Amara opens her eyes and looks around. Happy to see no stained glass, she sits up, vaguely muttering something about weird dreams. She stretches and begins doing a short routine of exercises to limber up.
Septima wakes with a frown and a feeling of discomfort vaguely floating in her belly.
She goes to sit somewhere quiet for a moment to collect herself and meditate while the rest of the party does...Stuff.
The group gathers and slides out of the shop about two hours before midnight. With the curfew, the streets were completely empty, save the occasional Dottari patrol. The party only saw one, and they were easy enough to circumvent through back alleys. You all arrive at the Fair Fortune Livery without incident.
Gremlin thinks about going back to sleep, but his mischievous nature gets the better of him. He hustles out of the shop to catch up to the party. You may notice he keeps stopping to scratch at the collar on his neck. The more perceptive of you may notice that he wasn't wearing one earlier. If you're close, you may even notice that embossed in the leather is the name Gremlin.
Weird. But then, this is a cat who stole her tools earlier and can talk. Figuring out a way to make a collar work isn't a particularly big thing.
Mira pushes the question about 'thumbs' to the back of her head. "Aaanyways, here we are. If the walls start bleeding, just like. Try to ignore it. Seriously."
"Hmm maybe it's a spell? Could useful to study if we see it. Amaras, do you want to lead? Also Septima do you have any tricks to help us before we venture out?" Alexis withdraws her spellbook and gets herself ready for the worst.
Before you is a stinky, run down stable.
Well, since this time we have a party with us Mira will go through the efforts of picking the lock that was mentioned before.
The area is relatively quiet as you approach. Mira sets to work on the lock, but suddenly jumps backward, frantically shaking her hands. She stops and looks them over, then back at the lock.
Alexis approaches Mira and blinks.
"What's wrong? Did something happen?" Alexis taps Mira on the shoulder.
"Nothing... nothing!"
She looks jumpily left and right, and then points at the lock again. Screw this, she doesn't want anything to do with that... whatever it is.
"Plan B. Ramon it."
Amara smirks and casually walks up to the door. She looks over to Mira.
"You have no idea how much time it takes to break a lock, do you?"
She leans back and kicks the door, attempting to break it down.
Despite a fair amount of rust, the chain holds strong. The door around the chain, however, crumbles like a cheap cookie. With a loud crash, it slides inward and open. Freshly roused from their slumber behind it are three Feral Dogs! Roll initiative!
Two of the dogs are rather scruffy and see growling at one another, one seems different, though. It may be a pure bred, and by the size of the body, would have been over four feet at the shoulders if not for the stumpy little legs. She has fresh blood on her fur and begins snarling and barking at the group.
As soon as the door busts open, the big one unleashes a loud roaring bark, taking Amara by surprise. The other mutt makes a mad rush and gets a mouthful of armor from her.
Mira tumbles her way behind the dog to avoid letting it get a bite on her.
Once there, she gives it a sap to the back of the head.
...Or, more likely, not.
Alexis Sees Mira and Amass surround the one pooch so she focuses on the leftmost one, blossom.
Bubbles manages to avoid the sap by a little, but Blossom wasn't so quick. She coughed up a snowball before after biting at Mira.
Amara grumbles something about how she used to like dogs before swinging Ramón down vertically at Bubbles.
She pulls Ramón from the dog's body with a sickening sound and moves to protect Mira.
The big one shuffles back and attempts to scare you off again. Her attempt at Mira was not as successful as the one at Amara.
Mira goes a-tumbling again to get back into flanking position.
And then it's time to hit them with her sap again. "This time for real! Really!"
With a Yelp, the dog faceplants.
Septima rushes forward to Amara's back and starts to...Basically poke her, her hands glowing alternating colors of green and gold as she murmurs in Hellspeak.
Alexis sighs a bit. She isn't really a fan of killing dogs as it were, though she is relieved that Mira was able simply knock one out. She also notes that even though the small legged one is quite large, it has done nothing but bark.
"Maybe you guys can just knock that one out? I mean they are just dogs, probably just spooked. Alexis is holding her action as of right now.
Amara rolls her eyes.
"Fine."
She steps forward and shouts menacingly at the dog.
The Corgi backs up and gives a whimpering Growl.
Mira raises her sap and looks at the others.
"Want me to try knocking this one out, too?"
Alexis sighs.
"I mean if possible I would prefer a non violent way to deal with the pooch. Not like it is evil or anything, probably just scared.
"Well... it's bloody already... shouldn't be too much trouble to just."
She makes a whacking motion with her hand.
"Right?"
Septima frowns and looks between the three. This is annoying, this...this curse or whatever it was that had its hold on her was getting old quickly.
"Arg. You two should stop babbling about...Whatever."
She faces the big dog and tries to do something, really anything to try and calm it...hopefully Infernal doesn't scare it?
The dog stops growling and sniffs the air a bit, as if curious about who is speaking rather than attacking.
Septima hesitates, but after seeing the dog not lunge for her, she takes a knee, letting herself go close to the ground. Her next attempt at speaking is quite soft, despite her current impairment.
Hopefully, it doesn't take it as a chance to attack... and if it does, Amara is there to save her, right? Right?
She continues backing up until she bumps into the wall. She yelps as if she was struck and looks back, then, seeing nothing there, whimpers and looks at the party.
Amara sighs and sheathes Ramón.
"Did we just adopt a giant mutant dog? You guys are taking care of it. Like hell am I picking up dog shit that big."
She busies herself examining the room while the others try to calm the poor pooch.
Septima dares a glance at Amara to frown at her. At least she's not intimidating it?
She looks back at the others and asks, in her own not-normal way that kind of cuts Amara out of the conversation, if she should heal it.
Alexis nods.
"I approve of healing the poor thing. It's quite cute."
Mira gets to looking around the room as well.
Septima nods and goes towards the dog, her posture low (having remembered some vague tidbit from childhood about dogs disliking height...or something. Who knows if it applies to dire ones.)
She holds out a hand and-
Cure Light Wounds time! 1/5
A big gash on her chest and several fresh whip marks on her rump begin to close up. As she starts to feel better, she licks Septima's face, which is rather uncomfortable considering the tongue and the face were nearly the same size.
Amara kicks around and finds some rotten riding tack and, as she expected, a really, really big turd. Mira, however, looks up and spots a shiny ring on a nail in the rafters. It may take some effort to get to though.
Alexis slowly approaches the dog and gets about as low as Septima, hand out.
"Its okay friend." Alexis turns her head a bit to Amara.
"As for cleaning up after him leave it to me. Presdigitation does wonders after all."