Enemies (NPC)'s Story

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As Allan chopped the branch from the tree, a low and hushed grunt could be heard, almost like something was in pain. A nearby tree, when the party had continued on, slowly and quietly uprooted itself, using their footsteps as cover to move quickly.

A section of the bark creaked and split, revealing the face of a treant, awakened by the injury of the tree nearby. The treant, now fully out of the snow-covered ground, slowly began to drift towards where the party stopped. Once the treant was almost within its arm's reach, which was made from several heavier branches twining together into an arm and hand shape, it raised its leg into the air, both of which were made from twined roots, and slammed it into the ground, the booming impact knocking snow off of nearby trees, and instantly grabbing the attention of the entire party.

The treant's eyes began to glow a bright amber, signature of a treant becoming enraged, as its crackly and rumbling voice boomed forth,
"You shall not leave this place!"

As its first attack, it swung its massive arm at Thoroark, as he was the closest and largest, attempting to bludgeon him with the sheer size and weight of the massed branches.

The giant turned to the origin of the booming and ducked under the Treant's swing,swinging his ice pick up so that it lodged into the gnarly branches that made up the massive arm. Hoping his weight would atleast slow down the wooden creature a little bit. He was almost flung off as the arm eventually halted but the cuffs around his wrist kept him attached to the creature.

Thoroark grimaced and grabbed the handle of the pick again,quickly pulling himself up and onto the creatures arm,he let go of the lodged picks handle and grabbed hold of the other pick at his belt with his free hand,preparing to shove the thing into the other side of the arm if it began to throw him off. Of course now his arm movements were limited by how far the stretchy cord could reach but it was better then falling,and the giant could still use his weapon. Which he happily had managed to hold onto.

"Zander,Fire would be nice! Allan go for the other arm! Lauren and Michael aim for the head and the legs. Quicker this thing loses limb's faster it falls." Thoroark roared,tearing one of the cuff's off his wrist and throwing the ice pick down to the ground for Allan. Hoping he'd get the message and try and replicate Thoroark's actions,hopefully he wouldn't get hurt doing it but it was hard to tell what could happen in situations like this. It was just a good thing the heavy Treant seemed slow for now,otherwise he wouldn't have had time to do much other then block. Finally Thoroark turned around and stabbed the heavy blade into the Treant's Hand,aiming to cut off any fingers it decided to grow.

The treant roared in pain as Thoroark's heavy blade went into its hand, lopping off what was going to be a hand. As a reaction from this, it lurched forward, and then swung its arm again towards a nearby boulder, attempting to crush the large man against it, or at least to get him off of its arm.

In the same movement, with its other arm, the treant scooped and compacted some snow from the ground, pressing it hard enough to make it more solid, and flung the barrel-sized ice ball directly at Michael, who the massive creature assumed was the most inexperienced.

The Treant surprised Michael, but not as much as much as it should have. His life in the caravan taught him two things. To heed all warning and assume problems are bigger than suggested. Thoroark's almost casual iteration of the kinds of creatures to be found on this mountain put a fear into Michael better than any zealot ever could; as such the merchant was trying to think of any and every creature that would decide to call this rock home. A Treant was somewhere in the middle of that list.

What was more uprising was the quick reaction of Thoroark, his battle readiness was something worthy of a bard's song. The giant was climbing onto the great beast and hacking away at it like an enraged lumberjack. But what was most surprising of all was the rate at which a white sphere that the Treant had scooped from the snow began to increase in size.

'Oh.' The realization hit Michael quicker than the ball of ice would have, allowing him a few precious moments to react. It was coming too fast to dodge; bracing himself he put one foot behind him and bent both knees, turning his torso to the right and stretching his hands out to the side. As the ball was within a meter Michael turned himself sharply. He slapped at the mass with both hands and felt the surface give way. He felt his heart stop. If the ball was too soft the lack of strong impact wouldn't let the enchanted gloves trigger and he'd be crushed by the weight.

A fraction of a second later he hit the more solid mass of the snowball and the gloves released their kinetic energy into the strike. Michael could feel the change in inertia as the ball changed trajectory; instead it rolled past at an angled path and rammed into a tree, cracking the ball in half and scaring some onlooking birds out of the branches. There stood Michael, his entire front covered in a layer of snow. During the sudden change in direction whatever snow wasn't completely attached to the mass was shaken off and massed itself onto Michael's face and body, turning him into a white silhouette from the waist up.

He stood still for a moment before he could regain his wits. Coming back from his stunned state, Michael shook himself of the snow and began to remove the wooden rings from his fingers and took a copper penny from his pocket.

"Allan, this is enchanted." He approached the young warrior and shoved the penny into his palm.

"If you can, spit on this and rub. It'll start to spark. Throw it down that things gullet quickly or you'll lose your hand. Put some fire in its belly. If you're going to look away from the Treant, look behind it or you might go blind for a few seconds." Patting the youth on the shoulder he approached Lauren, handing three of the wooden rings to her.

"They flash and smoke after you blow into them. You can use one for cover or distraction. If you use your arrows with them maybe you can pin some to it's face and stun the beast." Lastly he went to Zander.

"Focus your fire on its legs, burn away a knee or something. Anything else you can think of, whatever keeps it from moving around as much is perfect. If you can melt some snow maybe you can make it slip." Satisfied with the plan, Michael backed away from the fight and checked his gloves. 'Only a quarter charge. Great.' Looking around he looked at the keg-sized snowball that the Treant had thrown at him. It was too large to use, not to mention broken in half, but it gave him an idea.

"If this Treant wants to throw things, the lease I can do is return the favor." Taking handful of stones from the ground, the merchant picked through and took a smooth one. Tossing it upwards to test the heft, Michael tried to come up with what he was going to do. 'Best I can do is pester the thing, cause a good distraction while Allan tries to get up and put that coin to good use. Throwing stones might not normally hurt a Treant's rough hide, but if the energy was boosted I could really cause some damage. And I should get a good twenty stones out of the charge I have left.' Plan decided, Michael took a pitcher's stance and pelted the small stone at the walking tree's hide. It shot forward faster than one would expect, a sure sign the enchantment was working as intended. He could hear the whir as the wind was parted by the stone mass and swiftly flew to the Treant's bark, embedding itself into the wood. Penetration, but nothing deep enough to cause structural damage. But it would hurt like hell, and that would satisfy Michael's needs.

He was surprised by Michael's reaction to a treant's idea of a snowball fight, and looked at the penny he was given. "Consider it done Merchant." He drew his sword and tossed the stick, kicking up a pile of snow as he bolted for the treant, yelling at Lauren as he passed. "Aim for the knees!" He scooped up the ice pick and came around to the left of the treant's still extended arm. Michael's stone kept its attention away from him and he leapt and twisted in the air, plunging half of the picks blade into the newly formed hand, and pulled himself up onto its arm. He let go of the pick and drew his knife, leaping again and driving the knife into the woody shoulder. He hefted his bastard sword and looked down at the arm he was secured to. The area on the inner side of the "elbow" seemed weaker, thinner, so he aimed for that. He got a good hit, cutting almost half way through the elbow, nearly severing it and certainly rendering it useless. Just to be safe, he gave it another good hack, severing the arm completely. He sheathed the blade quickly and held tightly to the knife as the treant thrashed and howled like a well made bassoon. Muttering a small prayer to whatever god was watching, he spat on the penny as directed, gave it a good rub and kicked off the shoulder of the treant, tossing the penny straight into the mouth of the roaring treant. He landed a little lopsided, unable to correctly judge the ground's surface and fell hard on his shoulder. It would bruise, but other than that he was fine, more importantly, he'd successfully severed the treant's arm and deployed the enchanted penny.

When the Trent first appeared Lauren was too stunned to move, she had never seen one and that she was surprised was an understatement. But Thoroark fast reaction was enough for Lauren to start moving as well. She quickly started firing some arrows to the head of the beast, but with little impact. "If only I had fire" she thought, but now was not the time to think on what she didn't have. She barely looked when the thing aimed a snowball to Michael, she was more worried in not hitting Thoroark with her arrows.

But them the merchant approached her, with a lot of snow on him, but apparently without injuries, he gave her three rings and said the instructions. She was thankful for the aid and started felling bad, apparently he was not the burden she thought he would be. She used one of the rings in an arrow she shot at the Trent's head, she hoped this could distract him for a while. When Allan ran past her and yelled "Aim for the knees!", she didn't need to be said that twice, she started shooting a barrage of arrows at the Trent's knees, it didn't do much damage, but it hindered it's movements.

She was getting ready to shot another arrow with one of Michael's rings, but she didn't have any. "Dammit, I'm out of arrows!" she cursed, well she still had the rings. And she was fast, so she decided on running and trying to capture the Trent's attention so that her companions could finish it. And she did a small note to herself, she needed to start learning how to save her arrows.

Thoroark luckily had wrenched his ice pick free and thumped down onto the ground infront of the boulder, Gratefully not smashed against it. The giant huffed and grinned to himself,pretty much everyone had been useful,the merchant far more so then he'd have ever thought. Hearing the Treant's last word's he groaned and walked over to it,climbing on top of the smouldering wooden carcass and raising his infront of him with two-hand's.

"Shut up you overgrown pile of twigs." He grunted,slicing down through the thing's head and splitting it's face open. The giant crouched down and shoved his hand into the newly created crevice,tearing free a gnarly piece of grey wood and lightly placing it in his rucksack for later. "Well....that worked out well,Nobody's dead and that thing barely did anything. This may go smoother than ever before ladies and gents. To adventure!" He cried with a large grin,suddenly back to being jovial and careless after his rather cold demeanor earlier. Thoroark jumped off the carcass and tossed a penny to Michael "Not sure if that thing's meant to burn out or stay there but it survived. It fell into the Ironbark Heart that I just pulled out luckily enough!,Good work with that strategy by the way." He praised.

The giant walked along for a moment and pulled out the afore mentioned heart again,a small gem shined in the center of it and it was a mass of gnarled root's and wood that seemed to weigh heavily even on the giant's arm. "We'll make camp a little way up the mountain,do an inventory check when we're not in danger of being mauled by tree's." He joked,putting the heart away and standing still,apparently meaning to go at the back of the group.

Zander was slightly caught off guard by the Treant. He positioned himself out of reach of the Treant. He tripped and fell into the snow, but got himself up quickly and brushed himself off. He watched as Thoroark fought the tree and how it attacked the merchant with snow. After the merchant defended himself he came up with a plan that Zander felt was reasonable. He focused on his ring, fire engulfed his hand sparks of red and orange flowed around it. The fire grew until it was a large fireball, Zander then let it go and it sailed for a short distance and then slid along the ground like a bowling ball. It smacked the Treant in its right leg and Zander watched as the fire began to spread.

When the creature was finally taken down by everyone's actions Zander stood there for a moment. The merchant wasn't such a liability after all. His quick thinking actually helped take down the Treant. The boy then approached Allan who had taken a fall during the fight. he laughed at him for a second and then tried to see how badly he was hurt. When Zander saw nothing that needed his healing he patted Allan on the back and said "That was a graceful fall, you need to teach me how to do that." he then ran off to the front of the group. He decided to use his ring to melt the snow and make a path. It tired him a little, but it would help get the group up the mountain faster to set up camp.

"And then the guy says, 'Treant? I hardly knew 'er! ' "
The table of mages burst into laughter, causing Aisha to snap back into focus. She had met some of her old buddies from the Eldritch Academy, the school where they all began their magical study.
She peered down into the mug of ale, the liquid was a darker amber, but with a noticeable purpleish hue. It was brewed with a native Willowspeak flower, so the drink got a more floral color, and was a bit sweeter than most ales, but still just as strong and sharp.
"Those animated golemoids you described, could we learn how to design one for ourselves, like a shopkeeper? I could use an extra pair of hands that doesn't need to leave o sleep." Aisha inquired to the one in blue robes, who had become a court wizard: he was at the noble's court mainly for the sake of having information on the mystical and unusual.
" There's a wonderful way to do this, AND I have an idea to get you a pretty penny from it." The Mage chirped, his shrill voice was rather humorous on a wise wizard like himself.
He beckoned her to him, and she leaned over towards him, and he whispered into her ear, about how to make golem cores. The process was simple, and intuitive for designing different kinds of them, but there was one little issue: a soul of someone deceased is needed to make it sentient and/or intelligent. There was one simple and lucrative solution, she'd visit funerals and mourners, and make a golem from their soul, at a fee of course, to let the dead be (kind of) alive again. It was like resurrection, but a LOT less practical.
Aisha's eyes sparkled with excitement and intrigue, as if she could see the gold she'd make infront of her.
"Looks like I'm paying for drinks now. To Seivus, and his knowledge!" Aisha made a toast to him, and they all clinked their mugs together, before taking a swig of their drinks.
The night was filled with laughter and stories, the atmosphere was a drunken euphoria, nobody at the Frosty Dragon was having as good of a time as the mages, ironic for how intellectual and snooty they're portrayed to be.

==========

Meanwhile, at the mountain, night began to descend, and it was uncommonly peaceful so far. A wolf howled in the distance, but no attacks. The most that the party saw was the occasional pair of lupine eyes, but the creatures seemed to be cautious, even more than they usually are.

Thoroark stared upwards and pocketed his coin, nodding to Michael whilst still keeping his eyes to the sky. His gargantuan hands wringing together as he thought for a moment. Perhaps however...no such plans were needed, Thoroark smiled for a moment before that smile turned into a frown when he thought of his comrades. The sun was already rising, the world already beginning to lighten so soon.

"Welcome to Willowspeak....It's not just deadly because of the nasties or the cold, no...to climb it you have to deal with near on no sleep or rest. To set up camp at night is dangerous, to rest during the day....that's suicide. Everything can see us now,or at least they will when that sun hit's the Willows Horizon. A fake horizon that is. Magical mountain that this peak decides to be" He explained, standing swiftly and glancing to the tree's,expecting whatever beast that had relied on the shadow's to burst forth. "No objections to your plan Michael but...I don't think we'll have time anymore." He commented,his sword in hand he side-stepped a little and kicked lightly at the tent, hoping to get Allan up and moving as soon as possible despite the draining day.

The giant rubbed at his eyes once more and brought his sword in front of him, at the ready for an attack, chances were it was a troll or something of the like, and that meant having to treat infected wounds already. He just hoped whatever it was went down as quickly as the treant and that Lauren showed up sometime soon.

"Oy, boss, do we go for em now?" A young man, no older than his twenties, peeked out from a bush, and towards the group they had been watching. They had counted five, one of them being a massive man, and another being a young girl.
"I want them alive. I'll chop off one of your fingers for every one of them that dies." Another figure spoke, in a deep bass voice that is coarser than sandpaper. The larger figure hoisted his axe over his back, and shambled away, back up the mountain.

Suddenly the younger bandit said in a hushed voice,
"Alright boys, get in position! Boss says we need them alive." He dusted off his clothing, a tattered jacket with various patches of random cloth sewn over the holes.

He cleared his throat, stepped out from behind a tree, and spoke, mainly addressing the largest member of the group (Thoroark)
"Good morning. However, this ain't a good mornin' for ya today. Yer going to come with us all quiet-like, or things might havta get a little rowdy around here. We want ya for ransom and for loot, not to kill ya. Just lay down yer weapons and come with us."
He snapped his fingers with the end of that sentence, and a few dozen bandits appeared from behind and inside trees, around corners, and even in fake rocks. They all were brandishing weapons of some sort: daggers, small axes, clubs, a few even had bows.

"So," The bandit extended his hand out and pointed at Thoroark,
"Are ye willin' to keep yer life and come with us?

Needless to say, Michael was very much surprised. Surrounded as if by magic, the group of brigands popped up suddenly and without warning. A flicker of self-disappointment came and went for the merchant, but the time for such frivolous emotion was not at hand.

”Unless these folks are going to disagree with you, Thoroark, I do believe this confirms my suspicions of sabotage. I should have took bets while I had the chance.” Looking around slowly Michael counted about forty men, armed and dangerous. But whether or not their courage could hold was another story. That was not something Michael would usually leave up to chance.

”Gentlemen, if I may confer with my group for a moment I may be able to find a amicable solution to your demands.” Bringing his hands up above his shoulders to show he wasn't holding anything, Michael slightly leaned towards Thoroark and tried to keep a smile on his face.

”I could,” he spoke in a hushed tone,”try to convince them to take just me instead and let the rest of you go on with your mission. Depending on how much they ask, you may be able to pay using what's in the cart I came in on. Let's face it, I've spent most of my usefulness on that Treant and I don't believe I've got the constitution for a mountain climb. Plus you don't seem the type to just let me rot in shackles so I feel somewhat safe in that. Should I try or what?”

He frowned as his tent was kicked and started pulling his gear back on, buckling his pauldron back into place as he heard the voices. Bandits this far up the mountain? Either they had followed the merchant's wagon, or someone had hired them to attack the group specifically. For some reason, he suspected the later. Slowly he lifted the very bottom of the back flap to his tent. Just from where he was, he could see three bandits spread out to surround the group. Well, they were in for quite a rude awakening. They didn't seem to be paying attention to the tent, perhaps not knowing he'd been inside. This was probably going to be his only shot!

He silently drew his sword and unlaced the back flap of his tent... Then he shot out from the tent like an arrow loosed from bow, covering the distance in less than a second. The first bandit died bloody, Allan's sword slicing him open from waist to shoulder, blood flying into the air and freezing as it hit the cold ground. He ran to the next one, but this bandit had time to raise his weapon, though his eyes were wide with shock. Allan charged at the man, but stepped off to the side as the bandit swung his weapon, then leapt through the air whilst slicing, neatly cutting the man's jugular. He landed in the snow and leapt again to the next man, flying nearly ten feet into the air! He kicked his heavily armored feet behind him, the force of that sending him into a sort of midair somersault with a sword attached to it. The bandit blocked, but the force of the blow broke the man's weapon and both of his wrists. Allan's sword kept going, cutting deeply into the man's collar bone and into the ribcage. Allan pulled his weapon out of the lifeless corpse and scanned the immediate area. Lots more bandits. Allan growled with rage and charged at the next bandit, sword at the ready. Allan disliked the idea of killing others, but by no means would he hesitate to send them all to their graves!

Thoroark grimaced as Allan leaped from the tent, killing the bandit's in a messy manner without half a thought. The giant growled and rushed forward towards his ally reaching his arm out and grabbing the young smith by his throat while he charged. Stopping the fool before he could hurt their chances anymore then he already had with his behavior. The giant instantly sheathed his sword upon his back and flung the boy behind him, utter disregard to where or how he landed. Looking directly at the bandit leader,his fist clenched tightly in anger,how could he have not seen this? He turned back to look at Michael and shook his head once before rolling his shoulders and straightening up.

"We have no chance against so many, They made it up to us and they don't look tired or injured at all, They either came from below or live in the peaks area...They are way out of our league....at least right now. This, is what is called a perfect trap on the peak....There ain't just monsters up here and I should have thought that through before bringing you ALL up here." He said, loud and clear before a stabbing pain filled his head, The giant pawed at his eye for a moment, his arm's tensing up as he fell to his knees. The pain spreading through him so quickly, so rapidly....It felt like an eel was tearing it's way through his body,writhing through his soul and his form couldn't take it. The giant thumped his fist into the ground and then just...fell. Collapsed and unconscious on the ground, a sickly black glow hidden and barely showing from under his eye.