The first Etoile knew of the antimagic field was the barge stopping. This did a few things to her. Firstly, the door in front of her slammed open from the sheer force of momentum, revealing that there was literally nothing on the other side and that she'd gotten up in arms about what was probably a gust of particularly irritating wind. Secondly, she pitched forwards into an epic-level faceplant. She took the fall on her metal right arm—which, she realized with some horror, had gone totally dead—before her forehead donked against the deck and she let out a high mewling sound that she immediately wanted to punch herself for. Her sabre was ripped from her grasp by the fall, tumbling away from her and clanking upon the deck, only narrowly avoiding the edge of the barge.
Disoriented, confused, unable to use her dominant arm, embarrassed at the
noise she made and deeply cross, she stumbled to her feet with a horribly aching head, hoping that she wasn't concussed, breathing heavily. She was in full-on fight-or-flight mode, ready to beat the ever-living piss out of the first thing to get anywhere near her that she didn't expressly want to stop from being injured. She breathed deeply for a moment before growling out an angry "
Impulsus ventus!" at the door to slam it shut and maybe take out some of her frustration. So imagine her surprise when nothing happened. The door remained open, her palm remained outstretched, and the wind remained eerily still after the constant howling wind of motion that she'd become so used to. Her eyes widened fractionally in something between more confusion and panic.
Slightly off-kilter, she dashed over to her sabre, hefting it in her biological left hand before giving it the same Ventus-magic treatment that she'd given it before. And as with the previous spell, nothing happened.
"
What's going on?" she asked nobody in particular, voice ever-so-slightly quavering before she shook her head.
No time for that. Focus down, Etoile. Whatever's going on, you can deal with it. She took a deep breath. She'd read about antimagic fields in her training, and about how they could suddenly form over bargeways and other modes of transport, causing catastrophic accidents. She just needed to wait for it to pass, or for the barge service to come with more manual modes of transport and shove the
Eoldysseus out of the zone.
Then a shadow flitted across the barge. She looked into the sky, glaring angrily at whatever obnoxious cloud decided to make the day even worse on her when she realized that there were more important things to worry about than a lack of sunny weather. There was, in fact, a massive flock—swarm?—of birds bearing down on the barge. Etoile narrowed her eyes. There were a lot of things wild animals would do when a fast-moving object suddenly stopped in their general vicinity, but to come dive-bomb it en masse was not one of them. Whatever was going on, it was setting off her inner alarms something fierce.
A particularly-nasty looking raven broke off from the flock and dove straight for her. Holding the sabre at her hip, she waited for the last moment before lashing out with it, neatly bisecting the screaming aerial vermin and spinning out of the way before its dark blood could splatter all over her face, where it had clearly been heading. She was now deeply glad that she'd trained a little bit with her left hand; while it was nowhere near as good as her right with the sword, it was at least workable.
She heard the kid say something and realized that she had been right. Trying her best to ignore the fact that she'd made a less-than-dignified sound in his presence a few moments ago, she shook her head as she looked at him. "
The fact that you even have to ask that makes me even more sure you have a death wish. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting out of here right about now, and I'd suggest you to come with me if you want to have any hope of making it to the next town alive."
She was making her way over to the side of the barge, preparing herself for the painful jolt of dropping twenty-odd feet, before she realized something, stopping short and hissing in a breath before breaking into a dash, headed for the still-open door.
Damnitall! The idiots inside won't have a chance! I need to get them out!@Altered Tundra@Kal-El
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