Snippet #1457108

7 Miles South of Laeral

"Excellent!" Said Kisikoni, bowing to Talae. "Thank you! Er, you already know my name, so why don't you..."

After introductions, Kisikoni had tried to make idle chit-chat with the dark elf in order to understand her better, but she was quiet and eventually the amicable Deep Human gave up. He would talk to her later, but she seemed more concerned for Fae, who was her sister. He wasn't deaf, and despite his eavesdropping he knew the more he could gather about his squad, the better. She wasn't exactly too seclusive about that, either. By the time they had stopped, he was getting rather winded. Deep humans weren't meant to cover such expanses of land in such little time. Rubbing his forehead, he heard the order to follow his captain, and took off after the halfling commander. He threw himself into the ground. As they took out long-range weapons, Kisikoni was glad that he brought his crossbow with him. He laid it out in front, taking comfort in it's familiar form. All these drills, all this training came down to this.

He pulled the string back, carefully loading a standard bolt. It was wise to start with the basics. The tickle trigger lightly rested on the deep human's fingers, and he quickly took aim and shot. The bolt flew, but by then Sid's initial shot had already alerted them. He got up, put his foot in the ring and drew the string back with both hands to reduce the time it took, then loaded another bolt. He took aim and fired. He did not check to see if any hit, rather focused on looking down and making sure he loaded his bolts quickly and aimed for the closest approaching Child.

He kept checking to see how his partner was doing as he loaded a bolt, and figured she was doing well- if it came down to a fight he'd have to make his way to her, or find a partner if the fight became too heavy. At some point, vice-commander Sid made a snide comment about how her own weapon was larger than Kisikoni's. Kisikoni didn't really care in the thick of battle, but before he caught himself, he heard himself replying "It certainly does seem like you're compensating for something." Beelzes, one of the deep humans caught wind of the reply and chuckled before concentrating on her own devices.

???

The trees blurred in and out of her view as the Nightmarian Spider continued to lead her pursuers on a wild goose chase. There seemed to be no end to them, but she had to escape somehow. This was important stuff, and she had to get it somewhere before she either died or got caught. Twirling around a tree, she shot a globule of webbing into another child. Sadly, with this rate of exhaustion Mercy knew that shooting anymore unless she made it into Laeral or something would make her too tired to even speak coherently. The day had not passed quickly, and her strength had waned. She was completely wired on adrenaline now, and the pure will not to be captured.

Dropping from a branch, she landed on a unready Child, his sword skating off the armor on her abdomen. The sword was twisted out of his hand, and Mercy raised her fist and gave the man a nice punch to the face. She tore a hunk of flesh from his neck, and started chewing on it aimlessly as the Children of Fire swarmed around her. They finally had the Nightmarian cornered. Well, at least she would kill this one before they caught her. The Child pinned under the sheer mass of her body struggled, blood spattering from his open neck wound irregularly. She winked at him, grabbing his head. The man's hands clasped weakly on her arms as she ripped the head from the body, and crushed it with one of her many plated legs. This man was definitely dead. The body flopped slightly, and before she knew it, the Children were upon her.

"Well, I guess they did want me alive. I can tell you boys now, I'm not the best playmate." She said, smiling vivaciously at one Child. The Child scowled. She had been turned upside-down, and her eight legs had been bonded by some very strong rope. They carted her around by tying the rope to a large log that several carried on their shoulders. She was backwards as well, so she rotated her body to watch out for incoming foliage to dodge. The vain spider didn't want her head to be full of lumps this early in the game. Her arms were tied, her weapons were tied to the end of the log for compact travel. She could still fire her webbing, but that would only exhaust her and most of it would simply miss.

"Poo. The legion has sure does have some useless soldiers." She pouted.