Subject: Re: The Chase; Avenging Sa'id (5)

OOC: Apologies for the somewhat retroactive nature of this e-mail, but I've been itching to write this one for a week...

Sa'id awakes to cries of alarm... and to that damnable itching. He reaches to scratch, and actually gets a couple of satisfying scratches in before everything fully registers. Listening to a quick overview of the situation he agrees with the general sentiment that the group should get underway as rapidly as possible. If the witch is as high as it seems, and her eyes aren't glowing, they should be able to slip away under the cover of his invisibility sphere... he focuses his thoughts, banishing all irritation at the incessant itching, and prepares for --

-- two arrows --

-- and then one of them is sticking out of him, horribly, and all he can think of is that the sound as it entered his chest was one of the most disgusting things he has ever heard. The second arrow --

-- pause.

His father had had an arrow-riddled corpse downstairs in his embalming chamber once. Normally they were at least cleaned up a little bit before being turned over to the funeral parlor, but this body had been delivered by the guards and not by whatever family he may once have had. Sa'id had just been a boy, and he'd only caught a quick glimpse of the corpse before his father had shoo'd him away... but it was enough to leave him retching for the rest of the afternoon. Or maybe it was the swelling, and noticeable marks of carrion feeders. Hard to say.

More than once, on the streets of the much larger city where he had worked as an assistant investigator for the local government, he had witnessed murder firsthand. Had nearly been murdered himself more than once, trying to track down killers. Arrows had a way of just sprouting from people like branches from trees. Sickening, but over the years he'd learned to swallow his disgust. Part of that came from zombies, of course. Hard to be disgusted by anything a living human could do after having dealt with the undead.

Two arrows passed through a wizard's throat as he stood on the wall of a ruined tower. For what? Not for Promise, not that time.

He spies it as it flies, shrieking, out of the dark. His mind's eye zooms out, away from the battle and the world, viewing the entire expedition as a series of events placed along a slender thread. Then, zooming back in, he sees this battle as though balanced on the head of a pin. Everything turns on the outcome here. Promise must survive.

Searing, choking, gagging PAIN --

-- Everything, then, is black.

Rest.

-- resume.

Sa'id tries to choke on the steel and blood in his throat but it isn't there. He gasps. He was dead?

What?

Cadfael praying over him. Pelor's grace returning the dead to life. But he had seen nothing while dead, no hint of any afterlife -- nearly dead, maybe. He shakes his head, tries to stand. Sees the battle.

They had killed him. These short ones, they had killed him. Arrow through the throat. He looks down at the broken shaft on the ground in revulsion. Cadfael, looking at the wizard with some concern, sees an angry fire ignite behind Sa'id's eyes. A dark fury falls over his mind and he welcomes it, giving in joyfully to the raw anger.

I will kill them all.

They will burn and I will watch them writhe before releasing them into the sleep of death.

Slowly, he begins walking toward the nearest halfling. Painfully, but methodically, ignoring the battle around him. He focuses all of his fury on that one dimunitive body, pouring all of it into a single white-hot jet of flame [Scorching Ray].

Subject: Re: The Chase; Avenging Sa'id (5)

Farron will cast magic missile at the nearest archer.

Subject: Re: The Chase; Avenging Sa'id (5)

Obviously I should have specialized in evocation, not necromancy. :P

Subject: Re: The Chase; Avenging Sa'id (5)

Yes, this will be remembered as the battle in which Farron layeth down the smack and hauls our collective ass from the fire.

...provided we live.

If not, it will be remembered as the battle in which Farron layeth down the smack in a valiant but utterly futile effort at hauling our collective ass from the fire.

But this battle clearly illustrates why people burn witches.