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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1194631" data-attributes="member: 645">Baking SandsCho starts violently awake.  Heel sinks into rolls of fat, the sleeper she's kicked at struggling to her feet snorts and rolls away.  Astragard.  Leo’s Rope Trick.  Stifling but safe.  Even though the harmony is broken.  She sits back and rubs her face free of the familar clinging nightmare.  Leo shoots a glance over the edge of the book he’s studying, and disappears again.  The place of the fourth sleeper is empty:  Tarquin has already left.  Dawn soon.  Cho braces against the desert’s morning cold and drops out through the hole, breath cloud trailing as she lands.  The stench of camels hangs heavy in the caravanserai, different from horses somehow.  Less manure;  more burping.  There is Tarquin’s form, bent in prayer.  Judging by the degree of light, he will be a while yet.  Cho settles at a polite distance and drops into a mind exercise.  Thoughts keep shoving her back.  She lets them flow past.  Of no relevance.  But the harmony has been broken.  Thoughts batter, and more thoughts.  With a sigh, she yields.  Best to order those thoughts and try to make sense of events.  ***She had rejoined the others in Gaxmoor.  At Margrave Kanor’s request, it was agreed to make another strike against Harecules while his hold on the Dark Folk was weakened after his recent defeat.  Plans were made to locate him in his hideout in the mountains, teleport in, kill him and teleport back to Gaxmoor.  Those who joined Dovistar on the agreed morning were:  Aos, Elros, Leo, Red Ivy, Tarquin, Titania, Xiang, and Cho.  Saphie appeared to be absent on some mission for her brother.  Sigurd was busy showing presence amongst the remains of his army, presumably working to smooth the waves thrown up his unfortunate absence and sudden reappearance on the threshold of the recent battle.  Tactics were discussed and further refined, diamond dust scattered, protective spells cast.  Dovistar muttered arcane words and turned towards his silver mirror – only to declare after a moment of tense concentration that the Cambion’s will had proven too strong for his scrying attempt to get through.  In intense frustration Xiang and Elros went and killed an ochre ooze that had the terrible karma to lurk near.  And so, the group picked up where it had left off when Harecules invaded the Borderlands:  by returning to the southern desert.  Dovistar sent Astragard, Cho, Elros and Leo to the spot from where he had summoned them on the morning of the battle, depositing them in baking afternoon heat.  They hid overnight in Leo’s Rope Trick, safely concealed from a winged reptile that Elros reported flying over and hunting desert creatures with sonic attacks that made the Sidhe scout’s ears bleed.  Aos, Tarquin, Titania and Xiang arrived safely the next morning.  Leo conjured up soundless, hoofless magic horses for each member of the company.  The memory draws a breath from Cho.  What speed!  Intoxicating to the point where it takes an effort to stop or even rein in.  Was the harmony broken then?  Cho scans the expressions of her companions in her mind.  Xiang looking hung over.  Leo with more attention for Astragard than anyone else.  Titania visibly raw from some recent argument with Aos, him displaying unconcern – none of which was new.  No.  There was nothing more wrong than usual at that point.  Then came the priestess.  They had been travelling on Leo’s horses towards the village from where Astragard was planning to set out for his tomb.  On the last dune outside a village a rider waited with her camel.  She was tall and striking and shown by her dress to be a priestess of a local goddess, Isis.  She came forward and greeted Aos with honeyed words as Champion and Chosen of her goddess, come to deliver her land of some lurking evil.  Aos seemed unsurprised, if feverishly dazzled.  It could have been her revealing dress.  Part of the company ended up invited to spend the night in the priestess’s temple.  Astragard was excluded.  The priestess was not ashamed to insult the old man to his face, calling him a Black Serpent.  Leo went with Astragard, Tarquin with his friend Leo.  Cho joined them, out of reluctance towards their new hosts as much as in order to provide better balance for safety.  Yes.  It was that.  The priestess.  Like a crack snakes across a crystal mirror, she broke the company’s fragile skin of harmony.  ***Tarquin straightens carefully and starts to walk towards the well, his face smooth now.  What a peace he appears to draw from speaking with his god.  A peace Cho manages to inadvertently shatter when she approaches him with what has long burdened her mind.  Tarquin turns out strangely tight-lipped when asked about his god and matters of the faith.  (What a contrast to the wordy desert priestess!)  Yes, there is an item particularly holy to the faith.  It is the called Staff of Urnus Gregaria.  It is now in one of the Deeper Hells in the possession of a demoness, who tricked a party of heroes into retrieving it for her.  No explanations are asked or given. but a brief flare of emotion reveals that most likely, Tarquin had been involved in that.  And suffers for it still.  He does mention (as Cho turns away to leave him to regain composure) that like Leo, he is not too happy about turning away from Astragard’s task.  Cho agrees.  What is your word worth if you set it aside at the first distraction?  *** The group assembles.  Astragard, though disgruntled by the delay, has agreed that a detour may be made to investigate a certain gorge where the priestess’s supposed evil is said to be lurking.  In order to do that, yet another champion must be collected from a nearby village.  The division is even clearer today.  Aos swings himself into the saddle of Leo’s magic steed with a feverishly self-righteous air, followed by a silent Titania.  Xiang and Elros as well keep close to the priestess during the day’s ride.  They arrive at the village Artuat shortly before nightfall.  Strolling around trying to find the priestess’s Champion of Toth, the group hears screams and cries for help ahead.  Aos, Elros and Xiang rush in, followed by Titania.  Elros’s bow twangs, and moments later the four reappear around a corner to report that they slew a large demonic crocodile the Champion of Thoth appeared to be wrestling.  A night at the local caravanserai, a wait while the priestess haggles over the purchase of a number of camels, and once again the company sets off towards the gorge, now accompanied by the priestess and the Champion of Toth, but without Astragard, who remains at the caravanserai.  *** With the slow sneakiness of shadows, the riders’ shadows creep to hide underneath the camels’ bellies.  Air shivers above the path, the sand bakes.  It is not even noon yet but the heat grows steadily worse.  Xiang, in plate armour today, wipes his face.  Cho walks, slowing her strides to match the swaying trot of the camels.  Behind her, Leo mutters educated curses.  Aos rides, his face clenched in that expression of righteousness he has assumed lately.  Titania follows, trying to be invisible.  Tarquin’s face is once more set in his priest’s calm mask.  Elros turns in the saddle, scanning around.  Yet, he discovers nothing.  Suddenly the air sings and the camels dance madly as a volley of arrows drops on the party from above.  Elros looks shocked.  Xiang with supreme confidence taps his mount’s neck with the riding stick, controls it.  Leo’s mutter rises to a shout as he is either thrown or leaps off his bolting mount.  Almost simultaneously, magic erupts:  a column of fire and then a fireball wash over the party, leaving behind a stench of burnt flesh and smouldering heaps of saddles and bones where an instant ago were camels.  The priestess drops, unconscious.  A pale Leo draws invisibility around him or steps into the Void.  The others are scorched but reaching for weapons – not an instant too soon:  a second volley of arrows follows and already the ground trembles under the charge of two dozen horsemen now dropping their bows and drawing curved blades.  Titania is moving towards the downed priestess.  Elros looses an arrow and shouts in triumph.  Cho has no time to register more as her focus narrows – seeking a target.  The charge drums up a heavy cloud of dust.  The spellcasters are either hidden in the throng or invisible.  Later then.  Cho chooses a rider at the front of the charge and leaps forward.  Out of the corner of her eye she sees Aos’s rapier flash as he does the same further on the right.  Her target dodges ineptly – too ineptly.  She knows even before she connects that she should be able to take him down – and that she has miscalculated.  She succeeds merely in winding him.  Immediately more riders sweep around her, surround her.  None of these is hanging back like a mage or a priest would;  they are out for blood.  The riders attack in concert, each with his flanking partner, horses’ flanks sidling into her while blade cut down from the opposite side.  It is a narrow dance.  Almost she would have evaded all of them;  all but one, who strikes a heavy blow.  Muscles tear, bone crunches under his blade.  Instinct fumbles to repair, pull the edges of that wound together – Not now.  Too many.  Allow them to hamper each other. She dances, ready for the bead that will announce Leo’s fireball.  Between heaving horses’ flanks she gets a glance in Aos’s direction.  He is surrounded as well, and taunts ring out with an edge in his clear voice – betraying that he, too, has been wounded and is hard pressed.  At least the charge is broken, or mostly.  Hopefully this will buy time for the healers to get around to those who desperately need them.  Then the air hums, heavy with ozone.  All around Cho, lightning flashes.  Horses bolt madly, throwing and dragging the seared lumps that until a moment ago were their riders.  She turns for a quick grin towards her ally, but cannot spot him.  Elros and the Champion of Thoth have arrows nocked and are busy selecting targets.  Xiang has a foot on a downed man’s chest to wrench the spear out.  More lie around him.  The priestess is still down, but now defended by Titania against a small number of bandits.  What next?  Aos is holding up against his attackers.  Xiang is now wading up to him through the sands, throwing up waves of dust before him.  And just beyond the group surrounding Aos, a single man hangs back.  He wields neither bow nor other weapon.  Him, then.  She catches a glimpse of Aos as she flies past, white and clenched and bloodied.  Help? Too late now:  her charge is set.  And for a second time this day she miscalculates her attack.  His breath whooshes out under the blow to his sternum, his jaws clack shut around an ugly grin as he straightens, his eyes clear.  Expertly dodging and weaving her feints, he gestures with a religious symbol and speaks a foul prayer, then lunges at her:  “Die!”  Hawk’s marble eye!  She dodges his touch but of course he will try again.  Suddenly a wall of fire springs up next to the two of them.  Strands of the enemy cleric’s hair curl and powder away as sparks eat their way up them.  Men scream behind Cho.  She hopes it is not Aos;  and her next slash goes precisely where she has aimed it.  The cleric’s mouth opens and closes as his eyes bulge in horror.  He does not get another chance to deliver his killing spell.  Moments later, Cho drags the unconscious cleric away from the wall of fire, which turns out have been placed by Leo.  No one particularly wishes to question the cleric, not even the priestess and the Champion of Thoth, who purport to be so eager to learn what the gorge of Osiris holds.  Strange but true.  Xiang kills the cleric with the Spear and destroys his religious symbol, an ankh with a serpent woven through it.  Much loot is found on the bodies and some horses are retrieved.  Several enemies are found dead from a single arrow, easily recognisable by bearing Elros’s fletching.  The enemy sorcerer is one of those, felled at the outset of the battle.  Clearly today the Sidhe archer has exceeded himself.  An item called a Blood Red Moon is found on the sorcerer’s body – said by the priestess to be one of nine evil items that she wishes to see retrieved.  The party returns to the village.  There is elation at the victory, but the rift remains.  A decision will have to be made soon on which quest to follow:  explore Astragard’s tomb as promised, or set aside a word given to hunt down a “great evil” described in flowery words but with few facts to back it up?</blockquote>

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