With the trolls likely to be busy with each other, Isilme turns her attention to the bard.
Valaria throws her blade at the enormous troll. While her size makes her an easy target, despite the ram-shackle chain armor and helmet she wears, the winds and rain make it difficult for even an expert like herself to hit anything accurately. Her blade sinks into the rotting timbers of the town's inner wall, then vanishes and reappears in her hand.
Then, Lann's sword embarks towards the troll with a gentle whistle, its razor edges shredding through her. He draws blood, which is immediately washed away by the downpour rain... but the troll's wound heals over almost entirely. He takes a step back, shield raised, then bumps into something unseen and warm.
"Oh?" he says, surprised.
Isilme is up!
"Lann, he is right by you!" Isilme calls as she steps forth out of the tower. Reaching up, she scribes the divine rune for courage in the air above her, bolstering her allies.
"You call yourself a bard?" Isilme says with a derisive laugh at his meager attempt at poetry to inspire his allies. "I inspired the whole of the crusader armies in and around Nerosyan at once."
Brandishing her ebon starknife, Isilme sweeps around in a move that's more like a dancer's spin, bringing the blade down low and then back in an upward arc as she leans forward into the slash. The blade cuts deep into the invisible half-orc's jaw, leaving a spray of crimson through the air in its wake. "Perhaps you and your troll companions should have chosen a different line of work," she adds as she rises, satisfied with Eternal Night's performance. "By the way, if you are counting on your little pack of trolls to aid you, I suspect you will be disappointed. They would appear to be a little preoccupied at the moment."
Isilme's powerful strike shrieks through the air, leaving a violent laceration in its wake upon the invisible foe. He cries out, a garbled and gurgling sound, and blood drips down to vanish in the mud beneath them.
"ÞÚ! ÞÚ VILT EKKI HÆRA LAMBRECHTIÐ!!!" screams the She-Troll in a rage.
Meanwhile, one of the confused trolls stares blankly and starts babbling. "Himinninn stal allt mitt efni!!" he announces. "Það hrasaði fyrsta skrefið hljóp í gegnum allt."
"Hvað ertu að fara um, Ajin?" says another troll, irritably.
Kule is up!
Külə rears back his head and emits a keening wail filled with derision and spite for the creatures around him. Unlike the wail he'd unleashed at the battle of Silvershore, however, this one seems to wash over the group without any ill effect.
Several of the trolls cover their ears at Kule's baleful wail, though just as many don't even seem to notice. Meanwhile, as the hunter watches her prey from above, she studies for a conservative moment, moving from her hunkered state up just enough to isolate her foes. Oh no! The bard was gone! Perhaps Isilme would have a way to deal with that... but for now, Anevia's goal was simply to destroy all of them... waiting for Isilme to pick up the tempo, Anevia draws her bow slowly back, tiny dark tendrils roiling along the weapon, preparing to unleash hell on the most dangerous target... Then, a stylish combination of finesse and power, Anevia aims through the opposition and lets loose an accurate strike... Hah! A headshot! But wait... black wispy energies pour through her eyes and ears, pooling around her until they envelop her like a wreath. She pulls the arrow out of her head, revealing a hole that leads into pitch blackness. The wound seeps inky black energy, like there isn't even flesh underneath it. She grins, and the black coils start to circle around her arm, forming an enormous tendril. She lashes out with it at Isilme, and it simply goes right through her body, leaving her feel icy and cold...
Xanderghul scans the battlefield, and his gaze alights upon the trolls at the back of the procession. Focusing on his newly-gained powers over life forces, he casts his soul forward towards the weak-willed trolls, using his sheer force of personality and the strength of his magic to overwhelm the troll's souls and take over their bodies.
The Fiendish Troll has 25 STR, 14 DEX, 23 CON and 96 HP. He has a total of 22 AC.
He has a bite, 2 claw attacks, and 2 rend attacks with 10' of reach.
He has darkvision out to 30', energy resistance 10 against cold and fire, low-light vision, Regeneration 5 (acid or fire), Scent, and Spell Resistance 12.
He's wearing chainmail, which slows him. It's mundane and offers +6 AC. I'm not going to penalize you for not having medium armor proficiency cause that feels dumb, but it does come with a 30% arcane spell failure chance.
And then.... Xanderghul abruptly slumps over and collapses to the ground, as if dead.
By the time the ambush begins proper, Ehren is surrounded by motes of ley energy, conducted in an elaborate spiraling pattern by his free hand. As his spell nears completion, he feeds it a portion of his mythic essence. The Beast of the North may be dead, but a part of him lived on. Memories of Soltengrebbe’s legendary savagery seep into the ley, turning the starlights an angry red color. With a wave of his hand, Ehren then sends them flying out through the building’s numerous holes, into the storm. They land not far from the female troll, coalescing into the form of another kind of giant, a towering, one-eyed brute donning thick hide and carrying a tremendous axe.
The cyclops lets out a mighty bellow as he takes one, two wild swings at Yuzu with his giant axe. But as he raises his weapon overhead for a third attack, he suddenly goes quiet, becoming strangely calm. His eye widens, enraptured by the myriad possibilities laid before him. Its large pupil twitches side to side, as though browsing through them, making the second drag on for what seems like an eternity... until he finds what he seeks. The cyclops abruptly resumes his bloodcurdling warcry and brings his greataxe crashing over the she-troll. His daring and ferocious swing crashes towards her.. The troll reaches out and pushes the heft of the blade just in the nick of time... but the axe's flat slams into the side of her head with an enormous thud, leaving her somewhat dazed.
Meanwhile, Ehren makes his way to the roof of the watchtower, so he can properly survey the battlefield.
And then, still further way, one of the trolls ensorcelled by Isilme's magic turns and savagely rips into his fellow troll, not knowing that his mind had already succumbed to the might of the archmage... he balls his hand into a fist and slams into the other troll's face, his heavy swing landing with a sound akin to splitting wood.
Ary is up!
Seeing the whip incoming, Isilme incants a spell to speed her reflexes, allowing her to react to the troll's attack. Twisting to the right, she brings Eternal Night around to catch the tip of the whip, the magic of the blade interfering with the whip's trajectory, causing it to whiz by the Azata instead of cutting into her as intended.
Ary, unable to reach any foes, simply pushes through the doorway and hopes that the building will give her enough cover to move past her allies and into position to safeguard them. She immediately interposes herself between Isilme and the She-troll.
Realizing that she does have a useful tactic to employ, Ary presses forward, pressing the scale of Terendelev into Hinagiku's back, aligning her strikes versus evil foes.
Another troll arrives, but finding that there isn't enough room for him to get to the heroes, he simply lashes out at the watch-tower that Isilme is in! his enormous fist breaks through the wall, and he draws back, ready to slam another into the building.
Variska is up!
Seeing the battlefield crowded to the tilt, Variska decides to circle around to the side and engage the troll coming up from behind. If she was good and she was careful, she could halt the advance of reinforcements, and perhaps someone could come to help her. She enters the alleyway behind the watchtower and one of the town's ruined buildings, hoping to use the tight space to her advantage against their larger foes.
Then, she brings her blade to bear, her sword seeking out a weak point in between the creature's chainmail and its thick hides.
Variska squeezes through a hole in the walls to get into the alley between the two decrepid buildings. Eschewing brute swings for the finesseful strikes she learned at the Nerosyan military acadamae, with a casual twist of her wrist, she carves a notch out of the rampaging troll.
The voice continues to ring out, further away this time, though still speaking with a heavy lisp:
"Ratatothk är ekorren | vem det thka thpringa
På athkträet Yggdrathil;
Från ovanthtående orden | av örnen bär han,
Och berättar dem för linnorman av cairn nedanför."
"Ratatosk is the squirrel | who there shall run
On the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
From above the words | of the eagle he bears,
And tells them to the linnorm of the cairn beneath."
After his next verse, Lambrecht tries to stutter his way through a spell, but his heavily bleeding mouth simply does not allow him to manage to finish the incantation.
Round 2!
Hinagiku, Lann, Valaria, and Isilme are up!
With Lambrecht having moved, Isilme keens her ears to try to determine where he had run off to. If he had moved away from the group it would be possible to illuminate him with glitterdust, which would leave him vulnerable to Anevia's attacks.
"Thanks, that's just perfect, Lambrecht!" she says, taunting the bard as she steps back away from the troll. Lifting her her hand palm up to her mouth, she unleashes a spray of glitterdust on the unsuspecting trolls and Lambrecht. "You all really are hopeless, you know."
Losing track of whatever it was he bumped into, Lann keeps his attention on the giant looming over him. Frowning, he watches curiously as the troll's flesh seems to stitch itself closed of its own volition. Left with little alternative, he swings his blade twice more, with more force than his last attack. Then, noticing that a line of combatants is forming behind him, Lann politely steps to the side to give one of them a chance to get a hit in.
Lann's longsword's flashing arc terminates directly in the troll's belly, capitalizing on a gap on her awkwardly fitted armor. Unfortunately, the wound heals nearly as fast as it is opened.
Hinagiku and Valaria are up!
Val clicks her tongue and closes in on the female troll, swinging her starknife again and trying to hack a chunk out of her body.
Seeing Valaria closing in, the She-Troll lashes out with her enormous, shadowy whip, but in a perfect mirror of the move she taught Isilme in the past year, she wraps its tip around the long blade of her starknife and forces it away from herself. From behind her, Isilme tosses golden glitter onto Yuzu, revealing the glittering form of her half-orc lover just behind her.
Meanwhile, further back inside of the town, one of the confused trolls starts swinging his fists wildly at another troll in sheer confusion. Unknown to him, the troll was actually possessed by Xanderghul. Having finally regained his bearings inside the brutes' massive form, the melee seems to slow to a crawl as the troll's fist arcs toward him. He pulls back at the last moment, and his balled up hand slams through the air in front of him, dripping with rain.
Hinagiku and Kule are up!
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As usual, the battlefield is complete chaos into which Hinagiku hopes to find enough order to weave her way through their foe's attacks. Giant being summoned, foes appearing and disappearing in the street, clawed hands to avoid, Hinagiku juggles all the information rapidly. The cyclop's attacks on the troll give her the edge she needs though. As it strikes from above their heads, she strikes from below. Fists, imbued with Ary's scale, flurry rapidly has she punches high above her head at the troll's ribs and belly.
Getting into the rhythm of combat, Hinagiku steps from one side to the other to destabilise her foe, each step punctuated by a punch, each punch drawing deeper and deeper into the holy energy within her inner ocean.
And, among all this, Hinagiku finds time to whisper ”Mr. Lann, stay close to me or Ary. We can help defend you.”
Külə looks around, attempting to figure out how to get in to join the melee. Finally he snorts, exasperated by the crowd around the she-troll and the walls preventing him from finding an alternate path around to help.
Despite the wind, rain, and chaos, Hinagiku manages to tap into her inner pool of serenity, channeling Irori's divine power into each strike. On her final strike, the heavy winds cause her fist to wobble in flight for a moment before hitting her opponent squarely in the gut, leaving an indention that doesn't reform as she withdraws.
Anevia peeks up over the edge of the rooftop, before firing an arc of silver at the dust covered bard in the form of a shiny silver longsword. By the time she hears the TWANG from her bow, the blade had already slammed into the bard's torso.
Xanderghul closes his eyes and focuses on the shadow within his being. That shadow was both within him and was him. He was himself a shadow, and so that gave him power over shadow. He steps into it and disappears in a swiftly fading shade, and then reappears next to one of the trolls - the one Variska fights - cloaked in a temporary shroud of shadow. Xanderghul's troll-voice is booming as he laughs. "This is a powerful body!" he roars. "Imagine what I could do with it if I had it full-time!"
The wind whips around Ehren's hair as he watches the ongoing battle, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. When the invisible leader of the bunch is suddenly exposed by Isilme's magic, a smirk tugs at the corner of the druid's mouth. Having the two highest priority targets standing right next to one another is about as much of an opportunity as he is going to get.
The watchtower is not exactly the best conduit, but Ehren's pull on the ley is so strong, it scarcely matters. His eyes light ablaze, and chromatic lines of energy run up his feet and branch off as they spread all across his body. Filled with the ley's power, the druid takes a spell he has used numerous times in the past and alters its very nature so that it would draw on the power of elemental earth rather than fire. With a simple gesture of his hand, Ehren evokes a white-green pillar of caustic energy that engulfs Lambrecht and Yuzu, as well as another nearby troll.
The explosive green glow is reflected off the cyclops's eye as he lays into Yuzu with another series of vicious swings, sans the oracular insight he demonstrated the last time. Flecks of spit fly out of his mouth as he bellows, unknowingly emboldened by Isilme's performance. There is a dull thunk as his axe blade chops into his opponent’s armor. Blood starts seeping from the wound as he extracts his gruesome weapon.
Meanwhile, the confused trolls continue to babble uselessly. One stands there with a glassy-eyed expression, not even noticing its companion teleport past it. "Móðir mín elskaði mig, þess vegna fór hún alltaf til hjartans,"" it says.
Then, time seems to slow as the enormous troll bellows madly, black energy pouring out from her eyes until they resemble glassy black pebbles. She pulls her hand back and her energy whips arcs towards Isilme. She pulls back at the last moment, and the tip slashes a line in her clothing.
Meanwhile, further back in town, two of the confused trolls start wailing into each other. Their strikes barely do anything to each other, to be honest, but one swipe manages to knock the other troll's helmet to the side. "GRAWR! Islok getur ekki séð!!!!" screams the troll.
Finally, the only sane troll remaining foregoes his attempt to collapse the building in favor of Variska. As he lands a lucky swipe across her side, she cries out momentarily in pain and surprise, then grits her teeth as she refocuses herself. "I'm gonna kill you, you troll-f@&&ing bastard!" she yells, knowing full well that her insult technically applies to all trolls (and Lambrecht, apparently).
Variska and Kule are up!
When the troll land sits lucky strike on her, Variska hooks an arm around its claw to keep it in close and then lashes out with a bloody riposte, using the troll's proximity to dig her blade deeper into its gut - her muscles strain and scream as she pushes it to its limit in order to strike the troll with everything she has. Then, when the troll manages to disengage from her, she gathers herself up for a powerful thrust of her blade, the point driving forward into the troll.
There was little Külə could do in the narrow streets of the fort with everyone crowded in one area. Sighing, he resigns himself to waiting of him to be needed.
Variska's enormous sword swings into the watchtower with her first swing, finding it difficult to maneuever well enough in the small back-alley to do much harm to the enormous troll. As she struggles to pull her blade out of the wood, the troll lunges in with its enormous tusks...
Lambrecht ducks into the nearest watch-tower, intent on staying out of range of the sniper who was trying to kill him. Now out of sight from Anevia, at the very least, he continues his verse.
"Neljä sydäntä on, | että korkeimmat oksat
Nibble kanssa kaulan Bent takaisin;
Dain ja Dvalin Cragista,
Duneyr ja Dyrathror uv Tarn."
"Four hearts there are, | that the highest twigs
Nibble with necks Bent back;
Dain and Dvalin of the Crag,
Duneyr and Dyrathror of the Tarn."
Round 3!
Hinagiku, Lann, Valaria, Isilme, Anevia, Xanderghul and Ehren are up!
He has a bite, 2 claw attacks, and 2 rend attacks with 10' of reach.
He has darkvision out to 30', energy resistance 10 against cold and fire, low-light vision, Regeneration 5 (acid or fire), Scent, and Spell Resistance 12.
He's wearing chainmail, which slows him. It's mundane and offers +6 AC. I'm not going to penalize you for not having medium armor proficiency cause that feels dumb, but it does come with a 30% arcane spell failure chance.
Xanderghul's flesh begins to re-knit itself as he enters combat with the same troll as his apprentice. Xanderghul grins with pleasure at the strange, itching feeling of such rapid healing, and takes note of the instant hunger he feels as the troll's calories are immediately redirected to directly rebuilding tissue. The troll in front of him is starting to look mighty delicious...
Xanderghul shakes off the feeling and assails the troll with everything his mighty troll-body can muster, tearing at it with his claws and then lunging in with his tusks.
With everyone fighting Yuzu, there was no space available for Isilme. She quickly turns and heads towards where Variska had gone, but instead of waiting behind her, Isilme jumps up and catches herself at the edge of the roof of the building neraby. She quickly scrambles up it after catching hold, then heads up the roof and back down on the other side to attack the troll there.
Unfortunately for Isilme, however, one of the roof's shingles gives way as she crests the roof, sending her sliding down the roof towards the troll. Turning over as she slides down, she tries to dig her toes in and grasp the roof with her hands to slow down, catching herself just in the nick of time, but leaving her unable to attack the troll.
The cyclops continues his slobbering rage, seemingly infuriated by the troll woman's refusal to acknowledge his presence. He sweeps his greataxe side to side in his attempt to hack at her, but without his preternatural insight, his attacks are utterly hopeless. So hopeless in fact, that he is more of a danger to himself than to the troll...
In the meantime, Ehren continues to focus his magic on the trolls the others are in melee with. With a wave of his hand he evokes his own burst of radiance spell, blasting the two giants with searing white light.
Noticing that the troll's wounds are not healing over as quickly as they were before, Lann tightens his grip on his longsword and takes another two swings at her torso, stepping forward with each blow to put as much force behind them as possible.
Chaotic black energies swirl around the she-troll, sapping her very vitality as she struggles to wield the eldritch energies that suffuse her very being. She flails around wildly, her whip arcing over the heads of the heroes and passing through the buildings as if it were thin air. Lann ducks underneath its arc, lashing out as his longsword connects with her torso witb a wet sound. Blood seeps from the wound and she topples over to the ground from exhaustion, her chest still heaving with air. As she falls, Lann recoils back from her body, clutching the scaly side of his scalp in pain and horror. Something was wrong.
Valaria and Anevia are up!
As the she-troll falls to the ground, defeated at least for the moment, Val clamours over her prone form to get closer to a troll that is actually still threatening her allies. She swings her knife, attempting to drive it into the creature's flesh.
"Kláraðu henni!" Ehren shouts gutturally over the wind and rain, pointing a finger at the fallen Yuzu. Usually, he would not encourage such brutality, but against trolls, they could not take any chances.
Obliging, the cyclops raises his axe high over his head and brings it crashing down on the troll, not a hint of mercy in its eye.
As Ehren turns his head however, he realizes that something is wrong down below. "Lann? What's wrong?"
Lann gasps in pain, nearly falling to his knees. "It's like... my blood is on fire! Oh, gods," he hisses.
Meanwhile, visualizing a bulls-eye upon her target, she lets loose a strike that hits dead center, nearly slaying the wounded troll in one stroke.
Further back, the two confused trolls continue to duke it out, mostly to no effect. They flail their great arms and tusks around in the rain and wind, making a lot of noise and bellowing as they do.
Hinagiku and Anevia are up!
Anevia flickers from atop the tower she's on, the vague sheen showing where she was simply vanishing suddenly, and onto the other tower. As she reappears atop it, she draws an arrow into her grasp, firing it quickly into the nearest troll, before leaning over the edge to see if Lambrecht could exit out the back, otherwise keeping hunkered down against the wind and rain.
Anevia vanishes and reappears on another tower, but as she appears she slips somewhat on the wet lumber. Her shot veers off into the distance. She curses softly under her breath in Shadowtongue, then peers over the side. There are no other doors in and out of the watch-tower. He's surrounded.
Xanderghul then finally disables his opponent with a series of cuts and bites that leave the troll dead at his feet. But as soon as the troll falls, he feels something encroach on his mind...
Ehren's blast of light washes over Yuzu's unconscious form harmlessly, but Valaria finds herself caught up in its blinding light...
Meanwhile, the cyclops roars. Creeping closer with each swing the one-eyed giant stifles all attempts to mount a defense, splitting the fallen troll open with a final swing. The wound is horrific... but she still breathes, her flesh already starting to regrow...
The other troll continues to stand and babble with a vacant expression on its face. "Rennsli vatns er mousy, spotted, en dökkari en blóð!"
Meanwhile, the trolls in the back continue to duke it out. One swings a fist at the other, but he simply dodges out of the way. "Haha! Þú misstir!" he chortles.
Hinagiku, Ary, Variska, and Kule are up!
Val yelps and brings her hand up to cover her eyes as Ehren's spell goes off. "Hey! Watch it, Rocky! I'm still standing here, you know?" She tries to blink away the spots as her vision dances from the momentary flash of brilliant light.
The moment Lann brings Yuzu down, Ary looks him over, and when the effect doesn't immediately end, she starts speaking loud enough to be heard over the rain by the troll. "Xander, whatever this is, it isn't stopping. Any ideas?" Ary calls out as she moves forward to keep in lockstep with Valaria and keep their movements guarded.
When the second troll is brought down and the Cyclops slams his axe down onto Yuzu's neck, Ary hustles over the body - as quickly as she could - barely taking notice of the regeneration, but noticing all the same. "Yuzu isn't completely out, you'll need to hit her again." she calls to Ehren.
As she moves into the tower, she immediately spots Lammbrecht, and wheels slightly to bring her shield around first to interpose, and then to slam into him, hoping to topple him and keep him not only trapped, but literally pinned down. She maintains her position in the doorway to exacerbate any attempts to flee.
Lann appears to be under the effect of the curse of boiling blood, the death curse of a tor linnorm. Your mother likely told you a tale or two about the linnorms of her homeland, and their ability to curse those hapless adventurers who would try to slay them. The tor linnorm, who only lives inside of volcanoes, curses its victim with boiling hot blood, causing them to gain vulnerability to fire and to be permanently staggered from the pain of their boiling blood.
But Ary has no idea how he incurred such a powerful curse, with no linnorms in sight?
Ary's whipping blow connects with a grisly crack as the back of Lambrecht's head slams into the wall behind him. He falls to the ground, his hand still curled around a small vial.
Hinagiku, Variska, and Kule are up!
"It's a linnorm curse!" Ary calls to the others. "When a Linnorm falls in battle, they curse the one who slayed them. This has something to do with that!"
Skalds have the power to invoke linnorm death curses into their rage songs. Based on the lyrics you've heard, you can recall him invoking the names of famous cairn, crag, tarn, and tor linnorms.
The scarred unicorn moves around the corner as he hears Lann crying out in pain.
"Over to me, Lann," Külə says dourly. Though he wasn't certain what the curses Ary had mentioned might entail, he could watch over him in the mean time.
Hinagiku and Variska are up!
"He isn't a bard, he's a skald," Xanderghul yells over the wind - losing his body unfortunately meant he was removed from the message network. "I've read about skalds who can invoke linnorm death curses into their oration, more common amongst those who live further west. Lann will need his curses dispelled immediately, or he will die within the week."
"Aight, sounds like he's gotta die, then," Variska responds, heading into the watchtower behind Hinagiku and Ary. The handsome half-orc inside leans against the wooden wall glances past their legs at the collapsed bodies of the two trolls. He finishes his oration - the slow, lilting words are incomprehensible to the heroes, but their tone can only be described as a dirge...
"Yggdrasils aske | stor ond lider
Langt mere end mænd kender;
Hart biter sin top, | dens stamme klipper,
Og linnormen gnaver nedenunder."
" Yggdrasil's ash | great evil suffers,
Far more than men do know;
The hart bites its top, | its trunk is rotting,
And the linnorm gnaw beneath."
He smirks, and moves to his knees as if to push himself from the floor. But he stops there, and gives a dramatic flourish and bow, which causes his damp blonde hair to shroud around his face, though of course the heroes only can see a sparkle-covered shape where his body should be. And then he vanishes without a trace.
Through the holes in the roof of the building you're on, you can see the ruined remains of what was someone's home. Staring into it, you suddenly become aware of a malign compulsion that's reaching out to anyone who might enter the home. It appears to be haunted.
Round 4!
Hinagiku, Lann, Valaria, Isilme, Anevia, Xanderghul and Ehren are up!
As Xanderghul begins to be wracked by the curses, Isilme calls out to him, drawing upon her own divine power. "Focus, Xanderghul, shake off the curse!"
Isilme squints into the rain and wind... but sees no sign of the sparkly skald from her vantage point.
Hinagiku, Lann, Valaria, Isilme, Anevia, Xanderghul and Ehren are up!
"Be careful, these buildings appear to be haunted," Isilme says as she surveys the surrounding area.
Seeing no other real options, Isilme decides to attack the nearby troll, hoping the others will follow suit shortly. This time moving with more caution, she moves gracefully across the tiled roof coming to a stop near the babbling troll. Swinging her starknife in an arc that begins high facing away from the troll, she twists herself around, the weapon tracing a path down and through the troll's jugular.
By now Lann is already dripping with sweat, the rain falling from above providing him absolutely nothing in the way of relief. His legs wobble beneath him as he staggers back toward Kule, keeping an arm on the wall of the nearby watchtower for support.
Hinagiku, Valaria, Anevia, Xanderghul and Ehren are up!
"Sorry, Valaria," Ehren whispers sheepishly, having failed to realize that the swashbuckler was in his spell's area. The news of his friend's potentially imminent demise was not doing his focus any favors. Making sure to give her ample warning this time, he adds, "Would you mind moving a little bit? I definitely don't want to hit you with this next one."