Private Tales What do you do with a drunken Nordenfiir?

[Nerren Harclaw]

Nerren didn’t even intend for Petrus to divert his attention. Instead, she had beckoned him to turn toward a different direction by plunging her other fist into his back, maybe making him lurch forward. That, however, didn't work.

Anger. Hunger. Thirst. The fact that she had almost drowned and come out of her stupor without so much as a bottle of grog but a blade at her throat and a man’s fingers at her mouth. Call it whatever. Petrus, though, wasn’t the only one furious after a broken boat.

Having spied the corpses already heading for them given this man and woman stuck out like a sore thumb for them to bite, the Norden was less worried about their distance than this Allirian’s. He had presumed too much and she needed to teach him a lesson.

She might be more of a warrior for a sword and axe than a sorceress but she had her tricks like him. As sand lashed against her limbs to restrain them, the number of which diverted her opponent’s focus, Nerren reacted that instant.

Only inches from him, so close, she suddenly swung her head to break his nose and interrupt his attempts to turn his sand into quicksand. Nerren didn’t let go of Petrus’ weapon even if he didn’t. She even used the grip as leverage.

If he maintained his position on the blade’s hilt and evaded the blow to his face then his focus might still be split enough to let her escape. If her strike hit him? Then especially so because blood would flow from broken bone.

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

Petrus had, thankfully, readied his free hand to stop Nerren's physical blows, and he had the added experience of having his nose broken in a similar fashion before, so when he saw the brief backward tilt of Nerren's head he knew what was coming. His free hand would lash forward like a viper and her forehead would find no nose, but her throat would find a hand gripping it like an iron vice. Choking her without any reservation.

As the walking dead drew closer and the quicksand began to take effect Petrus sunk Nerren down to her knees before using one of the sand tendrils to twist her arm off his blade, his own arm wielding it, fingers smarting immensely from the struggle, couldn't mount any sort of offensive with it. Instead Petrus would leap backwards, releasing her throat, and simply move away from her. Putting Nerren's partially submerged body between himself and the living dead as he panted softly.

He still said nothing, no curse, no insult, but would meet Nerren's eyes as he pointedly turned and walked away from where the half-dozen rotting, water-choked corpses began to bare down on her. Wet, gurgling, lifeless groans heralding raised, rotted, squishy arms intent on snuffing out the Iron Bitch.

Nerren Harclaw​

 

[Nerren Harclaw]

With both of Petrus’ hands pretty busy, one trying to prevent Nerren’s from wrenching his weapon out of his grip, and the other going for her throat, that meant he wasn’t using any hand to project his magic.

In her experience, though she was no expert or sorceress, one’s focus was significantly lessened when it came to his myriad of sand shenanigans at the same time as trying to defend his sword with one hand and choke her with the other.

Therefore, even if Nerren hadn’t prevented sand from grabbing her limbs, Petrus wasn’t able to take it a step further in the span of instants and actually submerge her. If he attempted to with his split focus then he needed to free one or both hands and, if he did, that would open him up to an attack.

If he didn’t? No matter. Nerren just needed one leg free as she attempted to knee him in the crotch with a Norden’s strength breaking free before he could leap away. If she didn’t catch him in time with her knee? No matter—her leg extended to catch his balls with her foot instead before he could cover the distance as he leapt backward.

As for the undead, Nerren was still on her feet instead of her knees. Determined not to be the target of the creatures’ feast, she darted in a different direction from Petrus and grabbed the weapon littered on the beach. It wasn’t her sword or axe but the scimitar would serve its purpose in its new owner’s hand.

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

To her credit Nerren was being exceptionally difficult. He did not need his hand to gesticulate for his spells, though it did certainly make them easier. With his grasp on her and their fighting over the sword Nerren lifting her leg gave Petrus the advantage in leverage he needed to interrupt her knee to the groin with a simple shove toward the undead. Electing to disengage from her and, as the zombies flung themselves at Nerren, he decided to pursue his original goal and simply left. Sheathing his rapier he would walk away, venturing deeper into the reef.

The zombies, on the other hand, were intimately focused on Nerren. Rotting, bloated fingers would claw at her as she darted another direction. Thankfully the dead were slow, clumsy things. She was easily well faster than them and though their atrophied legs carried them without rest or need for respite Nerren now had some reasonable distance between herself and them.

The shipwrecked beach behind her and the zombies between where Petrus had vanished.

Nerren Harclaw​

 

[Nerren Harclaw]

To think, all this insolent man had to do was accept a headbutt if not a broken nose after placing a blade at her throat and then some. Petrus was rather apt with his magic and reaction time, that much was apparent, though Nerren had abilities of her own. She was no paladin but, as a Nordenfiir raider at land and reaver at sea with a bit of experience and experiments up her sleeve, she had learned some things.

It was time to apply them to these undead fiends who were, admittedly, her true enemy at the moment. As Petrus made to flee, separating Nerren from him with his family jewels unbent and unbroken, she was nonetheless not going to hang around like a fool. The woman was unbowed before the living and the dead, men included, as proven.

Scimitar in hand, she swung for the nearest one and severed the arm from its body. Even bloated and rotten, she recognized those clothes, hints in that visage, as not one of her own. The dead were dead, however, undead no less so.

What else might have washed up onto this beach from the Stormlance shipwreck? Her actual weapons, Nerren hoped. There could even be survivors of the Iron Bitch like her. So the captain decided to venture deeper into the reef. Perhaps she would reunite with Petrus down the line and, if there was violence, then he best protect his privates.

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

Petrus would move from the water-choked beach that had formed around the reef into an artificial cavern born of the brine-soaked reef slowly thickening and calcifying over time. Unnaturally twisted and hardened to be closer to stone Petrus would conjure a tiny flame in his hand, at least enough to see by as he ventured deeper into the labyrinthine depths.

Pools of shallow water clogged with refuse from various shipwrecks littered this place even in the more open caverns deeper within. Only when he found a suitably isolated alcove did he choose to sit and rest, breathing slightly heavily and gathering together what scraps of magical energy he could he began to center himself. The magic here was deeply corrupted. The very air was tinged with necromantic energy and Petrus had to focus to draw natural energy from the twisted reef.

Meanwhile......

Nerren would find scattered driftwood and other flotsam as she trudged along the beach. Her personal weapons were nowhere to be found though there was the novelty of a zombie, from her own crew, impaled on the yard mast as it flailed and squirmed to try and attack her despite being helplessly suspended several feet off the ground above even Nerren's head.

While further down the beach there was a somewhat intact smaller boat, pulled into the beach with such force it was half-submerged in the sand. Numerous corpses littered around it's broken hull, seemingly torn in half to the last.

Nerren Harclaw​

 

[Nerren Harclaw]

Sand and more sand on the shoreline. Undead creatures behind her. Looked like a cavern might be at her other side further along the reef. Beyond the beach was a horizon she could not reach. However, it was her axe and her sword that were more important to Nerren at present. Her crewmembers too, of course, if they were still living and breathing—literally.

One wasn’t. He was a sore sight for eyes all right. He growled at her, scowling with his lifeless gaze, trying in vain to scratch her face and bite her throat with those gnashing teeth. His captain kept her distance, naturally, but approached closer; just close enough to make out the dead man’s countenance.

“Quellon,” she sighed. “How far you have fallen.” Her fingers tightened over the hilt of her scimitar. She didn’t need to think even as she waited. There were no options to weigh, nothing to deliberate. She just savored her memories of this face that had much more color once before, was less pale, as the impaled Quellon flailed away, helpless against the swell. “I will take you the rest of the way.”

At that, Nerren Harclaw roared as she kicked the yard mast hard and fast with the warrior’s strength born to her, the fury of a bear in her skin, and the mast snapped in half. Quellon fell to the shore but, before he could get up, his captain swung her sword in a flurry. She didn’t glare despite the head she just then separated from the neck. There was only certainty in her eyes.

She walked over to the boat without a second thought. Pieces of debris floated off the coast but she wasn’t going in for a swim. The corpses scattered on the shore weren’t getting up, it seemed, which was reassuring enough. Observing the boat with a sailor’s nature and an opportunist’s habit, she whispered to nobody in particular.

“Patch that. Fix this.” She sighed into the wind. “It might just work.” And, as far as she could find at the moment, it was her only ticket out of this pit for the shore. Right. She turned her head, spied the cavern, and the rest of her environment. Where the heck even am I again?

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

After taking enough time to heal his injuries, gathering enough energy to himself to overcome his exhaustion, and working his way to his feet Petrus would conjure a small light and begin to skulk more deeply into the labyrinthine reef. A long zombie, clad in a sailor's outfit, would fall to a swift, piercing stab through it's rotted face and Petrus would flick the rapier clean before wiping it on the zombie's soaked, moldering clothes.

Moving onward Petrus's breathe would shorten as a particularly potent wave of undeath would chill him down to his bones. The source, the center, of this mess was close. Close enough to take affront to his living flesh's approach and for him to take affront to this artifact thinking it could quell him.....

Meanwhile......

Nerren would approach the boat surrounded by bisected corpses. Every corpse down to a one torn in half, limbs missing, and soon enough Nerren would understand why. The 'submerged' boat would suddenly shudder, the sand shifting into a shifting pit as a giant, undead crab tore it's way free of the sand. It's soaked, sand-coated claws lunging up and out through the sand to add Nerren to the field of bisected corpses by snipping her quite efficiently in half.

The selfsame boat Nerren had been eyeing up to escape this place serving not as a source of salvation but instead as the makeshift 'shell' of this rotting leviathan.

Nerren Harclaw​

 

[Nerren Harclaw]

Nerren gauged her surroundings. Whether on the edge of some since civilized continent or long lost island, she was used to predicaments like this. It wasn’t the first time that a ship had snapped in half with her in it or a boat had capsized with her in it. Tragic though it was, it also wasn’t the first time this Norden reaver had encountered the undead—but to cut off the head of one of her own crewmembers who had succumbed to them was certainly a first for her.

“Trees,” she murmured. “I need trees.” Trees might mean a body of water nearby that she could actually drink without succumbing to saltwater, or coconuts at least to eat and drink their juices dry. It also meant timber for shelter, tinder for fire and lumber for fixing a boat that might become her own ticket off of this sandy rock.

Nerren spotted her quarry and made to leave when something happened. She twisted in reaction, half-expecting Petrus to have emerged behind her given the sand that began to quickly shift at her back. Before her sword came swinging, however, it was a giant undead crab instead.

“SHIT!” Her roar was as explicit as expected as the crab tore forth and she dove away to evade its strong claw. She hadn’t even imagined that the boat was but a makeshift shell of some mutant crustacean.

So be it. As always, there was only one way to deal with a threat like this: end it with her blade. It wanted to kill her, it seemed, but she was determined to live. Eight legs; ten, to be specific, if counting its wicked pincers.

“COME ON!” The Norden shouted without a flourish of her sword as its claws clicked. She waited, biding her time, letting it get close, when the moment to strike arrived. It snipped. She rolled to its other side, whipping her blade above the sand, dragging it through one of its limbs to sever it in half. It worked, but this dance wasn't finished as she came to stand.

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

Petrus would round corner after corner, slinking into deeper and darker depths with every steps, that foul chill battering at the heat of his soul like a cold iron gauntlet attempting to crush the life from a defiantly blazing torch. Nature, Arethil itself, sustained him. Even this twisted and malformed reef was still a thing of nature, could still be drawn upon, and thus when Petrus walked across the surface of a deep pool, a sinkhole leading down into fathomless depths, to come into a great, open chamber wherein dwelt the center of this catastrophe, he grit his teeth as nature's magic pulsed through him.

Spoiler: The Source

Atop a pirate king's ransom on a makeshift island in the center of this room, surrounding by swirling necromantic energy sat a crown. Coin and corpses woven together acted it's throne and the grasping, hateful motion of the corpses told Petrus they were far from there for show.

Petrus had only barely cast a glance around the room when that deep set obsidian would emanate a deep, green pallor darker than the most shadowed forest floors. A screech of energy much like the wail of the banshees they had encountered prior, though less potent, would herald the lance of pure, eroding energy that arced toward Petrus with deadly intent.

A quick, rote movement from Petrus drew up seawater-clogged rock to his defense. The very stone, subjected to that malignant rot, crumbled and disintegrated before his very eyes bit by bit. The artifact being, evidently, sentient enough to defend itself from a rival source of magic. Petrus, teeth grit and heart hammering in his ears, was still weary from this entire ordeal. But little did he know the artifact had already made it's next move....

Meanwhile....

The giant enemy crab reeled back as Nerren severed it's smaller claw, letting out a drowned, gurgling series of inhuman noises from its maw not out of pain, for it bore no such emotions, but instead the malignant intelligence that drove it made the crab spew a rotting, sewage-like spray of seawater and corpse-fluid at Nerren while the stump of it's once claw slammed down on Quellon's defeated corpse. The bloated, water choked flesh of her crewmember grafting and melding into the flesh of the crab seamlessly.

But hark, in the distance, at the artifact's behest the choir of banshees would begin to swim through the air toward the reef. Their distant, deathly song drifting closer and closer on the wind by the second.

Nerren Harclaw​

 

[Nerren Harclaw]

Back on her feet after her attack, sand clinging to her garments, blade brandished, Nerren didn’t delay or intend to stay on this beach for crabs, singing sirens or any darkness. Sidestepping right on time, the putrid goop that spewed from this creature missed her, but some of it manage to land on her boot as she whipped the limb away in her evasion.

It was rank, as foul as expected. When Nerren glimpsed the dead Quellon taken by the crab, she scowled, infuriated. It didn’t matter if the crab was some mindless beast, if this was its beach. It was disrespect nonetheless and she was, literally or figuratively, pretty sick of it as she growled.

Something shrieked over here, over there, as if the universe was threatening Nerren Harclaw with the death of a thousand agonies after having failed to drown her. Not today. The Nordenfiir thought. The sword in her grip was sharp but her arm was harder. The strength of the Svalen was within her, greater than the weapon, greater than the claw.

“COME GET YOUR DEATH THEN!”

Feet grounded, Nerren waited again. As the crab advanced and lashed with its claw, she jerked sideward, skirting away from the lunge while she swung her blade downward with a roar. The sword tore the limb in half, severing the pincer to the floor. But she wasn’t done. The eyes of a crab stood upright which meant this giant’s were even bigger.

Creating a path for another strike, Nerren immediately reversed her weapon’s direction and swung her blade upward to separate the crab’s eye-stem from its head. That was when something unexpected happened as she glimpsed Quellon’s flesh on its carapace even as her blade ripped.

Petrus Ritus Iskandar