Fantasy Cursed Island

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle nodded. "I still believe we can make it. We just have to give it our all."

 

[Darkling0096]

Adran smilled and gave Shuffle a pat on the shoulder. "Keep that optimism, and hope Jerry's gonna be okay."

 

[Fangs9090]

“She can pull through. She’s part dragon now.”

 

[Darkling0096]

"I hope so," Adran shook his head, "Half the time it feels like we've only got half a brain to make plans when she's not around."

"Found something!", Emfa shouted from across the nest. She'd found another structure that looked like the ballista they already had, but with different pieces that were in decent condition.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle looked over towards Emfa before running off to see what she’d found.

 

[Darkling0096]

"Help me dig this out," Emfa instructed when Shuffle appeared, "We might be able to fix the other one with the pieces."

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle gave a nod and happily started digging where she was told.

 

[Darkling0096]

The ballista was unearthed. It was heavily rotted, but seemed to have some of the missing pieces still intact. "Nice!", Emfa nodded.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle glanced around before she started digging again in a random spot, wondering if something else could be found.

Niudisa soon had what she needed. She’d collected a few hydra scales and several bottles of blood.

 

[Darkling0096]

"What have you found?", Joanne asked as she dumped an armload of bolts she'd found and metal components next to the ballista.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa glanced over. "Blood and scales. I need to run some tests before I can figure out a use for it, but I don't know if we'll be staying around here long enough for me to get my alchemy stuff out."

 

[Darkling0096]

"The heads are too close to set up shop immediately," Joanne shook her head, "We would have to purify them."

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa looked back at the heads. "And that would take an awful long time. But...setting up here and stopping the body from decaying would let me harvest as much additional blood as needed."

 

[Darkling0096]

Joanne nodded, "That may be the best idea." The rest of the body wasn't within sight, so anythign coming to them would probably be coming for the heads. "Perhaps some sort of barrier should be set up as well, just in case. Adran is capable of a potent shield spell, is he not?"

 

[Fangs9090]

"Probably. An alternative would be figuring out someway to boost some talismans, or perhaps work them into the shield, but that would call for experimenting and testing."

 

[Darkling0096]

"I do not think altering the talismans would be wise," Joanne shook her head, remembering how a quarter of the party had reacted when the talismans were boosted upon creation.

 

[Fangs9090]

"Then I'll see about that shield." Niudisa glanced around before fluttering off to find Adran. She passed a small field of holes along the way, evidence of Shuffle searching for treasure.

 

[Darkling0096]

Under different circumstances, Jerry might have been proud of Shuffle's pursuit of valuable loot. As it were, Shuffle's searching yielded only dirt, roots, the occasional head of a ballista bolt, or the bones of an unfortunate creature. Little treasure to be found in the mound.

Adran was still searching for anything useful, found about half a mile from the group with his leopard sniffing at the ground, an illusion spell mapping out what he'd found in front of him and marking points of interest, all of wuich seemed to just be piles of bones and saurian nests that might contain something he'd come back to when things weren't so dire. "I know, I'm farther from the group than I should be," Adran shook his head, "We're trying to find where this thing's heads connect to the body, these necks must go on for miles as thick as they are."

 

[Fangs9090]

"Uh huh." Niudisa looked at the snake before looking back to Adran. "We're trying to see if we can camp here for a bit, just long enough for me to figure out what I can do with this thing's blood. To do that though, we need to purify the remains and set up some kind of barrier shield."

 

[Darkling0096]

"Hmm," Adran nodded, "I don't know how to purify stuff. I can desecrate, but that would probably speed up decay."

 

[Fangs9090]

"We could probably just spray the thing with healing water and that'll work well enough. I came to you for the shield."

 

[Darkling0096]

"How big a shield?"

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa shrugged. “The idea came from Joanne. But I imagine it should be big enough for us to camp within and possibly include the snake heads.”

 

[Darkling0096]

Adran tried to visualize that for a moment, "Too big," he shook his head, "Even if I could spread it that far, it'd be as strong as tissue paper."

 

[Fangs9090]

“Mm. Then what could you do? Maybe we can work with it.”