RP:Into the Forest I Go

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Summary: Assisted by Gilwen and her Aer'athrad elves, the alliance dives dangerously into the heart of the Southern Sage Forest, where a tip from Blut has revealed the whereabouts of one of Kahran's powerful generals. There, they combat a variety of General Qybek's freakish forces. Wits, weaponry, and steadfast resolve prove victorious, liberating the zone from Kahran's control. As Gilwen and Kreekitaka enter Qybek's lair, Blut sneaks through a different path to emerge above the wicked necromancer and deliver the killing blow. Outside, Beldur the Knight Errant secures the field, showcasing the budding leadership abilities that Lionel has seen in him for years. The few elven prisoners to evil's whims are rescued by Gilwen; their mental scars may never fade, but they're safe from harm's way. With Qybek's death, the deceptive Blut fulfills his secret contract, brandishing the thought that he'll soon take the fool's place by Kahran's side.

Occupied Territory Deep Within The Southern Sage

Lionel | If there were color left in the skin of the emaciated elf, he might be flushed with fear. His bare chest is covered in cuts. Stitches have pulled together his flesh where the wounds are deepest, but fresh slash marks crowd over even the stitches themselves. He, like his fellow elven prisoners who have yet to be slain or taken out of their cramped, shared cage, has been reduced from person to science experiment. He trembles when the drow draws near, as he trembled to see drow during the war between the races. But this drow does not look at him in disgust for being an elf; she reviles him for being Lithrydelian. She seethes at him, hisses at him, lifts up a stone and tosses it through the bars at his bloody face to render it bloodier still. He recoils but lacks the strength to dodge. It hits him in the temple and his anorexic body hits the hard ground and he whimpers. The drow does not seem satisfied. She barely seems anything at all. Like her peers, she is not from the time of Gevurah. She has no real ties to anything but for the darkest bind in the known world: the Dark Immortals. The drow in Kahran’s clutches were once foot soldiers in Khasad’s armies. The few that survived the Second Immortal War faded into unknown fate; in truth, Kahran, Khasad’s last battle commander, shepherded them for his own. But they rebelled. They no longer wished to be someone else’s puppet. They longed for freedom. They longed for home. Kahran has many powers no mortal man should possess. Heightened illusion, limited control over his dead, former masters’ practices, dominion over the perilous Shadow Plane, and --through his wraiths and perhaps worst of all -- the ability to control whole hordes to his will. The orcs suffer this affliction. Jaize’s naga and Orra’s avians find remarkable ease in ordering them in Kahran’s name. The drow, too, suffer. This one, her hand tightening around a second stone, stares at the whimpering elf with neither racial condemnation nor racial satisfaction. She stares at him because her masters made it so, and she’ll kill him because her masters made it so.

Lionel | The elf and the drow, the caged and the captors, all reside within an elaborate network of caverns less than a kilometer from a godly temple abandoned to time. The caverns yawn across this expanse of the Southern Sage Forest, concealing a fine collection of creatures in the service of Qybek, Kahran’s necromantic general. Qybek, a skinny man of common human birth rarely seen in anything but robes so black he’s as like to be mistaken for a wraith, prowls the lantern-lit halls flanked by drow. There are many cages, filled with many elves. Any and all missing elves in the aftermath of the conflict in this region were taken here in the shadows months before Kahran ever announced himself in Cenril. In some cages, ‘fresh’ specimens linger, well-fed and tended-to. In others, maggots have taken to corpses, and the survivors cannot hold down the paltry meals they receive; they vomit over the maggot-infested corpses, praying for an end. In the worst cages, Qybek dutifully inspects the fruits of his labor. Elves have been transformed into vile, charred-skinned abominations that look less like people and more like husks. They are wretched, lacking any semblance of the personalities Qybek has killed in them, and they will follow his command without question. “They are the shape of things to come,” Qybek chuckles to one of his red-armored praetorian guards, female drow one and all. And Qybek has a secret, too: he has no intention of sharing these elven husks with Kahran. The pointy-nosed specter of a man should very much like to use these things against him and rule the ashes of the world in his stead.

Lionel | Throughout the dense forest surrounding the caverns, orcs and drow have dug into shrubbery and cleverly disguised themselves with war paint. They lurk and linger, ever-watchful for intruders. More visibly, steel-plated guard towers have been built up into the canopy, where archers by the dozens survey the approach. Hellhounds prowl the perimeter, sniffing out foes. Further surprises may yet await. As the alliance’s dispatched division, helmed by Kreekitaka and Gilwen and Blut and Beldur, thirty-strong in diverse race and prowess plus whatever else their leaders have brought, enters the outskirts of Qybek’s rumored location, they’ll be wise to tread lightly or else with a very sharp stick.

Kreekitaka had been told to come here ready for a fight. He'd also been told "caverns". Caverns, in his experience, generally weren't great places for dinosaur combat, as the fields were too narrow and the ceilings too low. His approach for Chartsend wasn't liable to work here simply because the terrain wasn't open enough. Still, there might still be use for at least some dinosaurs--for example, his armor-plated Stegosaurus riders, flanking the group like the walls of a castle. A dozen animals, each crewed by a pair of uyeer armed with spear-throwers, formed the barricades through which Kahran's forces would have to penetrate to reach the group. Kreekitaka himself was in the front riding Vindicator, his tail-catapult locked back and ready, with a gunner riding in the backseat ready to fire. The uyeer were a canny, observant bunch--their compound eyes were made to detect camouflaged creatures buried in the sand, after all--and it was the uyeer's intention to use this natural advantage and steel-plated wall of flesh to take the teeth out of any ambush. In the distance, Kree could see the guard towers rise up out of the forest. He issued a command to his gunner--as soon as they came in range, a hornet's-nest bomb was to be flung up into one of the towers, and then immediately followed by a second to the other one. Hopefully the projectile's arcing trajectory could get over the tower's steel walls to deliver the payload within.

Beldur would've arrived with as many as Lionel would've allowed from the Frostmawian army and his Giant allies. Their heavy warm armor wasn't the best for the warmer climate, but thankfully, they had long since changed into something cooler. The errant himself would be on foot with his troops, or what few there was. The caverns seemed good for many tactics both assaulting and defending, but mostly defending having the advantage. His armor was polished, and ready for the battle ahead. His hand raised to signal his troops to hold. He knew that the large army that Kreekitaka brought would need the enemy to be forced outside to properly use. “Think they'll believe us if we said we bring cookies?” He said, half joking, and half sarcastically, as he looked into the cave. He obviously didn't like the look of the enemy's forces.

Blut looked over the battlefield without his wraps on allowing him to see the mana of all things. The differences in the enviroment is how he can identify the orcs hideing within shrubs for all liveing things have mana but only sentient beings have mana unique to them changeing colour and sometimes shape depending on the individual. Within the distance of the cavarn he could identify a very potent mana source as well as that of whatever elves were still alive but the mana of Qybek put the others of shame. A black and malific mana is what Blut could see. Blut put the wraps back over his eyes allowing him to see the physical realm once again as he turned to his "allies" "Alright before we do anything everyone has a rosary ring around their neck right." Blut asked he expected everyone to wear one around their neck. These were runic chains that detonated when the user dies. These were his counter measures to be sure that none of his dead become his enemies. "Check to see all your troops have them attached to their necks and lets go over the plan." Blut ordered he expected to be listened to haveing alot more knowledge on this one person than probably anyone else in the area.

Gilwen and twenty of Aer’athrad’s highly skilled rode behind the alliance’s division, and despite the careful and thorough training of each horse, their mounts shied away from the dinosaurs that flanked their ranks. While the men and women that composed her small militia were focused on the mission lying before them, they couldn’t help but occasionally glance at the Stegosauri- Gilwen, however, couldn’t help but glance at the Uyeer. There were so many of them. Upon arrival to a predetermined location, before Kreekitaka could fire his bomb, before Blut could demand that each person wore an explosive, the vines that always curled around the length of Gilwen’s arm unraveled and the tips burrowed into the earth beneath her dappled mare. Each of these vines spliced with roots of the foliage of this section of unplagued forest, and signals ran from grass, to bush, to tree. Each unusual variance, whether it be created by orc, or rabbit, filed back along the neural pathway created by Gilwen’s characteristic choice of jewelry. A handful of foes were logged, and just as Kree loosed his bomb, each section of tree and shrub were flooded with enough energy to produce a sudden, small combustion that would smolder away the coverage of those hiding, and providing a clear and easy target. Blut’s demand had been ignored, and none of the elves wore a rosary ring- it's a cultural, and religious choice.

Lionel | As the alliance’s troops move further into the forest, loudly enough for all the trampling stegosauruses to alert Qybek’s hidden forces -- who, in turn, spread out and send messengers between groups to alert Qybek himself -- tweeting birds with long blue beaks and multicolored feathers flap wayward of their trees for fear of what is coming. The uyeers’ expert vision will help to suss out the moving shapes. Perhaps they will also discern the rapid approach of the hellhounds, with their spiked backs and slobbering sharp jaws, each of them nearly the size of a carriage with eyes as red as blood. The hellhounds move swiftly but subtly; even the leaves which crunch underfoot seem quieter in the crunching. The forest is dark here, even with the sun high overhead, and the hounds must feed. From the shadiest places they hunger, delighting at the scents of the frost giants and mercenaries whom Beldur the Knight Errant has brought with him. But they’re hungrier still for the saurians, and hungriest of all for the seafood riding atop. Will the gathered feast heed Blut’s desire for speech? It seems an inopportune time for detailed conversation, so near to the caverns and the corrupt mana the assassin keenly senses. At least many of the alliance’s soldiers have indeed tucked their beads as ordered. The great steel towers, looming dizzily in the distance, are almost within range of Kreekitaka’s dastardly surprise.

Lionel | “Yes, I am aware,” Qybek replies to the sweating orc who has disturbed his ceremony. Qybek, holding a syringe, has just begun administering injections into a pair of elves whose nauseating fit of tears has almost -- almost! -- spoiled the general’s appetite for sadism. He turns his back on the cage as the elves’ crying turns into something else, something guttural, and their skin melts off leaving only irradiated flesh. Their eyes go gold and they howl to kill upon command. “So the sylvan she-devil finally shows her teeth? What of it? We knew this was coming. The hounds will devour her and her pack of fools.” The orc, breathing staggered, does not dare look at Qybek directly. “That is not all,” it tries its best to annunciate. “The bitch brought the Alliance. Crab people on lizards with clubs for tails. Frost giants whose stink assails. Humans who stink like no frost giant could ever dream. Killing them all will not be easy.” Qybek grabs the orc by the neck. Powerless to resist the mental control of his superiors, the orc does not try to prevent his own death. Qybek twists and snaps his neck, leaving the soldier mangled. “Talk to me of difficulty, do you?” The necromancer chortles and slams his wand into the corpse. It rises, lifeless but strong, and the drow praetorians set about wordlessly opening the cages of all the elven abominations in the army’s employ. At once, the caverns spring to life with undeath. A horde of victims in the general’s arsenal flood from the entrance, surprising even the orcs and drow scattered throughout the forest. As Beldur supposes, they are not, in fact, thinking about cookies. They wail, and wail, and wail, and their weaponry is honed and varied, and they will withstand several blows that would kill them right proper in life. The bombs are flung, the towers are unfazed, but the archers above are engulfed in hornets and plunge to escape their woes forever. The hellhounds vault in unison to feast upon stegosaurus flesh and try to taste uyeer. The undead horde bursts through the treeline and surrounds, bows firing arrows and blades swinging for humans and giants and elves. Safe within his cavern, Qybek returns to his ceremony. The battle has begun.

Kreekitaka had allowed those of his uyeer who felt comfortable with wearing Blut's devices to wear them, but had rejected the idea of putting them on the dinosaurs--an exploding dinosaur would be far too much a danger to their own forces. He had given his uyeer standing orders to shoot if provoked, but just in case they needed more encouragement, the uyeer on their saurian mounts are given an explicit order via their king's snapping his jawblade out of its holster and letting out a harmless but still clearly audible "krumpf!" of a shockwave. Spears fly from the backs of the dinosaurs as the drivers change position, turning the beasts sideways with their backs towards the charging hellhounds. Stegosauri aren't chargers, like ceratopsians, but the three-foot spines on their tails were backed by an enormous amount of musculature. As the hellhounds were likely to discover, with spears protruding from their bodies, there is a reason that even the huge theropods stay well away from a stegosaurus's posterior. Having cleared out the archery towers, the uyeer was prepared to move his scorpion into the caves--but then the undead begin to fall on them, the first arrows falling upon their forces. The sheer mass and thickness of the dinosaur's armor and their bony plates gave the uyeer riding them considerable protection against the horde, but Kree himself was exposed atop Vindicator. He decided on a plan, pulled the ripcord which dumped his potions into his tank, and ran onto the scorpion's tail catapult. "WiHHHTH me!" he shouted, to any of the alliances forces who might listen, then ordered the gunner to fire. A snap, a whistle, and the uyeer was airborne. Potions crashing through his blood, he decided now was as good a time as any to test out a new technique with his jawblade. He slammed into an undead claw-first, and pressed the blue button on his weapon before it had any energy with which to produce a shockwave--and held it down during his swing, with the toothed-side facing forward. The enchantment absorbed the energy from the blade's recoil and fired the shockwave from the plate-side, propelling the weapon along its swing--such a strike effectively tripled his output, and neatly obliterated the head of the undead he'd used as a landing cushion. "Marveyous," he murmured, and with that the rampage began--amped-up Kree with a weapon that gave him the might of three uyeer at once, against a horde of zombies... just like old times.

Blut shook his head so much for disgression. Blut sighed as he moved forward and staying close to the ground. Blut intented to split off from the main force to appraoch and enter the cavarns solo. Blut held his holy dagger in his right hand which was amplified against unholy targets to the point that it could probably cleave through zombies like butter. Viewing the rush of the undead Blut took to the trees served to see if they were any good with climbing before continueing his hunt via tree tops. Blut waited for chaos to fill the field enough so that he could possibly slip into the cavarn un noticed. If he took out the head of the snake he'd kill the body.

Beldur would allow allow his men to decide to wear the amulets or not. And like Kree, he refused to put it on his hatchling. The errant was too emotional to allow the little drake explode like that. Still, he didn't like Kree's charge. Lifting his hand to halt his troops. “We're to continue creating the commotion outside and secure the escape route.” He explained as he pointed to the potential blind spots. “We need to cover those blind spots.” He would direct his troops as best he could. Optimizing the giant's range by having them help cleave the hell hounds that assaulted the dino's. The soldiers on the ground protected the giants by forming a shield wall, two shields high. Bearing in mind not to have any soldier get too close to the dinosaur's tail if he could help it. Those left over, he had with him. Moving as needed down the line to give supportive hit and run tactics to help lighten the burden on the main column.

Gilwen || The other druids among the Aer’athrad’s ranks adapted a similar practice as Gilwen, and began burning out their foes, allowing the archers in the back to loose volleys of arrows to fell orc and drow alike. Spell casters and swordsmen focused on those that escaped the careful aim of the elves, as well as the hellhounds that attacked the dinosaurs. However the heralding wail of those escaping the caverns slowly drew the attention of the elves, and likely other fighters around them as well; this distraction proved dangerous, and many suffered wounds or worse. As the undead horde surged forth, brandishing little resemblance of the kin and kith the elves once knew, a sharp whistle pierced through the fray, dislodging the attention of her militia from the unrecognizable, and yet still known, dead elves. “We are no strangers to pain,” Gilwen roared, once in Sylvan, again in Common, as her vines re-emerged from the earth and snapped back to her arm. “Do not look upon them as brethren in this moment, there will be time to mourn yet. Harden your hearts and do what you must!” She pulled hard on the reigns of her mare in that following moment and unsheathed her sword, and her mount reeled around in time for Gilwen’s blade to swing and cleave into the thick neck of a leaping hellhound. She dislodged her weapon with a swift kick to the dying creatures chest, which crumpled to the ground, its legs scrabbling at the ground to find any purchase to carry it from the pain of death. The rangers, swordsmen, and druids behind her met each foe- be it orc, drow, or undead- with swift justice, though it was the latter of the three that wrought hesitation. Few of the Aer’athrad guard fell to that hesitation, their cries of death ringing out only to embolden their fellow soldier with a new fervor. Gilwen had promised her fellow council members that her role in this mission would be purely support, and endangering her life would be done of pure necessity. Those few elves who marched on them from the caverns was that determining necessity, and she spurred her mount forward, to run through the dead ranks of her brethren with sword and spell; roots of trees and shrubbery surged from the ground and snapped at anything in passing, be it friend or foe. Gilwen intended to follow Kreekitaka into the cavern, by any means necessary.

Lionel | Few among the hellhounds sample stegosaurus, the wide bites of scaly, sinewy meat hardly what they’d hoped to find. But even among them that eat, spiked tails come lumbering in, and although the hounds are well-plated, they cannot protect against such momentum. They snarl and bark. Some do not rise from their tumble, the spikes having pierced their armored hides and splashing blood. Many soon succumb to Gilwen’s gallantry, her companions in the Aer’athrad bringing proxy pain to Kahran’s general. Is it her skill what scares them most? Or her stalwart battle cry? Regardless, they fall. Kreekitaka, having fired himself into the mindless elven automatons, may have a difficult time hearing his friends who are now quite busily swarmed. And yet he presses onward, and some among his crew, as well as several humans, follow him into the caverns bravely. A few will be picked apart by the horde, but a few will live to see what lurks within. Outside, an arrow takes a frost giant in the neck, and then six more bring it down in thunderous doom just before she can repay the injuries in kind. Orcs and drow pile in among their zombified brethren, swinging deadly slashes and taking nearly as many humans and giants as they lose in the attempt. A sizable gathering of the husks who were once Gilwen’s own people scream and lash out with their sabers and staves, some casting crude fire spells, all targeting the living elves and all heedless of the chance to be trampled in her wake. But she breaks their line, she and her peers, cruising through the forest deep inside the caverns hot on Kreekitaka’s lead.

Lionel | With the Aer’athrad safely beyond the forest craze, the Alliance’s growing number of dead each punctuate with explosive detonation upon falling, wiping out pockets of opposing forces but obscuring view even further in their wake. A cacophony of violence ensues, and smoke fills the air. Orcs and drow and former elven citizenry repeatedly appear like ghosts within the smoke, and repeatedly they’re pushed back by the explosions of the men and women they kill. Among the combatants, across all the races, there is now only one man who can prevent total chaos: Beldur. His orders are heeded, his seasoned men -- some of them survivors from the Knight Errant’s previous encounter with Qybek’s thralls -- forming shield walls and keeping order and ensuring a way out on mission’s end. Even as the smattering charges of foes attempt to breach that wall, that bastion, that beacon, any successful kills result in turn in murderous boom.

Lionel | Qybek’s praetorian drow, their red lacquer armor shimmering, raise their swords at the arrival of foreign invaders to their base. They surround the necromancer protectively; he’s barely visible within their circle. They move slick as snakes and lunge to uyeer, to humans, to elves, precise and methodical, strength and resilience and agility alike greatly enhanced by foul sorcery. Somewhere in the shadows, Blut must surely lurk. He may have scaled the hangings or found hidden grooves through tunnels. He may well have a bird’s-eye view of Qybek, who twists his lips in gnawing disdain. “Mongrels!” He shouts from his supposed place of protection. “You will not take what I have built! Kill them! Kill them save for one! Leave the she-devil; let her suffering outshine even the elves she could not save!” The drow strike, first with conical spells of flame and lightning and then with stabs and skewers. In cages, elven survivors rise and bear witness, even the ones filled with filth, glaring daggers at the necromancer. They want for revenge.

Kreekitaka was a machine. Not literally, of course, but he'd discovered that the undead were somewhat predictable in their approach, and it wasn't long before he'd settled into a rhythm himself. Strike after strike, the serrated teeth of his jawblade ripping viciously through flesh, viscera flying in all directions, the uyeer king powered through the horde with sheer overwhelming brute force. Down in the caverns themselves, the undead had been thicker, but slower--forced into more narrow passageways, the endless hordes had to be pushed through choke points--and it was in these places that Kree removed his tendril from the blue button, and simply defended--swinging and dealing negligible damage, blocking attacks--charging up energy. It gave his forces time to catch up to him, and when they arrived, he flipped the weapon around and pressed the button, emptying it of all that stored-up energy with a deafening KA-BOOM that rivaled the sounds of exploding corpses behind him and cleared the entire choke point by hurling every undead back, the shockwaves bouncing back and forth through the rock, crashing into each other and amplifying its strength with reverberation. Those at ground zero of this blast would likely have their bones reduced to paste, and even those further back would likely be blown aside by the weapon's thunderous collected momentum unleashed. With a roar, the king hurled himself into the open gap, flanked by uyeer and human, with the red praetorians before him. The uyeer behind him open fire with their spear-throwers as the king makes a quick figure-eight with his jawblade to build up a little more power before slamming it into the first drow, toothed-side forward, in a massive overhead diagonal blow intended to rip his weapon from his hands. He lunged forward, tendrils of one claw spreading out wide to block escape routes, and attempted to latch onto the drow's head with his claw--and then he squeezed with all his potion-amplified might. Suddenly having one of your elite bodyguards' heads explode might make a person suddenly very nervous, and very nervous people sometimes panic--and panicking is definitely a mistake. The gore-splattered uyeer, should his attack succeed, hurled the drow away from him with a battle-shriek of pure elation. "Observe, Qybek! No power in HHHTHe universe can sTAH!op me! Your abominations are pyayHHHTHings againsTAH! my mighTAH!"

Blut managed to infiltrate the cavarn with all the chaos on the battlefields. Useing his mana claws to scale the cavarns and entering through a watchpost. Following Qybek's vile mana to find where the man was. He saw the guards but for a moment he noticed Qybek who hid behind his guards. Whilst it was hard there were openings every now and again. Hopeing his grim ward would protect him from getting detected Blut took cover in the shadows and loaded a holy bolt made from silver and enchanted made specifically for this mission.(Cost a fortune) Blut took aim bobbing back into cover whenever he was worried that he might get noticed. Within that moment when the conditions were meet and Qybek exposed his head he let loose his holy bolt. If the bolt kills him or not Blut will continue to load his crossbow with smoke pellets and launch them at his target makeing a thick smoke screen which should allow Blut to charge forward and execute Qybek with his holy dagger. Without his wraps he would be able to see Qybek casting any spells.

Beldur would continue to order the troops as best he can. Trying to get as many to survive the mission as best he can. Knowing they can serve somewhere else after this battle to help win the war. His shield slamming into the enemies that assaulted the shield wall. He would continually glance to the cavern. As if expecting his allies to return. His drake blowing her best into oncoming enemies. Hiding when a hellhound noticed her in his scaled armor that rests over his cloak. The small team he had with him would be a great help in the combat. Pushing the injured into the protective barrier of the wall before pulling a healthier one up or ordering one into their place. His troops still focused on trying to safeguard the exit. Hopefully lasting long enough to see the end of the seemingly endless waves of enemies.

Gilwen || Many soldiers of the Aer’athrad remain behind to ensure a safe and cleared exit route, and fold in amidst the ranks of Beldur’s Frostmawians, taking their orders from Beldur. However, those few elves who’s need for revenge burned just as brightly as Gilwen’s own, followed their fiery commander into the caverns; they did their absolute best to avoid watching Kreekitaka’s demolition of them- they had been brothers, fathers, sisters and daughters amongst those exploded by the shock force, and the inability to retrieve their bodies, or identify who had been slain would be impossible. Horses has been left behind, and given the engrained instruction to flee the area, with the hopes that their mounts would be saved from a gruesome death, while elves surged on. Spells loosed from lips and swords swung at the drow, and sounds of battle reverberated off the craggy walls in a symphony titled Revenge. In the midst of clanging swords and cries of rage, of victory, of pain, Gilwen battled with a wild ferocity; there was no time or thought made to call forth vegetation to dispatch her foes- nothing but a feral need to get to Qybek fueled her thoughts and movements. The Aer’athrad soldiers found pockets of time to release the elves within the cages, and as more of the necromancer’s forces fell, the weakened prisoners were shepherd toward a modicum of safety despite their intentions to assist in destroying their captor. As Gilwen fought on, amid the blood and smoke, the occasional twinges of pain were felt, and then promptly ignored, and with each death at the end of her blade brought forth a fresh surge of adrenalin that gave her strength enough to cut through another, and another until finally, Qybek stood before her. She took time enough to heave a breath, grit her teeth and loose a guteral growl of pure furiosity, before lunging forward. Just before Blut’s bolt sank into the necromancer’s head, she rammed her sword upward to skewer Kahran’s general just behind the rib cage. This was not the death blow, much to Gilwen’s chagrin, and she ripped her blade free of his body ruthlessly just as Blut’s expensive projectile claimed the life of Qybek.

Lionel | A grim silence befalls the remaining praetorians to see their fellow’s head splurch noisily, brain matter tossed like rotten lettuce. “Khasad take you,” one of the matrons declares. She casts a flame as green as emeralds from her palm to Kreekitaka, allowing her gauntleted fist to burn for it. With her sword, she strikes deep into the neck of a charging human, nimbly evading his own slash. Her sword is bloodied, and tastes the blood of another, an elf in Gilwen’s ranks. “Khasad take you,” the others join her chant, chain lightning lighting up the caverns as some of the alliance’s operatives are reduced to smoking bodies on the floor. And then the bodies rise to Qybek’s beck and call, twitching at impossible angles, and they leap into the rabble to cut open any enemies they can find, their blades and spears working together with plying hands possessing unnatural strength in order to rip open the scales and carapace of an uyeer and pull out organs in celebration. And then the uyeer also rises, what remains of his shell lit up like glitter, and he snaps his paddles down on an elf’s arms and twists them right off.

Lionel | Qybek cackles fiendishly. “What a sight to behold! The formula! The formula! It works beyond my hopes! It works on uyeer! Can you see me, Kahran? Can you see me from your brigand’s perch in another realm not even your own?” He looks around, waving his wand, his uyeer and other assorted possessions waving around in tandem. In this eureka, he’s blissfully unaware of three crucial things: his praetorians, for all their pomp and power, are falling to the opposition’s sheer tenacious and vengeful push; the Sylvan heroine herself has found occasion to plant a blade within his ribs; and an assassin whose presence Qybek completely missed has fired a bolt to kill him where he stands. His world goes silent as his dreams of conquering it not by numbers but total telepathic control fade to dust. He doesn’t see Blut, not even now, not even as the man spirals toward him with a dagger. All he sees is Gilwen, retrieving her weapon and leaving. The possessed uyeer, the possessed humans and elves, fall in shambles forever. Qybek tries to swallow but gurgles red liquid by the bushel. “She-devil,” he bleeds throatily, and then he is no more.

Lionel | The orcs and drow and pair of remaining hellhounds fall back to the war horn of a lumbering troll as the undead elves outside in the forest collapse without their master. Between the Frostmawians and the Aer’athrad, an escape route is secured to avoid further clash. The fighting ends as suddenly as it had begun, but the smoke continues to obscure the aftermath. In that smoke, an assassin named Blut, who has coyly used his false allies to his advantage, will hover over the corpse of an arrogant necromancer, content in the knowledge that he has just risen to become one of Kahran’s generals.

Beldur pants as he looks around. Ordering his troops to stab the formerly undead as a precaution. Another group, he had go around and gather their wounded and dead. A grim task but one that was needed. He wouldn't bother greeting the others as they would've exited the cavern. Focusing rather on the after battle duties.

Blut hovers over the mans body as he kneels down greateing a blade of pure mana to decapitate the corpse for good measure before laying his head with the body and closeing the necromancers eyes. The man begins to search Qybeks body for anything good gems weapons anything of value Blut would take before useing the smoke to leave. Not a word to be said to the other "allies" He had a contract to finish and Blut expects his pay in full. Blut stays behind to search the area to find treasures and secrets. Blut would spend the whole day here checking for treasures and chests in order to find the dark secrets that the man was hideing. He had to make money some how and merc pay wasn't cutting it.

Kreekitaka hadn't a clue who Khasad was--at least not right this minute, in the midst of his battle-furor. He might have heard the name before when Kahran tried to bargain with him, or perhaps Lionel had spoken it, but that was neither here nor there. The flame scorched his shell and cooked the pieces of meat which still clung to his jawblade and carapace, but his potions kept it from doing any lasting internal damage. The chain lightning would have hurt him, had his jawblade not still been warded against electricity by Emrith's painted runes. True, he wouldn't have much in the way of protection there much longer--a few more good lightning strikes and he'd need to have them reapplied, somehow--but for now it was holding, and that was all he needed to continue his grisly massacre of the bodyguard--at least until an uyeer suddenly turned to life. He surged towards the undead crab, fighting through the line of red praetorians--focused on obliterating the abomination before Vekhnrn grew angered--but then the man at the center found himself very dead, and the uyeer fell to pieces, and the praetorians scattered. Kree had to force himself to stop--with the battle over, the adrenaline rush and the potions had him itching to keep going, to wipe out all traces of resistance. But this was sufficient. This was fine. He had wounded to care for, after all.

Beldur saw Kree return to find his wounded. The errant would point towards a tent that his men would've set up. "If you're looking for your injured troops, they're there. Still looking on the field for more." He would return to organizing the dead. Ensuring everyone who still had bodies were placed where they would be able to return to their home nation. Also ensuring that the alliance dead was respected. Berating any soldier, be they his or not, if he caught them disrespecting the dead in any way.

Gilwen She-Devil; a name to be worn with pride. In the aftermath of the battle, the elves outside the cavern took time and care to collect the bodies of their dead, both freemen and those imprisoned by Qybek. Two druids stood over each, one providing the rights and prayers of passage, while the other bent to wash the dead’s feet, drawing water from the sources provided: blood, soil, foliage. The only tears came those elves rescued, but the Aer’athrad expression lent to the idea that tears would be later shed as family were clung to in the privacy of homes. Gilwen’s own features, usually so carefully constructed into stoicism, were corrupted with pain of varying degrees and places of origins. Covered as she was in gore, she couldn’t tell where her blood started, and another’s began, and with help, she slumped at the base of a great ash tree. The process of returning home with all the wounded and the bodies would be slow going, and she forced herself to find a moment of peace while her fellow elves worked still to retrieve the dead.