Active [Eastern Border of the Fae See - M’lynra Village] - One Last Push

Fae See Message Runner
{“We’d feared as much.”} The satyr replied to the Almeida. He had been told to expect See regulars and not this mishmash of irregular forces. That there was only one (silent) See recent recruit present--and that a random bombardment seemed to be falling on the village--indicated that the mission had failed.

The satyr introduced himself as [private Bramble] when Watching of Reflection approached. He squinted at the common the creature scribbled upon its slate. “I see.” Corporal Glimmerleaf had been far down the list of persons to whom he was supposed to deliver his message. “Who is in charge here, then?” He asked, and found himself eventually pointed to Flare, asking Watching to join him as he delivered his message, sticking to common so that WoR could understand.

”Company Charlie is being folded into Bravo at the fort north of here.” The Satyr pointed the way he had come. “However, they’re only taking regulars, not recruits or contractors. You are to report to the nearest See command post for orders.” The Satyr said to Watching. Though no other See forces were around, he lowered his voice. ”Honestly, the whole front is a mess, and you’ll be sitting around for weeks if you do. If you want, I can report that you were KIA with your squad; your pay will go to whomever you listed as your next-of-kin, but you also won’t have any more orders. Otherwise I can tell them that I didn’t find anyone other than the mercenaries, so you’ll stay on the rolls, but not have any orders. Let me know what you prefer.” The Satyr offered. The desperate bug-bait scheme of Charlie company was clearly not the only place along the front where the organization of the See forces was in disarray.

”You mercenaries are discharged.” He said to Flare. ”Your pay will be rendered to the guild, which will dispense it to survivors or next-of-kin.” He paused a moment. “Honestly, I’m a little surprised to find you here. Did you not join in the attack, as planned?” The Satyr seemed to realize what he was saying a little too late. He was not one of the planners of the merciless way in which the contractors had been misled, but he was aware of the scuttlebutt about sacrifice plays made with irregular forces, and it jived with what he’d been told to expect. That the “bait” was alive and the regulars were dead made it seem like the mercenaries had figured out they were being betrayed and sat out the fight. He raised his hands. “Not that I blame you--some crazy shit has been going down all along the front--but I need to make a report to my superiors.”

Realizing that the mercenaries might be none-to-happy with a negative report, he made them an offer similar to the one he’d made Watching. ”I can, ah, report that you’re all deceased or missing, if it helps.” After all, he reasoned, a partial report was better than no report--because the messenger had been killed.

”I have to report back that the mission failed. I can’t help you with burials.” The Satyr said to Watching. ”But… ah--how to put this--I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. The bugs… eat the dead--theirs and ours.” The Satyr grimaced and waved to the explosions marching back and forth over the ruins of M’lyrna. ”That might slow down their advance, but it’s not going to do anything to the Tank Bug, so trying to collect anyone else’s remains is a suicide mission at this point.” Private Bramble opined, not realizing that the mercenaries, themselves, had succeeded in defeating the tank and plugging the gap. “If you want me to tell my superiors that you are here and that you have the Corporal’s and Private’s remains, I can say you’re asking for dustoff… but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Even rescue missions are on hold, and recovery missions… well, good luck. Maybe the strategic situation will change in the next few weeks,” the Satyr reported. The area was likely to fall under bug control and stay that way indefinitely. It was gruesome and sad, but the mercenaries best bet was just to leave the bodies behind so they would not slow down their retreat.

The lot of them seemed to be in a pretty good mood; and he supposed that was to be expected from mercenaries that hadn’t participated in the fighting. He didn’t blame them. He did overhear some chatter about resurrection spas and the like. He assumed it was just bravado bullshitting--but who knew?--so, he decided to interject his opinion into Almeida and Yunaesa’s side conversation. ”Honestly, if you’ve got any way of bringing back the dead, I would forget protocall and try it. Nobody else has the resources to help them.”


@Speed @TheTimePiece @Karcen @Develius Elvario Giftvi

Mentions: Irihi
Languages: Common | [Terran] | %Analog% | <Beastial> | {Sylvan}

She'd nod at Purpler, ah, Watching of Reflection, now, she should try remember that. Its reasons to fight were noble. “<I'll wish you all the best, then.>” Its name was obtained in an interesting manner for sure. “<I wonder if my name would be Debating my Existence in that case, cause I did that a lot at first.>” It also didn't deny it was a nudist, but that was tertiary to the story.

“{Yeah, it's a shame. We got the big bug one though. Valerius here hammered right through it after it burned up in glorious Valkanite.}” She'd reply to the Satyr. Sadly enough, the rest of the conversation went entirely over hear head. Staring as the Common was spoken. In the end it seemed like he did try to tell them, something, but she just turned her head and looked puzzled. “{I'm sorry buddy, I got no clue what you've been saying. I don't speak Common. I speak Beastial, Terran, Analog or Sylvan. Yuna here also speaks Terran and Analog.}” She'd point to Yuna. “{So anyhow, do you know if there's resurrection bathhouses somewhere?}”

Fae See Message Runner
{“What?!.”} The satyr exclaimed when Almeida, and then Watching, revealed that the tank bug had been destroyed. {“Amazing! This will be the first good news I’ve delivered in a week!”} He said, excitedly. {“I suppose you’re all still discharged, but as heroes instead of MIA or KIA!”}

{“I’ve only heard of such a thing in myth or legend.”} He blinked at Almeida’s question. {“But, before the war, I kept to my family’s lands. Perhaps such places exist, but I do not know of any.”} He shrugged.

”I’ve got to get news of your victory back to headquarters! He said to Watching. “Your nearest reporting station is going to be either north at the Kirkwall fort or south at Ferrydeep.” He said in common. ”I’m headed to the fort. I’ll bring word to them to watch out for you if you decide to come that way.” The Satyr was not going to be persuaded to delay his departure, so Watching was left to lay the dead to rest--as best he could--by himself, as private Bramble was anxious to get the information back to his superiors.





The sad small corpse was likely to surprise Almeida. Irihi, in death, was not the sallow-skinned svelte sinister beauty she presented to the world. Though the magic that had struck her down had dealt her no physical injury, without her glamors, her body was a tome of past abuses. What was left was wasted, broken, and marred by scar upon scar. The corpse had paper-thin skin pulled over broken bones. The witch had barely an unbroken limb, for she did not heal--she had given up any true life-giving or life-restoring power long ago in trade for her necromancy. When injured, she only welded herself back together with white-hot ire, papering over her injuries and pressing on.

Two great scars rippled across her face where her eyes had been clawed out long ago. Her neck and arms were broken. Her skin was scarred with dozens of old defensive wounds, and a great gaping hole was rent in her belly where something had once been torn out. Without the magic that sustained and armored them, her sorceress robes were little more than rags.

She weighed very little and would have been easy to carry were it not for the sickening miasma that seemed to hang around her devastated corpse. Any who drew near or touched her would feel an enervating influence. Even death could not wholly dispel reality-warping echoes of her malicious presence.

…

Irihi, herself, was not in that empty vessel. Instead, her spirit sat--barely visible in the fading afternoon light--on the edge of a crater where Alpha Squad had met their violent ends.

{{“Hello, creature.”}} She greeted Watching of Reflection as the voiceless being scampered up beside her. Irihi doubted its mortal ears could hear her--perhaps watching could not even see her ghostly presence at all. For a few moments, she watched WoR collect what it could find of markers for their comrades. It was a touching gesture.

{{“Pointless, but touching nonetheless.”}} She said, pushing herself to her spectral feet.

There were many other spirits besides Irihi’s, here. Most of C company had spent their lives on this battlefield, and before them more See warriors and the inhabitants of the village. What remained were not coherent spirits, as Irihi was, but rather flickers of attachment; ephemeral ghostly echos of souls rended from their mortal coils in violence. Some were not ready to move on to the next world, and some were--none more than the phantasmal sorceress in their midst. Yet she was the only one bound here.

{{“Death is a doorway. Let me walk you through it.”}} She said to the miasma of departed souls, speaking to none of them in particular.

Irihi’s athane, knocked over by the fire magic blasting M’lyrna vanished from where it lay, and a ghostly phantom of the dread scythe appeared in her transparent hand. As Watching finished writing the first of the long litany of names, Irihi swung the scythe through the pyrrhic soul light that had drifted near--drawn by this tenuous connection to what they once had been. Corpsmourn cleanly severed the soul’s connection to the world of the living, and the fairy light dispersed with an unheard sigh.

Many of the other coalescing spirits drew back--wafting away from this shedding of the world they had known. Whether they had some errand they thought left undone or whether they feared the unknown step into the next life, none wanted to be near the ghostly reaper with the power to send them on.

Irihi sighed, the sound of her breathless exhalation echoing, as if in a sepulcher, rather than out in a late autumn field. Her sigh became a hum, and her hum a soft woeful song in archaic proto-sylvan. She did not like to dirge-dance, though she was quite skilled at it; the act cooled her ire and the melancholy kindness of it poisoned her malice.

Still, though she told herself she despised these mortal fools who had died in the town and on these blood-soaked fields, she found that she could not stand idly by while Watching made his gesture of respect to the dead. The little purple creature did not want this to become a haunted place of lost souls and residual terror, and it--for what it was worth--had been Irihi’s ally when she was alive, so she danced, and sang her dirge, gathering the remnants of souls and then laying their cares to rest in concert with Watching.

The restless spirits followed the dance of the dead sorceress, slowly spiraling inward until they were within reach of her reaping. When Watching ran out of the names of soldiers to paint, Irihi bent her steps toward him, weaving into her dirge the names of the dead of the village that the See recruit had not known, until he heard or somehow sensed the names he should include in his dismal registry.

At last, there was only one spirit left unsent; that of the sorceress, herself. With a last sweep and turn of her dance, Irihi came to stand beside the small violet creature, regarding the name it had written upon a field stone.

Her lips pressed together into a thin line as she looked down at the marker bearing the sound of her name in the common tongue. {{“I would that it were so easy for me.”}} Irihi said, neither knowing nor caring if Watching could hear her. Her athane faded into nothingness and she turned her wrists over, looking at the bone shackles slowly fading into existence around them.

{{“Goodbye, creature. I do not think we shall meet again.”}} Irihi said. Then, with a rippling snap--like the sound of a sail filling with air, what little of her that remained in the world of the living vanished. She was not in her gloomy corpse. She was not lurking behind fencerow or haunting the deepening shadows of the nearby forest.

She was just gone.

Giftvi
Elvario