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Owner	Pose
Marigold	Village of Tynan, Fibernia, the Western Isles      Half a day from Castle Armagh.      It was such a good plan too.      Fir the (half?-)Sacaen swordswoman and Sin your second horse-archer know exactly where Duke Nord's castle is, and its rough layout. "We'll wait until nightfall," Roy had said. "Shanna can watch until the last lights go out. We don't know if the Duke's men are in on his racket, so try to avoid fighting them. If we can just break through that wall, we'll almost be in his bedroom. Then..."      Those hours of preparation evaporate in an instant, like the smoke rising into the sky.      "Is that a forest fire?" "No, wasn't that where..." "There's a village." "Tynan!" "Hold on," says Merlinus. "We can't just be rushing in. What if it's Duke Nord only trying to draw us out?" "Then he'll have us drawn out." "... Roy? Roy!!"     Roy votes with his legs. Shanna darts into the air to get a better view, and the army's five horsemen (plus Clarine, I guess) spring into action while the infantry scramble for their weapons.
Marigold	- - - -      Haste was probably the right call.      Tynan is a small village, maybe fifty single-story stone houses clustered at a crossroads and tapering off into ploughed farmlands. The black smoke of burning thatch roofs mixes with the Isles' omnipresent fog in an unpleasant gray-swirling concoction. Red glows above where the flame catches and shines below where the blood pools on cobbles.      It's similar enough to that very first excursion that you might worry for Lugh and Chad. Only, there is no Guinivere here being held at spearpoint, and rather than a tense hostage situation the killing of the villagers is active.      The village's crossroads are the nucleus of the fighting. Villagers have piled up furniture between some of the closer-together homes to barricade the central square against invaders. Many of them- especially the wounded- cower in the homes that form the impromptu fort's walls; others are out in the open behind the shoulder-high bed-and-table walls, those that have hunting bows trading whistling arrows with Duke Nord's forces through the smotheringly thick fog, or throwing dwindling buckets of well-water on burning roofs.      Someone barks orders behind the barricades, but it's hard to make out even their booming voice through the din, save for the authoritative tone.      Roy slows and freezes in horror when he starts to absorb the intentionality of what he's seeing- an open siege on a meager hamlet. Marcus riding up behind has to grab him by the arm, shield him from blind-fired high-arcing arrows, and pull him protectively onto horseback. "Don't just stand there, Lord Roy! "But- what are they doing? "What does it look like?"      'They' come into view as soon as you press a little farther, clashing almost immediately with Lance, Alen, Sue and Sin. Duke Nord's forces, the same leather-clad axe-loving mercenaries who acted as 'pirates' on the coast, are most concentrated to the west while Roy's army approaches from the east, but gangs of five or six axemen skulk the streets looking for anyone who's had the bright idea to run.      Sue and Sin try their hit-and-fade archery tactics against the roving axeman bands; the 'fade' is helped by the fog but the 'hit' certainly isn't. Lance and Alen are less hindered by it, but it's all they can do to keep from getting stuck in when outnumbered, superior spear-reach or no.      Overall, Nord's forces seem to be playing a game of bloody attrition against the villagers, making breakout just dangerous enough while pelting them with superior volume of fire from their squads of longbowmen on the knolls of the village's western outskirts.      That trend lasts until someone on Nord's side gets impatient enough to hurl a man-sized sphere of seething black magic, arcing with smooth tendrils like electricity, crashing through a barricade. That voice- the villagers' leader?- yells more distinctly now: "GET DOWN!"      https://youtu.be/Ma-WJUidpRU
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine leaps onto horseback behind Sue, giving the Sacaen a split-second's warning with a "Room for one more?". The huntress concentrates to break gravity's hold on her body, allowing herself to be simply pulled along by the horse's motion with her hands firmly clamped to the back of the saddle. Her weightlessness means the horse won't be slowed, even if it will be a little strange for the horse.     She does not, however, remain on horseback as Sue arrives at the battlefront. Instead, when she realizes the gravity of the situation, she half-leaps, half-shoves-off from the horse's back to set off at a dead sprint toward the hills to the west. As her boots pound the dirt her breath mists around her, growing into a cloud that takes physical form as nearly a dozen ice-construct wolves. Some of them still have seams or cracks where Fir's blade split them, but it'll have to do.     Madeleine, at the head of a wedge of wolves, emerges out of the gloom into the archers' torch lights and crashes into their formation like an avalanche. These men, as soldiers of the duke, were duty-bound to protect the very people they now slaughter, and there can be no forgiveness in the huntress's mind. "You DIE!" she howls, impaling the first man within reach on her spear and kicking the body free. "YOU ALL DIE!" Tears of blind rage streak her face.
Dysnomia	"We can't just be rushing in. What if it's Duke Nord only trying to draw us out?"     ...cannot allow base sentiment to distort your vision. We work for the greater good, dear. Sacrifice is an inevitable prospect of governance; you can't throw away advantage for some abstract 'feeling...'     "That's right, Merlinus. We can't allow him to outmaneuver us--"     "Then he'll have us drawn out."     Dysnomia trails off as Roy cuts her off. For a moment, she stares at the young lord, while he marches ahead, leaving his army no choice but to follow in his wake. She doesn't have a word for the white-knuckle tight thing that clutches at the place her heart should have been. It was like she'd trespassed past curfew to whisper throughts with her brother through a bulkhead.     "...I suppose the choice has already been made." Blessingly, there was no time to examine these feelings, and Dysnomia vanished into the fog. She followed Shanna up into the sky, a streaking line of color, playing support to the pegasus rider. Where arrows cut through the air, she ducks to interscept--sometimes with a blazing plasma whip, but, with unfortunate frequency, her own body.     At last, she took the air in a spiral, an assortment of burning lightning needles materializing between her fingers, loosed in a wild throw that cut sharp lines of violet light across the battlefield. Again. Again. Again. Accuracy was not intent goal, but as the archers were peppered by screaming ozone, from above, Dysnomia hoped to break their ranks.
Aidan Proudpick	"Sometimes, the best thing to do with a trap is to spring it!" Aidan's jog turns into a slow walk as he takes in the carnage. Burning buildings. Narcian. Children being held hostage. But no, this is open fighting. Slaughter. Arrows arc out of the sky, lancing downward into townsfolk. Axeman harry those who dare to come forward, Aidan watching blood spurt. He breaks into a run before he's even thinking of it. Arms pumping, running at full tilt, tail tucked in tight against his back. He snags up his shield, white knuckles holding the cloth straps. A twist, a flick of the shield, knocking one arrow upward. It's like bees singing by his ears, putting his buckler, his magic to the test. A puff of air, a twist of the body to let an arrow bounce off his half chestplate and across his arm, opening a bloody gash. The squirrel leaps up onto the side of a building, scrambling across it to land gracefully behind the barrier. His breath comes out in a rushing hurricane, forming a plane of wind on top of the barrier. "Fuck, I've never done this in the middle of a battle." Aidan mutters, trying not to let the people behind him realize he has no idea what to do beyond this first step, when it comes to actually trying to be a combat medic.
Khosa	Khosa had, of course, come along. She had some stories to tell for the march - she sticks to non-war stories, which means there's a fair number of hunting stories, and one semi-embarrassing one when she was travelling and completely misunderstood a village's tradition and thought they were insulting her when they were, by local standards, being extra-polite. Is this a story for Roy to listen to? Maybe. But when it's business, she gets down to business. Khosa doesn't forget things when she makes any effort at all to remember them, and so she memorizes what she's told about the layout. "I can climb up," she volunteered, "and maybe take the wall down - or at least carry other people up it if they can't climb." But how little all that planning ends up mattering. As soon as Khosa sees that the village itself is under attack by the soldiers, she sees red. Roy slows down and freezes; Khosa speeds up, apparently used to being the first one in and recognizing the flames of burning buildings. (Not everything in Athas is made of stone.) Khosa barrels in like a battering ram, or a charging bull - about that level of subtlety. Sue and Sin try to hit and run; Lance and Alen use their spear reach to advantage. Khosa just barrels in, her right hand already twisting and distorting in a manner that looks painful; the fingers flattening together and expanding, shell forming along the back of her hand and halfway up her arm... By the time she gets to the axemen, she has something like an oversized scorpion's pincer from just below the elbow down, and she literally catches the first axe blow aimed at her in it. She squeezes, snapping through the axe - wood or metal, neither one slows her down very much. An arrow hits her, caught on still-forming scales as Khosa attempts to pick up the axeman overhead (one-handed), simply accepting blows to do it, and throw him at his allies; after that, she uses the pincer like a shield and parrying tool, catching blows on the thick chitin or snapping at axe hafts while her free fist does the main offensive work. Khosa is attempting to shove her way towards one of the barricades people are hiding behind - and block it, keeping the soldiers firmly out. She seems confident in her ability to act as a wall; the arrow wound she's taken is already healed, covered with a rough patch of black and red and sandy-gold scales, and any axe hits are rapidly doing the same thing. She snarls, "Come on! If you want to fight someone, fight me! Unless you're too fucking SCARED to fight someone who can hit back!"
Alucard	Alucard has, in his way, been a fairly sparse presence. Though, that's not exactly true. He hasn't been spending time with the rest of the Elites. He's been hanging out with the rank and file soldiers. Marching with them, sharing meals, even gambling. He seems to have found more comfort in the presence of these salt of the earth people than with others who are more like him. There's just too much ...drama. Too many -feelings-. He wants to forget feelings. Drown them in alcohol and comraderie. When they move through the night, he has no troubles. He can see quite well in the dark, and he moves silently. As they approach the, calling it what it is, massacre, he can almost feel it. The death. The terror. He can smell the blood on the wind. He slips away from the marching infantry, moving towards the front so he can at least try to see. Golden eyes glint in the dark as he watches the chaos unfold as best he can. He must act. He takes a few steps forward, and a lucky arrow hits him in the face. Right between the eyes. The projectile shatters on his marble-hard skin, and he hisses in pain. He felt that. He did not like it. He starts to run, and his body seems to start collapsing in on itself, swirling into a cloud of mist that rapidly melds with the fog and disappears. The trek through the town is hellish for him. He can hear the screams, sense the blood and violence, and he can do nothing in this shape. But he has a goal, and he rushes his cloudy form as fast as he can to get behind the enemy lines. For this moment in time, they are spared his wrath. When he reaches his destination, this will change.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel surges ahead, keeping his pace in levitation with Roy until he comes to a stop. This... systemic violence. The way they're practiced in it. The way they just go through it step by step, kill by kill. This *really* isn't right. Telepathy searches through the crowd. "Hello? Was that you? No-- You? Wait..." He's gotta find the leader, telepathically probing to start a conversation. Because... "Give me locations on every axeman you can find, and I'll stop them! I'm Flamel Parsons, acolyte of a vague yet ominous order, and I'm enacting a secretive scheme against Etrurian interests in this area!"     Invisibly, ducking between raining arrows and blasts, he surges through the street. Giant telepathic hands lash out to grip, toss, even palm-strike or chop the men from unexpected angles. People who are great at this kind of task tend to be the cruelest, and did you know? Cruelty is strongly correlated with an inability to perceive humanity, which makes you extra-vulnerable to psychic stealth!     Flamel doesn't have much for those arrows. He's gonna need plenty of help there. Luckily, from the sound of canine-and-huntress rage up there, he's gonna have all he needs. He casts a small external rage-enhancer effect towards Madeleine's mental surface-thoughts, nothing invasive but enough to leave a mark.     It won't really meaningfully boost much, at all, in terms of intensity. But when she looks over her thoughts later, she'll probably intuitively see Flamel's grimey little psycho-fingerprints on some of her angrier moments. Through this, he thinks, she won't wind up feeling uncomfortably close to this rage, or prone to internalizing it as her own, or likely to unhealthily take responsibility for the vengeance. He's almost never seen her this angry! Is it something about large systems of authority turning against their innocent inhabitants? He shouldn't defuse her negative mental health moment, but by leaving some interesting traces, he'll hopefully improve her mental health in the long run!     He doesn't ask about this or even consult with anyone. *Obviously*.
Trudy Grimm	"Sowing fear," Grimnir muses as he strokes his beard. His pipe remains clamped firmly in his teeth as he speaks, "Trying to bring the people under his heel. That's my wager; seems awful popular in this day and age, hmm?" He turns his head slightly towards Merlinus, just enough to see his fellow noncombatant with that single eye of his, "We'll get our answers soon enough, either way."     He's content to remain where he is, though, on that hilltop overlooking the carnage. The green-eyed woman he's taken to accompanying is nowhere near him. Trudy has ventured down into the fields around the hamlet. The fog'd obfuscation does little to save her from a roving patrol of axemen, resulting in a brief tangle that finally ends when one of them expires and then *violently* explodes amidst the remainder of the squadron.     That sorted, bloodied and fed up, Trudy settles down where she can only hear the din of battle, drawing forth the Grimoire and holding it out in both hands. Taking a breath, the witch lets it out slowly as her eyes close.     Eiwaz, the Rune of Death, carves itself into the air above the Grimoire's spread pages, guttering with sickly green flame. The witch in the field pushes aside Eiwaz and produces a new rune over her free hand, the distinctive warm yellow lines of Gebu, the Rune of Gifts. She regards it with a soft expression, floating above her palm. Her eyes shift back to the battle line, her lips curling into a wicked smile as she merges Gebu into the Rune of Death.     Shadows deepen in the fields around her, growing long and wretched, like grasping talons of some ancient creature reaching out from the darkness. After a few moments, things do start clamboring and crawling forth. Bones still ragged with torn flesh. Half-decayed, slumping monstrosities. Some aren't even human; the remains of large beasts emerging, lips and jowls long-gone to expose horrific grins of interlocking predatory teeth and nightmarish fangs.     Trudy has intentionally chosen the most wretched, mangled, putrid inhabitants of her gruesome collection for today. Lurching, slouching figures clad in what remains of ancient, rusted and broken armor. Some drag weapons-- and use them-- but most are unarmed. Lurching through the fog, directly into the forces of Duke Nord, heedless of their own mortality for they have long since lost it.     For those so accustomed to Trudy fielding nice, clean skeletons, the appearance of zombies might be a surprise. The unnatural way they move, advance, and fight by grappling and snapping violently at any exposed flesh with cracked and mismatched teeth.     They will die.     They will kill.         They will spread their Curse of Death.             And those who die to them will rise to continue this singular, murderous mission.     In the field, the witch closes her tome with a soft *thump*.
Odette Raskins	"That sounds like a good plan... If they're not, maybe we can get through this without too many people getting hurt." Odette's not the most optimistic of people around, but she can at least put faith in Roy's plan when he's aiming for something that involves the least amount of danger to just about everyone. She just hasn't learned when to expect the worst just yet, as she's caught off guard just as much as Roy is when the stench of smoke hits her before she even sees it. Like Roy, she runs for it, chasing after the young lord with her duffel bag jangling and bouncing all around her until she remembers to actually drape it properly around herself for easier running. It doesn't take particularly long for her to catch up with Roy, either, letting out her first frightened yelp of the day when a shadowy figure speeds right past-oh, it's Marcus. She breathes a small sigh of relief and breath-catching, then flinches again as a volley of arrows embeds itself into the ground around and in front of her. Worse yet, she sees who's attacking the village, and there's not enough time to properly feel disgust at them before she's already running again. That time could be better spent finding the wounded, after all, and Odette's path takes her right towards even more of those oncoming arrows. "Crap crap crap.. Uhh... Stay behind cover!" She shouts towards one of those groups of villagers hiding behind so many tables and beds as she sprints cleanly outside of any cover whatsoever. A good six or so arrows come hurtling down at her, and a panicked twirl and spin keeps any of them from landing cleanly on the EMT as opposed to just grazing her in a few places at once. Rather than wasting valuable seconds slapping a bandage over the nicks and cuts, she just keeps on running, nearly crashing into one of the overturned tables herself just to get to one of the downed villagers. "One... Gh. No. S-some of you, get that cover up and group up! Then... Uh. St-start running after the next shots! Y-you'll die if you stay here and wait for them to run out!" She 'orders' the nearby defenders desperately, shrieking briefly as another couple of arrows land dangerously close to her. Kicking at the ground to back up into the table, she waves her wound analyzer over the downed villager for a quick read while popping the cap off an injector filled with blood-clotters and painkillers using her teeth. She curses quietly under her breath, then jabs it into the downed villager before dipping down to hoist them up and around her shoulders. She can only hope that the other villagers actually listened as she takes off eastwards to try and get at least one of them out of here alive.
Angela	"Benjamin." Angela says, appearing on the pad that Tennant is holding. "Yes Angela? I'm a bit busy observing the battle--" "Were you born half complete? Is that why you remain loyal to Ayin?" "Angela I--...what??" Hokma's head snaps to look at Angela with a frown. "Where'd you hear something like that?" "Lucius was telling me that the trick to feel better about being half-complete is to imagine something you find unloveable in yourself and to imagine that trait in someone else who loves you and ask yourself if you could still love them. I have recorded evidence but I will not share with you due to a confidentiality agreement with Father Lucius." Benjamin fantasizes briefly about throwing himself under the Tiphereth Crusher. "It sounds like something you were thinking about yourself and is a matter between you and that man's Goddess." "Perhaps. But my incomplete feeling almost certainly your fault more than anyone else's. You are the one who signaled to me that my treatment was not all that there was. So take some responsibility and inform me. I am confident you have a weakness in the soul." "Angela, this really isn't the time and Tennant is right there--" "WHAT?? I can't hear you over the war crimes!" Tennant shouts. "You'd know all about those right, Hokma?! Ha ha ha!" "Later, Angela." Benjamin says. "Tennant, take out those archers!" MEANWHILE Shajo has slunk into the village crossroads, wielding the EGO Weapon from the Mountain of Smiling Bodies along with its armor, which renders him significantly tougher against physical assault than normal (as well as other forms of pain), but seeing axeman busting around just to kill villagers leads Shajo into a fury. He lunges towards the first batch of Axemen he can find, swinging out with his giant mace, the TEETH lashing out towards their necks to try and rip out their throats even as SHajo himself tries to crush their skulls. "Come on you fuckers..." Shajo says. "I've got WEDDING PLANNING to get back to. Every villager you harm I'm going to kill five of you. That's what the Book of Vengeance means to me... COME ON!" He's fighting by himself due to Tennant being in a whole other arena of battle, but that's just fine with him. He's used to it.
Desire Stars	Ace is here, in his DGP activewear.     So is Neon--sans the alarming purple veins spreading from an unhealed injury at the base of her neck. That condition of hers, that would only be overcome by going 'through,' is gone. If only her return were made to better circumstances. Then he'll have us drawn out.     "Roy..." there's almost a note of fondness in her sighed exhalation of his name.     Ace, too, is smiling, that particular shade of his smug smile that appears when he's proud of someone; a little lopsided at one corner of the mouth. "Consistent, isn't he?"                                  DESIRE DRIVER!                                                                   Set! M AGNUM                                                                 Set! ARMED PROPELLER                                   "Henshin."     "Henshin!"     Ace's showmanly snap of the fingers and Neon's cutesy cat pantomime disappear beneath matte black armor flash-forged onto them by cylindrical printers. The names of their Buckles hover briefly beside their armor, almost like advertisements, each fading away as the relevant equipment is forged overtop that baseline armor; Neon's in a pixelated wash, Ace's blown apart by red bullets. - - - -     Kamen Rider Na-Go is the first of the two to arrive, flying in alongside Shanna and Dysnomia, descending with a sheer drop over the crossroads. Immediately, she's beset by arrows--and to her credit, she's ready for them. The Armed Propeller buzzes as she grips the throttle, swinging the awkward weapon like she's fully used to it by now. The blades deflect and break up the arrows--wielded more to protect the villagers behind the barricades than herself. GET DOWN!     That draws her out of the trancelike concentration, her cat-themed helmet whipping sideways in a brief scan that comes too late.     The chime of her Spider Phone notifying a cleared secret mission is washed out by the impact of the spell, sending her flying and setting a shower of sparks forth from her breastplate. She skids across the ground and is halted, hard, by the walls of one of those houses. She gasps to catch the wind knocked out of her by the impact. Reaching over for the DGP strongbox delievered to her by the mission clear, she slides the lid off. The buckle inside is reflected in her lenses--a metallic blue-pink keyboard with a little turntable at the top-right.     Kamen Rider Geats arrives shortly after, with the high-powered laser-blasting Magnum Shooter in its rifle configuration. "Archers shooting from the high ground? Tough to deal with. Always has been." But--that means the same ought to be true of him, shouldn't it? *Getting* the archers up on the western knolls is a tall order. That doesn't mean he can't frustrate them, however.     With a 'hup' of effort, the fox-themed Rider makes an agile moonsault onto the roof of one of the intact houses. From this vantage point, he shoulders the Magnum Shooter and begins blasting the arrows out of the air. White-hot streaks of solid light incenerate and splinter shafts where they don't knock sharpened heads aside; Geats' aim is quick and when it isn't quick enough, there's...                                  BULLET CHARGE!                                     Special attacks to cover wider swaths of airspace with explosive force.
Petra Soroka	"We'll wait until nightfall,"     Petra had, for once, gotten really invested in the tactical planning of this particular mission, rather than zoning out and wandering off to advance support conversations. It's hard to say why, exactly, her mind was clear enough to settle down and focus on what would otherwise be a boring and long-winded discussion over the aspects of politics and war she's least useful for, but somehow, the battle with the false pirates on the beach hadn't left her half as roughed up as whatever came after. Apparently, that helps.     "Anyone who spots us on the road might move faster and warn . . ."     "There's probably not tree cover close to the castle, right? How . . ."     "For making a big enough hole, isn't Dysnomia the best . . ." "We can't just be rushing in. What if it's Duke Nord only trying to draw us out?"     Hours later on the march, and Petra has become stupid again. Shifting her focus from the toyetic strategy task that she'd contributed to and then set her mind on completing is a physical effort that comes with delayed comprehension, squinting up at Merlinus on his horse while reluctantly tottering to a halt.     "Huh? How, though? Who would even be attacking anyone here? I'm pretty sure *we're* the only foreign army wandering around, unless Bern also somehow slipped a fucking platoon of guys in with whatever payment they gave Nord."     Not quite understanding what they're rushing to stop, Roy's firm declaration is compelling enough that Petra follows along anyways behind him. As the sounds of battle become clearer, she picks up her pace, until she's sprinting with her gunblade in hand, stumbling to an unsteady halt beside Roy in the smoke-filled air. "What the-- what the *fuck*?! What's even the fucking *point* of this?! There's practically-- there's more people in this fucking *village* than there are in this *army*, is this *seriously* just to lure us out?!"     Without her EGO suit thrown on, because she was far too proud of her carefully constructed and Lilian-approved period wardrobe aesthetic to sully it with something as inconsequential as armor, Petra is more vulnerable to arrows than even the mundanely-armored soliders. Fully equipped weapon-wise, with her gunblade held to one side and her loose morphmetal telekinetically snaking an airborne path to follow her on the other, the roving gang of mercenaries is met with a Petra seething with rage that she's working out the details of out loud to anyone within ranting earshot.     "You know, they might be bought off by Bern or whatever, but I *know* they weren't asked to do *specifically* this. This isn't even keeping up the fucking bit that they're *pirates*! It's giving up the fucking game! For what?!" While nominally talking *about* the mercenaries directly in front of her-- embodiments of the current 'they'-- there's no part of her body language or gaze that suggests she even registers they might hear, much less that she's berating them to their faces. Her morphmetal comes to a pulsing stop midair behind her as she continues forwards with a gunpowder-amplified slash, its combined force bringing the much larger man's axe to a halt for just long enough for her to squeeze the trigger a second time to fire a slug into his chest.     "Sure, you know, we're an army! Sure we're the ones who're gonna fucking win this thing, *specifically* us, because of Lilian and everyone else we've got, but there's no shot *he* sees the narrative arc the same way! We're not the end of the world to him! So all it took, for him to start fucking gutting his own people and burning shit, and for all of his *stupid, fucking animals* to happily run along and tear at the same fucking meat was an *excuse*!"
Petra Soroka	While Petra is pushed onto the defensive by the axemen after her first surprise strike, her morphmetal writhes and gradually pushes out fractal, splitting tendrils, spiderwebbing out in crystalline vectors in a vertical plane. The remaining blob floating in the middle of the growing spread shrinks and shrinks as more is allocated outwards, until it's only a fist-sized nugget at the center. All at once, the angular web collapses inwards with sudden speed, and Petra drops down to the ground.     Slowly pressed backwards by the mercenaries, Petra drew them closer to her morphmetal, and when she ducks, a series of thin metal spikes barely pass over her head. The explosive force of compressing all her Silver back together is released in a fan of spears shooting out from the blob, and dead or not, Petra's taking advantage of the impact to dart past them and press further to the villagers' outpost.     "Seriously! They're all fucking Etrurians! If this weren't some tiny fucking nowhere-ass village, then some of these freaks would've *come* from here! That's what fucking gets me! All of that Duke's guys turned out this way, because fucking *anyone* turns out this way the moment they get the chance to start cannibalizing each other! Fucking *animals*!"     Oh, it kind of seems like she's angry at the villagers too? At least she's helping them, though she was too slow to have any chance of shielding anyone from that black magic. On her way to hunting down its source, she stops by the makeshift barricade to peel away one of the axemen battering it, sticking Silver in their back and continuing the impalement upwards to physically wrench them away.
Lilian Rook	With two previous experiences entering a castle by force, Lilian had felt confident that she could put them together for her first attempt at something like a premeditated daring assault on a fortified keep. A clear enemy, a black and white conflict, trustworthy company and an unobjectionable plan had her close to even looking forward to it-- the chance to take initiative and lead an offensive operation, even just a small one, rather than only scrambling to fend off Bern's never-ending stream of carefully seeded betrayals.     By the time she arrives at the burning village, Lilian still can't figure out why she is here instead.     Of course it goes without saying that she follows the Lycian League; what she'd sworn to do is only two steps off of 'protect Roy' in the first place. And it is entirely consistent (even if seldom predicted) that she wouldn't just ignore these people. Lilian likely couldn't even tactically sacrifice them. What leaves her stunned silent, clutching wildly at 'why' and grasping only smoke-smudged fog and the reek of blood, is why they needed saving at all. 'Why attack them at all'? 'What need was ther for this'?     'We can't just be rushing in. What if it's Duke Nord only trying to draw us out?'     "Then we should capitalize on his grave tactical error." Lilian mumbles, numbly, back to Merlinus. Her attention isn't even on Roy running off, at first. All her eyes can hold is the firelight. Her reply is automatic. "We have the superior force. Our ranks have grown, our soldiers are more experienced, and the Duke's certainly won't be equivalent to Bern." Lilian presses her hands to her face, sighing between her bare fingers as they slip back down. "It's wise to respect your enemy, Seneschal, but it's dangerous to mythologize him. Even the best generals blunder, and even the greenest get lucky."     She leaves him with just a lingering look before following after Roy, and "I think we should take care not to doubt the opportunities we don't have to, given just how many we will need to seize."     The village is small. That makes defending itself hopeless, and defending it as an objective very easy.     Lilian is out on the roads immediately. With no warning, she seems to simply have appeared from the fog, cloaked and with sword in hand. A messy scuffle with the first axeman she ambushes leaves him with multiple debilitating injuries from close quarters combat, and the rest she encounters are simply in the way. Lilian cuts a straight line from near the barricade towards the source of that explosive dark spell, weaving through arrows and fluidly brutalizing whatever toughs leap out of the mists to stall her. Her magical senses are open and tuned, specifically hunting down the impatient mage who'd given themselves away; as is becoming her focus lately.
Marigold	Sue nods to Madeleine as she dismounts. The implicit trust placed in a faithful fellow piece of machinery. She and Mia assail the archers, with Alucard soon to come; one group halfway collapses, frantically firing point-blank at Madeleine and her wolves, or up at the inferred source of those ozone needles which they can't quite see. "Oh, shit-" "Duke Nord!!" "Hold! Who are you?!" "Aghh-!"      Down in the streets, the Duke's Etrurian mercenaries are pressed back by zombies lurching through the fog ("What's wrong with him? Oh ffh--"), by Roy's marauding horsemen, by Lilian's swathe-cutting, and by Shajo's hammering and chewing. Their scattered disunity means that demoralization is slow to propagate, though; individual groups break and are killed to lift the siege on most of the barricade, but the western edge where the bulk of Nord's forces are is still contested. The survivors pull in, frightened, standing back-to-back so they can't be jumped in the dense fog.      The group of longbowmen remaining on the other knoll has their focus split. A quarter as many arrows now pelt the barricaded villagers, which Na-Go, Geats, and Aidan can thoroughly obstruct. The pattering clink of arrowheads on cobblestone tapers to nil.      But when Odette and Aidan enter the walled-off section of the town, they glimpse through the fog-- is that Hector?! A towering figure carrying an oversized axe like a toy, heavy armor jangling as they move. "WITH ME OR AGAINST ME?" No, wait, that's a woman's voice. She wears piecemeal Etrurian plate that's too small for her, hair tied back with what could double as a battlefield tourniquet, and her eyes practically blaze despite the dozen arrows in her shoulders and back (was she shielding people with her body?)      Her axe hovers an inch from their necks. Next to her, a man in a naval coat and a well-dressed blonde stiffen. Then after a sharply appraising moment- and a glance up at Khosa- she relaxes. "I like her." A weighing pause. "And you don't look Etrurian. Fine." On Odette's orders, most of the villagers break east towards Roy's army; the healthy do their best to carry the wounded. The axemen can't fully surround them anymore.      "Hello? Was that you? No-- You? Wait..."      "Give me locations on every axeman you can find, and I'll stop them!"      *Huh? ... Listen, 'Flamel'. I'm Echidna, leader of the resistance. You work for me now. They've got...* Her tactical memory and intuition are uncannily sharp. Mentally, she indicates large groups at the northern, southern, and western roads out, the vague locations of patrolling groups throughout the village, and then a small cluster guarding Duke Nord himself.      Petra carves through the mercenary goons successfully, too- despite the choking fog and thick tactical environment, they're less individually threatening than Bern's trained soldiers- but when she gets right up to the barricades, she catches a hit of Tall Woman Glare from over them.      "We're not Etrurians," says Echidna, looming. "We're Western Islanders. Don't forget it." Did she just... wink? Despite the blood seeping down her body, her hair blows gallantly in the wind for a moment.
Marigold	By now, the rest of Roy's army is starting to catch up. Lugh's fire and Lilina's lightning glow through the fog. Rutger's and Fir's blades glint in characteristic patterns, and you can tell them apart by the angles of the sprays of blood. The battle's turning quickly; however formidable that dark mage in the fog turns out to be, victory feels foregone.      ... And he isn't that formidable. Lilian can see, when she closes on the man behind the archery formations, that the circlet on his brow and the luxurious black robes mark the gaunt fiftysomething man as the Duke. If he's come out personally, he must've expected a slam dunk.      "Ah... You're not an islander. Let's be reasonable, now," he says with venomous silk. One of the hands he raises in surrender clutches a tone. He keeps a page bookmarked with a finger. "Whatever you want from my men, I'll--"      Mid-purring, he completes a gesture with a tiny motion of his finger, and glowing energy sigils trace themselves around everyone nearby. A heartbeat later, anyone still standing in the Danger Symbols have some vague energy ripped from them and flowing back to the Duke, draining vitality and inducing a withering muscle-shredding fatigue.      That pinpoints his location, of course. "There!" Echidna barks, and vaults the barricades to sprint towards him across a hundred feet of open archer-controlled field. It'd be suicidal, if the arrows sticking out of her body seemed to slow her down at all, and if she didn't shut down a magical counterattack by flinging a throwing axe at him without breaking stride.      Shanna makes an admirable wingmate to Na-Go; she can't deflect arrows in the same way, but she keeps her head on a swivel, swooping down to take care of anyone who thinks to harass her fellow flier with a javelin or throwing axe. She's uncharacteristically quiet, though- maybe it's the axe- so it's a start when she grabs Na-Go's arm and points with her spear.      "Over there!! The south! You see it? We've got to get down!!"      There's half a dozen pegasus riders on the southern horizon, rapidly approaching. Roy certainly didn't call for more Ilian mercenaries. But why would the Duke have them all the way out here, either...?
Aidan Proudpick	"WITH ME OR AGAINST ME?" "With! WITH!" Aidan waves his hands back and forth at the very large woman. Amaaaziiiing. With that huge axe?! Able to just take arrows like they are nothing?! Bellowing out orders and defending her people? Oh right, axe at his neck. "Aidan Proudpick, I'm with Lycian army!" Gallant hair blowing. Damn she's awesome. Could he rock longer hair? Focus. Aidan vaults the barricade with Echinda, landing nimbly on cobblestones, claws clacking against them. He pushes the first blow out of the way, only to let out a fierce howl of pain as another blades sinks into the meat of his shoulder. He mutters something about 'just dodging' under his breath. The scuffle gets intense as Aidan has to force back several at once, taking a gash across the face, the ear. He sees Madeleine, being pushed, ravaging through the lines. No time to worry about relationship meters now. "Madeleine!" Aidan draws in a breath of air. He grabs a skein of air from the breeze around them. The stale low air that lets the fog settle heavily on the town, even with the burning of the buildings. His fingers struggle to keep it held, like a squirming snake as he grabs another. Letting out a solid rush of air, Aidan suddenly rips both hands apart. Fog suddenly bursts away from the battlefield, lifting up into the air, mingling with smoke as the streets suddenly become clear. A handful of fog whirls, condensation and air spinning into a wall behind the axemen, giving Madeleine the perfect killing field. A bit of him feels back for being part of this. But looking at the bodies on the ground slain by these countrymen, he won't lose any sleep.
Angela	Shajo sees a tall woman in the fog out of the corner of his eye, "Eh? I thought you were busy sending out invitations--" Shajo begins before turning to look in that-direction. Once he gets a good look he realizes that's definitely not her. Nonon doesn't wear armor like that, nor does she fight with an axe and the build isn't actually THAT similar. He has a lot less better handle of the politics of this place than elsewhere. ''You work for me now.'' "Okay." Shajo says. "What do you want us to do?" He supposes he shouldn't be surprised that she's already vaulting barricades and drawing arrow fire from like every archer on the battlefield. Well. At least Shajo knows what to do about that. He charges after the domineering lady like he was born to. Sometimes Smile eats an arrow and making vague NAR NAR NARM noises in the process. He follows up Echidna throwing an axe by Luigi-spinning and flinging the hammer into another caster, catching it back up on the rebound. Arrows slam into his body, but they don't seem to be slowing him down much either. And a flash of light punches through an archer's skull as Tennant manages to draw another bead on with Magic Bullet. MEANWHILE "Look X is already acting quite differently from Ayin and I ''will'' set things right if he continues down this course." "...So you are afraid he won't be your other half anymore?" Angela rolls her eyes. "I hardly care, but the project's success chance increases the longer X isn't Ayin." "Then what does it matter, why are you talking to me about it at all." "I suppose I think I have my tendency to put my all in supporting those I love like you do, Benjamin." Hokma has no immediate retort. "Ah." Angela says, pressing an index finger to her lip. "Except in your case, I suppose, you gave up and ran away only to come crawling back--I cannot imagine doing that to the Dame Commander, so I suppose my ''Faith'' and ''Love'' is stronger than yours. Perhaps you had a hand in someone else's creation? I heard that happens to her quite often as she until recently had difficulty finding capable help--" "Haha! Wow! Lots of dead bodies out there!" Tennant adds, a bit louder.
Trudy Grimm	Axes work against zombie, cutting them down in geysers of putrefying flesh. Arrows are less effective but manage; bringing each one down after several shots. It really is about the weight of the weapon and its ability to break the bones that hold them up. Blows to vital organs, even the brain, aren't doing the trick as they would against living foes.     Those caught by them are wrenched down by their dead weight, bitten into, clawed at. They die, screaming. Within moments, those killed by Trudy's undead are shuddering back to life, that same sickly green glow in their eyes as they seek out their former comrades.     As savage as they seem; these cursed things avoid the villagers entirely. They shamble past in search of prey that suits a decidedly Etrurian diet. This doesn't make them any less ghastly to look at, though.     The witch in the field exhales, shifting her eyes from one side of the battlefield to the other. Her wretched army is making a meal of those roving bands. It's opened up a route for the village and their defenses. But--     The Duke's spell goes off. Zombies caught in its range lurch in place, then all swivel towards him. A spell that saps life-force does little to the undead but get their attention. It's Trudy herself who winces and wobbles where she stands. Thankfully, the effect is dulled... when it strikes one. But hitting so many at once is a feedback the witch simply can't laugh away.     "Oh," she mutters, "Oh my. This land's love for vampiric curses is going to be the end of me some day, I just know it." Holding her side, she straightens out her posture and gestures with her free hand, "Let's deal with that quickly."     The wretched undead, stock still and staring at the Duke's position after his spell went off, quite suddenly let out something between a hiss and a scream. Green light glows in their rotten throats as they howl, lurching back into motion. No longer scattering after the various formations of axemen. No longer advancing single-mindedly on the archery formations. Every single undead warrior on the field is now converging on a single man; to grasp; to bite; to wrestle to the ground; to tear apart, piece by writhing piece.
Dysnomia	"We're not Etrurians, we're Western Islanders. Don't forget it."     "It's like they've never heard of a colony before..." Dysnomia dropped from above, not quite stopping at ground level, leaving her to float there, above the ground. "But civics lessons can wait. Pegasus riders are coming from the south." She assessed the axe wielding heroine cooly. "Friends of yours...Or his?"     But, the battle raged on. Dark magic coiled through the air, sending Mia leaping outward, and outward...And then, she kept going.     The fog surrounding them all is almost too good cover for Mia, wisps of her trail lost in the writhing mists, and her eyes far too keen--she could peer through the veils of great nebulas. What was a little terrestial vapor?     She nodded tersedly to Sue and Madeleine, descending to ground level, floating where the swirling fog veiled her exact position from view, in great, spiraling circles around the battle.     Dysnomia never took them at the front--never where they expected her. Lancing plasma arced into a bandit's back, from behind, scorching them through their armor. A burning whip SNAPPED around an ankle, pulling someone screaming into the mists, before all the ones left behind in their wake heard a CRUNCH.     For the duke's forces, the fog rapidly became a symbol of death. Of fear.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine fights heedless of injury, solely focused on inflicting as much damage as possible on the bodies around her. The assorted hand weapons of the archers unlucky enough to be in arm's reach of her find little success, but arrows fare somewhat better, a few even managing to stick into her flesh for a short while before they fall to the ground, intact and bloodless as Madeleine's wounds disappear. She hears a call from the village, sees the fog clearing a path for her down into the streets, and knows what's expected of her. She's happy to oblige, leaving her wolves to rout the panicked and disorganized bowmen.     Madeleine dashes haphazardly downhill, taking an arrow or three to the back for her trouble and hardly noticing. In less than a minute she's ready to set upon the axemen who are, unfortunately, more aware of her presence than the archers were given the absence of fog. This will call for a different approach. Instead of charging headlong into the axemen, she raises one hand, palm upward, and clenches it into a fist. At her command, the cobblestones split and uproot themselves to give way for solid ice, a labyrinth of walls just too high to see over springing up around and among the axemen, splitting their formation into isolated clumps of two or three.     It's a maze Madeleine knows like the back of her hand, laid out the same as the vast labyrinth that sulks beneath her manor. What's more, she has the agility and strength to leap over the walls while the axemen struggle to clamber over the slick surface. The only warning each group of axemen gets is a dark shape darting past the other side of a barely-translucent wall, or the screams of their fellows around a corner. The huntress will not stop until the grisly work is done.
Alucard	Alucard has crossed the battlefield successfully! He reforms himself, immediately staggering under the assault of wicked, life stealing magic. It feels so similar to what he does sometimes, and yet, quite different. His nose wrinkles as his mystical senses hunt for the source and find it. He reaches his right arm over to his blade, drawing it. The dhampir seems to flicker as he moves towards the wizard who is the Duke. Golden eyes blaze in cold, almost inhuman, fury. "Monster who would harm innocents. And for what?" He hisses, his fangs suddenly very prominent. "For What?!" His blade ignites in mystical flames. He snarls, because words are beyond him. He strikes at the Duke, burutal and precise, and then he vanishes. The dhampir reappears at a different angle and strikes again. And again. And again. He leverages every bit of his vampiric speed and power, every ounce of sorcerous might. He vents his righteous fury upon this despicable old man. In his minds eye, he sees his father, waging a crusade against innocent people.
Desire Stars	Over there!! The south! You see it? We've got to get down!!     "I see them," Na-Go says. "But are we sure they're here for us? Here..." She hastily slots the music-themed Beat Buckle into the empty slot on her Desire Driver, fingers banging out a three-note flourish and a record skip on the keys and turntable.                 Set! DUAL ON! Get Ready For... PROPELLER & BEAT!                     A mechanical manipulator arm materializes to the right of her armor, and drags a pair of electric pink-blue greaves with subwoofers set in the plates on top of her otherwise plain black leggings.     "Either way... give me a lift, wherever you're going, and I'll make sure we're ready for whatever comes next!" Na-Go runs towards the wall of a house making the impromptu fort at the crossroads, twisting the Desire Driver so that the buckles switch places; the Beat Buckle on the left, and the Propeller Buckle on the right.                                   REVOLVE ON!                                       Na-Go makes a cartwheel a few feet from the house, a metallic track appearing to circle her armor. As she turns, her armor switches place like the Buckles did--the Beat armor now forms her cuirass, pauldrons and bracers, while the unassuming cameo-brace of the Propeller Buckle is wrapped around her right leg. At the completion of her cartwheel, she leaps, kicks off of the house, and lands atop Shanna's pegasus, sitting behind her, back to back.     Where before her weapon was the Propeller Buckle, it's now the Beat Axe--a sharply bladed flying-V guitar in the same electric pink-blue as the armor. Na-Go wastes little time putting it to use. The melody her fingers coax from the weapon-instrument is not only infectious, but carries tangible benefits to Shanna and any other allies on the field that can hear it--it sweeps across the battlefield, literally, a rainbow of sheet music freed from the pages and wrapping around the allied fighters. The strength-sapping magic of the duke is mitigated, somewhat, by her music--and it also fills those affected with newfound strength and clarity of aim.     Among those affected is Geats, who'd narrowly avoided a direct hit but still found himself forced from his rooftop vantage point by the unexpected Danger Circle which sprouted beneath him whilst prone. Having been clipped midair and forced into a sliding three-point landing, he finds regaining his upright posture easier than it otherwise would have been.     His efforts to curtail the arrows flying towards the village pause, just a moment longer, at the sight of Echidna making her charge. Geats chuckles, aims down the scope and transitions from protecting the village to protecting Echidna, as he notices the panicked shift in focus of the archers on the western knolls. Once she closes the distance, he vaults the barricades and makes his own approach, removing the Magnum Buckle and slotting it into the rifle to convert it into a machine gun with a foregrip as he bounds closer at a harrowing sprint.     Na-Go, up in the sky, turns her music a shade more intense, picking up into an anthemic dance beat bolstered by the speakers on her armor.                                    ROCK FIRE!                                       Whirling staffs of bouncing musical notation spit out roiling fireballs, raining down through the fog on any axemen along the way, the occasional blast surging through the air to harass the archers as Echidna rushes the duke's position down.
Flamel Parsons	"Woah! Uh-- there, sure!" Flamel shouts, as he tumbles out of the impact zone of one of those circles. It hits hard, but he's quickly moving again, shaking off the jolt because it only managed a glancing shot on a lower leg. Still, that drained him! "I mean, I won't turn down dealing with that guy! And I'm happy to back a local power! It's part of my whole *thing*. Did you know, I'm already backing secondary resisting powers in about two other regions? It's true!"     He's so bright and cheery about this, gliding along behind the woman. Is he telekinetically latched on to her? Telekinetically-parasailing? Mist, wind, ice, he trusts her to get through it. It's like she's a perfect path! He soaks up some of that good, good music. He darts through the mist to make sure that he's not struck from the flanks. He pulls low and skids against the ground, scooping up zombies in one big telekinetic hand to boost them -- no, throw some of them. Death, from above!     And then he converges with the others, beam after beam after violent beam of psychic power pelting the Duke's position with high, arcing shots. He has no idea who's coming from the south, and there's no guarantee they'll have another shot at this guy if they're enemies that get here to reinforce or extract him!
Odette Raskins	Is that Hector?! Feeling a brief hitch in her throat, Odette starts to hurry again before realizing that the voice belongs not to Hector, but... She has no idea who this lady is, but the EMT's eyes go wide both at seeing her and at the axe coming way too close for comfort. She swallows anxiously as she stammer out a confused and confusing noise, eventually managing to squeak out a strained "With!" by the time Echidna lowers the weapon. "N.. Not Etrurian, no. We're here to help!" Thankfully, Odette's able to breathe considerably easier with Na-Go, Geats, and Aidan halting the worst of the arrows coming her way, letting her focus on leading the villagers out towards Roy's army. She only sticks around long enough to treat the dying, though, smearing medicated paste and gauze over the heaviest of wounds to stabilize them so she can presumably come back to them after the battle. She leaves a small pile of those same bandages for those that can still stand, then heads right back in to chase after those still stuck in the melee. Namely, she's headed in the direction she last saw Echidna in. Keeping several of those injectors and gauze ready at hand, Odette keeps on running ahead as quickly as she can, keeping her eyes peeled for more villagers to redirect out of harm's way, or for that gallant axe-wielder so she can try and treat some of those arrow wounds. There's still plenty of axewielders to contend with on the way towards another set of cornered villagers, however, and trying to sprint right past them stops being an option. "H-hey! Uh... You!" She shouts awkwardly, clearly trying to get their attention and not having anything else to follow that up with. Grabbing a rock, she chucks it at one of the axemen before sprinting towards them, juking around a high swing and nearly getting her sleeve ripped open by a second not-pirate's lower swing. So far, so good! If she can just keep this up, maybe she can distract them long enough to... Wait, what's that ominous symbol? In her haste to not get exploded or whatever it's going to do, she collides with and bounces right off another pirate, stumbling around and yelping as she crashes into the wall besides those villagers she had come to save. The horrible draining feeling just from being that close to the symbol is enough of a sign that she really shouldn't touch one of them directly, but the axemen closing in on her and the nearby villagers becomes the most immediate concern. She lets out some panicked noises as she initially resorts to just chucking rocks and empty bottles at the bandits, but in her haste to grab stuff from her bag that might be helpful... She feels something else inside. Without waiting to think twice...               DESIRE DRIVER!             Set! ARMED SPEAR              "H... Henshin!" Unlike Ace and Neon, Odette still hasn't figured out a proper pose or style for herself, mostly just bringing out the Buckle and Driver combo in an act of desperation. The armor forms around her, the stylized mouse-like helmet appears over her head, and she jumps up to her feet with the chunky-looking Armed Spear in hand... And she just starts swinging hard. A trained spear fighter Odette is not, but the Spear helps compensate for that as each swing is followed by painfully flashy effects, aimed primarily at staving the axemen off rather than actively running them through. "G.. Get out of here!" Kamen Rider Zumine shouts in between each of those desperate swings, not quite making it clear if she's shouting at the axe fighters or the villagers she's protecting.
Khosa	Khosa is not afraid to use her body as a shield. She heals; it hurts, but she can handle a hurt, and she absolutely does not want to allow the axemen past her. Sometimes that means snapping their weapons with that pincer; other times it means a harsh shove, a sudden grapple or throw, or a punch. She fights mostly with her upper body, preferring a stable, grounded stance. Echidna and her escort come out. Khosa glances over - glances twice - feels a kindred spirit almost immediately. She raises her pincer-like hand in a vague salute, which also lets her backhand an arrow. The arrow sticks for a moment, but she pulls it out. No blood; it's damaged the exoskeleton a bit, though. "Never been Etrurian in my life," she says, brightly. "Mostly I saw your townsfolk getting attacked, and that's the kind of thing I can't stand for. Hope you don't mind me jumping in - better me than them, I'm meant for this sort of thing!" Khosa has been hit so many times her entire upper body has kind of a patchwork of black, red, and sandy scales over what should be bruises and wounds, the reformed skin functioning both as bandage and armour. "I'll hold this point, anyone who can't get out can cover here!" Khosa seems perfectly willing to lock herself in place, danger or not. She is immune to Tall Woman Glare mostly by managing to be just slightly taller than Echidna herself... and she's grinning again. Fighting always makes her feel alive. As she holds the point, symbols start to form around her. Khosa makes a snap decision once she gets a look at the runes; she doesn't want to be forced away from the barricades. She plants her feet, takes a deep breath, holds it - The energy *pulls* against her. Khosa *pulls* right back, a metaphysical yank; she can't pull energy away from the caster (more's the pity) but she can stop her own from going anywhere. It's a shock to most casters, though a harmless one. It does get her to yell, "Defiler on the field!" Khosa needs to clear these axemen out before he aims that spell into the civilians behind her. She hunches down like she was protecting her torso, and heavier chitin starts to form on her back. That's the reason she only wears a bandeau-like top and a loose vest; the top stretches, the vest doesn't catch on the weird-looking nodules forming on the shell or prevent her from moving. And it is a shell; almost turtle-like except for those tube-like nodules on it. And that would probably be it - until the tubes launch out organic harpoons, something like a frog's tongue with a barbed spine at the end of it. She fires at any of the axemen (or archers) within reach) and then pulls back in, reeling them over to her as she picks up a long chunk of lumber from the barricade. Which she spins with with associated battle roar, smashing as many as she can before it breaks. That ought to clear them out, she thinks - she'll have to get to the mage next, if he's still up.
Lilian Rook	'Ah... You're not an islander. Let's be reasonable, now'     Lilian, strides from the smoky mists, cloak stained in blood, sword in hand. She raises it with mechanically automatic motion as she closes, partway to attacking him without absorbing a single word he says. Then, in another heartbeat, Lilian actually halts.     It'd be a stretch to call it hesitation; Lilian doesn't show any sign at all of 'having second thoughts'. Her hand is stayed, but her knuckles are white beneath the gauntlets, and she holds her posture with the contemplative silence of a psychopomp. "I see. So you want to be reasonable, 'now'." she says, repeating after the Duke with special, lilting emphasis of one word. "What fortuitous timing. Had it taken you a moment longer to see reason, you would have been grievously injured."     It's a threat that Lilian sounds full-well like she means, and yet she doesn't sound as if she plans to carry through with it either. Not just yet. The displeasure that curls her lip is nakedly visible, but no tremor of aching restrain seizes her hand. "Go on then. Order them to stand down." she says. Like she doesn't put any stock at all in that evil-coded voice of his. Like it hasn't even occurred to her. "We won't be able to speak unless you do." No, like she actually just believes him. She clearly expects 'reasonable' to be little more than embarrassingly paper thin self-preservation, and yet is still refusing to ignore a surrender and strike the obvious bad guy just for that.     'Whatever you want from my men, I'll--'     Oh god. She's actually that stupid. The Duke gets his spell off while Lilian is still holding her breath and expecting him to selfishly capitulate. She spits out "I can't believe--!" at the same time-- and then isn't quite so rusty at being taken advantage of by the guy with the losing hand that she takes a direct hit on top of everything else.     Lilian steps off the spell circle and closes on the Duke in the instant he blinks his eyes. Her sword hacks down into the spine of the tome, completing its pending half-swing, and her left hand leaves the pommel to grasp hold of his cloak. Pulling on him at the same time she lunges forward, Lilian attempts to flick the magical book out of his hands with her blade while concussing him with a headbutt, before he can do anything with all of that juicy vital energy he'd just absorbed; dazing him and tackling him down into a grapple before he can recover.     Her own 'circlet' is far more of an article of combat, so she expects to barely feel the impact. Holding him in the way of Trudy's terrifying corpse legion until he actually surrenders strikes her as a great idea.
Petra Soroka	"We're Western Islanders. Don't forget it."     Being loomed over by a glaring Echidna, Petra's first response is-- "Waugh--! Tall woman!" -- being jarred out of her psychotic ranting with a strangled yelp, not at the frighteningly massive shadow in the fog, but by her reveal.     She recover her anger with a scoff and an eyeroll, though, still too radioactively misanthropic to be politically or literally wooed by a dashing one-liner and pose. "Fucking whatever, though, right? I'm not talking about *politics*. You're all Etrurians; you're all West Islanders, whatever. My point's just that it's fucking insane and pathetic and completely fucking damning of everyone that it took *so* little for these guys to go from exactly like you to bloodthirsty idiot psychopaths. It's not *following orders*, it's like they got permission to start-- what's the metaphor? There's a metaphor. But I just can't-- right, like, every hen in the henhouse is one fucking tooth away from acting like a fox."     In a breather between shoving mercenaries off of the barrier with her telekinetic morphmetal limb, Petra squints and twists her head back around to Echidna. "Wait, resistance? Resistance from what? From the guys who're-- eep--!"     Petra's clipped shriek cuts her off when a stray arrow slips by Na-Go's propeller, narrowly missing passing through her abdomen as she flinches aside. As is, there's still a long tear in her bodice and the ruffled white shirt beneath, into which red is already leaking. Oh no! Now Petra will have a battle bloodstain on the chest of her slutty pirate heartthrob outfit! She flattens out her morphmetal in a small shield in the general direction where the arrow came from, buying herself some more time to Post.     "I mean, from the guys like, literally killing you right now? Is this a thing he does, like, habitually? We'd thought-- you know, Roy's army, we're-- well, *they're* Lycian, I'm-- American, sort of, barely, but that matters so little because it's offworld anyways-- we thought he was tryuing to bait us out after having a whole pirate assassination setup on us earlier. Is this just something he *does*?"     Petra's mindset visibly changes as she goes through her miniature emotional arc out loud at the same time as it passes through her mind. No longer even-handedly victim-blaming-- or at least victim-insulting-- the villagers, Petra seems to have shifted to being an ardent rebel as well, gunblade bayonet tip aimed threateningly out at the crowd of axemen when Echidna prepares to vault over. "Well, fuck that guy! That's way worse than him just trying to kill us! We were gonna go to his castle and kill him, if you want to--"     Changes of heart and mashing TALK for a round unfortunately comes with staying in place long enough for Duke Nord's spell to complete. Petra coughs and stumbles out of the sigil, knees trembling with each step. "He's fucking *here*?! What a *freak*."     With Nord being here though, Petra knows he's already as good as dealt with, since Lilian's in pursuit. Instead, it falls to her to *fill* the gap created by Echidna's charge, rather than following it. She hops up a series of morphmetal steps to join the villagers inside the barrier, hoping to fill the role of a stabilizingly competent figure in the fray to the wounded and panicking, despite being a full foot shorter and half as broad. It would also, just feel nice to be able to fill that role!
Petra Soroka	Boosted by Na-Go's music, Petra's morphmetal rises up into a cloud overhead for the defensive bunker. Tiny razor flechettes fling out in a full radial spray, chipping away at the surrounding masses of mercenaries and warning them away. Petra reaches up and tosses her gunblade back into the wobbly reflection in the cloud, withdrawing her transteam rifle instead, warily aiming it up at the sky. She doesn't see the pegasi yet, but fucking *everyone* outside the Army has been a nightmare to deal with, so she doesn't have high hopes for the new arrivals.
Marigold	The villagers are terrified of Trudy's zombies even when they shouldn't be, but that ends up doing good; since the undead are concentrated on the western axemen it only encourages them to flee east to safety.      "Thank you kindly," says Echidna's blond friend to a friendly zombie while crouching behind the barricade. "You sound unwell. I mean no offense, but can I offer you a handkerchief?" ... Somehow he hasn't noticed the obvious.      Clarine proves her worth, surprisingly, by shepherding injured villagers back to the caravan in a show of blonde solidarity with Petra: her staff can mend the direst cases along with Lucius, and her horse can carry several more. Mercs anxiously pile up with their backs to Aidan's fog wall, unwilling to brave its unknown hazards- and Dieck, no stranger to dirty fighting, emerges from the fog into Madeleine's ice-maze to put his broadsword through a couple of their backs.      For a moment the duke tries to defend himself with waves of jet-black purple-edged energy, buffeting back energy blasts and turning away blades- but his resistance against Alucard and Flamel doesn't last long. Echidna with Shajo slams through his bodyguards; she immediately falls into just as reliable a rhythm with him as he has with her, seeming to recognize a symbiotic archetype as her axe-swings reduce them to creative brushstrokes of red. Archers that draw on them wither under supporting fire.      Flamel slams him with psychic beams around the time he's shakily retreating, and then eats a headbutt and disarmament from Lilian. He squirms as she hauls him up, but it isn't especially effective. "Ugh-- you don't know what you're doing! Unhand me! Lord Arcard will hear about this!!"      From there, he can see the encroaching zombie horde- and what's been happening to his men. Shredded by morphmetal, devoured by the fog, savaged by a weird shelled beast and kamen ridered... he gives the order: "R... Retreat! This instant! To me, you fools! Get out of--"      "Thanks," says Echidna the instant his thugs start to obey, and embeds her axe deep enough into his body that a twist of her wrists can pull him from Lilian's grasp. That's probably mortal already, but she flings him toward the zombies too for good measure. "So who are you guys?" she says, completely dissonantly casual while wiping her forehead. "Not local, not Etrurian, sure hope you're not from Bern. The Otherworld or something?"
Marigold	Shanna covers her mouth in awe of Na-Go's novelty, then beams and pats the back of her saddle, as if she needed any encouragement. "A bard, too... Two's tough, but I've been taking good care of my pegasus! We'll just get close enough to see what flag they're flying, then dart right back."      She swooshes her mount southward as if she's going to meet them halfway. They're still a few hundred feet out when Shanna slows, and Na-Go can feel the building shivery tension through Shanna's back.      "Hey. Is that... no way?! Sis--"          ______________________              THEA OF EDESSA              MERCENARY WINGLEADER          (... and Shanna's older sister.)      It happens in a flash. Shanna's sister dives onto them in the span of a syllable; Shanna's bolstered by Na-Go's music, but the other woman is the more experienced fighter and has the advantage of no passenger. Together they execute a gut-churning spiraling game of chicken towards the hard ground below, clashing lances like three-dimensional fencers to probe each other. The other pegasus riders part at a respectful distance.      "THEA! Why are you working with these bandits?!" she howls over the shrieking wind. "I'm working for the Etrurian army! Who are you working for?" Shanna chickens and pulls up first, narrowly dodging a gouging blow and swooping off towards the village again. The pegasus riders pursue, and a screamingly fast arrow the size of a grown man's arm threatens to strike Na-Go in the back. The firing-sound is more like a whipcrack than a twang.
Marigold	Crack, and an enormous arrow goes for Lilian's unarmored head. Crack, for Echidna, and this one pierces right through her gut and sends her crumpling back. Crack, and one practically pins Roy to a house's wall, sending Lucius rushing to his side. Barely a heartbeat apart, every Elite in the open eats a ballista-worthy and harrowingly accurate shot. The ones who aren't in the open get harassed by swooping pegasus knights, trying to flush them out like a coyote-and-badger team. Crrr--      That last one hesitates. A blonde young man in the southern distance, surrounded by heavily-armored knights, has frozen mid-draw on his enormous golden bow.      "... Dieck?" he shouts to the man who's already confidently approaching him across an open field. "Clarine?!" "You don't have to do this, Klein. Or, what, 'General' Klein now?" ". . . Provisional General. I never thought you'd--" "I don't care what they told you. Listen to your heart. Shoot me or go home." ". . ."      Clarine finally notices him and starts to gallop towards him. But that only makes his face draw tighter, and he starts to turn away. The pegasus knights start to peel back too, confused.
Trudy Grimm	The Duke is offed. And just to make things so much more final, he's hurled into the shambling horde. Whatever final words he might have are dragged down with the rest of him into the gnashing jaws and clawing hands of the ravenous swarm. As the frenzy fades, soon the duke's corpse shudders to life amongst them, lurching after his own retreating forces with that horrible green glow behind now-dead eyes, his chest split open and ribs exposed by Echidna's weapon and the undead's fervor.     "Lord Arcard, was it?" the witch hums thoughtfully, "I do believe we have the name of our latest in the line of power-hungry opportunists."     Something cracks in the distance, like a gunshot. Her gaze snaps to the horizon. As the noises continue and it becomes clear their formation is getting the archery equivalent of an artillery barrage, the witch thrusts her hand down to her feet. Her shadow deepens and, as she wrenches her hand upward in a swift arc, a spire shoots up in front of her at an angle. Easily several times wider than her silhouette and several times as tall, knit together from countless bones.     The bolt meant for her slams into this and, despite the wall's thickness, still pierces completely through. The energy is only arrested when the head erupts from the other side, coming to a stop scant inches from her outstretched hands, showering her in splinters of bone like the blast of a shotgun.     And it's a conversation with Klein, of all people, who convinces the attack to cease. Exhaling, Trudy lets her wall collapse into a heap of bone and drag itself back into her shadow. Around her, the zombies go dormant, milling about and groaning but overall not doing much. The one that a soldier offers his handkerchief to just stares gormlessly at him.     "I," Trudy mutters as she pinches a spike of bone in her cheek and removes it, "Am going to need to know what is happening in this Gods-forsaken country." Flicking the splinter away, she turns her eyes to the sky and the retreating Pegasus Knights, "Etruria was supposed to be different, but it feels like all we did was walk ignorantly into Bern itself."
Alucard	Things seem to be cooling down a bit. Alucard vents his fury. the Duke is neutrallized, and the rest of the melee is being wrapped up. Until ... reinforcements arrive? He starts to turn to look, when the massive arrow hits him. Unlike the last one, this hits him just to the right of his spine, puncturing entirely through him. He gasps, ichorous blood spewing from his mouth as he staggers, his eyes glinting red for an instant. Coming back to control, he sheathes his sword at his hip and grabs the arrow with both hands, pulling it through, dragging it out of his chest with another gout of blood. Hurling it to the ground, he stumbles as his regeneration takes over, sealing the wound. He's going to need a tailor though. "What ... What was that?" He pretends not to notice Trudy reanimating the suddenly Late Duke. It's only polite.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine's ice-walls crack and strain under the barrage of heavy arrows, and the huntress, hearing the sounds of battle within the village winding down, allows them to fall so she can better get out of the way of the pegasus-riders above. She starts to make for cover when she spots the Duke's risen body, and gets gets a different idea.     "You," she spits, stomping toward the zombie, "Are going to tell me every *damn* thing I want to know." Slinging Drogrung over her shoulder, she grabs the walking corpse, drags it to cover, draws her hunting knife and sets to work widening his splitting chest wound down to the abdomen. She doesn't hesitate before plunging a hand into the mess and tearing his liver free of what tissue remains. Casting the lightly-mangled organ onto the cobblestones (hopefully but probably not out of view of any straggling villagers), she crouches down to read the lines and contours of the Duke's history. How did this come to pass? What did Arcard offer or threaten, to turn a duke against his own subjects? And who was left in charge of Castle Armagh in his absence?
Odette Raskins	Duke Nord sounds the retreat, and not a moment too soon! Odette lets out a weary sigh as she lets that spear tip hit the ground, letting the weapon hang there for a moment while she catches her breath. It's only when the axe-wielders are no longer in sight that she finally turns back to the villagers, gesturing eastwards with a shaky hand. "E-everyone else went that way. It's safer over there, and we can treat your injuries. J-just grab whoever you can and go!" Taking another slow breath to try and calm herself at least a little, Odette looks over just in time to see the Duke getting torn up and tossed aside by that very same tall lady she was sort-of chasing after earlier. Before she can de-belt and start heading over, however, she hears a cracking noise, and then she feels something coming. Her survival instincts help keep her alive, too, as a panicked scream and dive sideways means the impact of the oversized arrow is only a glancing one instead of a direct hit. It's still enough to spin her around uncontrollably in mid-jump, though, and Zumine faceplants right into the ground. It takes her a minute to figure out where she is after that, groaning painfully and unpleasantly while rolling onto her back. Once she gets her bearings straight, though, she realizes just how much damage has been done, and she hurries to start checking on everyone while undoing the transformation and slipping all that DGP gear away. Roy, by virtue of being relatively close by, gets treated first with a clear focus on closing up the wound and stopping him from bleeding out. Lucius is there, after all, and Odette can already see that there's plenty more injuries to do triage on before she can go back and really fix up these wounds to a fighting-ready state. Echidna, too, ends up getting treatment fairly soon after due to the sheer severity of the wound through her gut, although Odette has to slow down a bit just to remind herself of the proper procedure for treating a wound this large. "Shit, okay... No, this is... W-we can fix this. It's gonna hurt, but..." She trails off, already getting to work on Echidna next while holding an unmedicated bandage up to her mouth. "Bite down. Better this than your tongue." She warns almost brusquely (relative to her usual tone), taking out an innocuous looking spray bottle and counting down from three with her other hand. "This'll hurt, but you'll be okay." With that warning given, Odette sprays on disinfectant that'll sting like hell, but work exactly as advertised before getting to work with all those bandages, sutures, and assorted medicines. She's got enough supplies in her bag to do this for a couple of people, at least, but she'll have to ration it out for her allies before she even thinks about starting on the not-pirates that are still around and alive.
Dysnomia	While lightning lanced upward, toward the Pegasus Knights, a pair of them caught sight of the telltale trickle of orange smoke(?) darting through the mist. They lunged, fearlessly through the mist, driving their lance into that ethereal flesh of hers, leaving her making a shout that was-not-quite a roar, pulling back, away from the their weapons--     --A chill ran down her spine, as she felt the light of clear sun on her back, and dove back--     Too late.     There's a lance of pain throughout her body, as an arrow drives a wedge right into her midsection, where Durandel had nearly cleaved her in twain, not so long ago. She cried out, carried by the sheer weight of the blow down to earth, pinning her to a tree, leaving her fumbling and struggling, as her body struggled to close around a wound that still had a shaft of wood lodged in the middle of it.     She made a soft, pained sound in the back of her throat, reaching for the arrow. Closes her eyes. Bites her lip and--     YANK     --A wispy lump of something important looking was pulled out along with the rest of the arrow. Once again, she was completely at their mercy...     Impotently, she drove a fist into the earth. It felt good, to feel it give under her fist. But not enough to bury this other feeling. "...Fuck..."
Lilian Rook	'Ugh-- you don't know what you're doing! Unhand me! Lord Arcard will hear about this!!'     "I wish you weren't lying." says Lilian. The way she says it holds the convincing edge of not thinking enough to lie about it, as she transitions to the next step of slightly shellshocked physical violence. "If powerful people started hearing about me then this sort of thing would happen a lot less."     'So who are you guys? Not local, not Etrurian, sure hope you're not from Bern. The Otherworld or something?'     It takes Lilian two seconds too long to realize the Duke is already dead. She's mentally loaded the attempted conversation first, and already primed her answer, before the knowledge that she's holding a corpse arrives, too-closely pursued by the fact that she isn't anymore. Unable to hide open-mouthed shock in that complicated daze, Lilian monotones "The Otherworld. Obviously. Don't start telling me that I have Etrurian eyes or something." while struggling through a rapid sequence of varying microexpressions regarding the woman she is talking to. She stands up as an afterthought. "I suppose that you're more than welcome. But since you've gone and curtailed any possibility of my asking, I'll expect you to fully explain why this sordid sight was transpiring at all."     --Crack--     CLANG,     Hearing it is already too late. A flicker of precognitive guidance tells Lilian that she has to look over that way to further her current goal, and her reaction to the danger is automatic. Her sparking sword crashes against the side of her head, fended by her own black antler 'crown'; the arrow spirals off in one direction, shedding half its mass beore stopping. Lilian collides with the ground on her back, gasps out everything in her lungs, pulls in her shoulder, rolls upright, and then feels the cold stab of too-slow adrenaline thump through her veins while her hair settles back around her face again.     Clarine. She has to stop. Going off that way on her own isn't safe. And Dieck. He's right there in the way. Lilian knows what he'll do to protect her. Ears ringing and residually dizzy, she starts to move only just before registering that she is turning her back on the village defender she was just talking to, skewered through the middle, and freezes.     When Odette catches up, Lilian is already crouched over Echidna, her Paladins mini-medkit halfwy empty as she rushes through as much of a treatment as she can.
Khosa	Khosa smooths her shell out once she's fired and retracted the tethers, because the tubes are a little awkward to handle - but she keeps the actual bulk of it, making her look a little hunchbacked even though she's able to stand up just about as straight as she ever manages. She finishes her spin and throws the battered, broken chunk of wood at the mage, javelin-style. It doesn't matter whether it hits or not, as Echidna has already solved *that* problem, but it makes her feel better and if Echidna hadn't followed through it would be good tactical sense. "I didn't know you had defilers here," Khosa says, and she spits the word like she was saying something dirty. She does not chase down the axemen who are fleeing from her - most of the ones *she* was dealing with are down, anyway, and without their leader she doubts they're going to cause much more trouble that can't be handled. "Yes, Outworlders. You think something like this grows local?" Khosa spreads her arms, revealing her torso, covered only with the bandeau; her front is mostly human, with mottled patches of scales where she took injuries, while her back is still shelled, and she's got the scorpion claw on her arm - *crack* "Down!" Khosa is too far away to cover Echidna, so she steps sideways, blocking the barricade again and Echidna's blond friend. The one who was talking to a zombie like it was a person, which *also* made Khosa's knuckles itch. The ballista-like arrow hits her on one of the front patches of scales just as Khosa takes that step. The scales flare up, thickening into ridges like a spiny lizard's, and she lets her muscles absorb the impact of the blow. It drives her back a step on sheer force, and she grunts as the air's knocked out of her - but the arrow doesn't penetrate. It shatters instead, spraying splinters away from her. The arrowhead itself drops to the ground at her feet. Khosa scoops the steel arrowhead up, holding it in her thick fingers. "Huh," she says, before looking up at the now-retreating archer. Not much she can do about that. She decides to keep the arrowhead, rubbing her thumb across it thoughtfully as she turns toward the zombie horde, giving the blond a nod as she turns. "Stop that," she says, to Trudy, with a significant look at the shambling corpse of the Duke. "It's disgusting. And wrong. I don't care what he was. Put them to rest." Fucking wizards, she thinks again, but doesn't actually say this time. Instead of actually enforcing it, she moves toward the impact sites of the other arrows. Echidna is down, but Lilian is there, and Khosa isn't actually good at medicine on other people - she's all thumbs when it comes to first aid. She takes two steps that direction, then turns. "Hey!" she raises her voice, instead. "Call out if you're hurt after that!" She can at least direct people to where they're needed.
Desire Stars	Not local, not Etrurian, sure hope you're not from Bern. The Otherworld or something?     "The Otherworld," says Geats, resting the machine-gun mode Magnum Shooter on the pauldron of his armor. "You can call me Geats, when I'm in this armor. My co-worker back there is Na-Go, in hers."     "I'll be honest," he says. "I'm happy to work with you against Bern, even if you and your people need a leg up to comfortably do that after this attack. But I wish you hadn't done that," he says, nodding towards the flung duke. "We could have worked him for information and ransomed him back. I'm sure you know that wars aren't cheap to wage, especially on the back foot--"     His white breastplate lifts and lowers in a sigh, as Trudy just reanimates him. "Guess that's one way to go about it." We'll just get close enough to see what flag they're flying, then dart right back.     Geats' 'coworker' doesn't yet know what she signed up for. Her playing grows frantic and irregular as the spiraling game of chicken flirts gut-droppingly with the ground. I'm working for the Etrurian army! Who are you working for?     "For the last hope against Bern, and so should you, if you know what they're--" Her sentence is cut off by a shriek as the arrow hits her.     'More experienced than before' isn't enough to get the better of an experienced sniper, or to know that there are even such things as those. The impact lifts her off of her seat on Shanna's pegasus, her limbs splayed out in futile search for purchase over a drop of a few seconds that seem to drag on for years.     A geyser of sparks sprays non-stop from the back of her armor, quieted only by her crash through the thatch roof of a village home. The sound of splintering wood echoes upwards from the caved-in roof. Something uncharitable broke her fall--she lays in a heap amidst the debris her entry created and the ruins of a small round table, her armor disappearing in a blue flash as a whimper that hurts to even utter escapes her. Burns and cuts from the armor's kinetic redistribution system are laid out like a patchwork across her skin, absent the armor which dissipated for the strain of keeping her alive.     Echidna is skewered as Geats' machine gun is lowered back into his hands and shouldered, too fast for him to shoot off course. The butt of the weapon strikes aside one aimed for his own head, 'merely' striking him in the shoulder hard enough to lift him off of his feet and drive him onto his back. His sliding body digs a furrow into the earth as sparks fly from the point of impact. His armor, too, dissipates, leaving Ace Ukiyo with his back in the dirt, a fresh cut on his lip, and a shortness in his breath driven by a killing strike blunted and spread out evenly over the whole body.     He rolls sideways, rising to one knee, disembodied Magnum Buckle held in one hand and primed for reinsertion, index curled around the red trigger as he searches southward. At first, he doesn't see him--and his eyes knowingly search the battlefield. *The fliers are flushing us out for him. But they stopped. Why?*     Dieck is a hard figure to miss, even at a distance. A familiar figure. Finding Dieck finds the mystery sharpshooter--and he doesn't need to be in earshot to guess at what's happening there.     "We're not your enemies," Ace calls to the pegasus knights, both hands raised. "Your commander's figured that out already. Follow his lead."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel takes a moment to stop and rest, after all that hectic fighting. Every super-spy knows you have to be irrationally constantly vigilant and simultaneously very relaxed, though, especially in a place that apparently has snipers just as quick and effective as the swordsfolk. His psychic barrier shines and shatters in layers, to let him know this important lesson, as the huge arrow glances painfully off of it.     He winds up rolling and on his chest, making sure to stay down when he goes down. "Wh-hhh-how that *hurt*. Good shot! Good shot, bad cause! You have to stop, this is a *horrible* thing to be doing!" The archer's already on the way out. Flamel's relieved that, at the very least, this sort of martial power might be one he can deal with using his psychic abilities. And hopefully, he won't have to.     This enemy archer is easily driven away by the presence of Clarine, after all. Wonderful! And wise!     Once things have calmed somewhat, he pokes his head up. "Nations are mostly different in their atmosphere! This is just how realpolitik is... Looks more and more like we're seeing an almost *infectious* love for Zephiel's approach to things. He's almost Roy-like in his inspirational habits!"     He's run to check on the medical care as well, but he can't help much, just rubberneck near the boundary of Odette's treatment space. For now, there's not all that much more to do for him, most likely. Can he scour a zombie's brain for information on a that lord? No, probably no dice. Echidna, though... "'Lord Arcard'? Hey, we'll need to know about him!" He exclaims. "We'll probably help the resistance plenty, if we can get some help with this Etruria situation. I think we're going to be *great* allies of convenience and need!"
Marigold	The one that a soldier offers his handkerchief to just stares gormlessly at him.      "Ah. Well. Every culture has its manners," says Echidna's refined companion of the zombie. The sea-salted one makes a face. "Elffin, that thing's not-- get down!!" As Khosa catches the bolt, the purple-haired man tackles the blond to the ground. "Hah. Thanks. ... Oh, god! Echidna!"      Helping one another up, they both dash over to her, catching up a few crucial moments after Odette does.      "Ah- are you hurt?" "Of course she's hurt. You're a healer, aren't you, miss? Just--" Echidna makes a groaning noise, then forces herself up to her feet, leaning on her axe with the bolt right through her. "Didn't hit anything important," she lies with an easy confidence. "Oh, thank goodness..." To Odette: "Do what you have to." Her face only tenses a little with the painful operations.      Lucius took care of Roy after Odette, but a moment later, he stops by Dysnomia as well. His lips part, awkwardly weighing her injury against her pride. "... Shall I make it a little easier for you, Mia? What wisdom can be found in suffering, I expect you've already learned."      When Na-Go tumbles, Shanna tries desperately to grasp her, fails, and then swoops down after. Dismounting, she steps inside, gasps softly, lifts Na-Go's head, and tries to find a way to feed her a bitter-tasting medicinal concoction. "Here. This'll... oh, god, I'm sorry. I didn't know it'd be her... Didn't know it'd be them. I should've- should've something."      The Etrurian forces are pulling back, but to the west, not the south where they came. "Klein? Where do you think you're going." "... To figure some things out. I don't know if I can associate with you yet." "Ouch." "It hurts me too." ". . . Yeah, I'm sure."      'Thea', obvious leader of the pegasus knights, stares at Ace with wide-wild eyes for a long moment while flap-hovering her mount thirty feet up. Maneuvers like that juice a person with a lot of adrenaline. "You're my enemy if he says you are," she says, warning. But he hasn't. With one more look back, she ascends, circles, and leaves, taking the others with her.      The wounded villagers stay with the caravan. The able-bodied ones trickle back in to survey the damage to their homes, now that the fighting's over, or to look at the assembled heroes in distant cautious awe.      "I am going to need to know what is happening in this Gods-forsaken country."      "I'll expect you to fully explain why this sordid sight was transpiring at all."      "We could have worked him for information and ransomed him back."      "... if we can get some help with this Etruria situation."      "I've got all the answers you need. Hey, you?" "Huh?" Roy, at last has made his way over, blood staining his tunic but moving easily now. "C'mere." "Uh, okay?"