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[center][h2][color=maroon]Z O S I M O S   B L A C K C O I L[/color][/h2][/center]
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Zosimos had been trudging along besides the horses pulling the cart, favouring their company to that of her traveling companions. Beneath her thick cloak she was dry and warm, kept safe from the deluge soaking the others. The downpour was nothing she was not already accustomed to from years surviving in Torvelt’s mountains, but she did wonder if perhaps the others were unprepared for it. She had kept an ear on the conversations unfolding around her as the day progressed, only really half listening for most of her attention had remained on subtly keeping a watchful eye on the magic users of the band. 

When the agitation of the horses quickly turned to panic, Zosimos reached out to calm the beasts. The rancid odour and the cry of warning from one of the band alerted her to the source of the horses’ fear. She growled loudly as she spotted Nathanial vanish into thin air, cursing both him and the oncoming danger under her breath.

Zosimos caught the bridles of the cart horses and stood in front of them, trying to stop them from rearing up and bolting away with all their supplies or trampling one of her quest companions in their blind fright. She used the connection her arcane magic gave her with the creatures of the natural world to attempt to soothe the pair. She spoke to them in a calm tone, one that contradicted the mounting alarm she was feeling. 

The Tiefling’s gaze swept over the line of trees on both sides of the muddy road, watching in trepidation for trolls in come into sight. Zosimos had run into trolls before, mostly during the first few years she had been living in the mountains of Torvelt. Those were the times before she learnt the signs they left and how to avoid them. Only once had she ever gotten close enough to one to be within any mortal danger. She had accidently stumbled across a small troll one day while scaling the crags and heights the peaks while exploring. Before she realised the troll was far too small to be anything other than a juvenile, two more had appeared in quick succession. They had trapped her against a cliff face, their positioning indicating that they had spotted her far before she had been aware of their presence. It had only been Zosimos’ ability to rapidly scale the rockface and frantically squeeze herself through a narrow fissure in it that that had allowed her to escape been torn limb from limb by the trolls that day.

When their enemy finally broke through the tree line, Zosimos’s one good remaining eye widened in shock. The flesh of the trolls was sloughing off as they charged towards them. Great, big open sores festered all over their bodies and the stench as they neared was enough to turn anyone’s stomach.

Zosimos hung back as the battle began. She was no use in combat if she could not use her retractable claws and shark-like teeth – and touching the decaying flesh of the trolls would only poison her. Instead, she steadied the horses as they cried out wildly and tried to break free from the cart in order to flee. Zosimos extended her magic, [i]Onterprinh[/i], again to reach out to the consciousnesses of the beasts of burden and willed it to be enough to quiet the terror she could see in their eyes.