Fable - Ask [Phorasmos] To Wake in the Night

[Tristan Locke]

Targets all in mind, one for each Mourner, and Haka taking the lead. A solid plan, now all that was left was to execute. Tristan steeled himself as best he could, short sword in one hand, hand crossbow in the other.

Breathe. Just...breathe.

Easier thought than done. He could hear his own heartbeat hammering away so loudly in his ears, roaring over the quiet din of the forest or the constant scraping being projected by the Possessed that lay before them. Then, it came.

"Three!"

Tristan surged forward along with the other Mourners. Shunk! The bolt knocked in his crossbow was loosed, whistling as it sailed through the air. It plunged into the owl's wing even as the animal clawed at the warding monument. It shrieked horribly, and Tristan was unsure if that horrid sound it made was entirely natural or if it was somehow altered by the wretched spirit inside it.

Regardless, the bird fell to the ground, unable to keep itself aloft with only one functional wing. As he rushed up to it he tried to be quick about finishing it off with a stroke of his sword, but the revenant within would not go so easily. It contorted the owl's body wildly, making it behave much more like a snake than an owl, whipping deftly to avoid being cut in twain by Tristan. It brought beak and talons to bear against ornate steel, woefully underequipped for biting or slashing through the tough plate of the ghost mail.

Click! Tristan racked another bolt in his crossbow and fired again, this time impaling the owl dead in the center of its face. It fell backward, corporeal body bleeding and dying, before Tristan punted its whole body with great force, the feathered form smashing into the stone of the ward, a bloody ruin. The Revenant emerged, furious, shrieking, burning from its proximity to the ward. Oh gods...Now came the difficult part. Though clearly not so difficult for the most senior among them!

 

[Aeris Silversale]

Aeris had spent months becoming formidable with two blades. She had a talent at navigating her off hand just the same as her dominant, and plenty of Mourners tested her ability to wield dual swords in a fight. It made her a menace, feeding her satisfaction and power whenever she saw on her opponents' faces surprise and confusion as she switched up her stance.

But against a revenant, all sense of precision and strategy were not guaranteed.

Some used to be Mourners, movement remembered in their muscles' memories on how to fight, but often times... it's hopeless visitors that venture out into these lands without proper awareness to the goings on here in Phorasmos.

Her arms were poised readily, moving to strike.

The man, or what was once a man, still had a sense of mobility to their being. Aeris swore loudly as her blade aimed for the precise points at the back of his foot to slow them down, but they had moved quicker than Silversale had anticipated. Her second blade came to corral her target, singling them out against the rest.

She supposed it was easier to face something more human, something more familiar to what they hunted. It should be like clockwork, a routine, but that only counted if Aeris herself was consistent in every circumstance.

Her lack of sleep was weighing on her.

Her attacks were too wide, too slow in the recovery, but Aeris worked at slicing at the right places to slow down any mortal form. Thoughts all muddled, she could not decipher if she were simply working harder and not smarter, just as the corrupted man fell to their knees and Aeris took a moment to breathe before piercing her long blade through their chest.

 

[Ihaka Nikau]

Even through the staff's handle and his own armor Haka felt in his hands the tactile sensation of the wolf's neck parting under the cleaving blade. Barely a feral yelp had escaped its throat. Haka wrenched his weapon from his prey with a curt upward jerk, freeing it, and he kicked the body away from himself some few feet, putting some distance between himself and it for when the Revenant would come crawling out of the carcass.

Haka glanced around at the others. Quick looks to see how they were doing. Iruna was wrestling with the Elk; Tristan missed a sword-stroke against the eerily eel-like owl; and Aeris made to hamstring the man, but again odd and deft movements defied a Mourner's attack. Altogether things were going okay.

Haka looked back to the wolf, expecting that familiar sickly green glow to be emanating from the gaping wound, if not the Revenant itself in full. He saw neither—or rather, nothing like what he expected. Some of that green glow did emanate forth, and like some abyssal tentacle it whipped the head almost perfectly back into its place.

Then the wolf stood up on its hind legs like a man. The head listed heavily to the left like a sinking ship, its long tongue hanging lifelessly down from its slack jaw.

"Ai! What nasty trick is—!?"

The now bipedal wolf rushed at Ihaka like a necromancer's crazed minion. Haka had instinctively spun his taiaha around to greet the creature with its spearpoint, but the wolf impaled itself in its effort to tackle him and hardly was its frenzy stilled by the steel.

Both Haka and the wolf went down to the ground in a mad scramble.

Iruna Reverio Tristan Locke Aeris Silversale