General Summary
DOC & CO (EIRWEN’S MANSION)
Everyone except for Leo and Eirwen stayed in the East Wing of the mansion for the next several hours. Wren, Cassia, Fable, and Lucius were eating at the dining table, while Doc, Asphur and JFK were sitting near the fireplace swapping stories. Lexus was reading alone in the far eastern Study, completely absorbed in thought.
In the West Wing, Leo was busy examining the portrait in the library again, while Eirwen was resting in his coffin in the lowest level of the mansion–below ground.
Lucius no longer found his dinner appetizing after watching Wren devour his food–a fresh rabbit he had caught in the mansion’s garden–without any manners, and decided to go take a walk. After he left the room and was heading down the hallway, a metal spider-like Construct known as a Retriever broke through the 10-foot-tall front and entry hall doors of the mansion.
Lucius quickly climbed up one of the mansion’s gothic walls and hid behind a stone gargoyle (that was built inside its walls, oddly enough) before warning Doc and the others. Doc and Asphur were the first to hear the sound of a crash and Lucius yelling, so they started making their way out of the room with Cassia close behind. While they were coming, Lucius executed a sneak attack on the Retriever with one of his regular daggers, but even after hitting the creature spot on with a move that would’ve fatally wounded other creatures, the dagger simply bounced off its metal shell.
Around this time was when Leo managed to hear what was going on from the other room, and phased through the walls into the hallway. He wondered past the broken front entrances and the construct toward the room Doc was still in while totally confused.
Behind the Retriever entered another Construct known as a Corpse Collector that still had rotten corpses hanging from the sharp instruments sticking out of its body. Doc and Asphur finally made it into the hallway and started to attack the Retriever. After hitting it with both of his warhammers, Doc realized it was immune to attacks from non-magical weapons, and relayed the information to the others. Luckily, all of Asphur’s arrows and attacks were magical, so she managed to do a ton of damage to the creature.
It was then that Leo got the idea of trying to possess the Retriever’s body, but since it was his first time trying since becoming a ghost, he only half took control of it. The Retriever continued to try and fight against his possession as the Corpse Collector used its Paralyzing Beam on Doc. Unable to move, Asphur had to hold the line while the Retriever attacked her in a frenzy and the Corpse Collector summoned 5 specters under its command of previous souls it had killed. Cassia, JFK, and Wren fought off the specters, while Fable suddenly appeared on the scene.
Leo had just completely taken over the Retriever’s body when Fable opened a portal to the Dimension of Air, which sucked the Corpse Collector inside. As the monster fell for eternity, a mini-tornado burst into the room that caused Doc to go flying straight through a wall–ending his paralyzed condition. Asphur asked if Fable could close the portal, to which he quickly did.
Eirwen woke up after hearing Doc crashing through the wall and rushed upstairs to see what happened. He was upset at the state of his mansion, but pinched the bridge of his nose and did his best to accept it, since he knew it was the price of allowing them into his home. Lexus, meanwhile, had only just popped his head out of the eastern Study to see what was going on–having no idea a battle had just happened.
CHARLOTTE (BETHANALORE ICE PALACE)
After Charlotte had teleported back to the palace (and vomited into a bucket Storm had prepared for her over-exerting her magic), she had been in the middle of having a conversation with him when they suddenly heard screams coming from the guards outside her room. Storm was the first to act, and bolted out of the room, then down the hallway toward the screams. Right as he turned the corner, a huge Construct on wheels spewed a cone of acidic fire at him that burned nearly all of the flesh from his non-prosthesis arm.
Enraged, Storm pulled out the massive Icebrand Greatsword strapped to his back and attacked the Hellfire Engine with his working prosthetic arm. Its magical ice was enough to extinguish some of the flames and patch up the melting walls and floor of ice around them, but didn’t injure the Construct itself much.
Charlotte caught up to Storm and wiped the acid off him with her prosthesis before healing him enough that most of his flesh and muscle regenerated itself, and his humerus was no longer showing. The two did their best to fight the Construct off alone in a dead-end hallway made of ice, until Robin emerged from one of the rooms to see what was happening. She cast a Storm Sphere around the Hellfire Engine–aiding the other two in their battle.
After they had weakened the monster enough for Storm to knock it on its side with his indomitable strength, it spewed another cone of fire right toward Robin and Charlotte. Storm pushed Robin out of the way–which knocked her out of her wheelchair and against the wall into Charlotte–so he took on the full brunt of the attack. Doing his best to protect his prosthesis, the other half of Storm’s body was burned away into a bloody, meaty mess.
Charlotte and Robin finished off the Hellfire Engine, then rushed to heal Storm, who was on his last leg. He refused to cry out from the pain of his injuries even as he was healing, since he didn’t want any of the soldiers to hear him in a moment of weakness.
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