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Bad days start with thin arrows and tree-trunks suspiciously shaped as bolts being launched from the front lines and the forbidding walls of the Castle of Maidens. Afternoon briefly becomes full evening for the knights riding from the south, airborne though they may be. Magic flames and bolts weave through the cluster, seeking out those wyrms. Albion, with the great bard Taliesin, makes the strangest of sights rearing up onto the whitewater lash of its tail, 'flying' by leaps and coils. Massed soldiers most definitely include undead and dark fae mounted atop dread beasts, things that make the spriggans, ogres, and horror gaunts of the Cat Coit Celidon forest look positively cheery.
*
Agravaine is not alone on his mount, but he can see clearly the great threat from the army. "I need to get low…I need to be among that army. Die, I may, but noble dragon, brave it and it will be worth it. I will leap from your back and give them what for!"
*
Bad days start with being very confused, having a headache, and clutching a giant serpentine dark dragon as it hurtles through the air. Although many have delved into the secrets of this world, the Summer Knight has been almost purposefully ignorant. Currently he's clad in only his basic clothing, having had his primary suit destroyed not too long ago, although both of his blades are still sheathed at his side. Somewhat simple leather armor is tightly bound to the bulge of his unnaturally sized left arm, shaking his head in disorientation. Where is he… where's he going…? Why does his head hurt? The fact that combat of some sort seems to be taking place is rapidly drawing him from his reverie.
*
"Diving straight into the fray seems suicide to mine ears…" the Green Knight remarks atop his dragon, vines writhing about him. Then he smiles. "I like it. Come!" With that, he has the great beast flap its wings and bear him aloft.
Almost immediately he summons thorn-ed vines out of the ground below to attack the army before him. "The woods have aught to say to this rabble…"
*
Ser Daphne looks at Agravaine in confusion, "I appreciate a good fight as much as the next warrior, perhaps moreso, but that's a suicide run you're planning there! And who will I have annoying me if you are slain?" She takes up her shield, looking at Agravaine with a wry expression, "And you might have better odds with two than one."
*
Ozone follows the sleek eel-like serpent that plunges through the air, a ribbon reflecting the early dusk coming to the old north of the kingdom. Flickering crackles of lightning run through the mistbound clouds surrounding it. The Summer Knight may have a moment of disorientation, but not the floppy-eared red hound somehow lashed to the back of a saddle. There's a saddle for the hound, but not for the warrior. Tongue hanging out, the pup bays.
*
Pretanikai banks away furiously from the surge of arrows raining down on Daphne and Agravaine, momentum too great to immediately stop. Its mobile crest widens to defend its serpentine neck and, presumably, the vulnerable knights. Suddenly subjected to consider G force, it hisses, "Hold fast!" The only choice for what to cling on to are its ridge spines, each of those formidable spikes as deadly as any ballistae bolts. They have only a few moments before the wyrm rolls, spiralling through a wild display of agility possible only if one has a highly supple, segmented backbone.
*
In the same manner that one stays low to the surface when attempting to remain a difficult target in a true river, thus a shielded Taliesin clings to the back of his tightly-scything dragon. This is insane. Is he yelling a war cry? Maybe he's just shouting out of pure, undiluted terror — or maybe suffused to the cellular level with adrenaline, he's surging too with eldritch power. Spells simmer on the end of his tongue like pop rocks-met-soda, but first…first he needs to scatter the instruments that sent the relative storm of projectiles at them.
Gods below, that was a flaming cow!
"Albion, the trebuchets and ballistae!" He doesn't need to say it twice. With all the fury of whitewater, the riverine dragon crashed down along the front lines. Somehow, somehow — they make their way through the projectiles, but it doesn't mean his inner ear likes the motions needed to do so.
CRASH!!! Heavy timbers go flying; the build of many a weapon isn't strong enough to withstand a river unleashed. He winces, shutting his eyes; splinters and chunks of wood bounce off him, leaving scrapes and a few cuts in their wake. Albion pulls up sharply, nearly centralized before the castle proper, and the Master Bardd sits up, gasping for air.
The Words are unleashed. With a roll of thunder that follows the splitting of the air before him, the self-same shielding that kept him safe in that insane dive spreads out to a respectable distance. Crystalline-clear unless disrupted by impact, it allows both himself and the dragon relative safety as well as a fabulous distraction.
Neener-neener, army, look at us, ALL YOUR CASTLE ARE BELONG TO US!!!
*
Agravaine tells his dragon-partner, "Hold fast to the Wyrm, my lady! I have a knack for command. I will come out the other end!" And then he times it to leg go and puts his shield in front of him so that he will, like a projectile himself, plow into a few people to break his knightly fall. Though Agravaine cannot command undead, and possibly not some of these other mindless beasts, or control-resisting fae, he immediately lashes out with his mind to grab those he CAN control, which could include leaders with signal flags, trebuchet operators, whoever is lighting cows on fire. Regardless, the moment he can grab a mind, he is causing chaos with it. He also does have to defend himself during this time too.
*
Taliesin's words cause a ward to comes alive, a cloak of rippling darkness running along the castle walls. The massed warriors below the walls have to fend for themselves. Seasoned defenders trust in the armoring on the war machines, and a few chant spells, but those green and purple bolts aren't getting through any time soon. It's not precisely a fair fight against that bard, and the projectiles deflected this way and that speak to how good that shield Taliesin has.
*
ROLL: Cable +rolls 1d20 for a result of: 13
*
The dog…? Nathan glances backwards at his loyal not-steed, still making heads or tales of the scales he feels beneath him. A dragon. Why is he riding a dragon into a storm of some manner of assault? It feels like he's been in some kind of play, and continually slumbered through key elements. "What…" he calls out, to whatever fellow rider might be closest. Grasping at the wyrm beneath for better purchase. "What in the seven hells is going on?!" His dragon has a clue, rushing down to bellow a rippling burst of thunderous force towards the front of the castle proper, whirling about with rapid motions of agility. Awooooo!
*
Ser Daphne moves up a bit to take Agravaine's place, "Bloody fool… need to buy him some cover…" She looks at the dragon, "Can you make an attack pass at the trebuchets? If you please?"
The dragon roars and dives down, banking as Pretanikai unleashes a screeching wave that seems to reverse gravity, focusing at the lower defensive wall as the foundations begin to crack from the stress. On the way back she whips her tail back and forth, sending ballistae and soldiers flying as she grabs a trebuchet in her claws, rising up rapidly before she lets it drop with a mighty crash onto a group of fell beings in this army.
*
"AROO!" suggests the hound, ears flapping around in the wild descent. The belt holding its hind legs to the saddle is broad and solid, but that doesn't stop it from spontaneously scrabbling now and then. Its snout points forward and it mildly howls again to help the Summer Knight gain his bearings. At least the Knight has the advantage of knowing he's going the right way. The serpentine beast he rides, on the other hand, has quite the idea, spitting sparks by rapidly lashing its tail and ribboning around on itself to create waves of air pressure force.
*
ROLL: Mordo +rolls 1d20 for a result of: 1
The Green Knight steers his dragon higher into the sky, then dive-bombs the first contingent of troops on the ground. As he near them, his living axe held high, he conjures whip-like vines to spear upward from the ground and attack people, left, right and centre…
At which point he very nearly collides with an unusually large adversary, and is thrown from his dragon. The Green Knight vanishes under a sea of opponents, at the feet of a champion.
"I hope the String-plucker did not bear witness…" he mutters to himself as he picks himself up.
*
Have no fear, oh Verdant Dandy, your unseemly trip was lost to the throes of the battle. THIS TIME.
Ensconsed in his shielding, Taliesin attempts to keep an eye on the battle spread out before him. The others have arrived in draconic style and already the army is reacting to their presences, mostly with panic — which makes the Master Bardd grin rather wickedly. Now that this is a proper engagement…
He glances over his shoulder during one of the curving turns of the river-dragon beneath him. The castle…and the shards. They resonate madly in his Mystical senses, like a gigantic pulsating splintering gong. He narrows his eyes and breathes deeply. Having run the proper distraction and destroyed a good portion of the projectile-throwing weaponry, perhaps he should attempt to find a way to said splintered pieces of the Heart…
"Albion, to the castle!" The dragon turns on a hairpin and swirls up into the air like some demented firecracker, spraying icy droplets of water in its wake, and then heads in that direction.
*
The shielding spell falls apart when the Pencerdd releases his willpower upon sustaining it.
*
What was that? The thorns pierce a few unfortunate souls along the way, fae breaking off the long spurs driven into their armour. The mortals don't rise. The undead groan and turn to face the Green Knight. Mananau, his wyrm, rattles and scrambles on viny legs over the masses.
Brimstone makes a difficult signature to smell at a distance, but cloys Bredbeddle's face. It rolls past him as the man in black armour pulls a sword blacker than night over his shoulder. "To think, you stayed true to a false cause." Under his helm, the voice comes as a dark, seductive chuckle. "Is this the power you crave? Weakness restrains you. Can't you feel the emptiness even now, on this hopeless quest draining you of every spark of your might?"
*
Albion may be rising, but there's not entirely much a dragon can do when some spellcaster on the ground gets the idea to throw a telekinetic shackle around its sinuous midsection. Those looping coils eventually get straightened out, and Taliesin has to face the very real problem of his springy mount being pinned to the earth. Water splashes around, puddles forming and making the ground treacherous in front of the third unit.
*
Agravaine should not be able to survive. He is surrounded by the enemy…dragons are destroying shit around him too, and…yeah, a lot of these things are mounts and bullshit he has a hard time with. However, he does seem to be grabbing enough people on his side that he's able to keep himself from being overrun. And…very oddly, the trebuchet nearest him, is rather swiftly moved to face the completely wrong direction so that it can fire on the castle. Its not JUST the attacks that he hopes to gain ground with, but the chaos that badly-behaving armies concoct, forcing them to turn on themselves
*
A cow sadly flames in front of unit 2. Neither Sir Agravaine or Sir Daphne aboard the sleek black-green form of Pretanikai has allowed its final moment of bovine barbecued glory.
*
Well, there's really only one person around here that Nathan knows might be capable of telling him up or down. That damnable bard; who, unknowingly, is better known as another moniker. He shouts down to his dragon, as the hound continues to bay. Whirling like a meteor, Taliesin will find that there's an impact like the hammer of the gods, annihilating the nearby terrain that until then had a spellcaster, the binding spell immediately dissipating. "What's going ON!!" he shouts again towards the mage, grasping the side of his head with a wince. It's pretty clear that he's still fully under the grasp of this world's illusion… why they are here, the shards, all of that remains muddied and confused…!!
*
Ser Daphne and Pretanikai bank around, coming back in for another pass at the fortifications themselves. Now, winged goblins of some ill-conceived experiment harass the dragon and her rider, but Daphne draws her sword, using blade and shield to ward them off with expert skill, slicing and bashing them clear of her mount.
Free of distractions, Pretanikai unleashes another gravitic wave, the stress causing the foundation of the fortress itself to crack, as part of the facing wall crumbles and slides down onto the battle, burying the troops closest to it as the dragon roars in triumph.
*
The hound flattens when Orcas plunges into the fray, avoiding an arrow to the side. The dragons — all of them — take more than their fair share of bolts and blasts, though it scarcely stops them.
*
The Master Bardd is nearly unseated for the sudden delay in movement by the river-dragon. Gripping white-knuckled at the flossy spinal fur, he cranes his head to look down and spots the tightly-encircling spell pinning the poor thing to the ground. His teeth flash in righteous anger; hey, this is his dragon, nobody touches it except him! Albion itself begins to stretch out, resisting the trapping of its white-water tail to the rapidly-muddying ground beneath it and Taliesin briefly panics with the vision of sliding haphazardly down the shrinking circumfrance of the dragon's body — that is, until the Summer Knight enters the fray with a resounding slam.
Still, it leaves him clinging to Albion's purled underbelly like a rainforest sloth as Summers shouts something at him. He shouts back, voice booming despite his attempts to cross his ankles and regain a proper…footing? Clutching?
"Why in the seven hells are you asking?! You're supposed to — the shards!" He risks losing his grip to point towards the castle, dead-North. "The stolen shards are there!" Not a yelp, but a yarp, and he has to grip the dragon's tummy tightly as it writhes, dodging more bolts. This is not fun. Not anymore. "Albion, THE CASTLE!"
With a swirly-swish, the riverine creature attempts to dart over the walls again. Much spellfire. Smells of elderberries. Taliesin grips as tightly as he can, burying himself like a tick against the undulating underside.
*
Pretanikai's efforts have disabled a good number of the war machines operating on the wall above the second unit. Sir Daphne has guided her to throw quite a number of those warriors out of the way, though when the scrambling forces land, it's to reform a wedge headed straight into the brink. Or, for those who can, the wallcrawling lizard-like mounts they have take advantage of the gap to the eastern flank to go scrambling up and mount a counterdefense. A few of them go crashing down around Sir Agravaine, and somehow he is not crushed.
One of the minds he controls is not so lucky, but at least he has a choice of more than six evil ewes and rams!
A fallen wall and rubble everywhere makes a barricade in front of a pair of spellcasters. Their mutual chanting has a foulness to it, but the beams from their hands rise up as several incoming missiles go flying around Taliesin and Sir Summers, and their respective mounts. Albion shrieks and fizzes where the spellfire surges through it. Orcas isn't much better, thrashing so hard, it's a wonder the man stays on at all.
*
Suddenly the sky blackensabove the castle. The air begins to swirl and darken above it as the clouds are splitting apart and reforming into a long, slender spiral of centrifugal force. Faster and faster it whirls, the slender tornado assaulting the walls of the castle. It can't damage the stone, but two men are thrown to their deaths while others scream and run for cover. Then it appears.
At first the dragon appears to be a cloud. Then there's a shriek as that cloud is descending like a screaming bullet toward the earth. From it drops a girl cloaked in black, her dress fluttering as she descends to alight upon the castle wall. There's an explosion of spikes from the ground surrounding her, flying in all directions. Unit 4 thought it was safe protecting the walls. With the scream of dust and debris swirling about and light devouring black shards of death shooting up from the ground it becomes apparent they were wrong.
Arriving in grand style Tywyll stalks among the destruction she has wrought and takes a deep breath. She pauses to adjust her mask. One must always look presentable, after all.
*
Archers turn on other units, as Agravaine stuns a dark fae and then spears it through with his sword, letting go the moment it starts to feel the pain of that betrayal. Then he takes its Ram by the fleece and mounts it. Now he's charging around riding a giant, evil sheep, slashing his sword down, while a posse of other creatures of moderate intelligence seem to be following him around like he's the cool new kid. When they die, he steals another one. He can see the spellcasters, and he charges ahead, aiming to mow them over with his mount. They have a moment to maybe do something about it, but once they get close enough, he'll try to make them forget where they even /are/. Then trample. Other spellcasters may be somewhat affected by the friendly arrowfire.
*
Unit four thought it was safe. Unit four made a grave mistake. One of the fae hisses to the other two, "Let's kill them!"
"Let's have swampwater tea first," mutters another archer, glancing aside. "Xyfren'nai, what are you doing? Stop casting!"
"Oh, stop your whinging!" snaps the caster. "First we kill them, then we have moss cakes and swampwater tea.""No moss cakes. Let's just kill them already…"
"All right," sighs the first. "We kill the dragon, then we have tea."
"Right," agree all, and turn.
Their ram is gone.
And Pretanikai appears to be overhead.
"Why, the river dragon's run off!"
*
Ser Daphne shouts at Pretanikai, "Drop me off by those spellcasters… I find that a blade in the gut tends to distract them!" She grins, readying her shield as the dragon dives low enough for Daphne to make a leap. Which she does, jumping off the dragon as she aims at the spellcaster, figuring all those robes and such will make a nice soft landing…
*
And Sir Daphne would be wrong. One of the arcanists furious to be deprived of moss cakes, yon Xyfren'nai of the House of Ashen Skies, intones a word so foul and noxious, both the Green Knight and the bard would be likely paralyzed if they heard it. All that matters is that a sickening blight swirls upwards from his open palms, the dark elf's rapid gestures coalescing into sticky ichor threads that cling hold of the brave knight and splat her to the ground in a sickly webbing.
*
With Albion balking again (for good reason, poor thing, those spellcasters are doing it a goodly amount of trauma with their bolts), Taliesin decides that the next best thing to do is to dismount. The dragon needs to be able to move freely, not worry about his presence. When it seems like the wall, with its surface in branching craquelure from repeated attack, seems closest, he releases his grip and attempts to turn.
But no Sir Gareth is he, of excellent timing and propensity to land on his feet. Instead, a tumbling roll with a yell breaking into the high pitch of utter agony and then silence. He ends up tucked back against part of the wall, clutching at his side and breathing in hoarse chokes.
He did like that rib, but it didn't survive the impact! Sorcerer down!
*
"What in the blazes… what shards?!" Nathan growls back at the bard as he whisks away, obviously not managing to fully impart his own confusion on his mess as he desired. He does, however, have a sense for the arcane… his eye glows for a moment, casting over the castle. There's certainly an incredible magical power within. He orders his dragon to hurtle down towards it, before abruptly leaping from the back as his dog howls away, leaving it behind to attack the surroundings. Darkness whirls about him, slowing him somewhat before he impacts the ground, bouncing a couple times not far from the estranged Strange. Pushing up to his feet with a wince, a moment later a spellcaster is incanting towards him. A blast of energy hits him square in the chest, whirl of darkness scarcely interposing before he's launched backwards, bouncing a couple times and then thumping into the wall with a grunt, leaving a very unhappy dent behind in the stone… Not going well so far!
*
More spikes are thrown out. They come in volleys of five, slender darts of shadow flying among the soldiers to taget the magic wielding foes among them. They shatter against shields but still, they force a few of the casters back. A couple of the wizards turn to flee. As she walks forward Tywyll symmons her sword to hand. Blacker than midnight, pulsing starkly with the inverse of a glow. She indicates targets for the shadow bolts with a finger discretely. They fly true but a few of the bolts vanish in mid-flight. Too much sunlight. The Spy Mistress frowns at this… But it seems her sword is holding, at least. She promptly puts it through the stomach of a poor soldier who thought to run at her.
*
Ser Daphne scowls, "I am a /lady/ sirrah, and this is most inappropriate!" She pulls a dagger from her boot, using the blade to cut her arm free enough to throw the weapon at the accursed wizard. He must have been too busy gloating, as the blade sinks deep into the wizard's gut, causing him to shriek and fall over. Which, happily, gives Daphne a chance to cut herself free.
*
Some call it the fog of war; the chaos that surrounds a soldier and makes it hard to quit fighting, hard to tell friend from foe, hard to know all the moving pieces for the sake of the desperate struggle to live that is in front of them. Brothers have fought side by side and recognized too late when one was mortally wounded. Sisters have been torn apart by the tide of battle to never reunite. Agravaine. Maximus. Both men have trouble, almost constantly, with the fog of a different war; that for sanity, and /clarity/. Some might say that a point of focus could bring that together. Agravaine would drink away that notion. Maximus would bitterly agree.
*
Some call it the fog of war; the chaos that surrounds a soldier and makes it hard to quit fighting, hard to tell friend from foe, hard to know all the moving pieces for the sake of the desperate struggle to live that is in front of them. Brothers have fought side by side and recognized too late when one was mortally wounded. Sisters have been torn apart by the tide of battle to never reunite. Agravaine. Maximus. Both men have trouble, almost constantly, with the fog of a different war; that for sanity, and /clarity/. Some might say that a point of focus could bring that together. Agravaine would drink away that notion. Maximus would bitterly agree.
Agravaine sees from his mount the fate of Taliesin and he finds a point of clarity. Across the field he charges, battering resistance out of the way with horns, cloven hooves, sword and shield, and mind, until he is directly before the Bard. Clasping his sword in his shield hand for a moment, he thrusts down his hand and will absolutely haul the guy around on the back of the sheep as long as he accepts, to keep him safe.
*
Lady Tywyll's wispy dragon continues to churn up havoc on the open courtyard and battlements of the Castle of Maidens. Its defenders send missiles from bows and crossbows at her, harrying knights and spymistress alike. 'Tis a deadly rainfall with a 90% chance of certain pain. As she pulls out a sword, an arrow slams into her through the shoulder.
Organized guardians weave shadowy wards of their own, paired as one lifts a shield while another flings devastatingly precise eldritch attacks. Stone turns to slag and dragonscale to running vapor where their attacks strike. Taliesin's sprawled state brings Albion into restless, vengeful thrashing as dangerous to foes as friends. The Summer Knight looks in far worse shape, stunned by spellcraft most foul.
Trapped on Orcas while the storm serpent rampages through the sky, the red hound bays a low, discordant note that drowns out the clash of thunder and arms.
Undead masses turn upon the Green Knight's thorn dragon, ripping it apart with their bare hands, for all rotting flesh falls away in chunks and ephemeral shades howl their inchoate pain for all to hear.
Lady Daphne's defiance meets with another chunk of stonework falling ninety sheer feet from the mountainside, and the poisoned strands burning like acid against bare flesh. Pretanikai's shadow cuts over her form as the great, backwinging strokes kick up dust and dirt. A bolt rips through her wing and she wheels around, shrieking in a ground-shuddering pang.
Mass chaos spins around the western flank in a fury: wild monsters and mythical beasts stamping, screeching, and hissing. Or all of them, in the case of the cockatrice pecking at the ground and roaming around behind it.
Where a pinned-down druid faces the gloomy blade pointed at his chest, the former prince of peace loses his patience and swings back to take a stroke. His forces still ring them as Sir Agravaine walks the night alone.
And they're waiting for the angels of Avalon,
Waiting for the eastern glow…