Chapter 23: Wolves at the Door
The Arrows do everything they can to ensure your safety. A team secures the doorway, another team sets up a protective screen and four more teams stand ready to breach the perimeter at Ceannard's orders.
Everything is waiting on his signal and he is waiting on yours.
"Derryth, don't do this," the Faceless Man has been trying to talk you out of attacking the compound's spells.
"Why not?" you whisper in response.
"It is reckless, that's why! You know nothing about the spells at play here! Hell, I know nothing about them! They could be anything!" you know all that of course. You know this is dangerous but you want to ensure the Arrows succeed and you are certain that this is the way to do it. It is precisely because the spells at the heart of the compound are so strange that you feel a need to remove them. You do not want the Arrows under their effects for too long.
"I am doing this," you answer, "Either help or stay out of the way."
"I refuse to help you do something this... this stupid!" the archmage sputters, "Think about all you could lose!" you are fairly certain he means all he could lose but you do not expect any more from him at this point. Ultimately you elect to ignore him, if he will not help then you have nothing more to say to the man.
The three of you stand in a small triangle. You take one another's hands, you close your eyes and you prepare to assault the enemies' spells.
You can not see the enemy mages, in fact you do not even know if there are enemy mages actually maintaining the spells. As a result you are left with a single option. Attack the spells directly and force your way to their heart.
It will not be easy but then what has been for you lately?
You nod to the mercenary captain, "We are ready when you are."
"Alright, I will give the order to advance," you hear the whistle of an arrow.
Explosions rock the night, satchel charges no doubt.
From the shouts and screams that follow you know that the Arrows have begun their attack and so you begin yours.
You begin with the easy stuff.
Alarm spells, sentry spells, warding spells of various types.
Nothing you can not handle.
The three of you know what you are doing even if you are only working from theory and not first hand experience. You and Thaïs are so used to working together at this point that you dodge and weave between each other's spells with a grace and elegance that is mesmerizing. Lyssa for her part does her best to keep up. Despite Mazzarin's low opinion of her skill you believe she demonstrates real talent and even knows a thing or two that surprises you.
All is going according to plan. Most of the enemy spells have been dealt with as you follow the magical currents back to their heart. Then you feel it, the spell you could not identify.
It manifests as a slight pull on your mind coming from the center of the compound.
You immediately halt your advance to properly investigate but it does little good. Something is pulling you further from your body. You try to shout a mental warning to your allies, you try to tell them to pull back but as you cast around with your mind you realize that they are trapped as well.
The three of you are pulled along the magical currents towards the heart of the compound. Your mind begins to grow weary, tired, and gradually you begin to drift off.
Faintly, you think you hear Ceannard calling your name but there is nothing to be done as you quietly drift off to sleep.
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Bravely the watchman strides into the woods.
He has walked this path hundreds of times before.
It is all he knows.
It is his purpose.
Once, he thought, he dreamed of another life.
In a city of glittering marble, he traded bits of metal in a great square.
But that could not be.
He has always been a watchman.
Such dreams are mere fancy, nothing more.
He walks on in silence as the night closes around him.
The scant light of his lantern barely pierces the oncoming gloom.
He wants to return to his bed, to the white brick fort, but he refuse to abandon this.
This is his duty.
So he pushes on.
The night comes on quickly now.
And with it come other things.
Enemies.
A branch snaps to his right.
It is on him in an instant.
A nightmare, part lizard, part housecat, with the tongue of a frog and the tail of a desert scorpion.
It is an elf, a fairy, a twisted little beast of the forest.
It will kill him, eat him.
He is ready though.
His blade fills his hand and all too quickly it cuts through to the very heart of the beast.
It gurgles as it dies, twisting, clawing its way down his blade towards him.
He drops the weapon and runs.
In a panic the watchman flees back to the fort.
He must stay on the path.
Should he take but one step off of it he will be lost forever.
Around him the forest springs to life.
Every tree reveals a score of red eyes staring back at him.
Every bush giggles, chuckles, whistles with the mischief and malice of the damned.
He does not look, to look would be to lose everything.
He runs.
Faster.
And faster still.
He is so close now.
Braches snap. Boughs break.
The entire forest screams at the watchman.
Perhaps that is why he fails to notice his death waiting just around the corner.
The wolf is a bolt of auburn against a black night.
Fire on oil.
Blood on the cool, dark earth.
It closes its jaws around his neck.
It sinks its teeth deep.
The watchman dies.
The forest cries in triumph.
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You howl.
In this eternal, dreaming forest. The hunt and the kill is everything.
You feel complete, whole, as you tear a strip off the dying watchman.
Daintily, you wipe the blood from your muzzle as your companions slink out of the shadows towards you. One black, one brown. Thaïs and Lyssa respectively.
Thaïs lets out a low series of yelps, "Nice kill Derryth," she eyes your prey hungrily but you made the kill and you get to have the first crack at it.
You carefully tear a chunk from the man. Lyssa edges closer to the corpse. Her presumption annoys you. You let out a slight growl of warning, "Don't either of you have something to do other than watch me eat?"
Lyssa whines in response, her ears plastered back, "Not really no. We all have to wait for the right moment to strike and there are only so many patrols."
You understand every noise either of them make.
For a second that strikes you as odd though you shrug it off after only a moment.
They are your pack and you serve the gods of the wild, dark forest. You will bring death to the men in their fort. Those that tried to tame it, to break it. You know you will succeed, eventually.
You exhale sharply. They are not going to leave, they want some of the kill as well. You decide to be charitable, you are their leader but you are not a tyrant. You will share, "Alright you two. Come over here but no fighting."
They fall on the corpse, tearing apart what little remains as you scan the trees in contemplation. They let out happy howls of appreciation as they devour the human.
They sing your praises but something bothers you.
You have the nagging suspicion that you had a greater purpose than this.
That once you were not as you are now.
It is very hazy but you could swear that there is more to your existence than hunting and killing.
The idea is slippery though.
Every time you reach to grab it, it slides away.
You huff in frustration.
That catches Thaïs' attention. She leaves the rest of the meat to Lyssa and sits down next to you, "Something the matter," she whispers.
"Yes," you growl, "I just do not know what..."
"Why not talk about it? That helps me," she pokes you with her muzzle trying to cheer you up.
"I... I don't think any of this is right. I think we were not always like this..." you shift to your left uncomfortably and raise a paw to your face, "Every now and then I catch a face or a place that does not fit," you whine in pain as you force yourself to remember.
Pain, suffering, misery arc through your mind. It would be so much easier to stop trying.
The forest provides all. It protects you and your pack. It will comfort you. It will feed you. And someday when you die it will hug your body to its chest and take you back to the gods.
What more could a wolf want after all?
You are about to tell Thaïs that it is nothing when a nearby tree begins to swell.
The forest screams.
It tells you to run.
You trust the forest and so you are about to do just that.
You don't have time.
The tree splits open as teal flames pour forth.
The two of you yelp and race back to Lyssa.
The three of you turn to run for the forest but the flames are faster.
They encircle you, trap you.
From the smouldering remains of the tree steps a man. Old, distinguished, dignified.
You and your pack growl at him.
He ignores you, instead he calls out to the forest, "You can not have them you know! They are mine and no second rate deity is going to fuck this up for me!"
The forest reacts, a gremlin of stone and wood leaps at the man. It dissolves in mid air, splattering a nearby rock.
He turns his gaze back to you as he clicks his tongue, "Oh Derryth. How do you get yourself into these situations?"
He grins as the fires die down, "Now don't run. I am trying to help you here."
He snaps a branch off a nearby tree and begins to focus on you and your pack.
They whimper but you order them to stand their ground. For some reason you believe this man.
The branch begins to glow.
The forest screams.
You close your eyes.
He hits you.
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"You know girls, it is a damn good thing you did not have those ridiculous gloves on when you decided to do this! Do you have any idea how long it took me to find you in this dream forest? Any clue at all of what could have happened! No, don't answer that!" the three of you sit in a line, restored to your proper condition though you remember very little of your time as a forest creature. The Faceless Man paces before you, lecturing you, "If I had been incapacitated! Why, you would be stuck as animals for the rest of your days!"
You do not really have time for this. You try to placate the mage, "Well thank you again for your help but we really must be-"
"What you 'must be doing' young lady is sit there and listen," another forest spirit leaps out at him, a twisted amalgam of a catfish, a canary and a weasel, and he snuffs it out without breaking stride.
By your count that makes forty two, not one of them has come close to threatening the Faceless Man.
He sighs dramatically, "You girls will be the death of me you know that!" while you are in fact grateful for his aid you also have had more than enough of his crap.
You ignore him and cast your mind out, looking for the source of the spell that dragged you down into this dream world. It is faint but you find it. The source of the Oneiroi spell is ahead of you, in that fort of white brick.
You stand and begin to walk past him towards the fort in the distance.
He steps in front of you, "Where are you going?"
"We have a job to do," you respond as you step around him, "I intend to finish it."
"Like hell you will," he grabs your arm, "You are coming back with me to where it is safe!"
You grin at the Faceless Man, "If you want to try and force me to then be my guest."
You think he might just do it to until Thaïs interrupts, "If you are concerned with our safety then why not come with us? You constantly tell us that we are your apprentices, well what better time to teach us something?"
"Exactly," you nod, "Show us what you have got... I mean unless you are scared..."
"I am not scared," he growls, but that cut him a little.
Thaïs seizes on the opening, "He is right Derryth. We can not say he is scared and we certainly can not say he is a coward-"
"Ladies," he tries to interrupt as you both ignore him.
You call on every little trick your friend has taught you, you feign surprise and actually do a decent job of it, "Oh no, I would not call him a coward at all! Why he is quite brave to come out here when he is so terrified!"
"Ladies," he tries again a little louder. Again you both ignore him.
Your friend nods enthusiastically, "Yes, it must be very difficult to choke down your fear like that. Why if I were that petrified, that fearful, that anxious, that-"
"Ladies!" he shouts at the top of his lungs.
You turn to him in unison, a look of surprise and concern fastened carefully to your faces, "Yes?" Thaïs responds innocently.
Your group stands in silence as he fumes.
The stillness of the night is only broken when another forest spirit launches itself at the Faceless Man, a bizarre mixture of a dog, a beetle and a lizard. He catches it by the throat and snaps its neck.
He sighs, "Let's just get this over with..." he turns and stalks off towards the fort with the three of you in pursuit.
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The Oneiroi compound in this dreamscape is far more impressive than it is in reality.
The walls are high and thick, dozens of guards stand watch, looking out into the forest, and you can feel something powerful radiating magical energy from the center of the compound.
"So what are our options?" you ask your group.
"Let me handle it?" the Faceless Man suggests with a smile, "I can bring down those gates with little effort."
That sounds too easy. There must be a catch and it seems Thaïs thinks the same thing as that is what she asks, "You have never been this free with your power before. What changed?"
He grins, "Smart girl. Here we are in a space outside of physical reality. A place that is not my home but one I am vaguely familiar with. Here I can steal a little power and make it my own. Of course to attack that fortress will require a little more power than I can currently draw on. I can take care of the fort but you will need to grant me just a little extra power to do so. Link your minds up to mine and I will have this fort levelled in no time at all."
"So this is yet another attempt to get into our heads," you grumble. Not angry, not surprised really, just a little disappointed.
"Well it would only be a little part of your minds. Just a single point of contact so that you can feed me the extra energy I need. Of course if you want to do this without my help be my guest," he gestures to the imposing fortress with a self satisfied smirk firmly fixed to his face.
That sounds like a challenge.
You turn to your allies, "If we were going to do it, how would we go about it?"
Thaïs begins, "Mental control spells? We compel one of the guards to open the gate and go from there?"
Lyssa speaks up, uncertain of herself, "There are other minds out there in the forest in the form of animals of various shapes and sizes, like we were. I could try to talk to them, try to convince them to help us. They could provide us with the numbers to take the fort by force if we cover them with illusions and mental manipulation spells."
Fairly good plans all things considered, "Perhaps we could do both. We get a guard to open the gates and then unleash the whole forest on them."
The three of you nod in unison as the Faceless Man frowns, "That is a horrible plan. It will never work," he snorts dismissively.
You are not so sure though. You think it might work and that, that is what annoys the archmage.
You are about to make your decision when another forest spirit materializes, it is a creature of spotted fur and living rock, feathers and greenwood.
It does not attack however, instead it bows lows.
It chatters at you and though you have trouble understanding it at first, gradually its words become intelligible, "You are enemies of the fort men? You help us and we help you! Open gates and we will take care of the rest!"
An interesting proposition but can you trust these creatures?
You remember very little from your time as a wolf and what you do remember is quite hazy. You do remember though that the forest spirits and their gods hate the fort and its guards more than anything. While the spirits are notoriously untrustworthy that hatred is something you can count on.
They could very well betray you but the Faceless Man can act as quite the deterrent and there is no way to stop them from involving themselves anyway should they desire or see an opportunity...
1. Unravelling the Spell: You need to get inside that fort to unravel the final Oneiroi spell, how do you want to do it?
A) You don't - You have taken out most of the Oneiroi spells, that will have to be good enough. You attempt to return to your bodies using the Faceless Man's help.
B) Archmage Assault - You want to see what a Fallen Lord can really do.
C) Assault Independently - You, Thaïs and Lyssa will use your own spells to assault the fort. You will compel one of the guards to open the doors then attack with every resource you can muster.
D) Diplomacy - You try to gain access to the fort by negotiating with the garrison. Perhaps you can convince them that you are watchmen that got lost in the forest though you are not confident.
E) freeform - Gain entry to the fort your own way.
2. The Forest Spirits: The strange forest spirits have offered to help you attack the fort. You do not really trust them but you think they may just attack anyway once the gate is down. Do you agree to work with them?
A) Yes
B) No