Anna
Dealing with the fallout of their skirmish was a dreary affair. Greg, Kalvin, and Helen attempted to interrogate the few living kobolds that they managed to capture, but they only received shrieks and screams in return. After the fourth attempt at escape, Greg killed them, which infuriated the others.
“We could have let them live! You didn’t need to murder in cold-blood.” Kalvin flung his accusations at Helen and Greg both, as the former refused to speak on the matter. It seemed she was much more subdued after her capture by the wolves.
“Letting them go wasn’t an option. We have no idea if there are more that they would bring. We don’t have the manpower or resources to keep them prisoner either. Be realistic and think about the group before you judge me.” Greg stood his ground as he busied himself with digging graves.
The others, in the meantime, busied themselves with looking after the former captives. Anna was pushed into taking charge as the others lacked healing skills. Not like I know any medicine myself. She thought as she cast Regeneration on the four newly freed people.
Collin, the only human among the newcomers, had fallen asleep from exhaustion and Anna honestly wished she could as well. The mental strain from staying awake for so long was starting to make her dizzy. Still, sleep deprivation was a trade she was willing to make if it meant saving others.
The two male orcs, Firth and Tormin, were in the worst shape. Firth was missing his left hand, and although whatever healing the kobolds had given them had regrown skin over the stump, he demanded the new flesh be cut off.
“Just try it, and if it doesn’t work, then I’ll accept the consequences.” He said waving around his severed hand in the direction of Anna. The image of a rotting hand slowly oozing pink sludge and the smell risked making her gag, so she only nodded her acceptance with her eyes shut.
The results were much better than expected. Miranda laid the orcs arm across a fallen log and sliced the stump open with her blade. Firth held the hand to his stump and Anna cast mend directly over the cut. Pushing the energy into the new wound was simple and when it crossed over into the severed hand, the new connection took over. Sinew and tissue rejoined followed by a new line of skin. The slow change of color from pale to light-gray announced the return of blood flow.
When she looked over to ask Firth how he felt, he was knocked out. Turns out that reconnecting nerves to formerly dead limbs was an excruciating process and the sudden shock was more than he could handle.
Tormin had a separate problem. His stomach had been cut open during the battle with the elves. He had barely managed to stay alive when the lizards arrived. The downside to their healing was that the hand he’d used to hold the wound shut had fused with the skin on his abdomen. That same fusion was the inspiration Firth had that his severed hand could be reattached.
Admitting that he was no good with pain, Tormin asked Hobbes and Kelbyn to hold him down. Hobbes accepted, but the other dwarf suddenly remembered that he lost his dagger somewhere in the battle and went searching for it. That meant that Anna had to take his place and heal, as Miranda was the one that would deliver the cut.
This time, the process involved plenty of screaming, swearing, and crying, and not just from Tormin. Meanwhile, the final new member of their troupe, Johanna, began walking back in the direction they had come from, only to be cut off by Kelbyn.
“Where are you going? There’s no one else left.” he told her.
“I have to bury Kastur, her body is still back there.” Johanna attempted to push her way past the dwarf, but he was surprisingly stout and held his ground.
“Don’t be dumb, it’s not safe. Just wait for Greg to decide what we’re doing.”
“He doesn’t control me,” she snarled, barring her two large sharpened canines, “If I die trying to bury my friend, then so be it. There’s nothing this hell can do more than take my life anyways.”
It was then that Helen provided a compromise, “We should head back at some point either way. There could be more survivors or trails, but doing so now would not do us any favors. I’m tired, and I’m sure you are too. If you wait a while, we can rest and be ready to go in a few hours. It’ll be so much safer that way.”
A few more minutes passed as different members of the group tried to talk Johanna out of her decision. Anna herself chose to stay out of it, knowing that if she were in the orc’s shoes, she would set out immediately. Instead, she told Teddy to keep watch over her while she napped in the burrow of a large tree.
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Anna, wake up! There’s something nearby. Teddy told her as he tugged on her arm.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she looked around the area to see what the others had gotten up to. Most of them were asleep, with Collin and Kelbyn keeping watch. Greg was facing off against Miranda, wielding a stick with his shield. They pushed against one another, practicing thrusts and cuts from behind cover.
Brushing off her already worn clothes, Anna made her way over to the group. “Teddy says there’s something close.” She woke the others up individually and let them know. As the last person got up, they heard the first thump.
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At first it sounded like a distant and dull thud against the ground. Yet, by the time they located the direction of the noise, it transformed into a heart stopping pound. The sound of splitting trees accompanied each rhythm thump, as if a giant had come to crush them all underfoot. Looking left and right, the others had come to the same conclusion. Hiding is our only option.
A mad dash to the opposite side of the forest began as the party looked for a safe hideout. The sound grew ever closer, marking a deathly time limit to their search. The ground began to shake from the crashes, and wild animals could be heard, screeching to announce their own desperate attempts to escape. A cry was heard from up ahead as Firth took the lead. Below his leaping form, lay a stunned kobold, knocked prone from the orc’s charge.
Several figures dotted the edge of her vision as Anna ran, their shapes slowly growing larger until she could make out their tails.
“They’re running too!” Kelbyn shouted to the rest of the group, stopping some of the kobolds as they turned to look. Anger flooded their facers as the stragglers barked to the others and pointed at the dwarf. It seemed like they blamed the group for whatever monster was headed their way.
Pandemonium broke out as several of the lizards turned to face them while others continued their flight. Kalvin spoke up as he neared the growing wall of foes, “Go left! There’s a cave we can hide in!” With his command, he also pivoted and slammed his hands into the ground, creating a cascade of broken earth that formed a line of separation between the kobolds and the group.
Hobbes followed up by filling the newly dug line with fires, lighting any twigs and leaves that had fallen in long ago. The dwarf continued filling the line with as many small flames as he could send out, slowing slightly as he did so.
Some of the faster kobolds attempted to jump through the boundary before the flames became too high, and Miranda leaped forward to face them. She immediately pushed one back into the line, letting the flames do the dirty work.
Two more lizards replaced the first and engaged the geckite, a small blade stabbing into her foot. Tormin shot out a vine similar to Anna’s, and dragged the other lizard back before he too could get to the pinned warrior.
Miranda swung the butt of her spear around to hit the chin of her opponent, knocking it off-balance. She got revenge for her own wound by following up her strike with a thrust of the spear, pinning the lizard into the soft earth.
At Anna’s command, Teddy rushed forward to finish off first Tormin’s kobold, and then Miranda’s as she slapped the warrior with a Regeneration. The pair ran after their group with Miranda leaning on Anna to take some of the weight off of her foot. Tormin and Teddy brought up the rear of the party, ensuring that they were not followed.
The remaining kobolds, unable to make it past the line of fire, turned and followed their fellows into the forest. Their ending abruptly as several forest creatures broke into their path. The barrage of hooves and feet stampeded through the line of lizards crushed them underfoot. Thankfully, the fire continued to do its job, and most of the herd turned to avoid the heat.
The party reached a large opening in the earth, tunneling into the ground at a sharp angle. The hole was mostly covered by underbrush and it took several of them to hack back the foliage just enough for them to squeeze through. Crowding into the tunnel, they placed the backs directly to the wall, terrified of not only what was above, but the uncertain fear of what may be within the cave as well.
Overhead, the crashes became more erratic. A large shadow loomed over the edge of the cave, only to be cast away by the illumination of blue fire. The flame leaped onto the nearby bushes, but didn’t spread. Yet the heat was certainly felt by everyone. A large wooden hand fell from the sky and crashed several yards from the group's hideout. Before them, fell a massive tree, in the shape of a human. Several parts of its trunk were blackened into char, its entire left side eaten away into cinders.
The creature laid on its side and let out a sorrowful moan, unable to put out the flames. As it turned left and right in pain, it dug a wide crater in the ground, threatening the stability of the group's own cave.
Kalvin rushed to the opposite wall, pulling a large pillar out of the earth and stabbing it into the ceiling. He motioned for the others to get underneath as he pulled more slabs into place, creating an earthen lean-to.
Although the others moved under the new cover, their eyes were locked onto the sight of the tortured titan. The question of what could have done this lingered on all of their minds. The fact that this creature existed in the first place seemed absurd. So many ridiculous thoughts rushed through Anna’s head about its existence. How does it even move? It’s too big to be that fast. Should it just collapse under its own weight?
Yet the death of the creature took hours. Throughout its ordeal, it swiped at nearby trees, not strong enough to knock the colossuses over, but enough to shake off several branches from above. As they fell to the forest floor, many landed on or near the giant, but the fire still did not spread to them. As the squirming of the tree beast came to an end, Anna felt its pleas take on a new form.
Sitting on the floor, she focused her mind towards her soul membrane. The world seemed full of life attuned energies, and the source of it all, was the giant. Looking at the creature through this new lens, she saw the true nature of the fire. It was burning away at the beast’s soul. The corporal flames were simply a side effect of the true inferno that blazed through it.
Anna sat and watched as its soul was not only burnt away, but also dragged off by some other force. Whatever was killing the beast was stealing away pieces of its spiritual body. Whether to kill it faster, or consume it, she had no clue. As the giant thrashed about in pain, it reached out to the forest for comfort, and the forest responded. Several of the nearby energies fed the creature with comfort, unable to save it, but at least stand in solidarity.
Then, the giant reached out to her with a tendril of its soul as well. It was drawn to the life energies that she drew in through her passive, and sought comfort from a similar soul. Her heart went out to the giant, it was a barbaric and cruel way to die. Anna condensed almost half of her own energy into a ball, and offered it to the giant. Her gift was negligible in the face of the energy offered by the forest, but the sentiment was the same.
As the energy was grabbed by the soul of the giant, it responded violently. The fire had already consumed the majority of its spiritual body, but it cut off the untouched sections, forcing back the tide for a brief moment. That was all it needed as the part of its soul that freed itself rushed into the energy offered by the others. Most went into the forest, joining the massive kapoks in their solitude above the sky.
A much smaller section, fled into the energy Anna provided. Most life energy that she had seen till this point was tinted green. The transformation that took place before her turned the energy into a mottled brown. The energy was condensed further and further until it took the shape of a small spherical seed. The seed returned to Anna and she received a system message.
System Alert:
You have been offered a Mighty Kapok Seed from a dying Rukhamen. Accepting it will guide your path.
Warning, if the seed is not claimed within 1:23:59:59, it will die.