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Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Carwyn & The Revelthanes Of The Feywild - I


"ARGH!" - The cry of Carwyn was not of pleasure anymore, but it went unheard, absorbed by the densely misty night as if the Feywild itself would have wanted to silence it. 
His most unwise companions were near but distant at the same time, embowered as they were in their concubines' gardens of delight. Lost in Feywilds of their own, rather literally.
Red was the only friend to hear the knight's pain, but couldn't do much more than replying with another dire howl, which resonated in the soaked air as if piped through an organ, to the cheers and inane replies of the three unaware companions, and their apparently frivolous lovers.
The willowy firbolg was pinned to the ground by four nymphs, which proved extremely strong, making him enraged for not having seen through the illusion before. Although at last he did pierce it. The same could not be said of the others.
Red managed to free his mind enough to call his loyal companion: a vortex of wind and primal spirit, which carried moss, dirt, leaves, and anything else it could carry from the ground, to which it appeared vaguely tethered.
The elemental came bobbing up and down like a pouncing predator made of zephyr and roiling anger. It took one of the berserk nymphs in its bludgeoning currents, freeing him from her grasp.

Carwyn in the meantime had recovered a measure of consciousness: the nepenthean mead was the only lymph animating his thinking tissues, but since that matter must have been rather vegetable in nature, the sweet sap was strangely capable of making the cogs of his thought turn.
In that instant of clarity, Carwyn touched one of the nymphs while pronouncing a word of power that not even oblivion could delete from his mind. Suddenly, the being changed under his very nose, appearing like a twisted knot of bones and sick flesh of a vaguely human form. Carwyn's mind probably didn't register the horror of having been intimately touched by that being, but it was for the best: he absent-mindendly flicked a finger and the monstrous humanoid crouched into a ball of claws and hair, and then jumped like a rabid toad onto a nymph that was about to replace the lost grip of the magically fooled sister. Sister? Carwyn's mind was drifting in the astral sea, and yet it perceived more truth then when it rode the horse of sober judgement.

Exiting the roaring fire, drunk of flames more than alcohol or passion, Delsevas finally focused, perceiving the ugliest of beings next to Carwyn, clawing at one of the nymphs.
All but enraged, he leaped in supernaturally high bounds, accumulating momentum like a topspin about to be played with by a cloud giant.
Arrived at the scene showing the meaning of haste, he released a flurry of rotating kicks and spear slashes, igniting the air with each stroke: he HAD to save the NYMPH!
The deformed hag screamed in pain, looking back at Carwyn as a a surprised wife witnessing betrayal (she was in fact unable to see Carwyn as anything else than a lover after he placed the eldritch spell on her). She then turned to Delsevas joining his dance of pain with crazed moves of her own, clawing and biting at the eladrin. Notoriously hard to catch, Delsevas was nonetheless left bloodied by the onslaught, and redoubled his efforts in a defensive position, calling for the others, who were now pinned by nymphs themselves.
Carwyn was trying to tell Delsevas about the nymph behind him not being what she appeared to be, but while remembering magic words of power easily, he could not speak high elven for the death of him.

While tiny Thyrona was unable to escape the strong hands of a nymph, even if she was starting to understand in her mind what was happening, Blyrdian was much more agile, and managed to free himself, and watch the degenerate bacchanal while hiding in the undergrowth.

Red in the meantime was trying to push aside the beings to reach his staff. Unable to do so decided to resist, healing his multiple lacerations with primal words of regeneration, and sending the elemental to retrieve the unassuming weapon, which it did quickly in a series of mad low flights.
Once the firbolg had the staff in the grasp of just one of his reaching hands, he unleashed the power of Shillelagh, becoming a force to be reckoned with. The false nymphs got hit one by one and forced to exit the reach of the mighty magic wood. Then from the ground emerged a new spirit called forth by Red: a spirit of the earth which threatened to entangle the unseelie fey into the roots of Yggdrasil itself.

Blyrdian was still thinking how to save the nymphs from the hag, when he witnessed the nymph behind Delsevas join in the flesh-eating just like the monstrous annis.
Seeing how the two companions had a chance of surviving (Delsevas not as much, but he never liked him anyway), he went back to the bower were Thyrona was held, not in lustful bondage as he thought, but as true prisoner.
The scene on his arrival was a mire of skeletal hands raising from the ground and holding the screaming nymphs. 
Thyrona's playful mood had ended. In fact, she then unleashed a spell of darkness and death so great, that Blyrdian got lost in its arcane shadows, even if his eyes had been used to the pitch black of the feydark for most of his life. Or maybe exactly because of that.
Memories of his sad childhood of slavery mixed with the narcotic effect of the faerie wine and the disheartening necromancy: the gnome started crying desperately, but that didn't stop him from throwing knives into the darkness, wherever he remembered the enemy to be standing.

The bacchanal raged on into its deathly crescendo, until some annis hags were lying lifeless in the bower.
Their blood coagulated hastily, forming mockeries of berries on the bushes where it had been sprayed.
The turn of the tide came when Carwyn had started singing drunk, while engaging in confused swordplay, raising the spirits of his wounded or deeply upset friends to the point of making them even more deadly than the crazed hags.
Strangely, though, not all the downed creatures turned to their ugly forms. Some stayed nymphs, golden and silvery fluids mixed with blood on their sprawling bodies.
What was happening? None of the companions really cared, since Carwyn's song had started: they had to WIN. Win against any attacker. Possibly chasing down those who escaped the battle, too. Which Delsevas and Red were happy to do.
When the wild chase brought the two noble fey outside the reach of barely-conscious Carwyn's elating song, though, they lost their will to fight, exhausted and wounded, and went back to the camp.
They found their noble half-elf friend sleeping half-standing, his sword impaling a nymph to the ground, and forming a grim and cold pillow for his limp body to rest on.
Blyrdian was throwing knives at the bodies while still crying like a shaken toddler.
Thyrona was the only one in her right mind, as much as her studying of the corpses in detail could be right in the minds of the two disgusted friends.

"Some of them were nymphs. The rest were annis hags. I have no idea what they were doing together, but they nearly took our lives. Of you two in particular. The mage tended their wounds, making sure none of the hag's taint remained stuck in them. Red Tail did the rest of the healing, the earth spirit helping in replicating it for all the nearby allies, sleeping and bloodied Carwyn included.


The Revelthanes had survived another revel, which turned into another fight. But at what cost? This is the question none of them asked themselves. A question they never asked themselves.

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