The last skeleton attacks Nathara, careless of its fallen brethren.
It's claws leave a few shallow gashes on her body, but otherwise do little to harm her.
Eirikr is up!
With all but one skeleton destroyed, Ashen and Eirikr move to try and finish the fight. Eirikr moves to pin the skeleton between himself and Nathara before attacking it with his spear, while Ashen bites at the monster's heels.
Eirikr and Ashen reposition themselves and attack. Ashen can't seem to get a good grip on the skeleton's bones, though Eirikr does manage to deliver a good hit in. Unfortunately, his spear glances off the creature and his blow does no real damage.
Tiferet is up!
With the tide of battle now finally swinging in their favour, Tiferet manoeuvres to bring down the last remaining skeleton. Trying her best to ignore the pain in her right arm and shoulder, she raises her axe in one mighty blow.
"Sister! From both sides, as one!" she cries, poised to strike.
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Tiferet's ax slams into the skeleton's body, cleaving straight through one rib and taking a chunk out of its spine. The skeleton stumbles and looks unsteady, but it doesn't fall yet.
Inire is up!
Finally seeing an opening that she can take advantage of, as Tiferet slams her weapon into the creature's body, Inire quietly darts across the ice and snow, like the pouncing cat that Nathara likened her to.
The creature, off-balance already from the many foes and strikes, leaves itself disastrously exposed for perhaps the last time. The pair of jaws collapse around the skeleton, Tiferet's axe slamming through one side, as Scribe, guided by a subtle hand, is guided through the most brittle of bones.
Inire leaps forward, her blade flashing through the air with a steely hiss. Her slash swings overhead and, despite her slim figure, she delivers an absolutely brutal strike. The blade strikes the skeleton's other side, then just keeps going. It cleaves through its arm, then its ribs, then cuts the spine in two. The skeleton falls in two directions, cleanly split in half by the tiny half-elf's sword.
Combat ends!
Tiferet is in the process of lowering her heavy greataxe down onto her foe when the corner of her eye catches a fleeting glimpse, a rapid movement darting from behind her and quickly bisecting the unbalanced skeleton before she even has a chance to realize what was going on. Suddenly, her foe crumbles in a pile of bones in front of her, its killer's vengeful figure appearing by her side – the deadly predator concealing herself under the unassuming name of 'Mouse'.
"Nice... thrust" she manages to say, her weapon having just effortlessly cloven through thin air where the undead threat used to stand. As soon as she regains her composure, however, a sentiment of rage and frustration pervades her, one that the flow of battle has kept away from her focused mind until now.
"To the Abyss with Rohkar and to the Abyss with his bloody pets!" she vents. "I'm tempted to walk all the way back to Heldren just to punch him in his smug face!"
Inire seems somewhat pleased with the compliment, but stays silent for a moment, as she tries to be cool and sheath her sword. She misses the sheath by a quarter inch and has to look to readjust. She looks just as disappointed as she had looked pleased. "Too cold for that. Should keep pressing forward, and find a warm place for the night... or find our enemies." she huffs out a breath, moisture rapidly condensing into a fog to punctuate her point. "I'll need to be more careful in the future. I don't like being so... exposed."
She quickly moves through the creatures, searching for any possessions who marked who the skeletons had been in life, before being turned into feral, mindless mockeries.
Examining the bodies of the skeletons, Inire finds very little. Their bones are old and weathered with time and their clothing and seems to have been reduced to a few fragments of rusty metal trapped in the ice and a few rotten scraps of cloth.
"They're not locals. Well... not recent Taldan locals. They're old, too, given the state of their equipment. I think they're Qadiran soldiers by what I can see... probably unearthed. I doubt Rohkar had time to dig up bodies and send skeletons wandering about. It doesn't make sense for him to do so." she says, shaking her head. "Vosi, are there any other necromancers amongst our enemies, as far as you know, or was Rohkar unique?"
"Yeah... You're probably right. That sleazy ruffian is not worth it anyway" she mumbles, cooling down a little.
"Besides, you're right. Qadiran garbs. Must have crossed the border and been killed by the Sentinels long ago."
Vosi shakes his head. "No fey play with dead things. Witch uses powerful magics. Likes to make minions. Summons, dead things, constructs. Mistress has many many minions. But mistress is still back in her tower. Would have sent things from Irrisen, not raised local corpses." He shakes his head. "Didn't see these things coming through. Flying must have made them leave Vosi alone."
Inire nods to Vosi, absently. It was strange that when Rohkar did it, it was nasty. When Mistress did it, it was okay. She didn't question the logic behind it, though. "I guess this was a first attempt by Rohkar, then." she says, standing back up. "I'm ready to press forward when the rest of you are."
Morgraine grimaces with distaste as she glances over her companions and sees that more than half still bore substantial wounds. Moving to each in turn, she performs the healing.
When she finishes, she looks out briefly into the forest. "I am afraid I have expended much of my power. I will not be able to heal you further until I have a chance to rest.
Evelyn grumps a few complaints as she composes herself after the fight.
"I won't be any use against undead, they're mostly immune to my magic and my weapons are mostly ornate."
"Mine, too." Inire says with a small smile. "Maybe I could teach you how to use finesse instead of force to land your blows?"
With the fighting over, Eirikr rushes to Ashen's side to check the wolf's injuries, a process that quickly turns into hurriedly petting the animal before returning to survey the battlefield.
"Necromancers are the worst," agrees Eirikr. "Couldn't hit them. No flesh. Maybe we should've brought Rokhar with us, made him deal with his pets."
Nathara is a bit thunderstruck for a moment after the fight ends how could this have been so devestating? How could she perform so badly. In hindsight she should have engaged right away as soon as Tiferet pointed out the mounds. But it is always easy to make tactical decisions in hindsight. It would help if she fought a bit more accurate and was a bit faster, though.
"Thank you", she mumbles as Morgraine heals her. She examines the human woman with the fine cut, almost elven features for a moment with a mild smile. She wonders again what kind of magic Morgraine might be. But then again, there is this feeling that she might not want to think about it too much, because she not like the answer. Morgraine is a decent person and a good comrade, after all, whatever else she may be.
She looks briefly around, scanning for eavesdroppers and speaks out with her voice lowered. "That took most of my spells, I only have a single one fire spell left and a few cantrips." She sighs. "I need to become better. And, by Cayden Cailean's firm, tight buttocks, I need to strike first. One does not leave it to the enemy to dictate the fight if one can help it."
She pauses and examines the environment again, rather listening to the wind in the branches and the sounds of the birds than actually looking. "We need to move on, though. Those under the spell of the winter witches know of our presence. We cannot linger unless fate bestows us with a refuge we veils us from their sight."
She mimics on Inire's remark that she was willing to teach her comrades finesse. That had not been particularly elegant of Nathara and that a half-human would teach her how to conduct gracefully in combat was just salt into Nathar's wounds. Even though the inconvenient fact remained that Inire was indeed outstandingly lithe. Maybe Nathara could bring herself to learning from a half human if she was willing to learn to dance in turn? Inire's grace might honour many a dance with unknown beauty.
A good thing about the fight was how well the fight alongside Tiferet went.
"With Cayden Cailean's buttocks on our side we'd be able to do anything, I'm sure," says Eirikr. "We all could've done better. For a moment I thought the were going to rip me to shreds and I was going to end up in Moonb--Elysium, I mean. Skeletons should stay in people's bodies. And dead bodies should stay in the ground. Rohkar is seeming less attractive by the second."
Eirikr looks to see if he can find any tracks to follow or signs of anyone else's presence in the area. As he does so, he looks up to Vosi and says "Fairy. I've wanted to ask you. Do you ever grant wishes? Like, if someone does you a favor do you have to grant them a wish?"
"Thanks" Tiferet whispers as Morgraine's seemingly endless healing powers pour into her, closing the wound on her shoulder and leaving only a thin red line on her right forearm as a testament of the fierce battle that has just ended.
Turning around to assess the situation, she notices how Eirikr and Ashen still show the marks of the skeletons' attack, but it's Eve who seems to have borne the brunt of their fury.
"It seems the only working strategy we have against them is to hit as hard as we can, and hope they don't hit back even harder" she says as she places her hand on one of the many frozen scars maiming the young Varisian's beauty, humming a melodious tune as she undoes at least a modicum of the harm the undead inflicted her. "If that's so, I don't like our long-term odds" she mutters, half-scowling.
As her companions discuss strategy, she lends her magic to repair the more mundane damage the battle has caused, mostly repairing the torn fabric where the razor-sharp claws carved into the underlying flesh and cleansing their equipment of blood and bone splinters alike. She can't help but smirk when Eirikr suggests they should have brought Rohkar with them – the mental image of his conceited self being pitted against his own creation bringing her some strange form of amusement. Then again, chances are he would have tried to turn them against us, so it's probably for the best we left him to rot in Heldren.
"You did well, Nath" she eventually says to the ash-skinned battle dancer. "You can't hit a foe that's not here yet, and every attack you evaded was one less gash on somebody else's body."
Tiferet helps Morgraine patch up the party, closing wounds, patching clothing, and cleaning away blood and frost from their clothing. It doesn't take too much effort, just time to do so. Vosi gives Eirikr a glare at his question. "Vosi isn't a genii."
The party continues their journey through the woods, continuing to follow the path down to the woods. The snow finally seems to have stopped getting heavier, but it refuses to let up in the slightest, making the trek cold and slow. As you start to come down off the ridge, you see something up ahead, just off the trail.
"Upahead. There's a tent. Campsite. More bandits, maybe? Hopefully living ones," says Eirikr as he catches sight of the camp off the trail.
Tiferet looks where Eirikr's pointing, but as she does so her eyes catch the reflection of a stray sunbeam on the snow, temporarily blinding her.
"Let's hope so. It seems that having their skeletons inside their bodies somehow manages to make them far less effective" she mutters half to herself as she immediately averts her gaze.
"I can still produce the same trick that allowed us to slip into the lodge undetected, if you wish to take a closer look. Doesn't last long, but it might help us formulate a strategy before we approach" she offers.
"Let's do it then. I'll tell you if I find any skeletons outside of their bodies," says Eirikr.
"Be careful. My power is only enough to make it last a dozen heartbeats or so. If you think you're spotted just whisper and the cavalry will be coming in no time" murmurs Tiferet as they cautiously make their way closer to the camp, using the trees as cover.
Once they're 100 feet or so away from the tent, she whispers a couple of arcane words, and with a touch on his shoulder, Eirikr seemingly vanishes into thin air right in front of her eyes.
With a deep breath, Eirikr hurries towards the tent, trying to get as close as he can as quietly as he can before Tiferet's spell runs out.
Eirikr carefully walks closer to the campsite, though his feet make crunching sounds over the heavy snow. However, it turns out not to matter. The campsite is extremely small, just a clearing off the side of the trail. The snow had been mostly cleared out of the clearing, making it much lighter in the middle of the clearing, but it must have been done at least a day ago because the snow is already starting to reclaim the ground. A single tent stands under some low branches with its flaps slightly open. Eirikr can make out a motionless humanoid form inside, but no one else and nothing else moves. The remains of a fire pit can be made out not far from the tent.
"There's someone in the tent. They're not moving. Either they're dead or sleeping very heavily," whispers Eirikr, stepping slowly towards tent to see if he can tell if the person inside is alive or not. "And there's something in the trees. This might be a trap."
At least it's not any more undead. They don't climb on trees. Usually.
"More fey?" Tiferet whispers back. "Never mind. Stay put. We're coming."
Crouching, she turns to her companions and repeats Eirikr's exact words to them. "This time, we might have the chance to become the ambushers rather than the ambushed, for a change. Let's prepare ourselves for a fight, and then approach as stealthily as we can" she says, and then taps into the power of her Celestial blood to reshape her bones and muscles into a thicker, more powerful frame.
"Was my fault, really." Inire announces, quietly. "I should have known better than to walk up on an animal's burrow so... unprepared." Though her previous comment had more been directed at Evelyn who seemed far less capable than anyone else in the group with her weapon of choice. She smiles at Morgraine as she mends what remain of her wounds. She also couldn't help but smile at Nathara's... was that even hubris? That may well have been an actual prayer to the Drunken God (one with which she was actually familiar, given that no less than a third of all heroes frequent taverns and spend more than their fair share of time up to their neck in pints.)
Having trekked through the snow, and moving a little off to the group's flank through the treeline, Inire doesn't have as clear a view as the others of the space ahead.
"I don't... oh." she says, dipping behind a tree, to get a clearer view. Once the magic is cast on her companions, she slips forward, off to the right flank, sneaking towards the camp (though doing considerably less well than the hidden man). She pauses as soon as she sees the movement in the tree overhead, and dips back behind her own tree.
I'd rather stick to my strengths than be mediocre at multiple things."
Evelyn sits quietly with those that couldn't scout annoyed at the thought of more undead.
[Nathara follows Eirikr's motion through the snow, impressed by how effectively the human... well, mostly human, anyway, traverses the snow. Noticing the spell Tiferet cast she kneels down in the snow close to her and closes her eyes, meditating over her combat technique like steps of a dance, including the motion, spell and melody, in order to be ready when the time comes.
She puts her sword away and readies the bow however, and her pointy ears move slightly as she listens and locates sounds.
Morgraine loads and readies her crossbow as she awaits amongst her less stealthy companions.
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Danger, the thought ringed out in Eirikr's head. This was a trap, and here he was, like a deer that had been separated from its herd--and those were always the ones that died. But he wasn't a deer and he didn't have a herd, he didn't need a herd, all he needed was himself, himself and his fangs--fangs that were far too small, nose too weak, ears too small--and a mind, a mind far too human, too human to see whatever it was that had made the fatal mistake of thinking that it was the one doing the hunting.
"Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of fairy scum," he whispers a line of a fairy story he had heard in his village to himself as the transformation finishes, his eyes scanning the tree line, trying to spot whatever is flitting in the trees. "Be they alive or be they dead I'll pluck their wings to make my bread."
Eirikr's body shifts to his more bestial state, his face becoming more and more wolf like. He sort of fades into existence as he finishes the change and a squealing cry erupts from the trees. Three figures erupt from the tree. One is a small creature somewhere between a bat and a sprite pops out of the trees on the far side of the clearing and the beings that look like nothing more than swirling air burst from the sides.
Tiferet is still crouching besides Nathara when she overhears Eirikr's rhyme through her spell. "Not fey. One ice mephit and its two air elemental goons" she says as three creatures come into view. "I do share the general sentiment, though" she adds, grinning.
Like a loaded coil waiting to spring, she promptly rises to face their challengers. Now a 6 foot 3 giantess of a woman, it' almost as she's trying to match Eirikr's feral form in ferocity as she bellows her defiance.
she cries, swinging her weapon over her head.
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Growling, Eirikr draws his spear and focuses on one of the creatures flitting through the air--Tiferet said it wasn't a fairy but it sure as Moonbog smelled like one, and it looked like one too, wings perfect for plucking. Ashen, seeing that his boy was surrounded, bounds through the snow as quickly as he can towards Eirikr.
Evelyn uses the advantage of catching them off guard to try and closes the distance.
Morgraine also moves forward.
A smile runs along Nathara's lips as she hears Tiferet's battle cry. A a soft whisper "I shall teach you fire." escapes her lips as the arrow on her bow's sting is similarly smoothly released.
But she does not wait to see whether the arrow hits or misses the target but jumps up and follows it with a lightness that is similar to the flight of the arrow.
The party prepares for battle as Nathara takes the opening shot. It flies true, despite the range and small size of her target, and the shaft buries itself in the monster's chest. The mephit yelps in pain, though it doesn't seem to badly slowed by the injury.
Initiative
Elemental 1
Evelyn
Vosi
Tiferet
Inire
Mephit
Morgraine
Elemental 2
Nathara
Eirikr
The first elemental charges down out of the trees and rushes at Eirikr, it's vaguely shaped limbs attempting to bludgeon him.
It doesn't actually manage to land a solid hit however, making its attack rather wasted.
Eve is up!
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Evelyn tries to turn her magical gaze upon the elemental near Eirikr and tries to influence it's actions with her magic.
The elemental's strange form allows Eve to meet it's gaze evenly, attacking its will. Yet it still manages to resist her command, the snow at its feet picking up as its form destabilizes for a moment with the effort.
Vosi hisses angrily. "Careful humans," Vosi says. "That's Izoze. She won't stop until she kills all of you." He draws his bow and fires at the elemental in front of Eirikr, trying to aim directly at its center.
Unfortunately, it hardly seems to impede the swirling monster.
Tiferet wastes no time throwing herself in the heat of the action. Sprinting forward, her visage is terror and her song is death as she lunges at the elemental attacking Eirikr, putting all of her bodyweight behind the blow.
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Tiferet charges in an delivers and absolutely brutal blow, raising her ax and slamming it straight through the creature. The elemental gives one last howl like the rushing wind before it dissipates entirely and vanishes.
Inire is up!
Inire waits until the elemental is low enough to attack, and then dashes out of the treeline, blue-tinged silver blade arcing through the air amongst white. The attack lacks most of the subtlety that the half-elven woman normally musters, but lead by Tiferet's song, Inire opts to try to repeat the woman's strike force, if not her ability.