Gavrick and Adrien spar back and forth, trading blows. Every stab in his direction seems to be parried and dodged as if his body was made of mist. Blows that seemed as if they would strike home with the practice blades instead were suddenly turned aside at an impossibly late moment, keeping him from being "wounded" in the spar.
Then, Adrien's father entered the room gently, his movements light and observant more than direct. After several seconds of observation, he speaks.
"I underpaid to find a tutor of your skills boy, and you can't even bother to score a point on this only passably competent fencer?! It's like you're TRYING to be a disappointment."
"EYES ON ME, BOY!" Gavrick commands when his father speaks, for indeed, the tutor has not let up in his advance at young Adrien.
---------------
Trissae-Rex huffed and lowered her head, reading Grellik's body language as potential hostility, and prepared to strike. Her tail raised high whipped back and forth in anticipation.
Adrien sets into his tutor, and as they exchange blows the scene changes to a city street outside of a commoner's tavern. Adrien's father changes to a pretty young woman, one Adrien admired, standing near the door. His tutor, on the other hand, had changed into a swaggering young man with many years above the even younger man of Adrien.
The smell of spirits wafted off of Adrien's tongue as he easily parried aside the blade of his opponent and pressed his advantage.
"Please, you barely know how to use those blades!" the well-dressed lout boasted, but the faltering expression of worry on his face betrayed his true feelings. He had many years on the young man, but despite that it might be that he was out-classed.
"Surrender now, and maybe I won't slay you dead in the street!"
Grellik scoffs. "oh, you think so? You're going to regret underestimating me! Or should I say her?"
Grellik starts to rush to Farlyse, poised to attack.
"You and every nobleman, think you're untouchable, think you can get away with anything. Think you're so f!*~ing important? You're nobody, just like the rest of us," he parries the young man's sword aside again, spitefully, then presses the offensive, attacking rapidly. "If you surrender I'll f%!!ing kill you anyway, so you'd better fight, coward!" It sounded pretty cool and fierce in Adrien's teenage mind, the words only a little slurred.
Ozz, who had been stealthed up to the doorway, just beyond vision of those within, snuck occasionally peaks.
Seeing negotiations fall apart, he gestures to Dino-Triss into the room as Grellik begins the first moments of getting ready to begin the process of charging into the room.
He charges into the room, just ahead of Grellik, ghosting out of the shadows of the doorway.
He goes low, low enough to get his shoulder beneath the long table, and to bring it up in an attempt to pancake Farlyse to the wall behind her.
"My lord!" Dolson says as he enters the piano room (The music playing without dissonance or disruption, throughout). He leaves the doorway, and enters. His voice can be heard shouting and pleading from beyond the threshhold.
"Stop! Stop! Please! Cease your fight and-... Sun and stars, your eyes! Lord, something is wrong with him, he doesn't seen himself!"
"I can SEE that, Marr!!" Comes Lord Frostheight's shouting voice a moment later, the sounds of swords clashing ringing off of one another again and again.
There is pain in his voice. Injured?
Three successful strikes on Sapphire/Adrien. -21 HP to the haunted swordsman.
"Stop just standing there, and help me!"
Ozz lifts the table and rushes Farlyse with it, the table turning against his body, legs out toward the hallway.
Farlyse turns, plants her feet and sets her mailed shoulder against the rush. The CATCHES the table against her, her boots sliding as the rug beneath her gives. They hit the far wall along with a shattering barrage of glasses and plates. A few candles go out, dimming the lights of the room only slightly.
The wall is held between them, the greatsword between Farlyse and a table, held by her armored forearm. Ozz's grip on the table falters and Farlyse easily recovers her balance against the back wall.
"AHHH!!!" Fayrlyse yells with exertion as she pushes off of the wall, returning the favor to Ozz. He keeps a grip on her sword, so as not to push it away as well.
The armored woman explodes off of the wall with the table. She pushes back, bowling Ozz over with the table and sending him back against the hallway entrance. The table leaves contact with her with a shove, flipping in the air as Ozz stumbles and ducks the turning table, narrowly missing getting hit by it as it clatters to the floor near the hallway, legs up.
Farlyse bares her weapon in both hands, free of the table from between her and her foes. She blocks the doorway into the piano room with her body, standing before it. Falling into a battle stance, she flexes in her stance and rolls her neck in anticipation, her bones cracking with satisfaction as she readies herself for battle. Her greatsword gleams coldly in the candle light.
"Come. Throw yourselves on my sword!" she hisses between clenched teeth, eyes glaring out beneath her dark bangs.
Sounds of swordplay continue to ring, this time joined with the pained exertions of Lord Frostheight. From the sounds of it, the nobleman isn't doing so well.
Lord Frostheight, at -36
Immediately you're being struck upside your face, and the setting is different. Time had passed... The identity of the dead lordling discovered and that information passed on to Adrien's father. You're in the mansion
"How DARE you?!" Lord Mareschal yells at his foolish son. This is only the beginning of his scolding.
Somewhere in the background is his mother, tentatively asking for the violence to stop.
Conflict! Trissaesaurus Rex roars enthusiastically as if trying to inspire Grellick before nearly trampling him stepping into the room. She stops a moment to let Farlyse drink in the view of what doom has come for her, then lunges her massive jaws toward the armored half-elf.
Farlyse's glare changes to surprise as the T-rex roars and enters the room. Still, she doesn't falter totally in will, and as the beast charges teeth first she brings her sword up in an attempt to parry the giant jaws.
As the flat of the blade smacks across the T-rex's cheek the jaws push forward and close down over Farlyse's chest, causing her to cry out in pain.
She is grappled and restrained.
Grellik grins and rushes past Farlyse to see whats going on in the other room. "Well, I'll leave you two to get reacquainted. Try not to rough her up too bad Trissae, though of course, sometimes things happen..."
Assuming he sees Adrien fighting Frostheight and heard Marr's exclamation he curses under his breath and rushes Adrien. If he has time to, he will try to grapple him, otherwise, he'll position himself as much "between them" as he can
Adrien is cowed and downtrodden. And a little shocked. The only good thing about nobles was their honor. They were supposed to keep their word, protect the weak, serve the people, and settle their differences with a fair duel. He'd felt like it was a noble deed he did, defending someone defenseless, and doing it through a (mostly) traditional duel. Sure, his opponent didn't realize it was between nobles, but it was nonetheless. He almost thought father would be proud, or impressed.
"It was a fair fight," Adrien Mareschal managed to respond, sullenly.
"Do you even know who you killed? That was a Bronn! We're RUINED, our family is RUINED," his father shouts, knocking everything off a nearby table, sending expensive silver clattering. He turns to his wife, "Lord Bronn will have us living in the streets if they don't just execute us outright for some made up charge."
Adrien stood motionless, red-faced and frozen, his cheek still stinging from the slap.
His father turned his attention back to him again, but this time there were tears in his eyes, having realized what must be done. "Idiot, senseless defiant idiot. I told you to keep your head down, listen to your tutors, and enjoy your easy life. If you really hate being in this family so much, then maybe you'll get your wish."
"What are you saying..." his mother asked quietly, shocked.
"We don't have a choice."
Her reaction already spent failing to defend herself from the Party's monstrous, man-eating bard, Grellik is able to negotiate past Farlyse with relative ease.
In piano room the windows are all covered by curtains, and a piano sits in the far corner from the doorway, playing without any apparent player. Sitting to the left of the piano is a chair and table. The table is covered in papers, and what looks like a map. A bottle and glass of Cherryfire have been shattered against the wall near the table.
To the left, all the way in the back is Lord Frostheight sporting a few fresh but not life-threatening wounds. He's panting and has his guard up, focused entirely on the swordsman even as Grellik approaches (Though obviously the bugbear would be visible to him).
Before him stands... Adrien? His skin has blackened like a shadow, and smoking tendrils float upward from his head like the long hair of some phantom floating in a sea of black blood. The swords in his hand, Sapphire's blade in one and Grimgar's in another, almost don't seem real. They appear flatter than a thing that is real should ever be, black pits of nothing sharpened to deadly points held in each hand of the dramatically changed rogue.
Grellik is just able to get into reach of the swordsman and... ... manages to do so. Indeed, he seems more fixated forward at the moment. Looking pale and confused near the Piano, on the window-side of the fight, is Dolson Marr, panicking.
Finally coming to his senses enough to act, now That Grellik had entered the scene, Dolson speaks a few magic words and an earthy, waxy scent passed through the room as he gestures at Lord Frostheight, who promptly vanishes.
Dolson just teleported Frostheight, or turned him invisible.
Changing places.
+??
Ozz charges forward at the half-elven foe held in the mouth of the T-rex, clearly intending to take advantage of this moment of opportunity.
With his axe wielded in two hands, he begins attacking.
Farlyse is at -50 damage
Farlyse, bleeding but still fighting, grips her sword awkwardly and begins slashing at the T-rex's belly with her great sword.
The armored woman slashes into the belly of the beast, but is only barely able to draw blood in the thick hide. Trissae's hold on her spell remains, as does her jaws remain around the half-elf knight.
She remains grappled and restrained.
Trissae-rex tilted and growled in a low rumble as Ozz attacked her prey, she would not put up with another Hunter touching her catch. However she is interrupted by her snack's squirming and stinging with her sword. Thuroughly angered, T-Rex lifted Farlyse to height, then stomped away back outside into the courtyard, rolling Farlyse with her tongue for a better grip.
As Trissae-rex carried Farlyse she whipped the woman vigourously back and forth, the dino was annoyed by the hard metal shell that protected the fleshy bits and wanted to throttle free the sharpness out of the woman's hands.
Enraged that, though disoriented, the mighty woman's grip remained firm on the blade the T-Rex whipped the woman about then brutally into the ground at it's feet.
Feeling the overwhelming beastial rage mounting Trissae panics to regain control of herself, her monstorous form preparing to smash the armored woman underneath it's massive foot to make a jelly of her. As the foot falls to crush Farlyse, only the light clap of an elven foot is heard, Triss only barley dropping the polymorph in time.
Trissae stood panting from the exhilaration and looked down at Farlyse with grim resolve, then held out a hand.
"The Man on the wall taught me mercy, but I still have to work on forgiveness..."
[ooc]Yeah, he definetly still wants to.)
As he grasps Adrien, hoping to at least stop him from continuing to attack Frostheight. "Cavell, get a hold of yourself! What happened here, Wizard?" his eyes snap to Marr "There, Adrien! there is our object, the fool who thinks to wield the Bowl for his own ends! Come back to us--Feng's life hangs in the balance!"
Grellik grapples the specter-wreathed swordsman, trying to talk sense into him, to get the swordsman to control the ghost.
"I don't know!" Marr says, when questioned. "When I heard the crash, I came in and he was already like this! He seems to be... Possessed by something, some malign entity!"
As Grellik holds his grasp on his haunted companion, the apparitions head suddenly swivels on Adrien's neck to face backward, directly into Grellik's face. Black eyes of smoking death stare into Grellik's, and Grellik begins to sink, feeling Adrien through the ghost's stare...
Again, read the last two spoilers between Adrien and I. You will appear in the room along side his mother, and can engage with Adrien directly there.
You can choose to make another save if you choose every subsequent round, reading the spoilers and interacting inside the vision if you choose to or fail, or acting in the real world with the spoilers barred from you in you make your save.
Meanwhile, Trissae drags Farlyse out of the building with her jaws, the knight's hands grasping and toppling at the hallway's decoration as she passes, thrashes her about and tosses her to the ground.
Then, Trissae turns back into herself, and offers her hand to the Knight. Farlyse stares up at Trissae, wounded and bleeding, her armored punctured like tin. That's when they both realize something strange.
While distracted with the struggle between each other while exiting the manor, the reality of what had just happened now sets in on them both. From inside the manor, there was no battle in the courtyard, just a stormy nigh. The gates were closed, and nothing was on fire.
However, sometime between exiting the house and now, the courtyard had filled with the struggle of the Shields and Sharks against the thick army of Dazers. Chunks of building, dripping with the bright green acid of the plane of earth sat melting in craters in the courtyard, the trampled gateway is still held by the Shields, Wen making a stand, shoulder to shoulder with others, behind the weight of the red Shield of Yartar.
An injured Torea kneeled nearby, holding a bandage on her bleeding thigh while trying to take occasional potshots at the larger dazers with eldritch blasts. She looks over at the Trissae and Farlyse, and regards the drow.
"Uhh, things are going well then?" she shouts over the storm and the combat.
How had they not been visible from inside of the manor? The battle is hard to miss. The burning building across the street had even spread, lighting numerous houses ablaze, turning the scene red and orange.
"Hruggek's fang!" Grellik stares in shock as the spirit twists around to face him. As he feels himself start to be pulled in he grits his teeth. "Watch my body, Wizard." And he surrenders himself to the spirit world
"Adrien! There you are! This is no time for you to be reminiscing about the past! Mareschal, Cavell..."In the spirit world, he pulls his mask across his face. "Who the hell cares! You're a Shark! And your true family needs you! Come and let us finish what we came to this misbegotten place to do!"
A bugbear suddenly forms within Adrien's vision, confusing him. He was being outcast by his father, and yet... Here was someone he knew but that he COULDN'T know. Someone familiar. Family.
"Son..." Adrien's father said without a pause to the materializing bugbear. "You're no longer a part of this family. Our son is dead."
Adrien's mom turns her head slowly, her body perfectly still, until it was facing nearly the other way around to focus on Grellik. Her tear-redened eyes were blank, and full of black ink.
"No... Not yet. I need more time. He is so close. So... so close... You cannot have him."
Her body suddenly jerks around to match her facing, and floats across the floor, her hair falling upward to float in nonexistent blood, one hand outstretched, nails blackening as they claw out to grasp him.
Farlyse stares, shocked, at the elemental melee happening at the gates. It was basically a warzone, with Shields and Sharks fighting side-by-side for control of the gate, and therefor the mansion. Dazers had started climbing the walls, and the ranged combatants turned their attention onto these.
The knight stands up quickly, Trissae's outstretched hand ignored.
"Drow... What... What is this?!"
"Silvers! What's going on?!" she shouts out to the mounted Shield, trotted from one wall to the other, trying to round up and knock out the dazers climbing over the walls.
"Oh! Vandeross! Joint operation, overseen by Captain Wen. Turns out there's a magical artifact somewhere in this mansion causing all this mess. The Captain and Sharks have come to an understanding, end the storm!"
"Unless Trissae was planning on finishing eating you, we could use a hand out here!"
Looking taken aback by the declaration, Farylse turns, open mouthed, to face Trissae. The expression quickly turns into a guarded glare.
"This is a spell!" she bleeds.
"Stop, what's going on? Who are you?" His young voice cracks a little.
"Begone, Spirit! he does not belong to you!"
As Adrien speaks to him Grellik turns his head toward him "I am Grellik! But well you know me, Adrien! We have fought together, bled together! We are Bogsharks--your family! And we need you now! Come to us!"
Trissae's hand drops as Farlyse stands, and she wipes a hand through her own hair to move the wet matted bang out of her eyes. She watches Farlyse's reaction slightly amused.
Triss's eyeroll is so overdone Silvers might be able to hear it from this distance as Farlyse makes her declaration...
"Love, if this is all a spell then you'd be in far more trouble than simply being nibbled on by a dinosaur. No, I'm not in control of any of this, so you can help me- help her-, or stay the F*^# out of my way. We have to stop Brundon." Trissae says matter-of-factually to Vandeross, before whipping her hair back into a ponytail and then turning to head back into the mansion.
Seeing confused familiarity, young Adrien rushes to the aide of the hulking goblin in his family's home as his mother rushes the monstrous humanoid with a wraith-like wrath.
Together, the two are able to wrestle and push Adrien's mother back, who glides backward across the floor on feet sliding inches above the floor, bare feet dripping dark-red pitch beneath the end of her dress.
Grellik implores Adrien to leave with him, and in his physical being is the path out of this place, out of this bad dream.
"Adrien! You are no longer a Mareschal! For what you have done, there's no other option. Be banished, child, and never curse this family with your arrogance again!"
Adrien's father points an outstretched arm at finger at the exit to the mansion, toward Adrien's eventual future. His arm is outstretched toward a nearby door, which swings open casting in twisting shadows and pouring, blood-red rain.
------
Trissae turns her back on the storm and re-enters the mansion, and four strides behind is Vandeross. As she crosses the boundary of the mansion, she turns to see the fighting Shields and Sharks disappear behind a veil of magical lies. The soldiers and dazers vanished, the crushed gate knit back together unharmed, and the smoldering light of the fire from across the street drowned behind sheets of uninteresting, uneventful rain.
"Wizardy..." Farlyse hissed behind Trissae from the entrance of the building. Then, she stuck her head through the boundary of the illusion."I will return! Hold until I speak with my lord! I will return!"
Then, she turns and pursues Trissae into the mansion proper.
Trissae and Farlyse enter the mansion, heading deeper in to their mutual companions.
Adrien stands in the center of the room, a wraith-like shadow enveloping his body, a sword in each hand. Long tendrils of smoke float upward from his head like hair floating in a sea of blood, and a ghastly, woman's face (Sapphire's rictus glare the Drow observed when the assassin died in the alleyway) is turned around unnaturally to face directly at Grellik who stands behind Adrien, while holding the swordsman in place. Both Adrien and Grellik look to be in a trance as they face away from the doorway.
There is no sign of Lord Frostheight.
"What have you done?! What sorcery is this?! Release them, at once!" Ozz barks at Marr, one hand pushing him up against the back wall of the room, the other wielding an axe at the ready.
"Release them!" He barks again, shaking the smaller man.
"I...! I didn't! I haven't!" Dolson responds, not daring to cast a spell for fear of catching the half-orc's axe.
"It's your swordsman! Adrien! He's possessed by some manner of spirit! This isn't my magic working here, this is some malignancy of his, some curse~!"
Young Adrien looks at the shadowy blood-raining door, then back at Grellik, "Right, easy choice then isn't it?" He steps to Grellik's side and turns to his father.
"I never was a Mareschal, it just took you disowning me for me to realize that. So thank you, and f+@# off," he sets a hand on Grellik's shoulder.
Adrien touches Grellik, his mother floating across the floor, both hands outstretched, mouth open in an impossibly wide scream.
"NOO!! HE MUST DIE! HEEEEE MUUUUUUUUUST DIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" Her voice rips through the air as Sapphire's spirit tries to prevent it from happening.
But she isn't fast enough, and the boy touches Grellik and the dream fades. Grellik and Adrien reorient into their bodies as Sapphire's wraith slowly fades from around the human.
Adrien's muscles are sore, as if from overuse. As are Grellik's, his hands gripping Adrien and preventing his body from moving even while in a dream. His unconscious form had exerted itself to prevent Adrien's from getting away, driven by a ghost.
Sounds re-enter their senses dully, audio booming in the backgrounds of their heads, Ozz's barks at Dolson slowly sinking into their consciousnesses.
The ghostly apparition around Adrien is slowly starting to fade.
Grellik grits his teeth as the revenant desperately tries to cling to its target."What manner of creature, and how...no matter. A question for afterward, if there are any answers to be had."
Trissae strode into the room to a halt. She flicked her arm up to hold Farlyse back as she surveys the scene. "Sapphire.." Slips between Triss's teeth as she glared at the wispy shadow lingering over her friends.
Trissae's side glance noticed Ozz and Marr against the wall. "Ozz! let the conjurer go - we may need his help to deal with... this..." She said in a rushed whisper, fearful of stirring the spirit.
Sapphire's form dissipates from around Adrien, causing both men to slowly regain their senses.
Grellik is the first to gain his senses enough to act.
Grellik nods to Ozz. "Trissae is right--of anyone here he may be best able to aid us--and this whole misbegotten burg." He snaps back to Marr. "Wizard, we have no time to waste--do you know where the Vessel is? This city does not have much time left!" Grellik cautiously makes his way to the piano, to see if anything new is apparent from a closer vantage point.
Grellik calls out to Marr for information, and approaches the piano.
There are a few sheets of paper resting above the keys, containing the glyphs which, for those proficient, can be deciphered into how to play music with the piano's keys. Edges of silver inlay can be seen in the wood of the piano behind the pages, mostly obscured.
Beneath, the keys play on their own, drifting music melodiously through the building without a single errant note.
With Trissae and then Grellik's insistence, Ozz takes his hands off of the mage but keeps his axe firmly held in his hand.
"Where's Frostheight...?" Ozz growls, asking Trissae if she had seen him and studying the room with suspicion.