strangetrip | Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

At the crest of the mountain, Coc'zac sat atop Nazu's head looking through a glass that Hotor held to his eye. Vokva sat beside them, little more than a pile of bones atop a pile of rocks, and Hafur paced behind them, holding the troops in check. They milled in the pre-dawn gloom, skeletons, wights, zombies, wraiths, and all manner of undead creatures. Periodically, Nazu swept the space behind them with their tail bowling over anyone who'd gotten too close.

The first pinpoint of light had Coc'zac's teeth chattering with excitement in his disembodied head. Today was the day he'd been planning for. Soon, soon the Inn and its occupants would be his. Nazu unleashed a heavy sigh tinged with poison and necrosis. Fortunately the troops were all dead already, and Coc'zac didn't have anything in the way of arms to hit them with.

It fell to Hafur to gesture the troops forward as punctuation to Coc'zac's 'rousing' speech, and together they crept through the portal, avoiding its fizzing and popping edges demarcated in what would be neon blue, if they could still see in color. They couldn't properly hear either, but they were aware of the noise and the danger it marked.

Once they were all through, the advance scouts, four bands of skeleton archers swept quietly as they could through the shadows to take up position around the main buildings, prepared to pick off anyone who exited--for example for a pre-sun jog. And once they'd settled into wary, silent waiting, occasionally interrupted by the pop of a joint or the clatter of toe bones on stone, the next wave rolled in finding shadows to hide in until the residents emerged with the wights taking point.The bone naga and three flameskulls slipped through the lobby doors and stealthed toward the offices, assuming to find the command center there.

It wasn't long before the invaders caught the notice of the residents, and then shouts began to echo through the grey light and journals filled with messages and reminders of siege plans. Several strongly worded messages urged the kids and those without weapons or fighting skills to head for the Temple where the Hallow spell would protect them from unholy undead things.

And so the battle for the Madonna Inn began...

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One early casualty of having very little actually tied to any given time of day was anything like a schedule, so Loki had used his balcony to get up on the roof to do some stargazing himself. Identify constellations, their placement... maybe figure out if this was actually some version of Earth and possibly where in time it was. Just because the technology of the Inn was set in the past didn't mean the world around it matched.

It was slow going. Astronomy had never been a particular passion.

Sound from the ground below came as a welcome distraction, and he looked over the edge of the roof in time to see a figure (female... Liz, maybe? it was hard to tell at a distance) roll under a bush and several thin white figures fan out. A few glints off the thin figures as they moved were obviously weapons and armor; Loki wasn't a 'warrior' but he'd been on more than enough battlefields to identify such things.

He could have just wished the bush-person luck and retreated back to his stargazing, but instead he dropped off the edge of the roof and then went over the railing of his balcony. He couldn't fly, but strategic shapeshifting let him get down almost as quickly. Snake to coil and move horizontally, squirrel to run down sufficiently rough walls....

Black cat, for a soft landing in the flower garden, between the bush-person and the... skeletons. How interesting.

She sucked in a quick breath when the cat appeared, but thankfully years of learning to hide and evade meant she was good at being quiet. Eyes wide, she looked at the cat.

"Shadow .. be careful." It was barely a whisper as she held out her hand to him.

He heard the whisper, and while it was oddly pleasant to hear someone concerned for his welfare, Liz wasn't in possession of all the facts. Yet.

That changed a few seconds later, when Loki shifted back into his own form and went on the attack. Daggers weren't the best weapons against skeletons, technically, but the skeletons were just bones animated by dark power. With a little added magic, the daggers proved to be excellent at disrupting the power holding the bones together.

They tried fighting back, but they weren't skilled warriors either. They had no chance against someone capable of not just dodging but literally not being where they were hitting.

The cat turned into Loki. The cat turned into Loki.

Liz watched stunned for a moment in utter disbelief. While she knew people at the inn were capable of changing what they looked like, she hadn't really seen much of it except with Piotr and his skin.

Things were sort of blurry for a moment as she tried to figure out how she hadn't known and then went through a list of all the embarrassing things that happened while the cat had been around. It was only when a skeleton seemed to be about to approach what she thought was Loki from behind.

In a panic Liz reached for the first throw-able thing she could find, a rock, and hurled it at the skeleton's back. "Hey!" The skeleton turned around and Liz realized she had nothing else to throw. She ducked back against the bus, but the skeleton moved toward where she had shouted.

The shift in air as the skeleton behind him turned away was all the warning Loki needed, and he spun, throwing a dagger (glowing faintly green) as he did.

The dagger buried itself in the thing's skull, which promptly exploded into shards. "Not that I don't appreciate the warning," and as proof, a slight flick of one hand sent the dagger skittering out of the skull-shards to rest in front of her, "but don't start a fight unless you can end it too."

She looked at the dagger in surprise. It wasn't the first weapon ever handed to her, of course, but it was the first from him. She knew she'd be dumb not to pick it up, even if she wasn't sure she'd be capable of using it, so she reached for the dagger.

Liz climbed to her knees and looked around. This didn't seem random. This seemed a lot like the wolf pack she had previously encounter. "This isn't - What's going on?" Liz ducked as an arrow went zooming passed.

"We need to warn people."

"It's an attack." With a fair amount of effort, Loki managed to keep the 'you idiot' out of his tone. She wasn't an idiot, she just didn't have experienced. "And we don't need to do anything. You need to get to shelter. Your room, that Temple place, wherever has four walls and a door you can lock. And I need to find my brother." Thor would be at the front, wherever that was.

Her eyes went to the closest building. She had every intention of making her way to the clinic where she could help out and she'd try to raise the alarm somehow. Still, her eyes moved back to Loki. "Are you going to be okay?" While Liz knew she would probably be anything but helpful in a battle, she didn't want to leave Loki alone if he was going to get hurt here.

Still worried about him? How odd. Loki smiled faintly. "Of course. This isn't even close to my first battlefield."

His reassurance didn't push the worry from her expression even though she realized he'd he far better off than she.

"I'll be in the clinic." Not that she wanted to see him there in need of its services.

Liz hesitated just a moment longer then started to dash to the main building. She ducked as she ran when she saw a few skeletons taking aim.

A few thrown daggers interfered with the aim of the archers, and Loki made sure to stay in the area until Liz had reached the building. The clinic wasn't too far, and she'd be safe enough. At worst, he hoped she'd have the spine to stab anything that came close enough for it.

Once Liz was no longer in view, he turned into a raven and took to the air. Thor was somewhere, and Loki intended to back him up.

Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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