Yasmeena scowls at the shaitans that have quickly surrounded them. She flickers behind her mirror images.
She is obviously startled when Aithaloessa's spell doesn't work and doubly so when the elf sails up into the sky. She steps back a step and continues to fire arrows, concentrating her fire on the one to the south, one of those that threaten her.
Yasmeena takes another one out with her first shot. And one more with two more shots. The shaitans crumble like sandcastles under her barrage of arrows. Tariq takes one down without killing it.
From where her magic carries her safely aloft over the melee, Aith nudges herself at speed back down towards the battlefield, hand dropping for the ingredients for her next spell, and calls out a warning, “Haleen, back-to-back with Yasmeena, please, or just, back!”
As she goes, she reaches into her reserves to make her spell burn – not hotter, exactly, but harder or hungrier – harder to resist or shake off.
The mage’s reasoning becomes abundantly clear as a glowing bead appears in her hand before hurtling downwards much, much faster than a physical spark would, striking the shoulder of one of the shaitans at the corner of their formation, and blossoming into a burst of fire over three of the genies while stopping just at her friends’ feet.
Haleen stabs ehr shaitan some more before stepping back to make room for Aithaloessa's shenanigans.
Meanwhile the gargoyles have come down to fight the entourage of Dilix, while Dilix herself takes on Ilqima. Interestingly, the sphinx does some figurative backstabbing on Ilqima by lending Dilix a paw. A very strong and sharp claw.
Haleen still ahs a hard time hitting those walking rocks but add one more scratch. Then the shaitans are caught in a blazing ball of fire, and get pretty charred for creatures of stone.
This reduces the count of shaitans further, which has Obherak change his mind and joining the fight. Tariq and Haleen are attacked by the shaitans and Obherak goes for Yasmeena.
The Knights of Kelmarane seem to be turning the odds in their favour, though Obherak takes a more active role in the fight. That means they'll have to even the numbers again.
Tariq takes out another one.
Yasmeena weathers the attacks as best she can.
The first attack of the shaitans causes her final mirrored image to vanish in a flash of light. The punches from the other two cause her to grunt in pain, but are fortunately blunted substantially by Aithaloessa's spell. Then Obherak steps up and swings at her with his fiery blade, and she takes another deep cut.
"I must say," she says lightly to Obherak as she masks her injuries in bravado, "that your hospitality is quite lacking. Why, I almost begin to think that you are not worthy of ruling this plane after all!"
She drops her longbow and draws her own scimitar, stepping closer to the other shaitan behind Haleen. She stabs at the remaining shaitan with grace and precision, never faltering in her beautiful dance as she fights.
Haleen gets into flanking position with Yasmeena behind Obherak and stabs him .
Aith continues her long swoop down towards the others, inwardly cursing her skittishness, or cowardice, even, as she realizes that she’s put herself out of range of some of the more useful spells she has prepared for the situation she finds herself in.
Still, beyond Obherak, those other genies not on their side are not anything to scoff at either. She’s pretty sure Tariq could take down at least one of them in a bit, but she’s worried about either Yaz or Haleen getting outflanked by the other… That settles it, and she lobs another fireball at the two remaining genies in their section of the melee, positioning the blast so that her friends and allies are unaffected.
Yasmeena finds that it is not easy to hit the experienced warlord. But she gets in one cut. Haleen also stabs the rpoud shaitan and Aithaloeessa adds more burn to the existing wounds of the others. It is amazing to see how the small army of the earth genie crumbles under the relentless barrage.
This enrages Obherak who lays now with all his power into Yasmeena. As she topples over, he turns on Haleen.
Through the barrage of falchion strikes, Tariq tries to launch a cut or two and contribute to weakening the powerful shaitan.
Aith is continuing her slow – too slow – arc towards the ground when she sees Yasmeena fall. Her best bet at this point, though, is to do what she can to help her friends take Obherak down more quickly, so quickly it is.
She makes sure to include Yasmeena along with Haleen, and Tariq, so that if they can get the bard back up on her feet in a moment, she’ll have that much better luck getting out of further harm’s way, hopefully.
Haleen would very much like to give that Obherak a wide berth, but with Yasmeena cut down - hopefully still alive - that is no option. So all holding back and being careful goes out of the window.
Tariq finds an opening to get in a hit. Haleen also wounds the shaitan some more. But even together they don't deal as much damage as the shaitan can serve.
Obherak throws a quickened glitterdust at that annoying mage and then keeps cutting away at the enemies in front of him.
Two falchion slashes take away most of Tariq's life force. Thankfully he's still standing, and thus tries to give back some of the love.
After Tariq is done with Obherak, there is nothing left to stab for Haleen. Meanwhile the team of Dilix won the upper hand and who is left leaves as Obherak falls. The sphinx is standing over Ilqima ripping her apart.
Yasmeena takes three deep cuts from Obherak and crumples.
"That's one of my tricks!" Aith grumbles as Obherak sends a blast of glitter her way, though she has to admit he manages it much more quickly than she can. Shaking it off, she's considering whether to fire back in kind or try to slip through non-space again to get to Yasmeena more quickly, when Tariq brings the shaitan leader down.
The respite that provides lets her see that Yasmeena doesn't seem to be gushing blood all over the place, and that the other battles nearby have gone their way too, so she saves her reserves for healing, and spirals down in a more leisurely fashion.
As soon as her feet touch the ground, she recites the basic healing spell she knows, hoping it will be enough to get the bard on her feet so Tariq, with his talent for medicine, can get a proper look at her.
"Up you get," she says brightly, offering Yasmeena a hand, her own eyes turning up already to scan the sky. Honestly, she's not entirely sure why, since even if the proteans have a flair for the dramatic, that doesn't mean that their sense of it would be the same as hers. But where is Lahapraset, anyway?
She mulls that over for an uncomfortable moment until the protean leader's words come back to her in more detail. She said her people would blip in once the Knights of Kelmarane found the shaitans' prisoner, and that's something that still needs doing.
"Well then," the mage says, redirecting her gaze towards the Golden Bowl. "I suppose we still have to get in there."
Time enough for that once we're less battered and bruised, she thinks wearily. And what are we going to do with what's left of Obherak and Ilqima? Our luck, the Earth Seed is still in the Bowl as well.
When finally the earth genie is defeated, Tariq turns to Dilix. "We did our part, now is your turn." He then quickly drops his weapon and runs to Yasmeena's side, who've been attended by Aith meanwhile.
"The plan was to dodge his weapon, girl..."
Then he takes care of Aith, and then of himself.
Yasmeena opens her eyes again and struggles to her feet. "Dodge his weapon? I'll have to remember that," she deadpans. "I figured it was all over when I had to drop my bow. Speaking of which..." She recollects her magical weapon, then bows to the sphinx and says something in her native language.
While Tariq helps Yasmeena up she inquires "You wanted to keep that guy alive?" while standing over Obherak to finish the job.
Dilix sinks into the stone and shortly thereafter the stone structure that looks somewhat like a well where the hole in the middle was forgotten gets this opening by a migical stone shape.
"This is the entrance. But you should still expect resistance."
"Ehh .. not really, but..."
He looks puzzled. What to do now? Ending the genie's life just like that can be a sin, but he has ways to escape if left alive. And they need to get out of here if they're to save people from Jhavul.
He just waves his hand. "Do with him as you see fit."
Turning to Dilix, he replies "I thought you would grasp leadership once Obherak was dealt with."
While Tariq and Dilix converse, Yasmeena uses a wand to bring herself back to full strength.
"Of course, if we find more earth genies. But I don't know what else Obherak has in there. I think the alliance with the gargoyles is broken for now and tehy left. But if other allies of Obherak will leave, fight or join our ranks I can't tell."
"Ah, right."
Haleen puts an end to Obehrak. She sure didn't like his attitude and don't want to have to deal with him ever again.
"It looks like we made a new riddling friend though."
“Thank you both for all your help,” Aith agrees, bowing towards Zulfiqar and Dilix. “That would have gone terribly without you.”
She rolls out the last kinks in her shoulders after Tariq’s ministrations have cooled the heat of the battering she took, but still winces at the thought of how much of her reserves she’s spent in a harrowing minute. “I have to admit, I think I have enough energy for one more fireball or burst of haste for us all, today, but otherwise I need to fall back on lesser spells and wandwork. Well, that, or throwing caution to the wind and seeing what chaos raw magic feels like doing.”
Our protean friends would love that, I’m sure, but I think I’m the only other person who would, otherwise, she muses, as she steps closer to see if Obherak had anything interesting on him.
Obherak is carrying quite some magic jewellery.
Aith hums a bit tunelessly as she examines what Obherak was carrying for anything of use, especially given just how messy the brawl was. Taking the time to do it right seems like a good idea.
Her inventive (if idiosyncratic) mage's mind is able to figure out most of the shaitan leader's gear without too much trouble. One of his rings provokes a considerably longer pause, but after squinting at the carved gem on it for a bit - goat? no, a ram, looks like - the chaotic elf turns excitedly to Yasmeena and holds the jewel out to her.
"Oh, you'll love this!" she enthuses. "Thrust it out in a fist like so, and it should conjure quite a sharp force. It will be a hefty smack, but, even better! it will send the target flying unless it's got a very good foothold. Its power will drain, eventually, but in the meantime, hopefully it will come in handy if we're at risk of getting surrounded again before you can fill the sky with arrows."
Of all the things, the sword is a bit of a shame, given everyone's weapons of choice, but then again, it's exactly the sort of thing that Jhavhul might well reward an underling with, so it's not surprising. Still, the rings certainly look like a welcome boost if they're about to poke their heads into a lion's den. Or whatever a suitable rocky equivalent would be.
Halleen takes a peek into the opening. "They don't care about reasonable entrances for people who don't walk through walls, don't they?"
Looking into the hole reveals a shaft leading straight down for some distance, widening then, and the bottom is at least 100ft away.
"If any of you need to cast a spell or renew some effects before we find more opposition, this could be a good moment." Since most of his blessings are combat oriented, Tariq doesn't feel the need to do so, and thus just waitress for anyone to get ready before heading inside.
“My flying spell should last the better part of another hour and a half,” Aithaloessa says, lifting just off her tiptoes eagerly.
“And,” she adds, rummaging briefly in her bag for her spare footgear, “someone can use these!”
She produces her pair of magical slippers.
“That does mean we need a bit of rope, probably. Just in case, let me check my grimoire, and tinker a bit.”
"Then let's get to it." Haleen calls out and jumps in with the fetherfall to make that easy.
This bizarre, sixty-foot-wide chamber suggests the interior of twin six-stepped ziggurats set base to base; the floor drops away in five-foot-wide tiers mirrored by similar tiers in the ceiling above. A shaft extends up from the ten-foot-square area at the highest point above, while hanging in midair in the center of the chamber is a blocky structure some twenty feet across, covered in an intricate lacework of tiny, glowing, golden Terran runes, giving a dim light to the entire chamber. At the widest point of the room’s perimeter, where the two inverted ziggurats join, stand four large stones. Yet in this strange chamber, perhaps the strangest sight of all is the figure imprisoned in that floating stone block — a snake-like creature with a feathered reptilian head and delicate humanoid arms seems to have been fused into the block, coils of flesh and lengths of arms protruding here and there from the stone, its head partially encased with only one closed eye free.
Two deadly constructs, beings created of stone and shaped vaguely like gorillas covered with jagged stony spikes, stand vigil in this chamber. The ground and stone around them ripple and extrude spikes, almost as if the latter were infecting the nearby stone with their presence.
Yasmeena activates her wand of gravity bow before jumping after Haleen.
Tarifa follows after the girls, ready to present a worthy opposition to the gorilla things.
As Aith swoops down into the Golden Bowl, her more scientific side appreciates the design of the space that opens up below. A bit squared-off for her tastes, but still. And there’s an absolutely fascinating bit floating in midair! If only she read Terran, and had the time to study the thing properly…
But it’s being used as a prison right now, and she can only guess who its occupant is. She flies closer and addresses the serpent, “Magiyawalla? Are you – well, as alright as you can be, under the circumstances? Lahapraset sent us! Give us a moment, and we’ll get you out of there as soon as we can!”
Flying around the stone prison, Aith tries the cantrips she thinks will be most useful for figuring out just what’s going on here before setting to work. She draws her pistol tool, not liking the look of the constructs below.
While Aithaloessa thinks she can take her time the spiky stone guardians attack.
But they are so slow, that even the elf who is not really paying attention gets a chance to react in time.
At the notice of movement, Tariq stands before Aith, covering her. With his sword grabbed with both hands, he protects the arcanist so she can help them with one of her spells.
Yasmeena steps behind Tariq and draws her bow. "I fear my arrows will hardly put a dent into these things, but I might as well try." She begins her battle dance as she notches her arrows.
Before Aith can get a good reading or her twitchy fingers can reach for the right wand, the stone creatures start moving threateningly, and she cuts her investigation short. Instead, she tries to figure out just what sort of creatures these rocky things are.
She decides to get their measure by calling forth a thundercloud to spark off the one Yasmeena's shooting at.
Haleen waits for them to come and takes a defensive posture.
The stone guardians are indeed resistant to Yasmeena's arrows, but chipping away a piece at a time will do the job finally. They are not the brightest candles on the cake, and they are slow. So they move up to Haleen and Tariq, but don't manage to attack them, before getting a beating themself. Tariq finds their 'skin' too hard for his blade.
Haleen takes the one Yasmeena chose and stabs it.
"Some magic to soften them up would be nice. I'm only dulling my blade here."