The duelist doesn't turn from her enemy - that impulse was trained out of her with a sufficient number of blows with a practice sword to the ribs, or once, rather memorably, to the side of her head. She does however duck her head, closing her eyes and filling her lungs, bracing for the inevitable torrent of filth from the creature.
Which never comes, halted by the insane leap of Ozzy and Marin onto the creature - which makes bladework somewhat more dangerous, but is at the very least commendably brave.
The stature of the bear-thing, and it's ability to leverage it's bulk and...vomit...was proving a complication. And if nothing else, Ozzy and Martin's heroics would be made much less complicated by taking place lower to the ground. Capitalizing on the furry distraction currently trying to punch the beast, Ana darts to it's back, seeking to sever the creature's overstrained hamstrings.
Ozzy might not have had a lot of time, but this isn’t his first time flinging the young monk into the air, and the practice pays off here. He braces himself and stiffens his back, and when the monk’s foot - paw, whatever - lands on his hands, it’s with the full force of Ozzy’s considerable strength that Martin flies into the air.
Martin’s tail arcs to the left to counteract a bit of a sideways spin as years of practiced training punching practice dummies, then bags of dirt, then bags of sand, then the stone walls of the monastery itself bring his fist into perfect line with the rest of his arm. Anata swoops underneath to try to cut the undead beast-man’s ankles - but she feels her saber bounce off of calloused skin and flesh, not slide through tendon. Martin doesn’t need such aid, though, as he brings his fist down with all his might with a ear-shattering CRACK.
Fortunately for Martin, that sound is the undead bear-man’s skull shattering, not his fist - and Martin feels his hand stop against something hard inside the already-putrefied grey matter inside the skull. It’s debatable if there’s enough time left in the world to groom his hand clean, but Martin feels something stoney under his fingers.
"Rip it out! Break it!" Ozzy shouts, turning the effort of throwing Martin into a full-body rotation and delivering a massive, telegraphed uppercut to either pop the tablet out through the hole Martin made or at least keep it from schlucking the thing back down into itself.
Red shakes his head, then draws and nocks, pulling back as far as he can, aiming as well as he can.
Only got one good shot, and need to put it through worked stone. On the other hand, pull it off and I can get at least one free round from every bar in the world for the story alone.
Martin's free hand claws into the bear-thing's chest fur as momentum threatens to rip him away again. Steadying himself as best he can with his legs against the shambling form, Martin forces his buried arm deeper into the beast's skull and snakes his fingers around what he thinks is the tablet. Either Ozzy gets it, or Red gets it, but either way, it ends now.
Ozzy's uppercut impacts the boar-zombie-beast-man's jaw with a wet THUD, and the impact numbs Ozzy's punchin' arm down to the elbow - but it's enough to let Martin pry the tablet loose and hold it high, just in time for Red, muscles burning with effort, to loose his arrow.
The shot screams through the air and strikes the tablet dead center, and shatters the arrow into splinters - but cracks the tablet piece in half down the middle. A burst of red light and a puff of smoke issue forth, and the night goes from pitch black to just another bayou midnight in an instant. Down below, an older voice cries out, "Thank the gods!" A rasping cough follows it. "Damn you, Beaulieu! Damn you to hell!"
The disadvantages of having your arm up to the elbow inside the head/neck/what-the-fuck-is-this-even of a decaying bilous bear-monster-thing become clear to Martin as the wobbly mass of putrid tissue and Asenath-brand ichor rapidly decays into a big fucking puddle beneath him, and let me tell you, that doesn't smell very nice, either. Within the second, he finds himself on the ground, half-crawling, half-rolling out of the steaming mess and flopping onto a preciously unsoiled piece of...soil.
"I'm going," he coughs between breaths, "I'm going -- to need a -- moment."
He barely musters the strength to raise his neck, and then looks down at the grime and slime and general-purpose ickiness all over him. He groans, and his head flops back to the ground, where he sucks in a fair bit more air.
"You guys," he says, slowly regaining his strength, "I hate Asenath. I really do."
Red finally emerges from the brush, taking off his coat as he walks over and lays the leather over the tablet.
"I hear you, Martin. When you've got your breath back, could you take a look at Lucius? His face is still smoking a little." Red looks around at the people gathering themselves after fighting toe-to-toe with a gelatinous bear. "Everyone else okay? Anton, Ozzy? Saw you guys get some black gunk on you."
"Haven't the faintest," Red replies. "But there's an easy way to find out for sure." He points to the farmhouse. "Once everyone's caught their breath and not going to die, I figure it's time to talk to Narcisse. Get some answers."
Anton's blood is still up, the heat of battle demanding he do something, that something is yet to be done. He shakes himself, making a face against the all-too-familiar stench of bad mojo. "Answers. And make sure this is over." He takes a stronger breath through his nose to try to steady himself, then the stench brings out a cough as it hits him again. "Answers, and then distance."
After a few more deep breaths, Martin picks himself off the ground. His knees are wobbly and his arms leaden, but he powers through it and steps through the cantrip of cleanliness. Seconds later, the grime and gunk of battle reluctantly sloughs off him and falls to the ground with icky little wisps of vapor. Don't breathe this.
"Checking on Lucius," Martin coughs, then staggers over to the assassin to lend a hand. Or paw.
Lucius has already hastily pulled a poultice out of his coat and slapped it on the side of his face, trying to keep the blistering to a minimum. "That was -" he hisses through his teeth, "- fucking stupid."
Martin cracks a smile at that. "It was brave, too," he says. He takes a knee next to Lucius and puts his right hand on the poultice, trying to summon up the rest of his power to bolster Lucius's recovery.
Datehl, walk with us.
As the laying-on-hands act proceeds, the blisters on Lucius's face start to shrink and fill back in. He'll look like his handsome self in a few minutes.
"Your secret is safe with me," Martin says. He wanders over to the others next. "Well fought," he says. "Let us provide what aid we can to Asenath's victims."
"If it's all the same to you," Lucius says, drawing his daggers once more, "I'd like to stick a knife in Narcisse and call it a day."
But of course, it isn't, and Martin lopes over to the nearest group of cowering beast-people. A family of possum-people are hiding behind a pile of dirt, their beady black eyes poking over the top and sides. "Don't eat us!" one of the younger ones shouts, and one of the men stiffens up and keels over on his back out of reflex.
----
Lucius walks up to Ozzy, Anton, Anata and Red as Q flutters down onto Ozzy's shoulder. "Let's gut the bastard so we can go home. And shower. Again."
"You're safe now," Martin says to the possum-people. "We've come to break the curse of the tablet and free you from the Descoteaux. I'm...sorry you had to experience all that. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but...I'm afraid we are still some ways from being able to reverse these transformations."
"But, you see, my colleague and I" - he nods to Ozzy - "are students of magic, actually. If you permit, we would like to examine you. Or perhaps you overheard some of the rituals or saw them refer to an ancient tome of forbidden knowledge? We would be most grateful for any information you can share with us."
A few others - a couple twitchy-looking field mouse-people and a few more raven-women - poke their heads out too.
"We - caw! - heard them talking about a tablet," one of the raven-women says.
"That's right, they needed the other half to - ca-caw! - to have control over what their Mistress gave them," the other one says. "At least that's what they said." She shivers and ruffles her feathers. "Sounded crazy to me."
"I see," Martin says, then glances over his shoulder at the bubbling, decaying pile of nasty that used to be a bear that used to be a man (but never stopped being an asshole) and the cracked halves of the tablet lying next to it. "Well, we know where to start looking."
He looks around to the group and gives a nervous chuckle.
"Any volunteers for gazing at an ancient artifact of incalculable evil?"
CrazyIvan
