Arc 2 Post 32: Of Cruel Cunning
Of Cruel Cunning
The Twenty Fifth of Elnu-hamba [Elnu Descendent] Year 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
You are not the bravest of knights, not the most pious, most generous or the most chivalrous, but you will be damned to hell ten times over before you hand any souls to that thing and its kin because you needed to save your own hide. "Loose arrows!"
The thing in the tree laughs, jaw unhinging unnaturally wide so is speaks and so is sings as it darts among the branches: "Little pigs, little pigs, nice and pink, nice and plump, come to the cauldron to the cooked!" A skull flashes white in its hand, far off the mark, lost among the roots and mushrooms of the forest.
From behind you another horrid laugh rises, another song, this one not in any tongue you can speak but it seems to your ears filled with the crack of bones and the screams of the damned drowning and boiling in the very cauldrons of hell. For a moment fear clenches in your stomach as though some black claw and it is all that you can do not to jump off silver's back and just run and run wherever your eyes should turn, to lose yourself in the woods Mayhap this is hell that you have come and the devils have come to collect...
Then you feel the child shift before you, raising hand and voice against the horror and you are shamed to have thought it, She does not deserve hell, and neither do the men who chose to ride behind you. With deft fingers you set arrow to bow and as Henri's arrow flies arcs above you striking the branch where the monster had just stood you shoot. Though your arrow goes through the thing's wing you seem to have enraged it more than you had harmed it.
"Ooh!" The sound of pain or perhaps exhaustion is torn from Inge's lips, but not without cause. Chill falls upon the air and ice flashes by moonlight... the shard flies sharp and true right into the misshapen head of the thing that had spoken to you.
Black blood rains down on the leaves and branches but before you can cheer, before you can even speak a third monster shows itself among the leaves and this one points a clawed finger not at you but at Silver, face contorting into a dreadful grimace, a thousand dagger sharp teeth wide. The poor beast is overcome by terror such as you have not felt in him since you had known him bold foal of green seaside meadows. He bolts down the trail swift as his hooves can carry him, bearing you and Inge away from the fight, even as arrows continue to fly and the monsters to leap and frolick through the canopy.
"Scare the hoof beasts, kill the hoof beasts, flay the hoof beasts!" they cry and cheer in dreadful voices.
A moment later Nico and Henri's horses join in the panicked flight and jean left alone and without way to hurt the damn things thunders after you. Another skull flies, another miss as the enemy cannot perhaps account for the speed of the horses they had set to flight.
As you pull desperately on the reigns to check Silver you hope by all God and the Virgin's grace that these things had not thought to trap the path then you remember with a sinking in the pit of your stomach that you had not been four but five there in the road. Tam tied into the saddle was at the mercy of those things.
Silver is Frightened and fleeing for the next 2 rounds, the horses of your men for 1 and 2 rounds respectively
What do you do?
[] Try to jump off the horse and turn to face the foe (DC 10 Ride check to manage a clean jump and avoid 1d6 fall damage)
-[] Try to take Inge with you (DC increases to 14 or both of you take 1d6 damage)
-[] Call for the others to also jump off their horses (same DC)
[] Ride out the fear then turn and fight
[] Write in
OOC: You know the horses actually had better odds of passing a DC 13 save then the humans, but then three of them failed one after another. On the plus side none of you are hurt right now and the lead dark fey, the one you shot is down to less than half health. Not yet edited.
