Her rigid movements lull Xanderghul into a strange sort of trance. Then, lurching forwards with sudden speed, she charges through Anevia and at Xanderghul, swiping at him with her claws. He steps back, the claws narrowly passing down his chest, leaving a set of narrow scores that gradually open up into bleeding wounds.
The red mask the hag wears is associated with the evil Tien god Fumeiyoshi, the patron god of Oni. He is Tsukiyo's evil brother, and is jealous of Shizuru's love for Tsukiyo.
Oni are evil outsiders, but rather than being made of the stuff of the planes, they are corrupted kami. Kami are guardian spirits that are created by the gods, but they can also be born of reincarnated souls that are particularly noble.
Isilme, Ary, Valaria, and Anevia are up!
With Xanderghul giving the go ahead, Val follows Ayavah out of the closet, drawing her starknife as she moves. She stops at the door and whips around sending the dark iron blade streaking through the air and slamming directly into the hag's gut.
Xanderghul recognizes the religious and fiendish iconography, but he is too confused by their significance to make sense of them. He at least gets the parallels between the Shizuru-worshiping changeling and the Fumeiyoshi-worshiping hags, though.
Ary steps through the doorway drawing Radiance as she pushes the door fully out of her way, and in two long strides she's upon the Hag, in the space between Variska and Xanderghul, Faith lashing out, but just as the shield bites into the hag, Ary twists the shield and shoves downwards rather than away. The end result is her shield spikes being tangled in the crone's scraps of clothing and the majority of her force being used to topple the witch rather than send her flying as she had done previously. Even as Ary's shield is biting into her, golden motes are flowing from the plaque on the back of her shield over to Xanderghul to fill in some of his wounds.
Anevia, meanwhile, completely invisible to her enemies, moves to the bed and begins to grope in the space above and around Isilme, this was surprisingly very, very fun! Xanderghul was the best buddy ever for making her super-ultra-stealthy!
Hinagiku had been meditating, standing on one foot arms clasped together in front of her chest when she hears muffled sounds coming from inside. Maybe Xanderghul yelling something. However, what causes her to fully spring into action is the unnatural screech that follows the sound. Launching into a run, Hinagiku makes her way to the temple's door which she opens. And she sees... nothing. Nothing next to Isilme and Variska, with her weapon drawn, fighting something she can't see in the main room.
Isilme looks at the babaus surrounding the family and freezes, uncertain what to do.
From your hidden spot behind a rocky outcropping, you look up. The flying demons are nowhere to be seen. You seem to have escaped them...for now.
"Fuko! Furaitofutto! Nushurz sni!" snarls the masked woman.
"Fuko! Furaitofutto! Defend me!"
"Fuko" means "Misfortune". "Furaitofutto" means "Flight of Foot".
Of all things, a tiny mouse on the floor sprints across the detritus and leaps heroically at Xanderghul. Its itty bitty body travels in a short arc, before colliding into Xanderghul's leg, leaving a disproportionately large bite wound in its wake.
Afterwards, the masked woman hears Valaria coming, and so skips lightly backwards to avoid the blade and whirs past her, before returning her attention to Xanderghul. Ary rushes to his side, feeling something supernatural and invisible push her, almost like a gust of wind, as she does. She grits her teeth and with herculean strength, pushes through it as her red cape billows behind her in the onslaught. It eventually ceases, and she slams Faith, heavy and hard, into the masked woman in front of her, attempting to push her down to her knees. But the old hag is far stronger than she looks, and pushes back, even as fresh blood runs down her tattered clothing.
From behind her, yet another "mouse" collides into her with a bite disproportionate to its small frame. Ary's brow furrows, and after a moment of concentration... she can see its true form. Before her in the Sarenrite courtyard, a towering, burning equine the size of an elephant stands upon smoking hooves. Hellfire shimmers in its hateful eyes. Its skin is an inky blackness. Fire spurts from its hair and nostrils, and its hooves spray sparks.
So distracted she is by this development, Ary is too slow to dart to Xanderghul's side and protect him from yet another "mouse". It bites into him, its jaws like an enormous vice grip.
Then, yet another hag rushes through the doorway and to her sister's side.
This creature is known as a Nightmare, a flaming harbinger of death, and common steed of denizens of the evil planes. They are intelligent creatures that understand both Infernal and Abyssal, and like most evil outsiders, see in the dark, and can fly.
Nightmares are born in Abaddon, but they are considered valuable mounts, so they can be found in Hell, the Abyss, and even the Material Plane. Nightmares can exhale smoke that chokes and blinds foes, filling a 15-foot cone and sickening all within. Their hooves are wreathed with flame, burning those that they strike.
This Nightmare is a cauchemar, a more dangerous variant of the nightmare, particularly valued for its ability to enter the Ethereal Plane with its rider in addition to being able to use plane shift to invade other realities.
Nightmares allow only the most evil of creatures to ride them, and are never mere mounts, but rather willing partners in destruction.
Anevia gropes around into thin air..until... aha! Yoink! There's another one! The night hag suddenly appears in front of Anevia's eyes. Still squatting on top of Isilme, she curses in a language Anevia doesn't understand and then phases back into the Material Plane. She runs through Anevia in the doorway and into the courtyard to join her sister.
Variska, Ehren, Kule, Xanderghul, and Ayavah are up!
Variska shifts stances, stepping back from the crones in front of her. Xanderghul had warned her that the types of supernatural creatures they faced would be fearsome, but these creatures were something else! She had to remember to take him more seriously next time!
She draws her hand-and-a-half sword and focuses on the visible crone in front of her. Somewhere, it had a weak point, one not protected by scales or armor or supernaturally thick skin. Variska struck that point as hard as she could. Variska appears from invisibility just in time to make a major fool of herself, immediately missing with her strike!
Xanderghul activates the power of his boots, his form's blurring power making it difficult to make retributive strikes against him as he retreats into the corner of the room. He had not expected these creatures to be so deadly, and while he had met several night hags in the past, none had had this level of power. Well, power invites challenge, as they say, and challenge breeds conflict. The next thing they say, however, might not be so applicable here, which was that 'conflict was lots of fun'.
He raises a hand and, with an ugly-sounding necromantic phrase, looses a ray of life-sapping energy at the hag which just appeared. If it struck, it would strivel and rot her skin unnaturally and strip her of some of her power.
Variska abruptly appears in front of Xanderghul, letting loose a wild swing. But she loses control of her weighty swing, driving it into the column behind her with a loud crash. A long, thin crack runs down the blade of the weapon...
Ehren, Kule, and Ayavah are up!
"Nightmares, not mice." Ary calls out, "Specifically Cauchemere. They can go Ethereal. Evil mounts for only the most evil of riders. They have flaming hoofs, can billow smoke that will blind us, can see perfectly in darkness, and are incredibly dangerous foes in their own right, seeking to cause mayhem even without a rider."
"Variska, you can use my hammer if you'd like, but it isn't cold iron so it won't work very well on the hags."
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After hours of waiting, Ehren twists his head around when he hears Xanderghul’s shouting, quickly followed by the sound of inhuman screeching. Things have finally started, it seems.
”Kule!” he calls out to the unicorn in perfect Taldane, sounding no different than he does in human form. ”It is time.”
With that he leaps off the small tree and opens his wings wide. The owl glides down, making a hard left turn as he flies through the temple’s entryway. Right away he catches a glimpse of what they are up against. He gives his wings a single hard flap, briefly stopping himself dead in the air, and then with a continuous rhythm of softer wing beats, he holds himself aloft.
Ehren takes a hard look at the masked figure he can only assume to be one of the night hags. Wasting no time, the druid taps into the power of the ley. A white tendril of energy immediately emerges from the ground and joins itself to his hovering form, infusing him with the ley’s sheer power, before detaching and sinking back into the earth below. Ehren’s eyes burn with intense white light, and his feathers shimmer chromatically, the ley’s power having suffused the entirety of his being. Even a casual observer could see, could feel the air around him crackling with power. But there was more to come.
The druid weaves a spell, focusing the power he has gathered into a single point at the tip of his beak. As he does so he imbues it with a portion of his own mythic nature, enhancing it in such a way that it would be half again as powerful as it usually would be. Once he is certain that none of his friends are standing in the way, he unleashes his spell. The tiny owl unleashes an immense beam of coruscating light that bridges the distance between him and the hag in an instant, before going on to strike the wall behind her. Strangely, rather than blasting a hole in the temple’s brand new wall, the bolt seems to phase right through it, passing through the room Valaria is in, only to harmlessly slam into the opposite wall, fizzling entirely.
Kule and Ayavah are up!
Hearing the call, Külə rouses himself and moves in only to find a complete mess inside the temple. Of course things couldn't be simple. They never were. He would try to explain this to them, but they didn't listen anyway, so all he could do was help drive off the horrid creatures.
Ayavah hurries around the battlefield, trying to get within arm's reach of Xanderghul. She lays a hand on his arm and sends pulse of magic into him, adding a haze around him as well, hopefully preventing a further hit or two to the injured wizard.
The masked woman on the floor's twitches her head back and forth as she watches the strange owl in the hallway glow and cast a spell right in her direction. He waits for Xanderghul to get out of the way before unleashing a beam of ley straight at the hag's chest. She squawks and tumbles out of the way, but she isn't fast enough to avoid all of it, and her clothing is left singed, a heinous wound just visible underneath the tatters. Xanderghul tries to follow up with an attack of his own, but the pain is too great... his beam flies off wildly into the night sky.
The singed hag circles around Ary, swaying her mask back and forth and making strange motions with her hands. It's hard for Ary to pull herself away from the woman's stare... and so she doesn't notice the final hag creep behind her invisibly! With a quick pair of cuts from her razor sharp fingernails, she hews a slitting gash through soft spots in Ary's armor.
Meanwhile, Isilme tosses and turns restlessly in his bed.
Round 6!
Isilme is up!
Perhaps the best way to deal with the Babaus is to give them something to chase, Isilme thinks as she sits there trying to solve the problem. After all, she clearly could not leave the family she'd failed to save before. It was hard to recall why they would be here, but whatever had caused them to end up in this situation, she had to make up for her prior failure.
Appearing closer to the pack, two children appear, peeking from behind cover a little too far out. They try to get the attention of the chained family until spotted by the babaus, and then take off running away from them and the family, eventually disappearing behind cover.
The babaus notice the waving children and cackle evilly to themselves. Raising their longspears into the air, they sprint after them. Sure, they could just teleport and surround them, but clearly the evil creatures relished in the chase.
Meanwhile, the chained children above the flames wail loudly as the burning hot flames lick their toes.
One of the mice in the shrine exhales a long stream of roiling black smoke into the room, making it difficult to see the hags through it. It then squeaks and leaps through the air at Ary... straight into one of the columns in the shrine! It slides down it with a humiliated squeak, then slowly gets back to its feet, its head reeling.
You see the cauchemar for what it is as it strikes at you. It exhales a stream of black smoke, then lunges its head at you... and straight into one of the columns. It jerks its head back from the sharp impact, dazed.
Valaria, Ary and Anevia are up!
Val glances across the main room as the cloud of noxious smoke fills the air and makes it impossible to see the hags. However, one of the 'mice', which is most certainly not a mouse, is very much visible to her. She sends her starknife flying again and again, trying to hammer the strange horse creature down before it tries to kill Ary.
Valaria's blade whistles, audible even above the din of combat, as she aims straight between the cauchemar's eyes. The horse nickers and moves its head, and the blade sinks deep into its neck, before vanishing and reappearing in Valaria's hand. She draws her hand back again to throw another time, but one of the shoulder straps on her heavily laden backpack slips down as she does, hooking her entire upper arm in a mess of ropes and straps.
Ary and Anevia are up!
"We need to thin the numbers down, or they'll overwhelm us! Ary calls out, hoping to stir her allies to action... if they weren't already.
"Anevia, all the hags are out here! We need you!" Ary says as she raises her shield. That had all escalated quickly. They hadn't even gotten a single heartstone from the looks of it.
Without hesitation and completely unvisible, Anevia creeps through the Cauchemar. Ha, silly non-ethereal mortals. She then takes a moment to center herself. Everything was awful and there was nothing she could do!
As soon as Ary sees the arrow she launches into an assault, delaying just enough to fully capitalize when she realizes the hag's attention hasn't been pulled away just yet. Radiance comes crashing downwards, even as she's jabbing forward with her shield, making space between herself and her foes, with an additional slam she tries to create still more space as she backs away, ready to conjure her golden motes to intervene on her and her ally's behalf at a moment's notice.
Valaria re-focuses herself at the sound of Ary's call. She had to take this seriously! She doesn't over-extend, and simply tosses her blade at the cauchemar, shattering through its knee and reappearing in her hand, safe and sound. The enormous fiery horse whinnies, great smoke billowing out from its nostrils as it does, and takes out its rage on Ary. It snaps at her once, its strike arrhythmic enough to catch her by surprise. It then rears up on its hind legs and brings them back down with amazing force, but Ary rolls back into the fog just in time to avoid the blow.
The furthest hag moves towards Ary, wicked claws drawn in front of her, but she teleports before her and slams her into the column that the cauchemar bashed its head on with a sickly splat, leaving the hag with a ringing concussion. She falls to the ground, and as she struggles to her feet. Ary appears next to her again, pushing her back with a powerful blow into the column and digging Faith's cold iron spikes into her flesh. Furious, the hag screeches and tilts her head back and forth rapidly, adding her own sinister psychic magic to her sister's.
Hinagiku is up!
Despite the fact Ary would likely need a long breather after the fight, she wasn't particularly worse for wear as a result of the smoke, still ready to continue fighting.
Graciously winding through her companions by shifting her weight from one foot to the other in sync with their movement, Hinagiku makes her way through the roiling black cloud. As she emerges, she uses the element of surprise to quickly punch the hag who has just been struck by Ehren's scintillating ray of light. As her fist connects with the creature's hip, the monk quickly surveys the battlefield. Three mice... no, no, Ary had mentioned evil steads. Guided by the commander's words, the monk peers more intently, to finally see the horribly creatures standing in the room awfully close to her. Then, with a surprisingly high kick, Hinagiku strikes at the hag's head. Backing away, she comes to Ary's side in a defensive position.
"Ary, Mr. Xanderghul, you need to get healed... soon."
Hinagiku passes through the fog cloud smoothly. She doesn't breathe, normally, so the foul smoke never has a chance to fill her lungs. She swings hard into the hag's hip. The bone beneath cracks, and she can feel the satisfying reverberations quiver up her arm. The cauchemar behind the hag rears up, struggling to reach Hinagiku through the tight space of the temple. It sinks its teeth into a pile of timber next to her and draws back, thinking it had managed to capture its prey... it bites down hard, splinters raining down to the floor.
Variska, Ehren, Kule, Xanderghul and Ayavah are up!