Some battles go down in legend as having been epic duels for the fate of kingdoms, others are remembered only by the survivors, and some only by the spectators. There are many types of battles, Sera knows, but there is nothing particularly special about most of them, at least in her mind. She’d expected this to be a special battle, though, and she would consider the three fights she’s been in so far to be special, but evidently some fights are just routine.
The group of six adventurer looking types that had rushed through the barracks room’s door moments ago never made it to Vey and Sera. The first to charge, a half-orc, took two headshots from the archer trio, and the human woman that followed him went down from the third shot. That was the point Sera realized this might not be much of a battle at all.
Right now, only two adventurers remain, the other four died to the six archers and two crossbowmen and their various projectiles. The only reason they’re alive is because one of them, she thinks he looks like a cross between an elf and a orc, is on the ground with an arrow in his thigh. It doesn’t take a genius to see that no matter what she and Vey do, they won’t be able to save him from an arterial wound, not in one piece, at least. The other survivor, an androgynous looking elf, simply ran the moment they saw their companions dead. This all happened in just a few seconds, and Sera isn’t sure if Vey wants to chase the elf or not, but either way, she feels like her task is clear.
“Vey, chase her if you must.” Sera tries to sound as polite and dispassionate as possible, both to drown out her disappointment and what little shock still remains. Vey just nods and starts towards the barracks in a light jog, followed by Ter and Jyu.
She lets her sword fall out of stance and into a more comfortable carry, and starts walking towards the dying adventurer. She reflects for a moment on how long she’d waited for this particular group to make it down into the dungeon, and how boring it feels that she didn’t get to do much. However, if anything, it proves that the dungeon’s defenses are working, since she and Vey didn’t need to do anything, they know that Dragon and Sheo squad can be trusted with the defense.
She turns to the squads in question, and then looks back down at the dying half-orc half-elf man, and takes a few moments to think. Sure, she might not be able to keep him alive because of the wound, but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely useless. Sera approaches closer, only a step or two away from him now, and makes sure to step loudly to get the man to pay attention to her.
“What’s your name?” Sera asks with an interrogative tone, trying to sound as intimidating and authoritative as possible. Her question only gets the man to look up at her, a few tears in his eyes, a fair amount of dirt and blood on his face from when he clutched his head after touching the wound, and the most notable feature of the man, heterochromatic eyes, a blue left and brown right.
“You’re… why are you in a dungeon…” Despite definitely being a question, the shakiness in his voice and dejected expression indicate to Sera that he has no hope for receiving an answer.
“Are there more of you? Adventurers, I mean.” She puts the tip of her sword under the man’s chin, making the judgment that with that wound, and his position on the floor, there is no way he could turn the tables here. The man only nods to her question, which prompts her next. “Are they stronger or weaker than your group?”
“Will you spare me?” The man’s question is a rather tenuous subject for Sera at the moment, but she recovers by falling back on a less personal response.
“Even if I do, we have no way to stop that wound from taking you, short of amputating the leg and burning the stump closed. Answer the question and I might consider that.” Sera lies to the man, albeit unintentionally. She realizes it is a lie when she considers that even if they did spare his life, he’d only end up a prisoner and a slave down here, by the simple inevitability of it not being worth the risk to let him go. Sera knows Vey wouldn’t want that, and Sera also doesn’t think he’d actually be of any use even if he were kept like that, so death it is. “I apologize, no, you will die here. Explain the full story of why you are here and who else might be coming and I will make it quick.”
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“Quest out for the nearest cities… ten gold per head for each bandit brought in from the border territories… thought this place had bandits, decided to go in-”
A single swipe of her sword sends his head tumbling in the air for a moment, before hitting the ground with a thud. It takes his body a moment to slump over afterwards, because of how surprisingly stable he was huddling while clutching his leg. Judging from the amount of blood pooling, he didn’t have much more than a few minutes left anyways, and if he’d taken the arrow out of the wound like he seemed to be trying to, seconds.
As she starts cleaning her sword and beginning to direct the ten skeletons in collecting the corpses and their various things, she hears a crackling sound from the barracks room, and decides to walk over and check. The moment she peeks her head through the door, she spots the path the adventurers must have taken through the corpses in various states of decay. Apparently, they’d decided to just step on them and run through as fast as possible, hence why they’d met the defenders while running and not ready for a fight. The several stomped-on looking corpses evidence that theory, at least.
The source of the sound is plainly evident, Vey is standing in the doorway to the tunnel entrance, looking down at his right palm. He turns, and Sera spots a few dregs of magical electricity on his fingers, and she assumes the noise was him testing [Lightning Bolt].
“They dead?” She asks, and Vey nods, so Sera immediately ducks back out of the room to try and get even slightly further away from that atrocious smell.
“She, and I hit her in the back of the head with the bolt.” Vey exits the barracks room, walking after her, and she turns to wait for him.
“I asked that one why he came, there’s a bounty out for bandits, and they thought we were bandits.” She shrugs as she leans against the wall, and watches Dragon collect the possessions of the corpses for Sheo squad to carry off. She idly wonders if it will only be a few more encounters like that for Sheo squad to evolve, since they seem to be following instructions better than any fresh undead Vey raises.
“That adds up, at least, the village may know it was us, but news might not be traveling so wide so quick.” Vey ponderously taps his own chin with his right hand, then focuses his eyes of Sera. “I think we should raid the village proper, for corpses for more undead, as well as all the supplies we can carry with all the undead we have. If more adventurers will be coming-”
“We’ll need to hunker down for a bit, so we should get supplies for stuff now…” Sera cuts him off with the obvious. In all honesty, she doubts the village will survive the coming snowfall. All those villagers dead, soldiers camping out by the village slaughtered, one of only two priests gone… yeah, her village is probably done for due to winter’s approach, if it isn’t already abandoned.
“Or we can more aggressively assert control over our little area of land.” Vey offers a second option, but to Sera, it sounds like the same thing, just worded differently.
“No, a looting raid is a good idea, I don’t think the village will last much longer anyways, and we should definitely take what we can, while we can, if we’re committing to that. It would forever tarnish any chance of peacefully coexisting with the surface, though.”
“Do you really think they’d peacefully coexist with something like me, or anyone else down here for that matter, to begin with?” Vey asks, and Sera doesn’t really need to respond to the question, but she shakes her head anyways.
“Regardless, with Dragon squad, Sheo squad, and Zombie squad we should be able to carry quite a lot back with us, but this place would be undefended in the meantime.” Sera tries to prompt the logistical discussion now rather than later, since she thinks the decisions might as well be made now and worried about later.
“Actually… it would probably be best if one of us stays behind to defend the place, since we’re the strongest fighters. Barring that, though, we could seal the entrances with [Stone Shape] and I can reopen them when we get back.” Vey’s suggestions are both interesting to Sera, for different reasons. The first makes the most logical sense, with proper scouting included there is no real reason either herself or Vey would lose a fight to anyone likely to be around, but that doesn’t mean she likes the idea of being separated. Sealing the dungeon has its own issues, but she’s almost certain Vey has already considered them if he suggested it at all, so she’s ok with that plan.
“Alright, second option, then. When will we do it? Tonight?” Vey just nods to her question, and so she continues. “Alright, how about we leave tonight, and do it in daylight tomorrow. I could go into whatever’s left of the village without being hostile, and then you can come in from a different angle?”
“That’s actually a better idea than what I had planned. I was just going to try and have you and I assassinate as many people as possible before we get noticed.” Vey shrugs, which still looks weird from a side angle. “Alright, I think we’d be leaving in a couple hours, you should eat while I get everything ready.”
“Right, I’ll get Zombie squad on my way back up here. Oh! Try using Soul Tendrils with Dragon squad, I’m going to use mine on Sheo squad whenever I get the chance, so we should coordinate that until we learn any better ways of using it.” Sera turns and gives her advice on their new skill, and almost trips on the one remaining unmoved corpse when she tries to continue walking before turning around. When she regains her footing, she wonders to herself why she’s fine with fresh corpses, but still hates rotting ones. She likes the zombies just fine, after all.
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