They moved through the grounds of the Château, much like the town, the stone garden decorations lay in ruins. At the large wooden door at the entrance Château, Effie put her hand to the door to assess the amount of force she'd have to barge through it, however it was unlocked and creaked open. She shared a confused glance with the others before moving inside.
Effie, Hamish and Captain Nabila walked slowly down the corridor. The open archways either side of them overlooked a large, long dead vineyard and a view of the cove from which they emerged.
They moved forward as quietly as possible, sword, blunderbuss and staff at the ready. The soft sound of footsteps and light ratter of armor made it's way the open space of the central courtyard.
Troops in white were stood on the three floors of balcony surrounding them. Their weapons raised. They remained still and silent, watching the intruders.
Eighty yards ahead of them, atop a wooden scaffolding at the base of the brilliant white clock tower stood a woman of ghostly pale complexion. Her shaved head showed a scar, running from throat to back, poorly stitched together. She clapped slowly, echoing throughout the courtyard.
'Your armor' The Unhanged Woman pointed down to the trio, pacing back and forth. 'Dwarfen made. You could feed a village for a year for the cost of that. And yet I am the one condemned?' she shook her head.
Captain Nabila cleared her throat softly. 'Have you noticed.' She whispered to the siblings trying to move her lips as little as possible. 'We might have the only magic user here?'
The siblings slowly looked around and scouted the white troops on the balconies. Swords, axes, notched arrows, a hammer, a primed chakram even a metal pipe, but not a single wand, staff of any thing to indicate a magical offense.
Hamish concentrated. No magical energy in the area. None form the troops surrounding them. Non from the supposed reanimated woman above them. He made eye contact with Effie and shook his head, confirming what he suspected, an imitator.
'I hope you've enjoined this beautiful ancient Olorian architecture.' The Unhung Woman grabbed the balcony and snarled. 'Or as you'll know it soon, your grave!' She looked around at her forces gathered on the baloney.
'Bring me their heads!' She barked at her troops, the collection of white troops spread out, some head for the stairs to get closer. Multiple arrows flew for the trio, Effie cut a half dozen down with a swift swing of her mighty sword.
Hamish dived out of the way, from the floor he let of a volley of scorching rays towards staircases on the ground floor. A descending troop jumped through from the stairs, despite his agility, his clothing caught ablaze.
Dropping his sword he tried to take of his burning armor but fell to the ground dead before he could get off anything more than his gauntlets, his fellow troops turned back to find a staircase not on fire.
Nabila rolled out of the way and immediately began unloading her Blunderbuss. The force from the blasts sent the archers careening backwards.
An elfen troop dropped to the ground clutching her shoulder, she squeezed her fist to make sure she could still move her arm. She pushed up to one knee and a ceramic ball bounced on the balcony in front of her. It took her a second to realize what it was and another second that the fuse had burned too short for her to be anything other than completely fucked. The explosion atomized her and a few other nearby troops.
The Captain unloaded her blunderbuss and tossed explosives into the balconies like confetti at a wedding. Along with Hamish blocking the only escape routes on the ground floor, they proved an effective fighting duo, however some of the troops had managed to get to the ground and charged at the three.
'You two, get to cover. ' Effie shouted behind her, she stood shoulder first to the charging troop.
Her girthy great sword faced was held two handed at her waist, facing away from her attackers.
A halberd was thrust toward her, she arced her sword upward, disarming her attacker before bringing her gargantuan blade down to the troop's collar bone. She turned inward pulling the sword from the troop's stomach.
Using the inertia of her turn, she swung toward the three remaining attackers.
It was supposed to put some distance between them however the very tip of her sword made contact with a dwarf's closed helm. He fell to his knees, axe clattering to the stone ground.
She stepped backwards, two attackers, both human, first, rapier, awful stance, heavy breathing, young, he was panicked.
Second, longsword, older, unfazed. 'Take down the longsword, the lad will run.' Effie thought to herself backing up. From behind, A Blunderbuss shot put a stop to a notched bow at the balcony.
The longsword leaped forward to take a swing, Effie barged shoulder first to his legs, she contacted heavily. He landed face first on the stone floor, but was still conscious as Effie punctured his throat.
She resumed her first position, shoulder first, two handed at her waist, facing away from the troop with the rapier. His face was as white as a sheet, he could barley hold his weapon his hand was shaking so much. Effie just shook her head ever so slightly.
He dropped his sword with a clatter and ran, he only got two steps before The Unhanged Woman put an arrow into his neck. Effie ran backwards to join Hamish and Nabila in cover.
'You thought you were going to be facing just my troops?' The Unhanged Woman shook her head frantically, pacing back an forth on the wooden scaffold she stood. 'No no no, you're going to be facing my creature from The Abyss!' She screeched at the top of her lungs. 'Unleash my creature!'
From beneath the wooden structure she stood, iron gates opened with a loud scrape, reviling a dark aperture in the wall.
From the darkness, a dull thud emitted, the ground shook. Slowly emerging from the darkness, a colossal reptilian creature crawled. The sunlight reflected off it's white scales lighting it up like a holy light.
The forty foot creature was bleeding from either side of his mouth, where crude piercings had been affixed to hold in place the reigns which were being held by Orc, sat a top the abomination's back.
'I call it, The Horror!' The Unhanged Woman laughed manically.
As soon as The Horror was out of it's cage entirely, it reared upwards and it let out a blood curdling scream. Effie fell to her knee, clutching her elven ears in pain.
'Oh wank.' Nabila whispered to herself.
The Orc Beastmaster cracked the reigns to give the command to attack, however The Horror immediately rolled over crushing the Orc into a maroon paste.
The Horror attacked the nearest thing to it which was two of The Unhanged Woman's troops, it grabbed one by the torso and violently shook them from side to side before The Horror bit down, sending the troops limbs in four different directions.
'I can always find more.' The Unhanged Woman thought aloud.
Effie came out from her cover in the alcove, confident in The Horror's distraction. 'Your dead you imposter cunt!' Effie yelled, running toward the scaffold.
'You'll find it difficult to kill one which is already dead.' She mocked as she ran into the tower.
'She's mine, can you handle that thing?' She nodded to the white reptile currently distracted by making a fine paste out of a half-orc troop on the opposite side of the courtyard.
'We can do our best.' Nabila tried to convince herself more than anyone else.
'Good.' Lens ran up the wooden stairs. Near the top, she shoulder barged a troop off the structure the the stone floor below, before she disappeared into the tower in pursuit.
An arrow whiffed past Nabila's head, she quickly spun, took aim at the offender, a fellow human, and fired. The Blunderbuss' blast caught the attention of The Horror. It turned to them, dropped what was left of a elven troop to the floor and charged
Nabila tossed a small pouch of gun powder in The Horror's direction and hit it with the Blunderbuss. The explosion only managed to slow down the giant lizard by way of a slight stumble, now with a new scorch mark on it's back, The Horror was running right at them again.
'Leg it.' Hamish grabbed her and they both broke in to a sprint, they spotted a few smaller alcoves with walls built up under them. Hamish and Nabila jumped through and backed up to wall, The Horror attempted the same but could only fit about a third of it's face through the gap.
Hamish pointed and let off a volley of bubbled acid into it's face, it screamed again. Frantic, it clambered backwards into the courtyard and attacked a nearby tiefling troop. Nabila could hear the rattling of armor coming down from a staircase just next to them, he made eye contact with Hamish and they took cover against the back wall.
A gnome appeared from behind the pillar. Brandishing a scimitar, his armor was a couple of sizes too big for him, it looked as though it was designed for a dwarf. Nabila gestured with her hands and mouthed, 'All yours.' Hamish blinked behind his and punched him in the back of the head, with the help of the ring of ram, the gnome was tossed with a squeal face first on to the stone floor, jolting his back. Before could recover The Horror had attacked. In one smooth curved motion, it grabbed the gnomes legs and bit down.
The gnome flew and slammed into a pillar on the second floor before bouncing back to the stone ground floor where The Horror finished him off. Hamish didn't intend for that to be so undignified, but shrugged it off. He moved forward taking cover behind a pillar, Nabila moved up to join him.
'We need to penetrate that thing's scales.' Hamish told her. 'How close can you get with that thing?' nodding to her Blunderbuss.
'I like my limbs where they are so about ten yards.' Nabila answered. 'What you thinking love?'
'Get as close as you can on it's belly, unload between the scales and I'll follow up. You got it?'
'Got it.' She moved from the pillar to a short wall as Hamish kicked over a barrel of water and ran up a flight of stairs, she raised an eye brow but shrugged it off.
As The Horror made another frantic pass, spooked by the increasing fire from the staircases.
Nabila leaped forward and thrust a her side dagger into the scaled belly. She held on for dear life as The Horror crawled up the courtyard wall, dipping it's tummy low to try pick off Nabila against the wall. The space was tight and Nabila couldn't get her Blunderbuss into a firing position between scales.
The Horror crawled back down to the floor and jumped directly up. Nabila took her shot and another for good measure however The Horror wasn't putting it's legs down, it was landing belly first. Nabila's long Blunderbuss broke like a twig under the great weight.
As she felt the pressure begin to mount being sandwiched between scale and stone floor she became engulfed in water and was thrust into the air at such velocity, The Horror was flipped over to it's back.
From where she landed on the roof, she saw Hamish jumping from the third floor of the courtyard, careening to the Horror's stomach spear in hand. The spear went through the weakened spot in the stomach like a hot knife through butter.
Hamish twisted his elbow, careening elemental lightning magic into The Horror's belly through the spear.
It convulsed violently throwing Hamish off balance and to the ground. He landed hard on his back, whip lashing his neck into the stone floor. Despite being knocked loopy, he pointed his finger at the spear and unleashed a stream of lightning that cooked The Horror from the insides. It would never move again.
Hamish lowered his arm, glassy eyed, he continued to lay on the wet stone floor. Looking at the clear blue sky, he saw the blurry outline of Nabila poke her head out over the edge of the roof. 'Can you help me down love?'
From the floor, he lifted his arm. A small disk of ice formed at the edge of the roof, which gently lowered her to the ground.
'I thought I was going to die again' Nabila held her arm out to Hamish, he took it and the Captain pulled up the skinny wizard with ease.
'I can't believe it worked.' Hamish admitted.
'How could it not have, it was mental.' She looked deep into his eyes and giggled 'I had a feeling you'd be full of surprises.' she had a bashful look on her face and without thinking they closed the gap between them.
Immediately an explosive squelching noise erupted next to them.
Hamish opened his eyes, meeting Nabila's own. Her eyebrow was cocked, moth agape.
The side of her face was plastered with blood. Looking further, the entire side of her body was plastered red with bits of gore.
'Oh, that's grim.' Nabila said nodding ground next to them. The remnants of a beat up corpse laid in the middle of a large and growing splat of blood.
'Can you make sure she's dead!' They looked up to see Effie leaning over the baloney at the top of the tower. A couple of hairs out of place but overall looking perfectly alive. 'Sorry about the mess!'
Hamish kicked corpse and looked up. 'She's dead!' Effie nodded and disappeared from view.
Nabila looked to Hamish and leaned closer. 'Shall we continue?'
'I think we should clean up first.'
She pouted, 'You're no fun.'