Sam jerked as the new sense of danger hit him. Spinning away from where he had been looking around the bars to see if there was any way of making the gate close faster, he watched as the obnoxious woman jumped away from an aggressive group of zombies and the main source of his concern: the armed and armored skeletons preparing to attack.
"Damn," he muttered, starting to walk towards the brewing situation: as much as he might not like her attitude, the group simply couldn't afford to lose anyone. Not with the monstrous golems approaching.
However, then he noticed the maps. Maps were good, maps were vital, and they needed them. Sam hurried over and started gathering them up; that gate wasn't going to be closed in enough time to keep the golems out, and the whole group would probably need to run, but they'd need every tool they could get.
EDIT: OOC: Sorry I've been away for a while, just dealing with some life stuff.
The maps do not take long to gather up with vampiric haste. More remarkably, Sam's sense of doom simply... cuts off as he crosses the threshold of the gate. He's keenly aware of a sense of danger from the active undead in front of him, but the certainty of doom that seems likely to have been connected to the hulking golems seems to have switched to the vaguest sense that one
could die if one made improbable choices.
The figures on the table, on the otherhand, were a bit less clear. She didn't seem to sense Unholy power from them, so she felt safe enough to pick up and examine them a bit. Perhaps they were meant to represent various forces on the map to plan the assault...?
The figurines are some kind of plain stone. The smoothness and uniformity of various figurines is relatively typical of figurines produced by trained geomancers who can simply use the same set of elemental spells to quickly get the same results, whether it's carved or conjured. However, the designs do not ring any bells- they're not designed to resemble chess pieces, they don't have anything like recognizable weapons or appear to be a specific kind of creature or undead, they don't match to any symbiology Catherine recognizes. Just a series of
probably light figurines, assuming newfound vampiric strength hasn't thrown off the sense of weight, in various colors with abstract, shaped bits.
They're small enough each that one could place quite a few on each map, if so desired, and do not have any obvious physical utility. They're not unnaturally hot or wet, for example, and there's no sign of anything like moving parts or openable compartments.
This was hardly the most surprising outcome, but still annoying. Miriette silently cursed herself for not following her first instincts and just smashing these things the moment she got within arm's reach, but, oh well. This was a fight, and a fight was something she could handle.
She said that, but these things had numbers and reach on her. The zombies she figured would be less of a threat, just on the grounds that they were squishier, but they were lightly armored and had swords, so she couldn't count them out entirely. On the other hand, they were mainly there to serve as a barrier - the halberds could reach her through them, on account of how polearms work, but she couldn't really hit the skeletons back, not without breaking through the line.
Well, nothing ever got done by sitting around and thinking about things. Miriette figured that the others had noticed this mess, and if they hadn't yet, it was probably going to be loud enough that they would in a bit. She charged forwards, swinging wildly at the masses of undead in front of her. She knew how fragile a living body could be, and judging by how these things looked, tearing them apart shouldn't be all that difficult.
Ideally, at least.
Movement and the sound of a door tearing open draws Catherine's eyes up from the objects on the table, and she gasps in surprise and sudden comprehension.
This is the Armory.
"EVERYONE, IN FRONT! THESE BUILDINGS ARE FULL OF UNDEAD!"
Was it true? Was every one of these buildings a storehouse for rotting monsters not currently in use? Perhaps not, mayhap some held more conventional arms, or 'parts' that had yet to undergo conversion, but Miriette was in danger.
Sam was suddenly at her side, grasping at the maps, and she couldn't say that was a wrong impulse. Could they run? Perhaps, but perhaps the Zombies Miriette unleashed would prove difficult to evade.
'You can't abandon her.'
Gritting her teeth, Catherine leaped around the table and came at the mob from an angle. If there was any saving grace here, its that these things apparently only reacted if you tried to open their specific charge. That meant they weren't going to be literally buried under the things.
With the brasher and more experienced woman hopefully occupying the bulk of the Undead horde's attention, Catherine attempts to figuratively nip at their flanks- reaching out to grab an exposed limb and dragging it's owner away from the mass so she can crush or tear it apart. If the Zombies or Skeletons divert their attention to her, all the better. It would give Miriette more leeway to maneuver and deal with her own foes.
Picking up a weapon from any Zombie she managed to destroy would also be useful. She wasn't exactly a warrior yet, but she had done a few drills and 'something' was better than 'nothing' when the biggest threats already had a massive reach advantage.
Miriette Oakbender can hear and feel the
crunch of bone breaking, a sound less familiar from punching as from dock accidents when large crates fell as the Zombies she strikes have their limbs visibly broken on impact. She pays in nicks and cuts as the rapiers fail to cleanly penetrate her skin, but cut she is anyways, and perhaps more concerningly the Zombies don't react with either pain nor fear to their injuries and fairly rapidly maneuver to compensate for the more unavoidable consequences of physical damage.
On the plus side, the zombies are slower than her, so even with their numbers she's able to turn the strikes that would have been cleanest into glancing blows... though it's also apparent her skin is just tougher than it once was. The minus side is the abrupt blow from the halberd that comes practically out of nowhere as the Skeletons remain alarmingly fast, zombies moving aside at the last moment possible to allow the weapon to swing through in a strange sort of rising strike that cuts her stomach open, and outright throws her into the air and a couple dozen feet away from its wielder.
Her stomach immediately begins closing, and it hurts but she can tell she'll live. She does feel... thirstier after the hit though, as her vampiric body burns blood to repair.
Vampiric reflexes even have her land on her feet, though not without a stumble, when she falls back down, though the zombie mob is already within ten feet of her by that point, having rushed forward to follow up. A moment of fighting however has given Miriette the chance to recognize why the zombies motions seem familiar...
There was a notorious street thug everyone called Drunken Fency, because he was fair with a blade and notorious more for his massive drinking tabs than his actual merits in a fight. The man skipped town and skipped out on all his drinking tabs, much to the rage of just about every tavern owner in town, or at least, that's what everyone figured at the time, a couple months back. But these zombies all have his exact moves, down to the sloppy holes in his guard and the way they walk. Kinda creepy, really.
Catherine finds her maneuver towards the group met by one of the two skeletons seeming to organize a hefty detachment of zombies to met her head on, fighting conservatively in a line. Well, they try anyways, but their fencing form is sloppy and it's easy enough for Catherine to simply grab one by the wrist and rip the arm off, snatching the blade from the removed hand on an overextended lunge, an action that causes the skeleton to push more towards the front, polearm ready and trying to shield the zombies from a repeat with the threat of the weapon. The zombie, of course, does not flinch from simply being dismembered, carrying on and adjusting to try to put the other arm forwards, presuming planning to punch if it comes to it, though other zombies shuffle past it to form the new leading edge.
Zombies stop pouring out of the building at last, but by this point there's somewhere north of a hundred in the street, and though they seem to damage easily, none of them is down for the count at either woman's hands.
