In the Shadow of the Grave
Sixth Day of Ikomi-eza (Ikomi Ascendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
Over a dozen battlegrounds a world away from here you have trusted Silver to carry you safely forth, thus you trust him once again, turning on the dreadful keening of metal and the hulking brute of Olweje. You turn thus to face the reaver lord, battered and burned, snared and pierced with arrows and yet undaunted. Behind him lie the broken bodies of his companions, before him one of the youngest of your armsmen, slowly bleeding on the deck, but not yet dead, still moving... just.
The memory of another man clinging to life not on a ship's deck but on the forest floor flashes before your mind's eye. Another time you might have said something, a prayer, a challenge, mayhap even an offer of mercy, this is not that time. All that tears itself from your lips is a sound of raw fury that drives your steps into a charge, past blade of one foeman, then another...
Though you dodge the first blow, the second, an ornate mace too heavy to be bronze alone surely, is too swift, pain rushes through your veins like fire.
You take 5 Damage
...and raise your sword to strike the man who now finds himself in sparser company thanks to the works of nets cleverly cast.
"Hear me thin-blooded, soft-headed, gutless, gormless sons of a poxed whore and the eyeless beggar who bedded her! I've seen yer fate, and that fate is blood and a bed of ash!" These words Isele speaks, not with the desperate fury of a man who knows himself at the mercy of his foes, but deep and booming like the call of the drums, and on the last word lo for the world bends to his will and all about him save for his companions in ruin are suddenly alight with flame and filled with terror, none more so than poor Wanderer, for while your own men recoil in horror and shock, dropping the nets, he scrambles away, rolling about on the deck.
Roland, John, Wanderer and Mark take 8 damage from the spell
Wanderer is set aflame
Fear burns in your gut as hot as the pain and your hand shakes upon the blade, but still the arc of it is true, still wrought with the skill of a dozen battles and more. It should have parted his head from his shoulders. Yet it parts naught but wind and smoke as the man is not where you had thought he would be, hidden in a shimmer of his own making.
A shard of ice shatters at Isele's feet five and pirates are flooding in from the longship red, lips pulled into a snarl against faces made white with limestone. One of them falls, an arrow in the eye, the only sign you have that the archers are still fighting and are not mauled by the beast you can yet hear from behind you. Even as the bastard with the mace that had already hit you once already raises his weapon for another blow only to have the arm fall limp, the body following a moment later as Tom drives his black spear through one ear and out the other as common steel could never do.
As he starts to turn to face Isele the pirate lord strikes, swift as a lashing viper, and in one dreadful blow snaps Tom's arm at the shoulder sending him to his knees howling with pain.
Tom takes 27 damage
Tom is at -4 HP
"You kill... my brother... my kin... I kill you... one... by one..." The words come heavy with the beat of the drums, impossible to separate from the savagery of the music. Blood and soot and ash swirl around him, around the maul that shines with baleful runes you cannot read yet know the master and the maker of.
The Lord of War favors this champion over you, that much is clear from the snarls of bestial might that yet ring out over the embattled deck, yet you can do nothing other than to fight, than to stand, and if this is the place where you are to fall then you could not have asked for finer company to be in. You raise your sword into a guard once more and then...
Familiar yet strange the chant of Ikomi fills the air, spoken in a child's voice, spoken with a desperate will, spoken in fear as much as anger and She of the Black Depths sees fit to answer in full.
Isele's does not fall, he does not crumble to the deck in pain, instead he is hurled back against the gunwale as a fist sized chunk explodes right over where his heart would have been. With one final dissonant strike the drums fall silent and for a moment so too does the carnage aboard the ship as a small girl-child stands over the body of one of her fallen comrades, her face serene as graven stone.
Six words she speaks, dreadful and true: "War is no master of death."
Of the five pirates... no four now, John had dealt with one even wounded as he was, three try to flee towards the next onrushing ship that is about to crash into Marcella, but the fourth simply jumps into the sea.
The remaining soldiers and sailors still on their feet are torn between facing the bear still clashing against Silver claw against hoof and two attacks, from both the ships on the starboard coming in the wake of the leading longship and the one to port... though that last one seems to be hesitating.
What do you do?
[] Face the attack of the next waves of pirates on the starboard side
[] Try to ward off the other longship attacking to port
[] Help Silver with the strange beast
[] Write in
OOC: I have never been more glad for blur in my whole experience as a GM. You almost decapitated another of my antagonists with a crit before he put up a serious fight and you would have if it were not for the miss chance, but as it is you got to see him bonk Tom hard enough to make him go unconscious and you also saw a bit of another of his magics. I am not going to spoil it here, but let's just say that it was a good thing Inge used magic to finish him off, he was getting harder to hurt with weapons.
