Shining gasps, seeing her siblings take such significant hits. She works some ancient dragon magic and steps up to negate some of the wounds in Yume!
Yume hisses with rage as the leech attaches to her.
"Protect Momo! I'll be fine."
She twists as best she can to swing at the massive leech, and manages to dig into it with her Katana.
Heavy blows have left a creature with this condition vulnerable to further attacks, imposing a -2 penalty to the creature’s CMD and preventing them from taking attacks of opportunity provoked by a creature performing a combat maneuver. Some talents have different effects or activation times against battered creatures. The battered condition can be removed by taking the total defense action, or through the restore ability of the Life sphere (see Spheres of Power), the lesser restoration spell, or similar effects. When inflicting the battered condition on a target that is already battered, the rounds stack when determining duration.
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The giant leech on Momo begins to chew on her and gulp down large amounts of her blood.
The one attached to Yume does the same thing to her!
Kenmei flies down towards Momo, firing another volley of bolts as he does. Looks like she's going to need some more healing!
Despite the creature's massive size, the stress of combat gets to Kenmei and he misses one of his shots.
Yume retches as she feels the blood being sucked from her. "Gaahh!!"
Then, with a glance at her sister, she says, "Momo, hold tight!", and swings again at the massive leech, but this time it twists out of her way easily.
”Momo! Could you try getting away from it?” Shizun asks as she continues healing her sister.
Momo quickly started acting on Shizun's advice.
If she manages to escape, Momo quickly tries to get away from the leech without giving it an opening to attack.
Yume misses her strike this time as the creature continues to chew on her.
Momo somehow manages to slip free. She stumbles back from the worm.
Shizun heals her again.
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The leech that attacked Momo before turns to strike at Kenmei.
It somehow manages to aim for the right Kenmei, and latches on to the scholar inflicting a nasty wound!
Kenmei struggles to escape, but is caught tight in the leech's teeth! "Help! Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllpppppppppp!" he cries in a most unheroic manner.
Seeing that her brother is in trouble, Momo utters a draconic growl and starts slashing at the leech responsible with her sharp claws!
Yume strains to reach her brother, but decides to keep hacking away at the leech that’s sucking her blood.
Shizun touches the holy symbol on her neck, and wills forth a blessing on her siblings.
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The worm biting on to Kenmei sucks a giant gulp of blood from him, and then spits him out when he goes limp.
The worm struggling with Yume continues to drink her blood.
"No!! I'm failing you all!!!" Yume cries, as Kenmei falls.
She swings again, but the stress of failure plus the loss of blood make her swing feeble.
”Kenmei!” Shizun shrieks as she sends healing energy their way!
Kenmei wakes up, and grabs his crossbow. Seeing that there is still a giant leech threatening him and his sisters, he risks firing another barrage.
Momo utters a catlike hiss and throws herself at the leech. Both of her adamantine claws sink deep into the creature's flesh. With a draconic roar, she rends giant chunks out of the parasite, severely injuring it as a result.
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The remaining worm continues to suck on the delicious dragon blood bag it has found in Yume.
Kenmei struggles to his feet as he fires another two crossbow bolts at the remaining leech.
Feeling a bit wobbly due to blood loss, Yume inhales and then lets out a jarring blast of sonic breath at the leech that's sucking her blood.
[/ooc]
Yume's breath blows away the last leech, splorching it into the swamp.
Yume trudges through the swamp until she can put her arms around her siblings. She gently brushes mud away from Kenmei's wound.
"I am so sorry. I knew this world would be filled with perils, but it seems to be worse than I feared. Father entrusted me to keep you all safe, and I must be honest. To my shame, I'm not sure that I'm capable."
Hanging her head, she adds, "I would like to be worthy of your trust, but I don't believe I deserve it."
Kenmei patches himself up as best he can with his medical equipment and alchemy.
"Well, that was unpleasant. Getting into a real fight is much different than our training. We're all going to have to be more careful from now on."
He turns to Yume. "Don't take it so hard Yume, you were great from what I saw." He looks to his other sister. "Thank you too, Shizun, for the healing."
He looks down at his bandage covered torso. "Do you think it's safe to continue? It seems like Shizun already cast a lot of her spells."
”Pish posh. I’m fine. Now finish those ugly things off so I can heal all you lugs up,” Shizun says dismissively with a wave of her hand. Once they are truly dead, Shizun pulses out a wave of healing energy.
While her siblings recover, Momo torches the leech corpses with her fire breath... twice for good measure.
"These leeches were highly unorthodox enemies who caught us unprepared. We should fare much better against, say, bandits," remarks the kunoichi. "Under most other circumstances, I'd be fine with pressing forward. However, while Shizun appears to have plenty of tricks left, I'm hesitant to continue after Yume lost so much blood."
The group decides to continue on for now. Kenmei is now totally paranoid and refuses to come anywhere near the ground, taking watch from above. After a few more hours of hiking through the morass, they come to the first shipwreck that he spotted earlier. Unfortunately, when they get close enough to examine it, the siblings realize that all that remains is a burnt-out hulk of a shipwreck, with nothing of interest remaining save for fragments bearing its name: Kaijitsu Star.
By this point night is falling. The second shipwreck is probably another thirty or forty minutes ahead.
The siblings set up a camp in the burnt out hull of the Kaijutsu Star. They set up a watch rotation, and settle in as best they can in the bug infested swamp.
The night passes without event.
In the morning the group continues on to the next wrecked ship. After a couple hours of hiking, they come across what Kenmei saw from the sky. What appears at first to be a strange tangle of branches is in fact the moss-covered ribs of a wrecked ship. The ruined ship lies on its side, split down the middle and mostly sunken into the mud and murky water. Little remains of this once-large ship today, but a search of the wreck reveals it to be of a similar style to the Kaijutsu Star.
The ship is in even worse shape than her sister ship, the Kaijitsu Star. As the siblings are looking over the ship, three skeletons wearing Minkaian style armor and wielding wakizashi rise from the murk!
”Allow me,” Shizun boasts as she steps forward and sends out a wave of golden energy that causes the bones of the undead to evaporate!
Shizun's magic handles the skeletons without any trouble. Yume looks around and manages to find what she thinks is a years old trail. The trees and brush going away from the Kaijutsu Blossom in a single direction were once hacked away with blades to clear a path. The damage has long since regrown, only her keen survival skills are able to pick it out. The spur leads southwest, towards a fifty-foot-high cliff which rises along the marsh’s southern border. Its face is a thick tangle of jutting rocks and bright green vines and nettles.
A few minutes walk brings them to the end of the cut trail, and the base of the cliff. A curtain of thick nettle vines partially conceals a cave opening at the base of the cliff.
"Maybe any survivors from the wreck fled here at the time. That would explain the old trail, and why it ends here. Should we go inside and check it out?"
Yume nods. "I'll go first."
The curtain of nettles that partially obscures the cave entrance can be dangerous if touched. Luckily Yume thinks to hack them down with her sword before entering the cave.
”Uhm...” Shizun asks as she steps back behind Yume, ”Which way first?”
"Let's see where this broader one goes to, first."
Yume steps forward slowly, listening for danger.
Yume hears the dripping sounds of a water-filled cave, and perhaps the whispering scrapes of movement from somewhere farther into the echoing depths. Rounding the corner of the broader passage, it starts to open up a bit. There is a pool spreading across much of the floor. These brackish waters remain behind from periodic storms and floods, slowly seeping into the rock. The water here is 3 feet deep at its deepest point, but the rock floor beneath the water is slippery.
Yume frowns at the water and tests it tentatively, realizing how uneven and slippery it is. "Kenmei, can you fly this rope across and tie it there? I'll tie it here. Maybe it can help continue without getting knocked on our asses?"
"Yeah, I can fly it over. No problem," he says, accepting the rope. He flies across the water tying the rope off in two places. "Looks like that other passage back at the beginning probably comes out here," he observes. He holds his crossbow ready while he waits for the others to cross.
Shizun just slips into the water and swims along. It was shallow enough for her to walk, certainly, but swimming for her was just was easy.
It takes her two attempts to get across, but the tenacious Momo eventually manages it!
Yume looks at the slippery puddle sufficiently, but manages to make her way across.
Shizun emerges from the water at the other side.
Yume leads the group further into the cavern. Four human skeletons lie on the ground, scattered throughout this large cavern. They are dressed in tian style armor and have tian style jian longswords.
There are two approximately five foot wide passages leading out of the large cavern.