Alaina kicked with all her might at the beast's back legs, in the hopes she could break one of them at least.
Henri, completing her reload, raises her gun level with the undead wolf's face in her slowly wavering hand. The trigger clicks softly underneath her finger, and the bullet flies from the blunderbuss with a crash of sound and black powder being expelled from the muzzle.
Dulae lunges in, trying to put the beast down.
Cel's blast shreds into the beast, Alaina's kick snaps the thick bone in its leg, and Henri's shot hits the creature just above its eye, collectively striking the beast with a flurry of blows.
As Dulae's swing misses, the party notices the dead wolf is staggering; it's not far from a second death.
+11C
+5A
+8H
-
+87 cumulative
Seeing the nice master's pain, McSlithers tries to see if there's anyway he can diable the looming wolf.
If he sees a weakspot he strikes, if not he simply bites where he can.
Staggering from the the horrenous bite, Xizoh's anger goes cold. Trusting his healing to keep him alive, Xizoh leaps up. As he comes down he slams his ponderous chain downwards, hoping to finish the beast off.
The little snake spots a raw-looking wound near the creature's ankle, but misses its bite.
Xizoh's chain slams into the dead wolf, breaking its back and cutting into its side. The wolf collapses, folding in on itself with a whining grunt. Its cold, lifeless body lies unnaturally twisted. The blood on its snout stains the snow around its head.
A moment later, a large fluffy flake of snow falls between the party, landing on the dead wolf. The party notices the snow clouds are starting to overtake them; a shower of falling snow sparkles in the sun just behind them.
At the peak of Mount Oranis, a plume of mist begins to roil down the mountain.
+12X
-
+99 cumulative. Very dead.
Dropping his flesh golem state, Xizoh tiredly scratchs Mcslither's chin. "You okay Henri?""
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Henri staggars and drops her blunderbuss as the wolf falls, returned unto death. She falls to her knee and grips at her arm, the elf's hand trembling slightly. Still, she grins up at Xizoh. "Right as rain, Doc. Though, I guess, if you've got just a minute to spare, I wouldn't mind it." She grimaced as a few more pellets of blood dropped onto the snow, deepening its scarlet tint. "Better do it fast, though. That mist doesn't look friendly."
The little snake cocks it head at the lull, before disappearing in a white light.
Walking around to the front of the wolf, Alaina's mounting frustration at her ineffectiveness, caused her kick the beast's head in until it was nothing but mush. Spitting on the body, she then said, "And stay down."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dulae quickly scans around the party to make sure nothing else nasty is sneaking up on them. Seeing nothing, she sheathes her sword and pulls out her wand of Cure Light Wounds. She keeps a carefully neutral expression on her face at the amount of blood coming out of her companions.
"Doctor, Henri" she says, using the wand on each of them "anything bitten off that Altien's grace won't cure?"
She pauses, scowls, and uses it again.
Looking up at the clouds above them and the tendril of mist reaching down the slopes, a sliver of fear works its way into Dulae's mind. That is not at all natural...
"I think its time to go."
Xizoh grins as he stops decorating everything in red. "Nothing too important. Though, I can't help but feel you don't need my medical skills with those super sticks around. Oh, what's a poor healer to do?" His tone humorous as he pantomimes grabbing his wounded heart
As he jokes he scans his fellows to make sure that the trip down won't harm them worse.
Alaina still looks a bit singed from the fire in the tunnel, but Xizoh doesn't think there are wounds behind the new tears in her clothes. Cel also sports burns from the same fire, but looks overall to be in relatively good health.
Looking past their soot-smeared faces and charred, torn, blood-stained gear, the rest of the party looks quite well to the doctor.
Looking up and seeing the mist, Alaina agreed with the Sergeant, "Yes, I think it is time to go."
Cel is jittering visibly with concern and desire to leave, nearly hyperventilating, as he starts inching toward the direction of town but too afraid to go ahead of the group. His head continues to dart in all directions looking for threats (like this but more scared). He is almost completely ignoring that there are other people around in varying levels of injury in his excitement to leave.
As Henri's arm stitches itself back together with a few pokes from the wand, she stood with a small smile, and winked at Dulae. "Thanks, Retired Sergeant Sunshine. Don't worry, Doc. There's plenty of ailments that those sticks can't fix, I'm sure." and went to collect her guns from the snowy ground, reloading her dragon pistol with a dragon's breath cartridge and her blunderbuss with a standard bullet cartridge.
"Agreed. Let's get the hell outta here."
The party continues down the mountain as the snow falls faster and the sun casts increasingly long shadows through the trees.
As they hike around the next switchback, they notice that this part of the mountain is also deserted. Instead of the echoing bellows of searching soldiers they hear the evergreens rustling as the wind picks up. If they call out, they get no answer.
The clouds loom fully overhead; heavy, grey, and dumping snow as they stretch westward. The flakes fall thick and fast, quickly covering the trail with a fluffy white sheet. The wind gusts snow into their eyes and under their hoods, making it difficult to see more than thirty feet ahead.
Meanwhile, the mist creeps down the mountain, seemingly hastened by the snow.
As the party approaches the dig where the archeology team was last known to be alive, it gets noticeably darker as the sun disappears behind the tall trees. Minutes later, the party suddenly notices the mist has ghosted silently through the trees, and is now not more than five feet away from Henri. The soft grey mist rises twenty feet high, curls slowly around the trees, and mixes with the snow.
They do not see or hear obvious signs of danger in the mist; no dark shapes moving through it, and no sign or sound of creatures other than themselves.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Seeing how far the mist had travelled in so short a time, true fear gripped Alaina. "Let's get the Hells moving people!"
Cel internally double checks that his shield is up and starts hustling further down the mountain completely disregarding the risk for falling .
Henri glances behind her every few moments, watching the mist draw closer to them. "It doesn't look so intimidating." Still, she did force her legs to move quicker, breaking out into a near-jog to speed up the group. "Still, if Red's afraid, I guess we should push faster. I don't know if we can outrun this thing."
Shifting the corpse on his back, Xizoh pushes himself faster, channeling minute amounts of magic to his legs. "Looks can be deceiving."
Dulae struggled along, finding it hard to keep up with the group in her heavier armor. She shoots Henri an annoyed look. "Its looks don't concern me. Its the groups of highly trained people who end up killed and their souls corrupted when they linger in it."
As she goes she gives the mist frequent glances, trying to recognize what kind of magic could be making it.
The party hurries on into the snow, alongside the mist.
Dulae doesn't recognize the mist as a form of any spell she's seen before. There is no casting signature she can sense; it seems indistinguishable from naturally occurring mist.
Dulae plods faster.
As Dulae finishes casting her spell, the wind dies. They hear a soft, light crackling noise ahead that quickly surrounds them. The party notices the undersides of the trees are freezing; evergreen needles are becoming brittle with cold and crunching under the weight of the snow. Ice runs up the tree trunks in crystalline patterns.
The next person to exhale notices their plume of breath is suddenly larger. The air grows still and quiet. They can only hear the soft press of fresh snow under their feet and the shifting of their gear. If they fall still it is utterly silent.
A bitter, glacial cold hits them suddenly; first enveloping Dulae and last Xizoh. It seems to pierce through their very bones. A feeling of dread creeps into their thoughts, raising the hair on the back of their necks.
Dulae and Alaina are the first to spot a pair of glowing blue eyes in the snow ahead.
A skeletal corpse approaches, its once rotting flesh now covered in frost and ice. Underneath tattered grey clothing are patches of grey-blue skin. Its mouth yawns open, revealing beast-like teeth too long and sharp to be human. From its sunken eye sockets, tiny beacons of blue-white light pierce through the falling snow.
Dulae thinks this is a frost wight; an abomination whose touch steals living energy. She thinks it wise to warn Alaina of this immediately. She remembers wights are not fond of daylight. She suspects the novice necromancer did not create it, but there is some possibility he commands it.
Henri is pretty sure this isn’t a zombie. She can’t remember why, but she has a nagging feeling they should take care not to touch it.
You have no idea what this is, but it is very scary and quite dead.
-
The undead creature shrieks and charges at Dulae, its blue glowing eyes focused on where she wears her holy symbol. It spreads its arms wide and attempts to slam into her.
Dulae easily deflects it with her shield. It screams in rage.
"Don't let it touch you!" Dulae cries out as it rushes towards her. She raises her shield and, just as the creature makes contact, she leans into it, spinning off on a diagonal and drawing her sword. The force of the wight's slam does nothing but add to her momentum as she whips her sword in a great arc, aiming to cut down the monstrosity in one blow.
Dulae's swing cleaves into the creatures torso, flinging bits of ribcage and dead flesh into the snow in the wake of her sword.
The dead thing screeches an ear-splitting cry and reaches for her.
+19D
Whirling as he shrugs the body off to his side, Xizoh stares at the beast for a split second before bulking up, his flesh splitting open to reveal the mix matched limbs of the flesh beast. His uneven legs have little issue rushing to the beast, his chain wrapped around him for a moment as the half elf spins like a top.
Xizoh's chain flies over the creature's head, whirling through the snow.
Once again, Cel inhales sharply pulling in more energy from the air around him and lets forth a mighty blast...
...that comes out far more like a mouse squeek than a lions roar.
Using Cel's gust of wind, Alaina leaped forward to kick the thing in the face.
Cel's gust shoots over the dead thing, blasting a column of air through the snow.
Alaina's kick strikes the creature in the side of its head, cracking off one of the hinges of its jaw and collapsing the side of its skull.
As she strikes the creature, a knife-like cold sinks through Alaina's boot, causing an aching pain that lingers long after.
The lights of its eyes dim to nothing and it collapses in a dry heap of bones, dust, and ice.
The frost and ice begin to slowly retreat from the trees. The party can feel a weight of dread lift from them as the wind picks up again.
Moments later, the mist begins to wash over them. It feels cold and damp, but nothing appears to happen to those caught it in for a few moments.
An eerie, unnaturally loud howl splits the air as the mist swallows them. It reminds them of the howl they heard their first night in Southtown.
Flesh sloughing off him, Xizoh prods the dead creature with his foot. "Well now, that was...different. Anyone know what it was?"
Fidgeting in the cold, Xizoh dons his cloak, returning to the dark skinned human that party first met.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Henri, who had raised her blunderbuss to quickly react to the monster just a moment ago, let out a low sigh as he was quickly removed from this plane by a flurry of strikes from her teammates. Still, she shivered and shrugged at Xizoh's question. "I'm pretty sure it was some kind of undead, given... everything. Not a zombie, I don't think." She slowly strode through the mist to examine its body, looking for any sort of identifying mark or any gear that might hint at its previous life. "Maybe Retired Sergeant RageBlade knows a little more, given that tip about not letting it touch you."
As the others are discussing the newly re-dead thing with the mist closing in and enveloping the group, Cel's fears take hold. Far too little knowledge about this mist and far too many overheard warnings about it result in him losing what little composure he had left, and he starts bolting down the path to get back to the town as fast as he can.
Henri sifts through the bones, half-buried in the fallen snow. A shining piece of metal catches her eye. It looks like a small pin, attached to a shred of an ancient coat that barely holds together.
Henri recognizes the symbol from tokens of the war kept in showcases like trophies by high-ranking military members of her family. It looks like the embellished six-pointed star she's seen on the crests of pre-war Abbhen military officers. Probably this person was one of Halkion's lesser officers who died in the battle of Mount Oranis 300 years ago.