Chapter 15: Following the Eye

October 10

Jaysek calls the group together and tells that his amulet is now looking at a new place, and he wants to go see where it points. He wants the whole group to come along. The group buys items and prepares for departure. They get moving around noon. They travel a little less than twenty miles and then camp for the night. In the evening, Kieron thinks about the matter and gets a feeling from her god that something very dangerous lies ahead. The group talks but still decides to continue.

October 11

The group continues the journey and arrives at Falcon’s Hollow in the afternoon. There are quite a lot of tents and homemade shelters there, so the group goes to find out what’s happening here. These are refugees from the east; apparently, there’s some cult that has now been more active than usual. At one time, the cult was far in the east and south, but now it has spread this way. The cult calls itself Naarshik.

The group starts traveling toward the middle of the town when at the same time they notice that between the tents are two robber-looking guys who are trying to burn one tent. Kieron also notices further away a couple of really competent-looking soldiers with halberds. Jaysek notices a mage off to the side. Ra doesn’t see these others but attacks the robber-looking guys with his warhorse, but doesn’t accomplish anything against them.

At the same time, those two competent-looking guys step forward and move toward Ra. Kieron gets off her horse and draws her weapons, similarly Jaysek gets off his horse and casts spells on himself. Ra decides to rush through those competent guys with his horse. The competent guys try to stop him, but Ra manages to block the strikes. Next, Neeia decides to cause confusion among the enemies. The two competent-looking guys concentrate for a moment and get over it; one of those two robbers flees, and the other drops the burning torch from one hand, draws two daggers, and drops the daggers to the ground.

The competent-looking guys decide to attack Ra because his back is to them. One guy pulls Ra to the ground, and the other strikes really hard at Ra’s heart. Ra blocks seemingly easily and mocks on top of it. The competent-looking soldier looks somewhat surprised. From behind one tent appears the mage, about whom Jaysek warned, and shoots Neeia with some bolt, but Neeia dodges.

Kieron makes an acrobatic move under the horse’s muzzle and runs next to Neeia. The mage attacks Neeia and Kieron with lightning. Kieron dodges, Neeia moves to the side, and one refugee hit in the area dies from the lightning. Kieron prepares to receive the enemies while Neeia speeds herself up and slows down one of the enemies.

Ra says let’s jump up from this and right onto the horse’s back and then continues riding at full speed to escape. The halberd men attack Neeia, who dodges and moves to safety. Ra circles one house riding and then comes back and gets off the horse and joins the battle.

Kieron strikes one halberd man and hits him in the stomach, but just barely penetrates their chainmail. Neeia manages to slow down the second guy as well and then shoots the other with two lightning bolts, hitting with the second. Jaysek has also sped himself up and then looks at the enemies. He notices that these are quite physical types, not any mind ... After that, Jaysek orders the other guy to drop his weapon. Surprisingly, he drops his weapon a second later.

Jaysek attacks him, going after the loser, and strikes him so that the man screams in pain. The mage comes closer and casts a complication spell on Neeia, but Neeia removes it with little effort. Neeia moves to shoot that mage, but the lightning bolts disappear in the air before hitting their target.

Jaysek casts a fire portal, but the other enemy runs behind his back and strikes him in the back of the head. Jaysek doesn’t manage to dodge, but he has such a hard head that it just clangs. That other halberd man who dropped his weapon draws a small wrist crossbow and shoots Kieron three times. Kieron dodges the first, the second dodge doesn’t succeed, but the bolt doesn’t penetrate Kieron’s skin. While dodging the third, Kieron stumbles and falls to the ground, whereupon the bolt hits the sole of her sandal, thus not penetrating the skin. Kieron jumps up, whereupon Neeia moves to attack the mage. The mage blocks a couple of times, and electricity comes from his staff along the weapon to his hand, so with the second strike, his hand breaks, and he drops his weapon. Neeia draws another weapon and strikes the mage with it, but he blocks again, and again electricity comes.