"Bruised, I think. Nothing more."
Sanjay touches at his limbs and a sore spot on his temple to be sure he's not bleeding, that nothing is broken. The curving, twisted wood of his walking stick is sticking out from the rubble. He wrenches it free, then checks his small rucksack-- also still intact.
He starts to pick his way towards the light that the dancer holds aloft. Dutifully, he answers the call for introductions by saying, "My name is Sanjay," but he sounds distracted. Is that the arm of a person, jutting from under that stone? He will stop to investigate, and pray it is just a piece of wood, caught in the shadows.
Aaliyah pauses oddly on being asked to introduce herself, but quickly says "Aaliyah El-Amin," in a quiet voice...but when she notices what Sanjay is poking at she almost drops the light (which would probably not have good consequences) to go to help extract the other person.
"Kel." the man who had been talking to himself said simply. "Just Kel"
"Kel, Aaliyah, Sanjay." Jens repeats the names to himself quietly. Well, I'm glad I left Alfie behind now. Though I wouldn't mind the torches I left in her saddlebags. He swings his shield into his left hand and looks around as best he can in the dim light, making his way to the ball of light.
Vaashti's eyes slowly re-focused in the darkness, and she felt something pulling at her arm. She gripped the hand and allowed it to pull her from the light layer of rubble that had covered her.
She sat up, craning her neck and taking a physical inventory. Bumps, scrapes, and bruises is all, she thought. I guess it's time to check on the others.
"Thank you for the assistance," she said, gingerly moving her cloak back and flexing her wings to make sure the delicate membranes hadn't been torn, or the light bones fractured. She stopped then, with a start, realizing what she was doing, and who she was doing it in front of.
She immediately folded her wings back to herself and started to rearrange her cloak. "I...I am Vaashti. Vaashti C'tan. Thank you for helping me." She noticed Sanjay's bleeding temple and said, "I am a healer of Milani's order. If you allow me, I can tend to those wounds. It is the least I can do to repay you for your kindness."
As your headaches clear, memories of what happened begin to flood back in terrible clarity.
Armasse officially began at noon, with the blessing of the festival
by Lord Hulrun himself, ruler of Kenabres. The crowd gathered in
Clydwell Plaza quieted as the aged inquisitor took the stage, clad
in shining, resplendent armor. He cleared his throat, but just as
he was about to speak, a bright light shone from the west, as if
the sun were rising from the wrong direction. Hulrun’s shadow
fell huge and distorted across the cathedral’s facade. A moment
later, the sound of a thunderous explosion ripped through the air
and earth, along with a violent tremor.
To the west, the fortress known as the Kite — the location of
Kenabres’s wardstone — had vanished. In its place, a brilliant
plume of red fire, lightning, and smoke erupted into the heavens.
A moment later, a powerful roar accompanied a welcome
sight rising from the crowd — Kenabres’s greatest guardian, the
ancient silver dragon Terendelev, who had until that moment
been attending the opening ceremony disguised as a human.
Above, another form appeared, as nightmarish as the dragon
was breathtaking. A humanoid shape three times the size of any
man, with skin coated in fire and lightning, gripped a flaming
sword and whip. The creature’s identity was immediately obvious:
Khorramzadeh, the Storm King of the Worldwound, had come
to Kenabres!
As the ground continued to shake and disgorge demons
into the streets, the dragon and the balor lord clashed above.
The fight was over in a few harrowing moments, as the balor
cut deep into Terendelev’s body, swooping down to strike the
dragon and arresting her charge. A few more blows, and the
titanic duo spiraled downward toward the crowd.
The sight of the dragon smashing into the facade of the
Cathedral of St. Clydwell is one no witness would ever forget. At
that moment, a titanic demon erupted at the far end of the plaza,
reducing several buildings to ruins as it smashed into this world.
The rift it created shot across the plaza, and this time there was no
escape—it opened below your feet, angling away into darkness.
Even as you fell, the dragon noticed your plight. Though she saw
death standing over her, she seized this final chance to save a few
more souls. After she uttered a few arcane words and stretched
out a bleeding talon, you felt her magic take hold of you, slowing
your plummet into the darkness as if you were feathers falling
into a pit. Yet the fall remained as inexorable, and as you drifted
downward into the depths, the last thing you saw was the Storm
King standing before the ancient silver dragon, his sword lashing
out and cleaving full through her neck. As her severed head fell,
the rift above you slammed shut, and the light of the world above
was gone.
As memory returns, so too does hazy vision, and the group begins to get a sense of where they are. It appears to be a vast cavern, the ceiling and far walls of which recede into darkness. On one side, the wall has collapsed in an enormous mound of rubble — here and there the arms or legs of victims who didn’t survive the fall protrude, confirming Sanjay's horrible fears. The walls and floor of this cavern have the rough texture of natural stone; clumps of stalagmites jut from the ground. The distant squeaks of bats echo broadly, suggesting that this underground space is large and relatively open. Grit and rock dust covers everything. In the back of the cavern, a disturbing shape looms. Nearly the size of a horse, what appears to be an immense black spider crouches silent and still on the ground.
As Sanjay's head clears enough that he can remember, his face goes slack with shock and devastation, and the youth drops to his knees with a wheeze as his legs refuse to hold him.
For everyone else here, this may be a strategic loss, a worrying realization that Kenabres has been compromised, that the first line of defense for the whole world has fallen.
For Sanjay, it is his home.
He takes shallow gasps for breath, staring down sightless into the rubble from a position on his hands and knees. Tears start welling up, running tracks down the grit and dust and on his face then landing in the cavern dirt below.
Resh. The rest of the wizards at the Tower. Tookah and the others of the temple of Desna. Almost everyone he knows in the world was in Kenabres, and with great Terendelev fallen and the Kite destroyed-- can any of them possibly survive? Resh is a blind old woman, in a city whose gates are now open wide to all of the Abyss's fury.
His parents. His parents had not been in the city. Sanjay hiccups through the tears, fingers clutching at the rocks and grit. Perhaps they are safe-- but what safety? They'll return to Kenabres to find it a smoking, demon-claimed charnel house--
Desna, WHY?
All other questions are irrelevant. Vaashti's query about if she can heal him goes unheeded, as the youth wordlessly smacks his hand over and over into the earth.
Aalyah watched Vaashti checking herself over, although she didn't seem to be doing so with fear so much as...mild curiosity? "Aaliyah," she introduces herself again, before turning to start searching further with the light for other survivors.
The disturbing memories returning only briefly slow her down in this endeavor. "Does everyone else remember what happened now?" she asks, having gone over the bodies as best she can with the light.
Vaashti watched the young man repeatedly assault the earth, and felt his pain as her own. He was likely coming to terms with the fact that his life would never be the same again, and that many of the people he knew, and maybe loved, might be dead. She knew what that felt like.
Vaashti placed a comforting hand on the young man's shoulder. She knew it was comforting, because she had been trained in the comfort industry. It never occurred to most people that sometimes men - and women too - came to whores just to be held. Why, Darellia spent a year with one client visiting her every week just to stroke his hair and listen to his woes. It was part of the job. Just because Milani broke her out of that career prison didn't mean she had forgotten everything she knew.
"Hush, now. Sanjay, was it? Take a deep breath and try and remember yourself. You are grieving, and rightly so, but you can't help friends or family if you break down here. We'll get back, together, and you can know for sure. All right? I know it is hard, but I also know that you can do it. Please Sanjay, will you?"
Vaashti looked over at Aaliyah, and her cloak slipped again. Furious at it, she roughly thrust it back, freeing her wings and tail. What did it matter now? As she did so, the Everbloom's tattoo on her right shoulder shone in the light.
"Yes, Aaliyah, I remember. As does Sanjay, I am thinking. I'm Vaashti, by the way. It seems that we're underground. I hope there's a way out of here and back to the surface. I'm not that pleased to think of spending the rest of my days down here."
She looked around the chamber and leaped back in fright as she caught sight of the monstrous spider. Her wings unfurled and her startled leap turned into a short glide of no more than a foot or two. "Dear Milani, is that...?" With wild eyes she looked from the creature to Aaliyah and back again.
When Vaashti jumps, Aaliyah's scimitar is drawn with a sudden cry of . . . well, something between fright and anger.
The gentle hand to his shoulder registers, even if the words are a wash of meaningless noise right now.
My son, control yourself. Only he who is master of his own will can be master of his environment, he imagines he hears his father's dry, even voice saying.
I don't WANT to master my environment! I want to be home! I want you there! I want no more war, no more funerals, no more demons!
And selfish desires bring down all the world. His mother, just as steady and quiet as his father. Seek to help others, Sanjay. Whatever path this takes.
"--Please, Sanjay, will you?" says the woman's coaxing, soothing voice.
He hiccups through his misery. A very unenlightened desire to keep crying like a child is in the forefront of his mind. But then the woman's voice changes to a cry of startled apprehension, and Sanjay looks up despite himself, staring for the threat despite the tears in his eyes.
He lurches to his feet, picking up his stick again. Giant shape in the shadows. He tries to count legs, despite the distance and the vast darkness of the cavern.
"Looks like a spider," he says hoarsely.
Jens glances only briefly at the woman - Vaashti, was it? - with wings and a tail. He snorts, turning away from her as his head clears. Memories come flooding back. The balor, the dragon, the battle... Well, at least she got a glorious death. To die that others might live is a noble cause.
He watches Sanjay smash his face into the earth, and sighs. "Easy now, lad. There'll be time plenty for that when we get out of here. Put aside your woes and focus on survival, alright?" His tone is calm, almost fatherly, and the slower speech smooths out his accent reassuringly. He drops a large hand on the lad's shoulder, patting it comfortingly.
His eyes never stop moving, however, and when he sees the spider, he draws his longsword. The steel slides into his hand with a smooth hisssss, and he clutches his shield a little tighter. "Looks like we have company, as well," he murmurs. "Alright, everyone get behind me. I'll hold it off, you start looking for a way out of here, alright?"
"There was a dragon..." Kel muttered, still wincing. He must have hit his head pretty hard, and he was probably still dehydrated from his long trek.
Then the danger was spotted and he pushed the thoughts of sorting out what had happened out of his head. There would be time for that later.
Or we might be killed.
Either way, worrying about what happened to get us here isn't that important right now.
When the big Ulfen man stepped forward to guard the others Kel smiled and stepped in beside him. "You won't do it alone."
Pulling his shield around and synching down the straps, he drew his sword and looked over his shoulder.
"Sanjay, I know this is difficult but I need you to get up and help find a way out of here. You're still my guide. These ladies need our help."
Sanjay looks with a dead-eyed blankness at both Kel and the Ulfen (Jens? was that his name?), his face streaked with dust and tears.
Find a way out? I do not care about a way out. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? Let's all die facing this damned spider.
The thoughts are a far cry from his usual reaction to a crisis. Sanjay is not generally given to pessimism or despair, on a normal day.
This is not a normal day.
After several seconds he jerks his head in a nod and turns to scramble along the bottom wall of the cavern, to try to get a glimpse of the rest of the cavern. The wavery light from Aaliyah doesn't shine far, but he'll dutifully, resentfully, look for exits.
Still Kel's guide, after all.
At the suggestion that she stay back, Aaliyah actually bristles a bit. She speaks a long sentence, probably the most anyone here has seen her say at one time, in a flowing, musical language that is almost certainly not Kelish.
As Sanjay scouts out to the edge of Aaliyah's light spell, he almost trips over something...no, someone. An elf with long, white hair, garbed in the robes of an arcanist lies prone amongst the rubble. The Vudran youth might almost presume the man to be another unfortunate fatality of the violence on the surface...until he stirs and utters a sudden, painful groan!
Kel held his sword out to the side trying to motion for the woman called Aaliyah to halt. He spoke over his shoulder again, not taking his eyes off the spider.
"हम फिर से सूरज से है, लेकिन हम आँख बंद करके हमें और सतह के बीच सब कुछ पर हमला आसपास नहीं है. जाएगा शांत रहने की कोशिश करो."
"We will se the sun again, but not if we go around blindly attacking everything between us and the surface. Try to stay calm."
"Sanjay, how are things looking over there?"
How do I know that language?
How do you think?
"...land?" Aaliyah's babbling slows to a halt, and the last word is in Common as something seems to 'click' and she realizes there's no danger...well, immediately. The scimitar she is holding suddenly wavers and she has to grab it in her other hand to keep it steady. "...sorry."
Sanjay knows the words that Aaliyah and Kel speak, but he knows quite well how he knows the language-- long hours of study under Resh's demanding tutelage.
His father was the one who taught him to walk with a stick as if it were not a weapon; to wear a blade hidden. So Sanjay doesn't let on that he knows Celestial. Who knows what any of these people intend, after all?
The discovery of the elf cuts off such unusually paranoid thoughts.
Sanjay drops to one knee beside the man.
"A man here-- an elf. Hurt," he says softly, and reaches to still the man's movements. "Hssst, quiet, my friend-- there are people to help you, just lie still. You may be badly injured."
Moving slowly toward the light, he checks every body he encounters for signs of life, The light seems to be emanating from beyond that low hillock
Closing with the "hillock", the figure abruptly stops. That's the first hill I've ever seen to have legs He peers at the giant form, opening his sight for signs of evil. While concentrating on the creature, his fingers slowly grip the handle of the morningstar on his hip as he brings it up to bear.
"How bad?" Kel asks when he hears Sanjay say he'd found an injured person. "Miss, uh... Vaashti? Did you say you were a healer? Can you go to Sanjay while we keep an eye on this spider?"
"It is difficult to judge his injuries in these shadows, but he is conscious, at least," Sanjay says, feeling with his deft fingers for any dampness that might be blood. He relates whatever else he can tell of the elf's condition, while murmuring to him to be still, just wait, sir.
All this babbling. Strange language, nothing I've heard before.
Jens watches the spider, realizing it hasn't moved. He sighs, turning briefly to "Kel", as he called himself. "What do you say we try to draw its attention?" He mimes bashing his sword against his shield. "Make some noise, see if it's really what we think it is. I've no desire to charge at a mound of dirt, and if it is a spider, I'd rather kill it than keep an eye on it. Thing's the size of my horse, and she's a big one."
Jens watches the spider, realizing it hasn't moved. He sighs, turning briefly to "Kel", as he called himself. "What do you say we try to draw its attention?" He mimes bashing his sword against his shield. "Make some noise, see if it's really what we think it is. I've no desire to charge at a mound of dirt, and if it is a spider, I'd rather kill it than keep an eye on it. Thing's the size of my horse, and she's a big one."
"Good idea, but let's wait to rile it up until we find out the status of our casualty over there. No sense in turning medical care into combat triage if we can help it."
Vaashti moved quickly, but quietly to the elf that Sanjay was looking at. She knelt by the man and quickly assessed his injuries.
"Sanjay, hold his arm here steady. I don't want him thrashing about while I work." To the elf she said, "Sir, please hold still. It makes it hard on a girl when you roll about like that. Let me just get a look here." Vaashti ripped the elf's sleeve apart to get a better look at a bleeding gash on the back side.
Jens lowers his sword - for now. He turns to the others, keeping an eye on the still creature. "Will he live?" he asks, tone falling between gentle and gruff. Another survivor? That brings us to what, six? How many died up there? How much of the city is left? Did Alfsigr get away? Stop questioning yourself, Jens... you're going crazy in your old age. One thing at a time.
Sanjay wordlessly obeys the woman-- Vaashti, was it? --his eyes darting over the elf and his injuries in the half-light.
In his time running around the temple of Desna, he has seen many injured people, but he never learned the ways of healing them, whether divine or mundane. There was so much else to learn, after all. There was the style of fighting his parents attempted to show him every time they were home-- drills with blows of the hand and the foot, how to strike with the heel or the elbow or to use his 'walking stick' to trip-- and he had taken to those lessons better than he had their lessons of inner tranquility and calm.
There had been Resh's lessons. Magic constantly piquing his interest, but it had all been so-- abstract. Words and theory and discussion of energy. Never anything he could touch, could know with his body.
Right now there is an injured man under his hands, a slender arm twitching under his hands. Sweat beaded on the elf's pale face. Vaashti's dark head bent to inspect his injuries.
Sanjay stares at the elf's face. He should feel compassion for him. He does feel compassion for him. Really. Truly. Somewhere in there, in the middle of the cold knot of nothing that is forming in his belly.
Jens asks Will he live? and again Sanjay bites back on the urge to say Does it matter?
Sanjay, with the help of the approaching Vaashti, helps carefully turn over the injured elf to better assess his condition. The man groans in pain, even as he stirs; he seems to be regaining consciousness. One look at his face brings a shocking sight, however; the youth, let alone the priestess, can easily see that a terrible tragedy has befallen the poor man. His face is a mass of horrid looking burns, his eyes utterly destroyed. Vaashti knows from her years of experience that while she may ease the elf's pain to a degree, it will be beyond even her skill to restore his sight.
Meanwhile, Aaliyah, Jens, and Kel look upon the motionless spider, considering the best way to handle the situation. Then they see an armored figure emerge from the darkness and approach the massive thing from the other side of the cavern.
As Kosz drawn near, he sees that the black shape is indeed a giant spider...a black widow if he's not mistaking that distinctive red hourglass marking on its abdomen. What's also clear, from the stench, is that the immense vermin is dead...probably has been for at least several days. Yet, even as the paladin starts to relax, he hears a muffled sound...chewing?...and then spies a bulge wiggling around inside the spider's abdomen. Then, with a disgusting splattering sound, one...two...three enormous maggots burst forth from the spider's carcass! They drag their greasy, pallid flesh forward hungrily, undulating toward the fresh meat.
Battle Is Joined!
Initiative Order
21 Jens
20 Aaliyah
18a Kel
18b Giant Maggots
15 Sanjay
11 Kosz
7 Vaashti
Aaliyah begins to shake again, before launching herself at the beasts slightly behind Jens. Her every movement seems fully committed to slaying the beasts, with a complete follow-through on the whirling slashes of her scimitar and a complete disregard for her own safety, substituing speed and abandon for physical strength with her weapon, along with the arcane fire that ignites near the edge with only a faint glow.
Another survivor? Jens has time to wonder. Or someone come to finish us off? Before he can finish his thoughts, three maggots burst from the body of the spider. With a grunt, Jens grips his sword and shield tightly.
"You lot, stay back! Kel and I can handle this!"
With a battle cry, he charges toward the closest maggot, swinging his sword at its greasy body.
Sanjay stares down at the hideously burned face of the elf. Gruesome injuries are nothing new in Kenabres-- any warrior who's lived past a few trips into the Worldwound usually bears some nasty scar as souvenir. His own parents have their share of mementos, and Resh lost her eyes to a demon's acid. So it is not shock that holds his gaze on the man's ruined face, it's...
What, exactly? Seeing the visual reality of devastation, perhaps. The ravaging of the elf's face is likely being also enacted upon Sanjay's home-city, however far above them that may be.
"You have lost your sight," he says in an even, hollow voice to the elf. See, father, mother? I am calm.
(The calm of emptiness, of desolation.)
"The healer will do what she can for you."
The cry of the others makes his head whip up. Sanjay rises from his crouch, his young face perfectly devoid of emotion as he takes in the sight of the maggots, the others racing forward to join in combat.
Wordlessly he undoes his compact bow from where it is strapped flat against his pack, and begins to move to a better position to fire from. The bulk of the spider's motionless body is in his way, here.
Vaashti grimaces as she sees the extents of the elf's injuries. The gruesome burns would heal, but nothing this side of divine intervention would ever bring back his eyesight. As Sanjay spoke, she thought, Well, that's certainly blunt enough! Why doesn't he just tell the man he looks ugly and has a small...never mind, girl, get back to work. She began ripping small strips of cloth from her cloak to use as bandaging for the elf, and was just about to call on her divine healing powers when she heard the commotion over by the spider.
Vaashti looked up to see Aaliyah and the warrior charging towards the spider, as Sanjay fumbled his bow out and armed himself. She wondered if she should do likewise, then turned back to the elf. He needed her immediate attentions.
A bit slower to move forward than the bloodthirsty woman or the huge ulfen, Kel moved forward and around the pair as they engaged the giant maggots.
Aaliyah rushes forward and hacks one of the maggots to bits before anyone else can even react. Pale flesh and sickening goo fly everywhere under her shining blade. Not to be outdone, Jens follows right behind, hacking a large furrow in the grisly flesh of the second maggot.
Initiative Order
21 Jens
20 Aaliyah
18a Kel
18b Giant Maggots (H3: -5 hp)(H4: Full hp)
15 Sanjay
11 Kosz
7 Vaashti
The hungry, wriggling maggots attack Jens and Kosz with circular mouths full of sharp teeth! But, they fail to penetrate the warriors' armor.