Fantasy Cursed Island

[Deadwood Deer]

Comedy was somewhat lacking down here in recent weeks, aside from Shuffle and Fia's actions, Emil's tale had Veo's attention and soon had her laughing like a fool.

"Yeah, but think about how the feeders only returned the moment his body wasn't able to move anymore," Adran scratched his chin, "He definitely had some magic ability, and he was at least on some level a tinkerer, he made that badge." He thought about it for a moment, "There had to be some kind of magic that helped him keep the grove animal free. With how fast and how many came in the second he was dead, there's no way he could have fought them all off on his own."

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil smiled as he sang his tale, mostly from seeing Veo’s reactions to it.

Niudisa nodded. “A repellent of some kind? Somehow linked to his body, considering the evidence. Damn, if we’d thought of that sooner I might have gotten some answer from the thrall.” She paused for a moment. “Oh, wait. We still have his soul.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Can you even make a soul gem talk?", Adran had heard of captured souls speaking, but demons handle the soul directly with magic. He'd handled some himself during his tenure in the Pits, but soul gems were physical, not metaphysical, and when you tie something metaphysical to a physical object, the metaphysical relied on the physical to interact.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa shook her head. “No, we’d have to put him into something that can, at least temporarily. Preferably something he wouldn’t be able to kill us with.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"What was Jerry's plan for him, anyway?" They definitely didn't have the components on hand to construct such a body for Urodor's soul gem, even if it was just to put a mouth to it.

 

[Fangs9090]

“She hasn’t shared that with me. She usually has a plan, so I guess that’s true here.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Gods-dammit," Adran shook her head, "I'll go get her." As Adran left to go find Jerry, a tiny point of light flew down Thoradin's chimney. It was a bit smaller than Niudisa's light, and flying about much more erratically. It looked like a spark if you didn't pay it too much attention, but sparks fly in a single direction. Erratic as this point of red light's flight was, it did look to be moving with intention.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa crossed her arms and glanced around as Adran walked away. No one seemed to be doing anything particularly interesting, but her observant eyes caught something out of place. She narrowed her eyes and fluttered over to investigate.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

As Niudisa approached the spark, the nature of it became clear. It was some kind of dragonfly, or at least some approximation of it. It had dark brown and red chitin, and only two wings with a hard elytra of almost black chitin that it used for steering. The eyes were bright red with a black flame pattern, and at the end of its tail was a small but bright flame. The closer Niudisa got, the larger it was. It was far larger than the point of light around the flame on its tail would suggest. If it were to settle on someone's arm and straighten out, the end of it's tail to its head would be the length of a human forearm. It's jaws, which on other dragonflies would be used for chewing up mosquitoes and other prey insects, here were razor sharp. If it had a mind to bite Niudisa, it would probably shear right through whatever limb it bit down on.

When it saw Niudisa, it gave a tiny screech and seemed to take a mind to such a course of action, stopping its seemingly erratic flight and shooting straight towards her.

 

[Fangs9090]

Confirming it was hostile, Niudisa flew back away from it as she hurled a dark magic bolt to deter it.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

As the bolt of dark magic shot towards the dragonfly, it nimbly shot under the bolt and picked up speed. The difference in mass wasn't very great, bugs don't weigh very much, especially magical bugs. The difference in speed, however, was noticeable. The dragonfly was easily dodging around Niudisa's spells, they only seemed to be slowing it down as it flew around instead of hitting.

Somehow, this tiny battle in the upper ceiling of the forge went entirely unnoticed by the big people below.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa kept her distance as she attacked, watching it dodge her bolts. As she fired another bolt, aiming slightly high so the best way to dodge would be down, she followed up immediately with a pair of magic hands, clapping them together where she predicted the bug to be.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

The bug's actions showed there was something more than insect intelligence at work behind this. Instead of dodging down, the bug did a barrel roll to the side of the spell and fired a bolt of fire from the flame on its tail, streaking towards the fairy all the while.

Niudisa's magic hands, however, clapped on something solid. Emfa's brand new axe, mid-swing in Joanne and Emfa's sparring. Emfa, not expecting her weapon to be yanked out of her hands mid-swing, tripped into Joanne, the two bowling over through Nyah and Fia and Shuffle's movie. Nyah, losing control of the illusion as she was forced to reduce solidity to not be crushed, accidentally sent the spell streaking towards Erina and Jerry and surrounding their heads with sparks and flashes of light, Jerry's reaction predictably being to try and swat at the illusion, almost shaving part of Adran's face off with her claws in the process.

The first to complain was not Jerry, for once. Nor Thoradin, despite the chaos in his forge. It was Beri, being woken up to the sound of pandemonium breaking out and roaring to force everyone's attention. "Have you all lost your minds?", the leopard demanded, looking at the chaos around him.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa dropped down and back to avoid the flame, holding her hands back to form a pair of small, brief portals. One of the portals caught the flame, sending out the other portal to fly back at the bug. The portals vanished immediately after.

Shuffle whined as the show was interrupted, looking around to see why. Fia hopped back away from the tumbling warriors. Erina flinched and hissed as she stepped back away from the sparks, not fond of bright lights right in her face. Asta, assuming it to be an attack, jumped to his feet and started looking for enemies. Emil stopped mid-story to look over at the sudden commotion, just as confused as everyone else.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Fire did nothing as the bug zipped around and vanished in Thoradin's forge. The dwarf was pretending not to have heard the commotion so long as nothing they did affected his work.

"Okay, who wants to explain what just happened?", Jerry demanded once the illusion spell stopped fizzling around her and Erina's heads.

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa looked around for the bug and huffed. “We have an intruder. Some kind of flame bug, definitely magic involved.” She glanced at the others. “All of that was an accident.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry facepalmed and looked at Erina, "You see what I'm talking about? The second I turn around." She turned to face the party, "Okay, who's fireproof and can do this without antagonizing Thoradin? Not you two," she glanced at Shuffle and Fia anticipating those two raising their hands.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle and Fia were both halfway to raising their hand, or wing, when they were excluded. Asta spoke up. “I am not fully fireproof, but may be able to withstand the heat for a time, if I’m quick.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jerry nodded, "Okay, Niudisa how fast is this bug?" She turned to the necromancer for further information on the bug.

 

[Fangs9090]

“Faster than me, just a bit. It looks similar to a dragonfly, so speed was definitely a focus. And somehow I doubt it was acting on its own. Someone else is behind this.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Great," Jerry facepalmed, "Can you amplify Asta's flight speed? it probably can't outfly two of you. Maybe Adran can polymorph into a pixie or something and help out."

"I take offense to that."

"Shut up, Adran, we catch this bug or whatever's controlling it has a free eye in the forge."

"So why not turn you into a pixie?"

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil stood up. “I can boost everyone’s speed, if needed. Or I can concentrate that on just Asta, if no one else needs it.”

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Hopefully you'll only have to boost three," Jerry nodded at the bat, "Asta," She knelt down to shrink Asta down to as small as she could make him, which was still much larger than Niudisa but definitely on scale with the bug.

"So who's becoming a tiny flyer", Adran held up his tome, "This won't shrink with me and I need it to cast spells."

"I do not reccomend putting wings on someone who did not previously have them," Joanne pointed out, and then shuddered, remembering being stuck in Niudisa's body. Just thinking about being in the necromancer's body she felt like she needed a bath.

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil shook his head. “That’s more complicated. I can either have it affect all allies who can hear it, or I can focus it on a single ally. Specific numbers of allies, not so much.”

Erina spoke up after Joanne. “That only leaves Emil, Shuffle, and Fia. And Emil is providing support.”

Shuffle and Fia smiled at the prospect of helping.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Shuffle and Fia aren't part of this, we went over this," Jerry felt bad about excluding them, but track record showed they had a tendency to make messes and were easily distracted, which was normally a good thing, chaos was an advantage in a fight, but right now they were trying to cause as little chaos as possible. Jerry reached into her kit to pull out some straws, "Okay, everyone but Shuffle, Fia, Adran, Emil, or Niudisa, come here and draw a lot."

Lots were drawn and checked once everyone had one. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," Jerry was holding the short straw.

"Oh, relax," Adran shook his head, "Unless I focus on a specific entity to turn you into, all that's going to happen is you'll turn into a non-court affiliated pixie version of yourself."

"Shut up, Adran."

"Poli, do me a favor and vacate, you don't wanna turn into a fairy with someone as big as Jerry inside you."