@AzureKnight,
@PaulHaynek
With the father and his baby safely away, hopefully to make it out of the village without running into further hazards, Coco's quest continued. As the werecat rounded a corner, she performed a remarkable feat of self-lag, pulling back to behind the house she'd just rounded, once she saw what waited ahead. It was the fire-demoness, along with a Varjan wearing a suspicious mask and brandishing metal claws which likely weren't meant for wood-working. There was also a whole pile of ... Coal...? No, those were definetely too big o' piles to just be random charcoal lying about. Dead shizuyamans taken by the fires? No, the village hadn't bee set ablaze for that long, there was no way the fires lit in the buildings would have done
that at such speeds.
So, that meant that this was most likely the remains of Varjans. Courtesy of that fire-demon. Didn't really take a genius to figure that out, especially with the shrieking of children that Coco had heard a bit earlier. Not exactly makin g afavorable impression on the locals if you're allowing their children to watch as you char people into carbon right infront of them? Then again, that girl hadn't seemed too bright during their exchanges with Lady Kyouko and the two armored fellows. Coco sighed.
She'd no intention of getting involved in this scuffle. She'd attacked the Varjan warriors cornering the father and his son because she took them by surprise, but she'd no desire to make her presence known to an abberation in the Varjan ranks like this. Plus, if this demoness was alright with just straight up incinerating people into ash, then she really doubted there was any need to interfere. After all, if push came to shove, the demon would probablhy just burn down everything around her in order to survive. Thus, a decision was made!
And that decision was to 100% Vara and the weirdo in the Freddy Kruger-get-up and go somewhere far, far away! Yup. Time to make like a cat and gracefully
escape move on to somewhere else~
And so she did!
Coco would thus simply continue her tour of the burning village, carefully moving through the streets, using her ears and sharp eyes to keep herself appraised and informed about her surroundings. The werecat mage would stop to offer beleaguered townsfolk her aid - either by removing obstacles in their paths or by thrashing Varjan mooks - so long as it didn't put her in any immediately unfavorable positions. Of course, by that same course of action, the actual numbers of villagers she did help were probably not as numerous as it could have been, had she been as ... Energetic, as say Sidoneus or Gwen or Vara in her own efforts.
But cats be lazy.
She figured helping a few more locals would be more than enough, then it was time to head on back towards where their little group of heroes were to reconvene. It'd most likely be a good idea to get there before the others, to make sure the area was safe and secure, naturally. Not because she wanted to slack off or avoid doing any more actual work. Hah, nonsense!
@PaulHaynek
"Unf...! You brute, how dare you! Take this!" A most indignant Gwendolyn chirped, after being hit in the horn with an axe. She swung her scythe, but it missed again, and now the Varjan warrior was trying to use his shield to bulldoze her into a building. Which was on fire. Which was just not a good time. For anyone. Period.
Unfortunately, the Varjan warrior would soon learn that there are few things with as sure feet as goats. Or, more specifically, goat-girls. As the man rammed his arrow-blocking-object into the little baphomet, there was not more than a comedic
clonk-!-noise, as both him and his (not actually) immovable object came to a complete halt.
Gwendolyn stared at the man for a bit, blinking in confusion. Then a proverbial candle lit up above her head and she finally realized what the guy was trying to do.
"Ho-ho! You dastardly fiend, trying something like that while possessing not but this amount of paltry strength? Know thy place, worm!" A strangely excited and smiling Gwen announced.
... She then raised one leg, plonked her hoof onto the shield's face... And pushed. With all her might. Like she was trying to stomp on an empty can of soda, or something. Well, regardless, she put a lot of heft into her pseudo-kick-shove-move.
Which, as we all can rightfully imagine, wasn't exactly what the Varjan soldier had been expecting. Especially not when he was sent flying backwards, through the air, across the street, and into the wall of the building on the opposite end of the road. With a loud clatter and crashing. Again, Gwendolyn looked at the man, blinking a few times.
"Wai-- What, no? No! That wans't how this was supposed to go! I was supposed to kick your shield out of your hands and we were meant to engage in an epic bout of grappling! Hey! ARe you even listening!?" A most upset baphomet was flailing her arms and puffs of train-whistle-like smoke was shooting out of her up-right ears as she berated the collapsed man for his... Transgression? Failure to meet expectations? Whatever it was, the guy was just having a bad day.
After it became painfully clear that the poor sod wasn't getting back onto his feet to try and challenge her again, Gwendolyn huffed and pouted, placing her scythe's butt-end onto the ground and making it fade into the ether from where it had appeared. She was mildly annoyed. But only mildly. ANd it passed soon enough as she started moving once again - as the excitement of her next potential encounter filled her with the endless possibilities of what could be.
In fact, so consumed by her own delusions was she that the baphomet didn't even realize the street took a sharp turn at one point, and instead charged head-first through one of the wooden walls of one of the burning buildings. This in turn placed her inside a living room or something, where a group of mo less than six manly Varjan men were bravely brandishing blades against a most worthy adversary! A mother and her two daughters! Or maybe it was a woman and her nieces? Whatever the case, they were unarmed, unarmored and most assuredly a threat to any armed military force!
All of the occupants were, of course, somewhat perturbed by the fact that one of the walls had just exploded and a tiny, medicine-ball-chest goat-girl had just entered into the domecile, looking equally confused and bewildered as the on-lookers. However, the mutual surprise didn't last very long. The women yelped and the men growled, snarled and made uncalled-for comments, before beginning to advance.
Shaking her head, horns and ears free from debris, splinters and ash, Gwen managed to somehow regain her bearings and comprehension of where she was and what was going on.
"A second group of maidens needing saving? Fewr not, I, Gwendolyn, is he- Woah! Hey! Watch it, buddy!" Gwen's speech was interrupted as one of the varjans rudely charged ahead and tried to remove her head from her shoulders. It seemed these fellows weren't keen on entertaining her. Which caused the little lady to frown.
"Quickl, you three! Out through the hole I made... For, uh, for you! Yes. Leave this to me." The short-stack called to the women, before narrowly evading the attack of another soldier.
The good news were that the lads didn't have enough room inside the... Room... To all charge at her at once, unless they wanted to collide with their brothers. The bad news was that there were six of them, one of Gwen and three women who couldn't fight back in any meaningful way at all. Add onto that the fact that the house they were in was on fire - again - and the possibility that there were more Varjans out there in the streets... Well, things just weren't great athe moment.
Thus, Gwen took it upon herself to solve this issue quickly, by way of magic Taking a breath as she bounced backwards a few steps, she charged magical energies into her palms and between her fingers, weaving a spell. The men shouted and raved about kiling
the witch before she could get her cast off, and none of the boys slouched on that front. Unfortunately, their attempts amounted to little more than widl, desperate swings which failed to connect, or only managed to graze the baphomet, failing to do any real damage or stopping her spell.
"Howling winds, I order you! Blow my enemies afar! Tempest Twister!!"For anyone interested, the spell 'Tempest Twister' does not actually exist and is merely the product of Gwendolyn's own, terribly corny sense of naming.
But despite this, a spell nontheless manifested. In the form of a giant-ass horizontally aligned cyclone, with the rough diameter of the front of a truck... Which, as you can imagine inside a confined space like this, caused it to take up most of the interior... And blew a hole, and sent most of the house as a whole, crashing out the opposite end of Gwendolyn's position...
Which was also unfortunately where the Varjans had were standing.
If they all got caught up in it, they'd be most likely subjected to a brief aerial trip, before crashing down in the waters some ways beyond the town's coast... And if some of they somehow managed to avoid the ginormous vaccuum-clearner-expulsion that had just happened, well, let's just say the building was no longer structurally sound.
