zenderael_rl | [EVENT] Acher's Attack on Enghelab

He fumbled away to do...something. She hurt too much to really check, even as the world slowly came back into focus and it felt less like she was a conspicuously empty spot in her own reality.

She tried to move her arm and then emitted a sound like a swallowed start. She curled her toes - that succeeded, somewhat to her surprise. And delight, because it meant she could try to vent the pressure of how much all this hurt.

"OK," she said back, managing to find the word. She tried to keep her breathing steadied, because anything deeper was...bad.

"He throw me," she rasped, and tried to indicate the impact with her head, nudging her nose toward the faux-masonry above that was cratered by her impact. "Did not...think he can do that."

Eileen should have been absolutely furious, she decided as she quickly navigated Enghelas Vegas and trying her best to be invisible. She wasn't entirely sure if paladins were welcome here, but if anyone did have a problem with it, as far as she was concerned, they would have to get in line. Apparently, she had someone to heal and a Siegmund to yell at for this being the first time he sent her anything since he had been back (which, coincidentally, she hadn't known about at all; Siegmund was clearly the worst friend). Once she got through all of that, then if anyone had any problem with a paladin in Pakerion, she'd deal with it then.

Or, at least, she would have had she not finally rounded the corner to find someone she assumed was Siegmund and a bloody pile of a person by his feet. He hadn't done it; she was pretty sure about that. After all, she wasn't entirely sure Siegmund would beat up on someone only to call her out here to heal them. So, who--

No. She'd worry about that later.

She didn't think she moved as quickly in her entire life as she did right then, clearing the distance to where they were. "I'm here." A quick glance down at the person on the ground made her frown infinitely more than she thought she had been capable of, setting her sword and shield aside so she could crouch down beside her and take stock of what even had to happen. Could she heal this? She had seen things just as bad, if not worse, in the infirmary when they had gone to reclaim Bastan, but she had never healed any of it on her own before. Not on this scale, anyway. "What happened?"

Siegmund didn't know how to respond to Tai Feng's comment. Maybe she shouldn't be trying to talk? That was how it was in movies. Or maybe she just wanted someone to listen and he didn't really need to say anything worthwhile. He didn't know. This was nerve-wracking.

"Is he gone?" he asked, in a hushed whisper, the words coming to him in a flash and leaving his mouth before he took the time to think them over.

It seemed like it took forever for Eileen to arrive. With his phone inoperable, he couldn't even check the time to see whether the minutes just seemed like hours or if literal hours had passed. When she finally did appear, he felt and immense wave of relief wash over him and he stood to wave her over. "I found her like so." In other words, he didn't know what had happened.

"He leave," Tai Feng replied, dully. She hurt, and she was also tired, but she knew she couldn't sleep; she might never wake up again.

She grit her teeth. This was more than she ever bargained for, but she could cry about it...deal with it, later. For now...

For now, she wouldn't give that son of a bitch the satisfaction of killing her. Her breathing shuddered but she stared grimly at the sky.

She couldn't tell how long it took. It was agonizing, not just in body but in spirit; Tai Feng was never someone who could stand to just sit still, notoriously fidgety. Now, trying to fidget made her all the more acutely aware of how much was broken.

And then...it was Eileen, and she couldn't help but bark a pained laugh, and then gurgle in pain right after. "Is you, huh?" she said.

"Big jerk beat me up," she replied, low; she couldn't raise her voice very far. "Then he throw me at building. Building win. So do fall."

Edited 2013-10-29 16:28 (UTC)

It took Eileen a moment or two before she realized who it was underneath all that blood. She wouldn't have realized it at all if Tai Feng hadn't spoken up. Her voice was soft, almost faint, but Eileen recognized it, and she certainly wouldn't be forgetting the speech pattern any time soon.

"Good. You remember me." Tai Feng wasn't too far gone, then. That was good. "We really need to stop meeting like this, though."

She frowned, glancing back at Siegmund. "Tell me there's somewhere near here you can get me some mana potions if I give you the money for them. I brought some, but I don't think I have enough."

The intent stare he was giving Eileen (heal her already!!!) turned dubious at the request. He glanced around the darkened city, at the war-torn chaos left in the wake of Acher's men, with the distant sounds of mayhem echoing to them through the darkness.

The answer was 'probably not.'

He reached into his potion belt instead and pulled out the small supply of mana potions that he kept with him. Only a few vials, because as an assassin he rarely ran low enough to need them, but it was better than nothing. He handed them over to her.

Tai Feng laughed, though from the wince it was probably a bad idea. "I thinking I have maybe too much funs today."

She groaned low, emitting a shuddering breath and laying back her head. Then she muttered, quiet, rather less bravely, "It was not fun."

Eileen frowned as Siegmund handed her the vials. Even these might not be enough, but she supposed it was better than nothing, and, really, anything to try to prevent manaburn. She set them down carefully beside her as she turned her attention to Tai Feng.

"It probably wasn't," she agreed, giving her a sympathetic smile. Still, Eileen couldn't shake what Tai Feng had said earlier, about the 'big jerk'. "All right, Tai Feng, I'm going to heal you now. While I do, I want you to tell me everything you can remember about the big jerk who threw you into the building, okay?" Talking would distract Tai Feng, and also keep her a bit more grounded as she worked. Maybe he was a berserker. After all, berserkers were capable of throwing people like they were nothing, especially if they were in fury mode. If that was the case, someone probably needed to tell the Ahura that one of his had gone on a rampage in Pakerion.

She didn't want to touch her, not when she wasn't entirely sure of the extent of Tai Feng's injuries, and, instead, she hovered her hands above Tai Feng, channeling her power as she had been taught in an attempt to heal her.

Siegmund frowned at her frown. What did she expect him to do about it? It wasn't like it was his fault there weren't going to be any shops operating right now. But he kept quiet and stood out of her way, letting her work.

Healing a little felt weird and tingly. This was not a little healing. Tai Feng tried to breathe, remembering what she'd heard about dealing with pain from the times she'd broken bones before.

This was rather more than one bone, though.

"He was...big guy. Big, very tall and very across." She breathed out, a low, shuddering sound. Ugh, everything hurt even now...but she kept speaking, because it did help her to focus on that instead of how weird her bones felt.

"He have a big sword for two hand, and thick armor. I hit him with skill for to knock back, and he does not go far. And he wear a metal crown."

Eileen listened as best she could as she continued to use her magic to knit flesh back together. Siegmund giving her the healing potion had helped a little, and she figured without the potion, Tai Feng might be unconscious right about now, but this... this was more than any healing she had ever been allowed to do on her own during the war. If she pulled this off without manaburn happening, it would be a miracle.

Still, this man... tall and broad with a metal crown? Maybe a helmet? Or did she mean an actual metal crown? The thick armor had to be plate, which, sadly, didn't rule anybody out, but only added paladins and spellswords to the list. At the same time, though, she couldn't think of any who would do something like this, especially when the majority of both the guilds were supposed to be in the Nenakret for the parade...

"I'm guessing he didn't have gold eyes," she said, shifting the position of her hands so she could focus on a different area of Tai Feng's body.

This was also more injury than Tai Feng had ever experienced. Scrapes, bruises and broken bones are one thing, but in a condition like this, her surviving long enough to get healing might just have to get chalked up to raw, volcanic spite.

This hurt. This hurt a lot. The stunned shock was starting to wear off and it all REALLY HURT, even as Eileen moved outward to work on healing lower breaks. She could breathe without wanting to scream now, that was a plus, but when she clenched her fist her whole arm lit up, fire screaming up seemingly the entire composition.

Eileen kept her talking. "No," she confirmed. "Normal eyes."

She breathed out, slowly, out her nose; a tentative breath, uncertain what would hurt. "He get...faster, suddenly. That when he throw me, too. I faster than him, then he suddenly is catch a fist and throws."

She hated just lying here like this. Sitting still, even knowing that Eileen was making her better; that was too much. Tai Feng was the type who could barely sit still at the best of times, even in normal conversation. This...

She'd rather be running, she thought sourly. Maybe soon, she could.

"Berserker, probably. They're the only ones I know of who can throw a person like that." And that was bad. If there was a rogue berserker running around Pakerion trying to start something, the Ahura would likely get blamed for it. The berserkers and the Ahura, especially, had been good to the paladins, had helped them when they needed it. "I mean, if one was in fury mode, they get pretty scary pretty fast."

If it had been a furied berserker, Tai Feng was lucky she was alive at all.

Eileen gave her a little smile as she shifted her hands once again. "Did you notice anything else about him?" Maybe if they had more identifying features, Siegmund could send something to the Ahura and let him know while she kept healing.

Given the whole town was a huge bloodbath and the power was out more or less everywhere, that'd have to be a hell of a Berserker.

"Not really," Tai Feng muttered. She was feeling better by degrees, and no longer felt quite so much like every heartbeat was going to kill her. "Many men came, but he the only one with a thing like a crown. I guess he the boss."

Then, she frowned, squinting as if at nothing. "His eyes," she said, quietly. "They were not gold, but...no, they messed up. Like...bloody shootings." ... "Tcheh, no..." she muttered again, recognizing she said the wrong thing. "Red," she finally settled for, her initial grumpiness at her failure fading to more of a dull stare at the sky. She didn't particularly want to remember those few seconds she got a really good look at his eyes. "Like he got drug or something," she finished, softer.

"Blood shot," Siegmund supplied, as two distinct words to emphasize the correction. He knew that one, but he only realized what she was trying to say after she went with 'red' instead.

"When it starts," he told Eileen, pointing toward the general direction that he remembered the sound to have come from, "something explodes, and the city is dark."

Eileen frowned. So they forcibly took out the power first. A bomb, maybe, since he had said something exploded. Leave the city dark, send the people into panic or into hiding until it came back on. It ensured people wouldn't be on the street, but also left those who were on the street relatively defenseless.

"He knows what he's doing, then, whoever he is. The lack of power leaves people vulnerable." Of course, now she wasn't sure a berserker would think about it like that. Many of the ones she had dealt with during the war seemed to be in the mindset of 'hurt things first and deal with the fallout later'. "I don't like him and I haven't even met him yet."

Was that a terrible thing to say? Eileen considered this for the briefest of moments before she determined that, no, it certainly wasn't. Whoever he was, he had hurt someone she knew, and had probably hurt however many more before she had gotten here. If the paladins weren't mostly in the Nenakret right now, she was sure they wouldn't stand for someone hurting innocent people.

"Blood shot," Tai Feng repeated. "Yes, that. ...Thank you."

She felt pretty alright now. She took a tentative breath, and no longer felt like someone set her on fire in response. She didn't t quite sit up yet, letting it settle a little more. "He is big bad jerk," Tai Feng assured Eileen. "They kill many people. Seem like everyone they see. I was try to break through, get out, but he was in way."

She lifted her hand with her new-found dexterity, making a sweeping gesture indicating both her rough trajectory on the throw and how well that worked out for her.

"Maybe he tries to take the city," Siegmund suggested, his voice mostly apathetic but for the faintest hint of resistance to the idea.

He looked down at Tai Feng, who seemed to be doing much better now that Eileen was on the job, and felt immensely relieved that he'd managed to save her. Was this getting to be a thing for him? Coming across dying people and saving their lives? He hoped not. It was stressful to have that kind of responsibility.

"But why?" Eileen asked, glancing back at Siegmund as she reached for one of the vials Siegmund had given her with one hand and tugged the cork out with her teeth. She wasn't too bad yet, but staving off potential problems seemed like a good idea to her. She spit the cork onto the ground and took a quick sip of it before looking back at him once again. "I mean, if I was going to try to take over something, I'd go for the Nenakret before Enghelab. You'd control a major trading hub that way."

He stared at her. The sort of blank, judgmental stare that one only gets when they've said something monumentally stupid and the one giving it is just waiting for them to realize it.

He gestured toward the casino behind him. The casinos lining the streets. The decorative opulence that had taken over Enghelab when Las Vegas had merged with it. All of it was smothered in darkness at the moment, but the meaning, he felt, was clear enough.

There was money in this city. And money was power.

"Okay, yes, there's money." And, yes, she did realize it was a little silly now that he was pointing it out to her. GOD, Siegmund! "But you have the Armaiti and the Vairya in close range. You spent God only knows how long on a boat with the Armaiti, Siegmund. Would you really want to provoke her?"

Eileen shook her head, downing the remainder of the vial and tossing it aside before fully turning her attention back to Tai Feng. "Admittedly, Eghelab's the country's capital. If they're looking to try anything, then I guess--"

And then, suddenly, something occurred to her, her eyes widening a bit. Controlling Pakerion meant controlling the capital. Even with the Vairya and the Armaiti here, there wasn't really an organized army here. There hadn't been, really, since Aerveas was killed. That made Enghelab the easier target. Control the capital, control the country.

She glanced down at Tai Feng once again. "Tai Feng, you said he was wearing a metal crown, right? Like a king would wear?"

This was all Zenderael politics and so Tai Feng's internal processing of this conversation was more or less Charlie Brown adult noises all the way across the sky. Her bones felt better by the second. She could probably get going soon!

But Eileen asked her a question, and Tai Feng blinked up at her. "Yes, like that."

"And on a dragon," he added, as though that were a perfectly normal sort of place to end up spending time with the Armaiti.

But the Armaiti also didn't give a fuck if someone ran in and conquered Enghelab. If it caused chaos and shook things up, she was fine with it. She'd keep an eye on whoever did it, but an attack like this didn't mean instant Armaiti-enemyship. Before Siegmund could get any of that phrased right in his head, though, Eileen was already blowing past on her own train of thought, and he gave up with a quiet sigh of resignation.

A crown for a king. Like Aerveas. Hadn't his crown looked metallic? She thought so, but she was having difficulty recalling what the thing looked like in source art or if there had been any source art for him at all.

"He must want Pakerion," she said after a moment, forcing her face to remain as neutral as humanly possible. Any more of a deviation than one she was already making and she wasn't certain parts of Tai Feng would heal correctly. She was not going to let that happen to Tai Feng, thank you very much. "First the capital, then the country. It's what Aerveas tried with Everea."

Man, that freakin' dragon was somethin' else. "It was big dragon," she noted, more or less just to say words.

But then Eileen had her revelation, and Tai Feng grimaced, muttering, "He have a good start, then," bitterly. Don't take over countries by beating up cute girls!

Or murdering tons of innocents, but for Tai Feng the cute girls thing is more important.

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