Mortus Caligere | Tilly, Lekalis, Courcy

[black379]

The hellion squinted at the shape before it sank beneath the water. With spear and piercing dark eyes, it was undoubtedly one of those fish beasts. Courcy clutched her halberd, aiming the blade forward to the fog.

"Wait, there's..." It seemed the rest of the group were still catching up, so she did not continue forward yet. She glanced worriedly over her shoulder to Lekalis. "They're in the water."

She was prepared, but they had to stick together to survive an ambush.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/The Limestone Tower/

The Squire looked to Tilly numbly, absently, like a hound with a handless leash. He stared at her as he moved, before stiffly marching around the bodies; facing them.
His helm looked to the corpses when looking at Tilly would prove to be a touch fatal, a small breath escaped his lips as he nodded and quietly pulled away each of their helms, starting with the plumed one. When he moved to collect the others, they occasionally rattled against one another as his hand shook.

Elaine managed to stumble forward, using the wall as a lean-to, t'ill she made her own small gasp; less out of depressive surprise, but rather, genuine dismay as she suddenly stumbled back and almost lost her footing.
She was looking at her hand in disgust before swiftly wiping off what looked to be burned bark onto her night gown with a sigh.

It was enough to break The Squire out of his mournful state; the helms finding a place at his belt, having run a length of leather through their sockets to hold them in place. Now, he hastily jogged over to Elaine, murmuring an apology as he helped her onto his shoulder and limped on towards Tilly, wordless...

\\
/Lekalis/

The Ex-Lord noted Tilly's pause, and turned to watch her speak her words... It was dire straits indeed, that he forgot base sympathies to mourning. For a moment, his posture relaxed. Contemplating just how far he'd sunk to be so base and improper, then again on how Tilly swept up admirably with due kindness. Though, he was a touch unnerved by The Squire's demeanour, he could understand the grim acceptance of death.

In a small, bitter part of himself, he was happy to have him steeled some; especially given Courcy's news.

He tried to send Tilly a quick smile of thanks, before turning and peering out into the waters as if he could spy the beasts himself. Though, he wasn't surprised to see little more than fog and water and debris. He always hired scouts for a reason, after all.
Lekalis cleared his throat and nodded, running a thumb over his belt, making sure it was fast about his waist and his falchion ready to be drawn.
"We need to get these people to shore..." He explained needlessly, positioning himself so as to be ready to cover Courcy's flanks with the reach of his spear,
"... Once we get to dry land, the battle will be-- hopefully, in our favor." He mused with all the intensity of idle rumination, though there was some steel in his tone as he nodded toward the door;

"Let's secure the immediate area outside, move quick and away from this tower; the seaweed around it is frightfully good cover for anything beneath it."

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly kept quiet during the small collection of helms. She didn't believe that any more words would do any good for the pair.
She waited, and distantly listened to Lekalis's instructions.

"Right, then. Let's crack on." Running a hand over her eyes, rubbing them sleepishly, she pulled her hat comfortably down onto her forehead and fell into step behind Elaine and the unnamed Squire.
She watched Courcy expectantly for the group to begin moving.
"...Off we go. I'll take the rear."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/The Limestone Tower/

With the orders and strategies laid out as best they could, the time came to act;
Courcy moved forward and managed to rather easily seize the empty grounds of the pier immediately infront of the Limestone Tower with the reach of her polearm, there was nothing but fog, though there was an almost malignant and oppressive air in the way the fog shifted and churned in and unto itself like a river eddy.
The matte grey grew to bear pocks and valleys of light and dark grey; some designs so closely mirrored faces, Courcy could almost make out words in their shapeless lips.

Lekalis came next, and made to beckon the Squire and Elaine forward yet again; moving Elaine between himself and the Squire, The Ex-Lord dutifully attended to formations on the boardwalk, making sure the party was at least roughly aligned with the drier center of the walk as opposed to the slick edges.

Tilly was last, of course, seizing what would be the van of the expedition, were they not retreating with goals attained. To her, the Fog loomed itself together in mysterious but solid structures; there was a warmth and confidence that brewed in her blood excitement and vim. The Fog itself was a paltry ritual meant to inspire fear, but the execution had all the grace of a fish floundering on dry land.
Perhaps more worrying than the fog, was the manner of revelation.
Having known Jacques and encountered the dark arts on multiple fronts; the revelation was one conjured from some unspoken arcane blessing.
Regardless, the Fog was neither frightening nor oppressive now.

Where most of the party would see perhaps ten to twenty feet ahead of them, Tilly could scry past to roughly forty and fifty feet before the veil turned anything past that point into silhouettes.

\\

/Lekalis/

With a huff, he looked about and into the fog with dogged determination; muttering haphazard directions to the group as he gingerly moved Elaine about and offered a quick smile in apologies as he finished tending to the subtleties of positioning.

His gaze wandered to Tilly, raising a hand for her attentions,
"Mind your step!"
Though, he quickly realized the warning 'ought to tend to the whole group. With his hand raised, he looked to each member of the expedition, rallying their eyes as best he could with idle twirls of the hand,
"Stay on the center-path! They may try to grab you, your weapons, anything! Tuck in, call for help if needed, and Focus on the Wine!" He chuckled, pausing as he glanced to Elaine and The Squire, his hand falling and apologetically rolling out a hasty bow to them,
"O-or the... Sun, what have you."

With that, he gave Courcy a quick pat on the shoulder as he directed her to start advancing at a steady pace down the Boardwalk...

\\

[black379]

Courcy did as directed, setting the pace for their extraction - not so quick as to leave the injured woman lagging behind, nor misstep on the soggy boards, but quick enough that they might escape the boardwalk before being skewered by fishfolk. She strutted almost toe to heel to keep in the center of the restricted path.

And while not much concentration was required to walk straight ahead, she kept watch of each side. She flinched as the water lapped up at the edge of the walk, but would keep 'tucked in', as Blood instructed, until and creature might mount the path with the waves.

"You and your wine." She chortled back to Lekalis, poking fun at his foppish delicacies. It distracted her, at least some degree, from the tension of the situation. Any second, or any half-second, an ambush could spring up. "Have you got any back at the beach?"

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly more or less slunk along, quietly following; while her eyes were alert, and she kept her wits about her, she still felt slow and sluggish, like she was wading through mud.
Hands in her pockets, but curled loosely around her sheathed daggers, she kept her eyes looking ahead into the fog, while periodically checking behind her every so often to ensure nothing could ambush them from the rear.

She smiled and nodded to Lekalis with a brief, "Got'cha," while making special note to center herself on the boardwalk.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/The Limestone Tower/

The Party proceeded some thirty feet forwards in a familiar but closing silence. It was almost precisely upon that last step to make thirty feet that a low whine echoed out through the fog. The noise much like a soft, drawn out trumpet.
Were they in some theater, it might've been soothing.

Instead, the Squire visibly tensed; Elaine flinched as she looked about, clutching her amulet then squeezing her eyes shut. She began to murmur a prayer.

The tune was ceaseless, a long drone; the longer it went on, the more muffled it came to be. As though their ears were being slowly submerged in water... The noise began to drown out the soft lapping of waves.

In the far distance, just breaking through the fog; Tilly would spy a haunting silhouette. For a moment, it looked to be familiar, like the kitely presence she'd seen in her Bloody Dream. But, as it held fast at forty feet, she'd spy small details on its person.
Instead of a kite, it was more smooth and human. A tall figure, with what looked to be kelp, moss, and nets drawn fast over any fleshly bits she might see. But, to her rather trained eye; she spied the most muddy of twinkles of gold and gems. Thousands of glimmering treasures pocked the great cowl of the Tall Figure, like a clear night's sky they twinkled in the odd ray of sunlight that cut through the fog in growing intensity...

To the rest of the party, there was only the vague silhouette of a man. Unfortunately, not a Scaramouche.

The Tall Figure kept pace, just out of sight from the main party, and opened his arms wide; the parka of watery flotsam and weeds spread wide like shadow of an eagle.
A scittering noise, of many tiny legs scrambling for purchase on the wooden boards, echoed out.

Tilly would see them first; many tiny crabs, like the one that had run off with the coin, now surged towards them. The rest of the party would soon see them to, as the crabs quickly ran, like a river, past them with such blind speed that a few even fell off the bridge itself. They hugged close to the party's feet, occasionally running over their toes.
The sound of their shells and legs clattering stacked on top of the low droning whine in a growing cavalcade of noise.

\\

/Lekalis/

He was taken aback by the noise, and he quickly rubbed his ears with some worry; thinking the siege was finally catching up to him, before he heard the clicking stacatto of chitinous legs racing towards him and his party.
Lekalis held his discipline, however, and kept his eyes focused on his given angle; his eyes trying to scry any possible pincer attack.
"Tilly..? What's going on back there?!" He shouted, his spear clutched in both hands, he tried to kick and swat away the crabs racing past their feet with his boots and haft of his spear...

\\

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly blinked sleepishly, before fully awakening at the sight of the Tall Figure and the impending swarm of crabs.
She stared a moment, incredulously.

Is this so? After all I've done for you lot?

Next time she'd chase a crab that had the gall to pinch a coin-- for the sole purpose of proving a point, of course.

"It's... eh, a tall man. He's got some seaweed hanging off of him. Sending crabs after us." Tilly hastily drew her hands from her pockets and, fishing out the dusty cloak with one hand, and the bottle of moth dust in the other, she turned about and was backpedaling towards the beach. She made sure to slide her feet, rather than step, so as to push the crabs out of the way rather than to step on them.
She rose the bottle, and aimed, looking back towards the Tall Figure.

"Don't panic! Just keep moving-- mind your step!" She threw the bottle as far as she could manage, and then began to beat the cloak at the approaching swarm of crabs in an attempt to put as many to sleep as possible.

[black379]

Her knuckles became white, anxiously gripping her halberd. The droning horn had Courcy gritting her teeth. She muttered curses to herself in dreadful anticipation of an attack.

"Fucking show yourself already..." She visibly tensed in response to the clattering, and quickly stole a glance backwards. She pressed on, with the slight comfort that Lekalis was directly behind her. But as the tapping caught up with them, and the crabs swarmed past their feet, Courcy inevitably panicked.

"WHAT the fuck!!" Though she mostly kept on her heels, dancing forward around the scurrying critters, she quite purposefully and violently stepped on a few. "Fuck off!"

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/The Boardwalk/

The Group, by one's estimate, was roughly sixty feet from the beach shore still.

Pressing on, Lekalis found himself a bit exerted from swatting away the crabs, his spear's small surface area made it a bit difficult to sweep away many but his dexterity more than made up for it, and he was soon moving with some relative ease. The Crabs seemed to have avoided the hostile zone.

Tilly was thankfully saved from the impediment by scraping her boots along the wooden boards; the crabs rushing more and more over rather than under. One dangerously scooted beneath if but by sheer determination, but was ultimately ineffectual.
With her arm reared back, even with the exertions of the day settled in her arm, her practice and skill at throwing knives rather easily transferred to throwing this bottle of moth dust.

With grace, the bottle left her hand as her arm arc'd out; and suddenly, her finger snagged the bottom of the bottle.
Her scooting feet suddenly caught, not on the crabs, but the wooden boards; her heel having hit a small snag in the woody surface.

The interuption in her throw turned an otherwise flawless throw, into a normal one. She'd be able to see the bottle's wobbly flight towards the Tall Figure, bottom first, smash at his feet in a sharp explosion of glass and smoke of dust.
The Figure immediately brought its hands up in an attempt to block the particles; it suddenly lurched from one side, as though hit by a club. And then something crawled out of its ribs, roughly the size of an infant. Something dense hit the floorboards, and joined the scittering orchestra.
The Figure lurched from the other side, and again, another infant-sized, tube like creature spilled out from the Figure's ribs.

Such was The Tall Figure's last motions as he swayed from side to side, and seemed to struggle to keep up; still standing, but drowzy. The crabs that rushed around their feet seemed to share this sluggishness.

Courcy, however, managed to clear a rather solid path infront of her as crabs were crunched into wet messes beneath her boots; but, like a preordained warning, she lost her footing for a moment.
Nothing to drop her, but enough to clarify that the guts and muscle spat out by the crushed crabs were making the boardwalk slick in her wake.

The Tubular shapes that spilled out from the Tall Figure now raced forward; faster than the crabs. Once in view, they would appear to be bloated shrimp like creatures. Maggotlike, but with shells over their back, long antennae jutting out of their mandibled maw which housed an irregular assortment of barnacle like teeth. They galloped forward with hunger in their black beady eyes and came just within a meter of Tilly as they prepared to lunge, it seemed.

--

Elaine hopelessly danced about, while The Squire swept his sword and shield low; kicking and clearing a path easily enough as he seemed focused on keeping Elaine's unprotected feet safe.
Ultimatately, he swept Elaine up into his arms and did his best to focus on moving forward...

\\

/Lekalis/

"Courcy-- Courcy! Careful!" He reached out and tried to grab her shoulder before turning about and realizing Tilly's maneuvers; flaring teeth as he spied her exceptional toss. Less impressed by the sudden approach of two beasts.

He kept marching forward, trying to help Courcy steady on her feet as they marched on,
"Tilly! Do you have it handled..?" He called out a touch worriedly, but still in control as he scoffed and sneered, batting aside crabs still and making to clear out he muck left behind Courcy's stompage.

\\

[Vanitypirate]

"Just keep moving!" Tilly called back to Lekalis, but she kept her eyes on the horrible, shrimp-like beasts in front of her.
She hated them.

She, while backpedaling, went about waving the cloak about with one hand, while she pulled the longsword out from her satchel and swung it low, making to swipe at the beasts' front legs.

[black379]

"Ach!" The hellion stumbled, but thankfully Lekalis was close on her heels and kept her upright. She decided that crushing the crabs underfoot was perhaps was more problematic than helpful. The tiny crustaceans didn't seem to be detrimental except to their footing anyways.

"C'mon!" Any crabs around her boots, Courcy kicked aside as she advanced. She watched the end of the boardwalk, still veiled in fog, anticipating to find the beach. It seemed further crossing back than it did heading towards the tower, thanks to their pursuers.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/The Boardwalk/

Their movement picking up speed again, the Party managed to march another twenty five feet forward, leaving only thirty five to go. The Fog was relenting, a bit infront of them and those at the front may be able to spy the odd silhouette of a tree on the distant shore.

Lekalis sweeping motions, like a dutiful janitor, kept the boardwalk behind him rather clean of any debris and even crabs in their wake. Effectively ploughing a path through the crabs as the party approached.

The Shrimp things scittered and clacked their mandibles excitedly before slowing, their legs dancing less and less as they hopelessly snapped and lunged at air as the cloak danced hopelessly out of reach.
They looked awfully drowsy already, when Roderick's blade suddenly flashed out and clove through the beast's fronts.
Tilly wasn't particularly skilled in using the blade, and the blade didn't rightly cut the creatures so much as sweep across them. Albeit, curiously, for the better; instead of cutting cleanly through the Shrimplings, the blade crushed one's shell inwards with a sickening sharpness against the growing drone, while pushing it into the other Shrimpling.
Ultimately, sending both clattering against the boardwalk; knocked down and drunkenly scrambling to their feet.

However, the droning noise grew until there was practically only that dull tune echoing in their heads. Granted, Tilly and Lekalis would find themselves still able to hear eachother over it.

Infront of Courcy, unfortunately, a man suddenly burst from the water and scrambled up onto the Boardwalk; long black nails digging into the woody planks and a familiar spear hoisted the creature up unto full view of her. Eyes black as pitch, socketed into a human face that had looked to be more sodden and laden with fats and water than truly transformed. Its skin was still a peachy hue, with a silver shimmer along its backside. The creature was thick, heavy set with fat but not in any means that looked obese, rather, like an alligator. Its forearms and hands looked especially powerful, with fingers covered in thick scales and long, vicious black nails that had bits of coral growing from the nail beds.
With a burbling cough its mouth opened and closed, showing its tangled array of teeth that were black from rot and looked to be held by no jawbone; it stumbled to adjust its thick feet to the sudden solid ground. Open to attack.

A second and third made themselves known just past the first, black flinty eyes blinking through thick white eyelids as water spilled out from gills that slowly fell flush against their scales.

Each wore little more than flotsam and junk that seemed more to have caught on their bodies than intentionally worn.

Another fourth and fifth Fishman tried to clamber up onto the Boardwalk on either flank of The Squire and Lekalis.

Thankfully, the boy had enough sense to kick one back into the water; though with the threat of the crabs still around, he struggled for a moment to find his footing again. Avoiding any possible watery demise for the moment.

\\

/Lekalis/

He felt his heart quicken at the sight of the first fishmen before them; their deformations were strangely welcome, as he desperately pined out any human anatomy still fixed to their person. They were human, ish, at the least; he knew where to strike.

Granted, the sudden surge of water beside him took his immediate attention. His eyes drew wide as he saw the Squire kick back another one of the beasts. Instead of surprise, Lekalis found focus in turning to face the other fifth fishman, scrambling up.
With his hands flourishing his spear to point the blade at the monster, he sent a quick and precise jab at the creature's eye.
"Mind yourself! Creeps are coming outta the water!"

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly watched with satisfaction as the beasts were knocked aside. A surprise: it wasn't what she hoped for, but she welcomed it all the same.
She looked back over her shoulder, to Lekalis and Courcy and all the rest, the encroaching beasts.

"Press on! The closer we get to shore, the better!" She called to her party, swiftly making to drape the sleepy cloak over her shoulder to free the hand, simultaneously sidestepping to see past the group and find a clear view of the fishman in front of Courcy.

She whipped out a throwing dagger from coat pocket and hurled it at the abomination, hoping to land it somewhere important.

[black379]

Courcy grit her teeth as the creatures sprouted from the waves. At last the fishfolk showed themselves, and she finally had a foe to sink her virgin blade into. The beasts were grotesque, but she only allowed herself to be startled for an instant.

The enemies were clearly deft in the water, but still gaining their footing on the walk. She took advantage of the moment and charged the first beast, striking downward at its neck with her halberd.

"Just three of you??!"