strangetrip | Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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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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Jag started when the portal opened beside him, and a bright sword cleaved through the undead he had been roasting. "I hope you were talking to the other blokes," he remarked, more than a little shaky, but unwilling to let that get in his way. Or in the way of quips, apparently.

The fire on the now doubly dead undead died out with a thought, and he turned back to the next line of undead making their way forward. He'd got separated from Emma a little while back, and he could only hope - trust - that she was still all right. He also knew, from what his Emma had told him about Illyana, that he was probably in good company.

He shifted his hands, calling up another fire ball. "I burn, you slash?" And with that, an outward arc of one hand sent the fire curving through the next wave of skeletons, the heat growing inside his chest each time the flames found something to feed from.

Her nose wrinkled at the smell of dead, burning flesh - not a smell she was unfamiliar with, but hardly pleasant either. The undead didn't flail and scream to be burning as would the living, yet they did seem to be somewhat susceptible to fire damage and flaming distraction. Undead or not, they required functional bodies to fight. "Slash and burn," she agreed, preferring the order in which she was less likely to accidentally lose her bangs. "Can you fight them hand-to-hand?"

"I really can't!" Jag emphatically answered. This was a far sight different from the pub brawls he was accustomed to, and he had no intention of fighting any of these things with his bare hands. No, the plan was to keep using his fire like a range weapon, and make sure they wouldn't get close to him to get a hit in. Again, anyway. He already had a few bruises, and his ribs hurt like hell from a bad fall earlier.

She frowned her mild annoyance that not everyone had basic combat training, but a cutting remark at Jag would hardly improve his performance in this battle. And the undead swiping, jostling, clattering violently in their direction required more of her attention in that case.

Unlike another mage (or pyrokinetic) might, Illyana did not hesitate to engage in melee with the oncoming skeletal warriors. Her Soulsword was far more effective against such foes than mundane steel, attacking the very necromancy that imbued the enemies with strength and motion as much as their bones. She fought viciously, and her weapon was mighty - but she did not make the mistake of thinking that she could hope to slay a whole army of corpse soldiers by her sword alone. "Then you need - to fall back - to a more defensible position," she got out between a combination of moves, bone shards flying to skitter off of new foes already shambling to take the place of the fallen.

She positioned herself between the rushing undead and Jag for the moment, but with so many enemies crawling the battlefield, it would be futile and pointless to stand their ground there for long.

Edited 2018-09-12 21:20 (UTC)

Jag worked around her, trying to make sure that neither one of them might be overrun by the undead, using the fire alternately as a barrier or an offensive weapon. It was a little surprising, how quickly something like this could become routine. He was long since done panicking; any emotional response had been put on hold, at least, while he simply did his thing. Undead after undead.

Although he was also, instinctively, backing away little by little, as they gained ground. He only realised that when Illyana spoke up again, and frowned. "What do you mean, I?"

He would leave her there if she insisted, but he'd make sure that really was what she meant, first.

"I mean," Illyana began to answer, pausing to twist free from the grasp of the undead long enough to cast a shielding spell. The glyphs glowed brighter as the wights and zombies battered themselves against the bubble of the magical shielding, redoubling their efforts in frenzied frustration. The barrier was holding, but its power had limitations.

"I am far better equipped for such fighting than you," she finished her thought as she turned back to approach Jag. The shielding did not impede him in the way that it had stopped the undead, power shimmering as she stood close enough to encase him in the radius of the spell effect centered on her.

"Are you?" Jag asked, very sarcastically, even as an undead heading for him ran straight into the... magical force field? "Hadn't noticed. Fuck, this is fantastic," he added, especially since it didn't impede his fire, either. Which meant he was currently treating the undead pressing against the barrier to another round of fire, this one so hot the flames turned blue.

He was this close to throwing up because of the stench, though - it probably didn't help that he wasn't used to wielding his fire quite as intensely as he had been doing today.

Flesh charred, corpses smoked and bubbled and crackled, and the ropes of muscle that held the bodies together were seared away. It was crude, but it did help to serve their purposes, forcing a number of the undead to stagger and collapse.

Would that Illyana had been able to attack at the same time, or that Jag looked less in danger of collapsing himself.

The rush of undead subsided for the moment, and in that moment Illyana summoned a glowing disk of molten-liquid magical energy to appear beneath their feet. The world seemed to suddenly shift around them, the brilliance of the portal swallowing them up -

They weren't where they had been standing in the next instant, as the portal collapsed and vanished as if it had never been. They were standing in one of the hallways of the main building, the sounds (and smells) of fighting become faint and distant.

Edited 2018-09-14 14:34 (UTC)

Jag experienced a brief spell of dizziness at the sudden change of location, reaching out to lean a hand on the nearest wall for support. The fire he'd been wielding had suddenly become too distant to keep a hold of, and it was a good time, apparently, to take a moment to breathe. He did just that, shifting to lean his back against the wall, instead.

"Thanks," he said, after a moment, looking over at Illyana. It was a little like having fought alongside a legend, for all the things Emma - his Emma - had told him about her. He didn't know whether she was the one Emma knew, but he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. Either way, she hadn't disappointed.

It was ironic that he would think so highly of her, when so many of her fellow X-men were stronger, faster, smarter, or at least not considered to be a traitor. There were few in the place and time that she had left that would have wanted her on a team with them, and not unjustly so.

But for someone that had not witnessed the exceptional feats of para-military mutant teams from an impressionable age, she could perceive where the stunned, wonderous look might come from.

"We need to cooperate in order to survive," she stated the obvious. "The next time you find yourself facing so many foes - fight smarter than ending up out in the open where you're outnumbered. Run if you must. It's clear you haven't had much in the way of martial training."

"How about none," Jag answered, and pushed off the wall. He needed to figure out where Emma was, and if she was all right. "Are you going back out there?"

"The undead are still attacking." She gave him a look that said his question had an obvious answer.

Fair enough. Jag nodded. "If you see Emma, will you tell her to come find me? I'll be getting some food." And, possibly, some painkillers for the headache that had been building at the base of his skull. But food was also a necessity; he'd noticed before how much creating and wielding fire took out of him, but this was on a whole other level.

As for Emma, he hoped that she wasn't out there without him, or at least not out there alone, much as she was better suited for this than he was, too. Hopefully he'd find her downstairs.

Illyana didn't judge him for wanting to eat. The physical demands of wielding mutant powers could take their toll, and it was common for young or inexperienced mutants in particular to exhaust themselves to a dangerous degree by neglecting to provide themselves rest and fuel. If he went back into the fray as he was, Jag would only be a liability.

Moreover, he was clearly preoccupied with Emma's well-being.

"I will. Perhaps you will find she is bravely defending our foodstuffs," her thoughts ran parallel to his. "Farewell." She summoned another portal and vanished the way she had come.

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Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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