Still feeling depressed by his inability to use his dark power effectively, Kurst stops near Valerian. It takes several moments before Kurst seems to recognize that he has stopped or that something is going on in front of him.
Valerian looks up at Kurst briefly, then returns to his examination of the marauder's corpse. "The question isn't 'what am I looking at?', it is 'what am I not looking at?'. This thing's head is ... missing. Since approximately half to a third of its body mass is taken up by its head, and none of the damage inflicted on it was sufficient to cause significant damage to its head, this fact troubles me.
"By the by, well done getting the kobold free from that trap. None of my magics would have done any good at all, and I'm sure the brute force preferred by the rest of our troupe of misfits wouldn't have left him as intact as your solution did."
Yatrax is muttering something under her breath in a language that none of you know, but sounds very harsh and unflattering. Probably curses; some inflections are universal.
"I don't know how far these filchers can go, but this enemy seems to want to draw us into these woods," she says finally in Common.
Moving carefully deeper into the forest, the small sounds of the night fade away around you, leaving you to travel in silence. No further shrieks pierce the thick night air, and a suffocating blanket of quiet envelopes you. Stalking deeper and deeper into the forest for several long minutes, you nearly jump out of your skin when that horrible shrieking returns. It cuts off abruptly as a bright white-blue light, perhaps as bright as a sunrod, illuminates a clearing ahead.
Peering from the cover of the trees, you see a most bizarre sight. In the middle of the clearing, illuminated by a glowing ball of light, stands an ethereal filcher , clutching the severed head of a marauder in its lower two limbs. In its upper two, it holds a man, one with yellow skin, red eyes, and no hair, his body twisting and writhing as it seems to shrink in upon himself, going from perhaps six feet tall to barely three, collapsing in all dimensions. The man wears purple leather armor, has many daggers strapped to its body, and a bow on its back.
The man's red eyes glare out into the woods as his size seems to stabilize.
"I know you're here nagaja! You and the hunter!" he calls, his voice deep and booming despite his small size.
Maavnod recognizes the word the man used:
Nagaja means "brother," but with a specific suffix that indicates something corrupted. It means something like, "sister in sin," to compare it to a Common phrase.
~~~~~~~~~
For those back at the campsite, you've seen a second bright flash of light, but this one is sustained, and a good few hundred yards into forest. The Blademark Defenders are looking around nervously, on a hair trigger of vigilence and fear.
"I am no nagaja!" roars Maavnod as he charges. He adjusts his essentia again, favoring his girallon totem. He intends to grapple with the filcher knowing it is capable of escaping.
Oliver strides into the clearing, rapier drawn and takes a thrust at shrinking man, his rapier is quick to recover from the strike, and is held defensively in front of him.
Init: +5. Move into clearing and attack using combat expertise. AC 25. Attack +6, 1d6 damage. If the filcher and the man are close enough, Oliver will use dance of death(tumbling as necessary) to move around behind them and attacking them both as he moves. I use an AP if I roll between a 10 and a 12 on the attack roll. If I am not close enough to move and attack, I will double move behind them, tumbling as necessary.
