Scout, but try not to engage. A easy enough task, or at least it was a task that was meant to be easy. After Nimruil dropped Inithelian off somewhere near Daelin's Point, he took a moment to gather his surroundings and plot the best course of action ahead. Walking through the locals, he could catch whispering and idle chatter and gossip. Everyone's topic at hand? Naga. Great, was all the blood mage thought to himself. Fish people, just what I needed, Ini should have taken this place instead. Nimruil sighed to himself, adjusting the rapier at his side to tighten it's leather harness. The path most logical out of the fort, that is where he would go. However the path most logical, he would also quickly find was somewhat not the best; discovery of blockades and militia posted, and in the distance on the coast....Naga. He stopped clear before he even got to the exit of the fort and heaved a sigh. "Of course, why did I possibly think the roads would be clear. Oh no, fucking fish people just have to ruin my day." He grumbled audibly to himself, raising brows from the locals as he backtracked the way he came. Side areas, he would have to trudge around side areas, which judging by the local meant wading through farmlands and hills. Great.
A break in the wall from earlier bombardments with Naga harpoons, and a little jump down, and Nim slipped past the walls of the fort to land on the outskirts. The first thing he did was check the perimeter near him, just to see if there were any nasties in the direct vicinity. He saw nothing, at least not to the naked eye. He had great eyesight....when it wasn't bright ass sunlight. Even with lenses in his mask he always had a harder time seeing in the daylight. Squinting up at the sun, hand shrouding over the eyes of his mask, Nim took stock of what direction he was in, and where he needed to go. North, he needed to go North...and there was North with just a little turn of his body. Hand gripping the hilt of his rapier, and off he went. Heels had to carefully pick through the rocky, grassy terrain of what was essentially coastal farmland as far as the eye can see. Nim's head was on a swivel, eyes darting from side to side, he didn't really want to be caught unaware by a Naga...or worse, one of their Sea Giants they allied with.
Nothing was really known of the location that Mac had given him, other than warnings of Naga, which he could clearly see on the horizon. Naga, Sea Giants and absolutely massive creatures in which resembled a eel that grew far too large for their own goods. Nim kept to the edges, cutting through the hills to end up on the coast near the little island he was tasked in observing, steering clear from the Naga entirely; let the locals handle that, it wasn't exactly his pressing problem in the moment. At a distance as he watched the island grow closer on the horizon, the man initially thought that his area might have actually been promising, but nothing would have prepared him for how fundamentally wrong he was.
It was the scent that hit him first, a scent he knew all too well from all of his time spent with Mordred. The heavy, cloying scent of oil clogging his keen senses, stuffing his nose. The air grew heavy with it the closer he approached the coast between shoreline and island, a scent that combined with the distinct tang of metal. Clanking, whirring, cogs and wheels echoing a racket along the water; heavy machines were heard first, and seen second once Nim had actually stepped foot on the beach. His jaw dropped. The waters were thick and viscous, blackened by oil slicking the very tops of once pristine salt waters. Plumes of smoke belched in the air from the machines dotted along the coast, sinking into the earth like his own fangs sunk into a bite.
Shouts off to his side shook him from his reverie, snapping his focus to the source of the disturbance. The crude language and slang of Goblins assaulted his ears, as several of the creatures themselves started sprinting for Nim. "*Shit," He swore to himself, and took off into a sprint further down the coastline, directed away from the distant fort. Sand kicked up by his heels, spraying behind him as he trudged through, but running in sand was gods awful and didn't exactly allow his full potential. Lungs burned and legs pounded, attention hyper focused ahead of him. That is, until a explosion abruptly rocketed at his side, sending shrapnel and heated sand flying all around the magi. He hissed, throwing his hands up to protect himself from the rain of debris, though some metal had tore through the softer bits of his armors to rip bloodied wounds dotted along his body. A quick glance threw over his shoulder to quick what was happening, and it was a glance just in time to see that several of the maybe eight or so Goblins had rocket launchers trained on him. Directing his attention away, even for a split second, while still running would prove hazardous for Nim, as his run had him barreling straight for a oil spill slicking up the sand ahead of him. Footing slipping from under him, lean body flailed into a slide akin to that of someone on a frozen lake without blades. His body tumbled forward, flipping and rolling through the sand to dirty himself with beach debris and thick stains of oil; making him look like the strangest abstract painting of sand, oil and blood.
Though fate almost seemed kind, in a ironic twist, it was his fall that saved his life as the three rockets shot at him went zooming straight over his head; barely just missing contact with him in a close degree that was not at all comfortable. The rockets shot ahead of him, exploding upon contact with the beach to send more waves of sand into the air and crash down in a messy heap. Dirty, pissed, and with something of a twisted ankle now, Nim grit his teeth in a lowly growl rumbling within his chest. The magi flipped himself from his stomach to his back, facing the oncoming Goblins still shouting at him in that horrid dialect of theirs. He smirked behind his expressionless, blood wept mask as both hands raised. One gloved tugged down, exposing the dark grey of his palm only for the width of his flesh to be sliced into by a sharpened silver thumb ring adorning him. A flash of sanguine, a aura of red and wide, wicked eyes glinted behind his mask with a cruel and unseen grin. The Goblins had no idea what as coming, had not clue, and had no way to prepare.
Both of Nim's hands rose towards the Goblins with that vibrant bloody glow twisting around long fingers, muttering incoherently under his breath with a reverb to his voice that sounded....wholly unnatural, wholly unholy. It wouldn't be quick, wouldn't even be noticeable at first by the Goblins, in fact they would be allowed to get closer and closer to Nim before they would start to really feel the start of their demise. It would start with a little heat, perhaps they were just running too hard, or the fuses of their rockets a little too potent. Then came the sweats and the sluggishness, slowing their run down from stubby little legs moving frantically to stumbling about. Then would come the confusion, the delirium as the heat rose steadily within their body. A fever, but not just any fever, a fever controlled by the twisting of blood manipulation. Slower, slower, hotter, hotter....the Goblins were forced into a complete halt nearly at Nim's feet. They panted and yelped, clawing at themselves as if to dig into a unseen itch....or to open their veins and vent the heat building within them. A little fever would become a liquid wildfire running through their bodies. Green skin started to physically bubble as the blood in their very bodies turned against them and *boiled* like a pot left too long on the burner. Screams of agony, and then the dull thud of collapsing corpses, and the Goblins which sought to end Nim, were snuffed out.
Satisfied by his magic's work, Nim smoothly brought himself to a stand, brushing his hands along his armors to flake off excess sand. A deep scowl was brought to his face, however, when he looked at the state of himself. New armors tattered by shrapnel, pieces of metal still sticking out of his skin, and oil smudged absolutely everywhere. He was going to need to bring those in for repairs and professional cleaning, and he wasn't the happiest about it. He leaned down, swiping one of the rocket launchers away from a dead Goblin, uncaring on the roughness of removing it from his grasp. If someone was going to show him the disrespect of shooting missiles at him, he wasn't going to show the respect of careful loot recovery. He turned the contraption in his hands over a few times, humming to himself. "Mord will like this." He stated to himself out loud before hoisting the thing over his shoulder. "Fuck this place." Was his firm stance on his section of the coast. With little more fanfare, Nim stepped over several dead Goblins, picking his way between them and made a definite journey back to the fort. He was officially done with this place.
