Asvig casually steps forward, drawing a shortspear and a heavy wooden shield from his back. His face expresses no fear.
Stopping in his tracks he cringed for a moment as one supernatural effect, first fear, then, overcoming that, rage, overcame him. Finally letting out an uncharacteristic growl as Kahsa's magic frees him he readies to attack.
"No he can't, he's dead!" he shout as he lunges again.
Friday's enraged assault takes the head clean off of one of Kavell's assailants.
He gasped as the blows creased his defenses but shifted closer to the thane as Friday felled one of his attackers. He passed a hand over one of the cuts before regripping his glaive anf then slashing at the thane.
Thane Longthews flinches momentarily as Kavell's glaive finds its way past his guard.
Haru steps into the doorway and unleashes an arrow on the nearest warrior, her song still going...
The arrow sticks into his thigh and he flinches.
The witch's face pales as Friday recovers from her fear-inducing spell and she hastily summons up more magic. Once again, she points at Friday... and oddly enough, she yawns.
...and the enlarged warrior topples to the floor, snoring.
The other warrior in melee notices Valeria standing next to him, sees her robes, and swings at her instead of Kavell with his axe!
She manages to duck in time, but his axe catches on one of her horns and sends a wave of pain into her skull.
The remaining warriors close in...
Contrary to some of the stories out there about tieflings (particularly the attractive female kind), their horns were not actually sensitive. Without skin on them, they were actually quite dull to sensations. But a solid enough hit to them can translate a lot of that force directly to the skull.
With no room to move away from the warrior, all she could do was make the warrior regret getting her attention. In a manner that would make more than a few spellcasters think she was breaking the known laws of magic, flame appeared in the air before her and raced forward to engulf the warrior who'd struck her, torching everything beyond him out to the wall.
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Glaring angrily at the spellcasting woman, Kasha focuses on her as the threat, at the same time sending Sly to wake their sleeping giant.
With a chanted incantation the shamanes calls upon the powers of nature, a wicked looking thorn, the size of a javelin forming in her hand.
As she does this, Sly leaps from the pouch at her side, nimbly racing over to the fallen Friday and biting his little finger.
... wha?" Firday says sleepily as he's bit.
Valeria's flames scorch the man easily.
The redheaded witch curses loudly as Friday is woken up. Thane Longthews, on the other hand, just grits his teeth and advances on Kavell to stab at him...
...and buries his spear in his gut.
"Ah, thank you, little one." Friday says as he stands back up while grabbing his spear. Minding Sly he lunges at the warrior across from him.
The axeman that wounded Valeria looks over his shoulder in time to see Friday lumbering to his feet and ramming a spear through his chest. All of his ribs shatter and he dies almost instantly.
He cried out in pain, his voice hitting a higher pitch than it had ever quite reached before. He staggered back off the spear (5 foot step) his hand already glowing as it clutched at the wound healing some. Eyes ablaze he struck at the thane with all the fury he could muster.
The thane roars in fury as Kavell's blessed strike easily gets past his guard and viciously carves a bloody swath across his chest.
Haru, still singing, sees the amount of pain Kavell is in and turns her ire on Longthews. This time, her song weaves through the air, and tries to lock the man's limbs into place!
He pulls back to make another thrust--and abruptly freezes in place. The witch, evidently having tunnel-visioned on Friday, directs another hex his way--this time, a violet glow settles around him.
Friday feels a sense of dread--as if Fate itself is turning against him.
The clearly shaken remaining axemen are beginning to have doubts as to their survival, but that doesn't stop one from swinging at Friday with his axe.
But his nerves clearly get the better of him--even though Friday is the size of an ogre, he easily bats the axe aside.
The remaining warrior steps up to Kavell and tries to protect his thane with another axe blow!
A combination of Shelyn's divine grace and Kavell's training allow him to deflect the axe away from him!
Focusing on the woman, Kasha hurls the wooden javelin at her, another immediately appearing in her hand.
The witch looks up in time to see Kasha's javelin hurtling towards her and yelps in surprise. The javelin is abruptly deflected into the floor by an arcane barrier of some sort surrounding her.
With nobody waiting to axe her in the back as she repositioned, Valeria ran around Friday's back and readied her crossbow.
Longthews tries to escape Haru's spell...
...and with a mighty cry, tears himself free of the enchantment!
Keeping an eye out for Sly, Friday takes a cautious step back before lunging at the warrior in front of Longthews.
He almost paused for a moment at the man's sudden freezing but as he shuttered into movement again the Aasimar Paladin struck again, letting his hand slip off his glave just a moment again pressing it against the wound in his stomach where the glow grew brighter then subsided after a moment.
Friday guts the axeman with ease.
Shelyn's power guides Kavell's glaive to the chest of Thane Longthews, and impales him. The man's eyes widen in surprise and he looks down at the holy weapon piercing him before the paladin pulls it back. He falls to the floor with a gurgle, and the redheaded witch behind him screams in grief and sheer, unbridled hatred.
Haru turns her magic on her next, humming a tune to hold her in place.
It doesn't work. The witch takes off running deeper into the house, and the one remaining warrior follows her, a dark spot appearing on his trousers.
"Should we go after them?"
"Yes! Who knows what she could be getting. Remeber we came here to find out what happened to someone....and there's the sword." Kasha says quickly drawing a wand and using it's magic on Kavell.
The enlarged man leaps after the fleeing witch with the alacrity of a panther and the force of a bear. In but a few strides, he crosses the room and reaches what appears to be a kitchen. The witch turns and faces him with wide-eyed terror and rage in her eyes, and the remaining warrior spins on his heel and raises his axe. It trembles in his hand.
"NO! Stay back! STAY BACK!" The witch screams in impotent fear. Her palm is outstretched, as if to summon forth another spell, but it seems that she realizes it would do little good now.
He moved or at least started to, Until Kasha closed in on him with the wand.
"Im mostly fine someone keep up with Friday!"
He said panting slightly and looking at the man he had killed... in his own home no less. His solid blue eyes looked blankly at the Thane.
Quickly moving after Friday, Valeria had more fire ready in her hand as she entered.
"Then you should probably start talking," Valeria said. As much as she complained about people leaping to conclusions from her heritage, she wasn't going to throw a potential tool away right now - flames, horns, and fangs make for a rather striking image. "And you can start by explaining why we were attacked by men working for Longthews on our way to this city and why they were under a geas."
"And what you did with Ulf Gormundr." Friday adds.
The witch trembles, and she starts babbling.
"Y-yes, yes, yes, Asvig--" She swallows and chokes back a sob. "--he only did as he was commanded to! Something about having to stop a caravan from coming through--I had no idea it was you!"
"His old liege, Stone-Eye--he was in the way. He died. We were going to have a celebration in honour of his life when you arrived--"
"And what you did with Ulf Gormundr."
The witch suddenly stops talking, her face turning deathly pale.
The sound of footsteps comes from a room off of the hearth room. Emerging from a side room are a group of men and women, all of them looking haggard and exhausted. Each of them bear arm-rings with golden lion-heads on them, but none of them are even armed otherwise.
They look at Thane Longthews' corpse, then at the party. Their expressions turn to shock, and then relief. "Oh, praise be to Desna--he's dead!"
Friday tilts his head while watching the Witch. "And Ulfr is dead too, isn't he?"
The witch shakes her head. "No! N-no, I don't think so..."
"He isn't. Not yet." One of the servants, a blonde, half-elven girl, speaks up. "He said Ulf would join Lord Stone-Eye for the festivities--on the funeral ship."
The witch's eyes widen and her hands clench into fists, arcane magic springing to her fingertips before immediately fading. The servant girl continues. "He bought an old ship from the Rimerunner's Guild--a ship called the Aril's Hammer. It served him well enough as a raiding ship against your band, and it's due to be burned for Lord Stone-Eye's funeral."
Friday bows to the servant. "When is the funeral?" he softly asks her.
"It was supposed to be tomorrow evening..." The servant girl replies, clearly unnerved by Friday's large size.
"'Supposed to be' tomorrow evening? Have plans changed?" The flames had disappeared from her hand as the girl had spoken of the funeral, but she was keeping one eye on the witch and was ready to bring the fire back if needed.
The serving girl swallows nervously as Valeria approaches. "No. The funeral's a public event--Lord Stone-Eye was a beloved man, and in good standing with King Sveinn Blood-Eagle."
The witch starts inching her way towards another doorway out of the kitchen--and is abruptly stopped by an arc of flame streaking into the nearby cookpot, sending it clattering to the floor. She squeals and jumps back.
Valeria's fingertips are still smoking.
"I'd rather you stayed, we have more questions for you," she told the witch, before turning back to the girl.
"So the ship should still be in the harbour at the moment?"
The servant girl nods. "...most likely. But trying to board it in broad daylight will likely raise an uproar. One does not board a funeral ship that's destined to be burned--such an act is seen as incredibly disrespectful to the deceased."
He had recovered enough to join the others at this point, though he still felt...He shook it off and instead stared clearly at the witch his eyes aglow.
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"Burning a living man along with the deceased is incredibly disrespectful to the living." Kasha notes, giving the red headed witch a pointed look.
"Either way, it sounds like we'll need a plan. Before that, though," she turned back to the witch, "you said Longthews had been 'commanded' to send his men after our caravan. Commanded by who?"
His scowl deepened and his face clearly showed as someone completely confused...
"Red... "
He muttered shaking his head and glaring once again for a second.
"You there do you share the releif as these people do at his death. Look me in the eyes. I'll judge if you speak true."
He pointed back torwards the man he had slain while studying the witch woman's expression.
The redheaded witch looks at the corpse of Thane Longthews before she glares at Kavell. "He was my husband, you self-righteous bastard!"
The servant girl flinches and looks away, the collar of her roughspun shirt slipping lower. Several bruises and cuts are visible on her collar.
"And I had no idea who Asvig took his orders from--some man dressed all in black with a blood-raven on his shoulder." The witch growls.
" There is no self,I am merely Righteous. had your husband been a righteous man he would still be alive. I had thought to giving you the benefit of the doubt m'am that perhaps he mistreated you, that perhaps you lived in fear of him, but as a partner... well that means you are as guilty as he and I have no regrets over your fate. "
He answered plainly though his voice had risen just a little.
He spun about to the others, before he sighed.
"Let me know what you find out and when we go to find Ulfr. I'll give the fallen their last rights."
He began moving back torwards the room the fight had been in.
Kasha's eyes narrow as she notices the bruises and cuts down the servant girl's shirt. "He hurt you didn't he?" she asked softly. "It's okay to tell me if he did. We can take you away from this place."
"Neither of them can hurt you anymore." Friday says softly to the girl as he turns to to stare at the Witch, though there was an edge to his voice.
Her eyes light up a bit before she shakes her head. "No... no no no, he n-never--he never did..."
The servant girl looks at the witch with an expression of fear before flinching away from her again. The party notices that she's the only female servant in the house out of the five servants present.
"He's dead now. And she'll be following soon after." Friday calmly says.
The witch blinks and takes a step back.
Friday's eyes drift to the Witch for a moment before going back to the servant girl. "You don't have to be afraid anymore."
The servant girl leans into Kasha and huddles next to her. "...I don't care what you do with her. I just want us to leave this place. Please."
Friday solemnly bows to the girl. Inwardly he cursed at what little they could do for her. "Take her from of her." he softly says before letting silence follow.
But they could at least do something, he thought to himself as his spear lunged at the Witch.