Shadow Slayers

Altheron looked down at his feet. Ooro was right; he wasn't at all fast or strong, but he knew he could help.

"I just thought..... I could help. Back at home, I used to climb trees to get fruit... hmm....." His voice started to waver as he tried to come up with a solution. None of Ooro's suggestions sounded very nice to him.

"Oh, I know!" he shot up, breaking out of his saddened state. "What if I climb onto your back?" 

Alroth - that identity referring to the suit of armor and its persona rather than the tiny woman inside - immediately drew his mace and shield, unlatching the weapon's chain so that it was converted into flail form. It had been a while since the church, but only now was this whole thing starting to feel like a mistake. These fearen were perhaps manageable, but this was only the first wave in an onslaught that could only get worse as they continued their journey. But this was no time to be thinking about the future. Alroth's controller quickly cast a spell, connecting the armor's movements to her own. She was definitely going to need the precision here.

Being on the left side of the caravan, Alroth immediately took the group's left flank. He held his shield in front of him and crouched behind it to be in the most defensible combat stance possible. His flail was out behind him, ready to be swung as soon as necessary. There were a few seconds between them and the fearen. They were very tense seconds, but they provided the chance for the pixie to survey the surrounding area with her firefly drone. Yup - they were completely surrounded.

"I've got the left!" she yelled, the armor's enchantments amplifying her voice to a louder, more human volume. The pixie didn't bother trying to disguise her tiny vocal tone. By now most of the others had either figured out her ruse or witnessed it first hand, so there wasn't much point trying to pretend around them anymore.

With most of the other fighters being fragile mages and range-types, there really wasn't anyone to contest Alroth's position. By claiming the left side he expected the others to stay behind him in that direction, since passing by him would put them in considerably more danger on the front line. The pixie puppeteer was clever and quick-thinking, but she didn't have the mind to suggest anyone take the other three sides. Her mind was more focused on her own place in the battle, and only those that were directly affected by it. Hopefully someone would, though, as a stationary formation would benefit them much more in this ambush situation. Getting separated meant getting surrounded again, and they would stand a lot less chance in that case.

With a mighty heave, Alroth threw his first attack, flailing his massive ball into the body of a charging bulk fearen. The creature's armor was easily shattered by the attack, but the blow was missing the right leverage to immediately kill the beast. The huge metal ball thudded against the ground, and Alroth pulled it back to his side to prepare another attack.

Fearens?

There's no way he could take down any of these things. Most of his other opponents were easy to read since they were humanoid. A fearen had no emotion other than kill, kill, and kill some more. With that he had only one thing on his side though: unpredictability. He swiped a small notebook from a corpse hanging from a half destroyed building. Thankfully, the corpse was recently rotting, the information could prove reliable. He retreated into the building where the corpse was hanging and played dead while reading up on critical information.

He flipped through the pages, skimming the contents. The contents within shared some critical information on these fearens, including their weaknesses. Osseus made an almost inaudible groan as he realized that a majority of these 4 types of fearens that were documented had majority magic weaknesses. There was no way he could fight any of these without quick thinking, and even then it only worked on hound and bulk fearens.

Right after he thought that, a giant bulk fearen loomed over the building. Still playing dead, the bulk fearen slowly sauntered away. With this, Osseus rose from under the dead body, stuffed the book into his hood, and scaled the building, ready to break that bulky monstrosity's cover. He jumped from the highest point, leg stretched out in order to get the full force of his kick, and broke the shell easily. With that, he scaled the remaining portion of the creature and sliced off the head of the weakened fearen with nothing but a rather small sword.

"This won't be too hard, huh...." Osseus thought to himself. Maybe his lack of magic could help with all of these magic users here. Maybe he was...worth something.

((by the way the information in the book was stuff written on the intro post))

   Fearens now surrounded the group, inching closer from all angles. Her eyes darted across the field, trying to find a safe spot, but alas their seemed to be a lack of areas for her to shroud herself in. To make matters worse, there was no opening between their enemies. "Altheron! We'll have to discuss this later, it seems your job is calling you," she says quickly as her body begins to withdraw from the scene. "If you have an injury, let me know. Good luck!" Ooro wasted no time in hiding herself away. Unlike her peers, she did not possess any special abilities that gave her an edge in battle. Her duty was to provide and patch up wounds as needed, but otherwise all she could was spectate from afar at the very best. 

   Inside the cloud, she huddled up against a dimly lit area as to try and conceal herself. Unfortunately, they were confined to a tight space, so there was not much she could do in terms of subtlety. Outside were the roars of the Fearen, who howled vigorously and charged. Her eyes could only catch a glimpse of the battle, but over time in the forest when her ears began to change, so did her hearing. The sounds of metal clanking and sparks shooting up in the air had become audible to her. Hopefully, she could hear a recruit's cry if they needed aid over the Fearens' blood-curdling shrieks. 

   There is nothing to do, but wait at this moment... Doubt began to settle in, her spot was still all-too-open for Fearen to intrude. While her speed was certainly an advantage, she could only dodge attacks for so long. It was only a matter of time before they would spot her.

  As her thoughts became overwhelmed with those of worry, her stomach churned. A sharp pang hit her in the gut. She moved one hand to hold it for a moment... her face contorting with pain. Sweat dripped from her forehead, this feeling was familiar... and to have it happen now only served to terrify her further. Her ears perked up at the sound of a screech overhead, followed by the swing of a venomous stinger. She had evaded it barely by an inch, but the beast swung itself again. The pain in her sharpened, and she doubled over in response. She was right in the way of the stinger...

Enoch's face was set into a hardened glare, watching grimly as many of the fighters blindly went darting in. "No no... There's no strategy, they're going to get themselves killed..." He shook his head and shifted his focus to the problem at hand as several bulky forms lumbered towards him and Daryn.

Enoch shot Daryn a quick look and began readying some Haste magic to speed Daryn's time up. "Focus on the big guys and hit them with everything you've got. Dodge as best as you can. If you get into a tight spot I'll bail you out." He lifted his glaive, the magic changing the flow of time around Daryn and making her movements appear 5 times as fast to the unaffected eye.

He smirked a bit and proceeded to cast a Slow spell on the surrounding fearen. Pointing his glaive at the enemy, he stepped into a fighting stance and shouted, "I'll follow your lead, be careful!!"

 

Show time. Manasa wouldn't repeat the same mistakes she made before. Everbody would stay alive, and it would be thanks to her. Manasa found a clearing away from the battle and focused on her allies.

Manasa started rhythmically swaying her hips and shoulders in alternating isolations. Ideally she would have done this before the fight started, but she could pull it off now. Of course she could. As her dance went on it got more complex, her eyes began to glow a bright gold. A few fearen of varying type caught attention of her glowing eyes and turned towards, beginning to close in. This wasn't good. Manasa could probably hold her own, but doing so would mean interrupting her dance, rendering it useless. She knew she shouldn't have tried something so complex right now, but she wanted to impress the others... She wanted to show off. Manasa prayed for back up as she rushed through the remaining steps of her dance, glow in her eyes growing more intense.

As the sound of flapping wings passed overhead, Enoch quickly put up a barrier around the two of them, blocking the ice spikes entirely. "Hold on one moment," He watched curiously as they flew overhead towards a different target somewhere behind then, but not before pouring out another rain of spikes. He lowered the barrier and held up his glaive.

Once Daryn's spell wore off completely, he immediately cast the Haste spell again, renewing the Slow spell on the couple of fearen coming directly at them, catching his breath for a moment. "Don't worry about it. Focus on fighting, and only start worrying if I need to stop time and rescue you!"



Enoch looked over in surprise before focusing on Daryn as he responded. "We need to evenly space out our forces! Everyone is scattered, Daryn and I have no combat mage or long ranged attacker. The formation is staggered and fearen are already swarming through. We need to start pulling back in!"