Chapter 1 - Leaving Dunova

Jezlyn flails about in the water. Her head is spinning and she's disoriented. Which way is up? She sees light above her and decides to kick up. Eventually she breaks water and takes a huge gasp of air. Her lungs hurt. She spies a shore of some kind nearby and begins swimming towards it.

Ail struggles against the water, his heavy hammer pulling him down. Eventually he feels his head break the surface and he pulls in a lungful of air. Water dripping he crawls up on the shore and gets on his back and pants heavily. "Everyone accounted for?"

"Present" Pinions says awkwardly from under Ail. Turns out the hammer wasn't the only thing weighing the big man down, as Pinion grabbed rhe first thing he could as the water came rushing at them. Holding in to Ail may be the only reason Pinion survived.

Hauling yourselves from the pool, you notice the ground here isn't like the top of the crater. It's glassy, as though something very powerful has struck across it and warped it. Below that layer, and the dust, you can make out thick obsidian blocks like the ones you passed on the way down. They're gently pulsing with purple energy, and it seems to come from the central building in a periodic wave.

Along with the occasional clank of a step from the damaged Elonian Knights, you can hear a hum. It seems to be coming from somewhere far away, like a background sound. It's consistent in it's volume no matter which way you turn or where you go.

Velisse weighed the merits of approaching the nearest Elonian Knight to speak with them about what had happened here, for they had evidently suffered from whatever befell them. Was the purple energy deadly? Could they avoid its effects?

With what appeared to be injured knights lying there, Velisse made the assumption that they must have suffered some effect from the radiating energy. She moved to the one nearest to them, "Are you okay? What happened?"

As Velisse approaches, she can see the movements of the knight don't seem natural. They remind her of a puppet on a string, as though something else is moving them in short jagged lurches. They stop when she speaks, and slowly turns to face her. She can hear the scrape of metal on metal as they turn. They doesn't speak, though.

The impression Velisse gets from them isn't of hostility though. They just seem lost or confused.

Velisse herself hadn't cleared her head as well, she momentarily wondered if she was feeling the same way they did. She didn't want to display hostility herself, not just yet, but something didn't seem right. She indicated to the others to see if they could tell if something, some magic, was causing them to be this way.

Admittedly, Pinion didn't have much experience with Knights like these, but they appeared to be acting oddly. "How curious, were the damaged by the ware also? Is that odd sound affecting them? Maybe they were hurt by the same energy that damaged the airship . . "

Jezlyn rests on the shore a moment to catch her breath while the others inspect the mechanical knights. She squints over at them, trying to study their behavior from a safe distance as she idly wrings the water out of her clothes.

The Elonian knight lets out a crackle of static, before falling flat. None of the others look to be in much better condition, as though they've just been abandoned and left to rust. Whoever it is that brought them here seems not to care what happens to them, now that they've served their purpose the owner obviously thinks it's fine to throw them away.

"More empty shells." Velisse looked troubled. "We'll have no answers here." She looked onward, to see where they ought to proceed next.

Velisse moves on from the broken form of the knight. She peers toward the central building, where something catches her eye. In the middle of the concourse, something small is approaching at speed. In the distance, it doesn't look like much but it resolves into the shape of a small person carrying a rather large bag. They are sprinting as fast as they can, pursued by the form of a strange looking bat.

She's attracting a lot of attention from the rather more functioning Elonian Knights who join the pursuit, and she keeps glancing behind her.

"I-I’m just a merchant." The young lady yells, dashing straight for you. "P-please help!"

Jezlyn pulls out her pistol to cover the poor woman in case anything gets too close to her. "Over here! Get behind us!"

"Thank you~" The girl yells, diving behind the group in terror.

The pursuers, now clearly a monster bat and a handful of Elonian Knights, draw up short. They eye the group warily, but don't seem to want to test an enemy with numbers and weapons. Even if the knights are acting on programming, something here seems to have given them more sentience than they usually have.

Strong Ail draws his hammer and looks at the knights. "Let us pass and you won't end up dented pieces of debris!" he threaten them.

The creatures back off a few steps at Ail's words, the bat practically turning tail and running completely, but the knights don't look like they're quite so cowardly. As much as an automaton can have emotions like that. It seems like they can't cross a certain boundary though, so as long as the group stays behind that they won't be coming any closer, either.

Pinion ask the woman; "Who was that? And what business would they have with a merchant?"