DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Anita’s magic fails to materialize, and she doubts whether she would be able to bind an unwilling innkeeper with her powers tonight, never mind this beast of Hirot.

"It shall have to be righteous indignation tonight, I’m afraid! That, and a good blade! The weave has failed me!"

She sighs, stepping back towards the tavern door she had just opened.

"One more soul saved, at least! Let’s be within, before the beast catches our scent!"

As she turns to head back into the Wolf-Spear, now fully realizing that the Hound must be on the other side of the building, Anora notes some tang in the air. Some invisible electricity, a scent that has no smell. It's like the night is holding its breath; it's like strands of pure chaos float on the air. Perhaps why her spell failed to take hold!

In the inn Aldric and Dufgal see Anora the Blue coming -- and with her another villager. A terrified one, who only does a double take at the state of Pelagia's priest before running for the hallway that leads to the guest rooms and the upper floors.

From the kitchen comes the sound of breaking, splintering wood, and a snarl that shakes the timbers of the building!

Dufgal quickly moves to close and bar the front door once more. And he upturns a table in front of it for additional security.

When Anora heads back inside, Ty gratefully retreats as well. Once inside, he assists Dufgal in closing and barring the Wolf-Spear's main door.

"I'll take sturdy walls over righteous indignation tonight, Madam Blue," he calls over his shoulder.

That's when the groan of cracking wood from the kitchen arrests his attention.

"It sounds like the thing is making headway back there. We should brace that door as best we can..."

So saying, the elf hurries into the kitchen to survey what might be used to hinder the spectral hound's entrance.

Anora suddenly looks every bit as tired and frayed as she feels. They had travelled since morning, and hadn’t stopped since, as the clock struck on a new day.

She sits a moment, as the door she had just barged out and then quickly back in was made strong again.

She just about heard the elf mention that the same should be done with the kitchen door, though she scarcely had the power to stand; her mortal energies sputtering as quickly as her arcane energy had.

Still… there was much left to do, and in a brief second of fortitude, she pushed herself back to her feet, and follows Ty into the kitchen.

"Another will be needed for the back!" she calls to Dufgal, hoping he was in an table lifting mood.

Aldric is quivering with anger at the moon Beast eluding him!* When the sound of splintering wood comes from the kitchen, he bravely covers everyone's flank and advances like a stalking shark that has smelled blood.** Not wanting to perturb Pelagia, he holds off on casting any more of her precious spells.

---

* - Actually, he was mostly just shivering because he was naked and sopping wet.

** - This, coincidentally, made him last to enter the kitchen.

Dufgal re-secures the front door as Anora takes a moment, Aldric shivers in his nakedness, and their elf companion moves to the kitchen. Ty does not like what he sees there -- the back door is partly broken in! One of the heavy iron hinges has been partly pulled from the jamb and there's a hole in the door where one of the vertical pieces of oak has been torn out entirely. There is motion in the blackness beyond that Ty can spy, and he hears the thing now -- not the howling and growling that has been sounding for minutes by now, but the wet and wheezing, gurgling breaths it takes!

---

ROUND 5

The strange noises coming in from the dark sound odd to Ty's ear, but do not give him pause. That's no hound-- at least none of which he has any experience. Still, the basic issue hasn't changed. Whatever is out there wants in, and Tyravasiel-Llir desires quite the opposite.

A quick glance about the kitchen shows him what may be moved: a wooden worktable laden with preparatory boards, vessels and utensils; a flanking pair of benches; perhaps that rack of pots if they have more time. And it shows him where the weight may best be applied: over on the jamb side, where the creature's efforts have weakened the hinges.

Ty starts with the table. Dropping his cane and all pretense of beggary, the elf shoves the worktable towards the door. He overlaps the wall on the jamb side so that if the hinges go, their intruder will have to shove into the middle of the table's bulk.

Ty is in the middle of pounding the hinge back into the jamb with a heavy wooden mallet as his companions come into the kitchen, seeing and hearing the same things the elf did just seconds before. There's a rumbling growl from the darkness outside the building, then a shadow shifts and an eye is suddenly pressed to the jagged hole in the wooden door. It is pupil-less and silver, that baleful eye, and it sees!

Always used to being told to "do it yerself, you lazy git!", Dufgal never considered collaborating. He simply saw the damage to the door and rushed to push a stand of shelves over to add barriers to the hound’s entry.

Aldric watches as the men of action bravely brace the door, their bodies inches from a fiend so fierce that it has scared a host of mounted warriors into inaction and cowardice. Surely, Pelagia must see that Aldric is leading these disciples against the foul creature that has earned her ire?

When the devil hound's silvery eye peers forth from the other side of the damaged door, Aldric is filled with righteous rage! He thrusts his arm forward, presenting Pelagia's holy symbol carved on the flat of his oar. His voice booms forth with a preacher's conviction and showmanship: "MOON BITCH! I have shat in my pants and breeches - hang them on your neck and wipe your mouth with them!!"

This unmovable Pelagia was as grim as Anora needed to be in this moment, and for the first time the wizardess felt a kinship with the sea-bitch.

"You chose your mistress poorly!" she mutters to the cleric, as she stalks closer to the eye in the slit; her sword as silvery as the thing she was about to run it through!

When she’s got quite close enough, she slips her blade through the gap, and hopes to blind the thing, if not scramble its brain with her blade!

That eye -- that repellent eye! It peers straight at Aldric as he calls upon his goddess and her briny influences -- to no avail! The priest senses it now, as does Anora as she darts forward with her sword, trying to stab the Hound through the hole in the door. It is a thing of pure chaos, this monster. This is no crazed animal, no natural or even corrupted thing at all. Evil has coalesced and taken form... and that form shrieks and wails as steel drives into its queer and rubbery flesh.

When Anora draws back her sword, the blade is wet with a thick black blood that begins to evaporate before her eyes. The bellowing beast recoils from the door, and that's when Dufgal starts muscling some shelves into place, intending to further bolster the blockade.

"The blade, not the Bitch, will serve us tonight!" Anora remarks with a grimace, as she watches the blood evaporate from the blade.

While Anora displays her valor, Tyravasiel-Llir labors to save his neck. That other necks might also be saved is a happy coincidence.

"Just so, Lady!" he huffs, while overturning a bench and dragging it to the back of their makeshift barricade. "Should the beast... come peeping again... give it steel for its-- trouble..."

Ty shoves the sturdy wood into place, hoping to add further weight and friction against another attempt on the kitchen door.

When Dufgal covers the hole with the heavy shelves, then Ty rams home the bench to hold it all tightly in place, everyone present can tell that this is a formidable blockade. Indeed, the beast outside screams in a warbling cry, then rams itself into the door not once or twice, but three times.

It shudders, but it holds! And so, perhaps bleeding from the wound opened by Anora's blade, the monster moves off, spluttering and gurgling into the night...

Dufgal, being always made to look up the social ladder from the Gongfarmers’ lowly status, habitually defers to the people with the highest rank. He obviously saw that the elf excelled as well, but he still assumes that he was inspired by the courageous sword of Anora the Blue. The thief kneeled down and lowered his head in her direction. "milady, you have mah ‘eart as well as my ‘ands."

He wished that the citizens bore witness as it would certainly count as assurances that the wizardess should be taken out of any lottery pool.

Anora, looking the worse for wear after the events of the day, awkwardly stands above the kneeling Dufgal!

She stoops a little to put a hand on his shoulder, and then slips the hand around and then under to grab his arm and lift him up to his feet. She pats him on the shoulder again, and gives him as warm a smile as she can muster, given the day they’d just put down.

"Use them to bar me from doing something foolish next time… like running out into the night to meet the beast." she says, with some amusement, wondering what she would have done, if she had met the beast head on in that moment.

"Ty followed me to face the beast! Our brave beggar is owed more than me!" she says, looking at the elf! Then she looks to the cleric:

"Can you sense it out there, Aldric?" she broaches tentatively. The man hadn’t been right since they set foot in the village.

Had the village magician interfered with the man somehow?…

"Have we driven the beast off for tonight?"

Ty straightens from his work on the barricade. He puts both palms in the small of his back and stretches, wincing. He's never been one for physical labor, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

They might have driven off the beast, but why was it here in the first place? Anora the Blue is playing a needless and dangerous game, but like all games, the rules and conditions of play hold a certain interest for the active mind.

"Curious that the Hound came to Hirot even after slaying Lloré," Ty muses aloud. "If the beast were merely driven by hunger, then why didn't it stop after it had a belly full of skald?" He purses his lips below the blindfold. "No, the thing looked for a particular sacrifice. And when that went missing, it came to take its revenge."