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Li'an waits for Hrut to move in and then follows behind him and Anevia. "Well, at least something survived in tact," she says, remarking on the house's condition. "It must feel strange to walk in here under the circumstances," Li'an adds, thinking aloud as she pictures walking into her house with it similarly untouched.
Anevia moves straight to one of the two doors from the main room - the one to her bedroom. "Alright," she says. "If Irabeth has been here, she would have left a note in here..."
She opens the door, and is immediately sucker-punched by a grim, gaunt woman. Her head is completely shaven, and her skin is covered in long, heinous looking scars. She is wearing tattered clothing and is barefoot. Her worst scar is around her neck - it appears as though her throat was once skewered clean through with a red-hot poker...
Anevia reels from the attack, leaning against the wall for support. "F!!*. S-silent shroud. We need to move. They usually come in pairs...She'll have a partner."
Initiative Order
1. Li'an
2. Julania
3. Hrut
4. Ehren
5. Julania
6. Anevia
7. Markus
8. Valaria
9. Ary
10. Silent Shroud
11. Klarah
Li'an is up.
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Ary is unusually quiet; the sort of quiet she typically reserves for when they're sneaking around. Most probably, this is because she still isn't sure that there's nothing to be afraid of inside the house. It just seems too good to be true that of all the homes and places... this one is safe. And it's precisely the one they wanted.
Ary had been fully ready to begin digging through rubble to get to the lower floor.
Aaaaand... there went that.
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"Sarenrae's Flaming A$$! What the Hell just happened?!"
"Everyone on your guard!" Li'an said as she prepares to attack. Drawing Lleuad, she feints rushing the woman who'd sucker-punched Anevia. Taking advantage of her shift into a wide stance, Li'an slides between her legs at the last second, using the bed's foot-board to stop and tumble up onto the bed. As Li'an pops up behind her she swings around with Lleuad, aiming for the back of her neck.
Li'an is incredibly fast... but the woman is just a hair faster. She wheels around to kick Li'an in the face as she whirls by. The sheer force of her blow nearly snaps her neck. Li'an wheels from the blow, but despite her injuries she manages to swipe Lleuad across her clavicle, leaving a deep wound.
The woman does not react. What is pain to a follower of Zon-Kuthon, but a divine experience?
Julania draws her axe and rushes in. The woman isn't fast enough to react, this time. Julania swings her axe at the monk, but she quickly dodges it.
Hrut is up.
Nidalese assassins. Of course they would choose now to finish their job, Ehren thinks humorlessly, wincing at what sounded like someone's head getting kicked.
Markus takes a step so that he's in between Ary and Hrut, the safest place in the whole room. Then he pulls out a scroll and reads it, the text vanishing with every word that comes out of his mouth.
The monk woman in between Li'an and Anevia feels the encroaching fear of failure, that she would never succeed at her job and would be given a painless, merciful death for her failure.
Moving into action at his own pace,
"Val you and I finish this one off, Li'an and Ary can get the other one. We need to put them down NOW!"
Hrut moves over to her and swings his warhammer, trying to get Val a clean strike at her midsection in the process.
Hunting party(Val gets AoO), Encouraging Roar(+2 morale bonus attack and damage for 1 round)
Hrut swings at the Silent Shroud assassin, but the woman gracefully dodges his attack, grabbing him by the wrist and throwing him off balance.
Ehren is up.
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Aware of how nimble the silent assassin must be, Ehren moves to the open door to head off any potential escape attempts. In addition, he takes the chance to reach out and heal Anevia.
"Th-thanks." Anevia gasps out as her wound slowly heals. She draws her shortsword, grim. If Li'an couldn't get past the assassin, what chance did she have? She'd have to stand and fight. She lashes out, hewing her blade into the assassin's anatomy.
At that moment, Markus pulls out his scroll to cast cause fear on the monk woman - but the woman is without fear or doubt. She has been hunting her prey for a very long time now, and will not be distracted from her goal.
Valaria is up.
Val leans over just enough to see the mess of a melee going on in the next room. "I'm just going to wait out here so I can be ready when her partner inevitably tries to murder us," she quips. "You look like you've got that handled rather nicely and I doubt I'd do anything other than get in the way." She draws one of her throwing knives and looks around, ready to launch it if another assassin comes into play.
Ary frowned, analyzing the situation for a moment. Anevia just got attacked. And immediately warned of a second foe. If she were going to ambush someone... she'd definitely try to hit from more than one side; especially if she wanted to capture them... or at least ensure a slippery target didn't escape. Since the others had already searched outside, that meant that most likely...
Ary moved to the other closed door, and sets her shoulder against it.
Whether she viewed the situation as reinforcements or ambush, tearing apart the enemy's plan seemed the best option. She just had to hope she wasn't wrong.
The woman stays focused on her quarry. She spins around, kicking Anevia around the head. The woman collapses to the ground, knocked out cold. The assassin smirks coldly, stepping over and onto her unconscious body protectively. The Nidalese woman locks eyes with Ehren, understanding that if someone was going to prevent her from bringing in her prey, it would be the healer. But the woman is moving a hair too slow due to her wounds - Ehren raises his clubin time to deflect her strikes.
Suddenly, a demonic eagle manifests next to Valaria. She reacts to the intrusion instantaneously, lashing out at the eagle, slashing a razor-thin incision through its midsection, which erupts into gore.
Klarah glances at Markus. "Um... Um... Incoming!" She focuses, channeling positive energy - but she willfully ignores both the eagle and the assassin that she is aware of.
Anevia's eyes flutter open, and she stares up at the assassin over her body with disdain. She coughs. "ووه فوثك ....يوو, يوو بيتش" she mumbles, clearly out of it.
Round 2
Li'an is up.
"Kul!" Val reacts instinctively, but manages to tear open the summoned creature without too much effort. "Of course there's a spell caster too. Why not? Wait, do summon spells require line of sight?"
"No, they don't. Given that we can't see the spellcaster, he could be anywhere." Markus says, craning his neck to look out of the windows of the building. Was the other assassin outside?
Li'an stumbled backward on the bed, reeling from the kick she'd recieved to the chest from the assassin. The hit was probably one of the most painful blows she'd taken in her life, though still a distant second to running herself through with Lleuad. She felt around where the blow had landed, trying to feel if she'd broken anything. "If she hits me again like that, I might die," she thought, the realization dawning on her.
She stands there trying to think what to do for a few moments before deciding on her plan of action. That plan was made easier by Klarah's channeling of energy, which washed over, her healing some of the wounds the monk had inflicted. When she hears the Val's question about the summoners, she calls back immediately,
"If you don't see someone, and didn't hear anything, the caster is invisible and must be capable of casting spells silently!" she calls back.
Li'an alights from the bed with what grace she can manage, landing on one foot and then whipping around in a quick spin to slash savagely at the monk with Lleuad, choosing to aim high to goad her into to ducking so Hrut would be better able to hit her. As she did, she used her free hand to signal Hrut "Go Low".
She knew that at this point they needed him to land a blow on the monk or Anevia would be in serious trouble. "Come on Hrut... use it to your advantage!"
Li'an and Hrut team up to swing at the assassin.
Regaining his balance and changing his stance, Hrut swings high with his shield then still spinning brings the warhammer around at knee level while the monk is ducking the shield.
"Let me see you dodge this one assassin!"
The hammer slams into her kneecap, almost bringing her to the ground, but she does not react.
At the same time, Julania growls, swinging her mighty battleaxe at the monk. She makes contact, but her skin is supernaturally hard and thick, and the axe cannot penetrate...
Ehren is up.
Ehren tosses a quick glance over his shoulder, aware of the eagle spawned right behind him. However, he adamantly stands his ground, wildly swinging his club at the Silent Shroud assassin.
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Ehren swings at the assassin, but ends up smashing his club against the door frame instead, breaking his weapon.
Anevia doesn't want to risk trying to get up with the assassin standing over her. She attempts to swipe at the assassin's leg to distract their focus, but the monk quickly and evenly dodges it.
Markus is up.
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Markus takes a step back, pulling out the wand they'd garnered at the library. He points it at the monk, knowing that she's staggering around and also very dangerous - he fires the wand, and the pair of purple magical bolts fly unerringly at the agile monk.
Markus' bolts hurtle at the monk's head, an audible crack! is heard as part of her skull shatters...
Meanwhile, Ary sweeps the room, starting from her current position, moving through the corner (in the top right), then following the wall down over desk and chair. She eventually bumps into unseen and tall...
The assassin hisses, realizing that her injuries are too much for even her to bear. She retreats, focusing her ki powers to expedite her retreat. She dodges past Valaria and Ehren and out the door, running down the street.
Klarah continues to focus and channel, this time only excluding the eagle. Waves of positive energy flow out from her and throughout the house.
The fiendish eagle feebly attempts to attack Valaria once more, its wounds ripping open from the effort.
Another fiendish eagle manifests next to Ary. It screeches terribly, its hooked beak and wicked talons tearing into her.
Valaria is up.
Val takes one look at the fleeing assassin, but doesn't like her odds with the woman's supernatural speed. She whips back around and brings her starknife across the wounded eagle's throat, attempting to put the beast out of its misery.
"I'll get her." says Markus, grimly, gripping his magic missile wand. "She may be fast, but she isn't as fast as magical projectiles that never miss."
Valaria slices straight through the throat of the poor bird. It falls to the ground, unconscious.
Round 3
Li'an is up.
Li'an tears out the door with Lleuad in hand after the monk, unwilling to let her escape. As she does she draws her dagger in case she gets an opportunity to take a shot at her. "Markus! Take her down, I'll make sure she doesn't get back up!" she calls back over her shoulder as she sprints out the door.
The instant before her knife opens the summoned bird's throat, Val's ears twitch and her eyes dart over toward Ary for a moment. "The spell caster is moving! He's somewhere on the other side of the room now. Toward the west wall."
The eagle near the doorway takes a shot at Li'an as she rushes past. Its sharp beak rips into her shoulder as she moves by.
Julania trudges slowly out of the bedroom past Anevia, setting up a flank with Ary and blocking door.
"No sneaky summoners are getting out this way," she grunts, as she takes a swing at the eagle, but it narrowly dodges her swipe.
Hrut is up.
"We need a way to make them visible. We can maybe grab them, but we need to know where they are to make that work. Can you make it rain, Rocky?" she had no real idea of what sort of spells and magic Ehren had... she knew he could make water, but just how much? "If that's okay, Hawk?" she said as she bobbed and weaved with the overgrown duck before her, flashing Julania a quick grin as she moved into place.
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Hrut knowing he is too slow to catch the monk moves into the other room to finish off the eagle, muttering a quick prayer to Torag as he attacks, illuminating his warhammer in the process.
"Guide my hands."
Enduring Crane Strike
The impact of Hrut's colossal blow sends the eagle sprawling comically like a thrown rag-doll.
Ehren is up.
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Ehren quickly assesses his club, frowning when he realizes that its wooden length has split right down the middle. It seemed like only yesterday that he had first snapped the branch off an oak tree and whittled it down to its current, gnarled shape. He allows it to slip out of his grasp, reluctantly reaching for the dagger at his belt. The fine line between wearing and wielding metal was not one he liked meandering near.
"I can't make that much water," he replies to Ary, before thrusting his blade at the empty space to the side of him. "And I would need a better idea of where they are."
Ehren swipes at the air next to him and finds that there is nothing there.
Anevia slowly moves to her feet. Suddenly, the invisible sorcerer reveals himself, a half-orc clad in red and black cloth armor, wielding a wicked ranseur with a head made of obsidian. He seizes the opportunity to skewer his ranseur into Anevia's side, causing her to gasp out in pain.
"Anevia!" he screams as the invisible spell upon him wears off. "I'm gonna leave your lifeless corpse on that bed for your wife to find, then I'm gonna kill her too!"
Anevia huffs, grabbing her side in pain. She backs away from him into the bedroom. "Vagorg? The f~%%?"
Markus is up.
Markus heads out of the building after Li'an and the other assassin despite the appearance of another opponent. Once he gets the monk in his sights, he fires another pair of magical missiles - he's confident Hrut and Ary will be able to team up to take down the sorcerer that appeared.
Markus' magic missiles rocket down the street slamming into her right-hand side. One of her fingers is blown clear off in the process, and the injuries to her abdomen cause her to collapse into the street, unconscious.
Ary moves up and onto the eagle's corpse, positioned in a way so that she can benefit a maximum number of people with her shield. She lunges forward with a number of fierce attacks, Radiance glowing softly all the while. Although Vagorg fights back with a flurry of desperate blows with his ranseur, she bats each one aside and then decisively cuts him down. A magical shield manifests as she does so, but Radiance smashes right through it, its energies feeding into the blade.
"Yaniel?!" Vagorg screams, astonished.
Klarah hangs back, unsure of what to do.
Vagorg steps away and down into the corner, not caring that he was backing himself into a sticky situation - he is completely focused on his prey. He focuses on his ranseur, and suddenly his skin hardens into grey stone.
Anevia tries to raise her shortsword in defense, but the half-orc sweeps aside her guard, and ends this struggle with a ferocious and gory shanking. Anevia screams and falls to the ground, bleeding heavily all over her own bedroom floor.
'
Valaria is up.
Valaria is up.
"Nope. And lucky for you, not even a paladin." Ary responded. She looked quickly over to Anevia as she went down, biting her lip.
Val nimbly moves past Ary, getting inside the sorcerer's reach before he can react. "Somehow I doubt you're Silent Shroud," she says dryly. "Considering you're loud, crude, and not terribly subtle. Which means you're just another psychopath trying to murder us. Would you mind dying for me? We really don't have time to deal with you right now." Her starknife slashes through the air with lightning speed, biting into his body and leaving a deep tear in his flesh.