Open Chronicles Thirst of the Ascended

[Alicia Blackbolt]

Spoiler: Music

“Perhaps I can,”

Alicia turned her head in surprise. Another one?

“Play whatever part you wish but don’t get in my way like those cultists did.” At that, the drow darted, trying to draw his enemy’s attention as much as search for an opportunity to sever a wrist.

"Noted," Alicia barked, fishing out a raven-feathered bolt from her quiver.

Staying away from this creature, leaving these dark elves to handle things?

That, she could do.

The obscuring of her smokestick had run its course. While it rendered her dangerously visible, it did make it much easier to locate the final gem. Loading her crossbow, she made her way to it, then whirled to the creature, her cloak snapping in a dark arc.

That bastard had nearly blessed her with his ritual kris. A nasty gift, to be sure. She didn't like to leave debts unpaid.

The butt of her weapon snapped to her shoulder, taking aim. She pulled the trigger with grim satisfaction. Sending the broadhead bolt right into his ugly mouth.

The creature moved strangely. Not like a regular beast or human. Fluid, like some strange deepwater creature washed into the cistern, arms slicing through the air, fingers stretching and testing their claws. It stared at its own drifting arms for a moment, as if in fascination.

This languid, snarling meditation snapped when a bolt flew through its open mouth and sunk into its palate. It barely reacted, didn't even utter a cry of pain. But it did turn its head in a rapid jerk, noting the trajectory - and crunched the bolt between its teeth.

Like a snapping crustacean, it suddenly swiped at both Feyrith and Zyndyrr, mowing forward, three claws for each. Its remaining hands traced the outlines of a silent spell: a spinning, six-pointed star of white flame forming there, drawn from the forge of its white-burning ribcage and eyes. This arcane energy whirled in Alicia's direction, and she rolled aside as long as she were, narrowly avoiding it.

It carved more than a few inches through stone and the tail end of Alicia's cloak before dissipating, white cinders still flickering in the heated scar. Alicia gasped sharply at this destructive magic and the mess it made of her cloak, but soon her eyes found a much worse sight - the last ruby on the floor, sliced in half. Now a cut sphere of red, its one side still smoking and glaring with cinders. It seemed the flagstones weren't the only casualties of the spell.

Her worried gasp turned into a groan of dismay. Quickly enough, her mind went from imagining scorched limbs to the waterfall of coins clattering out of this gem's value.

 

[Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher]

“AND SO THE HUNTER’S MARK FINALLY SHOWS ITS HIDE!”

Karskgorak charge through the remaining wraiths, towards the many armed demon. To the side he noticed a tall dark figure he recognized as that foul blooded swordsman Afanas. Karsk had heard the quasi-vampire had returned to hunting after a stint of book reading in Elbion

though catching up with a man he swore to kill was hardly pressing, as the many armed demon glanced over at Karsk with empty eye sockets.

The old orc stopped in his tracks with a stomp that shook the cistern to the same extent as the flagstone destroying the altar.

The demon wound back one of its arms as Karsk readied and drew his blade from its heavy wooden scabbard.

The blade was wrapped in a tempestuous pale light, growing to the size of a zweihander as Karsk muttered Mantras in Orcish.

The demon swung down with its claws but was deflected in a flash of light by Karskgorak’s sword.

The sword left no cuts on the demon’s hand but it seared in pain after coming into contact with the pale light.

“a spirit blade stings with more than just cuts!” Karsk shouted, as he drove his sword into the ground, driving up a wave of stone that launched into the fiend as it briefly recoiled.

 

[Feyrith]

What her blade form held in power and swiftness was truly ailed by a lack of control. Feyrith's head cleared momentarily to find her blade sunk threw the cultist. It hadn't been her intention none of it. She had certainly felt some small desire to halt the woman being sacrificed but that had been a passing compassion. What she had really hoped to do was nip the madness of the ritual in the bud before it could blossom into further chaos. In that she had failed spectacularly.

bolts found another cultist who lunged for their hired ally. Piercing his chest and safeguarding Feyrith, one even motioning to the mercenary that she could take shelter within their phalanx should she wish.

It was no small relief to know that reinforcements had arrived. For in her blunder they would surely need it.

In the time it took her to pull her blade free the sputtering man had already incanted some such to finish the deed. Silently she grumbled all manner of curses in her thoughts. It might have done her some good to hear the thanks of the would be sacrifice begrudging or not. It might have softened the blow a little.....but she had little time to process it had even been said.

“And who are you!?”

Zyndyrr beckoned the other figure with a quick flourish from one of his weapons. Purple-skinned. Female. Drow like him. Didn’t matter anyhow. He was a bit sick of these interruptions in his business.

Nor did she have time to reply to the Drow. Not that she would have answered even if he had asked more politely instead of waving a weapon.
No before anything else the woman had called to attention the rising form that Feyrith was staring down with a similar dread.

Alicia paled, then hissed almost as vehemently to Feyrith:

"Could you kill him again?"

As if to cosmically mock her, the arcane being transformed garishly into a skeletal form of many more arms than those she had failed to clip.
The male Drow called for an assault on the arms. She couldn't agree more and especially had no intention of 'getting in the way' she was more than happy to leave such a monstrosity to him and the assembled hunters.

In her hesitance to advance on the eldritch creatures Feyrith had found herself nearly caught in it's swiping claws. Between the Arcane attacks and the Orc carving up the ground beneath them Feyrith was doing more dodging than anything else. Amidst the keeping out of steps of the cracks in the marble she caught sight of the would be sacrifice lamenting the broken ruby. Perhaps she was devout.....or perhaps she had simply tried to take a consolation prize only to be swiftly misfortuned. Feyrith stood a step behind the phalanx of the sun emblem guards, her sword reflexively up.

Alicia Blackbolt
Zyndyrr K'yoshin