The Dauntless

Antoinette thinks for a moment. ”Well thanks for the information. If you want to help further, we could use a helping hand in whatever fights are to come down here. We can let you eat anyone we kill. We’ll also heal you up from any harm that comes your way.”

"Uh... pass, thanks," the tixitog replies. "I make a point of it to stay out of dangerous situations if I can help it. I prefer my prey easy."

"Make sure your easy prey are restricted to animals. I don't accept surrender a second time," Dorrak warns her.

"Sure, sure, you'll never hear about me attacking sentients again," the tixitog reassures you.

The group tries to sneak into Voz's room, but are met with an opening blast of magic that wounds everyone and makes them bleed slowly as they fight. Then the rest of the fight swiftly turns into a bloodbath, with Antoinette getting struck in the face by a bolt of acid that continually melts her flesh as fast as Dorrak and Django can heal. Dorrak, Luna, and Antoinette all maul and slash at Voz as much as they can, with mixed success, Luna landing one particularly wicked cut right along Voz's back. Fleur helps protect Django by tearing at the skeleton attacking him. Nova fights like a warg possessed, however, needing only the slightest direction from Dorrak to consistently bite at arteries in Voz's legs and shred her waist. However, the power of Voz's magic soon drops both Antoinette, and then Dorrak, with Antoinette's acid burns nearly killing her were it not for a burst of desperate will to live. After a huge heal spell from Django brings her and Dorrak back up and obliterates the skeletons, Nova's teeth finally fell the necromancer.

As Voz falls, Antoinette rises to her feet, towering over Voz's body, staring into her unconscious eyes, and in a furious, exhausted tone, says, ""You can't win. We have each other, and you have nothing," and then rips Voz's throat out with her teeth.

As she does, Dorrak roars, "Don't!" but to no avail.

Still on his knees, Django lets his shaking hand unclench from the motion of a spell which would have cut Voz's fragile tie to life, and fall limply to his side as he stares at the ruined mess of the necromancer's throat, and then at the gore dripping from Antoinette's lips and teeth.

Antoinette stares at the corpse for a moment. The blood drips from her mouth. Much as she hates to admit it, it tastes good. She seems to come to her senses a few moments later, fully realizing she had just executed the knocked out necromancer. She starts spitting out the blood before wordlessly leaving the cavern.

After watching Antoinette go, Dorrak turns to look at Nova and offers her a tired smile. "Nova, you fought incredibly," he rasps.

Nova's eyes light up and her tail wags drastically. "Did I Dorrak? I saw when her back was turned and I went RAWR! And then I was like woooosh! And then she hurt Antoinette and I was all 'don't you dare!'" As she excitedly goes about describing the battle that literally just happened she pounces and snaps at the air, playfully reenacting it.

Meanwhile, Fleur follows after Antoinette, bumping up against he legs. "That was awesome! The skeletons didn't taste very good though. How did the Voz lady taste, she looked yummy."

"Terrible," Antoinette lies. "And I shouldn't have done that. She was already knocked out. There was no point to it."

"I saw," Dorrak's smile widens at Nova's infectious enthusiasm. "And that's what it really means to fight well. You didn't just fight hard, you fought for a purpose, and that made you stronger."

Fleur looks skeptical. "She was a dangerous person though. She was trying to kill us, and even I know making skeletons is bad. You said we were s'posed to rip peoples' throats out to protect people, and doesn't killing her protect people?"

"It did, didn't it?" Nova is quiet and thoughtful. "I liked that. Can we do it again?"

"It's most of what I do," Dorrak replies with a nod. "So as long as you're with me, you'll get plenty of chances to."

Antoinette sits down and looks at Fleur. ”It is not always so clear and easy. Yes, she was bad. Killing her in the heat of a fight would have been fine. We’re fighting lethally and she was trying to kill us. The problem is, we had already stopped her. She was unconscious. At that point killing her was unnecessary. She was no longer a threat to any of us. I got carried away in the heat of the moment and killed her anyway.

“I know you don’t really intuit good naturally all that well. You’re a hunter naturally and if you apply that view to all things, what I did makes sense. Kill or be killed. But things are different for people. We have laws, rules. I don’t always respect those as much as I should, but I try to at least be good.

“I know it may seem weird to you, but I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a normal human, no crocodile powers at all. I was just a little girl, afraid, on the run, and only interested in learning, not fighting. We were in a swamp when these crocodile monsters attacked us. One of them but my arm and wouldn’t let go. I thought I was going to die, but my father kept stabbing it until it stopped moving. I hoped that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.

“I started having nightmares. Nightmares about the attack, but they started shifting. Instead of being from my point of view, I was the crocodile monster. The next full moon I transformed for the first time. It was painful, I was terrified, and then I was angry. I was angry at everything and I wanted to eat and destroy. I couldn’t control myself. My family had to chain me up to stop me from hurting anyone.

“It took a lot of hard work and practice to be able to control myself the way I can now. And in moments like that just now, I am painfully reminded of how tenuous that control can be. So when I tell you that just killing like that is bad, understand that it isn’t because I don’t know how it makes you feel. It’s because I know exactly how it makes you feel. It takes so much more strength to ignore that than to just give in.”

As Dorrak talks to Nova, Django has him sit with his back up against one of Voz's crates and remove the heavier bits of his armor so he can set to treating his wounds. Finding a nasty gash between Dorrak's neck and shoulder just barely magically healed enough not to be exposing an open artery, Django focuses his efforts on that first, slathering the wound with a stinging salve before binding it and the more minor nicks on the half-orc's torso.

"How you feeling, big man?" he asks, helping Dorrak gingerly pull his bloddstained tunic back on.

Dorrak winces at the burning sensation of the salve but doesn't complain, then offers Django a small smile. "Been worse, well enough to make it back and spend half an hour in my room praying for healing," he replies with a rumbling chuckle. "But first," he stands up, takes out his sword, and uses it to slice the head off Voz's mangled neck. "I'd rather not carry a shredded corpse all the way back."

Fleur is quiet for a long while, but seems to appreciate the sentiment as she climbs into Antoinette's lap and curls up into a ball.

Antoinette pets Fleur gently and waits for her teammates to come out of the cave.

The trek back to town is the same as it ever way, and people barely even take notice of your bloodied, stained and acid-washed clothing as you head to Town Hall. The council is once again in a meeting when you walk in, and Posandi lets out a weary sigh. "Should we just schedule 10 minutes a day for the Dauntless?"

"Hush, Quentino." Greta Gardania shoots him an annoyed look before nodding to the party. "Well, Dauntless, has your investigation proven fruitful?"

Dorrak pulls out Voz's correspondence first and offers it to the council. "Perhaps it would be easiest if you read this first."

Melma Ann Sendari takes the correspondence and reads it aloud to the council, her face growing more horrified with each line. By the time she's done everyone appears flabbergasted.

"... ya mean ta tell me," Jorsk Hinterclaw says slowly. "That we've had a cultist o' Norgober raisin' the dead and plannin' ta create an assassin's guild under our very noses?"

”Yes,” Dorrak replies bluntly. ”She had two skeletons protecting her when we fought her. She was quite powerful as well, she very nearly killed us.”

”Fortunately we all survived the encounter,” Antoinette adds. ”Unfortunately she did not. We won’t be able to lock her up or question her further.”

"Quite unfortunate indeed," Posandi grumbles. "She could have had accomplices we still don't know about, or what this 'Scarlet Triad' wanted with this ring. Perhaps next time you'll be more careful."

"Careful nothin'," Hinterclaw interrupts him. "Ye've never been in a fight in yer life, Quentino, ya don't know the heat of it. It ain't easy ta take someone in alive, let alone a finger-wiggler. Devestatin'ly dangerous, made o' paper."

"Regardless, it's good you made it back alive." Gardania steeples her fingers.

"I'm a bit concerned about this Alseta's Ring myself," Trini Spizzlegig puts forward. "Both Voz and Calmont were after it, and this Scarlet Triad seems interested too. According to the captain, Calmont called it a series of 'elf gates.' I think he's talking about aiudara, an old, lost form of elven teleportation, which would mean we've also got a bunch of portals to unknown locations to deal with. Y'know what that sounds like to me?" She grins mischievously, and Posandi lets out a groan.

"Oh gods, will no one think of the treasury?"

"The treasury is less important than the safety of the town, Quentino." Greta looks at the others, all of whom, even Posandi (albeit begrudgingly) nod. "I imagine curiosity will lead you there anyway, Dauntless, but this Council hereby offers you the job of finding Alseta's Ring, securing it, and learning what you can about what it does and where it goes. Given that there's no evidence of an immediate threat, the reward will be small, only 5 gold pieces, but you would also have the town's gratitude. Do you accept this quest?"

Antoinette does her best to remain stone faced as the council discusses the death of Voz. Once they finish she nods. ”Of course.”