When the blast struck, he found himself launched into the bar, sparing him for a moment from the view. But he managed to pull himself upright, swaying as he did so. Then he saw Fyr near him, also hurt. "Fyr?" He made his way over. It didn't look serious, thank goodness. "Hold still now." Then he rested his hand on Fyr's shoulder and recited a prayer, allowing what wounds he had undergone to heal away. "That should do you." He started to sway slightly more. Then Dalious's cry caused him to look towards the rest of the room, with all it's death and the obvious foes ahead, as well as more ladies like the first two...He adverted his eyes again, then drew forth his sword. "Seems we have a predicament here."

Flames. Screams. Moans of the soon to be dead. The crackle of burning wood where the torches which lit the room fell on the ground. All this and more could be heard from every direction. Luckily, there were now a few more holes in the tavern which allowed the smoke to clear out.

Not that it mattered for the party…being as busy as they were to stay alive.

The two tattooed assassins kept chanting their deadly spell with each passing minute bringing death’s cold embrace closer, as our party members fought off the bladed assassins.

Lapis threw her dagger at one of them but missed, laughably, as the distance between them was just too great. The dagger stuck itself somewhere in between the distance with a loud THUK.

Dal managed to injure the first assassin, fueled by his anger of losing a new friend and just as he wanted to attack again, the assassin:



Tried to strike him with his blade, ‘alas, Dal pulled his body out of the way a mere second before the blade would’ve claimed his life. Unfortunately, on the other side of the room, Arthur wasn’t as lucky. The second assassin closed the distance between the two faster than lightning and raised his blade to strike:



And managed to deliver a glancing blow to Arthur, a mere cut, nothing too dangerous. It looked like Fyr was now ready to make his move while the shadowed leader watched from a safe distance the battle, trying to pick out the most dangerous or weak member of the party to take out.

Fyr barely had enough time to raise his hands as a protective barrier in front of his face before the blast hit them all. He was partly thrown over the table, partly rolling himself across it in an attempt to build some distance even as disaster already was in progress. The result was a bleeding nose or at least that was what he could diagnose himself given the lack of time -- there was probably more he couldn't feel yet. And of course he picked up plenty of weeks, if not even months old dirt from other people's shoes as he hit the ground hard.

Great! He had hardly been given the opportunity to get rid of demonfolk blood splattered over his chest and now he was already struck by bloody scraps of intestines again! That was not to mention a few pieces of broken glass from the many bottles that had also suffered. Had the greatest pirate off all time's stare just been way too intense and energetic or had that really been a boob bomb giving everybody goose bumps ? This tavern was a damn booby trap! The sound of more footsteps came closer and a distinct and no less eerie glow could already been seen reflecting slightly from where the floor was actually polished, so quick action was in dire need.

Where had his trusty family heirloom gone ? It was quite the heavy thing, but the explosion had displaced it considerably still. Fyr was on the verge of launching himself towards it, then felt a foreign hand touching his shoulder. He heard Arthur's voice over the chaos around them, some words he couldn't understand at least verbally. Yet the unfamiliar warmth beneath his nose decayed, the bleeding was no more and so some of the other things he hadn't even been aware of yet. A very short appreciative nod was all Fyr could return before the other man's attention was drawn elsewhere again though.

So now to retrieve and use a proper weapon, finally! Only now Fyr's vision skimmed across the remainer of the room: This was not a slaughterhouse, but an extreme caricature of such! He rubbed the axe's handle against the nearest piece of halfway clean cloth he could find. It looked like some now dead man's clothes, but he needed a firm grip not weakened by blood acting as a lubricant. Five hostiles were there, three acting as backup while two apparently thought nobody would stumble across the idea that they might have more than a dagger each at their disposal.

No, certainly not after this overture! It would be them who'd be cleaved in two, not even more innocent patrons!

The axe landed harmlessly among the middle of the assassins, imbedded within the sandy floor, leading to snickers among the assassins still alive.

The leader came forward and retrieved the ax, smirking a little at Fyr as he hefted it up. "Quite a nice little toy, thank you. I know just the way to repay you." He took out a knife and threw it at Fyr.



The knife nicked Fyr's torso and lodged itself in the bar behind him.

As soon as the explosion rocked the tavern, Ashevelen slowly stood up and saw the carnage. Shaking her head, she saw how everyone was fighting with quite a streak of bad luck by the looks of it as most missed their attacks. Ashe almost face palmed herself when Lapis tried to throw the knives across the room only for them to fall flatly on the floor.

With a running start, Ashevelen shifted between enemies to attack the ones that seemed the most dangerous, the walking bombs. A jump in the air and sword poised to strike...



Only for the bombs to shift to the side at the last moment. Prepping another attack, Ashe managed to see the leader of the assassins throw a knife at Fyr and nick him.

The rest of the room became a blur in the background as the pirate focused on the one opponent before him, almost giving the man the full blame for everything that has just transpired. Dalious had already injured him during his first initial rage, though he quickly calmed down a beat and took a step back to display a fighting pose.

"You stand before the greatest pirate who's ever lived, Captain Dalious Durendail," he spoke, half swirling his blade while simultaneously half bowing. "Prepare to die!"

The assassin swung predictably as Dalious shifted quickly out of harm's way. Dalious then faked a lunge, side stepped, and stabbed his cutlass into the attacker's left ribcage. The assassin fell back momentarily in pain, pausing to check the wound. He was clearly in agony, yet still eager to fight on.

"I said, you stand before the greatest pirate of all the times!! Prepare to die!! On guard!!



They continued...

Lapis dared a glance up to see that her dagger had fallen far, far short of its target. Frustration and embarrassment overruled her fear briefly. Taking stock of the chaos around her as her companions engaged in the combat, she decided to go on the move. Someone needed to take out the glowing figures in the back. She'd wasted her own dagger, lost on the floor several feet from her, but she still had Dal's throwing knife and the dinner knives. She slid the knives under her belt and kept the throwing knife handy.



Darting from table to table, keeping crouched low to the ground, she picked her way around the room, creeping behind Dal as he fought one of the bladed fighters. She tried to keep a piece of furniture between her and the others at all times, staying as hidden as possible until she was ready to make her move. The fist gripping her borrowed blade trembled, but her gaze on the glowing, living bomb was steady.

All at once, she sprang up, ran the rest of the way toward the mage, and stabbed them. She tried to aim for the heart, but in the heat of the moment, she couldn't be sure where it was or even where she hit. She reeled backward, barely remembering to yank her weapon back out.

Arthur stared at thrown dagger, prayed in relief that Fyr wasn't hurt worse, then turned and stared at the man who thrown it. "I believe that that isn't yours's." Then he drew his sword and headed to fight the leader, only for one of the assasins to block the way. Arthur then lunged for him.



The assassin easily parried his blade, locking longsword and scimitar together.

The assassin attacked by Dal was bleeding hard and was in a great deal of pain but when Dal challenged him, he smirked. Many died upon his blade after words like this.

Dashing forward and leaving a trail of blood behind him, he lifted his blade up to strike only for another smaller blade to appear in his other hand and stab Dal in the side of his body.



Sadly, the second assassin was unlucky, as his sword missed Fyr as if he wasn't the person that he was. Almost...like magic.

Fyr looked at his axe for an instant as he realized that he had just lost his family heirloom a second time right now. It was only a tiny bit of hestitation however as way too many things were happening just now all around him, including a sword directly aimed at him.

It seemed though that the man wielding it experienced an equal amount of misfortune. The blade missed though it still came very uncomfortably close to Fyr's skin.

Bereft of his primary weapon due to his very own actions, Fyr reached for the spear he had obtained from the demonfolk back in that ugly cave and pushed the long weapon forward towards the second assassin.



The metal tip punched what looked like all the way through the man's thigh and, once Fyr started to pull back, started to exhibit some quite asymmetric behavior. In other words it acted as sort of a barbed hook and caused even more bloody destruction in the process. That leg would not work again anytime soon and, assuming that radical treatment wasn't applied very rapidly, would probably pull the rest of the man's life down with it. At least that was how Fyr thought.

The leader furrowed his brow as he took in his henchmen's leg. Then he stepped forward, swinging his axe for Fyr's spear.



But not being use to the weapon, he still needed to learn how to adjust to it. His swing missed.

While attacking one of the exploding assassins, Ashe saw how the other one's tattoos flared up like the one that destroyed the bar. Taking a deep breath, she threw her side-dagger at the assassin and...



Hit the assassin right in the head, killing him on the spot. But with her attention momentarily distracted, she didn't notice the punch that came from the one she was fighting initially.

Dalious swung and missed his opponent.



He backed up to recollect his footing stance, however he walked right into Lapis and tripped himself over her and fell to the floor, then quickly picked himself back up to his feet.

"Nine hells woman!" Dalious shouted, recollecting himself. "Stay back". His last words weren't to scold but more because there was no time to talk and he wanted her safe.

He went on guard against his attacker.

Lapis blindly stepped backward, and in her haste tripped over a body and landed on her rump. She continued to scrabble back on her hands and feet, not seeing Dal coming until it was too late. She flinched when he shouted at her, but managed to snap at him, "Like hell will I stay back!" The knife in her hand was steadier now as she stood, ran full-tilt at the glowing assassin, and stabbed him in the chest again.



The assassin stopped chanting. He clutched his twin chest wounds, looking down as if finally noticing that he had been mortally wounded. Lapis watched numbly as he stumbled, then fell to the floor, the tattoos on his skin winking out like smothered lanterns. She had the presence of mind to slink back to a hiding place beneath a table, but as the adrenaline drained out of her she began to tremble all over again. The enormity of taking a life was sinking in.

Arthur stared for a moment at what Fyr managed to do with the spear. Then steeled himself and thrusted home.



The sword pierced through, striking right through his heart and on through the back. The man's eyes gazed in shock for a moment.

"May the Lord have mercy upon you." Arthur sternly spoke. Then pulled back out the sword, allowing the man to fall to the floor, dead.

Seeing that he's almost all alone, the assassin considered his chances. Wounded, tired and outnumbered, it didn't look good for him. At all. With a look towards the leader, he steeled himself. This was his job. This was his mission. Nothing else mattered.



He lunged forward towards Fyr, angry at the death of his unit and managed to strike Fyr in the arm, a mere cut but a symbol of what's to come.

Fyr raised his fist slowly, but no less angrily as reality forced him to stare at the blood running down from his now rather demolished knuckles. That would buff out at some time for sure, but definitely not for the next days or even weeks to come without some magical assistance ? He had quite successfully knocked out the oak table with his strike, but only because the assassin he had actually intended to hit had managed to evade impending doom completely.

It had not even been that other arm where he had just suffered a cut, but the other one that had been still perfectly fine. There was no way to work around this embarrassing misery by claiming to have been impaired, was there ? Worse still, his intended victim was getting back on his feet just as Fyr was trying to start ignoring the pain...

The Leader glanced around the room, clenching his teeth. Then he took up the axe again and swung for Fyr.



But Fyr still had mind and awareness enough to dodge his axe as it swung right where his ribs had been.

Dazed as she was, Ashe looked around the room to see who's left out of the assassins but barely saw anything. The images she saw were all dancing left and right but eventually she lockedo onto what she believed to be the leader and charged forward with her sword



Only to trip over a dead body of a patron and hit her head on the ground with a loud thud.

"Impressive," Dalious said as Lapis killed one of the naked people. He watched her go back into hiding, seeing from her facial expression that the act was hard on her. Killing was never easy, even when your life depended on it. The pirate was already struggling with the nineteen or so people he had killed in his life, but this was not the time to think on such matters.

He turned to see Arthur kill the assassin that he had previously been fighting, the boy seemed to take it much better than Lapis seemed to. "Hey, that one counts as mine!"

The fighting looked to be nearing a close, in their favor. Just the assassin leader and one other assassin left. Dalious knew his team could handle the leader so he cut off the other assassin and held his cutlass up to him.

"You lot are defeated, stand down and we'll let you live,"he told him, but the attacker lunged forward anyway. Dalious easily deflected his strike, then knocked the assassin's blade away. Dalious hit the assassin with the hilt of his sword, bringing the man to his knees. The pirate sheathed his weapon, only to pull out his crossbow and aim it at the defeated man's face.



As he loaded the weapon with a bolt, more for a show of dominance than anything, he spoke, "It's over mate, look around. We have you completely defeated!". Dalious gestured toward the room. Immediately they watched Ashe go toward the leader, only to trip on a corpse and bash her head on the floor. "...she uhm...she meant to do that. A scare tactic, of course."

Dalious cleared his throat, then slapped the assassin with his free hand. "Nevermind that! You killed all these innocent people, and for what? Why!? Who are you, more importantly who sent you after us!! Who in the hells.....". Dalious, in his anger, accidentally squeezed the trigger of his crossbow and fired the bolt direct into the assassin's face. The man flopped over dead. "Oh, shite!! Oops."