Muttonhawk

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Just opened a beer, the exam was a walkover. Now I can relax x)

ParaCom: Adversary Inside

Both Anya and Luc were lining up a shot at the monstrous beast and its handler before them. They didn't exactly know how to handle the situation, so they stayed their trigger fingers until the sergeant gave them instructions. Luc heaved himself up and jogged behind a further piece of cover to give himself some distance, then turned around. He held his machine gun at the hip with the carrying handle and wasted no time unloading on the manticore. "I'll mount this thing's head on the wall!" Luc shouted over the rattle of gunfire.

Anya took her time with her shot, but was a little shaky from the urgency of the situation. She shot a burst of assault rifle rounds at the djinn's centre of mass and hoped that neither creature would pay particular attention to her.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Janius was on the verge of feeling sick at witnessing the fresh thralls go about their business, their rot filling the air immediately around them. Fleshless bones in suits of armour was one thing, but seeing the bodies that were taken from the near-empty town they had just searched as they shambled with morbid, puppet-like movements was quite another. He just kept his eyes to the table and fiddled with a splintering chip of wood in his fingers, trying to ignore them.

Fendros turned his head to Ahnasha upon being nudged, but her words along with their remorseless tone made his eyes shift about uneasily. "That's..." Fendros cut himself off. Initially, he wanted to ask Ahnasha how she could think to take their souls when they were now essentially defenceless, but his thoughts veered him away from emotional reaction to the reality of the situation. He had been thinking about the deal as well. Those prisoners belonged to the cult. Trying to sneak in and kill them without permission might be misconstrued. Still, they needed those souls to get Orskan's tome. Fendros began to get up, deciding to try a more transparent approach. "I'm going to talk to Orskan about this," he declared.

Without any apprehension this time, Fendros walked up to Orskan and addressed him. "Orskan, about the deal we had. I would like to have a word." After turning and moving to speak more privately, Fendros produced the bag of soul gems and the dagger he had borrowed. His words were still tired and stressed, despite being diplomatic. He wanted to wrap up their dealings with the least amount of bother to everyone involved. "We only managed to get one soul before we were captured. I apologise. However, given how the many people the cult captured alive when taking the settlement, I imagine there is now an abundance of souls available to you. I don't assume to insult you by asking for the tome you had promised without fulfilling our side of the bargain exactly as we agreed, but I would beseech that capturing those prisoners would not have been possible had the pack not tracked us to them. I should think the convenience for taking the souls has been provided with this, so I ask, with your agenda fulfilled, might you reciprocate and help ours? The experience we had yesterday was something I would sooner forget," Fendros started to trip over his words as more of his mind became occupied with blocking the images out, "I would rather not have it be for nought."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Fendros looked upon Rhazii as his eyes curiously followed some insignificant sound nearby. As he often did with such things, he put a portion of Ahnasha's pendant in his mouth. At least it was on a tether so he couldn't really swallow it easily, but it was still worth keeping an eye on him. "I don't think we'll need to lie to him. By the time he asks, I think he'll appreciate the truth more than anything. He might not understand now, or even when we first tell him, but he will eventually. I'm sure of it."

With nothing much else to do except scrape the rust off his equipment, Janius help pack the equipment up and used the last few minutes to do some scraping. Or, at least he tried to but ended up responding to Leaps' requests for attention. The time melted away before it was time to head to the great hall. Everyone in the pack was looking forward to winding up their business with Molag Bal and hopefully finding some semblance of normality after being virtually imprisoned for so long. The excitement to leave brought about a mild anxiety in Janius and Fendros, who both kept vigilant for any further betrayal, not that they had any more of a chance against their captors than before.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Got myself an exam tomorrow. Yet more study, I'm afraid.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"It's good to be back, it was unpleasant to search through fresh ruins like that." Janius slid off the large rucksack he carried which held mostly the clothing they had recovered. He had put on his own armour in case they ran into any further trouble on the way there and back, despite blotches of rust present across it. After warding off Leaps' excited jumpings at seeing them all again, Janius presented the articles of clothing, one by one. "Let's see, we found some city clothes that looked to fit you and Kaleeth. All the rest had Argonian tail-holes, so we'll have to adjust them or buy others if anyone else needs to enter cities. Apart from that, we found where they kept Fendros and Ahansha's things. Our other clothing is a bit dirty, of what we found, but any cleaning, repair, or replacements shouldn't be too hard. We also found a bit of hide, which could help, but it might be worth more to us to make an extra bedroll." Just the clothing and armour wasn't representative of everything they had found, but it was what Meesei had asked.

Fendros deposited what he was carrying and made his first stop by Ahnasha and Rhazii. The walk had helped his mood a little, even though he did seem to be on edge all of the time now. He placed a hand on Ahnasha's back and opened his other hand in front of both of their faces. "Look what we managed to find," Fendros said with a smile as the arrowhead pendant fell from his palm and hung on to where it was looped around his finger. Rhazii was either dexterous or simply well placed enough to wrap his little hands around the pendant where it hung and held onto it like a familiar toy. "Rhazii's looking a lot better," Fendros commented quietly, stroking the back of the cub's head before looking to Ahnasha's eyes, "how are you?"

Sabine's eyes quickly found the satchel that the group carried and walked up to retrieve it. Opening it up found that all of the few ingredients in it had been bruised, soiled, or otherwise ruined, while the only surviving potions was one small flask with a potion for resisting fire, and her last healing potion in a leather skin. She would have to make or buy more vessels if she was going to make any more liquid potions, but at least she had some things left. Not to mention, the strap on her satchel wouldn't be difficult to repair.

ParaCom: Adversary Inside

By the fresh hole still billowing dust from the building that Luc's rocket had impacted, the sniper was no longer a threat. Now, their objective was in sight, and there was a lull in hostilities. Anya and Luc both took the time to get back into cover with the rest of the team in sight. Luc began to reload his machine gun, while Anya kept her rifle sticking out so she could watch over the team's advance.

"Collateral damage didn't cross your mind, Luc?" Anya quipped.

Luc didn't seem to care much. "Was anyone else hurt but the bastard in the window?"

Anya just blew a hiss through her teeth and dropped the issue.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine had to think some more during Ahnasha's pause. Admittedly, talking as much as she did was better than saying nothing, but Sabine didn't feel that it addressed Ahnasha's own new fears.

Sabine took a slow breath in and spoke comfortingly. "Ahnasha, it's being scared. When your scared, it hurts for a long time." Sabine didn't know whether she was saying the right things or not, but her intentions meant well. "It might hurt, but, just keep your eyes open and notice when you get scared of things that you weren't scared of before, and then you might know what to say. Just don't keep quiet for too long." Sabine got up and walked over to Ahnasha, putting her arms around her neck and pulling herself in to hug her, "I love you, sister. Do not ever think we won't."

---

The path to the old settlement didn't have much talking, save for small and insignificant comments, or brief points of discussion. The matter of what had stuck in Fendros' mind hung like a cloud over all of them. He walked briskly ahead, setting an unnecessarily fast walking pace, he didn't say much unless directly spoken to, he was sometimes coaxed into a smile, but never laughed, and other times he always had this tense frown as if every moment tarrying was a waste of valuable time. During the walk, there was only one enquiry into what exactly had happened in the keep, and his response was a hand wave and a 'Not now,' dismissal that was spat like a snake. It was clear that he wasn't going to talk about it with them. At least, well, not now.

The now mostly ruined settlement they had found stood eerily empty. There was plenty of evidence from yesterday's fight. The shattered open gates, the many houses that had been gutted by fire, some of which were still smouldering with wisps of smoke. The smell of rotting corpses in the air had attracted a number of hackwings circling above. Most unsettling was the fact that the only rotting corpses were the ones left on the ground in a state of dismemberment that were strewn around very intermittently. The sheer amount of other dead bodies from yesterday were missing. The pack could easily guess why. The few corpses had some recoverable equipment, but their top priority was their own equipment. Not that they wanted to stay there a second longer than they had to. Even the aftermath of a nightmare left a lasting impression.

The first thing of use they spotted was Sabine's potion satchel not far from the gate, surrounded by the furs and wrappings, and other paraphernalia she had left behind. Some of the potion containers had been shattered or burst when trampled upon, but there were a few that had survived. This was also the area in which Kaleeth had transformed, but as evidenced by her wearing her wamasu armour back to the xanmeer, she had obviously picked up her own belongings on her way out.

Once all was recovered from there, the search stopped by where they believed they had transformed as a group. Janius and Lorag of course found that their armour and weapons had gathered some rust. Janius found himself wishing for an axe and perhaps some armour pieces made from Dwemer metal or orichalcum. He knew those at least lasted through the elements with less maintenance, especially Dwemer metal, but it had always been beyond his means. It didn't take too long to gather their weapons and equipment up, including any salvageable pieces of clothing, and then moving on to the keep.

The keep, being made of stone, didn't take the embers in the air so easily, but no doubt an act of retribution on the cultists' had left an entire corner of the structure collapsed into a large pile of rubble. Inside, the interior furniture, art, and decorations had all been melted or burned by artificial means. Next to nothing was spared on the ground floor and above, but nothing was apparently worth burning in the underground floor. The dungeon held an easily broken locked door where they found a chest containing prisoners' belongings. As soon as the group found this, Fendros rushed forward and rummaged through recklessly until he found Ahnasha's Dwemer metal arrowhead necklace. This he held tightly in his fist while he took an apparently relieved breath. Other things were recovered, like clothing, Fendros' bow, arrows, shield, and so on. More valuable things, like Fendros' sword, the black soul gems and the soul trapping dagger, were not present in the chest. They were later found in one of the keep's burned out bedrooms in a reinforced chest that somehow survived. Within this chest there also happened to be a few more instruments, such as silver blades, books on Molag Bal, and various other documents. It was a fair assumption that they had stumbled upon the noble's bedroom.

Now that the pack had recovered all that they knew to find, it came time to scavenge through the ruins to replace what they had lost in the xanmeer. It took some time to find buildings that still had surviving items in them, let alone ones that hadn't been razed completely. Of the paltry places they found, there was a few pieces of town clothing that looked about the size of some members of the pack, a couple of old knives, one and a half good sheets of hide, and a few septims. When picking the items out, there was an uneasiness throughout the pack in picking out the possessions of the now captured or dead. It didn't make the fact that the pack were accomplices to whatever horrendous situation that the prisoners were no doubt in any easier.

More luck was had when the pack came upon an intact basement that had been spared the fires of the cultists. Within was three rolled up and dusty fur bedrolls, preserved fruits and meats, and several kegs of Argonian and Cyrodilic beverage still in the process of fermenting. By the shape of the charred foundations sticking up from the ground, the building they had found was probably an inn. It was amazing that no fire had found the drinks, but no matter how Lorag groaned, they couldn't take the entire stash with them. In fact, with the load they already had, Lorag struggled to even carry one small keg of ale back with him.

After the inn, striding through the rest of the ghost town for the rest of the day yielded little of interest apart from the occasional portion of someone's body holding onto something useful. With all the food they had found in the inn, it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. Janius and Lorag both wished they had use of a horse and cart. For different reasons, of course. They headed back with less than they had lost, but far from empty handed. What they had would do well to give the pack a head start when they left. They all arrived back at the xanmeer before sunset, though they could hardly tell whether that was the case when they entered the fog again.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

G'night!

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sure thing.