The group was divided into three groups: The Wards team would focus on ensuring the wards around Apoplexy were in place, protecting the mages maintaining the wards, and providing ranged support. This team consisted of Autgar, Viktor, Jancis, Andronikos Thorne, Tiergan, Sejad, and Milo. The Assault team would directly engage Apoplexy on the front lines. N'hara, Berrod, Huggin Sigrun, Natja, Zachary, Reks, Edari, and Orion were on this team. The Piercer team would be opperating a series of ballistae to assail Apoplexy from afar. Kotoe, Martin, Gregos, and Louma'li would be handling them.
Everyone knew their role. There could be no mistakes today. Apoplexy was a threat to the realm and countless people would die if they didn’t destroy it here and now.
Orion, who had been mistaken for Apoplexy’s master, managed to lure it out into the open. The assault team had prepared a crude trap for it, a trip-wire that ran the length across the major road. The simple trap ended up working as intended and, attempting to follow the road towards the bridge that lead out of Ternli, it stumbled. The battle began and N'hara bolted into the fray first, fists thrumming with power from chakras and enchantments both. He, Huginns, and Orion assaulted its legs to cripple it while Edari let loose a hail of bullets. Reks and Zachary assisted in shielding and defense while Natja leaped into the air and brought her massive weapon down on it’s body like a guillotine. The slice cleaved the creature in half, dropping the body to the ground in a bloody mess.
Nobody expected that to be the end… especially not when coins and gems… and weapons began to fall from the sky.
Above them all, the red mists parted revealing the true lake of blood of Ternli. It began to rain, the blood falling to the ground and pooling into puddles.
The puddles began to shift and move, slowly rising up and taking hold of the fallen weapons as each puddle turned into a solider… a soldier in an army of the dead.
The group pulled itself into a defensive position, circling Orion, Reks, and Edari. Blade and fist, spell and bullet tore through one ashkin after another, their area attacks cutting vast swaths of the creatures down, but overwhelming numbers were still in favor of the monsters. Several moments of intense fighting had only reduced them down to about three fourths of their strength. The missing head of Apoplexy showed itself in that moment, decending from the sky in an explosion that rocked the wards and shattered them whole. The blood creatures converged on the head, as if to protect it from their advance towards it.
They wouldn’t give it any moment to grow stronger. If anyone could end the creature in a single strike, it was Natja and her murderous greatsword.
N'hara called upon all of his chakras and his internal aether to loose Lightbringer in its direction, cleaving a path towards it. Orion followed suit, using a summoned bird of flame to continue burning the path. Edari unleased a torrent of flames from a flamethrower. Zachary and Huginn burtalized ever more. Reks blessed the battlefield and shielded the viera.
Apoplexy broke from the head, reavealing itself with a roegadyn-looking body, but parts that looked like they came from the company’s various allies.
Natja, furious, made the charge. Her blade cleaved through everything around her, a ballet of glorious slaughter as he made her way to Apoplexy. The other teams were moving to intercept it; the piercer team shot a ballista bolt at it, halting its tracks. The wards team made a barricade to keep it from advancing out of the city any further.
The Astral Advent struck true. Blade and bolt and magic wrought utter destruction upon the creature, obliterating it in a moment just before its vile magics could try and kill all present. The blood vanished, the mists became just that, and the din of battle grew silent.
The group took time to rest and recover, to bandage themselves up and recover at least a little bit of the strength they’d spent taking down the voidsent. A few were recruited to help collect some of the treasure that had fallen when the lake of blood dissipated. Although N’hara wasn’t much for collecting treasure after a fight, it certainly was a lot of money… and perhaps some of it could go to refilling the company’s coffers to compensate for all everyone was getting paid for their heroism.
N’hara mainly wanted a bath and a good night’s rest. With the voidsent gone, all things were sure to heal in time…
stormborns
jbbartram-illu
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
areudirty
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
