Riverside 21: Older than Arkh

[Shadowcaller]

Spoiler: Quotes

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Abandoned Village

Flicker tries leading the rats chasing her away from the others, and when she's got a good enough lead she'll blast them with birdshot. She's not willing to let them get too close, however, so she can't stay long- and if she starts moving too soon after pressing the trigger then the blast won't work as the pellets lose their momentum in the barrel. She's only got five shots before she has to reload, and the momentum-cancelling effect of the teleportation means reloading can be a bit tricky on the move.

[Abandoned Village] Jaahlyn and Holly

And, there it goes. No chance to say anything back...which is about what she expected.
Holly puts away the communicator.

She almost jumps with the sudden appearance of Jaahlyn. Holly had forgotten that she was around.

"Oh. It was just the person who sent me. And sent thise other two that were with you earlier, too," she replies.

She looks into the abandoned village, seeing all sorts of combat and everything.
Wow, there's a lot of stuff going on.
She tries to figure out the state of the battle and what needs to be done.

[Abandoned Village]

Fade got a good spot while in his shadow. It's also rather safe from attacks unless they got some magic user in there rows. As he observes he makes out the chagne the small rats got after the big ones appear. That musst be related. He tries to get a closer look at them, but then he takes note of the grenade. He stops immediatly and heads for the otehr two. He jumps out of his shadow and immediatly tries to get a wall or something between him and were the explosion will be. Then he shouts : "Watch OUT!" which might be cut off by the explosion.

There they are, fighting those giant rats.
But now the small rats are finally attacking in earnest.

Ruby does her best to fight them with gun and claw and even just crushing a rat underfoot now and then, but the vermin are utterly fearless and too many. She should have stayed in the hut, she thinks, and dealt with them at the door.
But then the grenade goes off too close by, and though a bit of shrapnel hits her wing, the little rats are helpless for the moment.
She shakes them off, draws a deep breath through the pain of the dust in the air, and breathes out a wave of flame to engulf the rat swarm.

"Wait!" Nope, too late. The grenade goes off, but Archera is already reacting. The precarious ice platform was already just barely holding their weight, but the concussive blast of a grenade easily destabilizes it. Archera grabs Irena, holding her and the child close as they fall. She musters what she can to pull additional water, changing state is a bit much right now, to cushion their fall. They end up seated on the ground, sopping wet among chunks of ice. "Give him to me. Let's move." She tries to take the baby and get to her feet. Irena's being too reckless...

Abandoned Village

Irena braces as the platform collapses, perhaps a part of her having expecting this outcome. But then Archera dampens the fall and she finds herself sitting on the ground unharmed. She hands over the baby without question and makes sure to at least stand up before any surviving giant rats might get a jump on them.

However, as Ruby torches the rat swarm and Flicker shoots whatever survives she can find there is a sudden stillness in the air as if all sounds suddenly became muted. This silence is abruptly interrupted by the voices of what Irena, Archera and Amulungak can recognize as the first rat. The one which seem to act as their speaker.

"It seems our story is reaching its conclusion, splendid!" From the smoke it raises, bruised, battered, but far from dead. It's walking on its hind legs, which seems to have stretched into an unnatural parody of human appendages, and the rest of its body seems to be trying to follow suit its bones can be heard cracking as the creature seems to be trying to adapt itself to an upright gait. Bursting out from it's scalp is a growing circle of horns that seems to be forming a crown.

Irena shoots it.

The rat king stops for a moment as the bullet clearly causes it pause. A wound forming in its chest which instead of blood leaks a yellow pus.

Yet the next moment it continues as if nothing had happened. "So let us now tell a story before we close the curtains."

Irena now empties the rest of her clip at the rat king but this time one of the other giant rats interjects the bullets with its body as it too raises from the smoke. Shortly collapsing back into it once more. They can see more of them soon, appearing just as injured as their speaker but still forming in a protective barrier around them.

Again the rat king continues as if nothing had happened and now is started to rhyme.

"Once upon a time there was a boy that treated animals as toys.

A real brat that still owned nine times a rat.

But despite treating them as playthings, to them he was a lord, no, a king.

Yet one day their god, imagining the joy it would him bring, decided to tie all their tails together with a string.

Never questioning any-thing, the rats were all still worshiping.

Starved, broken, their minds starting to unstring.

They would only find death under their masters wing."

At this point the rat king gestures with which is at this point a paw-like hand at the dead rats laying all around Ruby. It doesn't appear like any of them are alive anymore.

"So the story have now repeated itself once more. Rats, whatever their skin, dying for their kings whims." At this point it gestures at the mutants who have come walking out from the huts they sought cover in. They seem harmless now, with no will left to fight. "We only killed your rats, we only sought to cleanse, yet suddenly their lives were worth something? So tell us truly, and we shall depart, at whomst behest do you us seek? Was there truly a king angry that we killed their rats? Or was it perhaps the rats themselves that bothered you so? The rat kings gaze move over not only Archera, Irena, Flicker and Ruby but Fade too as it appears to have spotted him as he called out his warning. "Answer one each and we shall all yield, deny and we might make you die." Once the rat king has finished its speech it makes an surprisingly elegant bow for such a creature.

Then it suddenly looks up, its red eyes seeing something beyond the darkness of the village. "And that goes for the servant and the pretender too. Come now and answer our question! What have brought you before us?"

Speaking of which, Jaahlyn had nodded in reply to Holly when they too could hear the rat king's booming voice echo across the underground village. As it finally seems to call them out, the satyr looks to Holly. "Looks like the story is about to reach its end." A beat. "Might be best to humor them. To avoid, uh, more fighting I mean."

[Moth Park]

"Yer' what?" But despite her apparent claim of ignorance to its meaning she still answers the question. "No, ey ain't stalking no one!" Hekta crosses her arms over her chest. "You sit in ya' room all day anyway, didn't ye? Since yer' mom's and all that. Ye'd be the most boring stalkrget ever." It sounds like she just tried to combine the words "target" and "stalker" into an abomination of a word.

[Buffet Dungeon]

Anika have just now turned back into her humanoid form but still appears rather wozzy. However, the moment Magda mentions the prisoners her eyes seem to clear up a bit and she quickly follows along. The loot could wait for now.

"Is it really fair to call dibs? Don't you need to roll dice for these things? That's what we always do once we defeat a boss." Of course, Anika hadn't even had the time to read the stats yet. "Oh, and, uh, good work by the way. You seem pretty seasoned for..." A beat. "How old were you again?"