To the Southern Continent

[Jack Rothwell]

"Take that power and shove it so deep up your ass you can taste it! Thataway."

Even in the cool damp of the temple Malja felt his face turning red at the taunts his intended victim sent back to him. The Ralkin broke contact and stormed around the crystal with an expression of fury written across his face.

"I can't get through. The kobolds, they must've done something."

Fucilious clasped his hands together, stared at the blackened cieling and tried to think. This should not be possible, he'd created the spell himself through years of relentless experimentation. It was fullproof, unless...

"They halted the spread somehow. What else can you deduce?"

"They're getting closer, they should be here in less than half an hour. Worse, the elder is carrying Arcelius' staff and studying it for use."

The leader threw back his head and cursed.

"Deal with them. Meet them inside the entrance and put them down, understood?"

[Sareth]

Jamie swore. This was, of course, normal for her. In this case, however, she looked like she meant it.

"The voices have gone quiet," she said. "No more canoodling my noggin. Which ordinarilly I would be pleased by, but it does mean no more corrections."

The youth thought a moment, then looked up at the sky. Another obscenity escaped her lips. "I can't find a star to guide off of either. The canopy is too thick. I guess we just keep walking the direction we were going and hope we spot something in this darkness." She scratched at her arm.

[Jack Rothwell]

"There's no need. We're close enough." Leli replied, hefting the staff into the air. "The Ralkin weapon's waking up... it's close to it's source." The elder pointed slightly to the left of the direction the group were travelling in. "It won't be long now. Be ready."

In the distance, a howl sounded.

OOC Alrighty, action on the next post. Sorry for the slow posting lately./OOC

[Jack Rothwell]

A short time later, the group began to notice a glow in the near distance. It was faint, but it appeared to be a pair of dull green orbs floating in the blackness, giving the impression of a pair of neon eyes watching the approaching travellers.

"It's them." Leli murmured. "It has to be."

"Gonna stop them." Tamina said, already sounding nervous and breathy with anticipation, She notched an arrow with fingers shaking almost too badly to manage the task.

The response to the kobolds dialogue was an abrupt crackling noise in the air, and a reply that the natives and the infected teenager heard cleary in the confides of their heads.

'You shouldn't have come here mongrels! Make peace with whatever Gods you worship, you'll be joining them shortly.'

"Ferals!" Leli roared, already gesturing to the kobolds around her to take defensive positions.

Sure enough, a mob was approaching, somewhat smaller than the pack that had attacked the town but no less fercious for their appearance. The young kobold squinted behind the group, she could feel something happening behind their attackers. It was something that spoke to her sensitivity to magic, something that definately felt like bad news.

"Leli! There's two of them! Doing something big!"

The elder nodded with a grim expression. "It's a summoning Tammy, I've seen this before. Take your friend and get to them. Don't let them finish or we're in serious trouble."

[Sareth]

"That them?" Jamie asked. The answering howls of attacking ferals seemed to be all the confirmation she needed. Even as Leli was giving Tamina the instructions to keep the summoning from taking place, Jamie was already climbing a tree with a grin. "Y'all watch this!" she said as she eased out on a limb overhanging the clearing. "Keep 'em of me!" she called, drawing a rifle from off of her back.

[Jack Rothwell]

Leli closed her eyes and focused as the dozen or so ferals closed in on the small hunting party. Tamina broke away from the group to aid her friend while she unslung the rifle, the young mage intercepted a charging kobold as it neared the base of the tree Jamie had climbed, channeling and delivering a kick to the gut of the monster which sent it flying backwards into the arms of one of it's comrades.

The charge of the main group of assailants hit home, or at least it tried to. The ferals slammed into a crackling barrier the elder had summoned, using the power of the Ralkin's own weapon to augment her spell. The plague victims snarled, hissed, clawed at the shield, Tamina could see with her mind's-eye cracks already appearing in the barrier from the sheer weight of the attacks it was suffering, she knew it wouldn't hold for long.

She looked at the pair of sorcerers and strained in the darkness to pick them out. Her last encounter with the group had given her cause for extensive study of the surviving members of the group. She recognised the pair in question as Malja and Valus, brothers who'd been inducted into Fucilious' devilsh cult when they'd been little more than boys. A memory, sharp in it's suddenness, surfaced of the young tribeswoman near clinging to her teacher's side in the middle of their village as the pair had called a monstrosity into being that would've chilled the hearts of even seasoned veterans. There hadn't been a name for it, it was something out of a nightmare, a fifty foot centipedal creature with a rash of beady eyes and a huge maw of needle-like teeth which acted like an industrial shredding machine to the unfortunates who stumbled into its path. Many of her tribespeople had died that day, and if the pair were allowed to finish their spell many more would die now.

"Gotta shoot one." She gasped, focusing her energy to defend herself against a second feral which had broken free of the pack. "Stop the spell. Big trouble if we don't."

[Sareth]

"Way ahead of you!" Jamie called. She crept out as far as she could on the limb, ignoring the fighting going on below her. Slowly she settled in and extended the rifle in front of her, nesting it comfortably into her shoulder. She drew aim and began to squeeze the trigger.

Her wounded arm suddenly itched like nothing she'd ever experienced. The muscles spasmed and the rifle was sent spiraling to the ground below with a clatter.

"Shit!"

[Jack Rothwell]

"Kallir!*" Tamina cursed as the rifle in question hit the ground beside her. The butt striking the ground hard enough to fire on impact and sent a bullet buzzing by the kobold's oversized ear. The second feral too, narrowly missed the native as she jumped desperately upwards and grasped a low hanging branch to avoid its claws.

A lot of things were happening at once, Leli's barrier dropped and the remaining ferals engaged with hunting party with a chrous of hisses and war-cries. Spears flashed through the dim light as the elder finally tapped into the crystaline power source of the staff with a triumphant cry.

*-shit!

.......

A few hundred feet below where the battle was happening. Fucilious saw the artifact in the central chamber flash brightly for a moment. The bald dome of his head creased with confusion.

"What's happening?"

"Interference." One of the remaining pair of Ralkin answered. "The kobold leader is using Arcelius' weapon to divert the energy of the spell. She's trying to seize control of the plague victims."

The leader's expression twisted into naked hatred. His knuckles creaked as they tightened on his own staff. A certainly settled over him that the battle would not be the walkover he'd anticipated.

"Then delay her. When Malja and Valus complete the summoning the ferals won't matter anyway. We can always make more." At that, the Ralkin leader headed to his personal chamber without a backward glance. He had matters to attend to.

"Always be prepared." He muttered.

.........

Leli strained, gritted her teeth, spat obcenities as she sought to wrestle control of the ferals from the Ralkin who were controlling the spell. The whole process felt to her like the magical equivalent of going into a rodeo on a bear, mostly it was about hanging on and praying. The staff flashed again as one of her tribesmen went down at the corner of her eye. The nearest feral tensed, getting ready to spring.

Then stopped.

Almost as one, the dozen plague victims became docile. Their ferocious snarls relaxed into eerily blank expressions. Leli could almost feel the emptiness of the minds before her, just voids waiting to be filled.

"Sorry, I have to do this." She said quietly, and channeled.

'Destroy the men behind you. show no mercy.'

The effect of her thought was immediate, the group who'd been hostile to them seconds before grouped together, turned and faced their masters.

Just as the ground began to shake.

OOC You didn't think I was going to let the chance of bringing an enormous beastie into this slide did you? Nice work on the fumble btw Sareth, feel free to write the Ralkin's spell/actions up if you have your own ideas, you too Grey, feel free to insert your character into this situation if you wish, after all, no-one said he wasn't there./OOC

[Sareth]

[OOC]I'm a firm believer in not making it too easy.[/OOC]

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Not yet aware that the ferrals had been turned against their masters, Jamie stared down at the rifle she had dropped, cursing her arm. With a shout of anger and rage (and some interestingly strung together obscenities) she threw herself out of the tree.

The teenager hit the ground sidelong, an ominous crack and sudden flash of almost blinding pain coming from her side. The girl fought down a wave of sudden nausea and shot her arm out to sweep up the rifle. She almost flung it into her shoulder, glared down the sight and fired two shots seemingly without aiming.

Both summoners heads exploded in a gory spray.

The girl gave a pained shout of triumph.

Then the ground began to shake and a form began to take shape between the two still falling bodies.

"Oh fuck me..."

[OOC]And with that charming little witticism I am out for the next five or so days. Catch you guys in a bit.[/OOC]

[Jack Rothwell]

"Oh... no, no, no...."

Tamina reacted on pure instinct, scuttling up the tree with uncanny speed to the exact spot where her companion had been only seconds before. The ground split open in a spiderweb of cracks and began to fall inwards, drawing into it the bodies of the deceased ralkin (OOC 3 down, 3 to go OOC) as the form grew to a prodigous size. The creature making its entrance was bigger than the native remembered if anything. Tamina shook with terror as a hideous off-key chittering noise began to pierce the air.

"Tamina! Jamie! Go! Get inside the entrance! That way!" Leli roared at the pair as she indicated a spot in the near distance that was darker than the rest of the scenery. The young native squinted to where her teacher was pointing... there it was.. concealed in a pile of rubble almost hidden to the naked eye. The entrance of the temple.

'Probably was cloaked til Jay-me killed the Ralkin.' Tamina thought through waves of panic. 'Bad men cover their tracks.'

Further thought was impossible. The creature finished tearing its way into existance at the completion of the Ralkin's spell. The centipedal worm from a Faustian nightmare, mottled in a migraine of colours and slick with slime that gleamed even in the darkness of the jungle. It reared up with a deafening insectoid clicking and slammed into the ground hard enough to make the tree Tamina was in shake like a sapling in a gale.

A glow began to surround the tribal leader, the ferals under her command scattered to every point on the compass. Tamina's kinmen too, cut into a retreat, realising there was nothing to be done against such an enormous opponent. The elder yelled again.

"Stop the Ralkin! If you don't then all is lost!"

OOC You shall not pass!!!!111/OCC