cinaed

Session 171: Day 27 of Saedan (9/12)

Everyone can tell that the vines are suffocating and trying to kill the people they are encasing. Diana knows these are people who were prisoners like her, and that Rezod is offering them as reminders of what she could have been. She could have been clawed to death and left to rot or smothered.

Diana grips her short sword extremely tightly.

There are six people dying within these vines.

Galowen moves first. He teleports towards one of the closest vines, reaching one of them. He strikes out at the vine, trying to cut the person free. Both attacks cut swathes of the vines away so that he can see big brown eyes wet with crying. He hears a voice whimper to help them, they don’t want to, but whatever else they are going to say gets cut off by another vine clamping over their face.

Grasping roots and vines burst from the soil around the rest of the Hooligans except Hava and attempt to lash onto their bodies, grabbing at their legs and arms and weapons, trying to pull them to the ground. Each vine is angry and viscous.

Az and Yolov are restrained, but Adrin bursts free of the vines and Diana and Audacity dodge them, Diana recognizing these vines with goosebumps prickling all over her body. She spies at the head of the pond, right at the very edge of it where the river flows, there is the shadowed entrance of Rezod’s entrance proper. The cavernous wide mouth of it, the perpetually damp stalagmite and stalactites like his toothy maw.

Within she can see two large bright green eyes.

She freezes in place. Rezod is there, watching and waiting.

Diana can’t move. Even Adrin beside her has gone stock still. She feels like she did when she was little and small, curling up as small as she could, pressing herself against the corner of the lair and praying to anything that would listen that he wouldn’t see her and torment someone else that day. Sometimes it worked, but today, like too many times when she was little, she can feel his eyes boring into her from a distance.

She begins to shake.

Hava flies towards one of the other people imprisoned in vines. She casts her Spiritual Weapon and attacks that mass of vines. It thrashes angrily. She calls out to the person within the vines that she’s going to work as fast as she can. She hears a muffled cry from within. Hava says she doesn’t speak kidnapped but she knows distress when she hears it.

Az, restrained, curses and casts Scatter to send everyone closer to the imprisoned people.

Diana feels a burst of friendly Fey energy and then the radiating warmth of Galowen’s strength, which both banish her terror from her. When she left, she wasn’t alone, she had Adrin. She was never alone, but she was so small and so weak. She’s not weak now. She’s stronger than she’s ever been and she is surrounded by people who are strong. They’ve killed dragons before. If anyone can help her, it’s them. She realizes that one thing is still true from the day she left until now. She left with the one person who she has known to have loved her no matter what, who loved her enough to do the impossible with her.

She’s now surrounded by people who love her enough to do the impossible with her.

Az teleports Audacity, Adrin, Yolov, and himself as well. He and Yolov stand side by side next to the river. Yolov gives him a grateful nod before he runs over to one of the vines restraining a dragon and says in Draconic, “If you trust me, I can get you out of this.” He sees icy blue eyes as he Thunder Steps himself and the wyrmling away towards Audacity and the vines smothering the other dragon and a second person.

The wyrmling is small, smaller than Adrin, with spindly legs. It blinks up at Yolov and then shakes out its wings and flies towards the trees, a relieved Yolov warning it not to go near the river if it’s hiding further away.

The skeleton struggles through the vines that tried to grab the group but manages to close with Hava.

Audacity stabs at the vines with a dagger and damages it, though realizes the poison from his dagger does nothing. He pulls out his new staff and attacks with that instead, striking it again and again and breaking some of the vines.

The tension in the air is palpable as the one that lost its prey scrambles about for more, its vines striking the ground, seeking out with a mindless intention for some sort of supper or prey. It doesn’t seem to be able to find anything, flailing miserably.

The other vines, however, still have people in their grasp. Behind her, Diana hears a crack and a muffled gasp, wet and slick, before the sound of broken bones as the one between her and Adrin brings its dead prey into the earth to devour.

Galowen lights his sword on fire and moves to flank the vines he’s attacking. He strikes out twice, burning and slashing the vines. It looks so badly damaged that Galowen can see the person within, able to be rescued.

A thorny wall of tangled briars breaks up from the ground and pierces Az. Both Galowen and Diana are caught slightly by the thorns but manage to hold their ground and are thrown to one side of the wall.

Diana attacks the vines that killed the captive. She hacks away at the vines and then tells Adrin to save that person within the vines closest to Galowen. Adrin flies over the thorny wall and grabs the person from the scruff of their neck, tossing the person to the ground in front of Az.

Hava hits at the vines with her Spiritual Weapon and her Eldritch Blasts, whittling it slowly but surely down until she destroys it completely, freeing the person. Then she looks at the skeleton and tells it that she’s a little busy, so let’s get this over with.

Az moves towards the plant still holding the other wyrmling and the last person. With his own magical attacks, he destroys that final vine creature. The person scrambles away and the wyrmling also flies into the woods.

Now Diana and Galowen are on one side of the thorny wall and everyone else is on the other. The shadows inside the lair shift and move, and for the first time Galowen sees those bright green eyes as Rezod looks out at them from the entrance.

Everyone can hear a splash, but only Galowen and Diana can see the tremendous gnarled claw that crashes down into the pond like it’s a puddle, then another, black claws and emerald scales, Rezod standing proud in the entrance to his lair.

All of them can feel a crawling sense of unease. Audacity and Hava can just see the crest, but Az and Yolov are too close to the wall. Whether they can see him or not, they can all hear the low voice that rumbles through their bones.

“Normally when a meal leaves it doesn’t come back. Did you think I wouldn’t know you were here? My weakest little thing. You are always such a disappointment.”

Diana speaks back in Draconic, trembling with effort, “I…am not weak.”

Rezod tells her not to pretend to him. He asks if she will stay strong when he rips her little sister from limb to limb and devours her body and bone? Will she stay strong as he makes her watch him gut every single one of her friends? How strong can she be without him?

Diana has heard similar monologues before. She knows he isn’t joking. She knows this is what his plan is.

Yolov can hear all of this and understand it unlike the others. He stares at the wall of thorns separating them from Galowen and Diana. He gathers sparks of lightning in his hand and then sends it down the wall in a tremendous lightning bolt and scorches it to ash, dropping the wall.

He looks up at Rezod and says enough threats in Draonic.

The skeleton tries to attack Hava, its attacks useless against her armor.

Audacity advises the person next to him to run and then races towards Rezod himself. His quarterstaff swings out and slams into Rezod twice before going into a series of punches. One misses, but another lands as well.

Audacity asks Diana if he’s been talking bullshit like Az’s patron did and gets a sad nod of acknowledgement.

Rezod looks over his shoulder at Audacity and like a horse flicking a fly away with its tail, slams his tail into Audacity.

Galowen studies the fifteen foot ledge between him and Rezod. He also eyes the river where he knows explosive fish might be lurking. He casts Ice Storm, freezing the river itself.

Rezod ignores Audacity, who lands a blow as Rezod leaps into the air and lands next to Diana. Everyone watches as Rezod wraps a protective wing around Diana as though to shield her before he breathes out a noxious breath towards Az, Galowen, and Yolov.

Az takes the worst of it, struggling to cling to consciousness. Yolov and Galowen both choke on the poison as well though Galowen’s armor diffuses some of the poison searing his lungs.

This thick fog also billows around Adrin.

Diana knows this fog. Rezod has used it before to control people. She sees Adrin’s eyes start to glaze over as Rezod begins to make a chirping sound. Adrin responds with a chirp but when Rezod leans forward to touch his nose to hers, Adrin flinches away.

Rezod’s wing is still outstretched over Diana. Diana rushes over and attacks the wing. She slashes at it with her dragon slaying sword, driving her sword into the thick of his web. He hisses and whips his head around and asks if that’s kind of her. Diana closes her eyes for a moment and then strikes again, driving it home.

Diana instinctively holds on as Rezod begins to beat his wings, almost knocking Adrin prone as he flies forty feet directly up, with Diana clinging to him.

Hava remembers being carried aloft by Coisaira and almost dying. Behind her the skeleton chatters angrily at her before she casts Destroy Undead and sends it running in terror. Then she moves to try and get as many people as possible in her aura and heals Az a little.

Az aims for Rezod’s back with his bow, misses wildly, and then feels himself teleport via the magic arrow and times himself to Misty Step himself next to Diana on Rezod, who tells him that he shouldn’t be here. She says the same as he gives her one of the teleportation arrows he bought previously.

Yolov also flashes back to Hava almost dying and runs forward, sending Es thirty feet up after them and casting Psychic Lance. He feels the spell start to take hold and then Rezod resist it, though Rezod makes an irritated snort.

Audacity leaps off of Adrin’s back and uses Water Whip to grab at Rezod. As Audacity continues to attack him, Rezod gives an irritated snort and asks why don’t they give up. When Hava says they don’t do that, Rezod says they don’t seem to do a lot of things.

Galowen tells him it’s only been twelve seconds before he lays a hand on Yolov and pours some divine healing into him. Then he moves forward and casts Hunter’s Mark on Rezod with his amulet.

Rezod dives back down to the ground, Diana and Az yelling and clinging to his wing as he descends. He lunges at Hava, biting her and then slashing her savagely twice with his claws until she is barely standing.

He flies forty feet back up. Az falls off with Diana still clinging to Rezod’s wing.