70 Vhalar 719
Between the events of these two threads: Hostile Foreigners and Deals with the Slaver. Mid morning time frame.
Between the events of these two threads: Hostile Foreigners and Deals with the Slaver. Mid morning time frame.
Location: Melrath Wilds
A battle of mages and mercenaries raged on around Abra as he got to his feet. He had made his first kill by flaying an Ithecal that had just earlier tried to put an axe through his chest. Fueled with the ether from the Ithecal’s body the Syns Empath was ready to attack.
Abra looked for someone to sick his magic on. He saw mercenaries half buried in the ground, some charred corpses, and even an ally who had taken an arrow to the knee. Both sides seemed to be taking respite now. From what Abra could plainly see, the three remaining mercenaries were hiding behind various trees and the mages were tending to their wounded. The employer of the mercenaries was missing, along with the Attuner that Abra had been with just earlier.
“There’ll be no resting for you,” he thought when he spotted the enemy mercenaries. They could hide behind trees all they wanted, but it wouldn’t save them from his Empathy spark. He applied a liberal amount of ether to their tangles and they fell to the ground one by one. He felt like a god with this much ether and he could finally see why mages succumbed to the Thirst so easily. The mercenary tangles were no match for him in this state. He was able to exert so much pressure that it was easy to maintain his most powerful attack for long enough to allow his team to capture them for questioning.
“Three at once? That’s new,” an amber haired mage told Abra when they regrouped. “Are you sure you won’t overstep?”
“I flayed.” Abra looked at the mage with a peaceful smile while he recollected how wonderful the brief experience was. He got uneasy looks, hungry looks even from the other mages. It was miraculous that mages could work together at all since they innately knew that flaying each other would be simply incredible.
“Careful, don’t let it consume you,” the amber mage told him. He tied the prisoners up and said, “now we need to track down the other two. He was referring to the Attuner and the Eidisi who were presumably still battling somewhere. “Abra, you go look for them. The rest of us will escort the prisoners and the wounded back to the tower.”
Abra travelled for half a break before seeing any signs of conflict. Several stray arrows, a trail of blood. It was the blood that drew him here. Blood was one of the few things that Abra could Douse with attunement. More arrows and more blood splattered on the tree trunks told him he was going in the right direction.
Along the way, Abra encountered a large group of people in tattered clothes quickly passing through the forest. Among them, was a man who sat on a throne and was being carried by a group of ten. Around the man circled a group of avriel who screeched at Abra when they saw him.
“I’m a Syns magician,” Abra shouted, “I’m looking for an Eidisi and another mage of my faction. Have you seen them?”
The person who was clearly in charge, the one on the throne, made his procession stop with a clench of his fist. “I am a lawful
He heard them before he saw them. Cries of pain proceeding thuds of arrows echoed throughout the forest. Abra ran as fast as he could all while awkwardly navigating around the frosted roots. He was tired but he still found the energy to push himself. Though he still had ether from the flaying it didn’t help with his physical setbacks. He was barely moving through the snow when he turned the final bend in the trees and saw a gruesome sight.
The Attuner Abra was teamed with was pinned up against a tree. No less than five arrows had shot so powerfully through his body that the arrowheads held him in place against the chilled bark. An Eidisi, the leader of this band of criminals, had an arrow trained on the Attuner’s head when he noticed Abra’s presence. The Eidisi whipped around and fired an arrow that struck Abra with an unnatural power. The arrow didn’t pierce, as a normal one might, but instead it broke a glass container onto Abra’s chest that sent an electric shock throughout his body.
His body convulsed as he dropped to his knees, nearly immobilized by the shock. He stumbled and opened a blink portal but the Eidisi was too quick. The blue toned man followed up with another alchemical arrow that knocked Abra away from his own portal. Abra could barely emit a sound from his lips as most of the air was sucked right out of his lungs during the impact. He slid along the snow and was motionless on the ground. He was no more than a sitting duck for an execution.
The Empaths’ problem was not that he couldn’t cripple the Eidisi’s mind, it was that he wasn’t even given enough time or focus to unleash an attack. “If I could just make it behind the tree,” Abra thought. He waited to hear the sound of the bow drawing then used every ounce of his energy to roll into a blink portal. Another arrow flew and travelled so fast that it made it through the blink portal and pierced his calf.
His attempt to hide was ruined by his new wound. He hollered when the pain set in which told the Eidisi exactly where he was. The nimble criminal leapt to the side and peered through the snow. His keen eyes picked up on the flecks of blood that contrasted with the icy wilderness.
“You couldn’t just take my payment and leave me be, could you?” He asked. He fired an arrow that bounced off a tree and skimmed Abra’s thigh. “I’ll get my money’s worth one way or another. There’s plenty that would kill to have a mage for a pet.”
Still barely able to move Abra frantically gathered up ether to launch an attack. He heard the bowstring pull back again and he realized he didn’t have enough time before another arrow would come disrupt his focus again. With how close the last one came, he was sure the next would hit something important. He braced for impact but the arrow never came.
“Do it now!” two voices shouted. It was the Attuners and the Eidisi’s in unison which told Abra that magic mind control was in play. He took several more trills to gather up the last bits of ether that he needed then bombarded the Eidisi with such a powerful fear that all the blue toned could do was start firing off arrows in hopes of making it stop.
The fear of dying forced the Attuner out of the Eidisi’s mind which let him move his body freely. Arrows whizzed through the forest. They were special alchemical arrows that exploded, shocked, and even melted ice off of tree trunks. More and more arrows flew as Abra forced himself into the depths of the Eidisi’s tangle and ensared him with even more energy.
The Eidisi wasn’t someone who could be easily downed with Ensare. Even though his emotions were causing him great agony he resisted paralysis, unlike his minions. Though just because he could still move didn’t mean he was able to keep firing with the same accuracy. Not a single arrow hit when Abra blinked from tree to tree to get close enough to deal a finishing blow.
The combined efforts of the attuner and empath were enough to overwhelm the Eidisi who could do nothing to stop Abra from staggering slowly towards him and gripping his temples in his hands. Abra had only just flayed an ithecal earlier in the day and here he was about to flay again for the second time in his entire life. He opened his mouth and sucked the archer’s soul into his body and finished him off in the only way that made sense. The Eidisi had no last words to give, only screams which slowly died down to a dead silence.
Much like the ithecal, part of the Eidisi seemed to crystallize. Instead of his eye it looked like his chest was altering which cued Abra to pull out his daggers in a crazed state of mind and start hacking into the chest until he found the crystallized heart within. Well in hand, he turned to the attunner, his ally. He looked near death, not that it mattered to Abra. He only had one thing in mind and that was to flay again. This time it would be even tastier. The soul of a mage had to be ambrosia compared to what he got out of normal mortals.
Abra stumbled slowly and hungrily to the Attuner who knew exactly what was coming. The Attuner mustered up more ether than he could afford to lose to use Jamming on Abra to jar him out of his delusional crazed state.
“Sorry I…” Abra said when he realized what he had been about to do.
“It happens.” The Attuner cut him off to end the formalities, “we need to get back to the group before we bleed out. Come, let’s lean against each other to alleviate your leg injury.”
After Abra collected the Eidisi's bow to be sold later, the pair painfully traversed the forest back to where the original battle took place. The other mages were waiting for them and ready to treat their injuries. They could treat the physical ones, but Abra knew that he was going to be dealing with the Thirst for some time to come.
