Fantasy Ballad of Renegades

[Goonfire]

SHERAGA THE LEPER
GROUP 1:
Corn Orc Vandal Tool Aegis SilverFlight

---

The sudden rebuttal against the crowd shocked Sheraga just as much as it did the mob surrounding the party. Dunan's words, coupled with the bold act of charity, swayed many to the brink of civil war. Not even Elspelth's words could quell the revolt among her 'congregation'.

"Wait..." the crusader tried to look up, noticing the indiscernible shadows overhead. His helmet coupled with the blinding sunlight made it difficult to get a clear view of what he was certain were crows perched above. It was hard to even hear anything, as the argument went on until...

SPLAT!

Sheraga felt the vibration of something soft hitting his metal plate armor, like bits of a tomato or rotten meat. He turned and gasped at the horrific sight—Ming-Xia, head caved in, body spasming in his dying throes. He then touched his pauldron, voice trembling as he pulled back red-stained fingers. The cacophony once again swelled to a crescendo and a sorrowful cry blended into the chorus of over a hundred angry brawlers. His efforts to protect the scholar had been for naught.

 

[Tool]

GROUP 1
Goonfire Corn Orc Vandal Aegis SilverFlight



The Not-Karwa answered her question with genuine ignorance, a frankness she both appreciated and recognized as a precursor to a deeper truth. So many in these strange lands were little more than sleepwalkers, present in the world only tenuously and living out their lives by force of momentum rather than any genuine want. Not having an answer was infinitely better than one given by force of habit, and Annik gave the strange-smelling not-man an approving nod.

A crowd of malcontents swelled, seeming to coalesce out of the very air, led by someone who looked like she was about to drop dead from OLD at any second. She looked too old to walk, with hair the color of snow, wavering and wispy. The woman's scalp and face was so thinned by time that Annik could clearly see the shape of the woman's skull under her skin. Every vein, every dark splotch, every wart, every wrinkle, they all created a mask that hid any trace of whatever woman this had once been in the long long ago. She looked like a bad bug bite might kill her. Or maybe coughing too hard. Or a good sneeze, even. Time had to be out there SOMEWHERE, looking for this woman so she could finally die.

Annik had seen people this decrepit before, at the start of her eighth winter. The leaders of the White Scar tribe, a group of elders had called upon her to look into her eyes. Annik's father, Brom, had kept his wife and child within the caves for all of her young life on THEIR request...... but on that day, he'd decided he wanted answers as to why. Brom's voice echoed strong in her young ears, and rang in them now, strong and angry.

You will give me the truth of my question as payment for my patience. Or, I will take my eight years back from you in blood..... assuming you haven't grown so old and your blood so lifeless that you bleed only dust. Now talk. Or die.

Hoarfrost, but the memory of her father's voice bolstered her heart. Annik had never been so proud of her father than in that moment, and his rage had stirred something unknown in her blood. Things had gotten violent after that, just as things were likely to get violent, now.

The Too-Old one spat insults at the Sick Man in Yellow Metal and Arnou in turn, though some of it was a little too obtuse for Annik to properly understand. The problem was...... Annik had been on this island city for days and knew that people killed one another on the streets frequently. They killed to steal, they killed to keep their victims quiet, they killed those that tried to run from chains or literal cages, they killed for the pleasure of it. These were not a peaceful people. These were a people comprised of predator and prey, both desperate, but only ONE profiting from the situation in which they found themselves embroiled.

Profiting....... like the Embodiment-of-Old, in front of the crowd.

But, before Annik could act, the Not-Man stepped forward, speaking in calm, firm tones, like someone trying to get close enough to an animal of the Wild. Annik stayed her feet and watched.

The Not-Man's words proved convincing to a fair number of the crowd, and they turned on one another as they realized the Not-Man might have a point about the Conclave. These people were mostly PREY, weakened and afraid, but they were finding their courage to be angry at something. Hurting these people wouldn't have been right - they needed to be encouraged to find their strength, not killed right when they were finding within themselves the desire to live free.

To not be afraid.

Not-Man was managing. Being able to speak to hostile humans was little different than getting in close to an animal of the Wild, and for that if nothing else, the scruffy Not-Man earned a few points of respect in Annik's regard.

Unfortunately, a stone from high overhead plummeted downwards and found what could only be its mark, impacting Raven Hair's skull with a wet crunch. He stood on his feet for an impressive few moments, his body not quite understanding that he was already dead, before toppling over. Annik felt bad for the man, mostly because death from an ambush-rock was was a death without purpose, without battle, a death from behind and up above, as devoid of honor and meaning as tripping over a tree-root and perishing. Hopefully, Raven Hair's spirit had already earned a place among whatever afterlife to which his people were destined.

The Sick Man in Yellow Metal looked down at his bloody gauntlet before letting out a mournful yell, and Annik's gaze flickered with visible sympathy. It was never easy to see a friend perish. At least Raven Hair died quickly.

Annik got as close to the Sick Man in Yellow Metal as she could without getting smacked away, and then she breathed deeply, snuffling the hard plate and getting a nose-full of soap and disease and Raven Hair meat and the strange, mingled odor of a Jarnakkian body, both civilized and male, before straightening as quickly as she'd shoved her face in his general direction. Annik looked straight into his helmet.

"I will find you."

And then, she was......gone.

Annik moved with all the speed that the Sick Man in Yellow Metal lacked, slipping her spear into the loops on her back just before taking a running leap for the wall of the building that had so recently ejected a fatal stone. When her body whacked against the rock, it took the breath right out of her, but her scrambling fingers found purchase, and up she went. It was harder than climbing a tree, but age and disuse left plenty of finger-holes, and though some thrown rocks from the crowd below found their mark, splitting skin and making her grumble furious insults against the wall, Annik was relentless in her pursuit. That killing-stone hadn't fallen from the clouds, and it had been too coincidntal for it to land atop Raven Hair's head. Fortunately, no other ambush-rocks seemed forthoming, and those flung by the humans on the ground weren't large enough to be more than painful obstacles, and the further she climbed, the fewer chucked stones were able to travel the distance.

When she made it to the roof at last, Annik found it......empty, though she kept her knees bent and her body low, the fingertips of one hand steepling on the tiles for an endless moment as pale eyes scanned her surrounds. A few decorative.....somethings lined the edge of the roof..... along with the hollow crevice where the killing one had fallen. Cautiously, as though the elaborate stone objects might at any moment spring to life and round upon the intruder to their roof, Annik approached cautiously, keeping her body low and her knees bent, looking at the place where the object had split from the rest of the stone, and then looking at its likes on either side.

Cracks, cracks everywhere, but still connected to the roof itself.

Though Annik tried to smell out whoever or whatever had been up here to give the rock a well-timed shove, there wasn't enough THERE to really detect, and she was bleeding enough from her back and shoulder to muck around with her nose. She sneezed, making a cloud of mortar-dust foomp into her face. Annik recoiled and sneezed again a few times in rapid succession.

A watching crow asked her for food, or more accurately, asked her if she was going to BE food and seemed disappointed in the way bird-brains could be when Annik responded in the negative. Though when Annik asked about any OTHER hoo-mans that had been here prior, she was grimly satisfied to hear that yes indeed, there had been two.

The thrill of the hunt bloomed in the Kellid's veins. Someone had tried and succeeded in killing Raven Hair. Annik had no special or deep connection to the man, but his death laid bare a singular truth: they'd been WAITING for the opportunity.

Someone was hunting.

That was alright.

Annik could hunt, too.

For now, however, she needed to find the Sick Man in Yellow Metal, and any other of the unlikely group that had so recently coalesced. After jumping over to the next roof over, Annik crept to the edge and looked down. Sweet black storms above, it felt GOOD to be a little above the stink of this place, again.

Now, she just needed to find the rest of her pack.

 

[Aegis]

SOUTHWEST SANCTUARY
Group 2 ( Zazz Corn Orc Vandal BlueXBlood )​

A carpet of paper, bones, and dust shifted under each step of Aris and Khadija while Bal's watchful eye prepared for an ill-conceived standoff. Shadows seemed to lurch and move--invisible eyes snatching at them from their peripheral vision. Knuckles taut white with stress as grips tightened on weapons, but the fight they were waiting for never came to them. They parted the black of the library and met no answers regardless of their careful consideration. Until, streaks of black and green blood began to gather in a trail through a door that seemed to lead to the abyss draped in the coat of arms common to their foe; the frame itself had been shattered and the stone itself had been chipped, stretched to accommodate the full mass of the spider.

The crux of their plan at hand, Khadija cast a silent spell yet tantalizing spell. There was a bleat. A silence.

Then, those nerve-grating clicks. A shift as sharpened claws drug shallow trenches through stone in a drawn-out, piercing squeak that sent a jolt through their teeth as though they had just bitten down on a knife. The figure of the monster sluggishly crawled into view with a vigor shared by Bal as it stalked just shy of the ambushed-laden entrance. It loosed another click--this one uncertain and probing, before inching closer to the library at large. The Spider's eyes that had been reduced to burst pustules strained and shifted as it sought out ANY advantage it could afford. After all, it was a hunter and a smart one at though, so the suspicion of a trap didn't seem outside of its capacity.

Blood dripped steadily from wounds the creature had no capacity to staunch--webs and books drinking of this involuntary drain, while two of its legs now hung limp underneath with a third seeming to buckle somewhat even as it stood still.

CLICK CLICK

The Spider inched its head forward past the doorframe and sat in wait. One mandible absently snapped against a phantom one courtesy of Aris, and it was clear that The Spider had chosen ambush as well.