Hey everyone, I talked with Fading and will leave this RP due to personal reasons, thank you to all of you who engaged with my character, hope you all have a good time going forward
Thank shit she didn't seem upset over his explanation, who knew that saying you are sorry could have positive consequences from time to time. Not that he was planning on making it a habit, mama raised... someone who should give them more often if he was being honest with himself but he just felt too awkward giving them, out of place and insincere -even when he WAS- so really, they should feel happy that he was even willing to give one from time to time.
Giving Mac a nod in return to postpone the conversation he focused again on the path ahead, now which one to choose?
"...-ok, so does anyone else other than myself see the large amount of spirits of the dead, as in ghosts, all over the place here?"
Lillianna's words gave him pause, ghosts? sure they had fought against orcs and skeletons but ghosts? Not that he didn't believe it, even were they still on Earth(?) he would still have believed her to some degree, what he didn't expect was for her to be some sort of medium. Looking in her direction he started to feel a slight burn in his eyes for a second making him start frothing them with the back of his hand.
"Ugh, shit, did my allergies jumpstart or someth... what the hell?"
Now in front of him, he could see the mage again but this time she was not alone, she appeared to be conversating with some sort of silhouette, a man by the looks of it, looking around he could see what she was referring to earlier, there were silhouettes all around them, both human and not with some of them missing chums of what should be part of their bodies, the only thing they all shared in common was the empty but shining eyes they all seemed to share.
Okay, this was getting freakier by the moment, hopefully they were just laying spirits that weren't planning on anything bad toward the living.
"Ok, so one of the dead spirits here just let me know there is a small pack of direwolves coming from the south. I don't care if I sound crazy, and I don't know if these wolves followed us here or are from here already, but we need to get ready for an attack from our rear.
Now."
Puta madre!
It really said something about their adaptability that rather than question Lillianna they all seemed to prepare for the battle ahead with Adam collapsing the bridge and Clive and Joji taking the front from where the wolves were supposed to appear. They weren't prepared enough for the speed of the wolves however, with the bigger ones surrounding Adam in a flash and another bitting and wounding Joji before he managed to kill it, Fenna didn't lose time and went to help Adam against the wolf with the strange tail. Zell tried to follow in her footsteps but had a run-in with one of the lesser wolves.
"James, that blinding spell would be pretty good right now!"
The Fighter words ran true against his mind and he didn't hesitate, reaching that space at the back of his mind felt easier each time he did it, and with barely an effort of will he made the familiar gun gesture with his hand and shot the spell towards the overgrown canine.
"Here! Kill it and help Adam!" The wolf couldn't help but flinch the moment the spell collided with its face and he wondered what sort of effect it had when everything reacted like that once hit, the wolf opened its jaws and released Zell's blade, allowing the Swordman to...
For a moment he felt like he stepped away from whatever reality they were on and moved into a movie, that was the only explanation for what Zell managed to do.
First, as soon as the wolf released his sword Zell retreated a few steps and then entered into a stance for a second before lunging at the animal, he could feel his pulse accelerate as the wolf appeared to sense the attack somehow and respond with a claw to the coming Englishman, only for its paw to met air and then fall to the ground as Zell transformed his lunging attack into a roll backward that severed said paw before getting to his feet. Enraged and in pain, the wolf jumped intending to use its other claw to tear his head off but Zell, undeterred, used his superior footwork to evade the blow by mere inches while taking the opportunity to chop off its other paw. At the end of its arc Zell didn't waste time and before the wolf could attack again jumped on its back and drove his blade directly into its skull making it twitch one, twice before slumping onto the ground completely immobile.
For a moment he and Zell shared a look of incredulity for what he had just done before the howling of another wolf drove them back to reality. "Help Adam, we can hold them off!" Noddiding the swordsman set towards the Druid position. As soon as he saw him set off he started casting the same ability that he had used only once before, this time with more confidence in his words, more faith.
"I call to you Lord Undaya, Ruler of the seas and King of the ocean, bestow upon us your blessing, to be as cold and unwavering as you are in the deep below"
As soon as he felt the Blessing settle on his party members he called. "Buff's in, fuck them up!"
Zell's comment made his grimace deepen a little more and a weight settled on his stomach as the group moved to follow his decision... which lasted exactly 18 seconds as MacKenzie suddenly decided it was a good idea to become French Spiderwoman.
"SINCE WHEN THE FUCK CAN SHE DO THAT!!!!???"
After a moment of gaping he quickly composed himself, fuck the look on his face must have been stupid, thankfully almost everyone else had similar expressions of stupefaction on their faces. After they managed to get their act together the journey proved to be as stressful as he dreaded, even if they didn't outright start a fight it was still pretty fucking scary when one of the bigger wolves seemed to want to get a quick bite, thank fucking god for the arrow wielding fighters and their quick hands. But of course, it couldn't be as simple as crossing the wolves' territory and being fine and dandy afterward, could it? there had to be a damned maze of what appeared to be natural means blocking the path. An idle part of him wondered if perhaps they had somehow managed to offend god so much that he went to mess with them just because.
Fuck me. Were any of you good at those maze puzzles when you were alive?
"Fuck both of us then"
Undeterred by their pessimism the party continued ahead following Adam's instructions until they come to a dead end, for a moment he was afraid that they had to double back because that would just suck only for Adam to decide to put on his Big-Boy-Magical-Pants and cast something that put to shame his light show a while ago. "Well that is one way to make someone feel inferior" Then he remembered Lilliana's coffin exit and his brow twitched "D-Did I just get the short end of the stick or what?"
Whatever the case he followed Adam's instructions and carefully crossed the improvised tree bridge alongside Joji, plant control seemed like a terrifingly cozy power if he could say so himself, for a moment he wondered if the Druid could command two trees to grow a hammock between them and what would it take to convince him to make one for him if he could, sleeping rolls were fine and everything but hammocks just ruled for a reas-
A sudden noise and an exclamation of fear later made his heart jump to his throat, looking back at the bridge he barely managed to get a glimpse of Zell's armor as he fell but before he could even think about moving a muscle to help MacKenzie threw herself over the edge and pulled both of them a moment later. He could still hear his heart roaring in his chest as he watched them cross the rest of the way, only after MacKenzie went to scout ahead did he escape from his stupor.
The first thing he did was let out a series of curses as he went to check on the almost-fallen Sworman.
"Shit, fuck, crap, shit, hell, shit, fuck!" Reaching him he didn't wait for a second before examining him and firing question after question "How do you feel? Does anything hurt? Can you talk?" It was only after he heard Zell's response that he calmed himself, said calm then switched to anger, then worry, then irritation, and finally settled on concern, taking a deep breath he said "Just... just be careful dude" .
Then he went to talk to MacKenzie as she came back with yet more wonderful news, at least this time the dead weren't coming for their brains.
"Hey dude, just wanted to say thank you, without you we would have likely lost Zell and that would have sucked, even if he is a moron sometimes" He attempted to give her a smile but all it came to his face was a tired grimace and a sigh, but as he talked he could vaguely remember her trying to talk to zombie-him in the morning, man that made him feel like an asshole "Also, I think you tried to speak to me after we cleaned camp? Sorry I am really bad at the whole 'being a morning person thing' and I'm basically on autopilot, could you tell me what you wanted to say?" Hopefully it wasn't too late to make amends, god knows he didn't want to lose one of the few people he was coming to see as a friend.
Maybe thinking that he had woken up turned out to be wrong after all, yeah he reacted and did all the things that he should have done but there was still this small part of him that was still in Lalaland even as they started to move, and talk between each other, it was frankly just Adam talking directly to him that broke him of his fugue.
"As the one who probably knows more about strategy than anyone else here, what do you think we should do?"
At his words, his mind went from 0 to 100, and the reality of what was going on settled on his shoulders once again.
He reaaaalllyy missed his morning coffee.
Adopting a thinking position to win time for himself to think he went back through the conversation he hadn't been part of until now, unknown animals on the path and someone or something maybe pursuing them, fuck that wasn't good, on one hand going around sounded like the safest route but he didn't know from which side they could get hit and he didn't want to be the metal between hammer and anvil but the problem was that some unknown animals could very well be dangerous, maybe even more than the Skeletons they had fought and he didn't fancy having to fight against another army while tired.
Descicions, desicions.
Finally, he came to a conclusion "I say... we continue if we are being pursued then our best bet would be to reach the city as fast as possible, last time we had the town guards to help us and we had loses." He didn't want to think back at those that lost their lives in the fight, or how it could have been any of them "That doesn't mean we have to be stupid about it, if we can dodge having a fight with whatever is on the path then we do, if it insists on a fight we kill it fast, too dangerous and we run, easy like that. Maybe it will even work as a deterrent if something is trying to follow us"
He could only hope that he had made the right decision.