Chapter 17: Headbutting Enemies

October 23

The group sets off by boat upstream. Not much interesting is visible on the banks of the stream except a couple of burned villages. As evening falls, the dwarf pulls the boat to shore, and the group stays overnight on the boat, others sleeping better and Jaysek poorly. On the afternoon of the second day, smoke is visible ahead, and the dwarf notes that there, behind the river bend, is some village. The group sets off on a fast boat for an assault. Behind the bend, three soldiers dressed in scale armor with some lizard-looking thing in their helmets are visible at the village’s shore. Jaysek recognizes that they are soldiers who want to celebrate the lizard blood in them with these helmets. There are also some villagers on the shore.

Neeia says, “You take those two closest ones, and I’ll take that furthest one.” Kieron and Ra fly to the shore and begin to fight with the soldiers; Neeia and Jaysek are still casting their flying spells. A mage comes from inside and joins the battle. From the side somewhere, a bugbear comes and sneaks up on Ra and begins to strangle him. Ra is strangled for a long time, and Jaysek is almost knocked down when he tries to fly. After Jaysek gets into the air, the soldiers move to hack at Ra, who is still being strangled. Neeia disturbs the enemies with debuffs and strikes them; Kieron is content with striking. Ra first tries to escape from the bugbear’s grip but doesn’t succeed, and then draws his weapon and tries to strike the strangler away. The mage chases Jaysek and throws big hammers at him, but Jaysek manages to narrowly dodge all of them. Then the warriors and the mage go after Neeia, and the mage blows the sword out of Neeia’s hand. Neeia debuffs more and fights with Kieron. Ra manages to hit that strangler and suddenly escapes. Kieron fights for a while with that bugbear and one soldier, and Neeia holds two soldiers and the mage. Neeia tries to retreat but finally flees from the scene, teleporting half a mile away.

Kieron takes care of the soldiers and makes a couple of drive-by slashes to the mage; Ra flees from the scene flying in the direction of the river. Jaysek calmly collects energy behind the house as he doesn’t know about the situation. Kieron’s weapon almost explodes, but she has a stroke of luck so that luck is on her side. Kieron is hit unpleasantly, and after that, she intends to flee from the scene and jumps into the river. Then Kieron decides to fly, and she is hit twice really unpleasantly and is on the verge of death, but fortunately, a stroke of luck again guaranteed luck on her side. The mage shoots the flying Kieron in the air with a hammer and hits crushingly, and Kieron falls uncouncious into the river. Jaysek throws an explosive fireball at the group that hit Kieron and throws fire to protect the retreat. Jaysek retreats to the other side of the river, agilely dodging anti-aircraft fire. Jaysek manages to disengage from the battle; Ra desperately tries to dig a potion from his belt but falls unconscious just as he finds it.