Beneath the Shadows Chapter Two: Chasing Shades

[Vestige]

Taking the sword out of Aina's hands, he immediately felt it's heft compared to, as she put it, his 'dinky little butter-knife'. He wanted to cry more, but he bit his lip and held back. "Yeah...I'll do that."

He was unsure of what to say next. So he simply sat beside Aina, all the while holding her sword in his hands. How am I supposed to learn to use this if you can't teach me anymore...?

[Nanami Touko]

"That's...wonderful, Alfonso," she managed to sputter out. She didn't feel like she was going to die, but she wasn't moving any time soon. Alfonso's horse was friendly enough, and knew her well enough to not freak out, as she collapsed herself near its leg, using it as a resting post. "I hope Ernce and Caslan are alright... They were hit pretty badly," she said in Alfonso's direction, not sure if he'd hear her at all. It had gotten eerily quiet after the fight, so he may have. However, it didn't matter much to her, as she took this time to close her eyes and rest a bit.

[Rothene]

Joey went to its rider and sniffed the poor elf lying down on the ground. The elf took quite a very solid blow to his head and collapsed just in time to avoid having a follow up spear tip thrust through his chest. Nonetheless it was sufficient to take him out for the remainder of the fight.

Noticing its rider was still alive, the gelding dragged Caslan to join with the rest of his comrades, taking great care not to accidentally choke the elf when biting onto his collar like how it was trained. Not sure who to send the injured elf to, Joey decided to dump the elf into the midst of Ernce's group, because it could not find the rather stealthy Leon.

[Shin]

"Alfonso, Linn..." Aeson puffed, worn out from the battle. "We seem to be getting into a lot of these, although I'm happy to say we're all still on this plain... we can catch up in a little bit, I fear we have some wounded to attend to."

The priest looked down at Caslan, who had apparently been dumped on the ground.

"You're not ready to leave us yet, have strength my child."

[Bluedoom]

As the battle concluded, Rimsky tunred Mehr to the direction where Jacob and Raelyn lay. They didn't look like they were going to get up soon.

Going towards Jacob, Rimsky took out a cloth that he carried with him and dabbed the man's chest to wipe away the blood oozing out of his wound. He needed healing, and fast. "Chandra!" he called out to her, "Jacob needs fixing quick! He's got a serious wound on his chest!"

Then he moved towards Raelyn, who lay there quite still. She didn't really have any noticeable wounds on her. He tried to wake her up, gripping her shoulders as he called out to her.

[scorri]

Sayina let out a deep breath. Riding over to where Jacob had collapsed, he dismounted and slowly started to utter the complex healing spell he'd become so used to using. When the spell was finished, without looking up, he called out not realizing the doors locked from the inside, "Someone should unlock the doors of the inn and release our friends trapped inside." Seeing the color return to Jacob's face, he nodded, stood up, and walked over to Ernce, where he repeated the process.

Adari meanwhile glanced at the elf and shrugged. "We're Harrop's Harriers. Group of mercenaries. We were hired ta do a job by someone who'd stayed in tha village here, but now I'm a bit worried something's happened ta him."

Rayil was still passed out on the ground, with a broken arm and a bleeding chest.

Edited October 2, 2013 by scorri

[Ether]

"If he was in the village, chances are that he's dead, sad to say. The Senians rode in and cut down anyone in sight, if they thought you were hiding in a building, they burned it down... it seemed odd that they left the inn intact, but it must have been to set that trap, if they were sticking around and waiting for you." Elysia replied, her expression dour. Had that been their intent from the start, to kill these Harrop's Harriers? Had everyone just been caught up in some stupid little plan to take out a mercenary troupe? The elf girl's knuckles grew white, not only from clenching her fist, but from the fact that her hand was frosting over in her anger.

Yes, that blasted inn. One of these mercenaries had been trapped inside at the start, and seemed to still be there, and Elysia needed to vent some anger, without any more Senian soldiers to slaughter, this was the next best thing.

"CLEAR AWAY FROM THE DAMN DOOR!" She shouted, ensuring her voice was loud enough to carry to the inside, and giving a few seconds for the message to register before bombarding the doorway with multiple conjured icicles... which didn't quite blow the thing open as she had hoped, but had left a few sizeable holes in the doorway, and likely left the inside feeling noticeably refrigerated.

"Damn... I had hoped that would get it open... still felt good, though." Elysia noted with a sigh, the frost that had been gathering on her hand dissipating as she calmed down.

[Snike]

Jacob's once-ragged breathing returned to normal once he was patched up, but he showed no sign of awakening, just yet.

***

There was a click that came from the inside of the inn. Immediately, the doors were kicked open and a sweaty and bloodstained Andre emerged from the building, red sword and axe at the ready. When he realized that the battle was over, and it wasn't the Senians who surrounded the inn, he lowered his weapons, and let out a sigh of relief.

"I want a status report," he said to Adari, once he saw the nomad and the elf. "And who's this?"

Behind him, Hale stepped out of the building as he wiped the blood away from his sword. That was one hell of a fight.

***

The Senian dwelf began to try and pick herself up off of the ground, but with a broken ankle, it was easier said than done. Eventually, she managed to stand by leaning almost all of her weight onto her good leg, but it looked like getting onto Holly would be an impossible task. Especially with the mercenaries still being around. They hadn't noticed her yet, but how long would that last?

Edited October 2, 2013 by Snike

[Nanami Touko]

The quick rest she had was worth it, as she stretched her arms out with a smile. This smile lasted all of two seconds. As soon as she stretched out her arms, her back began to ache again, as she hadn't actually received proper treatment. All of her bodily aches and pains were suddenly thrust upon her once more, and it quickly ruined her mood. She stood, albeit painfully, using Alfonso's horse. The healers were scrambling around, bringing people back up onto their feet, helping those who had gone down in the fight. Linn counted herself lucky, in some regard. She wouldn't have to find out what death was like; not yet, at least.

Finally trying to move, she spotted some movement out of the corner of her eye. The flier from the fight was back up, and no one else seemed to have noticed. "Hey!" she cried out, as loudly as she could, "she's still alive!" With whatever strength Linn could muster, a wind spell left her fingers. Unfortunately for the elf's cause, her strength hadn't returned at all, and it wasn't much more than a powerful gust, unable to cut through anything. Linn fell back down to her knees. "Someone, get her...!"

Edited October 2, 2013 by I have opinions

[Shin]

Linn's cries had not gone unnoticed, her bravdo earlier had made her seem far better than she really was. Not wanting to leave his travelling companion pseudo-crippled, he returned to her, offering her a hand.

"Linn, you've overdone it again, haven't you?" Aeson joked, pulling the elf back to her feet. "I remember that time you spent three days looking for me when I had wandered off. I think you were probably in more trouble than I was back then."

Aeson began his healing, just to take the edge off - there was no real substitute for a proper rest.

[Nanami Touko]

"It's not my fault," she began, her breathing returning to normal as Aeson's magic ran through her, "someone had to do something about that woman!" She was finally back to standing tall, no more terrible pains running through her. "Thanks, Aeson. And hey, if you hadn't run after that wounded enemy soldier, maybe I wouldn't have had to search for you. Honestly, you care far too much for everyone. Just care about us, please." She turned her attention back to the fallen flier, magic at the ready. "Sit still, you! I'm not afraid to cast something bigger now that I'm better!"

[Shin]

"Ah, I do remember that now." Aeson replied, recalling the events. "If I recall correctly, you threatened to make him fly... he seemed to not like the idea. I couldn't leave him bleeding though, perhaps the trail of blood made it easier for you to follow us?"

Aeson noticed Linn's target, one of the enemy hadn't quite fallen. Not really being that intimidating, Aeson just stood there, holding his staff.

[Nanami Touko]

"W-Well, so what? He probably thought you were chasing after him to finish him off, with how loud you were yelling you wanted to 'help' him. He probably thought you were crazy! Though, yes, it did make it easier to find you both..." It pained Linn to admit it. Her attention was starting to shift away from the flier, in the same boat as aeson; she was near death and wasn't getting away from all of them any time soon.

[Oersted]

Ernce slowly regained consciousness and opened his eyes to see Sayina standing over him, likely having just finished healing him if he'd hazard a guess. Ernce would've liked to just lay there some more but the sudden onslaught of noise from the newcomer elf, Andre and Linn had him on his feet faster than he thought was possible having just only regained consciousness. The only words he made out from all of the noise was "Someone get her!" probably because it had been the most recent of the loud noises. "Get who?" Ernce thought as he looked around the battlefield full of Senian corpses; however, one of the corpses was... standing? Straining his eyes Ernce found that that was no corpse but the Senian woman who had nearly sent him to his grave!

Unaware that Linn had attempted to apprehend the women through force Ernce briefly wondered why no one had made a move to kill her, or in the very least capture her. Seeing that no one else was making a move for the woman Ernce did his best to sneak up on the Senian women, not that it was a hard thing to with how focused she was on her apparently injured ankle and wounded mount. "Hey!" he shouted at her, hoping to catch her off guard. "Why were you trying to kill us?" It was at that moment Ernce realized how reckless he had been by bringing nothing to protect himself with having not bothered to retrieve his lance or shield before sneaking his way over. With any luck she wasn't capable of fighting unmounted and her mount would stay down long enough for the other mercs to notice or for him to subdue her if she tried to attack.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Oersted

[Xinnidy]

The knight's face felt noticeably relieved as Sayina himself went to the help of his new comrade, Ernce. The lad didn't much as look as Alfonso when he woke up, though, but with fair reason--Linn had already made her presence, as well as some living enemy, aware, and it was hard to ignore in these circumstances.

Albeit he stood still and observant as the mercenary approached the wounded enemy himself, as soon as he spoke up Alfonso realized to join his side with Lance in hand. The poor guy was still recovering, anyways. "So hey, what do we do about this one? Should we ask... ah, who's the leader again?" He spoke, in a quiet tone.

[Snike]

Oh no, one of the elves had noticed her. The Senian officer tried to move out of the way, but was knocked to the ground by a guest of wind. On her ankle. Damn, that hurt. The dwelven woman sat up and clutched her ankle, trying to brace it for another attempt to rise to her feet, when a man shouted, asking her why she tried to kill them - them being the mercenaries. She turned around to find out the speaker was a human- the man she had dropped earlier. Evidently her spells hadn't been as effective as she though.

"Orders," the woman responded, trying to hide her fear, as she fumbled around her back to find her tome, or her spear, or any sort of weapon to defend herself with. "I-I swear! We were j-just supposed to find the half-elf! Aldrick killed everyone! P-please, d-don't kill me!"

***

Before Adari could respond, a commotion erupted further out in the village. Apparently, one of the Senians was alive. Good. They could use some answers.

"... That can wait for a minute, actually," the half-dwarf said, as he walked away from his second in command and towards his other subordinates, who had no idea what was going on.

"I'm in command. What's the issue here?" he asked, with his weapons still in his hands. The Senian dwelf gulped. That was a lot of red.

***

Hale, in the meantime decided to approach the elf who had shot off that burst of wind. That was pretty impressive, considering odds were they were exhausted.

"That was some nice spell you just made right there, given you just fought," he said, glancing over to the growing scene by the pegasus. "Nice to meet you. I'm Hale. You would be...?"

[Psych]

Leon took a deep breath after the battle, but his work wasn't over. He rushed around mending wounds for anyone who needed it, before some more commotion had started off the way about a Senian. Leon really needed to pick up some sort of tome to start defending himself with, even if it was just a cheap one at some stall somewhere. He went over to where they had found the commander, healing Ernce's wounds before speaking. "This seemed a bit too rushed for a planned attack. You had to have been aiming for something other than just the one person."

[Nanami Touko]

The flier was being dealt with and Aeson had dawdled off to heal some others. Linn sighed. This whole battle had taught her a few things: she needed to get better at magic, and she needed some sort of armor to take hits. Perhaps she could scrounge some of these things up from the shops the town had, before they left. While in this deep state of thought and concentration, the half elf from the previous battle strolled on over to speak to her. "O-Oh, hello! Linn, yes, hi. That really wasn't that impressive. I just...shot wind at her, ahaha." Not expecting someone to come talk to her, she stumbled over her words trying to make coherent sentences.

[Snike]

"Well, you managed to knock her over instead of killing her, so that shows a fine degree of control over the magic," Hale said, with a slight smile. "I doubt those enemies gave you much trouble, anyways, if you could do this much while exhausted."

***

"N-no, just the one person, " the dwelf responded, still fumbling around for a weapon. "Tall half-elf, with silver hair, green eyes, has a blue necklace and a ring. T-That's all we knew."

Andre listened, but decided to wait for the full explanation from Ernce or Alfonso.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Snike

[Toogee]

Chandra was already at Raelyn's side when Rimsky rushed over. He was concerned about Jacob, who had suffered a devastating blow from the sole surviving Senian officer. With the battle over, the shaman saw that it was safe to leave Raelyn's side.

"OK, just wait by Raelyn until Sayina comes by." Chandra then rushed off to check on Jacob's condition. As luck would have it, Sayina had already come by; the swordsman was merely resting. Indeed, the troubadour seemed to have things handled. Perhaps there wasn't such a need for healers after all.

As she walked around to find anymore of the wounded, Chandra came across an interesting tome of dark magic. It surely came from the enemy ranks, as no one in Celisa would be caught dead with such a tome. She held onto it to read later, as the interrogation of the surviving enemy was underway. There were plenty of people already asking questions, so the shaman decided to hang back and listen.

[Nanami Touko]

"No, really, I'm not that good. I was just exhausted, like you said. If I wasn't...I'd have probably killed her." Linn stopped looking up at the tall man, and looked away. It was a bit embarrassing that she still didn't have a good control over her magic, and could only send it out at full power. "I can't be the only one, right? There has to be plenty of mages, like me, who don't have the best control over magic. I-I mean, just because the way I learned was unorthodox doesn't mean... Sorry. I should probably stop babbling! You didn't come over here to listen to me whine about trivial things, did you? What do you make of all this, Hale?" She of course meant the Senians that had attacked them.

[Vestige]

As Zeff sat pondering his situation, he noticed a commotion of sorts going on not too far off. Had he not been sitting with Aina, he might have gone to see what was going on but he would feel bad leaving her by herself, especially given her situation. Still, he needed to get Aina to a healer, and it was bothering him that none had come by yet. "Aina, can you stand? Let's look for a healer."

[Oersted]

Ernce was felt a wave a relief and security wash over him when Alfonso stepped up to him, holding a lance in his hands. "I think Andre would want her alive," Ernce told the older knight quietly. Just as he was about to question the Senian woman again because she had remained silent only for her to suddenly explain that they were looking for a half-elf and finished with pleading to not be killed.

"Well I wouldn't kill you, at least not in your current state, however Andre might not be so forgiving." As if on cue, as soon as he'd finished speaking to the woman Andre came up and asked what was going on. "Well sir," Ernce said as he turned to Andre after the woman had explained thing to him, "she told you what she told us. Alfonso and I just happened to be the first of us to try to apprehend her." Ernce figured that stating that he was the first but came without a weapon or a shield would be better left omitted.

[Ether]

Before a response could come to the man's question, he wandered off to take care of other things... he seemed most likely to be the leader of the whole shebang. Following after him, it seemed that there was a survivor, and interrogations were about to begin.

That was when certain words caught Elysia.

'One... man? They did all of this for... one... single... man...?' As those thoughts raced through Elysia's head, her eyes caught the fallen flier's hand groping about for a weapon. The mage's own gaze cold as the ice she chose to summon, as a single long spear impaled the wandering hand, nailing it into the ground with the impact.

"You killed... all those damn people... for one fucking guy?!" The elven mage shouted, her rage building again... everyone she had known since leaving was gone... her hand encased in hard ice, Elysia bashed the dwarf-elf across the side of her face, the icy casing shattering upon impact, several shards embedding themselves in the cheek of the assailed prisoner.

"Everybody in my damn life was slaughtered by you miserable bastards... everything is gone and the only damn excuse you can come up with is that you wanted one fucking guy?!"

Falling to her knees, the elf woman seemed about ready to sob, before reaching out and tightly grabbing hold of the prisoner's other arm, her hand directly on a still very much open wound.

"Tell me? The hell do you think will happen to you if I freeze the blood in your veins while your miserable little heart is still trying to pump it, huh?" Elysia muttered coldly, her voice low, as she stared directly into the face of the Senian.

***

"Nothin' wrong with mah legs... only reason I'm sittin' is because if I try to walk like this I'll just bump into shit an' fall over." Aina replied.

[Vestige]

"Okay, but we'll go slowly, I don't want you to start falling over because you can't see anything," he said as he held Aina's hand and helped her to her feet. Given his current state, it was no small feat and actually took quite a substantial amount of effort on his part. "Let's see if we can find that healer now. For you and me both."

He led Aina's to the general direction of the commotion, assuming he'd bump into one of the group's healers along the way.