RP A Wreath of Whispers

Wyrdryn glanced over with a lack of interest at the approaching guard. He cared less and less for intimidation tactics the more he found himself experiencing them-- though he had to admit that this particular bout, at the very least, was different than the others. Most often, he and his brother were separated and told that the other had confessed to whatever crime they'd been accused of. The ploy in and of itself was absurd; Remus hardly spoke to him, so why would it be any different with the law?

Besides, the only thing he'd ever been guilty of was showmanship.

"Look," Wyrdryn muttered to his brother, nudging him and gesturing with his head to the man with the bleeding nose. "He's-- ah."

And then the man toppled over, collapsing into a heap beside the cage.

"... was just beginning to like him." Wyrdryn lamented, overcoming his grief in the time it took for him to move to the cage's edge-- arm sticking through the gaps in the bars to pull at the body to bring it close and frisk it for keys and take the dagger he'd been flashing to the group. It would be put to better use in the hands of a conscious man, he reasoned.
 
"Oooh. Lightning. Sort of. Nice!" This was getting a little exhausting. She maneuvered herself up again, so that she was facing the bars of the cage; with a hop, she set her feet against the cart's walls, so that she was half-hanging there, like a--um... Some sort of acrobatic hangy thing. A lamprey, maybe. Or an eel. If lampreys or eels had arms.

Getting distracted again. Focus! Don't want to let your god down, do you?

The prophet grinned at the guard's back, and then with a gesture and a word she turned the whole world into a riot of evil sound.

----

((Thunderwave, cast out from the cart. 8 damage; CON save of 13 or higher required. Acrobatics roll to avoid accidentally blowing my arms off if I succeed in breaking open the cart: 18.))
 
“Oh I wouldn’t worry, he’ll be back.” Liliane said, scooting aside to make room on the bench for the human. A curious turn of events, all this, the tiefling had done something to her mother’s puppet, or she believed he had been the one given the comment the man made before he dropped like a bushel of apples, one of the humans was making a play for the knife, and the storm wasn’t her mother’s doing. Why she had even seemed interested by the turn in weather, which left Liliane feeling a touch sour.

“Might have the key on ‘em,” Liliane said, a little softer as she also reached a hand through the cage to aid in grappling the fallen man. Best to grab what they could before the other sellswords noticed more was wrong than just the weather.
 
Remus largely ignored the guard as he provoked Liliane, having little idea of the context behind their conversation nor having any real interest in it. Instead, his eyes sat focused on the horizon - and then, as another rumble rolled through the sky, his eyes peered up at the cloudy expanse. His expression hardened as his senses, honed from decades in the wild, sensed something was off in the air. The hairs on the back of his neck rose slightly as the clouds crowded against one another, but before he could think much else of it, Wyrdryn nudged him to look at the guard.

And then, lightning struck the camp.

After recovering from the initial shock of having lightning strike so close to them, Remus found it difficult to feel confused as their sudden fortune. He didn’t question it, mind you, or at least he didn’t question it much as his true focus was on using the camp-wide emergency to his advantage: something his brother was leagues ahead of him in doing.

”Fight or flee?” He asked Wyrdryn, eyeing the amount of guards running around the camp. By tone alone, his brother would know that Remus was quite serious in asking if he preferred fighting a camp full of Firebrands or simply fleeing.
 
The woman's strange lust for chaos was cause for concern, it seemed. If her words proved to be true, then the last thing Amity wanted was to be shredded to bits in a blistered explosion of crystal shards. The woman's excitement for wanton destruction was infectious, however. Amity found herself curious as to wherever the Hells this woman came from.

The desire to live was much stronger, unfortunately.

The guard outside of the cart spat out his warning quite rudely. His words cut into her memory and tugged out the memories of past executions once more. As the rain began to fell, Amity curled back against the wooden slats of their prison, blankly staring. The looming threat of a hanging proved to be a dampener on her spirits as much as the rain was.

A tingling danced on her skin, and she rubbed her arms to keep warm. What an absolutely dreadful day to die! Large droplets blew waves of water into the cart. Amity's hair plastered to her face and neck. In a futile attempt to stay somewhat dry, she started wiping water off of her arms. That's when she noticed the little hairs standing on end. Some resisted as she swiped her hand over the hairs to flatten them.

How curious!

The center of camp ruptured in lightning and screams. The palms of her hands slammed down to the floor in fright. She assumed that this was no natural strike of lightning; a strike of that magnitude was an act of something called upon, surely! Amity stared with shock as the man immediately took to punching the floorboards and the woman held her hands out to the guard, energy crackling around her hands. She pressed herself tightly against the wall of the cage to shield herself from whatever hell was about to break loose.
 
The guard in front of the first cart was distracted - so when the thunderwave erupted from the prophet's hands, it sent the poor man flying, his body tumbling to the muddy ground. The spell also broke open the side of the cart, wooden panels and iron bars cracking. They weren't designed to handle magic. Who in their right mind would try to arrest a caster?

Inadvertently, the cart blew open the exact moment Gyre's fist struck the floor. Nobody in their right mind would think he was the one that did it, of course.

"The fuck - " the guard muttered, spitting a bloody tooth from his mouth, turning to see the cart's side exploded. His eyes widened. "Shite. THEY'RE GETTIN' OUT! THE PRISONERS ARE GETTIN' OUT!"

His voice was drowned out by the storm and other shouts, louder, echoing from around the camp.

"DUSTRADI!"

Crack. Boom. Faint green lights flickered in the sky, and in the spaces of clouds carved out by them, the rain turned a faint green as well. The Firebrands it touched began to seize and scream, smoke coming up from their clothes.

--

Between Wydryn and Liliane, you're able to easily find an iron key-ring - five keys along it. One, simple with a cross cutout in its head, another, more ornate and silver, then the final three small with jagged teeth.

From where the second cart is, you also see the green lights flashing out circles in the sky, also see the strange rain fall and burn the men it touched. But - while the first cart was obscured - you have better view of the invaders. A group of fifty or so soldiers, garbed in fluttering cloth capes and metal armor with sharp pointed helmets, riding through the camp and striking down anyone in their way.

Dustradi? This far inland? Certainly not, but your eyes do not deceive you.
 
Cackling like a loon, the prophet toppled out of the cart and rolled back to her feet in one (relatively) smooth motion.

"Dustradi, is it?" she said, conversationally, as she picked a bar-shaped chunk of shattered prison cart out of the wreckage. "Fascinating timing. Don't suppose you were expecting them? Sorry about your mouth, by the way. We should get out of here, before that mist gets any closer. Would you like to come with me?" That last was directed both to the Firebrand and to the former prisoners.
 
Well, he'd, he'd, he'd showed that, hadn't he? One punch and the whole cart had, had, had - it was in pieces. Gyre had known he could do it - he was, was, was strong, wasn't he? Didn't look it, people didn't expect it. Expected someone, someone bigger. He wasn't real big, but he was strong. Strong enough to break a cart open. Which was, was a good thing. Yes? No?

Yes? Very good thing. Didn't like it in the cart. Too, too - small. Cramped. Like being in the mines. He'd been in the mines once, hadn't he? Had he? That was where the, the, the thing came from.

Tea.

Not tea mines. But he needed some. Some. Some. The other thing. Couldn't have the other thing. Had to find some tea. No point sticking around in a cart that was broken - how'd that happen, anyway? Must have been something. He pulled himself out of the splinters, walking past some crazy bint who was going on about mist and Dustradi and, and, going somewhere. He knew where he was going. There was a campfire, and that usually meant someone had tea.

There were a lot of screaming people around it and the wrong sort of rain. Gyre avoided the screaming people as well and started looking through whatever piles he could find, in search of, of, of-

Anything. Lots of things. Some thing. Gotta have-

Had to be something in here worth having.
 
Dustradi?

Hawke laughed at the sight. They hadn't come all this way for him, had they? Seemed a wasted effort to recover - or kill a captured spy. Then again, he wasn't the one calling the shots, he was just here to do his job. As the chaos rose, a prisoner in the other cart blasted a hole though their floor. "I don't suppose any of you can do that, can you?" Hawke asked, then turned his head to see his cart-mates lifting keys from the remaining guard. "Ah, subtlety! I like your style."

The tiefling shifted to their end of the cage and looked at the green lights dancing through the sky. "Any friends of Dustrad among us? Surely no friends Aldren in chains here, yes?"
 
Wyrdryn started on the lock as soon as he felt cold iron kiss his palm; with a flourish of the ring, he tried the cross-headed first, then the ornate silver key, and then the jagged trio until he felt the pins give way to a click. It was a practiced motion with which he steadied the lock and worked from behind it, arms stuck through the cage as he worked without even looking down at the handle; when the door finally gave way, he swung it open with a kick of his foot, gesturing for the others to step out as he moved from the floor of the cage to the earth beneath. He splayed his toes for a moment to get even footing, feeling the sand and dust along them even through the bandages, and nodded.

"Depends on who's asking, I suppose." Wyrdryn replied to the other man who'd been caged alongside them, rubbing at his masked chin. "But to say I have anything in common with those men is to think a bat and bird are brothers because they fly, yes?" And, finally, he turned to his own brother, nodding to him. "Fight if we can find our weapons. Flee if we can't. Sound good?"
 
It was a good thing that Amity prepared herself for whatever had happened next. The splintering of wood against her hands told her that her instincts wer correct, and when the dust had settled, Amity briefly checked over the others from a distance, and then herself for wounds. The grating of metal on metal told her that her shackles had yet to be released. With freedom so close that she could taste it, Amity grew impatient and unsettled. With a stammering breath she calms herself still and examines the cuff for anything to pry herself free. Eventually, after much fiddling and a few murmured Infernal curses, the handcuff falls to the floor.

*"DUSTRADI!"*

The word pierces an arrow of fear through her heart. The eerie green reflections shine in her eyes as they point toward the sky. This looks as though it's unnatural. If it's of Eldath's doing, it's nothing that Amity recognizes. The thundering of hooves and powerful shouts melds with the storm. It's hard to decipher, but unmistakable still. The Dustradi are on the way. But why? How? It doesn't matter. All Amity knows is that she needs to leave before she's found.

She turns to the other freed prisoners and nods eagerly at the strange prophet woman. As she climbs out, Amity clutches her clothes tightly around herself to protect from the rain. "Yes! Let us flee together before those men decide to kill us all." The young woman stands outside of the demolished wagon to help anyone out before following the prophet's lead.
 
Liliane held the man’s body to the bars until her cagemate found what his oily fingers were searching for, a ring of keys. She dropped him once the keys were through the bars, a bit like he was some sort of rotten root vegetable, or left behind scrap of food still sitting on the table. Not too far off she heard another guard screaming that the prisoners were escaping, though a quick check of things revealed to her that one, someone had plotted a far more dramatic escape in the second cart, and two the Firebrands were far more concerned with the wash of Dustradi infantry who aimed to slice through their number as a tide through sand.

And again, Liliane was struck by the notion that this was not her Mother’s doing, as baffling a turn of events that it was. The door to their cage was soon open, after a quick jangling of keys, and Liliane was not one to linger in a cage once the door had been opened, and she made her way out as soon as there was room to do so. Best to not be in a cage when things were all topsy turvy because then she could react if Mother dearest decided she needed to add more fuel to this particular fire.

“I lived in a bog,” which seemed to her to be a perfectly reasonable response to the question as she hopped out of the cart and onto the sweet earth below. She might of kissed it if not for the ever present that was careening towards their little group. “Any clue where they’re keeping our things?” Liliane asked.
 
More lights brought more rain. And as Remus thought, an unnatural storm.

As his brother worked on getting the cart door opened, the taller of the two brothers paid heed to the madness surrounding them. His gaze was stuck on the small groups of Firebrands being burned alive by the rain and it was then that Remus tried focusing on the rain itself. In the brief instances that he was able to process the droplets in their descent, he was able to make out glimpses of their color: green, like the lights above. He scowled at the revelation and quickly looked over the third cause of alarm of the day.

Dustradi riders. They cut their way through the camp, killing Firebrands as quickly as they did numerously. Remus kept his stare on them for quite some time, even a little while after his brother managed to open the gate. It wasn’t until Wyrdryn called out to him that he began to move, finding himself to be the very last one out.

”Flee.” Remus asserted as he looked off to the side. ”The rain is burning. It has killed many guards, yet the Riders remain unharmed. If we fought, we would burn too.”

After some time, he turned to look back at Wyrdryn.

”We would die.”
 
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