Chrysa skirts the edge of the vomit gas, trying to grab Bella's sword, but even vomiting the woman is way too protective of her blade.
"Bella, something is going on and you stabbed me, I would much rather you be without your sword for a little while. Can I have it... please?"
Sophiel waits a second for the gas to clear, then charges at Sootscale in the air, trying to grab him.
"King, please don't resist, we don't want you blowing anyone else up." She says desperately, hoping he's lucid enough to understand.
Annalla continues to retch.
Sootscale babbles, seemingly incoherently. "Tootuli i luma o loʻu malosi tele!"
He sidesteps as Sophiel charges at him, and then gibbers at her angrily. "Ua osofaia e le au matatau, Ou te fasioti ia te i latou!"
Orri is still so confused by what is going on it's like the dual realities in his mind are trying to rip his brain apart. He starts bashing his head against the wall in an attempt to make it stop.
Isabella doesn't want to, but with both Annalla and Chrysa requesting it, Bella drops her blade to the ground. She groans as he stomach turns in knots, painfully pausing between each word."I-dropped-it."
"Whats-going-on? I'm-feeling-sick." she says, retaking her feet and looking around only to fall back to a knee to retch again.
Sophiel watches as Bella drops her sword, and says, ”magic, my dear, I hope it wears off soon...” With that, she sticks her tongue out at Sootscale, and winking, double moves away from him, flying down the stairs. She says as she goes, ”I hope he chases me, c’mon Sootscale, I just tried to grab you! Chase me down.”
Chasing Sophiel around for a moment after she tries to grab him, Sootscale finds himself alone in a stairway. He alternates between babbling and moments of lucidity, before finally coming to, and realizing what he has done!
"Sophiel! Annalla! Bella! No, Bella!"
He rushes over to see if Bella and her baby are safe, fearful of what his marsh gas might have done.
Chrysa quickly grabs the blade, keeping a steady eye on Bella the entire time, then she runs over to Orri "Please stop" she says with pain in her voice over him hurting himself. "It'll be over soon, Anna will heal you, all will be good, just please stop hurting yourself. Here attack me, like your sister did."
He isn't listening... which isn't new, but still, the bashing his head into a wall is, and bad, so she tries to grab him and stop him.
Orri seems to be coming to his senses until Chrysa grabs a hold of him and all he can think of is that one troll he fought alone that nearly tore him apart. As he avoids her attempt at grabbing hold of him he steps back and lashes out at her with his whip, attempting to pull her feet out from under her. "You won't win this time you vile troll!" he yells at her.
When she is down he lashes out at her again with his whip.
Luckily he misses giving Chrysa an opportunity to get away before he starts smacking his head against the nearby wall again and then standing their just babbling incoherently.
Isabella recovers from her vomiting and proceeds to slam the hilt of her blade into her temple a couple of times before she rejoins everyone else in blissful lucidity.
Her body thuds to the ground, the back of her head against the floor in a jarring shudder, the wound in her gut screaming. For one moment lays and regrets ignoring one whole side of battle. Maneuvers. She always thought why in the hells would I bother disarming, or tripping, or grabbing someone. Stab them and be done. It was one of Kan's rules, but at the moment she forgets which number.
Then the crack of the acid whip whips the air, and the horned woman is rolled and doing her best not to be killed by one of her friends.
Sophiel follows Sootscale back, and sees Chrysa on the floor, in pain. She retrieves one of their wands, and sets to healing everyone, once the madness has obviously passed.
Sophiel straightens up while everyone calms down. "Well, that was eventful." She turns to Chrysa, and helps her up, "love, you did a good job distracting Bella." She smiles and turns to Isaballa, "Feeling better?" She asks, in as comfortingly a way as possible.
She looks around, "I haven't encountered something like this - though I believe that literature would refer to these as 'haunts'" She mulls over the problem. "Not exactly ghosts, but something which acts almost like a trap." She thinks quietly, "perhaps if another manifests - if we all discharge our positive energy -very quickly - we can disable it? Otherwise, I believe we have to solve the haunts 'problem'" She raises her hands in the air, gesticulating, "whatever that is." She sighs.
Isabella wipes her mouth and straightens up as she stands, nodding to Sophie "Yes, I am, thank you."
Turning to Chrysa, she puts a hand on her shoulder "I'm sorry I did that. I would never hurt you. Please forgive me."
Afterwards, she looks to Sophie and says "I would very much like to move on, that was extremely unpleasant."
Chrysa points out "Well you did. Hurt me I mean, but it was neither your intention or desire... so same thing." the no longer bleeding woman pats her hand in return and hands the woman back her blade.
Sophiel brushes herself off, ”well, haunts. Right. Maybe we should slightly modify our plan of action. Unless we all plan on channeling positive energy, or using our healing spells to immediately block the haunt, if there’s more, something like this could happen again.” She questions everyone, ”as far as I can tell, we have three options: keep carrying on and muddle through, throw everything we have of positive energy as soon as possible at the next one, or... one Chrysa checks for traps, let me go in alone.” She looks at the others, ”it may be the case that... things like this simply do not affect someone like me, very much. Any opinions?”
She’ll start moving towards the North door.
"I'll scout, and you come to rescue me if things go Complicated again." the horned woman suggests "No reason for all of us to suffer, and no reason for you to risk traps or worse, until we know your 'Someone like me' immunity is needed."
Unless there are further objections, Chrysa will check, and then open the north door, entering when she thinks it is safe to do so, Quietly, and then waits and listens before calling the others in.
Grasping her swords, she gives them others a quick look, before she disappears quietly in the room. Moments pass before she calls back "There is someone in here, a man in the corner mumbling 'No' over and over. Claw marks are all over the walls." then silence as she waits for suggestions and to see if the man reacts to her voice.
Sophiel grumbles at being rebuffed, but when Chrysa explains the contents, she asks ”It may be a haunt, let me check alone please.” When Chrysa doesn’t leave, she says, ”oh for b!&!+$~s’ sake...” She turns to everyone else. ”Stay here, please, for a moment.” She then says to Chrysa, ”I’m coming in - I can tell things about him and the room.”
"Sorry, not about to leave you alone with crazy man until we know he's a haunt." she says with a grim smile, as she tries to detect magic, not knowing it doesn't catch haunts. "Friends do not leave friends with mumbling potential psychopaths."
"Soph, he radiates necromancy from every seething pore. Step back and we'll call in the others to chat with the man." she says softly as she moves to make sure she is standing between the man and her friend. She HATES necromancy just a little bit less than the fey... or maybe more.
Inside the next room you find a very barren chamber that reeks of animal. The walls are covered in claw marks, and you see a man squatting down in a far corner of the room, rocking back and forth and mumbling ”No no no,” to himself.
Sophie looks at the guy and nods, ”yes. May not be his choice. The world is complicated...” she shrugs, and speaks to him. ”Can we ease your suffering, sir?”
After you address him, the man turns briefly to look at you. His features are obscured by a long, dirty beard and bedraggled, unkempt hair, but his eyes bear a desperate but regal bearing. ”You shouldn’t have come. This place is cursed. I am cursed! He...he won’t let me leave. Won’t let me die. But I am innocent...innocent! But...nnnngggghhh...oh gods...it’s....” he groans in pain as his arms and legs begin to lengthen and his face contorts and stretches! He doubles over in pain before his head snaps back to face you, now bearing wolf-like features! He glares at you with lupine eyes before he snarls ”RUN!”
He then stands to his full height, now a very imposing figure in the moonlight through the crack in the wall. He throws his head back and lets out a long wolf howl, ”AWWOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” before he draws his blade and prepares to attack!
"Shit" Chrysa swears softly, worry evident in her voice, as she continues to stand between IT and Sophie. Blades are drawn but not that useful anymore. "It's a werewolf, though you might have already guessed. We need SILVER weapons, and Do NOT let it bite you!"
"How about fire?" suggests Sootscale.
Moving up behind Chrysa, he lobs a stink bomb, this time toward an enemy!
;
The bomb explodes in a mix of fire and gas!
Ipmeek’ s bomb is off course, landing beside the werewolf as opposed to hitting it. The thing seems unaffected by the noxious fumes the bomb lets off as well.
Orri had been obviously quiet as they continued through the tower, a hard frown on his face as he walked along behind the others. When the reached the man mumbling he was happy to stay out of the room to avoid what happened last time but as it transformed her snapped to action.
He began to intone arcane words hoping to put the werewolf at a disadvantage and protect his friends. A cloud of glitter explodes around the creature in an instant.
Isabella grumbles about being left in the back after explicitly stating she wanted to be in the front. She weaves through her companions to the front and readies an attack for when it closes in.
Sophiel snaps at attention when the others get ready, and backs up, starting up her oratory, "whoever has harmed you, we will harm them, beast! Otherwise, do not force us to cut you down!"
The werewolf does not seem harmed by the glitterdust, and he even seems to shrug off the worst of Isabella’s attack when he rushes in. He slices at her with his sword in one hand, pulling a dagger as well as he closes the distance. His attack swishes past Isabella’s head so close the wind from the blade ruffles her hair!
Chrysa hurries around the snarling beast, careful to make her path wide enough to avoid being cut down.
Annalla begins singing some ditty about the cow jumping over the moon and she gestures towards the werewolf.
King Sootscale breaks out a new trick, moving into position before tossing what appears to be a net with an alchemist's fire tied to it!
Orri moves in as he pulls out his whip lashing at the creatures feet, trying to bring it to the ground.
Flanking with Chrysa, Isabella says "Right there, Chrysa!" She lashes out twice with her burning blade, trying to injure the wolf more than last time.
Sophiel looks on quietly, and continues her oratory, gritting her teeth, but looking back towards the door and the other entrance, warily, "fight on, everyone - fight on."
Ipmeek's net ensnares the werewolf's upper body as Orri's whip whistles through the air and cracks as it wraps up the creature's legs and sends him to the floor. He takes a slice from Isabella before using his own blade to cut through the net and free himself before standing up and stepping towards the wall.
She'll step to the left, following the creature and waiting for Bella to do the same before, laying into it with sword and braid.
Orri looks back to Sophie as he requests "Can you move to the north a bit so I can get to where you are and keep some distance between myself and this beast?"
He waits and once she moves he steps into her place before swinging his whip around to try and bring the werewolf to the ground once more.
Sophiel steps north, and continues her oratory of anger, continuing to provide guidance to Orri.
Having no success with her humorous song, Annalla resorts to simple expediency.
"Pew, pew!" she calls out as she sends missiles of arcane energy towards the man.
King Sootscale will wait for the werewolf to try standing up again. If he does, Sootscale immediately throws a sand bomb!