Morning is a silver glow on the horizon still when the expedition assembles at the staging grounds. Adventurers are sharpening blades, donning armor and packing rations. Mages are preparing their spells and fortune tellers are trying to peer into the future. A stage has been set up, probably for Lord Fael'wynn to make a speech. There is also a line of local priests giving out blessings.
Tasha, being an old hat at this, prepared long before she left the inn. In truth she's always a little prepared, and what she needs is never far, not during travels like this. A childhood of ship dangers, whenever-naps, and responsibility has provided this responsibility, even if she obfuscates it behind her typical irreverent attitude. "Ahh, another day of adventure."
"Mmmm," Wulfgaar grunts. Shinbreaker apparently has her own armor, which includes a little helmet with a spike on it. Brother Bone and Lila are keeping to the outer edge of the mob. "The Great Divide is a pretty odd place, where lots of different planes sort of overlap. It's full name is the Great Divide-by-Zero," Kai explains.
"That's surprisingly mathematical for a magical plane. Usually they have more descriptive and less scientific names. So, it's essentially the universe's error-zone? Or is this proof of some deeper answer to mathematics?" Tasha is not, as it happens, great at math, but she does know a few things and she has computer.
"Mathematics doesn't describe reality, just reality as we perceive it," Kai notes. "But it might been a mathematician who named it anyway."
"Scientists really like to name things," Tasha agrees, nodding. "And I suppose that makes sense. After all math as I know it really only applies back home. Magic is so often that which defies internal mathmatics." And then she shrugs. "So think Lord Sleepless is going to give another monologue? And do those blessings work or is it just a scam?"
Horn blares from the stage, and Fael'wynn and his guards mount it and wait for the crowd to quiet down. "Brave adventurers who have taken the call to action!" he calls out. "Today you venture forth into the Great Divide, to hopefully discover the fate of the lands beyond in these dark times.."
"Spoiler: it's bad," murmurs Tasha beside Kai.
"Blessings depend on the gods involved," Kai says. "The divine ones that only talk to a select few seem have more effective blessings than the ones that will come around and break your furniture if you insult them."
"So the more benevolent and talky ones are the way to go. Maybe it's a matter of energy expenditure, or, well, maybe the aggressive ones don't care as much." Tasha nods again, it does make sense.
There a brief cheer from some of the adventurers (probably the ones on their first adventure). "Discover the whereabouts and actions of Nyarlothotep and the Queen of Demise, and you will be greatly rewarded!" That bit gets more of a cheer, until someone asks, "What do they look like?"
"Hey do you think I can claim the reward if I find out? I'd be really funny if I returned with bags of gold coins or something," Tasha whispers to Kai.
Kai whispers back, "The reward may be another, more dangerous quest. Heroes are crazy, after all, and these were the rejected ones."
"That's true. I mean I had a lot of problems and look what I'll do," Tasha notes, casting furtive glances at the others adventurers. "They may be in for a rough time."
"The Crawling Chaos is a shape-shifter that can take on any form," Fael'wynn explains. "Sometimes as a tall, dark-skinned human, other times in forms that induce madness. His host is usually made up of moon beasts and Men of Leng. The Queen of Demise.." The elf lord trails off and gets a faraway look. Kai whispers to Tasha, "Watch this.."
"Ooo this should be good." Tasha does indeed watch and, for good measure, her ears go up too.
The elf begins to look haunted, saying, "I see a great Wyrm, made of black flames which devour warmth, light and hope.. her eyes.. her eyes!" He goes from a soft voice to a scream, and falls to his knees, then begins patting himself before rolling around on the stage, wailing in agony.
The guards quickly carry him away, but he can still be heard screaming. A different elf takes the stage and announces, "The gateway is soon to open, please proceed along the avenue.."
"He thinks he's burning in black flames," Kai whispers to Tasha. "Until Kainudy forgives him. I'll let her know about it once we see her again. If I don't forget."
Tasha's expression is neutral throughout; she's seen enough horror, and been subject to just as much of it, to not be phased by the sight of a adversary in pain. It doesn't quite move her as much as it might have, it feels more like brutal justice than sweet revenge, but there's some of the latter too. "I'm tempted to call out and ask if there's still a reward," Tasha tells Kai. "But at least we won't have to deal with him for a while, and we've another confirmation of what form she might take."
"Oh, I put that image in his head," Kai whispers. "It's pretty much accurate though of the initial manifestation. I have no idea what the Queen would be like if really let loose." Wulfgaar is moving towards Brother Bone, so that their little group can go through together.
Tasha also starts drifting towards the rest of their party. "The last I saw of her she was smaller, but still bleeding those flames. Lucid and sharp, though. She was able to interact with us clearly."
"She was still raw and barely holding it together," Kai notes. "She was about to do something, which is why she made us leave." Lila waves and Brother Bone keeps handing out blessings to anyone not intimidated by the prospect of being 'lightly tapped' by his steel-studded mace.
"I guess we'll see how that went, soon. But not total defeat anyway, that's good at least." Tasha steps up to the two and leans over, head tilting. "So what does a Bahamut blessing do anyway," she as Brother Bone.
"If one dies in virtuous struggle, your death will be painless," Brother Bone explains. "Would you like one?"
"Nooo, I think that might encourage me to die again. I need my painful reminders and unpleasant avoidance-inducing punishments." Tasha then hops back away from the mace. "We should remember our fear and understand what we face."
"You will not understand what we face," Kai then says. "We're going someplace where the rules don't take themselves seriously, and sometimes argue. The Great Divide is a place of dreams and nightmares."
"Yeah but you just told me what I face so now I understand. But you'll then say I won't because I can't, which is in itself an explanation intended to help me understand," Tasha further explains, holding up a finger like one of her Winged Citadel professors liked to do when he was making a point. "Also given what you just said it seems like death here could be really fun, boring, or any other thing."
"Would it help if we were drunk then?" Lila asks as the group approaches the gate, which appears to be a large pit with stone stairs spiraling downwards.
"From what I understand slash don't understand, it would help and-or hinder. Possibly simultaneousl." Tasha wags her tail as she walks, proof she is amused if perhaps not elucidated.
"Paradoxes make sense were we're going, but nothing else is obligated to," Kai clarifies. Everyone seems to be going down one specific set of stairs, which apparently aren't at an unnatural slope because the horses and horse-analogs aren't having issues. The chuck wagon is not coming along though.
"So it's like how people describe me to others sometimes." Tasha makes her way down the stairs, which come with the required clip-clop of cloven feet.
And then Tasha looks back. "The food wagon isn't coming, already this adventure has taken a downturn." Her head shakes sadly as she continues on.
As they descend, the purple mist seems to always be a few feet ahead of them, so that they can't see where those in front are going. "Once everyone is in the gate, the fog should clear as the dimensional waveform collapses. Welcome to the Vague. Think about fluffy bunnies," Kai says.
"The dimensional barrier has strong sense of dramatic buildup," Tasha notes of the fog. She nods slowly to the review then, looking around but not knowing what to expect, since she can't know what to expect, or so says Kai. "Bunnies get me in trouble and are difficult. If I start thinking of bunnies we'll end on an even more complicated and stranger adventure."
"But one with bunnies instead of eldritch horrors," Kai says. Suddenly they're walking on what seems to be pea gravel. "Get ready for something weird, in any case."
"Always am!" Tasha's tails wags more as she walks. "It's basically my every day."
There are a few minutes of milling around, and then suddenly they're someplace else. Black standing stones circle them, carved with symbols that glow ultraviolet. The black sky is illuminated more by clouds of blue flame than from the green sun. A forest of fleshy trees lies beyond, the trunks randomly dotted with eyes and mouths, and the leafless branches disturbingly mobile. The carcass of a truly giant spider-creature with a head shaped like a skull lays across several of them, which are sinking those branches in to feast. Sounds of conflict are close, just beyond the fallen spider.
"I think we're at the border of one of the incarnations of the Plateau of Leng," Kai suggests.
"Picaresque," observes Tasha. "It reminds me of a certain world, but that lacked the skull-spider ambiance. I like the burning sky, I should use that motif in paint." Tasha looks around, but keeps walking. "So Leng, is it? Is that were those People of Leng come from? I don't want to assume, it might be some other Leng."
"There are a lot of Lengs," Kai notes, as the expedition begins to fan out.. towards the sounds of battle, of course. "Or rather, Leng gets around. Let's see what's going on, then we can find out if we're close to Sarnath, which has a gate."
"Thotep did say he likes to spread his brand, and if they're working with him, maybe they do, too. Maybe I should spread my brand." Tasha considers this as they move, with her taking a position back and to the right of Wulfgar. "So what's Sarnath like? I feel like it has reptiles."
"It should be abandoned," Kai says. "Everyone went into the toxic lake next to the city and was eaten by a giant frog or something." Shinbreaker honks at Tasha, but she's on the other side of Wulfgaar. Lila has dropped her old-hag illusion, and all of her tails are swishing about anxiously. There are odd croaking sort of noises from the battle ahead, but the trees only have eyes for the newcomers. "Should probably stay away from the trees. Keep an eye out for vegetable vampires, just in case."
"I have learned to avoid trees this adventure." Tasha then glances over and responds to what she assumes is Shinbreaker's concern -- or its hatred of everything -- by roar-barking back, which has a very deep rrrr-WOOF bass feel despite her small size. "Vegetables are bad enough without being vampires."
"Well, with these meat trees, we will have plenty of steaks to plunge into their hearts," Kai quips. The edges of the battle ahead can be seen: creatures that at first glance look like Tasha, without wings, some riding frog-like creatures with faces like sea anemones. There are winged creatures fighting them as well, which appear to be night-gaunts, which Tasha remembers from the Wild Hunt. Servitors of the god Nodens.
Tasha's groan is very audible. "Be careful before this place makes your jokes in to scenery." She walks for a moment then almost pauses when she sees something like herself, which makes her frown a little. "That's weird because it's familiar. They look like me, don't they? But wingless. I remember the night-gaunts with Nodens but what are the other things? And I would never ride a frog."
"Men of Leng," Kai says. "Very nasty satyrs that deal in the slave trade. The others are moon beasts. Followers of Nyarlothotep. I don't see any of the Harlot's forces though.. yet."
"Nodens has always wanted to take down Nyarlothotep," she adds.
"I'm sad the first satyr I meet is a slave trading problem." Tasha's head shakes and she almost kicks a rock, but then decides the rock might kick her back and edges around it instead. "And I can't blame Nodens, Thotep isn't exactly a positive force in the universe. He's out to get everyone on some level or other, if I understand him, and he's not any better to his true believers. Can Nodens actually stand up to Thotep, though? I had always thought Thotep was on the top shelf of deifics."
"It's nothing to do with Nyarlothotep's personality," Kai says. "Nodens wants to hunt him. Nodens is no slouch, and Nyalarthotep is just Thotep's prime avatar in the Dreamlands. What a deity can actually accomplish depends a lot on location. You won't see Sidhe here, as they're at a disadvantage, while outer beings have power here but not in Faerie."
"So we're in an area where outter being can reach. Does that mean beings like the Ogdoad -- if they had been free -- and something like Leviathan? The deity, not the Waymaker." This of course concerns Tasha, since these are her primary enemy and this a mutable battlefield where they might hold greater sway.
"Well, now that Nyarlothotep not sitting on the throne, other dark beings could try staking a claim," Kai reasons. "He was the one holding them at bay, for the most part. But there are other things in these planes to watch out for."
Some of those at the front of the group are already engaging the locals.. either to fight or to try and sort things out.
"I assume we need to get through the battle?" Lila-ren asks.
"Oh I bet, I never though he and the few others I know about were the only game in the fair. I know I've been fighting one pantheon among several, perhaps many. Maybe.. Maybe we'll even find some of their old works, so I can try to understand them better; not that there seems to be much to understand, or be understood, at my level and type of existence. Hunger, immortality, vastness, society." Tasha peers at the fighting but stays back for now. "So what does sitting on the throne actually do for anyone? I can't imagine it's out of a strong urge for contemporary political power and wealth, and none of these beings seem like they have penchant for governing."
"Probably just for the sake of ego," Kai says. "Or for the sacrifices. I'm going to pop up and get an overview really quick." And then she flies up through the trees into the burning sky.
"Just watch, we'll have to go through them," Lila says. "That's always the case."
"Yeah it does seem to be how things go. I don't mind a good fight but my last unhappy stint of violence has inspired me to a degree more of consideration about how I conduct my destruction." Tasha does eye the enemy, however. Satyrs like her, and possibly with similar weaknesses. Likewise, they'd know hers, at least as far as her lower half is concerned. The frogs she knows less about, including what they have to do with moons.
Kai returns quickly. "Alright.. we have to get everyone back to the stones," she says with a sense of forced calm. "Because in about ten minutes a lot of heads are going to explode otherwise."
Tasha heel-turns and begins heading right back for the stones. "I just got mine so no arguments from me. Should we warn Noden's men?"
"Not sure Nightgaunts would be effected," Kai says, making hurry-up motions. "I'm going to blow my cover to get the word out, which means I have to get them to stop fighting for a moment. When they all get to the circle, tell the mages to set up every barrier and ward they can."
"I'll help with the influencing," Tasha says, and she hurries away from her group to start herding adventurers away from the battlefield and back towards the stones with such rousing warnings as, "Head explosions incoming, run to the stones, quickly now!" and "You can fight another day, but if you don't run for the stones, this is your last day!" At the same time she begins to project a sense of danger pushing in from all around, with movement towards the stones producing feelings of increased safety. It's about all she can manage, especially since she feels it herself. When she can spare a moment she tries to project the idea towards Noden's forces as well, remembering the stern but polite old man who let her run with him. he deserves better than to let his men die without a thought, even if those men may be nothing such.
Following on Tasha's efforts, Kai's voice sounds in her (and presumably everyone else's) head: "A Fallen is approaching. Return to the Standing Stones. Listen to the blond, winged lupo-gryphon." Tasha gets the sense that the tone carries a bit of compulsion with it.
The Men of Leng and the moon beasts stop, and fall over unconscious. This makes retreat a bit easier.
Tasha isn't used to being referred to so formally, it makes her proud in a way she doesn't have time to identify as she herds people further. She even waves to the nightgaunts to hurry along as well, uncertain if they understand her or can even hear anything, faceless as they are. "Almost there everyone, keep at it! Mages, ready your wards, Kai will instruct you! Everyone else inside, inside!"
"Tasha, I'll try to keep Nyarlothotep's forces unconscious until they get the barriers up, but I can do it for a few minutes," Kai transmits just to her. "Have Lila put up an illusion while the mages work."
The adventurers are gathering at the stones, though some seem very angry about it, even struggling against their own legs.
Tasha frowns at the legs, waving Brother Bone. "Try and encourage people to be calm and stop resisting, and see if anyone's injured. I'll let you and the other priests tend to wounded and morale." She doesn't even wait for a reply, turning then to Lila. "You're up on illusions! Hide us while the mages work out their wards. Next in turn is the nightguants, and Tasha has no idea what to tell them or how they can help. She knows they can fight, so her best stab at it becomes, "Hold the line with the others, if you can help shield us, please do so."
The faceless beings stand outside the stones, unresponsive. It is a way to encourage others to stay inside though. The mages work, as does Lila.. but whatever illusion she's putting up isn't visible from inside of it. There's also something in head. Three indistinct beats, which repeat every few seconds. It doesn't have the same feel that Kai does though.
Tasha can feel a sense of a coming storm. She begins to reinforce the Blue shielding in her own mind, something she's been doing out of habit ever since Kai and others urged her to do so, her only real defense against the ineffable psionic attacks of her myriad and alien enemies. She glances around, but sees nothing more to be done, so she focuses and she waits inside the circle. Whatever the nightgaunts are up to, she doesn't have the time -- or understanding -- to argue with it. Something is definitely coming.
"May the shell of the primordial egg protect us once more," Brother Bone chants. Other clerics beseech their gods, mages call upon esoteric energies, and others.. clutch their heads. The beats are even starting to get through Tasha's shield. They're like a drum, but also words. "B.. N.. Af...." Outside, the Men of Leng and the moon beasts begin to stir.
Tasha doesn't know what the message means, but suspects she shouldn't try to know. To confirm, she sends to kai, "I can sense words. Should I reject them? My shield ins't blocking them out anymore." For what it's worth she keeps trying to rebuild the shield against the attack, but whatever's coming seems stronger than her and, presumably, Kai as well -- a daunting prospect.
"Yes! Whatever they say, do the opposite!" is the response.
Wulfgaar is down on one knee now, clutching his head. "Be.. Not.. Afraid.." he mutters.
Many others begin to pick up the chant.
Some might say that's what Tasha always does when people tell her to do something, but she's made great strides otherwise. Today, however, she intends to fully resists. She continues her mental reinforcement and, upon Wulfgar's words, lets go of her will to resist her fears. She decides to just be afraid of whatever this thing is, an easy enough thing to do for most, but much harder for someone who routinely challenges the unknown and battles indescribable horror.
When the chant starts up, Tasha starts to shout it down. "No! Be afraid, don't listen to it! Don't do anything it says! Reject the message, be afraid, be afraid Be-" Tasha has ample experience with fear, she realizes, and so she decides to share some of it even as she repeats in her head, "Be afraid be afraid be afraid."
The satyrs are outside the circle now, grappling with the Nightgaunts. Up close they look ugly, with coarse hair and misshapen faces with rictus snarls. The voice is audible now, declaring, "BE NOT AFRAID" as the source draws nearer.
The awakening and awful Men of Leng make it easier to feel afraid. To Tasha it feels strangely nostalgic, something from her past. She is always afraid but she has learned to overcome it with a mix of bravery and flippancy, a kind of courageous irreverence, and a mindset that slides off horror. And she continues to shout in her head, trying to project her many fearful experiences. It feels like screaming down a storm, but it also feels like better than doing nothing.
The source of the voice is visible over the trees now, which are beginning to shake and rupture. The Fallen is a fallen angel. The wheels of eyes are there, but within is a blob of ever changing internal organs. Around it, disembodied spheres of flesh expand from nothing and then shrink back to nothing. There are eyeless faces that sometimes appear, and when a mouth forms a long, toothed tongue shoots out to catch a satyr. Once drawn back up into it, the mouth vanishes, but some translucent bladder appears briefly in the organ-ball, with the blurred shadow of a struggling figure within. "BE NOT AFRAID," it constantly bellows.
If Tasha had been having troubles with fear she certainly doesn't now. She immediately understands on a personal level the being is stealing away it's victims souls, and while of the same type of being as the angel she met, she knows there is something terribly wrong with this one. The angel she had met was hardly a reassuring presence; most would have considered it horrifying and overwhelming, and only her fondness for the strange and awe inspiring had her feel otherwise. her internal chant and shielding attempts persist, but she knows such a being is capable of singing her soul apart, it is on a level beyond her -- possibly vastly so. She considers, briefly, how she might fight it, and the projected results are grim and fraught with uncertainty and danger.
There are screams around her, but as the entity passes overhead its tongue-strikes are deflected, even though glancing touches on the satyrs and moon beasts causes them to turn inside out. It keeps going, eventually passing, and the deep voice fading.
Tasha releases an exhale, and if she had been Human then, she'd have been sweating. There's a moment then where she thinks back on the Winged Gift comics and how she's supposed to be some angel gifted to fight the monsters of that world; faced now with the wrath of the real thing, the comics live up to their name by feeling comical.And yet part of her wonders if she could have beaten it in the perverse way her old, dead self wanted to throw itself at the unknown and see if she could ruin it. She realizes the impulse was part of old approach to fear, the decide to meet fear with violence, to throw herself at it until either she or it were ruined.
Tasha's thoughts and the experience leave her distracted, the sense of insignificance another cold reminder of what she faces again and again, and how great it is. How small she is.
People begin to recover, and the barriers drop. "Corruption of the divine," Brother Bone says, scales puffed out. "A terrible thing, indeed."
"I could beat that thing.. once I get my ninth tail," Lila notes, covering her nose at the smell coming from the bodies outside. With no more enemies to fight, the Nightgaunts take wing and fly off in search of another battle.
The words snap Tasha out of her dark reverie, and she realizes belated that she's increasingly angry. Furious. She hates feeling afraid, really afraid. So much of her mental effort is to stave off the crushing emotion, a immutable requirement of her work, and the essence of her enemies. It feels like being defiled in some way, to have to feel afraid again. To not suppress it in the complex ways she does.
It makes Tasha want to chase after the angel, to kill it. To stomp it down in to the mud, to crush it with all she can throw against it. To obliterate it for making her feel afraid, and small. It's an old, old feeling, almost as old as her fear. Before she realizes it she's staring off where the angel trod, standing alone as people begin to move on.
A heavy, taloned hand falls on Tasha's shoulder. Brother Bone says, "It is an endless struggle, is it not? The dragon within cannot be slain. But one cannot defeat the storm, no matter the urge."
"Yeah," Tasha says in that distracted, heated way a person does when their ire is focused elsewhere. "But I can fight that. Or I could. If I was stronger than I am, maybe I could." The indignity clings, and it surprises her because she thought she'd left this side of herself behind; she suspects she must have buried it deep, and deeper still after what happened to her soul. To see another soul-eater so soon must have been a crack in her fortitude, open wide by, as it happened, her own trick.
"Where is your companion?" the cleric asks. "She was not inside the barrier with us."
"What?" This snaps Tasha out of her fury like cold water, the fear of smallness pushed aside by the fear of loss and failure. She snaps her head around to search for Kai, looking near the circle's edge, then further.
It's a mess out there. The bodies of the satyrs and frog-like moon beasts litter the area around the circle, and the trees are dead as well - many burst apart, or with just their eyes ruptured and oozing bloody sap.
Tasha is surprised to find even the trees dead, she had thought them nothing but part of the landscape, almost a mirage; that they ahd minds and possibly even souls is a disturbing thought. And the smell, she has to cover her nose to avoid it, and even that doesn't help. Flashes of herself in pieces come unbidden and unwanted as she searches, eventually she starts calling out, "Kai? Kai, where are you," repeating the same in her head over the ansible.
There's something of a ping in reply, enough to get a direction from.
That's not good, Tasha thinks, all to herself. If Kai doesn't even have enough strength to reply, something is seriously wrong. Kai is supposed to be Kainudy's secret avatar of destruction, some percentage splinter of the presumably vst energies of Kaiundy, to see her drained makes the situation that much more dire in hindsight.
Rushing in the direction of the ping Tasha vaults corpses and shoves aside bodies, knowing time can be of the essence in a crisis.
Eventually she finds something that's not entirely burst open. The red hair is a giveaway. But 'not entirely burst open' leaves room for 'slightly burst open'. "Ugh," Kai groans. Her eyes are missing, but she still manages to grin. "No soul. Comes in handy," she says.
"You look like I've felt," Tasha observes, stunned by Kai's injury and going with the first quip that enters her head., She's silent for a moment after, struggling with what next to say. "Can you.. Can you heal? Do you want me to pick you up?"
"Give me a moment," Kai replies. "No unlimited power source for me. Drag another satyr over to me."
Tasha looks around and as a guess tries to find one with eyes that are largely intact. This she drags over, grabbing one hoofed leg (one is all there is) and pulling it along. "Me either, it's frustrating isn't it? I wanted to fight that angel. I wanted to drive it in to the dust." She knows she's rambling a little, but small talk's important for injured victims, it's something someone told her once. Or maybe told Nora.
"That wasn't even it's full body, just what was squeeze through to this dimension," Kai notes, putting a hand on the body once Tasha brings it over. "I'm going to go spriggan for a bit. Ugly Faerie. Go warn the others that the spiders will be coming soon."
Tasha tries to envision the whole thing. She wants to ask about it, but there isn't time. "I'm on it." She awkwardly pats Kai on the hand, encouragingly, and then hurries off to warn the others.
The adventurers are mostly on their feet, but some are still recovering. The mages and clerics look exhausted. Even Lila looks tired.
"Kai's down but not out. We can't rely on her protection for now. We need to get moving, the spiders are coming. If you can walk and have the strength, pick up those who can't move and start moving." Tasha's voice is monotone, authoritative. She doesn't assert herself like this often, for one she doesn't really like leading, doesn't like to be the decider. But she knows it's necessary, and she's had to do it before. "If you need help, say so. I can carry someone. Anyone need help?"
"What in the Nine Hells just happened?" one armored figure demands, but without much heat. He's soon helping someone else up anyway. Nobody seems physical injured, just.. shaken. "Where do we head?" another person asks Tasha.
Tasha finds she isn't sure, she looks to Brother Bone. "You know the way, don't you? We need to keep going, keep looking. Or turn, but I don't see any real injuries, which is very good." She turns then to start inspecting the people around her, looking for people who aren't getting up. "As for what happened, that was a fallen angel."
"It certainly fell on us," someone comments, and there are few chuckles. Brother Bone leans on his staff, and suggests to Tasha, "Sarnath. But we don't know which direction.. Kai didn't tell us, if she spotted it." He then points up to the sky.
"That leaves me, then, unless someone else can fly. Get everyone as ready as you can, I'll see if I can find it." Tasha looks up, searching the sky for horrors she might have missed, then her wings spread apart and she begins rising without the need for a start, not wanting to waste time when they could be set upon at any moment.
From the air, Tasha can see that they're in a shallow valley, but things become indistinct with distance. To the 'east' is the nearer side of the valley, which does rise up to a plateau of sorts, and what might be either a city or a heat mirage is in the distance. To the 'west', the further side of the valley, is a much steeper and rockier incline. That's the spiders are emerging. Some as big as a house, many the size of wolves.
Tasha's decision is made for her: heading towards the spiders is likely certain death for most of her team, possibly including Kai and certainly everyone else except her. She could escape, but that would be among her last resorts. She returns to the ground and reports. "We'll head East, that way. There's no time, we need to move. The spiders are coming and they're in significant numbers." She decides not to mention the uncertainty, it migth casue those less willing to follow to make off on their own, to the deteriment. She also resolves to scout again once they've moved a ways.
Since the mages certainly aren't in any shape to set up any more defenses, the group starts moving in the indicated direction. Before the last of them leave the stone circle, she spots a figure coming from the direction she left Kai.
Tasha snaps around to follow the figure even as she helps a mage along. "Kai," she calls out in question, ears focusing on the distant silhouette.
The sight of her reminds Tasha of her own post-explosion, slightly mis-matched form. The spriggan is like the version Tasha saw in the apartment at the new base, garishly colored with disturbing eyes and sharp teeth. But she did have most of her clothing. "Yes," Kai replies. "I tried to reuse most of the blood, but I'll need to wash or burn these clothes at some point."
But Tasha smiles anyway, because she knows it can be worse. "At least you're alive. Come on, I think I spotted the city. And if I didn't, well, we'll find it. Sooner, hopefully, than later." She waves Kai to follow along, offering her a shoulder if she needs it.
"I used to be able to defeat armies, in theory," Kai claims and does lean on the offered shoulder. "Things must be a real mess out there, and I have no idea who could have summoned a Fallen."
Tasha wraps an arm around Kai for support and helps her along. "I guess the years must have drained you, or is it her? her draining energies?" She sighs, looking out across the vast wasteland, the detritus of countless battles, perhaps infinite battles. Infinities within an infinity. "I'd like to know who could have, too. I'd like to know about them, but there will be time later, when we're away from here. You might be glad to know that we didn't suffer any losses, and everyone's on their feet. I have Brother Bone leading the way. We'll just have to get there before the spiders get us." And if not, well, Tasha decides they'll just have to become one more battle on this endless battlefield.