Blarney, Squire of EarthHP: 66 - 3 = 63/75 (skelly damage blocked by wall & half damage from water blast, with permission from Song)
Location: C11->C9
Action: Wall of Nope v water & skellies
Interaction Roll: n/a
Damage/Healing/Buff Done: n/a
Blarney - gaped. He felt his sister's hand slide into his, and didn't need to look at her to know her expression mirrored his own. That -
thing was...was...
Indescribable.
It was a freaking
sea monster, right out of a pirate story, scrawled in an unknown corner of a treasure map:
here there be monsters. This monster, in particular, evidently knew Water Gun, in a big way, and a blast of water was coming their way.
Blarney grabbed his sister close and held her tight and pulled at that magic pool, pulling up as much wall as he could, just around himself and his sister. He heard the skeletons batter against it uselessly, and
felt it when the water hit the wall. It bought them just enough time to cover their faces before the water broke through the wall and hit them, with half as much intensity as it should have. It should have knocked them on their butts and soaked them to the bone; instead, they remained upright and...well, still pretty wet, but not as wet as some of the people around them.
"Thanks," Edam said breathlessly, moving her attention already from him back to - that thing that awaited them. "What now?" She looked at her little slingshot, and Blarney felt a pang of sympathy - he didn't really think that his shillelagh would be able to take down a monster like that, either, but...
Blarney looked around and straightened up. They were not alone. There were other, some more powerful, fighters around them, all of them gearing up or fighting their own skeletons or wringing out their uniforms. They were not alone.
"Now we fight," Blarney answered, grimly. "However we can. We protect who we can, we hit what we can, we try to keep everyone from..." Blarney glanced dubiously at the mean-looking fog that was beginning to creep up and around everyone's ankles. "From succumbing to despair." Blarney looked back at Edam, squeezed her hand.
"Think we can do that?" Blarney was actually asking - he searched her eyes. None of them
had to be here, and if his sister wanted to leave, he was pretty sure she would be allowed to, if she could figure out how.
Unsurprisingly - his sister was incredible - he found iron resolve replacing the doubt, the dread. She frowned, nodded, and looked back at the monster.
"It's just a skeleton like these stupid idiots," she said, and Blarney could tell she was willing herself to believe it even as she said it. "It can't be
that hard, with all these people here, right?"
He hoped so. "Absolutely."
Blarney's attention turned back to the skeleton, and then beyond it: to the...giant...beating...heart. That was covered with gunk. The giant beating heart that was covered with evil gunk.
Sure. Why wouldn't it be.
Even as he and Edam moved up, following the path that was being cleared of skeletons, Blarney tried to fight the growing anxiety in his stomach. He had no idea how to help, not really. His wall - his wall was good for protection, but not so much for attacking, and he didn't
really think that his lil shillelagh, no matter how engraved and pretty and possessing of a funky stone it was now that he'd become a Squire, would be all that useful against a giant skeletal sea monster. Edam's slingshot wouldn't do much either.
But maybe Edam was right. Maybe with all these people, it wouldn't be
that bad.
Man, he really hoped so.
Edam, Page of CybeleHP: 38 - 3 = 35/50 (Blarney's wall blocked skelly damage, half damage from water)
Location: D11->C9
Action: Slingshot @ monster?? i guess???
Interaction Roll: 1d8 physical damage
Damage/Healing/Buff Done: 7 damage to Big Skelly
The fear that had frozen her in place upon the awakening of the sea monster was unlike any Madeline had ever felt in her entire life. She was only dimly aware of her brother pulling her against his chest, and the shadow that fell over them as he called a wall into existence from nothing at all was only reassuring after she realized it wasn't the shadow of the sea monster itself, looming over their heads, waiting to eat them in one bony bite.
The skeletons had charged against the wall and crumbled away. When the wall fell under the water's force, it jarred her - she wasn't Madeline right now, she was Edam, and she -
They could do this. She listened, faintly, to Blarney's encouragement, but in truth, her ears were ringing so badly and the fog that was beginning to curl around her ankles was making it difficult to concentrate on anything.
Madeline wanted to go home.
Edam knew she had to stay.
She looked back at Blarney, who had evidently asked her a question, based on the searching expression on his face; he was looking for something. What did he want to see? What did he
need to see?
The same thing he always needed to see: her, in control. Her, capable. Her, keeping him safe.
She couldn't leave her brother here to face that thing alone, even if she
could figure out how to get home by herself, which she did not think she would be able to do successfully.
She was not a coward. She had never been afraid of
anything before, and in spite of every instinct telling her to run and hide, she forced herself to straighten her shoulders and paste a look of resolve across her face.
"It's just a skeleton like these stupid idiots," Edam said, scowling at the piles of bones that surrounded them. "It can't be
that hard, with all these people here, right?" As Blarney glanced around, Edam's attention stayed on the skeletons. Already, they were beginning to twitch and shift back together, and she was getting
real tired of it. Scooping down, she picked up a chunk of bone - maybe from a rib or an ulna, it was too broken to tell for sure - and hooked it into her slingshot.
When Blarney began to run toward the giant skeleton and the...was that a
heart? Oh, God, she was going to
throw up - Edam chased after him, keeping pace with him, running in time. When she began to grow breathless, she caught his arm.
"I might need that wall again in a sec," she said, letting out a long, slow breath. "If I can do this right, I might be about to make this guy
really mad."
Taking another breath and willing her hands to stop shaking, Edam held her slingshot aloft, aimed as she had been practicing. It wasn't a skeleton nightmare monster. It was just another target. She'd gotten a non-magical slingshot off the internet and had been practicing using it at varying distances, with various projectiles - she'd learned that nothing she packed in advance by way of ammo translated when she powered up, gone to the same place that her jeans and flannel disappeared to, but she'd decided that she could forage more ammunition than she could carry with her anyway, so it was probably fine.
And, well, ammunition was not in short supply here, with eleventy-bazillion skeletons breaking apart around her and coming back together. She just had to swoop in before they reattached themselves and she'd have enough to fill as many shots as her little sling could carry.
This was it. This was no different than the targets she'd set up in that empty, overgrown field. This was no different than the weird sad fish-thing she and Green Chapel and Blarney had destroyed when the girls had first awoken.
This was it.
She took one more steadying breath, pulled the sling back, locked onto the sea monster, and let the tiny broken bone fly.
Edam held her breath as she watched the projectile launch itself high in the sky, just like she'd practiced. Blarney clearly couldn't follow it the way she could, if his questions were any indication ("where'd it go? did you hit it? did you miss? Edam??"), but Edam could. She watched the tiny speck soar through the air, arc downward just as her mathematical equations had said it would, and couldn't help the grin that broke across her face as it made contact, knocking the thing right in its forehead.
Was it enough to take it down for good? No, not even close. Not even in the same universe as close.
But she'd hit it. And it hadn't liked it - just a little flinch, or something she couldn't quite put into words, but she
knew she'd hurt it.
If it could be hurt, it could die. If this thing was the skeletal source of all the other skeletons, Edam wondered if maybe this thing wasn't the reason they kept coming back.
"Can you keep the little guys away from me?" Edam asked breathlessly, a plan coming together in her mind instantly. She didn't have to say it out loud, or even express it silently through their magical earrings - it was their regular old twin connection that did the trick, the thing that let Mason and Madeline move as one being, two halves of a whole person. The trust was implicit. If she had a plan, he would follow it, no questions asked.
He grinned, but grimly. They were disgusting, covered in dirt and water and blood - oh, hey,
ow, her body
hurt, those stupid little skeletons - but they were together, and that meant nothing could stop them for long.
noir songbird
sorry mads had a whole journey when all she did was move ten feet and attacc monster
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