The Lion's Way

Aiwë's breath is heavy as she pauses to look at the tracks. "The wolves are smaller but the deer are bigger?" She is tired of the south. No. She's just tired. "Maybe they caught it," she says hopefully. Fresh meat. Hot blood. A small glimmer of something pleasant in an agonizing two days.

She sighs. The meat won't be fresh and the blood won't be hot if they still take hours to catch up yet. She tightens the ties keeping Keggruk's arms together around her neck, and continues on.

Despite her exhaustion, Imoen hops up and down excitedly. "A deer! A giant deer! Oh, those are supposed to be special..." She furrows her brow and holds the bridge of her nose. "I just can't remember! But... I hope they didn't catch it. Something special..."

While thinking, she wanders over to Ossein and his walking corpse. "You don't happen to remember anything about-Aaaaaagghgh!" She stumbles away from the zombie, who has three huge nasty bugs perched on his back, sucking out whatever juices they can. As Imoen watches in horror and disgust, a fourth buzzes over to land on Ossein's new friend.

"Ewwww!"

Imoen skitters back from Ossein's zombie and takes aim with her bow. One of the stirges flaps around suddenly and spooks her just as she looses the arrow, and it *thunks* into the zombie's back (Ossein's archer friend takes 5 damage).

Wirrow sighs (mostly internally) at Imoen's incompetence. It was a good thing the person she'd shot hadn't been alive, or there might be serious consequences. She moves forward to hack at least one of them off, but while the sun is setting, a few stray rays catch her in the eyes and she slashes at nothing but air.

(Missed both attacks on the stirges, yay...)

HP: 20/20
AC: 14
Up next to the stirges.

"...huh? Oh, my where did those come from?"

A burst of various spectral weapons slide out of the archer.

DC 12 dex save or taken2 damage, everything within 5 feet of me.

Aiwe pulls two of her mallets from their case at her hip and beats at the bugs. One falls to the ground, thoroughly squished, but the second evades her sluggish swing.

"Taking a nap already? We've barely started. Wake back up, c'mon."


Ossein re-raises the archer.

Wirrow looks practically offended at the stirge's attempt to drink her blood. Even as it goes to bite her, she whips her sword through the air and cuts the bug in half lengthwise, bursting open the part of it that holds blood from all of its previous victims, as well as her own. The impromptu red shower hits everyone nearby; Wirrow herself looks more satisfied and vindicated than disgusted by it.

(Stirge 3 is a heckin dead bug)

HP: 15/20
AC: 14

"I've decided I hate them." Wirrow sends a casual, blood-splattered glare at the bug carcasses on the forest floor. Not much point dwelling on it. There had better not be any more, though.

As the group starts on their way once again, Wirrow closes one of her hands and focuses on it. She'd read about a lot of different things in Candlekeep, but only since the assassin attack did she start feeling different. What better time than now to try and see about that magic?

When she opens her hand again, in her palm rest ten red beads, like perfectly spherical berries. Wirrow is almost surprised by how easy it comes to her; Stella had complained a couple of times about magic lessons, so she'd expected more difficulty.

Well, she wasn't going to complain with results like that. They even taste alright too, and the reclamation seems to be working from what she can tell. Spirits and condition a little higher, she catches up the few paces she's fallen behind.

(Wirrow casts Goodberry, and then consumes all of them over the next little bit to regain 10 HP)

"Bugs," Aiwë says, an obvious agreement with Wirrow's decision. She stows her mallets and brushes her hands against Imoen and Wirrow's arms, muttering a snippet of song to herself about a frog eating flies on a log. The two become clean of blood at her touch.

"We have to keep moving," she says. "You'll catch up again?" she asks the mace. She turns and continues plodding on, not waiting for a reply.

"Yes, yes, yes. I'll catch up again, just make sure wherever you go, it's obvious. I'm not one for tracking. And when I do catch up, if you'd like, I can take over that manual labor. My archer might not be able to lift that big fellow, but he can drag him and he doesn't tire. Might at least give you a break, even if we go a little slower."

"It's safer for me to carry him. A drag trail is hard to cover and easy to follow." She pauses and looks back at the weapon. "Thanks though. Maybe Archer can carry our packs if there's time to trade later."