Grunting, Muraisa aimed the giant axe and tried again.
It turned out she wasn't as good at smashing bouncy monkeys as she was normal zombies for some reason.
Muraisa's axe slices into the bed, missing the mandrill who springs to his feet. Taking their opportunity, Muraisa and Sautekh wildly hack at the ape but do little to harm it, but Bjorkus manages to take another chunck of the creatures flesh. The creature slams its fist into the bear's muzzle.
Kayin groans as the corpse somehow avoids a multitude of strikes as it regains its feet. If the situation weren't so dire, it'd almost be funny. But it's not amusing, and Kayin calls back, down the stairs, for the last member of their party to join the fight.
Turning back to the fight, he momentarily releases his grip on the rapier to cast a minor spell, which he directs to its intended recipient by placing a hand on Bjorkus' flank. Immediately after that, he focuses once more on the power within him, considering the best way to drag that undead beast's feet out from under it a second time.
The mandrill slams its other fist into Bjorkus, and the bears falls limp to the ground.
With a touch, Kayen imparts the wisdom of the ether to Muraisa in hopes her big axe will hit the undead creature. The paladin flashes his khopesh, swinging at the mandrill with all his might. The creatures ducks below Sautekh's strike and screams with an unnatural roar.
With a heavy groan, Randall stands up and begins hobbling his way back upstairs.
"This thing is far too challenging for a damned pet," Muraisa muttered as she aimed another blow at the bouncy monkey. The heavy axe had been too slow so far, but it was only a matter of time.
Muraisa's massive axe slices open the undead mandrill's chest. It wavers momentarily then regains its footing. Its arms look slugish but still very much dangerous.
As Titan bounds up the stairs, the mandrill recovers and swings its arms at Muraisa. The first blow misses to the barbarian's right, while she ducks under the second.
As the heavy thump of boots on the stairs sounds behind him, and Muraisa lands a solid hit of her own, Kayin lashes out a second time with the whip but again fails to connect, disastrously so this time as the mandrill intercepts and catches the blurring length of razored leather. Only quick thinking on the oracle's part avoids seeing him laid out, the whip dropping from his hand before the corpses can apply any force to it. A moment later, he's reeling the dangling weapon back into his grip via the cord connecting it to his wrist. "Gods," he mutters angrily as he gives the unusual weapon a flat stare, it having failed him three times now. "If I didn't know that what I was trying to use you for was possible, I'd trade you to a whore that specializes in pain and get something useful instead."
The aasimar slashes at the mandrill, bringing his khopesh down in a high arching swing, but the mandrill's leathery flesh deflects steel with a ringing sound.
Muraisa snarled her satisfaction, a slightly unhinged grin appearing, as Teinntean bit into undead flesh with a chunk! and a sizzle. She tried to replicate the effect.
Dagger still clutched in his shaking hand, Randall staggers back into the room. "Gods-cussed stupid freaking simian motherf..." He grumbles a stream of obscenities as he flings the dagger past Muraisa's head at the monkey.
Bristling with confidence, Muraisa lifts Teinntean above her head. She shifts her weight to her back foot, arching her back and grimacing. She lets out a primal scream at the mandrill as she launches herself forward. But the weight of the butchering axe is too much and she looses her grip. The axe flies out of her hands, spinning end over end and embedding itself in the wall at the corner of the room.
The undead creature cackles at the barbarian, then glares at Randall as his dagger flies over its head pinging off the mighty axe in the corner.
The oracle isn't the least bit shy in answering the snarling hunter. "Less laying blame, more killing this thing," he says as he watches the corpse ready itself to answer the fumbled axe strike and missed dagger. "We had a plan, it was working, then Randall found a bad spot in the floor and your bear get his bells rung hard. Retreating would have left Bjorkus here helpless, because I damn sure can't lift him and haul him along on my back."
As the blade slides across the floor, the undead creature jumps repeatedly on the bed screaming. Its voice echoing painfully in the room. With its third bounce, it flails an arm at Muraisa. The barbarian deftly ducks under the blow, but her maneuver leads her closer to the mandrill who swings a second arm as it rebounds on the bed. The fist slams into Muraisa's jaw spewing blood across the unconsious bear and Sautekh. She feels the disease course through her veins more potently than before.
With the situation getting increasingly dire, Kayin finds himself forced to consider engaging the enemy more closely, not a prospect he's terribly enthused by. Still, he can at least attempt to make the circumstances more favorable for himself before stepping in, and he lightly flicks the whip across the mandrill's muzzle in an effort to disorient the creature. The oracle then releases the whip to dangle from its cord while replacing it with a rather nasty-looking mace.
Kayin's whip flicks out at the mandrill, snapping at its muzzle. However, the creature fails to react as it cares little about the feinted strike.
"A thousand years of curses upon you!" Sautekh shouts as he slices once again at the undead mandrill. But the creatures luck continues as the aasimar's blade fails to strike the nimble creature.
Well, that didn't usually happen. Cursing for a moment she roared as she drew a javeling and attempted to stab the monster with it, and hoped her axe didn't set fire to anything before she could get it back...but that concern faded as the battle madness overtook her.
The barbarian grunts a profanity as she grabs the javelin strapped to her back and thrusts the tip at the mandrill. The undead creature takes the length of the weapon silently into its neck, grabbing the metal shaft. It lashes out at Muraisa twice before going limp and falling to the bed. Its body quivers then explodes with a violent burst that sends Muraisa backwards. The barbarian falls to her back unconscious. Her face and chest lacerated terribly. Sautekh and Titan, along with his unconcious bear, also are hurt from the mandrills burst. The foul blood coating the bear's pelt.
What is left of the mandrills carcass lies still upon the bed.
With the battle coming to an unexpected and, as the body comes apart in a shower of tainted gore, debilitating manner, Kayin immediately stows his various weapons and moves into managing the aftermath. Though he's not a healer by any definition, including his own, the oracle is willing to give it a go instead of just watching as his new allies bleed out. And it'll hopefully wash away the bitter taste of his poor showing in the fight; for all that he's no warrior, Kayin still has some pride in his skills, and that pride is about as dead and broken as the shatter corpses in this shop.
Still, he's got one asset in his efforts, and he makes full use of it, channeling his magic to hopefully guide his hands in the most effective possible ways. Almost as an afterthought, he also resumes bolstering himself and the others with his magic.
Randall wavers on his feet, but refuses to sit down until Kayin assures him Bjorkus and Muraisa are stable, at which point he slides down the wall, exhausted. "That," he says with a slight slur in his voice, "was awful." He looks over the unmoving forms of his erstwhile companions at the burst corpse of the mandrill. "What... what was it even doing here? Seems like a weird pet... Experiment maybe? But why would they be performing experiments? Isn't this a scrivener's shop?" He leans his head against the wall behind him and closes his eyes. "I feel awful. But... I don't know if we can rest without making sure the rest of this place is safe. There were two more doors up here."
He looks back toward the doorway. "Although... I guess we could bar this door and just watch the hole in the floor. That's an option." He gives the hole a particularly dirty look.
|
The hunter bitterly mutters a prayer as he tends his fallen companion.
When Bjorkus finally comes to, the hunter slips his bow over a shoulder and then hauls the unconscious barbarian onto the bear's back. He jabs a finger at the door. "Everyone downstairs to regroup. Now. No more quips. No more b$~#%%&$. You fools are going to get all of us killed. Sautekh, get the girl's axe."
Titan hauls the unconcious form of Muraisa onto Bjorkus's back, then leads the bear downstairs and into the main room. The aasimar nods in agreement and follows the hunter down after grabbing the massive axe.
Kayin's eyes narrow at the peremptory tone being taken by the hunter, but he directs his words to the wounded tiefling instead. "The question of why this creature was here is indeed a curious one, but it'll have to wait on answers. And the remaining doors will as well, since Titan has so rightly pointed out that we're not really in any condition to check them right now." The oracle then follows the others back down the stairs, then finds a comfortable spot to catch his breath; fortunately, that fight hadn't left as worn as the one before it, and he settles into his chosen seat feeling almost decent.
Fixing his attention on Titan with a wide-eyed stare, Kayin then asks in an exaggeratedly obsequious tone of voice. "As you've commanded, oh great and glorious leader, we've obeyed. What are your next orders that we, your most humble servants, may blissfully scurry to fulfill?" If the hunter wanted to bark orders at them as though they were brainless lackeys, then the oracle was more than willing to take the piss out of him for it. Not that he didn't understand the hunter's current mood, mind--it was a pretty lousy showing on their part, thought not entirely their fault--and Kayin even understood that much of that mood was almost certainly due to the near-death of Bjorkus. But it was a fight, and those always come with the risk of injury or death. And it was also a team effort, and having the one part of their team that decided to linger downstairs be the one outraged over their failure was not going to pass unremarked by the oracle either.
Although mostly unconscious, Muraisa still snorted something suspiciously like a laugh.
|
|
Titan doesn't waste an ounce of energy returning the oracle's sass. Kayin's juvenile tone just reinforces the hunter's lack of confidence in him.
Recognizing that a lot of the group's blunders were just a lack of experience, he sighs and tries to find his patience again.
"Look, it's time to take this nightmare seriously and stop pretending that we're on a midsummer hunt for wild hares. The world you knew is gone. Everyone you ever loved or might have loved was either sucked up into the sky or turned into the walking dead. This particular group of fools is all any of us have left and we need to come out of this job in one piece if we're going to survive whatever hell comes next."
"I'm going back upstairs to search that room. Put the girl in the corner near the front door. Bjorkus will stay with her. If I run into more of those things, I'll shout a warning and come down the stairs. That's your signal for everyone to fall back into the street. Do not try to go toe to toe with those things again. As we've seen twice now, they die in a messy and dangerous way. It puts everyone at a lot less risk if we draw them into the open and pick them off from range."
With the group reassembled in the main scribe room, Titan bids them to watch over Muraisa while he searches the upstairs room. The dresser to the left of the door is undisturbed and filled with fine clothing made of silk while the bed and its sheets are in tatters. The chest in the corner has several winter blankets as well as a fur lined cloak. A hand-carved wooden bowl rests on the lavatory table to the right of the door. Beside it is the broken remains of a couple flasks. From the smell of it, Titan guesses it may have been perfume. Under the table, he can see a small bottle has fallen into the corner and is partial obscured by the table leg.
As he squats beside the table, the flooring creaks and moans. The hunter looks over at the broken floor boards left from Randal's fall. The boards surrounding that area took heavy damage at some point recently. His eyes run up the wall and he sees the same damage to the wooden paneling. A section three foot in width is partially bowed out from the room. A visible outline of a small door is apparent. Titan skirts the open hole to get a closer look at the paneling. He can not only see the scratch marks made by claws but the repeating pattern of something striking the wall, perhaps something metal.
He turns his attention to the mandrill and walks across the room. The decaying flesh of the undead is ripped from its finger tips, exposing the bare bone of its first knuckles. The stain of its black blood is dried in the hair of its arm. The hunter begins to leave when his eye catches a glimpse of steel under the bed. Pulling up the shredded mattress, he finds an ornate mace lying in the corner.
|
|
Returning downstairs, the hunter addresses the group.
"Let's drop off what we've found and update Marcusic on what we encountered in here. We'll need to get Muraisa patched up if we're going to resume clearing this neighborhood with the others. Better equipment would help too. Longspears and proper bows would be a good start."
In a blink, Kayin's attitude shifts from irreverence to outrage, and he snarls at Titan, his hands unconsciously clenched tightly enough to whiten the knuckles. "Listen here, you unwashed brush rat, don't you talk down to me. While you were out in the hinterland somewhere wiping your ass with leaves, I was watching this 'nightmare' as it happened, watching as most of the people here just disappeared into some hungry hole in the sky, or worse. In fact, we're in spitting distance of the place I used to live, and I'm the only one from that part of the district to come out alive. And the fact that I am alive is all the proof I need to give you or any-damn-one else of how seriously I'm taking things these days."
Pausing to take a breath, the oracle makes a visible effort to calm himself, though it's obvious that he's still offended by the hunter's words. He gesturess to the stained patches on the floor where the three undead, or what's left of them, are currently resting. "Now unless you're holding out on the rest of us, then there's no way to know that these undead were any different from the ones that have been lurching through town the last few weeks, and no way to know that taking them up close is a bad idea." Kayin then gives the hunter a pointed look. "And if taking them from range is the best way, you should have been up there with the rest of us. We could have had Muraisa, or better still, Sautekh block the doorway while you fired over their shoulder. And if covering the door down here was needed, the rest of us could managed that."
Kayin takes another breath and gives his head a shake. "But all that's done with, and no amount of hindsight made with the facts that we have now is going to change what's already happened. So go on, check the room and then we'll go from them. Oh, and mind the floor," he adds with a look overhead at the hole in the ceiling.
With the hunter bringing down what minor treasures he's uncovered, Kayin wordlessly slots him back in among the other as he casts his minor magics. The oracle then eyes the awkward pile of loot with a dubious expression before shrugging and turning one of the blankets into a makeshift sack for everything else. "Should probably add bags to carry whatever we find," he remarks as he uses the weapon cord from his right wrist to temporarily bind the ad-hoc container shut. His eyes briefly drop down to consider the empty bandolier across his torso. "And, while I doubt there's much to be had, maybe some things to treat injuries on the spot and fortify ourselves against exposure to whatever those bodies are tainted with," Kayin adds with a look at those party members who got splashed with residue from the bursting bodies.
Loading up Muraisa on the the bear's back, the group quickly makes it's way back to the bridge. There they see several young women tending to the wounds of other would be soldiers. "Over here!" one shouts, waiving and pointing at a makeshift cot. Titan and Sautekh aid the young woman in setting the barbarian on to the cot. "I'll get Brother Thomas. She's hurt badly!"
The young lady dressed in white, crosses to the northern side of the bridge where a young man dressed in similar white robes is speaking with an several women and a dwarf. When the group bows and departs, the young priest begins to make his way to you.
"I am Brother Thomas," he says. From a pouch the priest produces a small crystal shaped into a cherry tree. "Sacred Mother, I'm a but a vessel for your light. I beg that you share your grace with these warriors."
Light begins to well up like a third eye upon the priest's brow, pulsing in rhythm with light streaming up from the earth and twining into an image of a cherry tree. With a flash of light some of their wounds are washed away. And again the tree flashes its radiant light. "Teysura loves and succors all her children, within whom she has planted the seed of life," Thomas says with a wide smile.
With a groan, Muraisa opens her eyes.
On the verge of collapse, Randall feels the healing energy infuse him, and is almost elated with the absence of pain. "Thanks. I think there might be some kinda disease being spread by these corpses, too. At least, the ones in the Second Scribe were. Might wanna be on the lookout."
Waking with a start, Muraisa yelped "BAD Monkey!" before looking around. As her eyes focused again she grunted and winced, rubbing the now part close wounds that had formed ugly, puckered scars and marks across her body. "Oh, that was deeply unpleasant." She looked over at the others and added, "Was that damned monkey the last thing there, at least? Or do we still need to finish the job?"
Kayin sits out of the way and watches as the healing take place, grateful for a chance to just sit and relax. He knows quite well what's ailing him, and he curses--mentally, of course, mustn't let anyone else know about his particular issue--the source of his affliction quite bitterly and extensively for a few moments. His thoughts then turn to ways to alleviate this problem, which might become critical if he's going to be seeing any more fights like those in the Second Scribe; if his hand hadn't been shaking as it was, Kayin was dead certain that his initial effort to pull that mandrill off of the bed would have been successful. Who knows how the fight would turned out then, with that horror sprawled out helpless on its back.
Muraisa's yell upon regaining consciousness startles him out of his thoughts, and the oracle answers her question with a grimace. "No, we've still got at least two rooms left to clear there, and then a proper search before we can call it done. Though, considering the beating we took today, I think that'll be our only stop for now." The oracle's eyes roll briefly and he points to where Titan is. "Glorious leader is apparently feeling sulky that I didn't jump to orders immediately and without sassing him, so I think he's ignoring me for the moment, but we'll have to check with him and the rest first to see what they have to say about heading back and finishing up." The oracle then sighs and scrubs a hand down face before continuing. "While I'd honestly love nothing more than to just sit back and do nothing, I really do hate the idea of leaving a job undone, and we've already got most of the Scribe cleared. Not to mention that having someone else finish for us might affect our chance at claiming the place for ourselves," Kayin adds with a frown.
Randall pokes tentatively at a bruise on his ribs that the healing magic has already turned from a dark, angry purple to a faint, sickly yellow. He sighs and looks up at Kayin. "He does have a point, in that the world is changed. Honestly, I have no idea how we're supposed to survive this in the long term. I can understand his frustration; wasn't exactly my finest showing in there." He shrugs and crosses his legs lotus-style. "That being said, tearing out each other's throats will do no one any good. We took a beating today. It wounded our pride as much as our bodies. But that's the world now. We're gonna take a lot more beatings. We're gonna lose more than we win. Only way to get through it is to get up more often than we fall down. And when we can't get up..." He offers a lopsided grin. "You get one of us to carry you."
After a somber moment, he jerks a thumb at the barbarian. "I nominate Muraisa."
"The undead are rather more...toxic that I was expecting." Muraisa shrugged. "We live and we learn. But yeah, I'd rather be doing the carrying that the one being lugged." She stood, stretched, and retrieved her axe before the poor Paladin tried swinging the weapon and burning his hands.
Heading back to the healer, she nodded. "Thank you for bringing me back. It would have taken weeks to heal that on my own. I know I already owe a favour, but we may need another. My new friend and I got...infected...by those things." She made a face as she recalled the taste. "I don't know if your magics are able to remove it, or if you can tell us of another way?" Not that herbs or plants would be easy to find.
Maybe it would be booze.