[Backdated 8/25 - mini-GP open to team demilich or by request] is anyone dead?

[st_ratagem]

Coming back to consciousness hurt, significantly more than Loki remembered hurting in recent memory. There didn't seem to be a single part of his body that wasn't in some kind of pain, and on top of that he became aware, very quickly, of an odd whistling emptiness that said too much magic. He couldn't even have called one of his knives.

All of that being the case, he didn't move. If the fight was still going on, he intended to stay down. For a little while. Until he had something to act with or on. Or until he legitimately passed out again; that seemed horribly likely, with the way his head was swimming and the warm-wet of blood flowing out instead of staying in.

The desert was essentially silent, though, for the definition of 'silence' that included the sounds of wind and ordinary movement. Footsteps. Voices.

He wasn't dead, then. Was anyone else?

Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

[st_aff]

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...